The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

the fact that Frye had your phone number in his pocket. Why was that?”
    “I don’t know,” Barton gasped.
    “The police have his wallet with your number in it. They’ll be coming to see you soon themselves.”
    “I’ll ask you to leave my house now, Mr. Peters,” he said. “My record and my reputation are enough.…”
    “To make a sailor blush,” said Rathbone. “Tell me, Major, why are you still a major at your age? Shouldn’t a West Point man have made Colonel by the age of fifty?”
    “How do you know all that?” Barton started.
    “Your West Point diploma is on the wall and the year of your graduation, indicating your approximate age,” Rathbone explained. “Could your drinking have something to do with it? You do a very bad job of hiding it, you know. And where, pray tell, is your wife? From the look of this place, no one has taken care of it for some time except a gardener. No Major Barton, I rather fancy your job is not as important as you’ve indicated and that you’ve been given this assignment to keep you from embarrassing superiors or some influential friend who is protecting you. A military classmate, perhaps?”
    Barton licked his lips, almost defeated, and Rathbone lit a cigarette, turning his eyes from Barton for the first time. Barton reached for a bottle and poured himself a drink. He didn’t offer us one.
    “I can’t tell you anything,” he said. “I’m going to report what I know to my superiors as soon as you leave, and they can do with it what they will. You’ll get no more from me.”
    “I think we’ve gotten quite a bit,” said Rathbone. “Perhaps you’ll be more inclined to talk to us after you’ve seen your superiors.”
    “Perhaps,” said Barton, “but I doubt it.” He downed his drink and went silent.
    Rathbone indicated that we should leave, and we did, but not before we saw Barton pour himself another drink. On the front steps, Rathbone said:
    “Sorry about that, Peters, but I couldn’t resist playing Holmes. I quite enjoyed it.”
    “That’s all right,” I said. “Except I started to feel like Watson, and that didn’t do anything for my self-image.”
    “Well,” he said. “Comfort yourself. Nigel plays Watson as much more of a loveable bumbler than Conan Doyle intended. After all, Watson was very much Conan Doyle—doctor, admirer of ratiocination, solidly built. Our version is a bit more comic. Now I suggest we have something to eat and return in an hour to question Major Barton again, when he has made himself more vulnerable with drink and fear.”
    “You don’t buy his tale about going to his superiors,” I said, getting in the car.
    “No,” said Rathbone, getting in the driver’s seat and pulling into light traffic. “I can’t believe a West Point man, even one who tends to drink, would go to a meeting with his superiors with his shoes unpolished. He certainly wouldn’t after having a few drinks.”
    We found a small steak place for lunch. Since it was after one in the afternoon, it wasn’t crowded, and no one but the waiter stared at Rathbone. We ate, with him urging me to talk about what it was like being a private detective. It was nothing like being Sherlock Holmes.
    “Well,” I said, “for a month back in ’39 I was a night bouncer at a hot dog stand in Watts. Four bucks a night and almost all you could eat.
    “Later that same year I filled in for the hotel dick at a place in Fresno. One month again, room and board, mostly old women cheating at bridge. But one night we had a woman come running out of a shower screaming rape and I followed a trail of wet footprints down the hall and into a room. I found a guy in a closet. He scared the hell out of me, jaybird naked and covered with blood. Never did find out where the blood came from. The woman hadn’t bled. Never found out how he got in the room or hotel either. He wasn’t registered, and the room belonged to a priest who was in town for a convention and had left his door