by Alice Duncan
The men chatted in the living room whilst we ladies set the table and got the foodstuffs settled thereon. How come women do all the work in the world? Not that being a bounty hunter or a policeman or whatever Mr. Zollinger was didn’t count as working, but really. Lots of women had to work away from their homes, too, and then they had to come home and do all the household chores, as well. Seemed unfair to me, but nobody’d ever asked me. Nor would they care if they did ask and I answered. I swear…
“Mr. and Mrs. Zollinger are going to Gay’s Lion Farm tomorrow,” I told everyone after we’d been seated at the table and Pa had said the blessing.
“I remember you saying something about that place,” said Prophet. “I’d kinda like to see it, too.”
“You can come with us!” I said happily. “Harold said he’d take me. We can all three go together!”
“What about me?” asked Sam in a grumble.
“You may come with us, too,” I said magnanimously.
“Thanks. I’ll probably have to work.”
“That’s what I figured,” I told him. “Anyway, on Sunday Lucy can tell me all about it, and I can then let you know if it’s worth the trip to downtown Los Angeles.”
“Never saw a lion outside of a zoo before,” said Prophet.
“Me, neither.” Sam.
In fact, the sentiment was unanimous.
“I’ve wanted to see Gay’s for a long time now,” said Lucy. “I can’t imagine being a lion-tamer.”
After a short, but piercing glance at Sam, I said, “I can.”
I do believe Sam would have thrown a piece of garlic bread at me if we hadn’t been seated at my parents’ dining-room table. Everyone laughed.
“I understand they’re going to move the lion farm to El Monte pretty soon,” I said after downing an awe-inspiring bite of meatball.
“Yeah? That’d be closer to here, wouldn’t it?” asked Prophet.
“Yes, but I don’t like El Monte much.”
Mr. Prophet lifted an eyebrow. “Why’s that, Miss Daisy?”
Sam and I exchanged a glance, and I decided the rest of our dining companions didn’t need to know I’d been kidnapped by a couple of murdering anarchists, driven over a police-planted tire-flattener I didn’t know was there, and ended up in a ditch in El Monte. I just shrugged. “Not sure, really. There are dairies in El Monte, and you can see cows on the hills there, but you probably don’t much care about cows, do you?”
“I like eating them,” said Prophet.
Again a round of laughter filled the room.
Then Mr. Z asked Mr. Prophet what he did for a living, and it seems as if the air in the room had suddenly been sucked into several lungs. Prophet, however, remained unfazed.
“Retired now. Used to do me a bit of law-dogging.”
“Law-dogging?”
“He was a lawman,” I said. “Kind of.”
“Oh! You mean a sheriff or a policeman or something like that?”
“Something like that,” said Prophet, his voice as dry as the dust on an Arizona desert.
“My goodness. Where was this?” asked Lucy, naively sweet.
“He worked all over the west,” I said, hoping the subject would die a natural death.
“The west?” asked Mr. Z. “We’re the west, aren’t we?” He appeared honestly confused.
“Yes, but this was in the olden days.”
Prophet gave me an unfriendly squint.
“Well, I don’t mean the olden days, exactly. I mean, he used to work in some of those rough western towns in, you know, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, those places. Before they were states, I mean. Well, Texas was a state, but when he worked in them, Arizona and New Mexico were territories. He saw a lot of what we think of as the old west,” I said, mentally telling myself to stop babbling.
“Oh, my. Fascinating,” said Mr. Z. I think he meant it.
“It had its moments,” said Prophet acidly.
“More spaghetti?” asked Vi, beaming at us.
“Yeah. Thanks. This stuff is really good. Never had it before,” said Prophet.
“You had to cook for yourself, though, didn’t you?” I asked. “When you were on the trail of some of those bad guys, you had to cook over a camp fire, right?” The two or three times I’d ever sat at a campfire was when I’d gone to the camp our church held for kids during the summer months in the San Gabriel Mountains. The only things I ever cooked over the fire were frankfurters and marshmallows on sticks.
“Yeah,” said Prophet. “Sometimes we could catch a fish if there was a stream nearby. Mostly, though, it was bacon and beans. And hard biscuits. Gets a mite tiresome after a few weeks.” He grinned as if in fond remembrance of times past.
If all I got to eat were bacon and beans and hard biscuits for weeks on end, I think I’d have perished from sheer boredom. And, perhaps, flatulence. I probably shouldn’t have said that, but it did occur to me.
“Goodness,” said Lucy. “I can’t imagine having to track bad men in the old west.”
“It was a living,” said Prophet.
Sam mentioned something about Italian cornmeal, which he called polenta, and the conversation ranged away from Mr. Prophet’s employment in the old west.
I got the feeling Mr. Prophet was glad of it. Truth be told, so was I.
Twenty-Five
As soon as I walked into the choir room the Sunday after Lucy and Albert’s visit to our house on Friday, Lucy attacked me. Well, she didn’t precisely attack, but she was on me like a duck on a June bug. That’s another saying I got from Mr. Prophet.
“Oh, Daisy!” cried she. “It was so much fun!”
I blinked at her. “What was so much fun?”
“The lion farm! It was wonderful! A fellow put on an exhibition and showed visitors how he trained the lions and everything.”
“Oh, that’s right! I’m so glad. I was hoping it would be worth the ride to downtown.”
“It’s not really all that far,” said Lucy. “It was a fine day for a drive, and the park is lovely.”
“That’s nice. Harold Kincaid told me he’d take me there, so now I’m looking forward to it even more.”
Our duet went swimmingly. Mr. Hostetter was as good as his word, setting a hymnal on a music stand for us so I didn’t have to hold the heavy book in my weak left hand.
After the church service was over, my family gravitated to Fellowship Hall. I was moving around much better by then, and was able to fetch a cookie all on my own. I didn’t even need my cane. Not that I much wanted a cookie, but Dr. Benjamin told me it would help me recover fully if I exercised my arms and legs after having been sedentary for three weeks. What the heck. Fetching a cookie was exercise, wasn’t it?
I took it to a table and sat next to Sam, who’d sat next to Lou Prophet. Mr. Prophet had shed his shabby frock coat for the occasion. I don’t know if Sam had bought him a new suit or what, but he looked almost respectable. Lou Prophet, I mean. Sam always looked respectable. Harold even said he looked like an Italian count now and then. Anyhow, both men had snagged three cookies each. Vi had a chicken stew bubbling on the stove at home, so we didn’t want to overdo the cookies.
“You and your lady friend sounded mighty fine up there today, Miss Daisy,” said Mr. Prophet.
“Thank you!” His compliment sounded heartfelt, and it touched me. Not sure why.
“They always sound good together,” said Sam.
“Yeah? You two sing together a lot?”
Modestly, I told Mr. Prophet, “Mr. Hostetter has us sing duets from time to time. Lucy has a lovely soprano voice.” I didn’t say that in the next life, should there be one, I wanted to come back as a soprano because they always got the melody, thinking that might be inserting sour grapes into an otherwise friendly conversation. It did, however, occasionally irk me that we altos always had to learn the harmony while the sopranos warbled away on the melody as if they’d done something interesting when, in truth, it was the altos who had to work hard in order t
o make a duet work well. All the sopranos ever had to do was not go off-key.
“That’s nice. He knows a good thing when he hears one, I reckon.” Mr. Prophet went back to munching cookies.
I was surprised when Miss Betsy Powell sat across from us at our table. She smiled at me.
“It’s so good to see you up and about again, Mrs. Majesty,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling politely. Miss Powell and I weren’t enemies, but we’d never been bosom pals, either, so I thought her arrival at our table a trifle odd. It probably wasn’t. I’d received a host of good wishes from lots of congregation members that day, and I hardly knew several of them. I guess that’s what happens when you sing in the choir; you meet all the choir members, but unless you socialize a lot at church functions, you don’t necessarily meet the rest of the congregants.
“Your duet with Mrs. Zollinger was lovely,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“Mrs. Majesty! You’re looking ever so much better today than you did when we last saw you.” This came from Mr. Bernard Randford, who pulled out a chair next to Miss Powell’s. He smiled at me, too. “Are you feeling better?”
“Much better, thank you. How’s your poor motorcar.”
With a thin smile, Mr. Randford said, “It’s fine again. I had to replace the seats.” He shook his head. “Creatures in the wild don’t understand the purpose of automobiles, I guess.”
“I guess,” said I.
“Are you coming any closer to finding who stole it?” Mr. Randford asked of Sam, who’d been quietly nibbling away at his cookies.
Lifting his head, Sam said, “Not really. It’s annoying, too. We pretty much have the whole gang who wanted Daisy dead locked up, but we still haven’t pinned the vehicle theft on anyone.”
Mr. Randford frowned slightly and shook his head. “I hope you do it soon. Whoever stole my car—and then used it for such a fell purpose—should be locked up.”
I got the feeling he added on the “fell purpose” comment because he didn’t want us to think he was merely interested in who’d stolen his car. Well, that was all right. I suppose that might be my main interest, too, if the only thing I’d had to worry about was a stolen vehicle. As it was, I considered the theft of Mr. Randford’s Cole Sportster the least of the problems we’d faced during the past three weeks. Except that it had been used in an attempt to kill me.
Lucy sat in the chair next to me and smiled across the table at Miss Powell and Mr. Randford. “Did Daisy tell you where Albert and I went yesterday?”
Looking puzzled, Miss Powell said, “Why, no, she didn’t. Where did you go yesterday?”
“Gay’s Lion Farm in Westlake Park! It was so much fun!”
“Goodness, I didn’t know there was a lion farm nearby,” said Miss Powell. She turned to gaze upon Mr. Randford. “Oh, Bernard, wouldn’t it be fun to see a lion farm?”
After giving the matter some thought, Mr. Randford said cautiously, “Might be interesting.”
“Oh, it was,” raved Lucy. “They put on an exhibition to show visitors how they train the lions, and they had posters from the various moving pictures their lions were used in hanging in a hall, and…Well, it was an enjoyable adventure.”
Smiling besottedly (is that a word?) at his wife, Albert Zollinger said, “It was most entertaining.”
All of a sudden, Sam spoke. I jumped a little, having forgot he was even there. “I might be able to get Wednesday off.”
“Oh, Sam, really?”
He glared at me. “No. I’m lying.”
A soft guffaw from Lou Prophet smote the air. Everyone else at the table chuckled to one degree or another.
“Would you mind if Harold went with us?”
With a shrug, Sam said, “No. That’s fine.”
“I want to see this place, too,” said Mr. Prophet.
“I’ll call Harold as soon as we get home, and we’ll make arrangements to go to Gay’s Lion Farm on Wednesday.”
“If Kincaid can get the day off,” said Sam.
“Of course,” I said. “His schedule seems quite flexible, but he might not be able to take an odd Wednesday off any time he chooses.”
“We should go as a church group someday,” said Miss Powell and giggled.
Her giggle annoyed me for some reason. I think, by that time in my life, and after hearing Miss Betsy Powell scream on numerous occasions, pretty much everything she did annoyed me. I’m not very nice sometimes.
The rest of my family gathered around our table then, so we all got up to traipse home again. My chest itched a bit, and I scratched it as I got into Sam’s Hudson, feeling happy. It seemed a long time since I’d been happy. The day was glorious, and I was starting to get used to being out of danger. It had been almost a week since anyone had tried to kill me and, while it was true I jumped approximately three feet in the air any time a motorcar in my vicinity backfired, my nerves were ever so much calmer than they’d been during those first perilous weeks in January.
As soon as I’d set the table for Sunday dinner, I telephoned Harold Kincaid’s home. Naturally, Roy Castillo answered same. He told me Harold was away from the house, but that he’d have him call me as soon as he got home. Pronouns. So annoying. I meant he (Roy) would have him (Harold) telephone me (Daisy) as soon as Harold returned to Harold’s house. Nertz.
“He didn’t go to church with Del, did he?” I asked of Roy. It was really a joke question. I knew Harold better than to think he’d go to church with Del.
As I might have expected he would, Roy laughed. “No, Miss Daisy. I don’t think Harold would go near that place. I think he’s afraid of it.”
“He might well be.” And perhaps for good reason. If anybody called me Our Lady of Perpetual Malice, I’d probably be annoyed, too. I’d been to see St. Andrews, where Del worshiped. Its sanctuary was lined on each side by columns made of marble in different colors. I could visualize one of those marble columns crumbling right on top of Harold should he dare enter St. Andrews’s hallowed halls.
For the record, the reason I’d gone to St. Andrews was in order to see its innards because they were so widely praised for their beauty. Honestly? I thought the sanctuary would be prettier if the columns were all the same color marble. Once again, nobody’d asked me what I thought about St. Andrews’ columns, and I probably wouldn’t have answered if they had, because obviously I was wrong. Only I still didn’t like all the different colored marble columns. Guess I’m just a Philistine.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell everyone how delicious Aunt Vi’s chicken stew was. Or how delicate and toothsome her dinner rolls were. Or how much we all enjoyed dining thereon.
Lou Prophet, who had only recently begun to savor Vi’s cooking, said it all for us. Shaking his head in rapture, he said upon a sigh, “I swear, Mrs. Gumm, I’ve never eaten so well in my life. You’re the best cook I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you.” Vi tittered. She didn’t do that often, but Mr. Prophet had that effect on women of a certain age.
Truth to tell, I could get a little giddy around him myself sometimes, but please don’t tell Sam. Heck, Lou Prophet must have been nigh onto eighty years old by then and, while remnants of his handsome youth remained—in spots—he was an old man. Not a little old man, but an old man. With a peg leg, for pity’s sake.
Trying not to stare as I assessed him, I acknowledged he was undoubtedly telling the truth with regard to Vi being the best cook he’d ever met. He didn’t look like a man who lied often. He also didn’t look as though he’d dined on top-notch foodstuffs during most of his adventurous life. Beans and bacon and hard biscuits. I hoped he’d at least found the occasional onion to chop up and dump into his beans and bacon to give them some oomph.
The family and Mr. Prophet had just polished off a baked Roman beauty apple (prepared with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon and served with thick cream) for dessert when the telephone rang. I instantly rose from my chair at the dining table. I didn’t hurt! Well,
I didn’t hurt much, anyway.
Feeling quite chipper, I went to the telephone in the kitchen, pretty sure I knew who was on the other end of the wire.
I was right.
“What do you want from me now, Daisy?” Harold asked in a simulated-aggrieved tone.
“I want you to take Mr. Prophet and Sam and me to Gay’s Lion Farm on Wednesday.”
A slight hesitation preceded Harold’s, “Oh. Well, hell, why not? Only I don’t think we can all fit in the Bearcat.” Harold owned a gorgeous, bright red, snazzy, low-slung Stutz Bearcat.
“Hmm. You’re probably right. You ought to drive Mr. Prophet there. Bet he’s never been in such a fancy car.”
“You want me to ride in a moving vehicle alone with that man?”
“Sure! Why not?”
“Because he’s a dangerous lunatic?”
“He is not! He’s a hero of the old west. Anyway, he has a wooden leg, for the sweet Lord’s sake. What the heck can he do to you?”
“I’m not sure, but he looks like a dodgy customer to me.”
“Fiddlesticks! He’s a nice man, he’s saved my own personal hide several times in the last few weeks, and he wants to see the lion farm, too.”
A huge, heavy sigh gusted its way through the telephone wires. “Very well. But I swear to God, Daisy Majesty, if that man ropes and ties me or shoots me or anything, I’ll make sure you catch hell for it.”
I heard a gasp from a party-line neighbor and did a little sighing of my own. “He didn’t mean it, Mrs. Barrow,” I said, figuring the snooping party was she.
“It’s Mrs. Longnecker,” said that lady.
“He didn’t mean it, Mrs. Longnecker.”
“I should hope not.” And wham went the receiver on her end of the line.
“You really have to get a private line, Daisy.”