Fine Spirits [Spirits 02]

by Alice Duncan

  But Henry knew what he was doing, and although it took a good deal longer to drive from our house to Mrs. Bissel's place than it would have done had the weather been sunny, eventually we made it. After turning right from Lake onto Foothill Boulevard, Henry drove north up Maiden Lane, which was running with mud at the time, turned left into the circular driveway in the back of the house, and pulled up next to Mrs. Bissel's flagstone patio.

  I'd been to her house during the summertime when she'd entertained guests back there, and I loved it. She had a shrub called a daphne that had glossy green leaves and pearly white blossoms that smelled so wonderful, I could shut my eyes and fancy I'd died and gone to heaven.

  On that ghastly autumn day the daphne was dripping and dreary like everything else, and nothing smelled like anything but mud. Even Mrs. Bissel's monkey-puzzle tree looked as if it had been dunked upside down in a bucket of water. It drooped as if it had caught cold in the lousy weather and ought to be lying down and resting with a hot-water bottle on its head and its roots resting on a footstool.

  Henry ran from his door to mine, the umbrella held high, and opened my door. I thanked him for it, and he walked me to the back door, still holding the umbrella over my head and his. I thanked him for that, too. It's kind of nice to be treated as if you were worth taking care of once in a while.

  Approximately a thousand dachshunds, all barking hysterically, greeted me as I walked into the sun porch off the patio. Henry laughed as he shook out the umbrella. Mrs. Bissel was close on the dogs' heels, holding out her hands in greeting, and hollering at her dogs to shut up. They didn't, of course.

  Chapter Five

  It took approximately twenty minutes for the dogs to calm down enough for Mrs. Bissel and me to hold a conversation.

  “It's because they've been cooped up all day,” said she. “The rain, don't you know. Their little legs are so short, I'm afraid that if I let them go outdoors, they'll just float away downstream and end up in San Marino.”

  I wouldn't mind ending up in San Marino. It was a great place, full of mansions and rich people, including Harold Kincaid. I didn't mention my thoughts, although I must admit that the mental image of a bunch of little sausage-shaped hound dogs floating downhill was an amusing one. In fact, I almost laughed, which was an improvement over the glumness that had been my companion from my house to Mrs. Bissel's.

  “Come into the breakfast room and have a cup of tea to warm you up, Daisy. There's plenty of time to work on the spirit belowstairs. I need to tell you what happened last night.”

  I perked up a tiny bit more. “Something happened last night? Something out of the ordinary?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Bissel's voice had sunk to a whisper. “Oh, Daisy, I do so hope you can help us. Whatever's down there is becoming more bold.”

  “My goodness.” Rats. This sounded bad. If there was anything I didn't need, it was a bold spirit--or criminal or lunatic or mountain lion. “What did it do?”

  She drew her chair closer to mine and leaned toward me. Mrs. Cummings must have been warned to bring tea and cakes as soon as I arrived, because that's what she did.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Cummings,” I said politely.

  “Is it?” Mrs. Cummings replied, which I thought was odd.

  “Oh, Daisy, you just can't imagine how frightened we all are!” exclaimed Mrs. Bissel.

  “That's the God's own truth,” affirmed Mrs. Cummings.

  Golly, this didn't sound good at all. In fact, it sounded like a job for someone other than a phony spiritualist. I'd never say so. “What happened?” I asked again.

  “Whatever's down there made something crash.”

  I glanced from Mrs. Bissel, who'd made this pronouncement in a voice that would have done the spirit belowstairs proud, to Mrs. Cummings, who nodded her head and looked grim. “Um . . . It made something crash? What did it make crash? You mean, like a glass or something?”

  “That's just it,” Mrs. Bissel said in a harsh whisper. “We don't know!”

  Mrs. Cummings nodded some more.

  “Ah . . .” Crumb, what did this mean? I wasn't even sure what they were talking about. “Do you mean you heard a noise like that of breaking glass? And it came from the basement?”

  “It came from the basement, all right. It was probably a mirror,” said Mrs. Cummings gloomily. Her aspect went well with the horrible weather. “I understand them spirits and so forth don't like mirrors.”

  “Ah. Of course. A mirror.”

  Mrs. Bissel nodded and looked thoughtful, as if she were considering Mrs. Cummings' comment and agreeing with it. “Yes. It might have been a mirror smashing.”

  “Are there very many mirrors down there?” I asked, just curious as to how Mrs. Bissel's resident spirit might have gotten its transparent hands on a looking glass. Most basements of my acquaintance weren't heavily endowed with mirrors.

  “I don't know of any,” admitted Mrs. Bissel.

  She peered questioningly up at Mrs. Cummings, who shook her head. “I never seen one down there.”

  I made the brilliant deduction that the paucity of mirrors belowstairs let mirrors out as the crashing device. Whoever lived there probably broke a glass by accident. “Did you investigate this morning, to see if there were shards of glass or anything like that left on the floor?”

  “We all four of us--Mrs. Cummings, Susan, Ginger, and me--went downstairs together.” Mrs. Bissel's voice dropped again, and again she sounded as if she were speaking from the tomb. “We didn't find anything, Daisy. Not a single thing.”

  Tidy ghost. “Ah.”

  “So it must have been a spirit,” Mrs. Bissel concluded with impeccable illogic. “Or a ghost. What else could have made a crash like that disappear?”

  Beats me. I gave her another cryptic “Ah.” What in the name of goodness was I supposed to do about her mirror-smashing fiend? Easy answer. I was supposed to exorcize it. Crumb.

  The cakes were delicious. Mrs. Cummings' culinary skills weren't quite up to my aunt Vi's, but those little breakfast cakes were wonderful. When I asked, Mrs. Cummings said they were applesauce-spice cupcakes, and she'd iced them with a frosting made from Philadelphia Cream Cheese. I decided to tell Aunt Vi about using cream cheese in frosting. She appreciated getting these little tips every now and then, even from me, who could barely cook an egg, although my potato soup was tasty.

  “So you found nothing that might indicate where the crash came from or what caused it? No broken windows or anything of that nature?”

  The two women exchanged another look before Mrs. Bissel said, “I don't think we looked at the windows.”

  “No, we didn't. If it was a window, that basement's going to be flooded if this rain keeps up.”

  “But we'd surely have noticed glass on the floor,” said Mrs. Bissel, brightening.

  “We would,” agreed Mrs. Cummings.

  I wasn't so sure. I could feather the four women, arms clutching each other, so scared, they wouldn't notice a hippopotamus if it were hiding in a corner. I'd have bet anything that no one had thought to look inside the two rooms down there, although I didn't ask. If I found the broken window, the discovery would make me look as if I knew what I was doing. Maybe.

  That ended our brief sojourn at the breakfast table, darn it. I wanted another cupcake.

  Since I planned to go with them, Mrs. Bissel and Mrs. Cummings said they dared to enter the basement sans a fourth member of the party. I would have rolled my eyes, except that I didn't do things like that when I was working. The customer, as they say, is always right. This axiom held true even when you made your living doing something as outrageous as raising spirits from the dead and chatting with them, or exorcizing demonic ghouls from basements.

  Taking the lead in our expedition, I said, “I'll go first.” Brave little thing, aren't I?

  “Thank you, Daisy.”

  Mrs. Bissel's thanks sounded heartfelt, and I scolded myself for inwardly sneering at her. I'm sure I would have been frightened, too, if
something had decided to live in our basement. The notion that it might be a skunk, of which there were plenty around, struck me, and I decided not to be snide anymore. I think I'd rather face down a lunatic than a skunk. I'm not sure about the criminal or the bear or the lion.

  I walked softly but assuredly down the basement stairs. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Mrs. Bissel and Mrs. Cummings, arms encircling each other, trying to walk downstairs side-by-side. Since both women were large, this didn't work, but they managed to stay close to each other in spite of their respective bulks.

  “Why don't you remain at the foot of the stairs,” I said. “I don't want to overwhelm the spirit or ghost.”

  “Are you sure? Don't you think we ought to stick together?” Mrs. Bissel's objection didn't come from the heart. From her apprehensive expression, I knew she'd have been glad if I'd told the two ladies to go back up to the kitchen. Still, it was nice of her to offer to accompany me.

  “I don't believe it would serve any purpose,” I said.

  A thought had just struck me, sort of like a bolt of lightning. I almost let an exclamation of surprise escape, but suppressed it before it leaked out.

  After calming down a bit and pretending to investigate the laundry basket closely, I asked, “Did you say this spirit or ghost has been down here for two weeks?”

  When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw the two women silently consulting one another. Mrs. Cummings nodded first, and Mrs. Bissel turned to answer me. “Yes. It's been about two weeks. Maybe two and a half.”

  “Ah.”

  Marianne Wagner had been missing for a little over two weeks, according to Sam Rotondo. Was it possible that timid little Marianne had run away from home and was now hiding out in Mrs. Bissel's basement? The notion was preposterous on the face of it, but I wasn't certain it was wrong.

  If I were Marianne, I'd have skipped town years before, but I wasn't Marianne. Marianne Wagner seemed to me to be a girl who'd been beaten into submission so early and so often, she'd lost any spirit (so to speak) she might once have had. I imagined, from what I'd seen of her and the rest of the Wagner clan, that she didn't dare do anything the least bit daring, much less something as outrageous as running away.

  Still, even the meekest lambs among us have our limits, and if she had run away, she probably wouldn't go far. She'd be too scared to walk boldly into a train station and buy a one-way ticket to New York, say, or tell her parents to go to hell and then get herself a job.

  Yet the notion of her eating spaghetti out of a tin can in Mrs. Bissel's basement was kind of . . . loopy, I guess. As I poked into corners, visited the mangle, peered inside the washing machine--the sheets and blanket were there again. Or still. I didn't know--I thought hard about Marianne. She was so good at self-effacement that she tended to blend in with the scenery, so it took me some cogitation to recall her to mind.

  The first time I'd seen her, she'd been sitting in a corner in Mr. and Mrs. Wright's sublimely lighted and decorated ballroom. It was at a Halloween party. I was there because Mrs. Wright, whose husband had become wealthy producing chewing gum, had hired me to read my crystal ball for her guests. I loved attending these parties because, when I wasn't busy, I got to look at all the ladies' fashions. I gleaned scads of great ideas that way. It was kind of disappointing to me that so many people availed themselves of my service that night.

  I didn't really mind, although my crystal-ball readings were less effective at overawing people than my séances. But this was all in fun, and Mrs. Wright was collecting money for a worthy charity: the Pasadena Humane Society, which had been established in the late 1800's (Pasadena was a very progressive city) Besides, lots of the women for whom I normally worked were there, and lots for whom I didn't, and I always garnered new customers when I entertained people at gatherings like that one.

  Several of the young ladies at the party had come to me for a crystal-ball reading. They acted just like most people do: they adopted an air of doubtful good humor, but they couldn't help but wonder if maybe I might have some sort of link to the Great Beyond. Of course I didn't, but I was so good at my line of work that almost all of them left believing I'd actually seen the things I prophesied.

  It's always puzzled me that nobody's ever come back to inform me that nothing I'd foretold for them had come true. I guess they either forgot about it or aimed to give my prophecies more time. I was careful not to put time limits on my predictions.

  At any rate, I'd sort of expected Marianne to drop in to my fortune-telling tent, which Mrs. Wright had her servants set up in the ballroom, but she didn't. Mrs. Wright kept coming to the tent and telling me I needed a break-she was a nice woman-and every time I took advantage of her kindness, which wasn't often, I'd see Marianne sitting in the corner, her hands strangling each other in her lap. I got the impression she was trying to hide from everyone, as if people scared her. It sounds silly, I guess, coming from me, a person who's grown up poor but proud and hard-working, but I felt sorry for her, a girl who had everything money could buy. I could feel her terror from my tent, and I didn't understand it.

  That was before I met her father, mother, and brothers. When Mrs. Wright introduced us, I thought I might have met the source of Marianne's stifling fear.

  Her father was an overbearing, dictatorial ass. Her mother was as colorless as a worn-out bed sheet, and she had the same terrified look about her as Marianne. I hate bullies, and I took an instant dislike to Dr. Wagner. I'd met Marianne's two brothers once or twice before, and knew them to be worthless sons of dogs. I figured they took after their father, except that the doctor was rich. I presumed Gaylord and Vincent just leeched from their old man.

  I deliberately walked past Marianne that evening and smiled at her. My nature is outgoing and friendly, probably because I'd always been too poor to develop neuroses, or whatever it is the psychiatrists call them. Even my friendly smile seemed to frighten poor Marianne, and she shrank further back in her chair. I got the impression she'd have liked to disappear altogether.

  So I felt sorry for her. Then I forgot about her.

  Until last night when Sam Rotondo told us she was missing, and again that morning in Mrs. Bissel's basement, when I remembered what Sam had said about her disappearance. I kept telling myself I was being stupid; that no wealthy young lady would take refuge in, of all places, a basement, but I couldn't get rid of the notion.

  Marianne had never struck me as the adventurous or imaginative type, and she might have become lost and chosen the basement out of sheer terror. Or maybe somebody had chased after her and she'd taken refuge from him in under Mrs. Bissel's house and didn't dare leave. In the time it took me to inspect the basement, I'd come up with all sorts of scenarios that would account for a timid creature hiding out in a rich lady's basement.

  After my tour of the main room, I entered the bedroom in which I'd found the empty spaghetti tin. There was no such incriminatory evidence to be found today. Was that because Marianne had swept up the jar she'd dropped and broken the night before?

  A trash container sat next to the washing machine, so I wafted over and peered inside. Nothing. Not even a scrap of paper or lint. Hmmm.

  “How often is this trash container emptied, Mrs. Bissel?”

  “I beg your pardon? The trash container? I . . . I don't know.”

  She looked inquiringly at Mrs. Cummings, who provided an answer. “We generally toss the trash on Mondays, when Ginger and Cynthia Oversloot do the laundry.”

  “Ah,” I said mysteriously.

  Shoot, it was Thursday. Surely, some trash must have accumulated since Monday. “And do your servants have business in the basement every day, Mrs. Bissel?”

  Again the two women exchanged a glance. Mrs. Bissel spoke up this time. “They used to, until the haunting started. Now they try to bring everything upstairs that they think they'll need for the whole week.”

  “The whole month's more like it,” grumbled Mrs. Cummings.

  I gave them another enigmatic
“Ah.”

  This was very interesting. If whoever was living down there had broken a jar, swept up the glass, and thrown it in the trash, he or she had taken the trouble to empty the trash receptacle so that nothing of the accident remained. I shivered involuntarily, thinking about how sloppy and muddy a slog that must have been. Mrs. Bissel's outdoor trash bins sat beside the garage and were at least a hundred yards from the house. I wondered when the rain had started, and felt sorry for the intruder.

  I stood in the little room, thinking, trying to decide what to do next. If Mrs. Bissel's “spirit” was Marianne, and if I could get her to come out of hiding and return to her parents' home, I might earn a fee from both Mrs. Bissel and the Wagners. That was an enticing prospect. I hadn't looked at the Star News that morning and now wished I had, because Dr. and Mrs. Wagner had, according to Sam, placed an item about their daughter's disappearance in the local newspapers, and it was supposed to run that day.

  Had they offered a reward? Probably. Even though Dr. Wagner was, in my opinion, a certified meanie, he wouldn't want the world to know it. Besides, he had more money than God. Surely he considered Marianne worth a few dollars of that fortune. Or maybe not. But he cared about his reputation; I was almost certain of that.

  Thinking about Dr. Wagner (I honestly wasn't sure he gave a rap about anyone at all other than himself), I wandered over to the pitcher and bowl. The bowl had a teeny puddle of water in the bottom again. This was all very strange. I tried to keep my imagination from going wild, but it was a difficult thing to do, since my imagination was like a runaway train at the best of times.