by Alice Duncan
“Heavens, no!”
“Well, Eddie said his father was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and he didn’t want anything to do with stealing—that’s the word he used—from poor people just so his father’s cronies could tear down their houses and put up businesses in their place.”
“My goodness. Can you think of any examples of that sort of thing?” If I could get some names, it might help my investigation.
She shook her head, disappointing me mightily. “No. Eddie didn’t give me particulars. He had to be very careful in his practice, you know. Lawyer-client confidentiality and that sort of thing.”
Drat confidentiality! But there was nothing I could do about Eddie Hastings having been discreet. “And did Mr. Hastings and Mr. Grover get along?”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Grover doesn’t have any personality, so he gets along with everyone.”
Interesting observation. I wondered if she were right about Mr. Grover, or if he might hide a seething resentment under his bland façade. Which reminded me that I’d better clear that up. “Would you say Mr. Grover has a bland façade?”
“A bland façade? I guess so. He’s kind of like oatmeal. You know, bland. Yes. That’s a good word for him.”
“Did he take any cases the late Mr. Hastings refused to take?”
“That, I don’t know, since I never heard any names when Eddie and his father argued.”
“I see. And Mr. Millette? What’s he like?”
“I don’t have a lot to do with him. You’d have to talk with his secretary, Mrs. Larkin.”
“Do you think Mrs. Larkin would mind talking with me?”
“I honestly don’t know. We’re not close. She’s ever so much older than I am, and she’s worked here since the last century. She’s nearly as old as Mr. Millette, and he’s got to be seventy, if he’s a day.”
“My goodness. How old is Mr. Hastings? The older one, I mean?”
“Heavens, I don’t know. He’s old enough to have a son as old as Eddie was. I think Eddie was about twenty-seven, so I guess he’s in his late forties or early fifties.” She sat looking glum for a second or two. “I wonder if they’re going to paint out the second Hastings on the firm’s name. I hope not. Eddie was a good man, and I have no reason to believe he wasn’t a good attorney.”
“I should think Mrs. Hastings might have something to say about anyone wanting to paint out her son’s name.”
“Huh. I doubt Mr. Hastings pays her any more mind than he does anyone else.”
She was making the older Mr. Hastings sound like an extremely unpleasant fellow. I wonder if she was right about him, or if the father had a legitimate reason to yell at his son. I should think a prudent man wouldn’t holler at a business partner in the office, whether he had a good reason for being annoyed or not, but what did I know about the business world? Not a thing, is what.
“Would you mind introducing me to Mrs. Larkin?”
“Well . . . she’s kind of an old bat, but I don’t mind. Don’t expect her to be pleasant, though, because she’s not.”
Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to work in a place where nobody was nice except a guy who got himself murdered.
Belinda had just risen from her desk chair when the outer door of her room opened. I glanced quickly over my shoulder, and Belinda stiffened like a setter on point. “Mr. Grover! I didn’t expect you for another little while.”
Mr. Grover, who looked as bland as he evidently was, with mouse-brown hair, a clean-shaven face, and a gray suit that sort of blended in with his skin tone, removed his hat and hung it on the hat rack beside the door. “The judge adjourned court earlier than expected.” He eyed me with mild curiosity, and Belinda remembered her manners.
“Oh, this is Mrs. Majesty. Mrs. Majesty, this is Mr. Grover. Daisy just came in to ask a couple of questions, Mr. Grover.”
He came over to my chair, bowed formally, and took the hand I held out for him to shake. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Majesty.”
“Good afternoon. I was here to see if your firm might be able to handle a bit of work for me.”
“I see. And did you make an appointment with Miss Young?”
“Not yet. We were just getting around to that.” All right, so I’d just fibbed again.
“Actually,” said Belinda, “Mrs. Majesty’s inquiry might better be handled by Mr. Millette. I was just taking her over to see Mrs. Larkin.”
“Ah. Very well. It was pleasant to meet you, Mrs. Majesty.”
I peered into his eyes, which were a watery blue and just as bland as the rest of him, but I didn’t detect any emotions seething therein. On the other hand, I’ve never yet been able to read emotions in another person’s eyes. People in the novels I read do it all the time, but I guess they’re more perceptive than I am. “Nice to meet you, too,” said I mendaciously.
“When you’re through introducing Mrs. Majesty to Mrs. Larkin, will you take a letter, please, Miss Young?”
“Certainly, sir.” She smiled at me with a professional secretary’s mien. “Please come this way, Mrs. Majesty.”
So I went that way, which led across the hallway and into another room, where sat a cranky-looking woman with gray hair drawn back into a tight bun and a gray dress that looked kind of like she’d either bought it or made it in 1890. She actually looked rather as though she’d sprouted right there in the room, like a mushroom. She glanced up from her typewriter, upon which she’d been banging out words, and frowned at the both of us.
“Mrs. Larkin, please let me introduce you to Mrs. Majesty. Mrs. Majesty, Mrs. Larkin.”
Shoot, now what was I supposed to do? Pretend to have a case Mr. Millette might handle? I told myself to improvise and held out a hand to the grouchy Mrs. Larkin. “How do you do, Mrs. Larkin?”
She didn’t want to do it, but she shook my hand. “I’m quite busy, Mrs. Majesty. As you can see, Miss Young,” she added for Belinda’s benefit. Brenda turned and headed for the door, but not before she mouthed, “I told you so,” at me.
“Yes, well, I shan’t take much of your time, Mrs. Larkin. I know how valuable it is.”
“Do you,” the old bat said nastily.
“Yes, indeed. I, too, am a working woman.”
“Hmm. Well, what is it? Do you wish to make an appointment to see Mr. Millette?”
“Not really,” I said, determining to just ask my few questions and get out. To make sure she answered them, I added, “I’m here at Mrs. Hastings’ request. About her son.”
I saw Mrs. Larkin’s eyes go round behind her steel-rimmed spectacles. “You’re here at Mrs. Hastings’ request? Why ever did she ask you to come to the business?”
Even though she hadn’t told me I could, I sat in a chair in front of her desk. “Mrs. Hastings believes her son was murdered, and she’s asked me to do a little investigating.”
“Murder! But the boy committed suicide. The police said so!”
“Nevertheless, Mrs. Hastings doesn’t believe he took his own life. So I’m here to gather information.”
Turning to face me, Mrs. Larkin grabbed her specs, placed them on her desk, and commenced squinting at me. “And just how, pray, are you supposed to determine how the young man died? Are you a special investigator for the police or something?”
“Not at all.” I decided not to tell this particular woman I was a spiritualist, having gathered that she wouldn’t be impressed. “I’m only attempting to assist Mrs. Hastings.”
“Well, I never had anything to do with the young scamp, and neither did Mr. Millette, so neither of us can help you.”
Young scamp, eh? “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Why do you refer to him as a scamp? Did he get up to mischief at the office or something?”
“He was young. All young men these days are frivolous and silly. Not like Mr. Millette. Why, in my day, a young man was serious about his work. He didn’t go around smiling at people.”
“And the young Mr. Hastings smiled at people?”
/>
“And laughed with them.”
“How shocking.” I know I shouldn’t have said that. Sometimes I can’t help myself.
“Don’t you be sarcastic with me, young woman! The office is no place for frivolity and larks.”
“And the late Mr. Hastings cut larks at the office?”
“Well . . . I don’t believe he did so here, but he was a frivolous young man, and that’s all there is to it. I had nothing to do with him.”
“Nor did Mr. Millette?”
“Nor did Mr. Millette.”
Very well. It didn’t look as though I’d gather much information from this source. “Thank you for speaking with me, Mrs. Larkin. I’ll let you get back to your work.”
She said, “Hmph,” turned, and commenced typing a mile a minute.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
* * *
Determining it would be foolish to tackle Mr. Hastings in his den—heck, if he used to holler at his son for no good reason, can you imagine what he might do to me?—I left the building housing Hastings, Millette, and Hastings and wondered what to do next. Nothing much occurred to me. Then I recalled my vow to visit the Reverend Learned, so I drove to North Euclid Avenue.
I found Mr. Learned in the church sanctuary, puttering about, although I’m not sure what he was doing. A stooped fellow, he looked rather like a desiccated Christmas candy cane that had gone off. He was very nice to me when I held out my hand and told him who I was.
“Good morning, good morning. So nice to meet you. Are you new to our church?”
“Yes. I haven’t been here before, but I understand the Mr. Stephen Hastings family attends your church.”
“Eh?” He held up a hand to cup his ear.
“Hastings,” I said more loudly. This sanctuary was a much more elaborate affair than that of us lowly Methodists, even though our own sanctuary was pretty and had lovely stained-glass windows. We sure didn’t have one of those fabulous pipe organs I saw behind the chancel, though. “I’m a friend of the late Mr. Eddie Hastings.” Nuts. I’d just lied in a church. Ah, well.
“Tasting?” he said, clearly puzzled. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, Mrs. Maj-maj- Please forgive me, my dear. I fear I’m going a trifle hard of hearing in my old age.”
Oh, dear. This wasn’t going so well. I was kind of tired, and the notion of trying to make myself understood to this kind elderly gentleman daunted me. But I decided to persevere a while longer.
“Hastings,” I all but shouted.
“Oh, Hastings.”
I nodded, feeling something akin to triumph until he spoke again.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hastings are charming people. Such a shame about their son. He was killed in the war, you know.”
He what? I wanted to wiggle a pinkie in my own ear after that one. I got the impression that Mr. Learned was not merely deaf, but perhaps a little forgetful.
“Their son died a few months ago,” I hollered.
He shook his head mournfully. “Yes, yes. I performed the ceremony for the dear boy. What a tragedy, that war.”
“Wasn’t it, though,” said I, giving up. “Well, thank you.”
“You’re more than welcome. Please feel free to come on Sunday. We have two morning services, one at nine o’clock and another at eleven, and of course, there’s the seven o’clock evening service, which, if I do say so myself, is quite lovely.”
“Thank you,” I shouted. Then I decided to go home and clean house. You see? I didn’t spend all my time being snoopy.
I’d finished the dusting and polishing and was running the carpet sweeper over the pretty Oriental rugs I’d brought back with me from Egypt and Turkey when a knock came at the door, and Spike set up such a frenzy of barking, he nearly deafened me. I set aside the carpet sweeper, wiped my perspiring brow on my sleeve, and picked up the dust rag I’d laid on the dining room table.
Although I wasn’t fit to greet company or anyone else, clad as I was in an old ratty housedress and with a scarf tied around my head to keep my hair and sweat out of my face, I told Spike to sit and stay, walked to the door, and opened it. Darned if Sam Rotondo wasn’t standing there, glaring at me.
“Sam!” I said.
He eyed me up and down. “New fashion statement?”
Blast him anyhow! “I’ve been cleaning house, darn you!”
“Yeah? That’s not what I heard. What the devil have you been poking around at Hastings, Millette, and Hastings, asking questions about Eddie Hastings and telling people he was murdered for?”
It took me a second or two to disentangle the gist of that question. When I did, I glared back at him. “Darn you, Sam Rotondo, what do you care what I’m doing at any given time and for what reason?”
He stomped past me and on into the house. Aggravated, I shut the door behind him and gave it a quick swipe with the dust rag in my hand. What the heck, I was supposed to be cleaning house, wasn’t I?
“Good boy, Spike,” said I, releasing my dog from bondage to obedience training. Naturally, because Spike had no taste in human beings, he gamboled delightedly up to Sam, who curbed his fury long enough to pet the dog. Good thing, or I’d have been really mad at him. I mean, it wasn’t unusual for Sam to be rude to me, but if he ignored Spike, I’d have had to take him to task. Severely.
Sam rose from greeting Spike. “I care,” he said, “because Mr. Hastings cares, and he called the station asking what we were doing sending spies to his place of business.”
I felt my eyebrows rise in astonishment. “Mr. Hastings? But I didn’t even see Mr. Hastings, much less talk to him. Anyhow, why does he care if I visit his offices to chat with an old friend? I didn’t take her away from her job, for Pete’s sake. We only chatted a bit about Eddie Hastings. We couldn’t have taken more than a minute and a half of Mr. Hastings’ precious time.”
Sam pointed a beefy finger at my face. “There! I knew it! You were snooping around about that damned Hastings kid who killed himself. His father doesn’t appreciate you spreading rumors that his death wasn’t suicide. And how in hell did you ever get the idea he’d been murdered? Are you nuts?”
Aw, jeez. Precisely the questions I didn’t want to answer, especially to Sam. I heaved an enormous sigh. “Sit down, Sam. I’ll get us some orange juice.”
“I don’t want any damned—”
“Oh, stop swearing and sit! If you don’t want orange juice, I do. I’ve been working hard all day.”
“Prying and poking,” Sam muttered as he pulled out a chair at the dining room table and sat.
“Cleaning house,” I snarled back at him as I headed for the kitchen, where a lovely pitcher of orange juice awaited my consumption. And Sam’s, blast him.
We had two orange trees in our yard, a Valencia and a navel. They provided oranges for us nearly all year long, which was a jolly state of affairs. I got down two glasses, begrudging Sam his, then opened the door to the Frigidaire, lifted out the heavy pitcher, and filled the glasses. I took a hefty gulp from mine before carrying the both of them into the dining room.
“Here.” I plunked Sam’s glass down onto a coaster I’d snatched from the sideboard.
“Thanks,” he growled.
“You’re welcome.” I didn’t mean that any more than he’d meant his thanks.
He guzzled down about half of his juice and set it back on the coaster. “All right. Tell me why you’re going around to the Hastings law firm, telling everybody that Edward Hastings was murdered. That’s not listed as the cause of death on his death certificate or anywhere else that I know of.”
“I . . .” Aw, shoot. Now what? I knew I couldn’t tell Sam the truth. He’d never believe me. Being accustomed to dealing with pressure when speaking to people—you have to be quick when you’ve got a room full of people wanting to chat with dead relatives—I decided to tell as much of the truth as Sam would tolerate. Actually, he probably wouldn’t tolerate even as much as I aimed to tell him, but I had to say something.
“I conducted a séa
nce on Saturday night at Mrs. Bissel’s house.”
Sam snorted, but I forged on.
“Mrs. Hastings, Eddie Hastings’ mother, attended.”
“Daisy Gumm Majesty, if you’re going to tell me that the ghost of Edward Hastings showed up at your damned séance—”
“No! If you’ll hush up and let me finish what I was going to say, you’ll hear the answer to your question, drat you, Sam Rotondo!”
“Huh.”
“Anyway, Mrs. Hastings came to the séance. We chatted afterwards, and she’s absolutely sure that her son didn’t kill himself. She believes he was murdered, but she doesn’t know who did it. And she claims nobody else will listen to her, including the Pasadena Police Department.”
Sam put his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands. He then proceeded to shake that same head and said, “Good God, Daisy. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?” I asked, sounding quite snappish to my own ears. But I’d known this confrontation would happen eventually and that it would be unpleasant. That didn’t mean I had to enjoy the inevitable.
“Pry into people’s lives and get involved in stuff that’s none of your business.”
“Mrs. Hastings asked me to investigate in this case, Sam Rotondo! She said the police didn’t even bother to question her son’s cause of death. Much. Anyhow, she knows he didn’t kill himself.”
He eyed me through a couple of fingers he’d parted for the purpose. “How does she know that?”
I shrugged. “She’s his mother. I expect she knew him better than anyone else on earth. And she swears up and down that he’d never have killed himself.” Because I was curious and because Sam was already mad at me, so it didn’t matter, I asked, “What does the death certificate say, anyway? How’d the police come to their conclusion of suicide?”
“How the hell should I know? I’m a homicide detective. I had nothing to do with the Hastings case.”
“Why’d you come here, then? You said Mr. Hastings called? Did he complain to you personally? I didn’t know you hung out in such exalted social circles, Sam.” Low, snide blow. But I wasn’t sorry. Well, not very.