Strong Spirits [Spirits 01]

by Alice Duncan

  “Oh? And how is that?”

  With a heartfelt sigh, I admitted culpability. “Because I let the cat out of the bag and told him. I didn’t mean to. It happened sort of by accident. At Harold’s séance.”

  Rotondo mouth pursed into a grimace, I presume at the word séance. “Oh?”

  “Quincy was parking cars there. Harold and I got to talking afterwards. That’s where I found out—” Whoops. I’d almost gone and done it again: blurted out something I didn’t want to admit. I really, really didn’t want Harold to know that I’d blabbed to Rotondo about the conversation between Harold and Mr. Farrington that I’d overheard at his house.

  The notion that Harold might find out made me feel defensive. Nobody wants people to think she’s a sneak and a spy. In reaction, I jumped all over Rotondo some more. “But what I want to know is why are you asking so darned many questions about Quincy? I thought it was Mr. Kincaid who’d robbed his bank and run off, and that’s why we’re here.”

  “We don’t know what happened to Mr. Kincaid. And we don’t know what, if anything, has happened regarding the bank’s assets.”

  “Are there bearer bonds missing?” I asked loudly and, I fear, sarcastically. If this man was going to tell me that nothing had gone wrong with the bank after I’d spied for him . . . Well, not spied, exactly, but . . . Oh, nuts.

  “There appear to be some irregularities at the bank,” Rotondo admitted.

  “Involving bearer bonds.” Only then did I recall that I wasn’t supposed to know anything about the bearer bonds and the only reason I did know was because I’d overheard Harold and Del’s conversation. Fiddle. I was getting very confused. When I glanced at Harold, his face appeared about as blank as a clean sheet of paper, so I guess he didn’t suspect my part in anything. Rotondo’s expression didn’t undergo much of a change as a result of my sarcasm. In fact, he didn’t seem to give a hoot. Figured. Even at the most intense of times I don’t look particularly formidable. The best I can ever seem to manage is mystical.

  “The fact that there might be irregularities at the bank,” Rotondo went on, “doesn’t negate the fact that Mr. Eustace Kincaid is missing after having had an apparently violent argument with Mr. Quincy Applewood.”

  “Nobody said anything about it being violent,” I grumbled, expecting no one to accept my amendment. I was right.

  “It is always possible that Mr. Kincaid, in an attempt to get away with bank assets, was set upon by Mr. Applewood.”

  “Oh, yeah? That’s nonsense. Anyhow, if that happened, what happened to Quincy? Where’s the money? For that matter, where’s Mr. Kincaid? Corpses don’t generally get up and mosey off on their own, you know.”

  Looking as if he’d like to swat me like a fly, Rotondo said, “If there were illicit bank assets in Mr. Kincaid’s possession at the time Mr. Applewood accosted him, who’s to say but that Mr. Applewood found them, realized he’d hit the jackpot, and has taken off with them.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Quincy would never do anything like that.” And if he had discovered himself in sudden and illegal possession of a lot of money, he’d at least have gone back for Edie. It goes without saying that I didn’t voice my thoughts.

  Suddenly it occurred to me that I was defending someone I didn’t really know very well. What did I actually know about Quincy Applewood? I knew that Edie Marsh was in love with him, and I trusted Edie’s judgment. On the other hand, maybe her judgment was sound regarding everything but men. That sort of thing had been known to happen to other girls. Sometimes I wondered if it had happened to me, actually, although that wasn’t fair. It was the war that had ruined any chances of marital bliss that Billy and I might have had.

  Then I told myself to stop thinking so hard. I could almost always undermine myself if I thought too hard. “Quincy Applewood is a good man. A moral man.” I hope my implied message, that Mr. Eustace Kincaid was neither of those things, came across.

  Rotondo grunted, so I guess it did. “I suppose I should talk to Miss Marsh.”

  Oh, boy. Edie was going to kill me when she learned that it had been I who’d spilled the beans on her and Mr. Kincaid. Nevertheless, I stood up, feeling noble and willing to sacrifice myself to the cause. “Would you like me to get her for you?”

  Eyeing me as if he were trying to decide what sort of evil business I was up to, Rotondo didn’t answer for a minute. Then he said, “Yes. Thanks. Please let me ask any questions of Miss Marsh, Mrs. Majesty. You needn’t contribute any of your own.”

  After shooting him a glance of withering scorn, I skedaddled out of there as fast as I could. Since I couldn’t remember where Edie’d said she was going to be, but recollected something about bedrooms, I went upstairs to look for her. I was glad I’d done so after I’d peeked into the first couple of rooms. What a place that was! Suites of rooms, and lots of them. Boy, wouldn’t that be something, to live in a house like that?

  When you got to the head of the staircase, which branched off in both directions, there was a hallway like another entry hall, only on the second floor. Pictures of everything from the Kincaids themselves to what looked like all the lords and ladies in England, not to mention landscapes roaming with cows and horses that were so gorgeous they made me drool, graced the walls. From this picture-lined hallway to the right was a sitting room with tons of books and lots of easy chairs and a fireplace that might have been cozy had it been about a quarter of its size.

  A hallway on either side of the book room led to the bedroom suites, which were arranged sort of like this: Sitting room, dressing room, bathroom, dressing room, sitting room, bedroom. There were at least three of those. There might have been more on the other side of the staircase, but I found Edie before I’d come to the end of the elegancies afforded by the Kincaid mansion’s second story.

  Truth to tell, any one of those upstairs bedroom suits could have swallowed our little Gumm-Majesty bungalow whole. Our entire block could have fit inside the upstairs of the Kincaid place.

  Which is neither here nor there. I only mention it because it was so interesting a phenomenon to me, a Gumm.

  “Edie!” I’d begun to feel lost, so perhaps my greeting was a little louder than I’d planned.

  Edie screamed and spun around, her father duster clapped to her chest, her eyes wide, and her cheeks as pale as chalk. “Daisy!”

  “I’m sorry, Edie. I didn’t mean to scare you. But the detective wants to talk to you downstairs.”

  “Oh.” She deflated, reminding me of a spring lily wilting on its stem. “Does he think Quincy did it?”

  I didn’t have to ask what “it” was. “Naw. He’s only blowing smoke. We both know Quincy didn’t have a thing to do with Mr. Kincaid’s disappearance.”

  “But where is he, Daisy?”

  The expression on her face was eloquent. I sure wished I had an answer for her. “I don’t know, Edie, but you don’t really think Quincy had anything to do with Mr. Kincaid’s disappearance, do you?” She, of course, knew her boyfriend better than I did.

  “I can’t believe it of him.”

  “Well, then.” Darned if I could think of anything else to say after that, so I took Edie gently by the arm and led her downstairs, relieving her of the feather duster before I opened the door to the drawing room. “I’ll just put this away in the service porch,” I whispered as I drew the door closed, hoping to escape before Rotondo noticed me.

  I should have known better.

  “Mrs. Majesty!”

  Darn. Cracking the door open an inch or so, I peered into the room. Harold tossed me a wink and a grin, which was nice of him, I guess. “Yes?”

  “Please don’t be out of reach. I’ll probably want to talk to you some more.”

  “I don’t know why,” I growled. But I added an “Okay” before he could tell me. Then I shut the door and fled to the kitchen. There I flopped into a chair and started fanning myself with the feather duster until I saw the dust fluttering therefrom. Before Aunt Vi could yell at me, I took t
he duster outside, shook it, and hung it on a hook on the wall of the service porch, where the iceman and the grocery people made their deliveries.

  Anticipating my needs, God bless her, Aunt Vi set a nice hot cup of tea in front of me, along with two of her most delicious culinary treats in the form of buttery slices of Scotch shortbread. “Thanks, Vi. I need this.”

  “I expected you would.” She sat across from me, poured herself a cup of tea, and grabbed a piece of shortbread. “So what’s going on, Daisy? I’m so worried about the missus.”

  The first bite melted in my mouth so I followed it up with another. I paused to savor both bites before answering my aunt. Aunt Vi’s Scotch shortbread seemed at that moment ever so much more important than anything else that was going on in that huge, expensive house.

  “Well,” said I after I’d swallowed and forced my mind back to the present, where it didn’t want to go, “it looks as if Mr. Kincaid’s taken it on the lam with money from the bank. The detective thinks Quincy Applewood knocked Kincaid off, snatched the money, and blew town.”

  Aunt Vi eyed me skeptically. “Have you been reading crime novels again, Daisy?”

  I gave her a toothy grin. Nobody but me appreciated my taste in literature. “Ring Lardner. Sorry, Aunt Vi. But it looks as if Mr. Kincaid’s taken off with bank money—”

  “And without his wheelchair,” Aunt Vi plopped into the conversation.

  I sat up straight. “He what? You say he didn’t take his wheelchair?”

  She gestured toward the service porch. “There it is, big as life, beside the back door. As if he’d just hopped out of it, opened the door, and escaped outside and into a waiting car.”

  I goggled. I’d walked right past that wheelchair as I’d gone to shake out the feather duster and hadn’t even noticed it. I noticed it now. “Good heavens. Does the detective know about this?”

  “Humph. What that man knows and what he doesn’t know are two things I don’t know. Nobody’s bothered to ask me questions. Why ask the hired help? Do we ever know anything?”

  I understood her peevish attitude, although I was sure her time was coming, and probably soon. The truth of the matter was that most of the time the hired help knew a good deal more about what was going on in these big mansions than the people who lived in them, and I’d be surprised if the police didn’t know it. “I wonder if I should tell him about the wheelchair.” I took another bite of shortbread to help me think.

  Aunt Vi shrugged and took a big glug of tea. Glugging tea is about the only thing a hired cook can do when it comes to demonstrating displeasure; otherwise, she’d be fired. As usual, life wasn’t fair.

  A fuzzy memory slid into my shortbread-happy brain and floated around there for a minute before it sank into a recognizable image. It shocked me so much, I darned near dropped my second piece of shortbread. Rescuing it, I popped it into my mouth and stood up again. “I’ve gotta go back there and tell them something. And tell them about the wheelchair, too.”

  “What?” Aunt Vi clearly had no idea what had gotten into me.

  “I just remembered something they probably ought to know, even though they won’t know what to do with it.” I knew what to do with it. And I’d wager Mary Roberts Rinehart would know what to do with it, too. I didn’t trust Detective Sam Rotondo as much as I trusted Mrs. Rinehart. However, I could but try.

  She sniffed. “I hope it won’t bring any more grief down onto the missus. What with that dreadful daughter of hers and that miserable husband, the poor woman can’t take much more.”

  I thought about all the tragedies Aunt Vi had been forced to endure, and internally commended her for her big, inclusive heart. I’d wager Mrs. Kincaid didn’t even know Vi had lost a son and a husband within the past couple of years. “I don’t know about that, but I think they ought to know what I remembered.”

  “Tell me about it before you leave to go home, Daisy.” The words were pleasant, but I knew a command when I heard one

  “Don’t worry, Vi. I won’t leave you in the dark.” And with a wave, I took off through the pantry and down the hall to the drawing room.

  I probably didn’t really need to knock, but I did. Nothing happened for a moment, then the door was yanked open from within by none other than Detective Rotondo, who looked furious. I was used to it, so his expression didn’t disturb me.

  “What do you want now?”

  That disturbed me. I gave his outrage back to him, with interest. “For your information, I just found out something and remembered something else that might be useful in your investigation. If you’re too busy to hear it, I’ll just take myself off.” I turned, pretending that I’d march off if his manners didn’t improve.

  He didn’t sweeten up, but he did grab my arm to stop me from walking away. “No need for sarcasm,” he muttered, opening the door wider and more or less thrusting me into the room.

  Rubbing my arms pointedly—they didn’t really hurt, but I’d be darned if I’d let him know that, I said snippily, “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  At once I saw why he was in a twit. Harold and Mr. Farrington had left the room, so the only people there were Rotondo and Edie. Poor Edie had broken down and was weeping huge, gusty sobs into her apron. I rushed over to her, casting accusing glances at Rotondo as I went. “Edie! Has that hateful man been bully-ragging you?”

  “Yes!” she whimpered.

  I glowered at Rotondo who gazed at the ceiling as if he’d never understand women as long as he lived. I agreed with him on that point; I was dead-bang certain he’d never understand us, too.

  “I’m not bully-ragging her. I’m trying to get some information out of her.”

  “You don’t have to be mean about it,” I pointed out.

  “I’m not being mean.” I heard his teeth clank together.

  “I just bet.”

  It took a while, but at last Edie stopped crying. She subsided into painful hiccups, still holding her apron to her face, which was flushed and blotchy. Her eyes would probably take several days to un-puff.

  “Do you really have to question her more now, Detective Rotondo? She’s as upset as everyone else about this. You let Mrs. Kincaid off the hook. Why not Edie? Is it just because she’s a maid?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  Glad that I’d found a raw nerve, I tweaked it some more. “I don’t think it’s ridiculous to expect fair treatment for all citizens of the United States. Even the Supreme Court has finally recognized that women are citizens, you know.”

  “Good God, what are you talking about now?”

  I was talking about the vote and he knew it. I didn’t press the point, but sniffed significantly.

  He threw his arms out in a gesture of frustration that I found gratifying. “All right, all right. Take her out and give her a posset or something. But come back. I suppose I have to listen to what you just remembered.” He put an undeserved emphasis on the word, drat him.

  Wondering if any of the unhappy people in this household would ever recover from their recent blows, I helped Edie up from the sofa and kept my arm around her as I led her out of the room. Because I knew Aunt Vi to be one of the world’s most comforting human beings—and then there was that fresh batch of Scotch shortbread—I guided Edie to the kitchen.

  As soon as I opened the kitchen door and staggered through with Edie, Aunt Vi’s hands flew to her plump cheeks. “Good Lord, child, what’s happened?”

  “The detective is what’s happened,” I said grimly. I led Edie to a chair and pulled it out for her. She sank into the chair and drooped there like a morning glory going on towards midnight. “She needs some shortbread, Vi, and some strong tea. Pronto.”

  “Of course, she does.” It never took Vi long to recover her composure when it had been rattled, and she invariably headed toward foodstuffs to cure all the world’s ills. What’s more, she was usually right about food easing problems from heartache to broken bones. She knew her way around a kitchen better than any other woman of
my acquaintance, too—and she was mine, thank the good Lord. Sometimes I didn’t know what I’d do without her. In a jiffy, Vi had set a cup of strong, sweet tea and a plate of shortbread in front of Edie, who looked at it as if she didn’t know what it was or what to do with it.

  “Eat,” I commanded her. When she didn’t move, I picked up a slice of shortbread and held it to her mouth. She took the hint at last, and thank the good Lord I didn’t have to feed her more than one bite.

  When she seemed to be on the way to temporary recovery—I supposed full recovery would only occur when all the mysteries had been cleared up—I sighed and stood up again. “Gotta go back to the torture chamber. I’ll be sure to let you know what’s up.”

  I left them to each other and realized I felt Edie was in better hands than Mrs. Kincaid, even though the latter had a rich friend and her preacher at her side. Neither Algie Pinkerton nor Father Frederick, even though they were both well-intentioned gentlemen, could come close to matching Aunt Vi and her Scotch shortbread.

  This time I didn’t bother to knock when I got back to the drawing room. Of course, this was the one time I should have, because Rotondo was in deep discussion with another policeman, and Harold and Mr. Farrington had returned to the room. They were conferring, too, and I felt like an intruder. Oh, well.

  Rotondo looked up and frowned at me. I frowned back, feeling as though we were back on familiar territory. Harold and Mr. Farrington broke off talking, and Harold gave me a thin, strained smile. He walked over, holding out both hands, which made me feel a little better.

  “What’s up, Daisy? The detective said you remembered something that might be helpful.”

  “I don’t know how helpful it will be, but yeah, I remembered something. And I also just found out that your father left his wheelchair on the service porch last night, I presume before he disappeared.”

  Harold’s rather protuberant, light-hazel eyes bulged appreciably. “He what?” His voice was kind of blankish.

  “What’s that?”

  At Rotondo’s sharp bark, I jumped and turned. “No need to shout,” I said as frostily as I could.