Strong Spirits [Spirits 01]

by Alice Duncan

Or maybe—and this scared me even more than the above—I was beginning to find Detective Sam Rotondo attractive. He wasn’t handsome, like my Billy or Del Farrington, but he had a sort of rugged charm.

  No. Not charm. Rotondo definitely possessed no charm. I don’t know what it was, but it worried me, and I wished he didn’t come to our house so often. Which was selfish of me. Billy needed friends almost more than he needed his morphine.

  In other words, I was totally confused and didn’t like my state of mind one little bit.

  Mrs. Bissel called me on Monday, almost as if she’d heard my thoughts about trading séances for dachshunds, but there wasn’t a peep from Mrs. Kincaid. Harold had called me once or twice during those few days, but he only claimed nothing new had happened and that there had been no word from or about his father. I didn’t ask about Stacy, and he didn’t volunteer any information, so I assumed she was being as bratty as ever.

  When Tuesday rolled around, I was starting to wonder if Mrs. Kincaid had found herself another spiritualist. Now that would put a serious crimp in my business. Harold called again that night to chat. He was a great one for chatting, and was very entertaining, although I didn’t suppose Billy would think so. I almost asked him if his mother didn’t like me any longer, but couldn’t quite make myself do it.

  On Wednesday, I was just about to take a bold step and call Mrs. Kincaid for myself to see what was going on, when the telephone rang in the kitchen. My cream-colored silk slithered to the floor when I jumped up from the sewing machine. I didn’t even stoop to pick it up, I was so eager to get to the phone.

  After persuading Mrs. Barrow and Mrs. Mayweather to get off the wire—I presumed Mrs. Lynch and Mrs. Pollard were off shopping or visiting somewhere—I recognized Mrs. Kincaid’s voice. Barely. Her voice was raspy, sounding amazingly like leaves scraping against a window on a dark and creepy night.

  I wasn’t even sure it was her at first. “Mrs. Kincaid? Is that you?”

  “Y-yes,” she whimpered.

  Oh, golly, something bad must have happened. “What’s the matter, Mrs. Kincaid? What happened? You sound desperate.”

  Now, if I were truly a person who could communicate with spirits, do you think I’d have had to ask her what was wrong? Neither do I, which either means that Mrs. Kincaid was as stupid as dandelion fluff or that she didn’t think like the rest of us do. I hope she never begins to, either.

  “Oh, Daisy!” She started to cry. Of course. I was so accustomed to her crying at me by this time that I didn’t even wince. “It’s Eustace. Mr. Kincaid.”

  Her voice choked to a halt, and I thought she was going to tell me they’d found his body buried in a remote spot on the desert and that Quincy Applewood really was guilty of murder, but I couldn’t ask. Not right out loud over the telephone wire. Besides, I couldn’t believe it of Quincy.

  Instead, I donned my virtual spiritualist hat and crooned in a soothing tone, “All will be well, Mrs. Kincaid. The cards never lie.” I trusted her not to remember that the cards had predicted undefined but harrowing problems for her. “And neither does Rolly,” I added, just in case she did remember about the cards.

  “Oh, Daisy, you’re of such solace to me. I wanted to have you over yesterday and the day before and the day before that, but Harold begged me to give you a rest. He said you mediums—or should I call you media?—Oh, dear, I just don’t know. But Harold said you needed a chance to meditate and center yourself or your powers would be drained or diminished or something like that, and I couldn’t do that to you, Daisy. You’ve been my mainstay and my support. With, of course, Freddy and Algie and Harold, but they’re men, don’t you know, and you know what men are.”

  “I certainly do.” I wasn’t altogether clear on the rest of her speech, however. Her voice had picked up strength as she said the above, although it still didn’t sound like hers. But I think I caught the gist of her message, even though I still didn’t know if her husband was alive or dead. If it hadn’t been Quincy who’d offed the buzzard, I’d personally prefer the latter scenario, although I didn’t say so to Mrs. Kincaid. “Um, what exactly has happened, Mrs. Kincaid?”

  “The Coast Guard caught Mr. Kincaid. And he hadn’t got very far. His steamer was just about four miles out to sea, heading to Portugal or Spain or Istanbul or one of those countries over there.”

  I hadn’t even thought about Portugal or Istanbul, because I hadn’t thought a Spanish phrase book would do Mr. Kincaid much good in either place, but I didn’t quarrel with her about it. Rather, I said, “Hmmm,” mysteriously.

  “It happened just as you said it would, Daisy. I told that Detective Rotund that he should listen to your suggestion. He balked at first.”

  Naturally. He would.

  “But in the end, since they were having no luck finding him anywhere else, he decided to call upon the Coast Guard to search for a vessel containing Mr. Kincaid. And you were right, Daisy. They found him. With the bearer bonds. You were right!”

  By darn, I had been right. Good for me. And take that, Detective Sam Rotondo! I couldn’t understand why Mrs. Kincaid insisted on calling him Rotund. He wasn’t fat. He was just big.

  “I’m so glad they found him alive,” I said, thinking it was the right thing to say even if I didn’t mean it.

  “Hmph,” said Mrs. Kincaid. “I wish they’d drowned him. Oh, Daisy! He’s going to go to jail! However will I withstand the gossip and talk. Think of the humiliation of having a husband in jail?”

  That beat me, so I remained silent, hoping she’d take my silence as something to do with seeing mystical auras and so forth.

  “I need you, Daisy! I know you need to rest your powers, but haven’t they been rested enough? Are you able to come over to the house? Please, dear? I need you so much!”

  Interesting, thought I, that she should call on a stranger—and a fake, at that—rather than her own daughter, when she was in trouble. Harold had an excuse for not being at his mother’s beck and call each and every day, since he actually worked for a living. But all Stacy ever did for a living was get into trouble and annoy people.

  Still in my spiritualist voice, I said, “Of course, Mrs. Kincaid. I shall come as soon as may be.” Calculating frantically in my head everything I had to do before I jaunted off to the Kincaids’ mansion, I added, “I should be there within the hour.” I didn’t want to leave my cream-colored silk lying in a heap on the floor, nor did I want to leave the sewing machine set up in the back parlor, because it was in the way should Billy want to wheel himself in there for some reason.

  And, of course, I had to change clothes. Right then, I looked like any old housewife who’d decided to make herself a new dress with fabric bought on sale at Nash’s, but I wasn’t supposed to be any old housewife. I was supposed to be a spiritualist.

  I also had to break the news to Billy. I caught him reading on the sun porch and, after sucking in a gallon or two of air to brace myself, told him I was going away again. He took it fairly well, probably because I’d been home for several days running, which didn’t happen often. True, a couple of ladies had come, by appointment, to have me read the Tarot cards for them, but Billy didn’t mind that, since I did it in the back parlor (yes, the same room in which Ma, Aunt Vi, and I did our sewing) and we didn’t get in his way.

  “Sorry the old man’s alive, but I’m glad Quincy’s cleared of murder charges,” he said.

  “Me, too, on both counts. I wonder if Mrs. Kincaid allowed Quincy to stay at her place, or if they locked him in a cell once he was able to get around. He was in bad shape the last time I saw him.”

  “Must have let him stay at the Kincaids’,” Billy said knowledgeably—he’d been talking to his favorite detective a lot lately and knew more about police business than he used to. “They can’t very well arrest a person for murder if nobody can find the corpse, unless they have a whole lot of circumstantial evidence. From what I’ve gathered, they don’t have anything against Quincy except people overhearing an argument in the
old man’s library.”

  “Well, they have the old man himself now. And the bearer bonds.”

  “Aha!” Billy actually smiled at me, something that seldom happened when I was running away from home. “So they found the bonds on the old devil, did they?”

  “According to Mrs. Kincaid.” I was surveying my wardrobe, trying to decide on an ensemble that would be eloquent of tragedy but not overwhelmingly gloomy and one that would, moreover, create the impression of a person in communication with the Great Beyond. Sounds complicated, but my wardrobe was geared to such conflicting necessities.

  I settled on a light-weight, dark blue, poplin summer suit with shiny blue bias tape sewn on the long pointy collar and around the jacket pockets. I wore the suit with a white lawn blouse and topped it off with a moderate-brimmed blue hat with one white flower adorning the brim, modest cotton stockings, and white bag, gloves, and shoes. If I say so myself, I looked pretty classy. But arcane. Always arcane. I never allowed myself to forget the way I made my living. I walked out to the sun porch.

  “Do I look mystical enough?”

  “You look super, Daisy. You always do.”

  “Thanks, Billy.” I bent and kissed him. “I hope this isn’t going to take all day.”

  “Me, too.”

  As I might have predicted, had I been possessed of real psychic powers, it took all day.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I drove the Model T since neither Pudge Wilson nor Pa was available to harness Brownie to the pony cart. I’m sure that made Brownie happy, or would have, had he been capable of happiness. I think Brownie enjoyed his sulks.

  Cranking the blasted Model T wasn’t any fun, either, but I did it. The days were getting much warmer, and the haze, which I understood had always existed in this area, blurred the San Gabriel Mountains to the north. According to Miss Carleton, a librarian at the Pasadena Public Library on Raymond and Walnut, the Indians who used to live in the San Gabriel Valley called this area “The Valley of Smoke.” Pasadena was still a beautiful town to live in, though, even if you weren’t rich and the day was hazy.

  Gardens were bursting their buttons with roses and other flowers. I hate to say it, because she’s such a terrible gossip and I don’t really like her, but Mrs. Longnecker’s garden was spectacular, especially her dahlias and roses.

  Mrs. Weber, who lived a couple of blocks from us, had planted a hedge of gardenia bushes several years earlier. On hot days, the fragrance of the blossoms seemed to get trapped in invisible clumps in the air. When the Model T drove through one of those airy clumps, the fragrance all but knocked me out. We had one gardenia bush in the back yard. I decided then and there, while under the influence of hundreds of gardenia blossoms, to plant at least one more.

  And then there was the jasmine. Mrs. Phipps had jasmine that bloomed during the day and jasmine that bloomed at night, so you were treated to glorious fragrances no matter what time of day you passed her house. Not to mention the honeysuckle vines crawling all over her front fence. And all this glory was in our own modest neighborhood.

  When I made a left turn onto Orange Grove Boulevard and started tootling through that neighborhood, the beauty was enough to make a person cry, if she were that sort of individual. I’m not. But I sure did enjoy the drive. Roses, roses everywhere, not to mention stock, ranunculus, dahlias, anemones, impatiens, hibiscus, bougainvilleas, wisteria, geraniums, bird of paradise, and approximately three million and ten other flowers the names of which I didn’t know. Our own native California poppies, bright orange in the sunshine, grew in places where people hadn’t settled yet, making the entire trip as lovely as if I were on a magic carpet flying through a rainbow. It seemed a shame that I was in our clunky old Model T.

  And the lawns. My word, those lawns were really something. Nowadays you can’t find lawns like that. Some of them seemed to roll along forever, dotted here and there with trees. Coral trees, palm trees, jacaranda trees, pepper trees, avocado trees, weeping willows, the occasional sycamore or oak, and even a few eucalyptus trees and monkey-puzzle trees imported from Australia. I tell you, you could do a lot of swell gardening if you were rich.

  I got to the Kincaids’ within the hour I’d specified, in spite of the beauty surrounding my drive there—I tended to slow down and gawk when I passed the most spectacular of floral yard displays. Since I imagined that Quincy must still be feeling pretty puny, and since James was probably doing Quincy’s work as well as his own and didn’t need my machine to fuss with, I decided to park spang in front of the mansion, in the Kincaids’ circular drive. If Featherstone didn’t like it, too bad for him. Two other automobiles, one of them Harold’s snappy red Bearcat, were already parked in the drive, so I wasn’t creating a precedent or anything.

  Featherstone gave no indication either of liking or disliking my choice of parking spaces, but opened the door with his nose in the air, as ever, and I walked in. “Cheers, Featherstone,” said I because I couldn’t help myself.

  He made no response other than a chilly, “Mrs. Majesty.” He never did respond to my jolly greetings. Rather, he turned and I followed him down the hall to the drawing room. I guess it was inevitable that the first person I saw as I walked through the door was Sam Rotondo. I suppressed my sigh and braced myself for Mrs. Kincaid’s greeting. Her greetings, since Stacy’s arrest and her husband’s bolt to unknown ports, had been a trifle hard on my own personal body.

  Sure enough, as soon as Featherstone announced me in a voice that sounded like that of a judge pronouncing the death sentence on a murderer, Mrs. Kincaid squealed like a stuck pig and fairly flew off the chair in which she sat. It wasn’t until she’d stopped hugging me and, I’m sure I need not say, crying all over me, did I get to survey the room.

  All the people I was beginning to think of as regulars were there: Sam, Harold, Father Frederick, Algie Pinkerton, and, to my distaste, Stacy, all occupied space in the drawing room. There was no sign of Mr. Kincaid. I hoped this meant he was already in jail. Stacy looked at me as if she’d like to shoot me dead. I ignored her, although I greeted all the others.

  “Good day to you, Harold, Father Frederick, and Mr. Pinkerton.”

  They good-dayed back at me.

  Before Algie could ask me to call him Algie instead of Mr. Pinkerton, I turned to Sam. I still didn’t like him, but he was being very kind to my Billy—mainly by behaving as if he wasn’t trying to be kind—so I smiled at him, too. “Detective Rotondo.” I wanted to ask him, “Do you live here?” but didn’t, although he’d asked me the same question in a snide voice once. I felt rather virtuous for my restraint.

  He nodded. No smile. Even when I tried, I couldn’t get on that man’s good side. If he had one. Oh, very well, I knew he had one, or he wouldn’t play gin rummy with Pa and Billy so often. But it was irksome to have wasted a smile on him.

  “Come sit beside me, Daisy, dear. I need you today so much.” Mrs. Kincaid had reseated herself on one of the sofas and patted the space beside her.

  I heard Stacy mutter something under her breath, although I didn’t hear the words.

  Harold, who was apparently as fed up with his sister as I was, barked at her, “If you can only be ugly, Anastasia Kincaid, leave the room. You’re a bigger pain in the neck than anyone else I know! Other than our father, that is.”

  Mrs. Kincaid said, “Oh, dear,” and pressed a hand to her plump cheek.

  Stacy said, “Don’t be such an ass, Harry.”

  Mrs. Kincaid, her head whipping toward her daughter, and her eyes bulging like some kind of South-American frog I’d seen once in an issue of National Geographic, whispered, “Stacy!”

  She sounded so shocked at her daughter’s vocabulary that I nearly shook my head in wonder. I mean, if you’re a mother, and you have a daughter as rebellious and unpleasant as Stacy Kincaid, wouldn’t you notice something was wrong before she said a word like ass in your presence? The word ass is even used in the Bible, so it’s not nearly as bad as some words I’ve heard. Or e
ven, I blush to confess, spoken from time to time.

  Sam Rotondo turned toward Stacy, too. “If you please, Miss Kincaid, I believe you needn’t be involved in this conversation. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the room.”

  Stacy’s mouth dropped open until her chin almost knocked against her breastbone.

  Harold said, “Thank God.”

  Mrs. Kincaid said, “Perhaps that would be best, Stacy, darling.”

  Humph. She never called me darling, although she had called me dear a few times. Then again, I wasn’t her daughter, even though I was nicer to her than was Stacy. There’s that family connection that always gets you, I guess.

  “Great idea,” said Harold, frowning at his sister.

  “I won’t!” Stacy said. Looking pouty and rather like a mule digging her back legs into the mud and daring anyone to move her.

  “Oh, please, darling, don’t start a scene. Not today. Not now.”

  Poor Mrs. Kincaid. If Stacy’d been my kid, I’d have smacked her from here to next Sunday, and she’d never have defied me again. That, at least, was my fantasy of what true, disciplined motherhood entailed. I had no first-hand knowledge of the motherly state back then.

  “I’ll see you to the door,” said the ever-watchful and prudent Father Frederick. Even though he seldom offered suggestions of a disciplinary nature to Stacy, he sure knew how to take advantage of one when he heard it.

  When he took Stacy’s arm tenderly with his hand, she shook it off violently. “Why should I leave, when she gets to stay?” she shouted, pointing at me. I never did know why she disliked me so much, but she sure gave every indication of doing so.

  Harold walked over and stood beside Father Frederick. He was decidedly ungentle when he took his sister’s other arm and yanked her up from the sofa. “Get the hell out of this room now, and don’t return unless or until someone tells you to come back in. And don’t leave the premises.”

  Mrs. Kincaid said, “Oh, dear,” again, but Harold and Father Frederick showed Stacy to the door and out of it. She looked as if she’d like to kill everyone in the room, starting either with Harold or me, depending on who was closer after she loaded her gun.