by Alice Duncan
Oh, Lord, I’m babbling again. Terror does that to me.
Once on my feet, I offered Angie a shaky hand, which she took, and she, too, arose. We both used our hands to clap dust and dried orange blossoms from our clothing. I heard Angie take a huge gulp of air. She said in a quavering voice, “Who in the world is that?” She pointed at the blossom-covered corpse with a finger that quavered as much as her voice.
“Dunno,” said Prophet. He walked over to the body and toed it over onto its back. Actually, he pegged it over, but I don’t think “to peg” is a legitimate verb; at least not in this context. After gazing at the face thus revealed, he said, “Huh.”
“Wh—” Angie’s voice croaked to a stop and she cleared her throat. “Who is it? Do you recognize him?”
Prophet turned and gave Angie a bland stare. “Yeah. You do, too.”
“I do?”
Still a bit trembly, and sucking in a gallon or two of orange-blossom-scented air, Angie took a couple of small, tentative steps toward the body, Mr. Prophet staring at her the while. As soon as she glanced down, she clapped both hands over her mouth and said, “Oh, my God!”
“Yeah,” said Mr. Prophet.
“Who is it?” I asked, finally gathering enough courage to walk over and gaze down at the corpse for myself. “I’ve never seen him before.”
Not that I routinely recognized gunmen, but several members of the rotten Petrie family had caused Sam and me a whole lot of grief in the recent past. I’d thought they were all either deceased or locked up, but it wouldn’t have surprised me a whole lot to see a Petrie lying there, dead, in Angie’s orange grove. Speaking of which…
“Is he dead?” I asked in a small voice.
“As a doornail,” said Mr. Prophet, pegging at the body again.
When he did it, the body jiggled some before it settled back down. I felt a trifle queasy. “Who is it? I mean he?”
“It’s as good as he in this case,” said Prophet, sticking his gun—I don’t think it was the one he’d called his gut-shredder, but it sure wasn’t his long Winchester ’73 rifle, either—back into the waistband of his trousers.
No wonder I hadn’t known he was carrying a gun. He’d kept it out of sight. On the other hand, I ought to have expected him to come to this get-together armed. After all, I knew he didn’t like or trust Angie and used to make his living killing people. That sounds awful and, even though Harold and I had joked about Mr. Prophet’s prior line of work, I don’t precisely mean it. However, he had been a bounty-hunter in his younger years, and he still kept a lot of guns in his arsenal. I know this for a fact because Sam had told me so. I wasn’t sure if I approved of him owning all those guns, but my approval or lack thereof wouldn’t make any difference to Lou Prophet, even if he knew about it.
“Who is he then?” I asked again.
“This here Jasper is Frank Tucker,” said Prophet. “Got a dodger on him at home. One thousand big ones, dead or alive.”
Very well, I understood “Jasper” to mean a man and a “dodger” to be a “wanted” poster. I hadn’t learned a new language since I’d taken Spanish in high school, but Mr. Prophet was teaching his to me really fast.
“I’ll take the money.” Prophet gave Angie a penetrating seconds-long stare, as if he expected her to demand the bounty on Mr. Tucker.
But Angie only shuddered slightly and said, “Fine with me.” Then, as if just remembering something, she gasped and said, “Oh, Lord. He probably came for Sally. I’d better check on her. I hope the girls didn’t hear the shots.”
“Who’s Sally and how’d he find her?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
“I hope Sally and Li are in the house,” said Angie nervously.
“You’d better call the police, too,” I said, my own voice still small, since I wasn’t sure precisely what Frank Tucker, Angie Mainwaring, Lou Prophet and Angie’s “girls” had to do with each other. But surely if the man was bad enough to be featured on a wanted poster offering a thousand dollars for his capture (or death), this killing was legitimate. Wasn’t it?
Lord, I hoped so.
It must be. After all, Mr. Tucker had shot at…Angie? Oh, boy, I didn’t know for whom he’d intended his bullet, but he’d fired the first shot.
“I’ll call the police as soon as I check on Sally,” said Angie, plainly worried.
At that moment, two women appeared on the pathway leading to the place where Angie, Mr. Prophet and I stood around the dead man. Acting quickly, Mr. Prophet shook the orange tree towering over the body and caused another avalanche of orange blossoms to drop onto it. The flowers did a good deal to hide the man on the ground. They also rendered him possibly the sweetest-smelling cadaver in the history of the world. Instinctively, I scuttled over and stood beside Mr. Prophet in an attempt to hide the body from the newcomers.
Giving Mr. Prophet and me a grateful glance, Angie hurried up to the two women.
“What happened? What was that awful noise?”
The speaker, female, appeared to be another person of Chinese extraction. She seemed older than the pale and trembly blonde whose arm she held, but she was lovely all the same. They were both lovely, for that matter. I wondered if they were two of the “fallen” women whom Angie was helping to regain an upright stature in life.
“Li and Sally,” said Angie. “Mister Prophet and I were just doing a bit of target practice.”
She turned a pleading glance at me, so I smiled idiotically at the women and gave them a little finger wave.
“You remember Mister Prophet, don’t you, Li?” said Angie, trying for all she was worth to sound normal. “From Tombstone?”
With a start, the Chinese woman—Li, I presumed—glanced at Mr. Prophet and said, “Oh, my Lord.”
“You might say that,” grumbled a sour-voiced Lou Prophet.
The Chinese woman seemed relatively calm when she gave Mr. Prophet a curt nod. The other woman was as pallid and shaky as a linen sheet in a high wind. I took her to be Sally. She appeared kind of sickly to me, and I wondered what was wrong with her. All at once, as she peered at Mr. Prophet and me and caught sight of the body, her knees gave out. Before she could sink to the ground, Li grabbed her and propped her up with an arm around her waist.
“Who is that?” Sally’s asked in a voice as thin and pale as she was.
“It’s just a dummy, Sally,” said Angie. “You know, like in the department stores? A mannequin? For target practice.”
If Sally bought that one, she was sicker than she looked. Both Li and Sally were exceptionally beautiful women. I felt kind of like a podgy English bulldog in a room full of graceful Afghan hounds. Suddenly I wished I’d brought Spike with me.
Turning to the Chinese woman, Angie sounded like a general giving orders to a raw recruit when she said, “Li? Will you please take Sally to her room? Then come down to the sun porch, if you will.”
“Yes. I’ll settle Sally and then join you there.” Li shot Mr. Prophet a glance I couldn’t interpret, although the image of a carved jade dragon flitted into my head. Hmm. Was Li the lady who’d…
How the heck was I going to learn the answer to that question? Well, I’d figure something out.
“Thank you,” said Angie. Her thanks sounded heartfelt.
As soon as Li and Sally were out of sight, Angie said in her general’s voice, “Let’s get back to the house. I’ll call the police.” Turning to me, she said with a note of pleading in her tone, “Do you think you can get Detective Rotondo to handle this? It might be easier on all of us if he did.”
Obviously, Angie didn’t know Sam very well. Nevertheless, I said, “I’ll try.”
Fourteen
“I have two telephones in the house,” Angie said as the three of us hurried to her gorgeous home. “One of them is on the sun porch. I’ll call from there. Um…Daisy, you’d better stay with me.” She glanced at Mr. Prophet, who stood like a statue of grim death at the door to the sun porch. “Mister Prophet, if you don’t min
d, would you wait at the door leading onto the corridor. Don’t let anyone into the room except Hattie or Li. If you don’t mind,” she repeated, sounding a trace panicky.
“And If I do mind?”
“Stop being such a pill, Mister Lou Prophet!” I told him, exasperation finally overtaking fear. “Just stand guard at the door so Angie and I can call the coppers.”
With a disgusted eye-roll, Mr. Prophet limped over to the door now standing open to reveal the hallway. He shut the door and stood in front of it, thereby blocking anyone’s entry, should it be necessary to do so.
“Thank you,” I snapped.
“Yeah.”
I noticed the crank on Angie’s telephone, and realized she probably had to go through an operator in order to be connected to the police department. Therefore, I made a sacrifice of myself.
“Want me to call, Angie? I probably know the girl at the telephone exchange.”
“Oh, would you? Thank you, Daisy!”
“Sure. I don’t mind.” I did mind, but I didn’t want Angie or Mr. Prophet to know it.
“Um, do you have a party line, or a single line?”
“A single line,” said Angie. No surprise there. If she had other people out in the big wide world who wanted to shoot her, she probably didn’t want to let her party-line neighbors know about it. And she definitely wouldn’t want the would-be shooters to know where she lived, although it looked as if that boat had sailed. Golly, I don’t know where I got that expression. It definitely wasn’t one of Lou Prophet’s.
Anyway, glad for small favors—like not having to shoo party-line sharers off the wire—I asked the telephone exchange to connect me to the Pasadena Police Department. For once, I was glad the operator at the exchange wasn’t Medora Cox or any of my other friends. After my request had been fulfilled, I asked the officer who answered the telephone at the police station to connect me with Detective Sam Rotondo.
“Who’s this?” the officer had the effrontery to ask.
“My name is Missus William Majesty. Daisy Gumm Majesty, and I am Detective Rotondo’s fiancée. This call, however, is not personal. It’s important, it’s related to an untimely death, and I need to speak to Detective Rotondo. Instantly.”
“All right, all right” said the officer, peeved.
I didn’t really blame him for his annoyance. I had a pretty good idea Sam was going to pitch a fit when he found out what had happened in Angie’s orange grove.
I was right.
“Damnation, Daisy! Why do these things always happen around you?”
“I don’t know!” I screeched back at him. From the tail of my eye, I saw Angie give a start of surprise, and I lowered my voice. “A fellow was hiding in an orange tree, and he shot at us when we got to the gardener’s shed.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” grumbled Sam ominously. “A fellow hid in a tree? And shot at you? Cripes, are there more Petries out there?”
“I don’t know!” I caught hold of my alarm and lowered my voice again. “This isn’t—wasn’t, I mean—a Petrie. He was a…” Stumped, I glanced from Angie to Mr. Prophet.
They chorused, “Frank Tucker.”
Mr. Prophet added, “He’s got a wanted dodger out on him.”
“Angie and Mister Prophet say his name was Frank Tucker and that he is—or was—wanted by the law. I don’t know what law where.”
“Arizona,” said Prophet.
“He was wanted by the law in Arizona. I don’t know for what.”
“Bank robbery and murder,” said Mr. Prophet.
I whimpered. What a big sissy, huh? “Um…He was wanted for bank robbery and murder,” I told Sam.
“Good God. Well, stay there. I’ll look in our files to see if I can find his information. We probably have a wanted sheet on him filed somewhere.”
“Look under the Ts,” I whispered, trying to be helpful.
Sam wasn’t impressed. “Huh. We’ll be there as soon as we can get there. Don’t anybody move anything.”
“We won’t,” I promised.
The receiver on Sam’s end of the wire slammed into its cradle, making me jump. But honestly. I was so tired of people shooting at me and throwing knives at me and running me down with cars. It makes a girl nervous, and I don’t think I should be faulted for my reaction. You see how calm you are after weeks of knowing several people want you dead.
Angie and I sat on a small sofa on her sun porch while Mr. Prophet continued to stand sentry at the door to the hallway. After about twenty minutes, a knock came at the door Mr. Prophet guarded. He opened same, stepped aside and Li joined us. She glanced up at Mr. Prophet when she walked past him and gave him a curt nod. He didn’t nod back, but he offered her a magnificent sneer.
Evidently impervious to sneering ex-bounty hunters, Li walked over to Angie and me, hooked the back of a chair and pulled it closer to the sofa upon which we sat.
“Is Sally all right?” Angie asked instantly.
“I think so.” Li shook her head. “Her condition is fragile, though. She nearly jumped out of her shoes when she heard those gunshots. I expect she was recalling her time in Tombstone.”
“I expect so, too,” said Angie. Then she recalled Li and I hadn’t yet been officially introduced, so she introduced us.
Sticking out my hand for Li to shake, I said, “How do you do, Miss…um…Li?”
“Li’s my last name,” she said with a grin, “but don’t worry about it. I’m fine, all things considered. And you, Missus Majesty?”
“Oh, please just call me Daisy. Everyone does.”
“Thank you, Daisy. Everyone calls me Li.”
“Even though it’s your last name?” Don’t ask me why I asked such a stupid question. Guess my nerves were still kind of jumpy.
“White people don’t understand Chinese names,” said Li with a cynical smile.
“Oh, that’s right. Your patronymic name always comes first, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. Most white people don’t know that.” Li’s expression softened slightly. “What’s he doing here?” she asked, nodding at Mr. Prophet, who stood scowling at the three of us. However, he didn’t desert his post, which I thought was nice of him. Almost noble, even.
Angie said, “Evidently, Mister Prophet was one of the men from whom we took a little more money than he technically owed when he bought our services.”
“Hmph,” said Li. “I gave him that jade dragon. It’s worth a few cents.”
Aha! I was right! Li was the one who’d given him the dragon!
“Yes, well, it seems he’d prefer to get his money back.”
“Yes, I would,” growled Mr. Prophet. “With interest.”
Angie sighed. “With interest.”
Li said, “Hmph,” again.
I thought of something that might (or might not) be pertinent. “Have you ever thought about getting a dog, Angie? A dog would bark and warn you when strangers come around.”
After exchanging a glance with Li, Angie said, “Some of the girls are afraid of dogs. Sally is, for one.”
“Why would anybody be afraid of a dog?” I asked, honestly curious.
“Not all dogs are as nice—or as small—as your Spike, Daisy. I fear some of the girls I try to help have been disciplined rather harshly from time to time, and the men who…ran, I guess is the appropriate term…the houses in which they worked often used…ghastly tactics.
“You mean they sicced dogs on them?” I asked, horrified.
“Yes,” said Li. “Mastiffs, to be precise.”
“Good Lord.” My mind, which was already in a precarious state, reeled.
“The man with the mastiff,” said Angie, “was a particularly vicious specimen of the type.”
“Sally barely escaped with her life,” said Li in a matter-of-fact voice. “I had to sneak her out through a third-story window in the middle of the night.”
“Good Lord.” My own voice was as feeble as my careening wits. “Is Mister Tucker the ma
n in question?”
“He wasn’t the one who used mastiffs,” said Li. “That was the delightful Mister Adolph Grant.”
“Delightful,” muttered Angie.
Being the brilliant woman I was, I deduced both ladies were being sarcastic. Fine by me.
“Coppers are here,” said Lou Prophet from the door. “Want me to let ‘em in?”
“I’ll do it,” said Angie, rising from the sofa and marching with firm steps to the door.
Mr. Prophet stepped aside to let her pass, but not without making a comment. “I still want my money back.”
“You’ll get it,” Angie snapped, flashing her glorious dark eyes at him.
He seemed unmoved by her rancor. He did, however, relinquish his post at the door and walk over to sit next to me on the sofa. It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment, but it might be painful for him to stand in one place for so long, what with having lost his leg rather recently.
Because I’m a compassionate individual, no matter what other people might think, I said, “Are you all right, Mister Prophet? Does your leg hurt or anything?”
With a truly magnificent frown, he said, “Leg ain’t there anymore. Stump hurts.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I was sorry I’d asked, at any rate.
“How’d you lose your leg, Lou?” asked Li. Not precisely a shrinking violet, Li. Nor did she sound compassionate; only curious. “You had both of them the last time I saw you.”
“Yeah, I did.” Prophet looked Li up and down in a manner I thought particularly disrespectful. Li only sneered at him. Maybe these two deserved each other. “Lost it in a car wreck.”
“I didn’t think you liked motorcars.”
“Don’t. A woman was driving the damned thing. Drove us off a cliff in Malibu.”
“Ah. Well, you probably deserved it.”
“Shit.”
Thank the good Lord and Sam Rotondo, the police contingent barged onto the sun porch before fisticuffs could commence.
Taking the lead and glaring at me, Sam said, “All right. Where is this body?” He looked at Mr. Prophet. “Lou, you want to tell me what happened?”