by Alice Duncan
“Best idea I’ve heard so far,” said Harold.
“It’s the only idea I’ve heard so far,” I told the men.
“It’s a good one,” said Harold.
“I guess so,” I agreed.
“Well,” said Sam, “better set it aside so we can deal with the rest of this junk.”
So Harold did, and we did, and the living room on that Sunday morning soon resembled a late Christmas morning, what with wrapping paper, ribbons and assorted gifts stacked hither and yon. A couple of the gifts were quite nice. Flossie Buckingham had crocheted a beautiful bed jacket for me, bless her. The Longneckers, who lived a couple of houses down from us on our side of Marengo, had delivered a pretty teapot and two pretty teacups in the same china pattern. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with a tea service for two, but perhaps after Sam and I married, I could make tea for us. Someone else would have to make cookies to eat while we drank the tea, because I…can’t. Vi would probably be happy to do it.
George and Marianne Grenville, along with Marianne’s mother, Diane Chapman, had sent me a copy of P.C. Wren’s book, Beau Geste, which had been published the prior year. “Aw,” I said. “How nice of them. I’ll never read that book again, though. It made me cry.”
“It’s still a lovely gift,” said Harold. He flipped through the beginning pages of the book. “It’s a first edition, and it’s been signed by the author. This might be valuable one day, Daisy. I’d hold on to it if I were you.”
“Of course I’ll hold on to it!” I said, irked that he thought I might toss it out. “I’d never throw away a gift.” I glanced at the porcelain dachshund at Harold’s feet. “Even something as ridiculous at that stupid dog statue.”
Both Sam and Harold laughed. I didn’t.
Anyhow, I won’t describe all the thoughtful presents people had been kind enough to give me. There were a ton of them, and the idea of writing thank-you notes for all of them made every single one of my aches and pains twang.
“I’d better clean up these papers and boxes and so forth,” said Sam, being unusually helpful. “Harold, why don’t you help Daisy open her cards? I don’t want the place to be a mess when the family comes home from church.”
“Sure thing,” said Harold.
I wanted to lift my head and stare at Sam Rotondo but, of course, couldn’t. How nice of him, though, to clean up because he didn’t want the house to be messy when my folks got home. Almost made me cry again, but I managed to restrain myself.
“Want me to start on the envelopes?” asked Harold as Sam picked up discarded boxes, paper and ribbons.
“Yes, please.” I was wearing out fast and wasn’t sure how many of the cards and letters I’d have the energy to read—or listen to, since Harold aimed to do the reading—when a gasp from Harold made my eyes open wide. They’d been half-shut.
Harold turned his head and hollered, “Sam, you’d better see this!”
“What is it?” I asked, alarmed by the worry I saw on Harold’s face and heard in his voice.
“What is it?” asked Sam, stomping into the living room and dusting his hands together.
“Listen to this,” Harold ordered. “‘Tell your lover-boy I will do a better job next time.’” He flapped a piece of paper in the air. “This sounds like a threat.”
Snatching the paper from Harold, Sam glared at it, turning it over. “Damn it, we shouldn’t have touched it. It might have had fingerprints on it.”
“I didn’t do anything with the envelope. Well, not much anyway,” said Harold.
“Nobody knew what it would contain until it was opened,” I pointed out in case Sam decided to get mad at Harold. At the moment, he was just irked in general. Actually, so was I.
“That is a threat, darn it,” I said. “And I’m scared!”
“It’s all right, Daisy,” said Harold, patting one of my hands.
Sam squatted beside the sofa.
“Don’t do that!” I scolded him. “You’ll hurt your thigh.”
“To hell with my thigh,” said Sam. “Listen, Daisy, we’d better talk about this.”
“You’d better hire a guard or two,” said Harold.
“But what if they’re after you and not me?” I asked Sam.
“So far, they—whoever they are—have injured and threatened you, not me.”
“Maybe they want to hurt me to get back at you,” I suggested, thinking my notion a sensible one.
“Why would anyone want to hurt me?” asked Sam.
“Why would anyone want to hurt me?” I asked in return.
“We came up with about thirty or forty people who fell into that category the day before yesterday, don’t forget.”
“How could I ever forget? But it wasn’t thirty or forty.”
“Close enough.”
Grunting, Sam got to his feet. “You were right. I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“You two have the most interesting conversations when I’m not around,” said Harold musingly. “You really talked about who might want you dead?”
“Yes,” Sam and I said together.
Sam made a face indicative of pain, and I said, “Take some of my morphine syrup.”
“I don’t need any of your morphine syrup,” said the exasperating man, limping to a chair and falling into it.
“Well, I do. Then I think I’ll just go to sleep until you figure out who’s trying to kill whom,” I told him.
“Sensible idea,” said Harold.
“Yes,” said Sam. “It is, but she doesn’t mean it. As soon as she’s able, she’ll be up and around and snooping.”
“I will not!”
“Yes, you will,” Sam and Harold said in a rather pleasant duet, Harold taking the tenor part this time.
“Bah.”
My family arrived home from church at that moment, however, so I didn’t have time to berate the men any more. But really! Did they honestly think I was idiotic enough to put myself in danger in order to find the culprit who had run me down with Mr. Randford’s motorcar?
Actually, I’m sure they did. Curse all men.
Pa stared at the one note Sam had laid on the dining room table. “That’s typewritten,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” said Sam.
“I don’t like it.” Pa.
“I don’t, either.” Sam.
Harold, Ma and Vi nodded their agreement.
Mind you, as I still lay on the sofa in the living room, I couldn’t see them, but I could tell what was going on by the various noises.
“This is terrible!” cried Vi. “Who in the world would want to harm Daisy?”
“Or Sam!” I called from the sofa.
Seven
And that’s enough about that. I was laid up for three weeks, and didn’t feel great even then. I was, however, up and about, if not entirely pain-free. Most of my scrapes and scratches had healed over. The only real problem remaining from my experience was a bum left shoulder. I was also a trifle perturbed by the notion that someone evidently wanted me dead.
Very well, more than a trifle.
We hadn’t received any more threats, and nobody had sent me any poisoned candy. I know the latter because Sam wouldn’t allow me to eat anything until he’d had it tested by the police laboratory. And I still didn’t quite believe someone actually wanted me dead. If anyone wanted anyone dead, I figured they’d want it to be Sam rather than me. He was responsible for putting more folks in jail than I was, after all. Not that I wanted anyone to hurt Sam, either.
Oh, fiddlesticks.
My being laid up was a trial for everyone, including my clients, most of whom called or dropped by to see me. After the first week or so of my confinement, I no longer wanted to smack anyone who dropped by. The first week was touch-and-go, and I nearly lost my temper two or three times, which would have been unkind, since all of my callers only wanted to wish me well. Unless maybe one of them wanted me dead.
Pudge Wilson and Dr. Benjamin visited me every day, Pudge in hopes he
’d get to do a good deed close to home, and Doc to make sure I was healing properly. According to him, I was. According to me, the jury was out. When I could hold books again, I reread my favorites: The Circular Staircase and The Case of Jenny Brice, by Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart; and The House Without a Key, by Mr. Earl Derr Biggers. And then I read The Circular Staircase again, because I couldn’t face anything more thought-provoking.
Fortunately for me, about that time Regina and Robert visited, bringing me several of Robert’s collection of dime novels. I read a couple of them. They were hair-raising adventures of lawmen and bandits in the old west, and they were pretty darned entertaining, considering I generally enjoyed mystery novels.
Poor Mrs. Pinkerton had been forced to attend a preliminary hearing for her disgusting daughter without me being there to support her, a fact that grieved her greatly. Her son, Harold, attended the hearing with her, and I heard all about it from him. He told me his mother was “too upset” to visit me, but she sent me a bundle of money via Harold, I guess to keep me happy. I’d have to get happy before I could stay that way, but I didn’t tell Harold’s mother that. I did tell Harold, who wouldn’t squeal on me.
I held the money, which I hadn’t counted yet, in my hand and stared at Harold. “Harold, I don’t deserve anything at all from your poor mother, much less this much money!”
“She’s far from poor, and you do, too. Don’t forget it was my darling sister who was responsible for Sam being shot, that woman being battered nearly to death, and you nearly getting killed. And she’s probably behind whoever ran you down the other day, too.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he said with a shrug. “Anyhow, you know as well as I do that as soon as you can get around again, Mother will be after you every day and have you come over to read the tarot cards and jiggle the Ouija board for her.”
“Jiggle?”
With a shrug, Harold said, “Whatever you do to make it work.”
I sighed heavily. “Yes. I suppose you’re right about that. I still feel…I don’t know. Undeserving of so much money from her for doing nothing.”
“You almost got killed. That’s something. A pretty darned large something,” said Harold. Nodding at the wad of bills in my hand, he added, “Since you don’t seem inclined to count that stack, I’ll tell you it’s supposed to be five-hundred mazumas.”
“Five hundred dollars!” I squealed.
“Yes. And don’t tell me again you don’t deserve it. I saw you the day after that car ran you into that tree. You deserve considerably more than five hundred aces.”
“But not from your mother.”
“Like hell. She owes you more than that.”
“But…” I didn’t know what to say.
“Anyhow, Stacy’s probably going to turn states’ evidence, so stop feeling bad about the blasted money.”
“What?” My brain was still kind of scrambled, this conversation having been held during the first week of my misery. “What’s turning states’ evidence mean?”
“She’ll rat out some of the other gang members in exchange for getting a light sentence. Instead of attempted murder and child exploitation, she’ll probably be sent to some country-club-like prison somewhere, stay for six months, then be escorted out in one of Mother’s Rolls Royces.”
“I didn’t know your mother had more than one Rolls Royce.”
With a roll of his eyes that precisely imitated one of Sam’s patented eye-rolls, Harold said, “Stop taking everything so literally!”
“Oh.” I stared at Harold. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“What?”
“The…whatever you called it and the country club.”
“Of course it doesn’t seem right. That’s because it’s not right,” said he. “However, it’s merely one of the benefits of being rich. You can buy your way out of pretty nearly any ticklish situation if you’ve got the bucks.”
“Hmm.”
“You know that as well as I do, Daisy. So use that money for something frivolous. The good Lord knows Mother would.”
“Yes, well, I’m not your mother.”
“Thank God for that!”
We both laughed. Which hurt, so I stopped laughing and sighed instead.
Sam had to attend the same hearing I’d missed, and he was considerably crabbier than Harold about Harold’s sister’s probable plans.
“She deserves to be locked up forever,” he said, grumpy as all get-out when he arrived at our house for dinner that evening. Dinner, by the way, was roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and carrots. It’s one of Vi’s best meals. Then again, pretty much all of Vi’s dinners are the best.
“I think so, too, but I’m not a judge or a lawyer.”
“If her mother didn’t have so blasted much money, that brat would swing for the crimes she committed.”
“My goodness,” said Ma, who wasn’t used to Sam sounding so bloodthirsty.
“It’s true, Ma,” I told her. “Her darling Percival Petrie’s aunt—I think she was his aunt, anyway—darned near murdered Sam.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” said Ma, who didn’t like to think about unpleasant things.
“Sam’s right, Peggy,” said Vi, gently setting the chicken on a platter. Then she placed the platter in the warming oven while she made gravy. Making gravy was a dark and mysterious art to me, although other people didn’t seem to be afraid of it. I felt so utterly worthless sometimes. “That child has been a problem since the day she was born. It astonishes me that both she and Harold came from the same parents. Harold is a wonderful man.”
“Yes, he is,” I said, giving my fiancé a hideous scowl. He only grinned back at me, and I got the impression he didn’t despise Harold as much as he liked to pretend.
“From everything I’ve heard about the girl,” said Pa, entering the dining room from the hall, “I think she’d benefit from working on a chain gang for a while. Maybe in the hot sun in a state like Mississippi or Alabama. She could learn how the other half lives.”
“We don’t live like that!” cried Ma. Literal-minded; that was my mother.
“I know, Peggy,” said Pa, coming over and giving her a peck on the cheek. “Just a little exaggeration. The girl needs discipline, is what I’m saying.”
“Oh,” said Ma, pleased to have the issue cleared up. “Yes, I agree about that.”
“I think a chain gang is too good for her,” I muttered, thinking black thoughts about Stacy Kincaid.
“Daisy,” said Ma.
I then rolled my own eyes, but made sure she didn’t see me do it, because if she did, she’d have scolded me some more. I still couldn’t move around very well, this being the sixth day after that blasted car had hit me, but I was able to set the table, so I did. Sam, bless his heart, helped me.
That evening, after Sam and I had washed the dishes—Sam washed and dried, and I told him where everything went—we retired to the living room, where I more or less collapsed onto the sofa. Sam sat next to me, took my hand and patted it. Spike jumped up and managed to snuggle his way between two of us. Spike never liked being left out of things when couches and his humans were involved.
“You holding up all right?” he asked.
“Yes. I still hurt a lot, but I think I’m better. Well, I know I’m better.”
“Did Doctor Benjamin say when he was going to unwrap your shoulder?”
“Probably the end of next week. That means another week without work, which means I won’t be earning any money—” I remembered the $500 Mrs. Pinkerton had sent to me that very day and decided to stop whining.
“You don’t have to worry about money,” said Sam softly. “If you get into a bind, I’ll help you. You know that.”
Because I was an emotional wreck, I began sniveling. “Oh, Sam! Thank you. You’re so kind to me, and I’m so mean to you.”
“What brought this on?” he asked, sounding puzzled. “You never used to apologize
for being mean to me.”
“I’m sorry!” I blubbered.
It was probably a good thing someone scritched the doorbell at that moment. Spike went into his customary paroxysm of boundless happiness, and Pa got up from his chair to answer the door. He told Spike to sit and stay, which Spike did.
The door opened, and I heard Pa say, “Mrs. Killebrew! Come on in.”
Mrs. Killebrew? What the heck was she doing, visiting us for the second time in a week? I mean, we’d been across-the-street neighbors for as long as we’d owned our lovely little bungalow, but normally we just waved to each other and exchanged Christmas cookies and stuff like that. And, of course, she’d brought us that fruitcake the day of my non-accident. The fruitcake was still wrapped up and sitting on a shelf in the kitchen. As Vi had said more than once, there’s no way a fruitcake can ever go bad because it’s bad to begin with. None of us told Mrs. Killebrew that, of course.
“Thank you, Mr. Gumm. I saw Detective Rotondo’s Hudson outside and thought I might catch him here.”
“You want to see Sam?” asked Pa, sounding puzzled.
Wiping my eyes with my handy hanky, which I’d been keeping in the pocket of my day dress since I’d been dripping uncontrollably for a week by that time, I glanced at Sam. He winked back. Big help. He did, however, abandon me on the sofa and walk to the door, where both Spike and Mrs. Killebrew greeted him enthusiastically.
“Good evening, Mrs. Killebrew,” he said, taking the hand she held out and shaking it.
“Good evening, Mr. Rotondo. I hope you don’t mind me calling on you here.”
“Not at all. Come on in to the living room and see how Daisy’s doing.”
“How is the poor child? Recovering well?” Mrs. K sounded concerned on my behalf, which I thought was sweet.
“She’s still in a good deal of pain, but she’s getting better.”
“I’m so glad.” Mrs. Killebrew walked to the sofa, stopped dead in her tracks, stared at me, clapped a hand to her cheek, and cried, “Oh, Daisy, you poor thing!”
Naturally, that set me off again. I swear, I was like a dripping faucet that first week or two. “Th-thank you, Mrs. Killebrew. Please, have a seat.” I’d have waved my arm to indicate various chairs scattered about, but I couldn’t.
