by Alice Duncan
Aw, heck. Escape’s as good a word as any other.
Anyway, when I finally managed to haul myself away from Sam and stop quaking and sobbing, I learned that Mr. Randford and Miss Betsy Powell had arrived at the lion farm a half-hour or so before we did. Mr. Randford had sent Miss Powell into the gift store the Gays operated on their property, and in which they sold souvenirs consisting of lion pictures, posters from flickers in which their lions had been featured, decorative ashtrays, statues, boxes, toys and so forth.
As Miss Powell had toddled around in the gift shop, Mr. Randford had subdued two of Gays’ trainers, using rags soaked in chloroform and then tying them up. The poor trainers were taken by ambulance to a local hospital, but were expected to recover. Chloroform, however its use is depicted in the moving pictures, isn’t an innocent gas, and people have died from being exposed to it.
After Sam had pushed me to the ground, Randford had walloped Sam over the head. Then Randford had picked me up, staggered to Slats’s quarters, and flipped me in. Although Sam’s first bullet had missed its target, his second shot got Randford in the side. Unfortunately, it didn’t penetrate his black heart, but it did make him fall down. Lou Prophet then used his famous ketch rope to tie up the despicable fellow.
Then it was that Miss Betsy Powell hurried out of the gift shop and began screaming. Lou Prophet had silenced her with a sock to the jaw and a handkerchief stuffed into her mouth. She was awake again by this time but not, thank God, screaming. Pressing a hand to her swollen cheek, she was shaking darned near as much as I was, however. She was the lousiest picker-of-men I’d ever met in my life.
Anyhow, after he’d silenced Miss Powell, Mr. Prophet had hobbled to the lion’s den and tried to rope Slats. I’m kind of glad he missed, because, although it didn’t feel like it at the time, a rope around his neck might have angered old Slats, and he might have done something other than merely lick my cheek.
Mr. Gay, who had been working in his office, heard Sam’s gunshots and had come a’runnin’—as Mr. Prophet might have said—fearing some idiot was shooting his lions. When he saw what was up, he didn’t pause to think, but raced to Slats’s enclosure, unlocked the gate, and hauled me out, praising Slats the entire time.
As we sat in his office, he explained, “My cats are all accustomed to people, so they wouldn’t harm you. Anyhow, as a rule, you really don’t need to fear a male lion, Mrs. Majesty. It’s the females who stalk and capture prey for the most part. They’re the ones who feed their family.”
I’ll be darned! Even in the animal kingdom, women did all the work! Nertz.
We were still huddled in Mr. Gay’s office when the police showed up. A detective named Bigelow and a couple of uniformed members of the Los Angeles Police Department wrote down all the information we had to give them and hauled Mr. Randford away.
Sam had tried to staunch the flow of blood from Randford’s wound, but Randford was still sore, both mentally and physically. And I was glad to hear it. The man who had tried to kill me with a lion—a terrible way to go, as far as I’m concerned—kept whining about his tiny little bullet wound until Mr. Prophet said, “Shut up, old son, or I’ll shut you up.”
Everyone except Mr. Randford and Miss Powell smiled. Even the coppers. Mr. Randford shut up.
Mr. Gay closed his lion farm for the rest of that day. A very nice fellow, he offered us free passes should we ever want to visit Gay’s Lion Farm again. I’d have to think about that for a while. A long while.
We didn’t dine at Philippe’s that day. Rather, Sam, Lou Prophet, Harold and I had to visit the Los Angeles Police Station. We all signed our official statements and, by the time we were through doing that, I only wanted to go home.
“Good idea,” said Sam.
“Why did he want to kill me?” I asked plaintively. Very well, maybe it was more of a whine.
“Don’t know yet, but I’ll find out,” said Sam.
“Bastard got what he deserved,” observed Lou Prophet. “Only your aim was off. You should’ve got him in the heart.”
“I agree,” said I.
Harold shuddered.
Lou Prophet handed me a stuffed lion. I looked from it to him, and he winked. “Thought you might like a souvenir from your adventure, Miss Daisy.”
I’m pretty sure I thanked him, but when we got home again, I aimed to stuff that stuffed lion into one of the drawers of my bird’s-eye maple bureau. I might take it out again one day. One day a long, long time from that day.
So. I still lived as of the first week in February, 1925. Here’s the skinny.
Mr. Bernard Randford, who wasn’t a Petrie but who was just as awful as the rotten apples on the Petrie tree, turned out to be the cousin and best friend of Eloise Frances Petrie Gaulding’s husband. I didn’t know until Sam told me, but evidently Mr. Gaulding became so upset after his wife’s evil deeds came to light, he suffered an apoplectic stroke and had yet to recover from same. Mr. Randford blamed me for his cousin’s problems. Me!
“Darn it! It’s not my fault his cousin’s wife turned out to be a wicked witch!” I growled when Sam told me this.
“No, it isn’t. Mr. Randford, however, sees things differently.”
“Bother Mr. Randford. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a whole clan of putrid Petries after me. Not to mention your disgusting nephew.”
My mother said, “Daisy,” but not forcefully.
Good thing, too, if you were me. She hadn’t had to hide out in the house for three solid weeks after having been deliberately smashed against a pepper tree by a fiend driving Mr. Randford’s motorcar. Which, by the way, Mr. Randford had lent him specifically to do me in. I think it was Bruce Petrie who’d driven the motorcar that slammed me into the pepper tree, although there were so darned many Petries loose in the city, I might be mistaken about which one had done what.
Mr. Lou Prophet, who sat with us in the living room of our bungalow—that is to say the bungalow belonging to my parents…Hmm. This might become confusing if Sam and I ever had the chance to get married—chuckled.
“Speaking of my disgusting nephew,” Sam said before anyone else could butt in, “Renata will be arriving on the two-thirty train tomorrow.”
“Oh, my! I’ll be so happy to meet one of your sisters, Sam!” I said.
“Yes, well, I’m not altogether sure your sentiment will be reciprocated.”
I stared at him. “But why? Frank’s the one who tried to kill me! I never did anything to him!”
“You ain’t Italian or a Catholic,” said Lou Prophet, still smiling.
Sam grinned back at him. “That’s it, all right.”
“Good Lord. I don’t think I’ll ever understand human beings if I live to be a hundred,” I said, torn between frustration and fury.
“You’re not alone there,” said Prophet.
“Sometimes I don’t think there’s anything in the world as divisive as religion.”
My mother said, “Daisy,” again.
“Nertz to that, Ma. The truth is the truth.”
My mother merely sighed. Pa tried not to smile.
As for Sam, he only laughed and said, “I think you’re right.”
Lou Prophet chuckled again. “Never had much use for sky pilots myself,” said he.
And there was yet another expression I’d have to include in my dictionary of old-west sayings. I decided to ask him what it meant later. At the moment, I was still under the influence of terror and the recovery therefrom.
“Oh, Mr. Prophet, please continue coming to our church with us,” said Ma.
I think she was attempting to save the old reprobate from hell. I didn’t think he needed saving. I liked him just fine the way he was.
Before I could say so and start an all-out war in the family, Vi called us in for dinner.
Dinner was good. Now that all the people who wanted me dead were locked up, even life was good. I hoped it would remain that way for a long, long time.
I did, however, decide not to
hold my breath.
The End
Don’t miss Aunt Vi’s recipe for HUNGARIAN GOULASH right after the excerpt from Scarlet Spirits. It’s all waiting, just ahead!
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Scarlet Spirits
A Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery, Book Fourteen
After taking a gulp of lemonade and fanning herself for a second or two, Angie looked at me, almost accusingly. “You didn’t tell me you knew Lou Prophet!”
“Uh…No, I didn’t. Why would I?” Because her voice held an edge of panic, I didn’t get angry.
She put her glass down and covered her face with both hands. “No. You’re not at fault. I’m sorry, Daisy. But those cards and that Ouija board were absolutely right, although I didn’t expect things to happen so quickly. Talk about someone from my past! Oh, Lord.” I was pleased to note she wasn’t a weeper, unlike some of us.
“You know that peg-legged fellow, Angie?” asked Mr. Bowman, a frown creasing his magnificent brow. Well, magnificent in that he was a terribly handsome man. Too old for me, of course.
Smiling at my fiancé, I said, “Thanks for thinking of the lemonade, Sam.”
“Sure thing,” he said, squinting at me and knowing precisely what I’d been thinking. Sometimes I think he knows me too well. But, golly, Sam was a terribly handsome man, too, if not quite as decorative as Mr. Bowman.
The four of us straightened in our chairs when we heard the thud-plop-thud-plop of Lou Prophet’s leg and peg as he walked past the orange trees lining the gravel pathway leading from his cottage to our porch. He looked mad enough to spit railroad spikes. I don’t think that’s an Old-West saying. I think I got it from my father.
Hoping to avert a duel, or something equally catastrophic, on the porch, I got up and walked to the porch steps. Standing on the top step, I barred Mr. Prophet’s entry.
“Mr. Prophet,” I said sweetly. “I get the feeling you and Mrs. Mainwaring have met before.”
“Mrs. Who?” Prophet growled. “That there’s no Missus Mainwaring. That there’s Angie Smith, and she fleeced me of a whole lot of money in Tombstone some years back.”
“Now, Lou, don’t be like that,” said Angie, attempting a sweetness equal to my own and missing by a mile.
“The hell you say!”
“Exactly who is this person, Angie?” asked Mr. Bowman, still frowning fiercely. On him fierce looked good.
I probably shouldn’t have noticed that, should I? Oh, dear. Sorry.
“For that matter,” growled Prophet, “who the hell are you?”
“All right, let’s all settle down,” Sam said, rising from his chair, putting on his Italian-Count-Police-Detective mien, and using his I’m-going-to-kill-you-and-dump-you-in-the-ocean-in-cement-overshoes voice. “Mrs. Evangeline Mainwaring, this is Mr. Lou Prophet. I take it you two have…met before, only perhaps you had a different name then, Mrs. Mainwaring?”
“Different name, my ass. That’s Angela Smith, and she ran the biggest whorehouse in Tombstone! Evangeline Mainwaring, shit.”
Nearly shocked out of my pretty blue pumps, I still managed to said, “Mr. Prophet, please!” in an attempt to curtail his profanities, although I already knew the task to be impossible.
“Daisy,” said Sam in the same deadly voice. “Sit down.”
So I sat. Didn’t dare do anything else. When Sam got into one of those moods, it was better to do as he said.
He continued, “Lou, come up here onto the porch and sit down. Let’s sort this out. There’s no need for violence. Or profanity,” he added, shooting me a glance.
“Hell,” said Prophet. But I moved out of his way and he continued up the stairs and sat on a chair as far from Angie as he could get.
But merciful heavens! Had Lou Prophet spoken the truth? Was Evangeline Mainwaring or whatever her real name truly a former scarlet woman?
Oh, boy, I sure hoped so!
“Now,” said Sam remaining on his feet, probably so he could catch anyone should he or she try to leap up and attempt some type of brutality on another one of us, “please explain these allegations.” He turned to Angie. “Ladies first.” He didn’t even sound cynical
“Lady!” spat Prophet. “Hell.” He, on the other hand, raised cynicism to a level surpassing any I’d heard before.
“Quiet, Lou. Ladies first.” Sam sounded even deadlier that time, a feat of which I hadn’t believed him capable until that moment.
Grasping Mr. Bowman’s hand and squeezing it hard, Angie whispered, “Yes. Yes, he’s telling the truth. I ran a parlor house—”
“Parlor house, my ass,” Lou interrupted.
Turning his man-eating gaze upon him, Sam said, “Shut up.”
Lou lifted his hands and said, “Shit,” but shut up. Probably for the best, all things considered.
SCARLET SPIRITS
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Aunt Vi’s Hungarian Goulash
Ingredients:
1 pound potatoes
2 pounds cubed beef
2 garlic cloves
salt
pepper
24 pearl onions
3T Butter
3T Flour
Preparation:
Wipe two pounds beef cut from lower parts of round with a piece of cheesecloth, wrung out of cold water, and cut in one and one-half inch cubes. Put in saucepan, add one quart boiling water to which has been added two cloves of garlic and let boil five minutes. Cover and let simmer until meat is tender.
Pare potatoes and cut in three-quarter inch slices, then cut slices in cubes; there should be one and one-half cups. Cover with boiling salted water and let boil five minutes; drain and add to meat fifteen minutes before serving-time to finish the cooking.
Peel twenty-four tiny onions and cook in boiling salted water to cover; drain and add to goulash.
Cream three tablespoons butter, add three tablespoons flour and work until smooth; then add by small pieces to stock in stewpan (of which there should be two cups), stirring constantly. Season with salt and pepper and turn on a hot plate.
Also by Alice Duncan
The Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery Series
Strong Spirits
Fine Spirits
High Spirits
Hungry Spirits
Genteel Spirits
Ancient Spirits
Dark Spirits
Spirits Onstage
Unsettled Spirits
Bruised Spirits
Spirits United
Spirits Unearthed
Shaken Spirits
Scarlet Spirits
The Dream Maker Series
Cowboy for Hire
Beauty and the Brain
The Miner’s Daughter
Her Leading Man
About the Author
Award-winning author Alice Duncan lives with a herd of wild dachshunds (enriched from time to time with fosterees from New Mexico Dachshund Rescue) in Roswell, New Mexico. She’s not a UFO enthusiast; she’s in Roswell because her mother’s family settled there fifty years before the aliens crashed (and living in Roswell, NM, is cheaper than living in Pasadena, CA, unfortunately). Alice would love to hear from you at [email protected]
And be sure to visit her Web site:
www.alicedunc
an.net and her Facebook page.
