Spirits Onstage (A Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery, Book 8)

by Alice Duncan

  Fiddlesticks. This was confusing. I said, "Of course, I can attempt to reach your late husband, if you'd like me to." If she'd pay me to, is what I meant, but she understood that, having already mentioned hiring me. "Where do you live?"

  "I live in our home on California Boulevard. Michael's and mine, I mean."

  California Boulevard, eh? Another street full of mansions and grand estates. "I see. Well, perhaps you can talk to Harold Kincaid about my services. His mother uses me all the time, and he can give you particulars." Especially about the money part.

  "Mrs. Majesty!" came a stentorian voice from the chancel. I knew that voice and instantly hopped to my feet.

  "Yes, Mr. Hostetter!"

  "You're needed for this next scene."

  "Coming!" And I trotted back onstage. Or on-chancel. Harold stood there, too, holding his fake Lord High Executioner's axe and looking fierce, in a Gilbert and Sullivan-ish sort of way.

  "Sorry," I said, panting slightly. "Which scene are we doing?"

  Mr. Hostetter frowned at me. I wasn't accustomed to being frowned at by my choir director. Generally he approved of me. Oh, well.

  "We're blocking out the end of act one, in which Katisha appears for the first time," said Max Van der Linden. I think he took pity on me after Mr. Hostetter hollered.

  "Very well. Where do you want me?" I asked, all attention in my effort to redeem myself.

  "Stand off-stage, stage left."

  I moved to my left.

  Mr. Van der Linden said, "Other side. That's house left. You want stage left."

  I stopped and stared at him for a moment. "Um..."

  "Perhaps this would be a good time for an introduction to staging terms," said Max in a bright and friendly voice, probably trying not to make me sound like an idiot because I didn't know stage directions.

  So he spent a few minutes with the cast and crew gathered around him, showing us on a piece of paper precisely where stage left, stage right, up-stage and down-stage were. To my mind, his directions were directly opposed to logic, but I wasn't an actor. Then I stood on the chancel, looked out upon the vast number of pews, and it suddenly clicked. From that position, stage left actually was to my left. I felt better after that.

  Harold joined me back-stage. "Figure it out?"

  "Yes. Finally. I feel stupid."

  "No need to. Nobody else knew stage left from an elephant's hind leg, so it's good that you precipitated some instructions. I doubt many of these folks have done any more stage work than you have."

  "And I haven't done any."

  "Right."

  "Harold? Are you ready with the Mikado's letter?" called Max to Harold.

  "Right here," called Harold, and he waved a scroll-type thing at Max.

  "Very well," said Floy Hostetter. "We'll begin at your entrance."

  By the way, Max Van der Linden was the stage director. Floy Hostetter just usurped his duties from time to time, I presume because he was accustomed to ruling over the singers at the First Methodist-Episcopal Church.

  "We'll begin after you and Nanki-Poo decide you'll execute him after a month of his being married to Yum-Yum," said Max.

  When I turned to look at the piano, darned if Mrs. Fleming wasn't there in her accustomed place. She gave me a big smile, and I gave her one back. Things felt normal again. For a second or two. Then I had to disrupt the joy and gaiety going on in the town of Titipu by barging in on a love scene. Fortunately, in between walking Spike and performing my other duties, I'd been studying my lines, so I managed a pretty dramatic entrance, considering I'm only a little over five feet tall.

  Rehearsal went well after that. We'd blocked the entirety of act one by the end of the evening, all of us making notes on our librettos. Or is that libretti? Oh, who cares? Sam had roamed around backstage and, as we went through the end of act one for the last time, had cornered Gloria Lippincott in the front pew after her "Three Little Maids from School" song was over. I kept slipping peeks at them, because—darn it!—she was trying out her seductress routine on him! I could tell.

  But I didn't have time to dwell on Gloria's shenanigans. I had a part to sing. So I sang.

  At one point during the scene, Lawrence Allen, who played the role of Go-To, a noble lord of Titipu, stopped singing and glared into the pews. We all stopped and stared at him.

  "Mr. Allen?" said Max tentatively, as if he weren't sure what was going on.

  "Detective!" roared Lawrence. "If you need to speak with Mrs. Lippincott, perhaps you can wait until rehearsal is over. Your conversation is distracting the cast."

  I saw Sam's eyebrows lift over his dark eyes like larks ascending. Or maybe caterpillars ascending. They were dark and fuzzy, Sam's eyebrows. "I beg your pardon?" said he in his official detective's voice.

  "You're interrupting the rehearsal," said Lawrence, not roaring. In truth, he appeared a little embarrassed about having made a scene.

  "It's all right, Lawrence," said Gloria in her sultry tone. "We'll be still." She gazed at Sam with what looked awfully like significant adoration. "Won't we, Detective Rotondo?"

  Lawrence squeaked.

  Sam stood and gave her the same look he might have given a fly that had landed on his apple pie. "Yes. We're through here, although I'll probably need to speak with you again, Mrs. Lippincott."

  "Of course, Detective Rotondo," she purred.

  Sam drew back and peered at her as if he were looking at a specimen at a zoological garden somewhere.

  Take that, you villainess, thought I. I felt better for the remainder of the rehearsal, though. So did Lawrence Allen. I could tell. I aimed to find out why he objected so strenuously to Gloria flirting with Sam, however. Could he be the man she was supposedly involved with? I knew he was married to Sylvia, and that Sylvia didn't appear very happy. But evidently Gloria didn't bother with trivialities like that. Anyhow, Harold had already told me he was having an affair with somebody besides his wife.

  Shoot. Maybe I really was taking on Katisha's nastier characteristics.

  I sure hoped so. Being a good girl all the time was darned boring.

  Chapter 10

  Sam held the door to his Hudson open for me when we left the church. I could open my own car door, but I didn't argue. He was being polite.

  After he was settled behind the wheel and had started the engine, I said, "So, what were you and Gloria Lippincott being so cozy about?"

  He turned and squinted at me. "Huh?"

  "Lawrence Allen sure objected to your tete-a-tete with Mrs. Lippincott," I reminded him.

  "Yeah, I noticed that. What was he talking about? We weren't speaking very loudly."

  Oh, brother! He couldn't possibly be that dim, could he? "She was plying her feminine wiles on you, Sam Rotondo! That's why Lawrence hollered at you. At least I think that's why."

  "She was what?" Sam's eyes got squintier.

  Shoot. Maybe he was that dim. "I think the two of them are having an affair," I told him. "Gloria and Lawrence. He's married to Sylvia, but Harold said he's been carrying on with another woman for several months. Bet it's Gloria."

  "Yeah? I didn't know that."

  "Yes. According to Mrs. Bissel, she's also trying to get her claws into Dennis Bissel, but Dennis seems firmly attached to his wife, Patsy."

  "Where'd you learn all this?"

  "Harold, of course. Well, and Mrs. Bissel told me about Dennis."

  "Of course." Sam started motoring down the hill to our house, which was only a few blocks south of the church. "Well, you learned considerably more than I did tonight."

  "Really?" That made me happy.

  "Yeah. But you still don't know who killed her husband or why. Or do you?"

  "Not a clue, but I bet she hired someone to knock him off."

  "Of course you do." Sarcasm, thy name is Sam Rotondo.

  I shrugged. "She wanted to get rid of her husband. He wouldn't give her a divorce, although I don't know why, since Harold told me he was involved with someone else. She's evi
dently involved with anyone she can get her hands on. Maybe she found better pickings and decided she didn't want to wait until her husband agreed to divorce her. Maybe she wanted to get it over with. Get him over with."

  "Then why'd someone try to kill her?"

  "Did someone try to kill her?"

  "How the devil should I know? You're the one who told me that!"

  "Don't yell at me. It's not my fault the woman called Harold with her wild story, and Harold called me. Either one of them would have been better off calling the police."

  "Did you tell them that?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "Huh."

  "I did!"

  "We're here," said Sam, not bothering to argue with me any longer, I guess.

  "You drive me nuts, Sam Rotondo!"

  "Likewise, I'm sure."

  He didn't get the opportunity to open my door for me, because I opened it myself. I also slammed it again once I was on the sidewalk—Sam had parked in the street in front of our house. I didn't get the chance to storm up the walkway to the door without him, though, because he was too quick for me and took my arm. Hard. I stopped walking, turned, and glared up at him.

  "What?"

  "I just want you to be careful, Daisy. I know you like to stick your nose in—"

  "I don't either!"

  Sam trod over my words as if I hadn't spoken, raising his voice as he did so. "Stick your nose into every mystery that comes your way, but a man was murdered a day or two ago, and his widow might just have a target on her back, too. Keep as far away from the mess as you can. That means Mr. Allen and Mr. Bissel and Mrs. Lippincott. I don't know if what you told me is true, but if it is, there are a whole lot of entanglements going on, and neither you nor I know who's doing what to—or with—whom."

  Well... when he put it that way, I guess I couldn't object too much. "The only time I have anything to do with any of them is when we're rehearsing for The Mikado," I muttered, not wanting to yield the stage, but understanding his point.

  "See that it stays that way," said Sam.

  It was then I remembered Mrs. Lippincott had asked me to conduct a séance to see if I could find out who'd killed her husband. Bother. As Sam began walking to the front porch, I held him back.

  "Um... Sam?"

  He stopped and glared down at me some more. "What?"

  I licked my lips and bit the bullet. "Mrs. Lippincott asked me to conduct a séance and try in that way to find out who killed her husband."

  "Good God."

  "Well?"

  He shrugged. "Well, why the hell not? I don't suppose you can get into too much trouble if you conduct a séance, as long as Harold and maybe one of those old ladies you're always spewing nonsense to attend it, too."

  "Thanks heaps. You have such a way with words, Sam."

  "You don't believe in what you do any more than I do."

  "That's true, but you don't have to be quite so brutal about it."

  He smiled suddenly. It wasn't a friendly smile. "In fact, I'll sit in on the séance, too. That way I can keep an eye on everyone."

  "You won't be able to see anyone, much less keep an eye on anyone. The room's dark."

  "I have my ways."

  "Oh, brother."

  We continued up to the porch to the racket from an ecstatic Spike, who greeted us both as if he'd expected never to see either one of us again in this lifetime. Ma and Pa smiled at us as we entered the house.

  The telephone began ringing. Ma, Pa, Sam and I all looked at each other. Spike didn't care. He merely kept greeting us.

  "Good heavens, who could be calling at this time of night?" asked Ma.

  "I don't know, but I expect it's for me," I said, and headed to the kitchen, where I picked up the receiver and said, "Gumm-Majesty residence, Mrs.—"

  That's as far as I got, because Harold Kincaid hollered in my ear, "Daisy! Someone tried to drop a boulder on Gloria Lippincott right outside the church after rehearsal!"

  My mouth opened, and nothing came out. Someone had tried to do what to Gloria Lippincott? "Um... Harold..."

  "It's the truth! Is Sam there with you? Send him back. Gloria's all shaken up. God, Daisy, it was awful. That rock missed her by inches, and it was huge! It made a dent in the lawn when it landed."

  "You're serious?"

  "Dead serious. Please excuse the expression."

  "I'll send Sam back."

  "You come, too. Gloria wants you."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know, but she said she wants you."

  "Sam's going to love that."

  "I'm sure. But please come."

  "I will." Even if I had to drive myself up there in the Chevrolet.

  "Thanks." Harold ended the call.

  I heard a bunch of clicks on the wire before I hung the receiver in the cradle, so I know our party-line neighbors had also heard the grim news. Oh, well. People like Harold—rich people, I mean—didn't have to suffer with party-line snoops. As soon as I turned away from the 'phone, I saw Ma, Pa, and Sam all staring at me. I heaved a sigh.

  "Someone just tried to kill Gloria Lippincott again."

  "What!" my mother cried.

  "Someone did what?" said Pa.

  Sam said, "Crap," and turned to go out to his automobile.

  "Wait up, Sam," I hollered after him, hurrying to catch him and nearly tripping over Spike. "Gloria said she wants me there."

  Sam stopped walking so suddenly, Spike bumped into his heel. He woofed. Spike, not Sam. Sam said, "Sorry, Spike." That was nice of him, although it was no more than Spike deserved. Sam turned to glare at me.

  "It's not my fault!" I cried, peeved by his expression. "That was Harold on the wire. He said a huge boulder fell and nearly squashed Gloria flat. I guess she's upset, and she wants me there."

  "What about her boyfriend? That Allen guy?"

  "I don't know if he is her boyfriend! Look, if you don't want to drive me up there, I'll drive myself." I heeled around and started to depart the house via the side entrance. Our lovely, almost-new Chevrolet sat out there, waiting for me just down the porch steps.

  "Wait!" Sam. "I'll take you. Hurry up."

  I'd have rolled my eyes, but it wouldn't have been worth it.

  "Be careful, sweetie," said Pa.

  "Nobody's after me," I said, hoping to reassure him.

  "Give them time," snarled Sam.

  That wasn't very nice of him, but it's no more than I'd grown to expect. I said nothing, but trailed after him to the Hudson, where he opened the passenger-side door for me. I climbed in, wishing I could just go to bed. I was sick of Gloria Lippincott and her problems.

  Sam turned into our driveway, backed out, and headed north on Marengo.

  "When did this accident happen?"

  "I don't know if it was an accident," I told him. "Harold said someone tried to throw a boulder on her. That sounds more like intent to commit murder than accident."

  "Where'd this boulder come from? It's not like we're in the foothills or anything."

  "I don't know. Harold was in a hurry. He just told me the bare facts." I thought about that call and frowned. "I should have told him to call the police."

  "He did call the police," said Sam, not happy about it.

  "Well, yes, I know that, but he should have called the station."

  "Yeah, but what else is new?"

  He had a point. People did seem inclined to burden me with their police problems rather than telephone the police department. I didn't bother to tell him that wasn't my fault, because we'd been over this ground before. Many, many times.

  A crowd was gathered on Marengo Avenue near the side entrance of the First Methodist-Episcopal Church on the corner of Colorado and Marengo. Boy, you didn't see that very often in Pasadena, where they pretty much rolled up the streets after dark.

  "Christ," said Sam irreverently.

  "You're at the right place," said I, being a prig.

  He pulled the Hudson to a stop at the edge of the crowd, which ha
d gathered more on Marengo than Colorado, although the church sat on the corner. Harold emerged from the group of people and hurried over to my side of Sam's machine. "Daisy! Thank God you both came. Gloria's in a state."

  "There sure are a lot of people here. Where'd they all come from?"

  "The church. We were leaving rehearsal. You know that." Harold sounded grumpy.

  Sam emerged from his side of the Hudson and scowled at Harold and me. "Can you tell me exactly what happened, Kincaid?"

  For the record, we citizens of Pasadena were fortunate in that electrical street lighting had been installed several years earlier, so we could at least see each other after dark.

  Harold passed a hand across his forehead. "I don't honestly know. A bunch of us, including Gloria and Lawrence and Sylvia and a few others, were walking to the street, and suddenly we heard a noise, I looked up, and I saw a huge stone falling right from the church roof."

  Sam and I both looked up at the church roof. It was tall and pointy.

  "How the heck did somebody toss a rock from up there?" I asked in honest curiosity.

  "It wasn't a rock. It was a boulder, and I don't know."

  "All right," said Sam, interrupting us in exasperation. "Where precisely did this happen. And what precisely did happen?"

  "Come over here," said Harold, and he led the way.

  Chapter 11

  When we got to where the intended victim—at least, I suppose she was an intended victim—sat on a stone bench with Lawrence Allen's arms encircling her, I could see where someone might have stood in order to drop the stone. The door leading from the side of the sanctuary sat under a flat spot in the otherwise pointy roof. One of its points was the church's steeple, but the rest of it was plenty pointy, too. However, in that one flat spot, I could envision where someone might have stood or lain and shoved a boulder on top of a group of people.

  "How'd whoever did it know the stone would hit Gloria?" I asked, thinking the question to be pertinent.