by Alice Duncan
I gathered she no longer wanted me to visit her and hold her hand through the police investigation of her symptoms. "It wasn't meant to be slanderous. I only reported what was told to me."
"Well, for your information, whoever told you that was misinformed."
"Or she didn't see what she said she saw?"
"What?"
"I didn't see what the person who told me about it saw, so this is second-hand information." Did that sentence even make sense? Oh, who cares?
"It's also incorrect. Now what am I supposed to do about being so damned sick?"
"Your symptoms, you mean?"
"Yes! What else do you suppose I'm talking about?"
"I already told you what to do. If you're sick, call a doctor. If you suspect you're being poisoned or something like that, call the police and report your suspicions to them. I'm only a spiritualist-medium. I can't do police work, and I can't cure the ill. However, I can set up a séance for you, if you still want to do that."
"What?" she asked again, not screaming this time. "Oh. Oh, yes, the séance. Yes, yes. I want to do that."
"Very well. Let me look at my calendar." I already knew my schedule, but I figured it was best to let people think I was going out of my way for them. It made them want me more. Maybe. Therefore I let the receiver dangle for a moment or two so she could think I was trying to make room for her séance in my incredibly crowded schedule—I'm joking. When I put the receiver to my ear again, it sounded as if Gloria were talking to someone. A man, if I were to judge by the background grumbles. "Mrs. Lippincott?" I said.
"Thanks. But I'll get back to you later about that. Right now, I guess I'd better—" She stopped speaking so suddenly, I thought we'd been disconnected.
I said tentatively, "Mrs. Lippincott?"
She sounded scared to death when she whispered, "I can't talk right now."
And I guess she hung up on me. Well!
Chapter 19
I hadn't even made it out of the kitchen when the telephone rang again. I paused and listened and, sure enough, it was our ring. With a sigh, I walked back to the telephone and plucked the receiver from the cradle.
"Gumm-Majesty residence. Mrs. Majesty speaking."
"Mrs. Majesty?" a nasal New-York voice said.
"Mrs. Barrow?" I asked, astonished. The very nosiest of our party-line neighbors, Mrs. Barrow was the last person on the face of the earth from whom I'd expect to receive a telephone call.
"Yes, this is Mrs. Barrow," she said, not in her usual scolding tone.
At a loss to account for this call from the party-line neighbor who complained the most about my use of the telephone, I stammered slightly. "Um... May I help you?"
"No. But I might be able to help you. That lady who just called you?"
She'd been listening, the meddlesome old bat! Ah, well. My fault for not shooing her off the line before I conversed with Gloria. "Mrs. Lippincott. Yes?"
"Well, I think something's wrong with her."
I already knew there was something wrong with Gloria Lippincott. She was man-stealing seductress and, I believed, as near as she could come to being a murderess. However, I sensed that's not why Mrs. Barrow had telephoned.
"You do?"
"Yeah. Right before she said to you that she couldn't talk right now? You remember that?"
"Yes. I remember." I didn't holler at her for remaining on the line and listening in on other people's telephone calls, for which instance of self-control I believe I should be applauded.
"Well, right before then, I heard a door open on her end of the wire, and a guy, he says, 'Who're you talking to?' Real nasty-like, if you know what I mean. And then she says, 'Oh, it's just...' Well, I can't remember what name she said, but it wasn't yours."
"Oh. How odd."
"Yeah, I thought so, too. But she sounded scared. And the guy, he sounded mean."
Interesting. Was Gloria Lippincott's partner in crime turning against her? Who could it be? "Did you hear any names?"
"Only the one I don't remember that she called you, but it wasn't your name."
"So you didn't hear Mrs. Lippincott and the man call each other by name?"
"No, but I thought you might could do something. If she's that scared of the guy, maybe he's gonna do something bad to her."
"Yes. Maybe so. Thank you, Mrs. Barrow. Please let me know if you remember anything else."
"Yeah. Will do."
And she hung up on me, too. I didn't mind this time.
But what should I do with this sketchy bit of information relayed to me by our intrusive party-line neighbor? Call Sam? I didn't have much to tell him.
On the other hand, Gloria had sounded frightened. Even Mrs. Barrow thought so. And she'd also described the same symptoms Connie had relayed to me only the day before yesterday. Was someone poisoning the both of them? And Mrs. Barrow had heard a man speak in a mean manner to Gloria, and Gloria had sounded afraid, even to me, who believed her to be a villainess. It was possible, I supposed, that if Sam or some other police person drove immediately to her home, he or they might catch whoever was threatening Gloria. If she were being threatened.
Bother! I didn't know what to do.
Therefore, feeling as though I were taking my life in my hands, I got the Pasadena telephone directory and looked up Sam's home number. He was probably napping at the moment—I didn't buy the paperwork excuse for a minute—but Gloria's call and Mrs. Barrow's information might be important.
Picking up the receiver for the third time in a half-hour, I pressed the cradle several times. A voice I remembered well answered.
"Medora? This is Daisy." Medora Cox and I had gone to school together.
"Hey, Daisy. What can I do you for?"
"You can connect me to Colorado five-two-five-six, if you don't mind."
"Sure thing."
Clicking sounds commenced, and after a few seconds, I heard a telephone ring on the other end of the wire. It rang for so long, I despaired of Sam being home. Maybe he'd been called out on another case. Maybe he was in the bath. Maybe—
"Rotondo," he growled.
"Sam! I'm so glad you're there." Very well, I'm not usually so enthusiastic when I telephone the grouchy Gus.
"Daisy?"
"Yes."
"What the devil do you want?"
Oh, boy. The man was such a cheerful specimen. "I don't want anything. But Gloria Lippincott just called me, and she claims she sick with the same symptoms as Connie Van der Linden, and—"
"What the hell am I supposed to do about it?" he snarled.
"Will you just listen for a minute?" I exclaimed, irked.
"Go on."
"Well, Gloria sounded shaky when she first called, and she hemmed and hawed and wouldn't get to the point, until at last she said she wanted me to schedule a séance so she could find out who killed her husband because she thought whoever it was is now trying to kill her, but I didn't believe that for a second."
"Go on," Sam said again, even more gruffly.
"I'm telling you! She blathered on about her symptoms, which are just like Connie's, and I said she should go to the doctor, and she said she thinks she knows what's wrong, and that somebody's doing something to harm her. So then I said she should call the police, and she hemmed and hawed some more. Then I offered to schedule a séance for her and let the receiver dangle for a minute so she'd think I was so busy that I had to look at a calendar. Then, when I got back on the wire, she sounded strange. Sort of like she wasn't talking to me anymore, but to someone else. Then she said she couldn't talk, and hung up. I guess. I didn't hear the receiver plop into the cradle."
"So what the hell—"
"Stop swearing at me! I'm not through! After I hung up, Mrs. Barrow, our snoopy party-line neighbor 'phoned me. She said that while my receiver was hanging there, some guy entered Gloria's house, and he sounded menacing."
"Menacing?"
I could almost hear Sam rolling his eyes.
"That's what Mrs. Ba
rrow said. And Gloria seemed awfully scared when she called, and especially when she hung up. If she hung up."
"What do you mean, if she hung up?"
"Well, maybe someone killed her and let the receiver dangle."
I heard Sam suck in a truckload of air. "If she didn't hang up, that other lady wouldn't have been able to get through to you."
"Oh. I hadn't thought of that."
"Surprise, surprise."
"Don't be unpleasant, Sam Rotondo. What if someone is at Gloria's house right now, trying to murder her?"
"I thought she was the one doing the murdering."
I huffed. "I thought so, too, but now she claims to be sick. Maybe whoever's poisoning Connie is poisoning her, too."
"Back to poison again, are you?"
"Oh, bother you, Sam Rotondo! Gloria asked me to go to her house, and I'm going to do it right this minute! If you don't want to know what's going on, I do!"
"Oh, no you don't!"
"Oh, yes I will!"
"Damnation, Daisy Majesty, stay right where you are. I'll pick you up, and we'll both drive to the Lippincott place."
How sweet! I'd never in a million years tell him so. With barely a sniff, I said, "Thank you, Sam. That's kind of you."
"Huh."
And, for the third time that day, someone hung up on me. This time I didn't mind even more than I didn't mind when Mrs. Barrow hung up on me. Bless Sam's crabby little heart, he was going to take me to Gloria's! It crossed my mind to wonder if he knew where she lived, but then I recalled he'd questioned the woman before with regard to the police investigation of her husband's death, so he must know her address.
"What's going on out here?" My mother appeared in the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. Guess she'd taken a nap after that gigantic meal Vi had fed us.
"Sam's going to pick me up in a minute or two," I told her. "We're going to be visiting one of the Mikado cast members."
"Didn't I hear the telephone ring a couple of times?"
"Yes. The first time it was Gloria Lippincott calling, and the second time it was Mrs. Barrow."
Ma stared at me. "Mrs. Barrow? Did she call to yell at you or something?"
I grinned as I headed to my bedroom to get my hat, gloves and coat. "Oddly enough, no. She called because she'd listened in on my conversation with Mrs. Lippincott—"
"The nosy old thing!" cried my mother, bless her.
"Yes, she is. But she might have overheard something important, and she telephoned to tell me about it. That was nice of her."
"If you say so," Ma said. She headed toward the refrigerator, so I guess her nap had helped her digest that mammoth meal. But she only reached for the milk and poured herself a glass. "Why is Sam taking you to that woman's house?"
Hmm. How should I explain this excursion to my mother without worrying her? "Mrs. Barrow said she thought she heard someone threatening Gloria." That wasn't much of a fib. "And I called Sam to tell him about it, and he said he'd pick me up, and we could go over to Mrs. Lippincott's house together. She asked me to visit her, but I didn't want to go alone. I'm not sure I trust her."
Shaking her head, Ma said, "I don't know about those theater people, Daisy. I've always heard they're a rum lot. Maybe the rumors are true."
"Maybe. But Harold works in the pictures, and he's a great guy."
"But he's not an actor."
"He is in The Mikado. He's got a huge role."
"But he's not an actor by trade. I think most of them—the actors, I mean—are crazy. Well, they must be if they want to parade themselves all over the screen for the whole world to see. And you're forever reading about them killing themselves with drugs and alcohol and things like that. And then there's' that awful Fatty Arbuckle who killed that woman."
"He was found not guilty," I said for the heck of it. "In fact, in three trials, two voted primarily for acquittal, and the last one actually wrote him an apology."
"Hmph. He was guilty of lewd behavior at the very least. And that poor murdered William Desmond Taylor. You don't hear about people in our circle getting murdered. It's always those picture people. Most unsavory." Ma frowned.
Interesting perspective, and one I'd heard before. Or at least read about. "You may well be right. Connie and Max Van der Linden seem nice, but Gloria Lippincott is another kettle of fish entirely. A kind of stinky one."
"Daisy!"
"You started it."
"Don't be childish," advised my mother.
"You're right. Sorry, Ma."
Ma said no more, but drank her milk, rinsed out her glass, and retired to the living room. After I'd put on my coat, hat and gloves, I walked to the living room, too, and saw she was all snug on the sofa, Spike reclining beside her, and she was reading The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Mr. G. K. Chesterton. I still hadn't figured out why so many British authors only used their initials. Not that it matters.
Because I didn't want to upset Spike by exciting him with Sam's arrival and then making him miserable because of Sam's departure, I decided to wait for Sam on the front porch. It was cold out there. I pulled my cloche down to cover my ears, crossed my arms over my chest, and stamped back and forth on the front porch in order to keep from freezing to the spot. I guess people get soft from living in California. I expect my Eastern relations would scoff at me for being a sissy as they shoveled snow off their sidewalks. Oh, well. It all boils down to what one is accustomed to when it comes to weather.
Sam didn't keep me waiting long. I saw his headlamps as he drove up Marengo Avenue, and I walked out to the street so he wouldn't have to park or anything. He parked anyway, and opened my door for me.
I said, "Thanks, Sam."
He said, "Huh."
"Do you know Gloria's address?"
"Yes."
"I hope she's all right."
"I bet you do."
"I do," I said, stung, although not a whole lot.
"Thought you hated the woman."
"I don't hate anybody. I don't much like her, but I don't want anyone to murder her, either."
"Right."
Very well. So much for conversation with the granite slab that was Detective Sam Rotondo when he was being difficult.
Gloria Lippincott's lavish California Boulevard home wasn't awfully far away from our more modest abode on Marengo Avenue. We passed groves and groves of orange trees on our way south to California, but since it was the beginning of autumn, no sweet-smelling orange-blossom scent kissed our nostrils. In truth, it was dark as pitch out there, and I couldn't see anything beyond the strip of road Sam's head lamps illuminated. It was kind of eerie.
After several silent minutes, Sam said, "Here it is. Eight forty-eight East California Boulevard." I guess he squinted into the darkness because he said, "Big place."
"All the houses down here are big."
"Yeah."
He pulled to a stop in front of a dense hedge of something or other. Couldn't tell what it was in the dark. "Don't park so close that I can't open my door," I told Sam.
"I didn't. You can get out."
"All right."
"Wait until I get my flashlight, so you don't fall and break your neck."
How kind and considerate of him. But he was in copper mode, so I guess he didn't feel particularly sentimental about being out with me after dark. This was especially true since I'd more or less forced him to take this trip with me.
By the light of Sam's big, policemanly flashlight, I discovered he was right about not being too close to the hedge. I opened my own door, and, thanks to Sam's light, recognized the hedge as a bunch of gardenia bushes. "Boy, I bet these smell swell during the summer months." We had a couple of gardenia bushes at home, but there must have been twenty or thirty of them in the Lippincotts' hedge.
"Yeah. You'll have to visit during the summer since you're such pals with Mrs. Lippincott."
"Why are you being so hateful tonight, Sam Rotondo?"
"No reason. I love being interrupted in the middle of doing paperwork
in order to go on nutty errands with you."
"You didn't have to come. I said I'd come by myself," I reminded him.
"Right. Sure as anything, if you did that, something would be wrong here, and I'd have to come rescue you."
"I don't need rescuing!"
However, I truly was grateful that I hadn't made this trip by myself. Except for Sam's flashlight, there wasn't a single other light around at first. Once we found the drive, I could see that light emanated from the stately home, which sat a hundred yards or so from the street. "Hmm. She must still be awake, anyhow," I murmured.
"It's only around seven or seven-thirty," said Sam.
"Seems later than that."
"Because of the time change."
"I guess."
Sam took my arm, I guess so I wouldn't trip and fall over my own feet, since nothing else seemed to be in the way, and we walked up the drive together. About seventy-five yards of not much of anything but lawn and cement driveway, I saw a long white porch to the right of us. Lights blazed all over the place, and the door to the mansion stood slightly ajar. I squinted to make sure of that. I was definitely ajar.
"That doesn't seem right," I said.
"What doesn't seem right?"
"The door being left open like that."
"Well, let's go and see if the lady's been poisoned to death."
"Sam Rotondo—"
I didn't get any father into my lecture than that, because as soon as Sam pushed the already-slightly-open door a little bit more open, we saw a woman lying on the floor.
Chapter 20
"Oh, my Lord!" I cried from the doorway, my hands at my frozen cheeks. "Is she dead?"
"I don't know. Stay there," Sam ordered.
I didn't stay there. I followed him to the figure on the floor. Gloria Lippincott. I could tell it was she by the white-blond waves of hair, although she was lying on her side facing away from us.
Sam leaned over Gloria, and felt for a pulse in her neck.
"Is she dead?" I asked again.
"No. She's alive, but her pulse feels weak."
"Does she have any injuries that you can see?"
