Dark Spirits (A Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery, Book 7)

by Alice Duncan

  Dark Spirits

  A Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery

  Book Seven

  by

  Alice Duncan

  Published by ePublishing Works!

  www.epublishingworks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61417-630-5

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  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2014 by Alice Duncan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Cover and eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Dedication

  For Mimi Riser (who is forever helping me), Lynne Welch, Sue Krekeler, Andie Paysinger, and my very old friend, Jim Hull, in thanks for their input. Without their help, I couldn't have written the blasted book. Also, I truly appreciate the help given me by Rosalie Jaquez, reference librarian at the Pasadena Public Library. Librarians are my heroes, and Rosalie went way above and beyond.

  By the way, I had a very good friend named Marshall Armistead, with whom I graduated from John Muir High School donkeys' years ago. I used his name in this book because he was a wonderful person, a great photographer, and he died far too young.

  Chapter 1

  If I'd read the Pasadena Star News that morning at the breakfast table, as was my habit, Sam Rotondo wouldn't have known how disturbed I was by the news it carried that day. As it was, he was right there in the living room when I finally got a chance to pick up the newspaper.

  "What's wrong?" he said, frowning at me. Sam frowned at me a lot. He'd been my late husband's best friend. Until recently, I'd considered him my worst enemy, but now I wasn't sure what I thought of him.

  I shook the newspaper at him. "What's this about some of your cohorts in the police department being suspended for insubordination because they belong to the Ku Klux Klan? Why would anyone with half a brain join that brutal group?"

  Sam's frown deepened, which didn't surprise me any. Sam was a detective with the Pasadena Police Department, and I guess he didn't like my description of some of his officers. "They aren't my cohorts. And at least the City of Pasadena has an ordinance against any of its employees belonging to the KKK."

  My father, with whom Sam had been playing a peaceful game of gin rummy, as the two men did several evenings every week, stared at his cards. Guess he didn't want to get involved in the discussion.

  I huffed, still upset and indignant. "But really, Sam. How can officers sworn to uphold the law belong to an organization that's dedicated to eliminating people who aren't precisely like they are? And violently, too! Why, I read the other day that the governor of Oklahoma actually had to declare martial law because of violent attacks by members of the Klan. And I don't blame him. The Klan burned down an entire Negro section of Tulsa a couple of years ago!"

  "The Klan isn't Governor Walton's only problem," grumbled Sam, trying to squirm out of a conversation he didn't want to have.

  "I don't care what his problems are. What I want to know is why people here in Pasadena, California, and police officers at that, join such associations as the Ku Klux Klan. Why, did you know that Jackson's brother and his family actually had to move to Pasadena from Oklahoma to escape the Klan?"

  Sam's nose wrinkled. "Who's Jackson?"

  I slapped the newspaper onto my lap and glared at Sam who, naturally, was still frowning. "Who's Jackson? How long have you known Mrs. Pinkerton anyhow, Sam Rotondo?"

  My mother said, "Daisy," in the voice she uses at me when she thinks I'm being rude. However, being rude to Sam Rotondo was sort of like being rude to a granite statue, so I didn't back away from this conversation. I did modify my voice slightly.

  "What does Mrs. Pinkerton have to do with anything?" asked Sam, looking genuinely puzzled for a second before he resumed scowling.

  Although it was generally Sam who rolled his eyes at me, I turned the tables on him and rolled mine at him. Which brings up another issue I'll go in to later, actually.

  "Jackson, Sam, is Mrs. Pinkerton's gatekeeper and has been for as long as I've been working for the stupid woman."

  My mother said, "Daisy" again, drat her.

  I heaved a sigh. "I'm sorry, Ma, but she really is kind of dim."

  "That's true, Mrs. Gumm," said Sam in defense of my opinion of Mrs. Pinkerton if not his brothers at the police department. "But that doesn't have anything to do with anything. I've never been formally introduced to Jackson, and I'm sorry about his family's troubles, but they don't have anything to do with me, and neither do the policemen who joined the Klan. And who have been suspended, don't forget. I don't like the KKK either, if that's any comfort to you."

  Now he was being sarcastic. Fine. "Have there been any lynchings in Pasadena?" I wanted to know.

  "Daisy!" My mother again. Even my father looked up from his hand of cards.

  "No! No, there haven't been any lynchings in Pasadena. And there aren't going to be. The officers who joined the Klan were suspended, and if they don't quit the Klan, their jobs are history."

  I sniffed. "Well, I'm glad to know that. But Jackson's brother has had a good deal of trouble since he moved here from Tulsa. Jackson thinks the Klan's after him. He thinks Klan members followed him all the way from Oklahoma. I thought he must be exaggerating, but after reading this article"—I waved the newspaper at him again—"I'm not so sure. Especially after what happened the other day."

  Sam's frown, which had been aimed specifically at me, now took on a more universal aspect. "What do you mean, he's been having trouble? What kind of trouble? What happened the other day?"

  "People following him and his children. Someone tried to run his children down last week—Jackson's brother's children, not Jackson's. They burned a cross on Jackson's lawn the other night. That sounds like the Klan to me, and it worries me that some of the people who are supposed to protect Pasadena's citizens might be doing the dirty work themselves."

  "They burned a cross?" My father had evidently lost interest in the gin rummy game. He laid his cards, face-down, on the table and stared at me with dismay. Made sense to me.

  "Goodness gracious!" said my mother. It was about the most forceful thing she ever said.

  "Yes. They burned a cross. And if that's not the most evil, blasphemous thing to do, I don't know what is, unless they actually lynched someone. Which they've done in other parts of the country."

  Sam's eyebrows dipped so steeply they reminded me of fuzzy caterpillars. "I never heard about any cross-burnings. When did this happen? Where? Didn't Jackson or his family report it?"

  "It happened the night before last. Monday night. I don't know if Jackson or anyone in his family called the police. You should be able t
o check your records. And Jackson lives on Mentone. Anyway, what with half the Pasadena Police Department in league with the Klan, why should they report it? To whom?"

  "It's not half the force," Sam said, growling slightly.

  I sniffed. "Perhaps, but I can understand Jackson's reluctance to report harassment if all he can expect from the police department is more of the same, if not worse."

  "Hmm. Maybe I ought to check into this."

  "Would you?" Instantly my irritation with Sam evaporated. "That would be nice of you, Sam. I know you're a detective and this probably doesn't fall into your line of work, but it's not fair of the Pasadena Police Department to ignore a segment of Pasadena's population. We all live here, after all."

  "You don't know we are ignoring them," he said giving me my own personal frown once more. "For all you know, the crime was investigated and the perpetrators arrested."

  I tilted my head, not believing a word he said. "Well, it would still be nice of you to check into the matter."

  "I will."

  "Fine. Thank you."

  "You're welcome."

  Sam and my father resumed their game. My mother went back to reading the book I'd obtained for her from the Pasadena Public Library—The Girl from Montana, by Grace Livingston Hill, in case you wondered—and I lifted the newspaper again. I read the article once more and then stared at the print until the words began to waver and slide around before my eyes.

  Darn it! Jackson's problems were real, whether Sam thought so or not, and the mere thought of policemen, the very people who were supposed to uphold the law and arrest the breakers thereof, belonging to such an organization as the vile and merciless Ku Klux Klan worried me a whole lot. And here in Pasadena, of all places! My own fair city! I'd always thought we Pasadenans were slightly more civilized than people in other parts of the country. Heck, we'd had telephone service and electrical lighting and paved streets since before the turn of the century, and the city was full of rich people. Why, we had more automobiles than horses and buggies in Pasadena, for Pete's sake.

  Mind you, my family and I weren't rich. But we worked for rich people. At least my aunt and I did. My dad used to until he had a heart attack a few years before. Until then, he'd been a chauffeur to rich people. Ma worked as chief bookkeeper for the Hotel Marengo, which, in its way, catered to folks who were at least rich enough to travel. Aunt Vi worked for Mrs. Pinkerton, who, as you've probably guessed by now, is wildly wealthy. Nobody but rich people can afford to have huge iron fences around their property and gate-guarders like Jackson to keep the riffraff out.

  Now I expect I'd better tell you why the notion of turning tables brought something else to my mind. You see, since my tenth year, when Aunt Vi was given an old Ouija board by Mrs. Pinkerton, who was then Mrs. Kincaid but that doesn't matter, I've been a practicing spiritualist medium. It started out as kind of a joke I played on my relations at Christmas time, but it gradually turned into a full-time profession. Via spiritualism, and particularly my own special spirit control, a thousand-year-dead Scottish guy named Rolly whom I made up when I was ten, I've been making a darned good living for my family and me for years now.

  My skills as a spiritualist came in extremely handy when my husband, Billy Majesty, whom I'd loved since my earliest years, went off to war, got shot and gassed in France, and came home disabled and in a wheelchair so he couldn't earn a living for us. His army pension was a veritable pittance. Therefore, I earned a living for the both of us, even though Billy didn't like it. Five years after the Great War's end, he finally died. He did so on purpose, but everyone who knew him, including our family doctor, Dr. Benjamin, understood that Billy was a casualty of that wretched war.

  Which comes to the reason I hadn't been able to read the Pasadena Star News at the breakfast table that morning. I'd just eaten the delicious meal Vi had cooked for us, washed the dishes, put the last one up, and was about to sit at the table and read the paper before I took Billy's darling doggy, the black-and-tan dachshund Spike, for a walk, when the telephone rang.

  Whenever the telephone rings in the morning, the whole family knows it's for me. And it's always Mrs. Pinkerton, who's always in a dither, and she always wants me to drop whatever I'm doing and go summon Rolly, use the Ouija board, or read tarot cards for her. Therefore, when I was supposed to be reading the paper and/or walking Spike, I was at Mrs. Pinkerton's house, trying to calm her down because she'd had a disturbed night. More about that later.

  By the way, Billy had been dead for about a year and a half when my conversation with Sam took place. My worries about Jackson and his family had plagued me for not quite that long.

  You see, Jackson and I were old friends. Ever since I made my first appearance as a spiritualist for Mrs. Pinkerton, he'd been teaching me about spiritualism where he came from, which was New Orleans, Louisiana, with roots somewhere in the Caribbean. Well, I suppose technically his ancestors came from somewhere in Africa, but they were captured and brought to the Caribbean and then moved to Louisiana. Boy, we white folks have a lot to answer for, don't we? Well, never mind about that.

  Talk about fascinating! Jackson was a spectacular source for a spiritualist medium. Not that I could use too many of his teachings in my own work, because folks in Pasadena didn't want any truck with voodoo and haints and tiny dolls and so forth. What they wanted me to do for them was chat with their dead relatives. So I did.

  Billy used to revile my line of work. He even told me once or twice that what I did was wicked, but I chalked up his lousy attitude to his state of health, which was pitiful.

  After Billy died, I went into a steep decline. In fact, I still didn't feel as well, emotionally, as I had before Billy's death, but at least I no longer looked like a skeleton—although, come to think of it, that might have been appropriate, given my line of work. However, it took me a long time to resume my spiritualist job. I couldn't summon up the energy to deal with the idiots who believed the malarkey I fed them. I know, I know. I shouldn't disparage those who pay me for my services and, thereby, keep food on the table, but that's how I felt for a long time after Billy's suicide.

  Eventually I got back to working again, and I was still making money hand over fist by fooling people. The people who paid me wanted to be fooled, though, so I didn't consider my line of work sinful. In fact, I honestly and truly attempted to help people by assuring them their late loved ones were happy on the Other Side (which, I presume, is heaven) and they wanted their still-living associates to be happy in this world until called to the next by God Himself. I absolutely did not want anyone to commit suicide on my watch.

  Wish I could believe that rubbish myself, but oh, well.

  By the way, the food I put on our table was cooked for us by my own darling Aunt Vi, my father's brother's widow, who is possibly the best cook in the world. In fact, if Vi were a man, she'd be called a chef and make lots more money than she does. But we were happy to have her cook for us. In fact, if either Ma or I had been called upon to perform the duty, the entire family would no doubt have starved to death or been poisoned long since. Neither Ma nor I could cook anything more complicated than toast. And I even burned that most of the time. Vi says it's because I don't pay attention to what I'm doing when I cook, and that's why I'm so bad at it. I say that we're each born with certain gifts. I was born with a gift for spiritualism and a gift for sewing, and I do both of those things to perfection. God gave Vi the gift of cooking, and she does it to perfection.

  Anyhow, none of that matters. I just wanted to give you some background and to tell you why I was concerned about Jackson and his family, and why I was outraged that so beastly an organization as the Ku Klux Klan had managed to gain a foothold in my hometown, Pasadena, California.

  When I first saw D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, I'd thought it was a swell picture. After talking to Jackson during the past couple of months, I now think Griffith did the world a disservice when he presented Klan members as fine, upstanding citizens.

&n
bsp; Very well, perhaps the Klan had served, or had intended to serve, a noble purpose when it was first started. I'm sure those southerners whose way of life was ruined after the Civil War felt pretty bad about the carpetbaggers and scalawags who moved in and took over their land. I don't agree with them, perhaps because my ancestors are from New England, and my side won.

  Besides that, the only way those rich southern white folks could sustain the way of life they so loved was if they continued the practice of slavery. Yes, I know there's no mention in the Bible that slavery is an evil institution. However, I also know that in ancient Rome, at least slaves could earn their freedom. And yes, I also know the old lady in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn freed her slave, Jim, but he sure didn't have an easy time convincing anyone else he was a freed man. It probably boiled down to color. In Rome, I suspect slaves looked like Romans. In Missouri in the 1840s, freed slaves didn't look like their white former owners.

  Anyhow, if there ever had been a logical reason for the Klan to exist, it seemed to me their goals had been perverted beyond all reason. Anyone who'd terrorize someone's children, try to run down a little old man or burn a cross on somebody's front lawn, while hiding behind a white sheet and a stupid dunce-cap thing, was bad. Not misguided. Not a little silly. Not merely misbehaving.

  Bad.

  And now they'd begun sending Mrs. Pinkerton threatening letters, telling her that if she didn't fire Jackson—who, by the way, had worked for her family for years longer than I'd worked for her—she'd face serious consequences. Which was why I'd had to go to her house when I should have been reading the newspaper that morning.

  And to think that members of the Pasadena Police Department actually belonged to that evil organization made me sick. I tell you, I was worried to death.