by Alice Duncan
Nuts. I couldn't figure it out all by myself. I'd just wait for further information, which was sure to come soon.
I spent the remainder of that day cleaning house and reading. Spike and I napped for an hour or so late in the afternoon, then I got up to set the dinner table when Vi got home and began preparing dinner.
Sam, who always arrived on time for one of Vi's meals, knocked on the door at precisely six o'clock. Spike and I greeted him and, before he knelt to say good evening to Spike, Sam handed me a bunch of store-bought chrysanthemums. He didn't wait for me to thank him before petting Spike, which was typical.
"Thank you, Sam. These are beautiful. I'll put them in a vase."
"You're welcome." He stood, much to Spike's disapproval. "They don't smell very good."
"They're chrysanthemums, Sam. Chrysanthemums smell like chrysanthemums, not roses or gardenias."
"Huh."
Also typical of Sam.
"Well, come along. I'll find a vase, and you can talk to Pa while Aunt Vi and I get dinner on the table."
"I couldn't remember what they were called," Sam said at my back.
I stopped my trek to the kitchen and turned to face him. "You couldn't?"
"Naw. But the flower shop was full of 'em, so I just asked for a bunch of them. Mixed colors, because you said you liked the different colors."
Sam had bought flowers he couldn't remember the name of because I'd mentioned I liked the various colors. That was... well, it was downright sweet of him. I told him so. "Thank you, Sam. That was very sweet of you."
I had the satisfaction of seeing his olive complexion take on a magenta hue. I swear, I could argue with the man all day and never raise a blush, but if I told him he was sweet, he turned to goo. Satisfied with the results of my words, I finished walking to the kitchen and listened to Ma and Aunt Vi ooh and aah about the pretty bouquet. I filled a vase with water, added the flowers, put the flowers on the dining room table and finished helping Vi serve dinner.
Dinner. I stared at a big pot of cornmeal mush, trying to hide my astonishment. I guess my efforts were for naught, because Vi laughed.
"Don't worry, Daisy. I'm not serving cornmeal mush for dinner."
I pointed at the pot. "It looks like cornmeal mush to me."
Mind you, I had nothing against cornmeal mush. We had it for breakfast with butter, brown sugar and cream often, and sometimes Vi poured it into a loaf pan and let it set, and we had it fried in the morning with butter and maple syrup. It was good stuff. But I'd always considered it a breakfast food.
"Well, it may look like cornmeal mush," said my aunt with a superior twinkle in her eyes, "but this, my dear, is called polenta, and it's Italian."
"Polenta? Is that Italian for cornmeal mush?"
"Yes. But you serve it while it's still hot and before it sets, and pour an Italian sauce over it."
"Who in the world did you get this recipe from?" I asked ungrammatically.
"Sam."
I goggled at my aunt. "Sam?"
"Yes. Sam. He even told me how to make the sauce."
I sniffed appreciatively. "So that's what smells so good?"
"That's it, all right."
"I had no idea Sam knew how to cook."
"I didn't, either, but we chatted the other day when he came to Mrs. P's to talk to the staff about poor Jackson's problems."
"Well, I'll be hornswoggled." Yet another inexplicable idiomatic expression.
"Smells like home in here," came Sam's voice from the door leading from the dining room to the kitchen.
"It smells great," I said. "And I understand it's all your fault, too." I smiled to let him know I was joking.
"I feel honored that Mrs. Gumm decided to use one of my mother's recipes," said Sam, sounding as though he meant it.
"Feel free to give me any other of your mother's recipes, Sam Rotondo. If they're as good as this one smells, we'll all be fat in a trice."
He only smiled.
Oh, boy. I'd had spaghetti with a red sauce kind of like the one Vi served us that night, but this was the best I'd ever tasted in my life. And it was served over cornmeal mush, of all unlikely beds!
"I didn't know Italians liked mush," I said after swallowing a bite of my dinner. Vi served some of her delicious bread and a green salad with the mush and sauce.
"We call it polenta," said Sam, clearly peeved.
"I guess polenta does sound better than mush," I admitted.
"In New York City, we Italians eat this red sauce with everything. In fact, the kids call it gravy."
"Really!" I said, my imagination instantly beginning to work. I glanced at my aunt. "Hey, Vi, I imagine you can serve all sorts of other things with mush. Like creamed chicken and stuff like that."
"Creamed chicken and polenta doesn't sound as if it would taste as good as this nice spicy Italian sauce," said my mother who, I might have mentioned already, wasn't an adventurous eater, although she was sure tearing into her dinner that night.
"I understand southerners call cornmeal mush grits," said Pa.
"They do? I had no idea," said I.
"That's what I read somewhere," said Pa.
"French folks eat snails," I plopped into the conversation for no perceptible reason.
"I prefer what the Italians eat," said Ma.
"But mush mixed with cooked shrimp and cheese sounds pretty good," said Pa. "I think I read somewhere that they eat that in the south somewhere."
"Where in the south?" I asked him.
He shrugged. "In a costal state, I imagine. There are lots of southern states with long stretches of coast."
"Shoot, California has a huge coast, too, and you don't hear about people eating mush with cheese and shrimp here. At least, I don't think they do." What did I know?
"And in Louisiana, they eat something called 'jerked chicken'," said Sam.
"What's that?"
"I don't know, but I bet your friend Jackson can tell us."
"I'll ask him when we get to his place. Boy, you can sure learn a lot of things around the dinner table, can't you?"
Everyone agreed, and we continued to enjoy our meal. For some reason, knowing we were dining on a meal suggested by Sam made me feel proud of him. Irrational, I know, but everyone is irrational sometimes.
After dinner and dessert (floating island, if anyone cares), Ma and Vi told me not to bother with the dishes, but to go with Sam to Jackson's house. So I did.
When we were rolling westward on Colorado to Mentone Street in Sam's Hudson, I patted my stomach. "That meal was great, Sam. I'm so glad you told Vi how to make it."
He shrugged. "It was nothing. We ate that all the time when I was a kid back home. My mother was a pretty good cook. You can use the same sauce with any kind of noodle, too."
"Any kind of noodle? What kinds of noodles are there? I've heard of macaroni and spaghetti, but... I guess I'm too much a Yankee. We eat stuff like baked beans and brown bread and cornmeal mush and syrup."
"Oh, there are many different shapes of pasta. There's ziti and penne and fettuccini, and there's even a kind of pasta made from potatoes called gnocchi."
"Good Lord, really? I'd probably really like the potato one."
Sam actually smiled. "New York City is home to pretty much every variety of people in the world. When I was a kid, we ate Italian, East Indian, Chinese, Arabian, German and all sorts of other kinds of foods."
"I remember you said something about you eating at an Indian friend's house and had curry a lot."
"Yeah." Sam smiled reminiscently. "I do miss all the different kinds of food available in New York. I don't suppose you've ever heard of falafel."
"What?"
"Falafel."
"No. I've never heard of falafel."
"I'm kind of surprised you didn't encounter falafel when you went to Egypt."
I shuddered, my automatic reaction when reminded of that dreadful trip. Harold had meant well when he'd dragged me off to Egypt and Turkey, but I'd been gr
ieving for Billy and sick as a dog almost the entire time.
"I know that trip was rough on you," said Sam, sounding amazingly sympathetic for him. Sam Rotondo was a big, rugged policeman. He wasn't as a rule given to sentiment.
"Yeah," I said and hoped he'd drop the subject.
Naturally, he didn't. "Falafels are made of chickpeas or fava beans. They're ground up, mixed with garlic and other stuff—I don't know what—and fried. They're delicious. My buddy Armen used to bring them to school for lunch."
"Armen? What kind of name is that?"
"Armenian. Then there were the Swedish kids. Their food was kind of bland if you were used to East Indian, Arabian and Italian food. The Germans, too. Helmut used to bring something called sauerbraten to school. It was kind of sweet. I didn't like it much, although he also brought some great sausages. His dad was a butcher."
"My goodness. Maybe I should visit New York City someday. Sounds like a great place to eat." Well, except for the German cuisine, but I didn't want to spoil the evening by bringing up my grudge against Germans.
Sam actually turned in his seat and smiled at me. "It is."
For some reason, my heart fluttered. Stupid heart.
Chapter 8
The part of Mentone Avenue where the Jacksons lived wasn't all that far from where the Pinkertons lived, geographically. Financially and socially, it was about three worlds away.
Not that the street in any way looked run down. In actual fact, although it was dark as night—because it was night—I could see small houses impeccably kept with small lawns bursting with fall flowers that I would have bet looked pretty during the daytime. Mentone sits in between Fair Oaks Avenue and Lincoln Avenue, and is north of Colorado Boulevard, where the north-south separation of Pasadena begins.
"I can't see any street numbers," grumbled Sam as his gigantic Hudson lumbered slowly up the street.
"I can't, either, but Jackson said he'd keep the front porch light on for us."
"How do you know that?"
"Because when I left Mrs. Pinkerton's house today, I asked him to."
"Oh."
Oh, my foot. "By the way, don't be surprised by Jackson's mother," I said to Sam as I squinted out the passenger-side window.
"Why should I be surprised by Jackson's mother?"
"I guess she was some sort of big voodoo queen or something back in New Orleans. Jackson called her a mambo, but he said she's not dangerous. She just dresses a little oddly for a Pasadena person, and Jackson says she likes to put on an air of mystery. And she makes those little dolls that people stick pins in."
The Hudson came to a sudden stop and I asked, "Are we there?"
"She's a what? And she does what?"
"There's no need to yell at me, Sam," I told him tartly. "Jackson said his mother is a voodoo mambo. I guess that means she's a bigwig in the voodoo set. Or she was when she lived in New Orleans. Evidently she has a growing number of followers here in Pasadena now."
Sam laid his forehead on the steering wheel for a moment.
I frowned at him. "What? It's not my fault Jackson's family is full of interesting people. Why, I've been talking to Jackson for years about the spiritualist trade. It's... well, it's definitely different in New Orleans. I don't think the Mrs. Pinkertons of the world would like it much. I read a really interesting article at the library about an old voodoo mambo named Marie Laveau, who was called the voodoo queen in New Orleans. She lived in the last century, and she—"
"Stop!" Sam said. "You're telling me we're going to the home of a practitioner of voodoo?"
"Well... yes. I guess so. Jackson's mother is the practitioner. I think Jackson goes to the Baptist Church on Lincoln where a lot of Negroes attend."
Lifting his head and pinning me with a look I didn't deserve, Sam said, "Daisy Gumm Majesty, you know the most... appalling kinds of people."
Defensive, I said, "I prefer to think of them as interesting. Jackson helped me a whole lot when I started out in the spiritualist business."
"How old were you when you decided to become a spiritualist?" The question seemed to be asked out of true curiosity. At least I didn't detect any sarcasm or condemnation in it. On the other hand, Sam had asked it, so I trod carefully.
"I didn't actually decide to become anything. It just sort of worked out that way. Turned out I had a knack with the Ouija board."
"A knack."
"Yes. A knack. But why are we talking about this now? Where's Jackson's house?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't know, but it's got to be in this block. I'll just park the machine, and we can walk."
"Sounds good to me."
So he parked his automobile, and I swear I heard him mumble something about "voodoo mambos" when he exited the vehicle and walked around to open my door for me. I thought he was taking Jackson's mother's vocation entirely too seriously. What the heck. If the woman was making a living practicing voodoo, more power to her, is what I thought. Still do, in fact.
It turned out that we were smack across the street from Jackson's house, so Sam and I walked across Mentone and were heading up the walkway to the porch when Jackson, who'd been sitting in a rocking chair on the porch smoking his pipe, stood and approached us.
"Evening, Miss Daisy, Detective," he said, smiling his big, white smile.
"Good evening, Mr. Jackson," I said, pleased to see him looking happy.
"Evening," said Sam in his usual gruff way.
"Can you show us where those evil creatures burned the cross?" I asked.
"Daisy," said Sam.
Nuts to him. I wanted to see for myself. Even if it was too dark out to see much.
"Yeah. Right over here. Woke up the whole neighborhood, it was so bright." Jackson led us to a black patch on his well-groomed lawn.
I shook my head in sorrow. "That's really horrid of them."
Jackson shrugged. "I 'spect it is, though they might've done me some good. My mama says it's good to burn the grass every year or so. Says burnin' it makes it grow better next season. Not that we have what you might call seasons here in Pasadena."
"Boy, that's the truth. I didn't know that about burning grass."
"We're not here to talk about grass," Sam snarled.
"Right, right," said Jackson. "Come on in the house, please. But first, let me tell you about my mama. She's a good woman, my mother, but she's from New Orleans, and she has some funny ideas." He pronounced the city's name "Nawlins."
"Daisy mentioned that," said Sam, sounding grouchy. Then again, he generally did.
Jackson and I exchanged a smile. "Well, she's like Miss Daisy here, in that she deals in the spirit realm. Only she do it the New Orleans way, where there's a lot of voodoo goin' on."
"She told me that, too."
Grinning widely, Jackson said, "Just don't be alarmed, is all. She don't dress like most ladies in Pasadena dress."
Boy, he could say that again! As soon as Jackson opened the front door to admit us, I saw a large woman, dark as soot, dressed in a fabulously colorful robe, and with an extravagant turban-like thing on her head. She frowned at us as soon as we stepped foot in Jackson's house.
"Here's the kind folks who're going to help us find out who's been plaguing Henry and us, Mama," said Jackson, using an almost pleading tone with the magisterial female seated beside the fireplace. She was ever so much more regal than any of the Majestys I'd met in my life to date. In fact, she'd have appeared right at home on a throne.
"I can do my own juju," said Jackson's mother in a voice that fairly reeked with disapproval.
Naturally, my ears pricked at the unusual word. "Juju?"
"Voodoo power," Jackson whispered.
"Who you be, girl?" demanded the voodoo queen. Her voice was deep and rich and reminded me of melted semi-sweet chocolate. Very smooth, her voice.
Deciding I had nothing to lose unless she aimed to cast a spell on me, and I didn't really believe people could do stuff like that, I strode over to her and stuck out my hand for
her to shake. "Daisy Gumm Majesty. I've been a friend of your son's for... oh, a long time now."
"That's true, Mama," said Jackson, looking disconcerted at my hand hanging in the air and not being grasped and shaken.
But Mrs. Jackson finally unbent enough to take my hand in hers. Her hand was big and warm. She didn't shake mine, but turned it over and studied my palm. My goodness. I'd never met another person who practiced one of my own personal job skills, but I got the impression Mrs. Jackson was a whole lot more adept at palm-reading than I was.
She stroked my hand with the hand that wasn't holding mine. "You have a gift, child. Sonny told me you did, but I never met no white lady with the gift before."
I wasn't sure what to say, but decided to take her comment as a compliment. So I finally said, "Thank you," even though I wasn't altogether sure I should.
Sam cleared his throat to let us all know it was time to get down to business. Mrs. Jackson, still holding my hand, took something out of a pocket in her voluminous skirt and pressed it into my palm. When I looked, I saw a tiny doll. I guess my eyes bugged or something, because she said, "That's good juju, girl. Don't lose it."
"I won't," I promised. And I wouldn't, although I had no idea what to do with the thing. Jackson's mother solved that problem for me.
"Hang it on this string here and wear it 'round your neck, girl." And darned if she didn't then hand me a long rope-like necklace that looked as if it had been tightly crocheted out of multicolored pieces of string. She must have sensed I was a brainless nitwit, because she snatched the little doll out of my hand, strung it on the rope, and put it on over my head. I blinked at it, dangling there against my chest, and said, "Thank you," again.
She said, "Huh. You take care."
Sam, who had been looking upon us with one of his fiercer scowls, said, "Can we get down to business now?"
Mrs. Jackson gave him a smile I could have sworn was a blend of wickedness and humor and said, "Yes, sir."
"Have a seat, Miss Daisy and Detective. I'll go fetch Henry, my brother."
So we did. I glanced around the small living room of Jackson's home and wondered precisely how many people lived here. Our house on Marengo was larger than this, and there were only the four of us. Jackson had a wife and at least one son. I guess we'd soon meet his brother, Henry, and then we'd know how many children he had. It made me sad to think little kids were being terrorized by a gang of big bullies in white sheets.
