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

by Alice Duncan

  Shaking his head, Pa said, "I can't believe Charlie is a coldblooded murderer."

  "He's a coldblooded hater of everyone in the world who isn't him. He. Whatever it's supposed to be."

  "And I still need evidence," said Sam, grouchy. He'd finished half of his sandwich and took a vicious bite out of the second half.

  "I know you do. What a shame." If everyone would only listen to me and do what I wanted them to do, life would be so easy. For me, anyway. "At least I might be able to give you some information about the real-estate swindle Mr. Hastings is hawking after I see Mrs. Hastings tomorrow."

  "There you go again," said Sam. "You don't know Hastings is involved in anything at all, much less a phony real-estate scheme. For all you know, Mr. Pinkerton was right, and he's the sainted cyclops of the lousy Klan."

  "Exalted," I said, musing about Mr. Stephen Hastings. Nope. I still couldn't picture him in a sheet and a pointy hat.

  "What?" said Sam, eyeing me with disfavor. Nothing unusual there.

  "It's the exalted cyclops, not the sainted cyclops."

  "Huh." Sam chewed some more sandwich.

  "Those people sure give themselves some funny names," said Pa.

  We'd all said much the same thing before, so I didn't agree with him again. Rather, I polished off my carrots and started the second half of my own sandwich. It was so good. If I didn't know there was devils-food cake for dessert, I might just have fixed myself another sandwich.

  "Oh, and, Pa, Mrs. Akers works for the Longneckers!" I'd forgotten all about that. "She said she's worked for Mrs. Longnecker for years and years, and has seen me several times. Funny that I never noticed her before."

  "You weren't looking at your neighbors' servants," said Sam. "People don't tend to notice irrelevancies."

  "Mrs. Akers isn't an irrelevancy!" I said, shocked by his words.

  He only squinted at me and said, "Yet she's seen you, and you haven't seen her. People's servants are invisible for the most part."

  I set my almost-eaten sandwich back onto my plate and stared at Sam in dismay. I'd always thought of myself as a kind, if sometimes rash, individual, yet Sam was right. Servants, unless you were one, were invisible. Of course, if Mrs. Longnecker had ever hired me to perform a séance, I'm sure I'd have met Mrs. Akers long since. "That's kind of depressing, Sam."

  He shrugged. "I guess."

  "I don't envy Mrs. Akers," said Pa. "I have a feeling Mrs. Longnecker isn't the easiest person in the world to get along with."

  "Boy, you're right about that. And she's a terrible gossip, too." Which gave me an idea. "Say, Sam, do you think I ought to talk to Mrs. Longnecker about what's going on with the Jacksons? Maybe she knows something Mrs. Akers didn't tell us."

  "I'd just as soon you didn't spread the case all over Pasadena," said Sam with a pretty good frown. "The fewer people who know we have Klan problems here, the better."

  "But they've been written about in the newspapers," I pointed out. "Anyone who takes the daily Star News or the Pasadena Herald or even the Los Angeles Times already knows about the Klan taking up residence in Pasadena."

  "Maybe, but I'd rather you stay out of it."

  "Stay out of it! How can I stay out of it when you keep dragging me along on your precious interviews? Darn you, Sam Rotondo. If you aren't the most illogical—"

  "How about some cake?" asked Pa in a rather loud voice.

  Steaming, I subsided in my rant, rose from my chair, picking up my plate and Sam's, and the last of my sandwich. "I'll get it." I stuffed the remaining bite of sandwich in my mouth as I stomped into the kitchen. The dining room was right off the kitchen. In fact, it sat between the living room and the kitchen, if anyone cares.

  "Thanks. I'd like a piece of cake." Sam. Mildly. Well, he'd won. Why wouldn't he be mild?

  Nuts. I got the cake out of the pie safe, cut two fairly large slices and, since our sandwich plates were relatively clean, plopped a slice of cake on each and brought them back to the kitchen. I even remembered to bring Sam a fork, although he didn't deserve one.

  He left us shortly thereafter, and I discovered that, after such a full day, I was exhausted. So I said good-night to Pa, and Spike and I went to bed. Tomorrow might prove to be another long day, and I needed my rest.

  Chapter 1

  Monday morning dawned warm and sunny, two characteristics I didn't share with it. I was chilly and grumpy, probably because Sam had annoyed me so much the night before. Or maybe not. Maybe all the loose ends in the Jackson-Pinkerton-Merton-Hastings cases were frustrating me.

  I decided that must be the case when I threw on a robe, let Spike out onto the deck outside my bedroom so he could do his own morning duty, and made my way to the kitchen. Where sat Pa, looking at the Monday morning edition of the Pasadena Star News.

  "Hey, Pa," I muttered, heading to the coffee pot on the stove top. "Did Vi make anything good for breakfast?"

  "Bacon and eggs. There's an article about Mr. Jackson on page three, Daisy. About him being shot."

  Pa's news perked me up a trifle. Not much. I mean, Jackson was a good friend of mine. I was, however, glad to know the local newspaper had taken interest in his case, even if it were relegated to the third page. "There is? You mean the newspaper actually reported a crime committed against a Negro citizen of our fair city?"

  I heard the newspaper crinkle as Pa laid it on the table before himself. Uh-oh. Guess I'd been a trifle sarcastic.

  "Yes, and I don't know why you sound so savage this morning." Pa wasn't generally so blunt. Guess I'd riled him. Oh, dear.

  "Sorry, Pa. I guess this Jackson case is really getting under my skin. Everything just seems so unfair. And how the Ku Klux Klan could induce anybody with half a brain to join it has dimmed my faith in my fellow man." Not that I'd possessed much to begin with. Shoot, I made my living fleecing so-called intelligent members of my species.

  "I guess I can understand that. But listen to this: 'On Saturday evening, at about seven p.m., Joseph Jackson, a member of Pasadena's Negro community, was gunned down on the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Washington Boulevard. Mr. Jackson is recuperating at the Castleton Hospital. His shooter's identity remains unknown at this time.'"

  "Hmm. Well, at least they reported it," I said, contemplating the bacon Vi had left to keep warm on the stove. Did I want to scramble myself an egg? More to the point, could I scramble myself an egg. The last time I'd tried, the egg had turned all leathery on me.

  At that very moment, my darling aunt walked into the kitchen, carrying her handbag and wearing her hat. She was ready to take on preparing the Pinkertons' meals for another day. She must have seen me looking glum, because she said, "Let me scramble you an egg, Daisy."

  God bless the woman as a saint. Nevertheless, I didn't want to make her late for work. "No, Vi. I can do it. You go on to work. You shouldn't have to fix eggs for me. You cook everything else."

  She shook her head. "It'll only take me a second. It would probably take you ten minutes and five eggs to scramble an edible egg."

  While that was true, it didn't make my mood any brighter. Hanging my head, I said, "Thanks, Vi."

  She patted my shoulder. "Nonsense. We all have our gifts. Yours isn't in the kitchen."

  "You can say that again."

  She didn't, for which I was grateful. I stuck a piece of bread on a fork and held it over a burner on the stove. We had an electrical toaster, but I was feeling a trifle martyred that Monday morning, so I toasted my bread the old-fashioned way. What's more, I only singed one side of it.

  Vi was right. It took her approximately thirty seconds to scramble and cook an egg for me. I noticed she cooked it in a small cast-iron skillet, used butter on the skillet's bottom so the egg wouldn't stick, and had the gas flame turned to a moderate heat. Hmm. Maybe I could cook an egg after all. I think I'd tried to use higher heat the last time I'd scorched one of them.

  She scooped the perfectly scrambled egg onto a plate, I added my singed toast and two pieces of bacon,
and I said, "Thanks, Vi. You're a blessing to us all."

  "Pshaw," said she as she turned and marched to the front door. From there, she'd walk north on Marengo to Colorado, catch a red car going west, transfer on Fair Oaks to a northbound red car, get off at Orange Grove, and walk the rest of the way to Mrs. Pinkerton's house.

  Pa was through with the newspaper when I sat at the table, so I took a peek at it. Some clever devil had invented a word game called the crossword puzzle, and the Star News had begun publishing one of them every Monday. Thinking solving the puzzle might cheer me up, I found it and a pencil and saw that Pa had already started filling in the little squares. Blast!

  I'm almost sure I didn't frown at my father, but he said, "I remembered too late that you love to do the word puzzle, Daisy. You can finish it for me. Sorry I spoiled your fun."

  So I felt guilty along with frustrated and grumpy. "Don't be silly, Pa," I told him, mad at him for spoiling the puzzle for me. And it was only Monday morning.

  However, I did finish the puzzle. I also ate my breakfast, washed the dishes and put them away, and went into my room to put on a cool day dress in which I aimed to take my dog for a walk. With my father, if he hadn't usurped that pleasure, too.

  But I'd wronged the man. When I left the bedroom, he'd already put on his hat and had Spike on his leash. "Ready?" he said, trying a little too hard to be cheerful.

  "Sure am," said I, doing the same thing.

  Spike didn't have any trouble at all being cheerful, which is one of the very best things about dogs. We strolled down Marengo, and when we passed the Longneckers' house, I squinted to see if I could detect Mrs. Longnecker in the garden. No luck. I wondered if she'd think it strange if I decided to pay a call on her. Probably. I wasn't on visiting terms with the Longneckers. Not that we were enemies or anything; it's just that we didn't walk in and out of each other's houses as some folks did.

  Which made me think that we weren't on visiting terms with any of our neighbors. Not like that, anyway. When I thought about it, I came to the conclusion this was because all the ladies in our house worked away from home. Well, except for me sometimes. Occasionally, I'd make appointments to read cards or manipulate the Ouija board for a paying client in the dining room of our home. Generally, however, it was Pa who was the neighborhood gadabout.

  "Say, Pa, are you friends with Mr. Longnecker? I mean do you chat over the back fence and stuff like that?"

  "It would be difficult to chat over the back fence when there are two other houses separating our house from his. But no, I don't chat with him on a regular basis. He's a good deal older than I am, for one thing, and I'm a car man. He's a philatelist."

  I knew what that was, by gum. "Collects stamps, does he?"

  "By the thousands. I'm sure he'll be glad to bore you to death if you want to chat with him about philately. He cornered me one day, and I didn't think I'd ever get out of his clutches."

  "So he's a fanatical philatelist." I was kind of proud of that sentence.

  Pa chuckled, so I guess he liked it, too. "You might say that."

  "Drat. I wish Mrs. Longnecker was interested in spiritualism or something."

  "Why? You don't think the Longneckers have anything to do with the Jacksons, do you?"

  "I guess not. I suppose I just feel guilty because I never noticed Mrs. Akers on our street before."

  "Nuts. Lots and lots of folks have people who come in and work for them one morning or afternoon a week. You can't notice them all."

  "I guess not," I repeated, still feeling guilty. Oh, well.

  When we got back home, it was time for me to dress and drive to Mrs. Hastings' house in the San Rafael area of Pasadena. San Rafael was home to the massively rich. I mean, lots of folks in Pasadena were wealthy in those days, but San Rafael was special. It had gigantic, multi-acre estates that went on forever and that were virtually lost in a forest of greenery. I loved it. Fortunately for me, I remembered how to get to the Hastings' estate, and drove up the miles and miles and miles of road from their gatehouse to the house without getting lost. Because Mr. Hastings had ties with Hong Kong—the family had even lived there for several years—all of their servants were Chinese. Probably if Mrs. Akers had been Chinese or Japanese, I'd have noticed her. Well, maybe. Oh, probably not. Bother.

  The same Chinese girl who'd opened the door for me the very first time I'd visited Mrs. Hastings again opened the door for me that day. I smiled at her. She smiled back, which was the second good thing to happen that day.

  "Good morning, Mrs. Majesty. Mrs. Hastings is expecting you. She's in the conservatory."

  Oh, boy! The conservatory was where Mrs. Hastings grew her orchids. I foresaw orchids in my future, spiritualist medium that I was.

  Sure enough, Mrs. Hastings was on her knees with the secateurs in her hands and dirt on her apron when Li, the Chinese girl, opened the conservatory door for me. Mrs. Hastings looked up at me and smiled. "Oh, Daisy, come here. I have the most gorgeous oncidium orchid just starting to bloom! This is the first oncidium I've had any luck with." She looked from me to Li. "Li, will you please bring us some tea."

  "Yes, ma'am." And Li disappeared as silently as a wraith.

  I strolled over to where she knelt, my gaze bouncing from orchid plant to orchid plant, feeling almost overwhelmed by the beauty of the waxy flowers. I didn't know beans about orchids, but I praised the orchid of which Mrs. Hastings was so proud. It didn't hold a candle to some of the others she had in the conservatory, but I didn't say so.

  "Oh, my, it's lovely."

  "Don't you love the color? It's kind of a... what would you call it? A peach color?"

  Sounded about right to me. "Yes. Or apricot." At least it wasn't purple, a color of which I wasn't fond, although I don't know why. Lots of her other orchids were various shades of purple. And they were pretty. But I liked the yellow, white and green ones best. Although... very well, so there were some perfectly gorgeous purple, lilac and lavender orchids in Mrs. Hastings' conservatory. The woman possessed a green thumb when it came to orchid cultivation, for certain.

  But I hadn't come there that day to discuss orchids. "Did you wish to speak with me about something, Mrs. Hastings? I love your orchids, but..."

  She heaved a sigh and rose from her pampered oncidium. "Yes. I'm glad you could visit me today, Daisy. I have a bad feeling about something Mr. Hastings is up to, and I'm worried that it might even be... illegal." She whispered the last word.

  As I'd already suspected, although I didn't let on. In fact, I allowed my eyes to widen and my mouth to form a shocked O. "Goodness!" I said. "Whatever is he doing?"

  She took off her gloves and apron, laid them on a table, and washed her hands in a sink she must have had installed especially for her use in the conservatory. Wiping her hands on a little embroidered towel, she joined me at a table and two chairs in a corner of the room. The room was pretty much all windows, and from it you could see the extensive grounds of the Hastings' estate. The woman was surrounded by a mile and a half of beauty, although it didn't seem to make her awfully happy. On the other hand, her only son had been murdered a few months prior, so that absolutely colored her outlook on life. Even such an astonishingly lovely outlook as she had before her eyes every day.

  "Please sit down," she told me, so I did. She went on, "I'm not sure it's illegal, but I'm afraid it's not quite right. Stephen—Mr. Hastings—has joined a consortium of his friends and another man whom he only met recently in order to buy land and develop it in Florida."

  "Florida?" I fear the word squeaked slightly as it left my lips. But... Florida? What did Florida contain besides swamps and crocodiles? Or were they alligators? I think crocs lived in Africa and gators in the USA, but I wasn't sure.

  She shook her head. "I know. But Stephen—Mr. Hastings—claims Florida is the next California, and that there are millions of dollars to be made in land there. But I don't trust the fellow who's heading the scheme. I think he's a shady character, and he's only recently come
to town. He's... oily." She shuddered slightly.

  Oily, eh? That didn't sound good. "What's his name? Do you know?"

  "Billingsgate. Enoch Billingsgate. He's evidently a wildly wealthy real-estate developer in Florida. Have you ever heard of him?"

  "Me? No, but I don't know many people who deal in high finances. Maybe Mr. Pinkerton, but no one else."

  She nearly leapt on the name. "Mr. Pinkerton is one of the members of the consortium!"

  "He is?" Oh, dear.

  "Yes. I've spoken to Madeline"—Madeline being Mrs. Pinkerton's first name—"about the Florida deal, but she... well, she didn't know anything about it. Actually..." Mrs. Hastings paused, but finally went on, "In fact, she doesn't seem to have much of a head for business of any kind."

  Boy, wasn't that the truth! She had a head filled with cotton fluff, did Mrs. Pinkerton. Naturally, I didn't say that. "Yes. I do believe you're correct there."

  "She was quite bewildered when I asked her if she knew anything about the scheme Mr. Hastings and Mr. Pinkerton were planning with Mr. Billingsgate. Then again, I doubt Mr. Pinkerton talks to her about his various business interests. But, Daisy, I know you know the Pinkertons. In fact, don't you visit them often?"

  "Yes. In fact, I'm going to visit Mrs. Pinkerton right after I leave you. They've been having some trouble regarding their gatekeeper." I wasn't sure how much to tell her, but what the heck. Maybe I could discover once and for all whether or not Mr. Hastings belonged to the Klan. "Um... Mr. Jackson, their gatekeeper, is a Negro man, and he's being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, he was shot on Saturday night, and I think it was a Klansman who pulled the trigger."

  At the mention of the word Klan, Mrs. Hastings put her hand to her mouth. "Good heavens! The Klan? In Pasadena?"

  "Yes, ma'am. I was surprised to know they've gained a foothold here, too."

  "Dreadful organization! How awful for those people. That poor man. Is he going to be all right?"

  "Yes. I visited him in the hospital yesterday. He has guards on his door so whoever shot him can't come back and finish him off." That wasn't elegantly put, but there you go.