Scarlet Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  Then Lou Prophet turned abruptly on his peg leg—he could maneuver with that thing quite gracefully, considering he’d had it for less than a year—and stomped out of the house, carrying his lobster roll with him.

  Eight

  I didn’t know what to do. I sat on the piano bench, fingers poised over the keys, and…didn’t know what to do.

  Finally, Sam came to the fore. “May I help you, Mrs. Mainwaring?” he asked, all but oozing solicitude. “Have you something caught in your throat?”

  Since he’d handed her a perfect excuse, Angie ran with it. After coughing a couple of times, she croaked, “Oh, my.” Then she forced another couple of coughs and pretended to clear her throat. She glanced at Mr. Bowman and frantically clutched his arm.

  “You all right, Angie?” asked Mr. Bowman.

  “Perhaps you need a glass of lemonade or something?” I asked, at last having found my speaking voice. I gently withdrew my fingers from above the piano keys and placed them in my lap.

  “Yes,” said Sam, still oozing. “Lemonade will be just the ticket.” He headed to the kitchen.

  “Yes,” Angie said in a strangled tone. “Oh, Daisy, yes, please. Will you please take me to the kitchen?”

  “I think Sam’s going to the kitchen. Perhaps we should go out onto the back porch until he brings your lemonade to you.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes. That will be just what I need. A glass of water. I mean lemonade.” She turned to the audience, the members of which were still staring, confused. Smiling sweetly, she said to them, feigning hoarseness, “I beg your pardon. An unexpected frog in my throat. I’ll be all right in a minute. Just need a drink of lemonade to soften my vocal cords.”

  I managed to say, “We’ll be back in a jiffy,” before Angie grabbed my arm, yanked me off the piano bench and, with Mr. Bowman following, headed to the kitchen. The wait staff from the Castleton crowded the kitchen, running this way and that like frantic rabbits, so I hustled Angie, Mr. Bowman, and Sam onto the back porch. Sam had possessed the presence of mind to bring a glass of lemonade with him, and he handed it to Angie as soon as she’d seated herself on a chair in one of Harold’s artistic groupings.

  When I glanced around, I was pleased to see no one else on the porch. They were probably still indoors stuffing themselves. Which was precisely what they were supposed to do. I’m not complaining.

  After taking a gulp of lemonade and fanning herself with her hand for a second or two, Angie looked at me, almost accusingly. “You didn’t tell me you knew Lou Prophet!”

  “Um… No, I didn’t. Why would I?” Because her voice had held an edge of panic, I didn’t get angry.

  She put her glass down and covered her face with both hands. “No. There was no reason for you to. You’re not at fault. I’m sorry, Daisy. But those cards and the Ouija board were absolutely right, although I didn’t expect things to happen so quickly. Talk about someone from my past! Oh, Lord.” I was pleased to note she wasn’t a weeper—unlike some of us.

  “You know that peg-legged fellow, Angie?” asked Mr. Bowman, a frown creasing his magnificent brow. Well, magnificent in that he was a terribly handsome man. Too old for me, of course.

  Smiling at my fiancé, I said, “Thanks for thinking up the lemonade excuse, Sam.”

  “Sure thing,” he said, squinting at me and knowing precisely what I’d been thinking. Sometimes I think he knows me too well. But, golly, Sam was a terribly handsome man, too, if not quite as decorative as Mr. Bowman. Anyhow, Mr. Bowman looked kind of like what one might call a fancy Dan. Sam was all masculinity.

  The four of us straightened in our chairs when we heard the thud-plop-thud-plop of Lou Prophet’s leg and peg as he walked past the orange trees lining the gravel pathway leading from his cottage to our back porch. For the record, the trees had blossomed, and the aroma out there was downright heavenly. Mr. Prophet appeared far from heavenly. In fact, he looked mad enough to spit railroad spikes. I don’t think that’s an old-west saying. I think I got it from my father.

  Hoping to avert a duel or something equally catastrophic on the porch, I got up and walked to the porch steps. Standing on the top step, I folded my arms across my chest and barred Mr. Prophet’s entry.

  “Mister Prophet,” I said sweetly. “I get the feeling you and Missus Mainwaring have met before.”

  “Missus Who?” Prophet growled. “That there’s no Missus Mainwaring. That there’s Angela Smith, and she fleeced me of a whole lot of money in Tombstone some years back.”

  “Now, Lou, don’t be like that,” said Angie, attempting a sweetness equal to my own and missing by a mile.

  “The hell you say!”

  “Exactly who is this person, Angie?” asked Mr. Bowman, still frowning fiercely. On him fierce looked good.

  I probably shouldn’t have noticed that, should I? Oh, dear. Sorry.

  “For that matter,” growled Prophet, looking Mr. Bowman up and down, “who the hell are you?”

  “All right, let’s all settle down,” Sam said, rising from his chair, putting on his Italian-Count-Police-Detective mien, and using his I’m-going-to-kill-you-and-dump-you-in-the-ocean-in-cement-overshoes voice. “Missus Evangeline Mainwaring, this is Mister Lou Prophet. I take it you two have…met before, only perhaps you had a different name then, Missus Mainwaring?”

  “Different name, my ass. That’s Angela Smith, and she ran the biggest whorehouse in Tombstone! Evangeline Mainwaring, be damned.”

  Nearly shocked out of my pretty blue pumps, I still managed to say, “Mister Prophet, please!” in an attempt to curtail his profanities, although I already knew the task to be impossible.

  “Daisy,” said Sam in the same deadly voice. “Shut up.”

  So I shut up. Didn’t dare do anything else. When Sam got into one of those moods, it was best to do as he said.

  He continued, “Lou, come up here onto the porch and sit down. Let’s sort this out. There’s no need for violence. Or profanity,” he added, shooting me a glance.

  “Hellkatoot,” said Prophet. But I moved out of his way and he continued up the stairs and sat on a chair as far away from Angie as he could get.

  But merciful heavens! Had Lou Prophet spoken the truth? Was Evangeline Mainwaring—or whatever her real name was—truly a former scarlet woman?

  Oh, boy, I sure hoped so! Evidently Harold had been right about her all along! This was the absolute berries!

  “Now,” said Sam remaining on his feet, probably so he could catch anyone should he or she try to leap up and attempt some variety of brutality on another one of us, “please explain these allegations.” He turned to Angie. “Ladies first.” He didn’t even sound cynical.

  “Lady!” spat Prophet. “Hell.” He, on the other hand, raised cynicism to a level surpassing any I’d heard before.

  “Pipe down, Lou. Ladies first.” Sam sounded even deadlier this time, a feat of which I hadn’t believed him capable until then.

  Grasping Mr. Bowman’s hand and squeezing it hard, Angie whispered, “Yes. Yes, he’s telling the truth. I ran a parlor house—”

  “Parlor house, my ass,” Lou interrupted.

  Turning his man-mangling gaze upon him, Sam said, “Shut up.”

  Lou lifted his hands, said, “Shit,” and dropped his hands to his lap again. But he shut up. Probably for the best, all things considered.

  As if gathering her strength, Angie then spoke more forcefully—although she kept her voice soft enough so as not to be heard inside the house unless someone were eavesdropping, and I hoped like heck nobody was. “Yes. I ran a parlor house in Tombstone. That was at least twenty years ago. Not that it’s an excuse, but I was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and…Well, I grew up hard. I scrimped and saved until I managed to leave—at least I had hoped to leave—parlor houses behind me forever. When I moved to Pasadena in 1896, I fully expected to have seen the last of that god-awful life.” She licked her lips, picked up her glass in a slightly shaky hand, and took another sip of lemonade. “I…
I…Well, I used every trick at my disposal in order to make my escape. I…” Her words trickled off.

  When nobody picked up the strands of conversation for her, she went on after what seemed like a year and a half of silence. “If it’s true Mister Prophet was injured in some way because of my business tactics…Well, I apologize, but not awfully hard. I wasn’t given any chances in this life. I had to make my own. And you,” she added, scowling balefully at Mr. Prophet, “chose to make use of the ladies I employed.”

  “Ladies,” said Prophet in a voice brimming with loathing and scorn. “My ass.”

  “Lou,” said Sam.

  Prophet said, “Hellkatoot,” but shut up after uttering the one word.

  “It’s true,” said Angie. “I ran a parlor house, and he”—she shot another glower at Mr. Prophet—“used to come in and purchase time with my girls.”

  “I see,” said Sam, his tone now judicial. He turned to Prophet. “Lou? What do you have to say about this situation?”

  “Aw, hell. Yeah, I met that woman”—he pointed at Angie.—“in her parlor house. She acted her role like a professional courtesan, by God. And, yeah, I chose to make use of one or two of her so-called ladies. And I sure as hell wasn’t the only one she skint.”

  Skint? I’d ask later.

  “I see,” said Sam again. “Mister Bowman,” he asked, turning to that gent, “did you know about Missus— Well, I guess she’s Missus Mainwaring now. Did you know about her past life in Tombstone?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Mr. Bowman, frowning hideously—only on him nothing looked hideous. “I helped her escape.”

  “Escape, hell,” said Lou Prophet. Then he spat on the porch floor.

  “That was so rude!” I told him.

  Looking at me under thunderous brows, he said, “Sorry, Miss Daisy. Ain’t sorry to nobody else.” He turned his attention to Angie. “So you managed to escape, did you? How many other men got skint when you did this escaping of yours?”

  Angie heaved a gusty sigh. “Many,” she confessed. She suddenly turned and looked at me. “Oh, Daisy, you’re not going to tell that mob in there about this, are you?” She hooked a thumb at the back door of the house.

  “Heavens, no! It’s nobody else’s business,” I said, meaning it sincerely. Heck, I’d kept darker secrets than hers, sometimes to my own personal peril.

  “Bless you, child,” she whispered, laying her hand on my arm. “Thank you so much.”

  “Although,” I said, having thought of something pertinent having to do with someone not entirely unlike Mrs. Mainwaring herself, “you might want to think about talking to Flossie Buckingham. She grew up in circumstances much like your own, and—”

  “Daisy,” Sam interrupted, his own brow now thunderous. “Before you offer advice, we’d better thrash out this current problem. We’ve still got a party going on, you know.”

  “Yes, Sam,” I said. I considered batting my eyelashes but thought better of it, thereby proving I can sometimes behave sensibly.

  “If you did relieve Mister Prophet of some of his money using sketchy tactics, would you be able to return the money to him?” Sam asked of Angie.

  “Of course!” No hesitation at all. “I’ve made wise investments, and I’ll be happy to repay Mister Prophet. With interest, if he’d like.”

  “Huh,” said Prophet, sounding like Sam.

  “I mean it, Lou. I mean, Mister Prophet,” said Angie. She sounded desperate. “I didn’t set out to rob people.”

  “You had your girls do it for you.” The bitterness in Mr. Prophet’s voice nearly made my skin itch.

  Angie sat straighter in her chair. “Yes, I did. Those poor girls had no more choice in their careers than I did. Even today, I help as many girls as I can to get away from that wretched life.”

  “You do?” As soon as the words left my lips, I turned to Sam, fearing rebuke.

  He didn’t seem inclined to scold this time, however. “In what way?” he asked of Angie.

  “Yeah. How do you help ‘em? You’ve taught ‘em to thieve. What the hell else can you do for them?”

  Needless to say, this comment came from Mr. Prophet. Sam frowned at him. Mr. Prophet rolled his eyes heavenwards. Mr. Bowman sat as if turned to stone. I got the feeling he hankered to shoot Lou Prophet through the heart, but didn’t want to cause a fuss. Sensible decision on his part.

  “When I can, I bring parlor-house girls who want to escape that awful kind of life here.”

  “Here?” I asked. “Here, like in Pasadena? In your home? I mean, where do you keep them?”

  With a sweet smile for me, Angie said, “No, not in my new home. I generally have three or four girls residing at Orange Acres until they…um…have acquired other skills and are able to secure employment somewhere else. Some of the poor things are…Well, they’re…”

  “They’re addicted to opium or laudanum or chloral hydrate, is what she’s tryin’ to tell you,” said Prophet in a flat voice.

  None of us gasped, and Angie seemed surprised by our restraint. I told her, “You have no idea what some of us have seen in the past few years, Angie. You’re not alone either, not in your tough life or in your desire to help others.”

  “Really?” She blinked at me.

  “Yeah. She’s telling the truth,” said Sam, adding a soft, “damn it,” under his breath.

  “My goodness.” Angie appeared very nearly stunned.

  “You got any of that left?” asked a snide Lou Prophet. “Goodness, I mean.”

  “That’s enough of that,” I told him severely. “We understand you’ve been wronged by Missus Mainwaring, and she’s willing, if not eager, to make amends. However, continuing to berate her will gain none of us anything.

  “True enough,” said Sam. “Look, Lou, I understand why you’re mad, but hold off the whining for a while, will you? We need to get back to the blasted party before people start looking for us.”

  Good Lord, I’d almost forgotten about the party!

  But sure enough, the words had no sooner left Sam’s lips than Harold Kincaid stepped out onto the porch. “What’s going on out here? You all right, Missus Mainwaring?”

  All of us except Lou Prophet, who couldn’t, leapt from our chairs and turned to Harold.

  “Harold! How nice of you to ask. Angie just got a little choked up. You know. I mean she got a frog in her throat there for a minute,” I said, blithering, to judge from the look Harold gave me.

  “Need anything?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. Sam got some lemonade for Angie. How’s the party going?”

  “It was going pretty well until all of you left.” Dry tones of voice were going around that day.

  “Yes, well, we’re all coming back now,” I told him.

  “Good idea,” said Mr. Bowman. “Here, Angie, give me your arm.”

  “Thank you, Judah.” She did as he’d suggested and hung on to his arm. I think she tried to pretend she wasn’t using it to keep herself upright.

  “Yes. We can’t let all that good food and lemonade go to waste,” said Sam, smiling and trying to look normal.

  Harold squinted at him. I whacked him on the arm, and he jumped. “Sorry,” said he.

  “No matter. Just act normal.”

  “Oh, good. That gives me plenty of leeway.” Grinning like the Cheshire Cat, Harold waltzed back into the house.

  “You all go on ahead. Think I’ll head to the cottage,” Prophet grumbled.

  I grabbed his arm so hard, I nearly upended the poor man. I guess he wasn’t as steady on his pins as he’d been when he still possessed both legs. “No, you’re not. You’re coming into the house with us, and you’re going to stay there, eating things and pretending to enjoy yourself for…I don’t know. Look at the clock in the kitchen, and stay until fifteen minutes have passed. That’s an order.”

  “From a snip of a thing like you?” he asked, gazing down at me. A long way down, as he was at least as tall as Sam, although not nearly as bulky.

 
; “Yes. From a snip of a thing like me, darn you!”

  “Oooh, such language.” Prophet pursed his lips and tried to look horrified. Didn’t work.

  “And from me,” said Sam, taking Prophet’s other arm.

  “Aw, hell,” said Prophet.

  But he walked with us back into the melee.

  I mean the party.

  Nine

  A few people seemed to notice us when we returned to the living room, but thanks to Angie coughing artfully a time or two and clinging to Mr. Bowman’s arm, no one asked us what had happened to compel our departure. Angie cleared her throat several times, too, thereby adding to the impression she’d swallowed the wrong way or done something else of a like nature.

  “Mistew Pwophet!” shrieked little Billy, who did a better job of diverting the party attendees’ attention than any of us who’d left the house and then come back indoors. His chubby two-year-old legs carried him on a wobbly and semi-straight path right to Lou Prophet.

  Bless his old and, I’m sure, scarred and at least partially black, heart, Prophet pasted on a smile for the child and said, “How, do, little Billy? Good to see you again.” He didn’t even sound sarcastic.

  “I wuv my wocks,” said Billy peering up at the tall man in an almost worshipful manner.

  “Glad to hear it,” said Prophet. “Let me sit in this here chair, and I’ll show you a couple other things you might like.”

  And darned if he didn’t sit on a chair and allow Billy to climb on to his lap. I must have looked as amazed as I was, because I felt a soft touch on my arm, turned, and found Flossie smiling at me.

  “Billy hasn’t been able to talk about anything besides Mister Prophet ever since we had lunch that day at Mijares.”

  In case the name doesn’t ring a bell—and why should it?—Mijares is a Mexican restaurant in my fair city, and it serves about the best grub I’ve ever eaten except at our dinner table at home.

  “Really? I don’t know why I should be so surprised that Mister Prophet gets along well with children, but I am,” I told Flossie. I didn’t add my suspicion that Mr. Prophet remained a child at heart in spite of his advanced years.