Scarlet Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  “Why don’t Mister Prophet and I both walk you out to where it happened,” I suggested.

  Still glaring, Sam said, “I don’t want you to get—”

  “I’m already involved, darn it, Sam Rotondo! I was there!”

  “She’s right, Sam,” said Mr. Prophet, sounding not the least bit happy about it. “But you don’t have to shout about it, Miss Daisy.”

  “I’m not shouting!” I shouted back at him. Then I clenched my hands together and pressed my fists to my mouth to prevent any more bellows from issuing therefrom.

  After a fulminating second or three, Sam gave up. “All right. Daisy, Lou, and Oversloot, come with me. Doan, take statements from Missus Mainwaring and Miss…” His voice petered out since he didn’t know Li’s name.

  “Li Ahn,” said Li.

  “From Missus Mainwaring and Miss Li. Oversloot, come with us.”

  The way Li’s eyes opened wide made me think she’d been surprised to know that, when it came to Chinese folks, Sam understood their last names came before their first names. Huh, as both Sam and Lou (and occasionally I) might say. My Sam was a smart man. After all, he wanted to marry me, didn’t he?

  Stop snickering, please.

  I led the way out to the back yard, marveling again at how beautiful it was, but not saying so to Sam, who, I sensed wouldn’t be receptive to comments about how I wanted our back yard to look just then. “Follow me,” I said after I’d opened the gate in the picket fence. Sam, Mr. Prophet, and Doan followed me. Down the gravel path and into the clearing I led them, ending up at the gardener’s shed. Sure enough, Mr. Frank Tucker still lay where we’d left him. Still covered in orange blossoms, too, by golly.

  “There.” I pointed at the sweet-smelling body.

  “Cripes,” said Sam. “How’d he get plastered with flowers?”

  “Mister Prophet shot him out of the orange tree.” I pointed at the now-unbecomingly bare branch where Mr. Tucker had lain in wait for…Well, I didn’t know for whom he’d lain in wait.

  “Why was he up a tree?” asked Doan.

  “Ask him,” I suggested. “I don’t know.”

  “Can’t ask him. He’s dead,” said Prophet the Practical. “Probably wanted to kill Angie.”

  “Angie said he might have come for Sally,” I said, giving Mr. Prophet a frown, which he ignored with easy aplomb, drat the man.

  “Who’s Sally?” asked Sam.

  “Sally is one of the ladies—”

  Mr. Prophet guffawed rudely. After frowning at him, I continued telling Sam who Sally was. “She’s one of the ladies from Tombstone Angie is attempting to help. Um…” I shot a glance at Mr. Prophet, who merely stared back at me, his head tilted slightly to one side. “Um…I think she used to work in a…in a…”

  “She worked in a whorehouse run by Adolph Grant,” said Mr. Prophet, not mincing his words.

  I frowned at him again, which did as much good as it had the time before. “Anyway, Missus Mainwaring is attempting to help Sally and a few other…women”—I decided not to call them ladies again, since I wanted no more uncouth interruptions from Lou Prophet—“who were desperate to get out of that way of life and into a better one.”

  “Ah,” said Sam. “Do you have any idea how many of them are here at the moment? The former…ladies of the evening, I mean?”

  At least he hadn’t called them whores. Good for Sam. “No. I’ve only met Sally and Li. I don’t know if there are any other women living at the house right now.” I thought for a second and added, “I think Li’s one of the people who run the place, though. I don’t think she’s a former…um…” My voice trailed off.

  Before Mr. Prophet could tell me I was wrong about Li, Sam Said, “What about you, Lou? Do you know how many females Missus Mainwaring is trying to set right with the world?”

  “Nope.”

  “All right,” said Sam. “Guess I’ll have to ask her. Take some pictures of the body, Doan.”

  “Want me to brush off the flowers first?” asked Doan.

  Then it was I noticed Doan carrying one of those new Kodak box cameras, and decided then and there to hire someone to take pictures of our wedding, if Sam and I both lived long enough to have one. At least I didn’t think Mr. Frank Tucker had been aiming for me. I hoped not; although if his aim had been off, I might be dead anyway. How discouraging.

  “Take some of him like that, then brush away the flowers and take some more.” Sam turned to Mr. Prophet. “All right, Lou, tell me what happened. Use as much detail as possible, please. I really don’t want to have to arrest you for murder if you were merely defending helpless women.”

  “Never met any women less helpless than them three,” said Prophet. “Maybe Miss Daisy’s—”

  “I am not helpless!” I roared at Lou Prophet.

  Both Mr. Prophet and Sam flinched. Actually, I think Doan did, too.

  “All right, all right. Calm down, Daisy,” said Sam. “Nobody said you were helpless.”

  “He was going to!” I pointed a quivering finger at Mr. Prophet. Don’t ask me why this one single comment of his had enraged me, unless all my emotions just managed to come together at that precise moment in time and spill out of my mouth.

  Ew. That sounds disgusting.

  “No, I wasn’t,” said Mr. Prophet.

  I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t screech again, not wanting to irk Sam any more than I already had.

  “Go ahead, Lou. What happened?”

  “Missus Mainwaring was showing Miss Daisy and me around her property and took us out to see her orange grove. When we got to this place”—he made a sweeping gesture with his hand meant to encompass the bare area around the gardener’s shed—“I saw the sun glint off’n a gun from a feller in that tree.” He pointed to the almost-bare branch of the orange tree that had been used for such a nefarious purpose.

  “How was it you saw him?” I asked, forgetting I didn’t want to annoy Sam. “I sure didn’t.”

  “Let me do the questioning, please, Daisy,” Sam requested through clenched teeth.

  “All right.” I folded my arms across my chest. I probably should have shoved a fist in my mouth.

  “I was lookin’,” said Prophet.

  “What made you look up into the tree?” asked Sam.

  “Years of practice,” said Prophet. “If ya’d met as many peckerwoods as I have in my life, you’d’a looked, too. I’m used to lookin’ around for folks who ain’t supposed to be where they are.”

  And there was another entry into my old-west dictionary. Peckerwood; which, I presumed, meant a bad man. I didn’t ask Mr. Prophet if my assumption was correct, recalling Sam’s precarious mood.

  “And he shot first?”

  “Yep.”

  “But he didn’t hit anyone?”

  “Saw him in the tree and shoved the ladies out of range,” said Mr. Prophet.

  Sam looked at me for confirmation of this ungentlemanly act, which had probably saved two lives. I nodded and then dared elaborate slightly. “He did. I was offended until I realized why he’d pushed us to the ground.”

  Sam nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “I was already drawin’ my Peacemaker when he shot, but his target wasn’t there any longer,” Mr. Prophet said.

  “You were drawing your what?” asked Sam. I’m glad he did, because I wanted to know the answer to his question, too.

  Mr. Prophet reached under his coat jacket and slowly withdrew a gun. It was a longish gun, although not half as long as his extremely long gun, with which he’d shot a man hiding in our hibiscus and rosebushes in hopes of murdering me. I think that firearm had been a Winchester ’73, about which my father knew a little bit. Pa had never shot men with his Winchester ’73, but only squirrels, ducks, rabbits and so forth.

  “Ah, now I see. Is that the genuine article?” asked Sam sounding fascinated.

  “It is,” said Prophet.

  Nodding, Sam smiled. “Now here’s an interesting piece of history,” he said as
Prophet handed him the gun, butt (or whatever you call it) first.

  “It’s my good ol’ .45 caliber, horn-handled, Colt Peacemaker. That there’s the gun that tamed the west.” His lips curled in something that wasn’t even a facsimile of a smile.

  “Why do they call it a Peacemaker?” I dared ask. “If it was made to shoot people.”

  “I think he means people used this make and model firearm to tame those old western towns you’re so fond of reading about,” Sam said, inspecting the gun and not looking at me. He opened the cylinder and perused its innards. “One shot fired.” He looked up at Mr. Prophet. “You’re a good shot, Lou.”

  “Had to be,” said Mr. Prophet. “Bein’ a good shot kept me alive in the old days.”

  “I guess so.” Sam closed the cylinder, handed the gun back to Mr. Prophet and turned to see how Doan was doing.

  Doan had actually stopped taking pictures and had commenced gazing in awe at the revolver Mr. Prophet was tucking back into his waistband. When he saw Sam eyeing him, he busily began taking photographs again.

  After he’d taken several photos of the late Mr. Frank Tucker from various angles, I helped him brush orange blossoms off the carcass so he could take more pictures of the same dead man from various other angles.

  “That’ll do, Doan,” said Sam after a while. “We can go in and call the undertaker. I don’t think we need to ask any more questions of Mr. Prophet.”

  “You believe him?” asked Doan, a question I thought quite rude.

  “Oh, yes,” said Sam upon a sigh. “We’ll need to talk to Missus Mainwaring and Miss Li, too, but I’m sure they’ll confirm Mister Prophet’s version of events.”

  “And I do, too. I was there. I mean here. Well, you know what I mean. At the time, I mean. When the guy shot at us and Mister Prophet shot him from the tree, is what I mean.”

  Sam didn’t even roll his eyes at me, but took my arm and began guiding me along the path back to the house. Mr. Prophet and Doan walked behind us. I don’t think Sam held my arm to prevent me from bolting, either, but because he was sorry I’d endured another unpleasant experience.

  Maybe I’m giving him too much credit.

  Naw. I loved my Sam, and he loved me.

  I could have lived happily forever if he hadn’t told me later in the day that when I got involved in dangerous situations, I sometimes made myself difficult to love. I think he was kidding, although I’m not sure.

  But this current mess wasn’t my fault, confound it!

  Fifteen

  By the time Sam, Mr. Prophet, Doan and I returned to Oversloot and the two ladies in the sunroom, Hattie had joined the gathering. She nodded when told the dead gent in the orange grove was Mr. Frank Tucker, as if she weren’t surprised.

  “I told you he’d come for Sally,” said she.

  “Yes, you did. I’m sorry he confirmed your opinion,” said Angie. “I don’t know how Sally’s going to react to this.”

  “Does she even need to know about it?” asked Hattie.

  Chewing on her lower lip, a gesture that surprised me because Angie had always struck me as a woman who knew precisely what to do in any situation, she said, “I…I don’t know.”

  “Might be better to wait and see how she gets along after a day or two,” suggested Li, who evidently didn’t suffer from Angie’s indecisiveness.

  I wondered, not for the first time, precisely what Li’s role was in Angie’s life. She seemed to live here, at the Orange Acres house, but why? What did she do here? Ah, well. Those questions would just have to wait.

  “Good idea,” said Angie, as if she were glad someone had made up her mind for her.

  It was then I noticed Li take Mr. Prophet’s arm and lead him to a corner of the room. There she more or less pushed him into a wicker chair, while she sat in another one close to his. He scowled superbly for several minutes until gradually, as Li quietly talked to him, his expression softened. I wondered if he and she had…well…if they’d liked each other in the old days. He’d told me before the love of his life had been a woman named Louisa, who’d had a French last name I can’t recall it at the moment, but I also knew he’d been a roué and a cad, so maybe he’d had feelings for Li, too.

  Heck, maybe she’d had feelings for him. She’d once upon a time given him a beautifully carved jade dragon, and he’d kept it. Maybe she’d loved him. From a lot of the books I’ve read over the years, I’ve concluded women often fall for bounders and womanizers, probably because they could be charming (the bounders and womanizers, I mean; not the women), although I had a difficult time picturing Mr. Lou Prophet ever having been charming. Perhaps the books were talking about men like Mr. Judah Bowman. I can see him charming the socks—and other garments—from susceptible females.

  Thank goodness I wasn’t one of those women, although I’d produced enough other mistakes to make up for this one oversight on my part. Anyhow, Mr. Bowman seemed firmly affixed to Angie these days. I couldn’t imagine her putting up with a man who played around with other women.

  Not that it matters, but I’ll never understand men for as long as I live. How can a man casually go from woman to woman and not feel anything? Especially if he claims to love a particular woman and then goes out and dallies with another, knowing as he does so he’ll break the first woman’s heart? Perhaps the men who do those things don’t care deeply for the women they’re cheating on? Maybe it’s because men don’t suffer the same consequences as some of the women men casually use and toss aside. Sam has told me more than once he’ll never understand women, but I personally think women are much easier to understand than men. At least women talk about stuff. Men keep everything bottled up inside.

  Also, never forget, men can’t get pregnant. It’s the women who become “with child.” Trust me when I tell you if a woman gets pregnant, she knows it, even if the man who got her that way is long gone. There. I said it. Shocking? Perhaps. Chastise me if you will, but it’s the truth, and you know it as well as I.

  Or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  As I pondered the differences between men and women—and the list of differences seemed to grow daily—Sam questioned Angie, Li, Hattie and Cyrus about Sally and Frank Tucker.

  “Before Li brought her here, Sally was working in a parlor house in Tombstone,” said Angie. “Li continues to takes trips to Tombstone periodically, attempting to help women leave the life if they want to. Most of them do.”

  I heard a grunt from across the room, but when I turned to look at him, Mr. Prophet wore an innocent expression. I frowned at him but didn’t say anything.

  Sam continued, “So Sally was one of the women you tried to help leave the parlor-house life behind and learn how to…What? Earn a living?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Angie said, “Sally has…other problems that need to be addressed before she can be trained for another kind of job. The perfectly ghastly man who owned the saloon in which she worked had managed to get her addicted to…well, to drugs.”

  “Which drugs?” asked Sam.

  With a sigh, Angie said, “Mostly laudanum. Chloral hydrate is another one. When Li found her, she’d begun using heroin, which is—”

  “Yeah, I know what heroin is. We’re seeing more and more of it these days.”

  This was true. Even I knew what heroin was, although I’d led a sheltered life (as opposed to the lives Angie, Sally, Flossie and many other poor woman had lived) because heroin had been used by a couple of evil men to murder a nice young Pasadena man a year or two earlier.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” said Angie with feeling. “At any rate, with Sally, we’re trying to deal with the drug issue first. She’s not a strong woman, and she’d formed a…I don’t know what to call it. She’d formed a relationship, if you can call it that, with Frank Tucker.”

  “Was he her manager?” asked Sam. Gee, “manager” sounded like such an innocuous word for so pernicious a job.

  “No,” said Angie.
“That honor goes to Mister Adolph Grant, who wants to murder me, too. Tucker was one of his hired guns, and he decided he wanted Sally for his own.”

  “And Mister Grant didn’t object?”

  “Of course, he objected, but Tucker was useful to him, so he more or less gave Sally to him.”

  “But…but that’s slavery!” I cried. Then I slapped my hand over my mouth, which had gone and done it again. I said, “Sorry, Sam.”

  Sam, naturally, said, “Huh.”

  But bless Angie’s heart, she said, “Daisy’s right. Sally was no better than a slave when Li found her, but she claimed to want out of her way of life.”

  “You sure she was telling the truth?” Sam asked.

  With a nod, Angie said, “She still says she wants to better herself. She understands blind obedience and devotion, and her allegiances shift from day to day. Let’s just say I hope we can help her. We’ll have to think of some kind of training for her so she’ll be able to support herself after we take care of the drug issue. And the reliance-on-a-rat issue.”

  “Good luck with that,” Sam said dryly.

  “Thank you.” Angie’s voice was dry, too. Not unlike the Sahara Desert, in fact.

  When he asked to talk to Sally herself, Angie said, “If you don’t mind, would you please question her in a day or so? She’s extremely fragile, and I worry about her mental state.”

  “What’s the matter with her that makes her fragile? Her addiction?” Sam asked. Blunt and to-the-point, my Sam.

  “Yes, and other things, including her so-called love for Frank Tucker. She’s been through some truly awful times, Detective Rotondo, and she…” Angie took a deep breath. “Well, we’re trying to deal with the drug issue first. Then, with a good deal of love and luck, we may be able to steer her in a new direction. I…I hope you won’t make her talk to you today.”

  “She’s telling the truth, Sam,” I dared say. “Poor Sally looked as if a gentle breeze would blow her down. In fact, it kind of did, only Li caught her before she hit the dirt.”

  “That’s so,” said Li, giving me an approving nod.