High Spirits [Spirits 03] (3 page)

      
“It’s there. You’re not supposed to see it, sweetie. It’s illegal. They try to hide them.” He tugged on my arm, but I didn’t move.

      
“Oh, Lord, Harold, I don’t want to do this!”

      
“You’re such a pessimist, Daisy. Can’t you look upon it as an exciting new experience?” Harold laughed merrily.

      
I didn’t. “No. I almost wish there was another spiritualist medium in Pasadena. Maybe your mother would have hired her to do this instead of me.”

      
“No she wouldn’t. You’re the top of the line when it comes to spiritualists, my dear, and Mother would never hire another one. You’re the epitome. Top of the trees. A mistress of your art. Why, even your name is perfect. Desdemona Majesty.”

      
I rolled my eyes and said, “Huh.”

      
“Nonsense. You’re brilliant at your line of work, Daisy!”

      
“Yeah, you’ve said that before.” I know I sounded grouchy. I felt grouchy. “But I don’t like breaking the law, whatever I am. Especially for your sister’s sake.”

      
“It’s not for Stacy’s sake, sweetie. I don’t like her any better than you do, but I do love my mother, and the poor dear is worried sick about Stacy.”

      
“I know, I know.” What I wished was that someone would drive a stake through Stacy’s heart and rid the world of a blight. Sure, her daughter’s death would make Mrs. Kincaid sad for a while, but ultimately I’m sure we’d all be better off. Problems are seldom solved so handily, however, and I didn’t expect Fate to stick an oar in and help me out with Stacy. Fate wasn’t exactly my bosom pal. Nevertheless, I gave in and resumed walking.

      
My persona couldn’t be faulted, considering I was a soon-to-be felon—unless it was a misdemeanor to frequent speaks. I was dressed in a dark green silk suit that I’d made for Christmas. It had satin edging around the collar and a low waist with a satin belt that tied on the side at my hip. It complemented my dark red hair and was gorgeous, and I usually felt good when I had it on. I’d decided to wear it that evening, knowing I’d need all the help I could get in the feeling-good department. The dress wasn’t working.

      
“Well,” Harold said, continuing our conversation as we walked through a sycamore grove (they
were
sycamores) in the dark, “at least you won’t have to do this more than once.”

      
“Sez you,” I retorted crossly. Not only was I stumbling over roots and leaves and things, and probably snagging my best pair of black silk stockings—thanks to the rum-running gangsters’ need for privacy—but I had no faith whatever that Mrs. Kincaid would let me off the hook after only one séance. I did, however, have infinite faith in her daughter’s ability to thwart anyone who attempted to help her. Therefore, I feared Mrs. Kincaid’s entreaties that I appear at the speakeasy were destined to continue. The notion filled me with a sensation I still find difficult to describe. Dread and terror come close, with a liberal dose of resentment thrown in. “Where the heck is this place, anyhow?”

      
“It’s in this grove. An old ranch house, I understand.”

      
“I don’t like breaking the law, Harold.”

      
He laughed. Big help. Suddenly I saw, tucked away among some trees, a faint light shining from a lamp mounted on the pillar of a porch attached to what looked like a barricaded building.

      
It turned out to be an old ranch house, just as Harold had predicted. Its windows had been boarded up, and the porch looked rickety. I’d have been willing to turn tail and run away and tell Mrs. Kincaid that Jinx and his cronies must have moved quarters, but Harold remained undeterred. Retreat probably wouldn’t have worked anyhow since Stacy would have pointed out my mistake. I supposed it was as well to get it over with tonight; surely I’d be able to think of an excuse to get out of coming here again.

      
As if he’d done this before, Harold led me along a path through a jungle of weeds and to a back porch that looked to be in an even sorrier state of disrepair than the front one. He tripped agilely up the scarred wooden stairs and rapped on the door as if he belonged there. I followed in his wake, looking over my shoulder, expecting to see uniformed coppers following us with their guns drawn.

      
No such luck. I heard something that sounded like a bolt being lifted, and a gimlet eye appeared at a small hole in the door. A gruff voice said, “Yeah?”

      
Harold whispered, “Oh, you kid.”

      
The eye disappeared, and the door opened. My heart was heavy when I trailed after Harold into the house.

      
Golly, what a difference between the outside and the inside! I’m not sure what I expected, maybe a continuation of the shabbiness exhibited by the exterior of the place. Instead, I stepped into what looked like a bordello designed by a color-blind seventeenth-century French courtesan. Not that I know what that would look like, but it’s the closest I can come to describing my impression of the place.

      
Red-and-black flocked paper covered the walls. Plush red carpeting had been laid upon the floor beneath our feet. The decor was undoubtedly meant to impart the impression of opulence, but it gave me a queasy feeling in my tummy (although that might have been a result of my state of trepidation). Crystal chandeliers with dangly ornaments were supposed to shed light on all below, but the cigar and cigarette smoke was so thick, everything looked merely fuzzy. A jazz band blared away in the main room, which lay straight ahead of us. I remember my footsteps dragging; I didn’t want to go forward.

      
Harold grabbed my hand and yanked, and I had no choice. “Come along, dearie. Let’s see what my sister finds so fascinating about this place and these people.”

      
I’d never before wanted to do anything Stacy Kincaid did, so Harold’s reasoning left me cold. But it was too late to back out now. I’d already committed myself. Nodding, I would have followed Harold, except that the man who’d opened the door to us, a bruiser of a fellow in a yellow-checked suit who must have been nearly seven feet tall and almost as wide, stopped us by the simple expedient of holding out an arm as big around as a tree trunk. We couldn’t move.

      
“Hold it a minute.” He sounded as if somebody had sandpapered his vocal chords. “I gotta tell Jinx youse guys is here. Wait a minute.”

      
Harold and I exchanged a glance. “Um … sure,” I said.

      
The noise was ghastly. While we waited for the monster to deliver his message and return to us, I gazed glumly into the main room. A long bar had been built parallel to the far wall, behind which stood what looked like a battalion of bartenders mixing and shaking and handing out drinks, all of which I presumed contained alcohol. A huge mirror backed the bartenders, reflecting the revelry going forward in the main room. Girls in skimpy outfits, net stockings, and shingled hair walked here and there with trays strapped to their shoulders that were supplied with cigarettes and cigars and matchboxes.

      
Leaning close so that I could whisper directly into Harold’s ear, I asked, “Where does it all come from?”

      
He shrugged and shouted back. “No sense whispering. Nobody can hear us anyway.”

      
He was probably right, but I didn’t want to raise my voice. I was scared, darn it. “Where does all the liquor come from?”

      
“Beats me.”

      
“Oh.” Since he didn’t seem to know any more than I did about the mysterious world of speakeasies, I let my question ride and stared some more, wondering if any of the scantily clad cigarette sellers were girls I knew from school. None of them looked familiar, and I was glad. I’d be done for if anybody besides Harold and Stacy recognized me.

      
Approximately three hundred people swarmed around the place, dancing to the music, laughing, chattering, and screaming. I think they were only screaming because it was the one way they could make themselves heard over the band, which was playing “Honolulu Eyes.” Almost everyone who wasn’t actively dancing held both a drink and a cigarette or a cigar. Most of the ladies (I use the word loosely) used holders for their cigarettes. I guess that was supposed to be sophisticated. I knew for a sinking certainty that I was going to smell like an ashcan when I got home.

      
The atmosphere was supposed to be festive, but it appeared only sordid to me. Maybe that’s my Methodist upbringing talking, but I don’t think so. I doubted that any of those people were truly happy. Then again, neither was I, so I guess I shouldn’t talk.

      
Whatever the mood of the attendees, you should have seen their clothes. I’ve never beheld so many beads in my entire life. Or so many rolled stockings and knees, most of which were rouged, I’d bet. In a couple of years, a dance called the Charleston was going to sweep the country, but most of the people in that room were foxtrotting. I think. Whatever dance they were doing, they were doing it with an air of devil-may-care abandon.

      
All the band members were dark-skinned and appeared a good deal happier than the people dancing and drinking, although that impression, too, might have been colored by my sense of unease. I surveyed the band in wonder, until I got to one particular face.

      
Then I gasped, grabbed Harold’s arm, and cried, “Good heavens, Harold, that’s Jimmy, Mr. Jackson’s son!”

      
Squinting into the melee, Harold said, “Who? Where?”

      
“That one, playing the trumpet. Over there.” I didn’t want to make any large movements—God alone knows why—so I jerked my chin toward the band.

      
“There are five men playing trumpets, Daisy,” Harold pointed out.

      
“Maybe, but there’s only one who looks like he’s ten years old.”

      
“Oh, yes. I see him now. So he’s Mr. Jackson’s son, is he? Who’s Mr. Jackson?”

      
“Who’s Mr. Jackson?” I stopped gaping at the band and gaped at Harold instead. “He’s your mother’s gatekeeper, for heaven’s sake! He’s manned the gate at your mother’s estate for years.”

      
“Oh.” Sheepishly, Harold muttered, “I don’t keep close tabs on Mother’s servants.”

      
I shook my head. “It’s got to be against the law for a boy that young to be playing the trumpet in a place like this.”

      
Harold shrugged. “It’s against the law for all of us to be here, if you want to get picky.”

      
I could tell Harold didn’t share my outrage. But Jackson was a friend of mine. He’d instructed me in many aspects of Voodoo and Caribbean spiritualism. I liked Jackson a lot, darn it, and I wondered if he knew about his young son’s career as a trumpet-player in a speakeasy jazz band.

      
Probably. Some people don’t care how they make money, as long as they make it. Look at me, for Pete’s sake.

      
“Do you see Stacy anywhere?”

      
I squinted into the swirling smoke. “Not yet. Did you tell her we were coming?”

      
“Mother did. Stacy and I don’t chat on a regular basis.”

      
Perfectly understandable. I didn’t say so because the monster came back. “Follow me,” he rasped.

      
So we did.

Although I hadn’t believed it to be possible, I became even more uncomfortable as Harold and I approached a knot of people on the far side of the main room. The knot contained Stacy (oh, joy), another woman, and two chaps who didn’t look as if they believed in brotherhood and tolerance toward their fellow men. One was an oily specimen with his curly brown hair slicked back, and the other was Italian. I could tell because he looked a lot like Sam Rotondo.

      
From what Mrs. Kincaid had wailed at me, I presumed the woman who wasn’t Stacy to be Flossie, the oily man to be Jinx, and the Italian to be either Jinx’s boss, whose name I didn’t know, or another gangster whose name I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know them. In fact, I didn’t want to meet any of those people. Neither did Rolly.

      
“Harold!” Stacy screeched. She ignored me, which was okay by me. She rushed to her brother and made a show of being pleased to see him. I knew better. Stacy and Harold got along like lions and lambs before Christmas was invented, although I couldn’t honestly have told you which one was the lion. Probably Stacy.

      
“Stacy,” Harold mumbled, trying to avoid her hug. He couldn’t do it, but he didn’t hug her back.

      
I suppose Stacy could be called a good-looking girl. She had a pretty face with delicate features, and she dressed in the latest modes. Well, I did, too, but Stacy favored the most radical of modern fashions, the ones that bring to mind the phrases, “flaming youth” and “flappers.” Her skirts were always too short, her accessories too jangly, her lipstick too flashy, her hair too short (and too blond), and her voice too loud. Invariably, too, she held a cigarette in a long, shiny black holder and blew smoke in everyone’s faces. Her total air was that of a brat of a girl who was trying too hard to be something she wasn’t: the heroine in
This Side of Paradise
. That goal would have been impossible for any of us. Stacy was too stupid to know it.

      
“Jinx! Jinx!” she shouted, hauling Harold over to the group. “This is my brother Harold! And this”—her enthusiasm chilled, although mine was equally frigid—“is Daisy Majesty.” She flapped a hand in my direction.