High Spirits [Spirits 03] (5 page)

      
At any rate, I didn’t want to conduct the darned séance, but I, stupid to a fault, had agreed to it. So I was stuck, and I aimed to do as good a job as I could, if only not to irritate Vicenzo Maggiori, whose reaction to irritation might prove painful, or worse, to my humble self.

      
Approximately ten minutes into my act (it usually only takes about five minutes, but I was
really
nervous), I began to exhibit symptoms of falling into a trance. I’d started moaning and groaning a trifle, and allowing my head to droop, and that sort of thing.

      
In case you’ve wondered, I never had any truck with ectoplasm, which I consider merely disgusting. I mean, who wants to have some kind of slimy junk all over his table, or the floor? I know some people thought that producing ectoplasm was a great way to prove you were in communication with the dead, but not me. Ick. However, I digress.

      
After another few minutes Rolly appeared, God bless him. I love Rolly, and not merely because he’d served me well for so many years. The story between Rolly and me, you see, is that we had been soul mates approximately a thousand years ago in Scotland. His spirit had stayed with me through all my incarnations ever since. You’ve got to love a guy with that much sticking power. Besides, given the state of my own marriage, it was comforting to think that some man, even if he was a figment of my own imagination and dead for a millennium, would love me through time and all eternity. It sure didn’t look as though that sort of love would be mine in this life. Not only that but Rolly, who was ostensibly a Scotsman, had an accent all his own, which I’d pretty much mastered. Because of his built-in accent, I didn’t have to fiddle with other types of accents. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle an Italian mobster, for example.

      
Anyhow, Rolly had showed up, and we were just getting into the meat of the séance, during which Carmine “The Hand” Bennadutto was going to speak through Rolly to his godson, Vicenzo Maggiori, when a door opened, completely shattering the mood.

      
Maggiori said, “Huh!”

      
Totally disconcerted, I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there, sagging. It was a most uncomfortable position. Until that evening, none of the séances I’d ever conducted had been interrupted at just that point—the point at which everything’s going to begin to happen but hasn’t yet.

      
A man silently slithered over and bent to whisper in Maggiori’s ear. I felt the big boss stiffen and wondered what the heck was going on and when it would stop. And
then
something happened that totally floored me. Maggiori released my hand, which flopped onto the table, and stood up.

      
He said softly, “I’m awful sorry, youse guys, but Jinx and me, we gotta go. But I want to do dis again later.” On my other side, Jinx, too, let go of me, and there I was, supposedly in a trance and communing with spirits, but with no living human being connected to me.

      
Well, golly! Since, to all intents and purposes, the séance was over, I made up my role of a medium deserted in mid-trance extemporaneously, having had no practice in the part. No one was seated next to me, so I remained slumped over, wondering how long I should take to recover my senses.

      
The matter was taken out of my hands when all of a sudden the door burst open, lights flared on in the room, and a booming voice hollered, “Cheese it! Da cops!”

      
In less than a second, Harold, Stacy, Flossie, and I were alone in the room, blinded by a flood of light, and trying to shade our eyes against it. I don’t think I spoke a single word, being too astounded by events. I remember Harold saying something like “Shit!” or “Damn!” but I didn’t hold his bad language against him. If I’d thought of it, I’d probably have sworn, too.

      
The lousy place was being
raided!

      
* * * * *

      
Approximately an hour later, Harold, Stacy Kincaid, Flossie Mosser, and I sat in Detective Samuel Rotondo’s office at the Pasadena Police Station, which was situated behind the Court House on the corner of Fair Oaks and Walnut. I was still shaking with leftover panic and trying not to cry. Harold was grinning, Stacy was pouting, Flossie seemed resigned to her fate, and Sam looked like a volcano about to erupt. Where Jinx and Vicenzo Maggiori were was anybody’s guess.

      
And I was done for. My goose was cooked. I was a goner.

      
“I-I thought you didn’t get involved in County matters.” My teeth chattered, my voice shook, my heart raced like a greyhound chasing a rabbit, and I was pretty sure I was going to die from fright any minute. I didn’t feel like fighting with Sam. But darn it, it was the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that was supposed to watch out for things in the area where we’d all been arrested. Yet here we were, in the Pasadena Police Station, being glowered at by Sam Rotondo, my worst nightmare.

      
“We cooperate,” he growled. “Which is more than I can say for some people.”

      
Meaning me. I’d have argued, but I was too rattled. Plus, I was still straining not to cry. We Gumms are made of tough stuff. If I cried in front of Sam, I’d hate myself. Of course, since I already hated myself, there was probably no point to the struggle. Nuts.

      
After skewering me with a hideous frown fully long enough for me to wish I was dead, or at least visiting my father’s relatives in Massachusetts, Sam jerked his head at a policeman who stood behind Stacy and Flossie. “Take those two to the lobby, Joe. I need to talk to Mrs. Majesty and Mr. Kincaid for a minute.”

      
Oh sweet heaven. I watched them go, wishing for the first time since I’d met her that Stacy wasn’t leaving a room in which I existed. As soon as the door shut behind the two women and the copper, Sam turned on me.

      
“Damn it, Daisy Majesty, does Billy have any idea where you were and what you were doing tonight?”

      
“St-stop shouting at me.” My protest was feeble. I’d done a terrible thing that night and deserved to be shouted at. Sam was quivering like the aspic on one of Aunt Vi’s preserved chickens. Ignoring Harold in favor of berating me, he loomed over me like a mountain, and he was doing a darned good job of making me feel like a crawling bug or a plague-infested rat.

      
“Damn it, how could you do this to your husband? Don’t you feel any sense of responsibility at all?”

      
That hurt a lot, mainly because my sense of responsibility regarding Billy was as large as an alp—and also because I thought I’d treated my husband shabbily by agreeing to help Mrs. Kincaid. I didn’t want Sam to know how much his words stung. Still, the shock of hearing him shout them made me suck in a gulp of air.

      
“Really now, Detective Rotondo. There’s no need for that sort of thing. Daisy has felt terrible about this job ever since my mother talked her into accepting it. She was absolutely petrified the whole of the evening and could speak of nothing but how ashamed she was to have misled her husband.”

      
Bless Harold Kincaid’s sweet heart. Sam didn’t buy it, which is no less than I’d expected of him, but I appreciated Harold’s attempt to make him see the truth.

      
Sam swung around to face Harold, making poor Harold start. “
Misled
? That’s a fine word for it, I’d say. She lied to him! Damn it, why did she do it, if she was so damned miserable?”

      
“Because she’s a kind-hearted woman who tries to help people. She feels obliged to my mother—don’t ask me why—and she agreed to take this job even though she didn’t want to.”

      
“Nuts. Your mother’s got more money than God. Mrs. Majesty’s got a family that needs her a lot more than Mrs. Kincaid does.”

      
“I’m sure that’s true. But don’t you see that working at her job as a spiritualist
is
taking care of her family?” Harold sounded irritated, which was unusual for him.

      
I flinched. Harold proved his mettle. He hollered right back at Sam,
“She had to work in a speakeasy this time!”

      
I’d covered my ears at Sam’s bellow. With Harold’s, I decided I’d cowered enough. Gumms aren’t supposed to cower. Lifting my hands (which still trembled, by the way) from my ears and sitting up straighter, I frowned at Sam. “Stop shouting, both of you.” I turned to Harold. “I appreciate the support, Harold, but Sam knows darned good and well that I have to work for a living. He just doesn’t like how I do it.”

      
“No more does your husband,” Sam said, shoving the words through his clenched teeth. I’d seen Sam angry lots of times, but boy, I’d never seen him
that
mad. Unfortunately for my humble self, I couldn’t fault him for his ire that night.

      
Harold tried to help again. “Honestly, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Detective Rotondo. Daisy was merely performing a séance. Neither of us took a drop of alcohol.”

      
If I hadn’t been so upset, I might have found the sight of Sam going through the various stages of fury interesting. I’d noticed before that his olive skin, which wrinkled up as when he pursed his mouth when he got mad at me, made yellowish lines, as opposed to the white lines my own fair skin made when likewise engaged. That night I was too miserable to increase my knowledge of which colors olive-skinned Italians turn when infuriated.

      
Sam included both Harold and me in his next glower. “And you think that because you weren’t drinking, that makes visiting an illegal gin joint right?”

      
“Oh, stop it! Harold didn’t mean that, and you know it. He meant that the only reason we went there was because of the séance. Harold only went because I was too scared to go alone.”

      
The full heat of Sam’s continuing fierce glare focused on me. It would. “And why do you suppose that was?”

      
Crumb, it felt as if a boulder had lodged in my throat. I knew I was going to cry pretty soon, and I just
hated
to show Sam how upset I was. I managed to swallow my lump for the nonce. “Stop being so darned sarcastic. I’m not an idiot, you know. I didn’t want anything to do with those awful people.”

      
I was beginning to remind myself of Mrs. Kincaid. That was bad because I knew Mrs. Kincaid to be a fluffy-headed nitwit. If there was anything on earth that could have made me feel lower than I already did, it was that.

      
But you did it anyway, Sam said flatly. “How much sense does that show, do you think? Did you give a rap about your family while you were fulfilling Mrs. Kincaid’s wishes?”

      
That was it. The tears came spilling out. I felt
so
stupid. “Yes!” I blubbered. “I knew Billy would hate it! That’s why I didn’t tell him.”

      
Harold, bless him for a saint, handed me a clean white handkerchief, and I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. I looked at Sam, wishing I was one of those women whom people feel sorry for when they cry—you know, the fairy-tale princesses of the world who look even more gorgeous than usual when teary-eyed. I’m not. My eyes get red, my complexion gets blotchy, and my nose runs. Not a pretty sight.

      
“I never wanted to hurt Billy, Sam Rotondo, and if you don’t know that by this time, you’re an idiot yourself.”

      
My pathetic aspect didn’t affect Sam noticeably. He frowned at me for another couple of seconds, then turned to Harold. “Would you mind leaving us alone for a few moments, Mr. Kincaid? I need to talk with Mrs. Majesty.”

      
Harold squinted at Sam and then at me. “Daisy?”

      
What the heck. Maybe Sam was going to shoot me and put me out of my misery, although I didn’t expect such a happy ending to that awful day. “It’s all right, Harold.”

      
Still, Harold hesitated. “Are you sure?” He cast a glance at Sam that I would have resented had it been directed at me. Sam’s hide was tough as an elephant’s, and he didn’t even seem to notice it. His attention was centered on me—and not in a kindly way, either.

      
I heaved a gigantic sigh. “Yeah. I’m sure. Thanks, Harold.”

      
“I’ll wait for you right outside the door,” Harold assured me.

      
“Great. Thanks.”

      
“I’ll take you home,” Harold said.

      
“Not until we’ve concluded our business here, Mr. Kincaid. Don’t forget that you’re both still facing booking and arraignment.”

      
I think I whimpered.

      
“I’ll still take her home,” Harold said firmly.

      
“I can take her home, for God’s sake,” said Sam.

      
Harold and I exchanged a glance. If I looked as doubtful as Harold, it couldn’t have boosted Sam’s ego any. Harold said, “I don’t know ...”

      
The volcano erupted at last. “Oh, for God’s sake! Get the hell out of here, Kincaid. I’m going to talk to Daisy whether she likes it or not, and if she doesn’t, I may just let the two of you spend the night in the slammer instead of letting you out on bail. It’s what you deserve!”

      
Afraid he might mean it, I said, “It’s all right, Harold. Sam will take me home.” I made a valiant effort and came up with a grin. “And if he doesn’t, please have the coppers scour the foothills tomorrow.”

      
Neither Sam nor Harold thought that was funny. I guess I didn’t, either.