High Spirits [Spirits 03] (9 page)

      
After glancing out the window to judge the weather, I decided to wear a black-and-white checked suit I’d made of a lightweight woolen fabric I’d bought on a bolt-end from Maxime’s Fabric Store.

      
I loved Maxime’s. They always had the best deals. I’d edged the collar and pockets with black bias tape, and when I wore the suit with a black hat, shoes, and bag, I was the picture of a dignified young matron with a spiritualistic bent going out to chat with ghosts on a crisp winter’s day.

      
I’d recently had my hair bobbed by the barber Billy and Pa frequented, so I didn’t have to fuss with my hair, thank God. I just plopped my black hat on my head, stuck a pin in it in case it got windy, and sailed out into the kitchen, where the men in my life waited.

      
“Think I’ll stop at the grocery store and pick up some onions and potatoes before I go to Mrs. Kincaid’s place,” I said as I shoved my tarot cards into my handbag. “Vi said she needed both.”

      
“Good,” said Pa. “Pick me up a can of baked beans while you’re there.” Pa, a transplanted Yankee, loved his baked beans. He’d made a batch a few months before this, but he wasn’t much of a hand in the kitchen, a trait he shared with Ma and me, and Aunt Vi considered baking beans beneath the talents of a cook like her. She was probably right, although those beans had tasted awfully good.

      
“Will do. I’m also going to the library. Anybody want anything?”

      
“No thanks,” said Billy. “The new
National Geographic
came yesterday. I’ll read that.”

      
“I’m set,” said Pa.

      
“Okay.” I was hoping a new crop of detective novels had been catalogued. I was friendly with Miss Petrie, who worked in the cataloguing department of the Pasadena Public Library, and the wonderful woman always kept new mysteries back for me before they were put on the shelf. I was blessed in my friends, as I was in my family, two facts I tried always to keep in mind when the burdens of my life felt overwhelming. I wasn’t always successful.

      
Have I mentioned before this that Spike was a cagey little critter? Well, he was. As soon as he saw me emerge from the bedroom all dressed up, he knew I was leaving the house, and he wanted to go too. He hurtled from Billy’s lap and dashed to the front door, leaping around like a ballerina in his excitement. Watching his antics, Billy chuckled, which made my heart leap as joyfully as Spike was doing.

      
“Come back here, boy,” he advised his dog. “You’ve got to stay home with me.”

      
“Here, poochy, poochy,” Pa called, waving the cup of coffee he’d poured for himself at Spike, as if as an inducement.

      
I knew better than to think Spike would prefer coffee to a ride in the motor. “I’ll get him.” I walked to the door and scooped up the dog and had turned to take him back to the kitchen when a knock came at the door. Still holding Spike, I opened it. At first I couldn’t comprehend the sight that met my eyes.

      
“Pudge?” Pudge Wilson, the neighbor’s boy, was clad in his Junior Boy Scout uniform and looking pretty natty considering he was nine years old, skinny, eternally scraped up, and freckled to a fare-thee-well. Pudge (I don’t know who’d given him his nickname, but it didn’t suit him) adored me, bless him. He also wore an unusually sober expression on his shining, freckled face.

      
Behind Pudge, whose presence, while unexpected, was at least understandable, stood a woman. It took me several seconds and a lot of brain twisting before I realized it was Flossie Mosser standing on my front porch. Nonplused doesn’t half describe the state of my mind at that moment. I’m sure I gaped rudely in my astonishment.

      
Pudge spoke first. “How do you do, Mrs. Majesty?”

      
Good Lord. I knew his business was serious when he addressed me so formally. My attention snapped back to the boy. “I’m fine, thanks, Pudge. What’s up?”

      
“I was walking to school when this lady asked me if I knew where you lived,” Pudge explained, sober as a judge. “So I showed her the way to your front door.” His face broke into an impish grin, and he finally looked like the Pudge I knew.

      
“Ah.” Enlightenment dawned. Pudge took his Junior Boy Scout duties seriously, as did most Junior Boy Scouts and Boy Scouts in those days. What’s more, it was only about eight o’clock in the morning, and he’d already accomplished his good deed for the day. No wonder he was grinning. He could spend the whole rest of his day being a normal, everyday nine-year-old boy. “Thank you very much, Pudge.” 

      
Pudge saluted me, bowed to Flossie, and bounded down the porch stairs. Flossie and I both watched as he skipped up the street, resuming his aborted walk to school. We turned and looked at each other at the same time. At once she focused on Spike.

      
“Cute dog,” she said.

      
“Thanks,” I said.

      
And then I didn’t know what to do. All I knew for sure was that I didn’t want either Billy or Pa to meet Flossie Mosser. Shoot, if Billy didn’t like my friendship with Harold Kincaid, I didn’t even want to
think
about what he’d say if he thought I’d taken up with the likes of her.

      
Still, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Spike started wriggling, and I was afraid he’d get loose. I reached out and touched her arm, which made her flinch, which puzzled me. “Wait here for a second, please. I’ll be right back.”

      
“Sure.”

      
That morning Flossie wore a bright orange dress with bangles, a black fox-fur stole, flesh-colored stockings with high-heeled black shoes, and a black hat with a veil. Her costume most definitely wasn’t anything a Pasadena lady would wear during the daytime. Or any other time, for that matter. Pasadena was a dignified, tasteful community. Flossie stuck out like a mud lark in a herd of swans. My heart lurched when I thought I saw black-and-blue bruises and swollen eyes behind her veil.

      
Maybe I was wrong. I hoped so, as I toted Spike back to the kitchen.

      
“Who was that at the door?” Billy wanted to know. He would.

      
“Pudge. He wanted to know if he could do a good deed for us before school.” It almost wasn’t a lie.

      
Both Billy and Pa chuckled. “That’s Pudge, all right.” Pa swallowed the rest of his coffee. “Get it over with first thing, and then cut up for the rest of the day.”

      
“My thoughts exactly,” said Billy.

      
Mine, too. “Here, Billy, hold your dog. He wants to go with me badly.”

      
“Don’t blame him.” Billy’s smile was wistful.

      
I gave him another quick kiss, wishing it were he leaving the house to earn our daily bread instead of me. Not that I didn’t enjoy my line of work, but I’d have preferred being a normal wife. And mother. I tried not to think about never having children, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. “I’ll be home as soon as I can be, and we can go for a walk, sweetheart.”

      
“That’ll cheer Spike up.”

      
True. I only wished our attempts to get Billy’s legs and lungs working again did more to cheer him up.

      
As soon as I shut the front door behind me, I hustled Flossie to our Chevrolet, which was parked in front of the house. “Get in quick.” I hadn’t been mistaken about the bruises, unfortunately. The poor kid’s face was a mess.

      
She got in, sliding into the machine with great care, as if more of her was bruised than just her face. I suspected it had been Jinx who’d delivered the blows, and my distaste for the man blossomed into full-blown loathing. “Don’t say anything until we get away from the house.” I don’t know why I told her that. Probably too many crime novels. All I know is my nerves were twanging, and I didn’t want Pa or Billy—or Jinx Jenkins or Vicenzo Maggiori—to see me with Flossie.

      
“Sure.” She didn’t sound happy.

      
When I glanced over at her, she didn’t look happy either. Her hands were strangling each other on her Halloween-orange skirt, and she had her head bowed, staring at her fingers as if she’d never seen them before. Her whole aspect was that of a woman who knew nobody wanted her because she was no good.

      
My heart gave a hard spasm of sympathy. I told myself not to judge her too lightly too soon. I didn’t even know her. And, although I had pegged her the night before as a woman more sinned against than sinning, I might well be wrong. It wouldn’t have been the first time my judgment had turned out to be faulty, and that’s putting it mildly.

      
Not to mention the fact that my imagination often soared into incredible flights of fancy. For all I knew, Flossie had just got herself lost and only wanted to ask me directions to the public library. Unlikely, but not impossible.

      
Besides all that, even if she did turn out to be only a victim—of fate or stupidity, or anything else—I didn’t really want to get involved. I’d had experience in rescuing a damsel in distress once before, and it hadn’t been any fun. It had also caused me no end of trouble and worry. I sure didn’t want to get involved with another one.

      
The Chevrolet had been aimed downhill when we got into it, so I continued south on Marengo until Bellefontaine hove into view. I turned right, figuring neither Billy nor Pa was likely to catch us there, and pulled over to the curb. Then I turned to take a good gander at Flossie. And then I flinched.

      
“Gee whiz, Flossie, what happened to you?”

      
A big sob escaped her before a word did, and then it was, “Jinx.”

      
I knew it. The fact that I was right caused no triumph to rise within me. “The lousy bum.”

      
She nodded.

      
“Gee, kid, I’m really sorry.”

      
She opened her shiny black bag and pulled out a hankie. Mopping tears from her cheeks, she said, “Thanks.”

      
That took care of that. I didn’t know what to say next. Neither, it soon became clear, did Flossie. I knew what I should do, however. So, as much as I didn’t want to get involved in anyone else’s problems, figuring I already had plenty of my own, I took a deep breath and spoke.

      
“Is there anything I can do to help you, Flossie?” It sounds mean-hearted and petty, but I was hoping she’d say no.

      
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said, sniffling pathetically.

      
I wanted to ask why she’d done it if she didn’t mean to, but didn’t, knowing such a question would be unkind. “Don’t be silly. It’s not a bother.”
Liar
. But what’s a kind-hearted, moral, upstanding spiritualist supposed to do when faced with such a dilemma? If I really
could
chat with spirits, I might have asked one of them to snatch Jinx out of this world and hurl him into Hades, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t the first time in my career that I’d wished I wasn’t a fraud.

      
“It’s only that you was so nice to me last night.”

      
She thought I’d been nice to her? I’d only spoken a couple of words to her. Shoot, how did people treat her normally, if she thought that was nice? Another peek at her veiled face answered that question.

      
“I probably shouldn’t’ve come.”

      
Her voice had turned thick with tears, and my soft heart squished. I took it as an omen and groaned inside. I’d been gripping the steering wheel with my gloved hands so tightly that my fingers had begun to ache. With a sigh, I released the wheel and sat back. “You’d better lift that veil and let me get a good look at you, Flossie.”

      
She shook her head. Even as she did so, she lifted the veil. When she turned to stare me in the eyes, it was all I could do not to cry out in distress. But honestly! How could Jinx do that to a person who must have weighed a good fifty pounds less than he did and was female, to boot? Both of her eyes were black and swollen, her lip had been split and was also swollen, and there were finger marks on her throat. “Geez Louise, Flossie. Why’d he do that?”

      
“He was mad about the raid.”

      
“And he took it out on
you
?” My mind boggled. It did that a lot.

      
“Yeah. He gets mad and hits me. He don’t mean it.”

      
Oh, boy.

      
If he didn’t mean it, why’d she look like that? “You’d better stay away from Jinx from now on.”

      
Tears dripped from her swollen eyes. She dabbed at them with her handkerchief. “He’s my fellow. I love him.”

      
I gaped at her for several seconds before bursting out, “How can you love a man who does
that
to you?” I made an effort not to shout, but the words came out in sort of a bellow.

      
Poor Flossie shrank back against the seat of the automobile. Grabbing the door handle, she whispered, “I’m sorry I come, Mrs. Majesty. I should oughta go now.”

      
I reached out and latched on to her arm. “No! No, don’t go. Listen, Flossie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

      
“Other people have said it before you.” She sounded utterly defeated. “I guess I’m too dumb to believe it.”

      
I didn’t want to delve into that subject. “Have you been to a doctor?”

      
She shook her head. “I’m all right.”

      
Like heck she was. Speaking slowly and thinking a good deal harder than I usually do before I say anything (sad, but true), I said, “Flossie, no man has the right to beat anybody the way Jinx beat you. It’s against the law.”