Fine Spirits [Spirits 02] (5 page)

      
“Daisy says it's going to take a good deal of thought and meditation in order to discover the best way to deal with it,” confided Mrs. Bissel, taking care to lock the door to the basement, as if a lock could keep a spirit (or ghost) confined. It seemed to me that she got along with her household staff almost as if they were family. I thought that was sweet.

      
“I hope you can meditate fast,” Ginger said, sounding a speck tart. “Whatever's down there is scaring us all to flinders.”

      
“Now, Ginger,” said Mrs. Cummings. “Daisy will do her best.”

      
“Of course, she will,” affirmed Mrs. Bissel.

      
“Well,” said Ginger, “better you than me, Daisy. I wouldn't go down into that basement alone to save myself.”

      
Who said anything about me going down there by myself? I didn't ask the question, certain it would reflect poorly on my abilities to exorcize the demon belowstairs. Not that I had any, even it
was
a demon, which I doubted.

      
Rather, I chose to appear arcane and to speak in my best mediumistic voice. “The spirits can be difficult. Yet they may listen to reason from one who knows their ways.”

      
After having a cup of tea and a piece of gingerbread, I left Mrs. Bissel's mansion, wondering how the devil I was supposed to get rid of whatever was living in her basement. I suppose I'd have to figure out who or what it was first, and then decide what to do.

      
I have a very good imagination, a characteristic I inherited from my father (my mother has no imagination at all). All the way home on the red car, I thought about Mrs. Bissel's basement's possibilities. First I pictured myself being attacked and brutalized by a huge, vicious escapee from some prison or other.

      
I didn't know if there were any prisons nearby, so when I'd wrestled that mental image into unlikeliness, I featured an escaped lunatic brutalizing me instead. Crazy people could be living anywhere. For all I knew, hundreds of families in Pasadena and Altadena kept their insane relations confined to attic rooms in their houses. Any of them might have escaped and might now be seeking shelter in Mrs. Bissel's basement, and might also object to my interference with their living arrangements.

      
That thought frightened me more than the notion of encountering a bear or a mountain lion, although I don't know why it should have. I suppose that in reality bears and lions are more dangerous even than lunatics.

      
At any rate, by the time I got home again, night had fallen, the weather was cold and windy, and I was thoroughly scared and out of sorts. It was all I could do to keep myself from running from Colorado Street to our cozy little house, but I didn't do it. I'm a Gumm, after all, and we Gumms are tough.

      
My mood didn't improve when I walked through the front door and saw we had company. This particular company wasn't the good kind. This wasn't a long, lost friend or a relative visiting from San Francisco and bearing gifts and candy. Nor was it Reverend Smith from our church, paying a social call on the family. It wasn't my pal Harold Kincaid dropping in to invite me to a premiere of one of the pictures he'd done the costuming for.

      
No. This company was nothing like that, more's the pity. When I entered our snug little bungalow that evening, I saw that Billy and Pa were playing gin rummy with Detective Samuel Rotondo, from the Pasadena Police Department.

      
Nuts
, I thought. If my luck wasn't running true to form--that is to say, uniformly bad--I didn't know what was.

 

      
 

Chapter Three
 

      
Detective Sam Rotondo and I had met a few months earlier at Mrs. Kincaid's place, first when Stacy Kincaid, Mrs. Kincaid's awful daughter, had run amok, and later when Mr. Kincaid had stolen several thousand dollars' worth of bearer bonds and tried to hot-foot it out of the country. His fell plan hadn't succeeded, primarily because I had forced Sam to listen to my well-reasoned theories. He hadn't wanted to. He'd resisted my suggestions at every turning in the road. Eventually my theories had been proved absolutely right. He still hadn't gotten over it, either.

      
We didn't get along, Sam and I. It was my rotten luck that Billy and my own father, whom I'd always considered a true gem of a man until then, had decided they liked Sam a lot. I had once hoped that Billy's friendship would soften Sam's attitude toward me, but it hadn't happened.

      
Sam was always coming over to our house to play gin rummy with them and eat my aunt Vi's good cooking. I didn't think he deserved Aunt Vi's cooking any more than I thought he deserved Pa and Billy's friendship.

      
To be fair, I was glad for Billy's sake that he had a friend who treated him as if he wasn't a cripple. For my own sake, I wish Sam Rotondo would take a long walk off a short pier.

      
Sam's profession and mine were destined to collide, no matter what. I'd known from the minute I met him that he had no use for fortune-tellers (because he'd told me so). When I'd explained that I wasn't a fortune-teller, but a spiritualist, he'd rolled his eyes. He and Billy were as one on the spiritualist issue, darn it. The fact that Pa liked him, too, made me feel left out and abused even in my own home.

      
Because I'd be slowly roasted over Mrs. Bissel's barbeque pit before I showed Billy how little I wanted Sam there, I sauntered over and surveyed the card table. “Who's winning?”

      
Billy grinned up at me. “Me.”

      
It was an effort, but I grinned back. “Glad to hear it.”

      
I know it sounds petty, but I resented the fact that Sam Rotondo, a man who didn't like me and whom I didn't like, was able to cheer Billy up when I couldn't. All I ever seemed to be able to do was irritate my husband. The sad, not to mention foolish, truth was that the situation made me want to cry
again
. I wondered if my monthly was due. I'm not a weepy person as a rule, and only get moody during that time of the month.

      
“Will you boys just look at my beautiful daughter,” Pa said, winking at me. “That's a pretty dress, Daisy. Did you make it yourself?”

      
“Sure did, Pa. Thanks.”

      
“You look like you've just been to a funeral.”

      
I glared at Sam, from whose lips the above comment had issued, annoying but not surprising me. “Thank you.”

      
“She's been up to Altadena,” Billy told Sam. “She's turned into an exorcist. She's trying to get rid of a ghost in some rich lady's house.”

      
“It's Mrs. Bissel's house. And it's not a ghost,” I said, pushing the words through clenched teeth.

      
“What is it?”

      
“I don't know yet.”

      
“Good God,” said Sam.

      
He laughed. So did Billy and Pa. I wanted to conk someone over the head--maybe three someones. Instead, I said sweetly, “I'll go change clothes. Have you fellows had supper?”

      
“We're waiting for your aunt,” said Pa. “She called to say she's bringing leftovers from Mrs. Kincaid's house.”

      
This news cheered me up. Every time Aunt Vi cooked, no matter where she did it, we ate well. “Does she know there's an extra person to feed?” I shot another good glare at Sam. He wasn't looking at me, which figured, not that my glares ever seemed to affect him to the least degree. He might as well have had elephant hide, his skin was so thick.

      
“Pa told her,” Billy supplied. Ever since his own parents died during the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, he'd called my father “Pa.”

      
I guessed that left nothing more for me to do, so I took myself off. I stopped to chat with Ma, who was in the kitchen looking confused as she gazed at a recipe card. “What's up, Ma?”

      
“I don't understand this.” She pointed at the recipe card. It was a good thing Aunt Vi lived with us, because neither Ma nor I could cook worth beans. “I was trying to make a raisin pie using this recipe that Vi copied out of the last issue
of Good Housekeeping
, but I don't understand it. What does a capital T mean?”

      
I looked at the card. “Um . . . I don't know. Teaspoon?”

      
“I think that's a small t-s-p.”

      
“Oh. Tablespoon?”

      
“I think that's a capital T-b-s-p.”

      
“Oh.” I read the rest of the recipe. “Sorry, ma. Beats me. The pie sounds good, though. Did you have to buy a lemon?” The recipe called for a cup of lemon juice and a teaspoonful of lemon rind.

      
“No. Mrs. Longnecker gave me a lemon from her tree.”

      
“Ah. I'm surprised she had any left.”

      
We both stared at the recipe card for a couple of moments, neither of us knowing what the heck a capital T stood for.

      
At last Ma spoke. “Well, I guess I'll put in a tablespoon-full of baking powder and see what happens.”

      
“Sounds logical to me.” It sounded as if the pie filling was going to take the lid off the oven, actually, but I was too depressed in spirits to question Ma's judgment on the recipe issue, especially since I knew my own was just as bad, or worse. All I wanted to do was change into something comfortable, crawl into bed, and pull the covers over my head. Such a blessed escape was not in the cards for me that evening.

      
Sometimes I got to wondering if Billy was right about me. Maybe what I did for a living really was evil and wicked. I know for absolute certain that I wished I
could
communicate with spirits and read the future in the Tarot cards or communicate with Rolly through the Ouija board. I'd have liked to know if life was ever going to get better for Billy and me.

      
Of course if the spirits, the cards, and Rolly all told me I was doomed to remain unhappily married to Billy for as long as I lived, I don't know what I'd have done about it. Resigned myself to an miserable future, I suppose.

      
Nuts. There was no quick answer to my problems. I decided to make the best of them, at least for the evening. Then I told myself I was being stupid, and that it didn't matter what I decided or didn't decide; my circumstances were what they were, and whatever was destined to happen would happen.

      
Brother. Sometimes I wondered if my job wasn't getting under my skin a bit too much.

      
I was in a truly blue mood when I hung up my pretty black dress, eyed the puppy-claw snag with disfavor, put my hat away, rolled down my stockings, stowed my shoes, threw on my pink-and-white-checked house dress, stuffed my feet into a pair of floppy slippers, and went back to the kitchen. The pie was in the oven, and I hoped the capital T had meant “tablespoon,” but it didn't matter a whole lot. If the worst thing to happen in the world was a bad pie, life would be good.

      
Aunt Vi had just arrived with jars and plates of food, so I got to help her unload. The thought of food made my stomach growl, and I realized I'd forgotten to eat lunch, which tells you what kind of state I was in, because I
never
forget to eat. Virtually never. Clearly, I'd forgotten that day.

      
“Go on with you, Daisy,” Vi said. “You've been working all day, too. Go set the table while your mother and I get the food heated.”

      
Aunt Vi was trying to be nice. Vi knew, and Ma knew, that the cooking gene had missed me. I could boil a fair pot of water, but that was about it as far as my culinary talents went. Because of my lousy mood, I felt as if she were kicking me out of her kitchen because I was no good. Telling myself not to be an idiot, I said, “Okay,” and went to the dining room.

      
Billy rolled in as I was laying out the silverware. I glanced over at him and produced a smile from a reserve stock I kept for such occasions. I didn't feel like smiling. I still felt like crying. “How much did you win, sweetie?”

      
“Fifteen cents.” Billy grinned at me.

      
“Wow. Don't spend it all in one place.”

      
“I won't. I'm adding it to the fortune I've already won from Sam.”

      
The only good thing about this day so far was that Sam Rotondo was apparently a very bad gin rummy player and Billy kept winning pennies from him. I was pretty sure Sam wasn't letting him win, either, because Billy wouldn't stand for that.

      
“I think your husband cheats,” came a grumbly voice from the living room.

      
When I glanced over Billy's head and into the living room, I saw Sam and my father folding up the card table and putting the cards away. I'm sure Sam was joking, but I took instant exception anyway, which again shows what kind of humor I was in. “My Billy would never cheat,” I said coldly.

      
“Heck, I don't
have
to cheat when I'm playing with Sam,” Billy added, laughing.

      
I scolded myself for being a drip. I ought to be grateful to Sam for taking Billy away from his pain and misery for a few hours a week. I tried to produce a smile, failed, and said, “There you go,” which meant nothing.

      
Pa and Sam trooped into the dining room just as I'd laid out the last plate. I was reaching for glasses when I felt a large presence behind me.

      
“Here, Mrs. Majesty, allow me.”