Unsettled Spirits (23 page)

"Thank you, Mrs. Wright. I'm very glad things worked out for Evans."

"The best of the best," said she, and rang off in high humor.

Well. Glad to have been of assistance even though I hadn't been really, I walked back to the dining room, where everyone sat staring at the doorway, anticipating my return.

"That was Mrs. Wright," I told them. "She thinks I'm the reason the sheriff's search party found Evans."

"I think so, too," said Sam, almost surprising the socks off me. Not that I was wearing socks.

"Good for you, Daisy!" said Pa, making me happy even if I didn't really have anything to do with Evans' rescue.

"I'm proud of you, Daisy," said Ma.

"That's wonderful, Daisy," said Vi.

Spike wagged at me. Spike always wagged at me. Therefore, I decided to take Spike's wag to heart and not try to correct my family's misconceptions about my overall assistance in helping to rescue Evans.

There was an article in the following day's
Pasadena Star News
, telling the citizens of Pasadena and Altadena all about the failed bootleggers and how they'd kidnapped a man and held him for ransom. I hadn't heard about the ransom part before I read the article. In fact, I'm sure no ransom demand had been made, or I
would
have heard about it. Were newspapers always inaccurate like this? I didn't approve. Not that the newspapers cared.

The article also said that one Mr. Frederick Kingman, a member of the criminal gang, had died overnight of a heart attack.

How convenient for him.

My life seems so very strange sometimes. Trees, bootleggers... I mean, what next?

Chapter 18

The next day I again made my way to the Underhill Chemical Company, this time for an interview with Mr. Stephen Tiefel, who worked in the Underhill personnel department, and for a tour given to me by Mr. Robert Browning, and then to a nice lunch. I hoped it would be nice.

To tell the truth, I was a trifle anxious about that lunch. True, we were both single people, and it was also true that we'd lost loved ones. However, I was technically engaged to Sam Rotondo, even though no one except Sam and I knew about it, and I didn't feel quite comfortable taking luncheon with another young, single male when I was, in effect, an engaged woman. Bother. I could confuse myself more easily than just about anyone else I knew.

Once more I parked in the dirt lot, noticing the same thing I'd noticed the day before: not many automobiles sat there. I again suspected most of Underhill's underpaid employees had to take a bus or walk to work. The more I learned about Mr. Underhill, the gladder I was that he was no longer cluttering up the earth. How sinful of me, huh?

Robert Browning stood next to the receptionist's desk when I entered, and he gave me a big smile. "Good morning, Mrs. Majesty. Let me take you to Mr. Tiefel's office, so that he can interview you."

"Thank you."

I smiled at the receptionist, who smiled back at me, and Robert did as he'd told me he'd do and led me through the big door, down the ugly hall, and into another room, where a bespectacled man sat behind a desk, looking worried as he stared at a bunch of papers before him. He glanced up when Robert Browning opened the door.

"Mr. Tiefel, I have Mrs. Majesty here for you to interview."

Mr. Tiefel stood. "Ah, yes. Thank you, Mr. Browning. Mrs. Majesty, please take a seat."

He waved at a chair in front of his desk, and I sat and smiled at him, not sure what to do next. I mean, it wasn't as if I applied for and was interviewed for jobs every day of my life. This was, in fact, a first for me.

"Here's Mrs. Majesty's application," said Robert, handing Mr. Tiefel a sheet of paper.

"Thank you, Mr. Browning." Mr. Tiefel gazed at the paper before him through his thick lenses, blinking several times.

"When you're through interviewing Mrs. Majesty, please give me a call, Mr. Tiefel. I'm going to take her on a short tour of the plant."

Mr. Tiefel looked up from my application and squinted at Mr. Browning. "What? Oh. Yes, I'll do that. Thank you, Mr. Browning." His gaze returned to my paperwork.

Robert Browning patted my shoulder, tipped me a wink, and left Mr. Tiefel's office.

"Oh, wait! Mr. Browning."

But Robert Browning had already shut the door behind him. Mr. Tiefel said, "Bother. I'm to take you to see Mr. Underhill after we're through here."

"Oh." Heavenly days, why? I didn't ask.

"But never mind. I'll just tell Mr. Underhill to call Mr. Browning when he's through with you." Mr. Tiefel recommenced looking at my application.

Through with me? What, precisely, did that mean? I didn't ask that, either.

It seemed to take him an awfully long time to read my application. As I'd never been employed before, except as a spiritualist-medium, I couldn't figure out what was so fascinating about my application. However, I remained sitting and smiling and waiting. After several eternities of that, I cleared my throat, and Mr. Tiefel jumped slightly in his chair.

"Oh! Uh, oh, I'm dreadfully sorry, Mrs. Majesty. I beg your pardon. I got lost in thought for a moment."

It was more than a moment. However, I only said in a voice that fairly dripped with honey and molasses and other sweet stuff, "That's quite all right. I understand there are great changes being made at the company since Mr. Underhill's untimely death."

"Untimely," said Mrs. Tiefel as if he didn't think so. "Yes. Well, that's as may be." He squinted at me through his spectacles. "So you want to work on the line, do you? Have you ever done work of this nature before?"

He ought to know. He'd been staring at my application for what seemed like hours. "No. I need a job in order to help support my family. I'm a widow." I hung my head and tried to look pitiful.

"Sorry for your loss," said Mr. Tiefel as if he didn't really mean it, although I think he would have if he hadn't been thinking about other things. "Line jobs aren't difficult, although you'll be on your feet all day, and they're tiring. You'll work from eight in the morning until six in the evening. You'll have a ten-minute break in the morning and in the afternoon, and forty-five minutes for lunch at one p.m."

Lordy, that sounded like hell to me. "I see."

"You'll have to wear a head covering and gloves. We work with toxic chemicals here, so we all have to be careful, and we require that our line girls wear face masks covering their noses and mouths."

Whooey. Greatly daring, I said, "I understand there were some problems here before, but that they've been... er, fixed."

Mr. Tiefel grimaced. "Yes. Mr. Underhill wasn't... um... Well, never mind about that."

"He wasn't concerned about the welfare of his workers?" I hazarded.

Another grimace. "You might say that." He squinted at me. "Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Majesty, but do you type or take dictation? You, er, appear to be more of an office worker than a line worker."

Surprised, I asked, "Why?"

"Er, well, your general appearance and... and grammar, and that sort of thing."

Aha. Line girls weren't well educated and couldn't expect more out of life than working at a plant bottling (or boxing or canning. I had no idea) deadly chemicals, eh? Didn't sound right to me. Then again, Billy used to accuse me of having Socialist sympathies, so I'm probably not to be trusted on these issues.

"No. I'm sorry. I never learned any useful skills in school. I'm only fit for the lines, I fear."

"I see. Come with me, please, Mrs. Majesty."

So I went with him, out the door and down the dreary hall to another office, where Mr. Tiefel opened a door and ushered me inside. To my intense shock, Miss Betsy Powell sat in a chair in front of Barnett Underhill's desk, industriously taking down shorthand in a notebook. Both Mr. Underhill and Miss Powell jerked their attention to Mr. Tiefel and me.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Underhill. I thought you were free to interview Mrs. Majesty now. I should have knocked."

"Interview?" said Betsy Powell, her shock as great as mine. "But aren't you a—"

"I need a job," said I, ruthlessly interrupting her. Impolite, I know. But I didn't want her to blurt out anything that might reveal my true employment.

"Oh," said Miss Powell.

"Will you please leave us for a moment, Miss Powell?" asked Mr. Underhill politely. "I'd like to chat with Mrs. Majesty for a moment."

"Of... of course," said Betsy Powell, fairly leaping from her chair and dashing to the door, clutching her secretarial pad to her bosom and gazing fearfully at me the whole time.

When the door closed behind her, Mr. Underhill said, "Thank you, Mr. Tiefel. You may leave Mrs. Majesty with me now."

"Very well, sir," said Mr. Tiefel, and he, too, fled, although he didn't look scared as he did so.

After the door closed behind Mr. Tiefel, Barrett Underhill smiled at me and gestured me into a chair. "I understand you're assisting Miss Castleton in her search for Mrs. Franbold's killer, if killer there be. Frankly, I don't care who killed my father. I'm only glad he's gone, although if Mrs. Franbold was also murdered, I'd like to know who did her in. She was a lovely person, unlike my father, who wasn't."

I sat there with my mouth hanging open, trying to find words in me somewhere in order to respond to this statement. "Um... I don't think they even know yet if Mrs. Franbold was murdered, Mr. Underhill. If anyone knows, the police haven't released the information. I... Uh, I was only interested in how your plant works, mainly, and to meet people who worked with your father."

He sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers before his face. "So you're not really looking for a position on the lines here?"

Oh, dear. What to say? What to do? I decided honesty, while not always the best policy, might work in this instance. "Truthfully, no. I'm mostly just trying to help Miss Castleton, even though I don't know the cause of Mrs. Franbold's death yet. No one has told me if she was poisoned or just... I don't know. Dropped dead of a heart attack or something, I guess."

"Thank you. I appreciate your honesty, believe me."

Did he? Very well. "I'm also interested in how anyone could get cyanide in order to kill your father. I... Well, I understand he was an unpleasant man, and I haven't yet met anyone who's sorry he's gone, but still... Murder isn't very nice." Was that weak, or what?

With a huge sigh, Mr. Underhill dropped his hands to his desk, sat forward, and said, "No, I guess it isn't. Life is sure easier without him, though. He was a dreadful man, and if he hadn't died, we'd probably have had to wrest control of the company from him by force, or he'd have ruined it completely."

"My goodness. How does one wrest control of a company from the company's owner's hands?"

"We'd probably have had to vote him out of office, although that wouldn't be simple, because he owned the majority of the stock in the company. However, I'm doing my best to bring the plant back into a profitable position."

"Um... How are you doing that? If you don't mind my asking."

"I don't mind." He smiled. He had a nice smile. Not at all like his late father's wrinkled contortion that used, for him, to pass as a smile. "We have a board of directors, and, except for my father, all of the board members want to bring our equipment up to current standards and assist our staff members with monetary recompense commensurate with their contributions to the company. To bring the Underhill Chemical Company into the twentieth century, as it were."

"And that includes the girls who work on the lines?"

"If it weren't for the girls who work on the lines, the company wouldn't be able to operate at all. So yes. That includes the girls who work on the lines." Barrett Underhill shook his head. "My father was not only as miserly as Scrooge, but he was wicked. I know that sounds terrible, but it's true. If you don't believe me, ask my mother or my sisters."

I didn't have to ask them; they'd told me, without any prompting, what they'd thought of the late Grover Underhill. "I'm sorry."

"Thank you. Still, I suppose the police need to investigate his death."

"Yes."

"Even though whoever did it deserves a reward."

"Oh, my. He was really that bad?" I asked, although I'm not sure why I was aghast. Heck, if anyone deserved to be dead, it was Mr. Grover Underhill, I reckon. To hear a son talk about his father like that made me kind of sad though.