It was around three p.m. on that bleak but otherwise lovely April day when Harold gave me my first ride in his brand-new Kissel Gold Bug. The bleak part was that he drove us both to the Pasadena Police Station, where I hoped like heck Sam would be in his office.
The officer at the front desk frowned at Harold and me when we entered. Because I was by this time scared nearly out of my wits, I gave him back frown for frown. I might have overdone my own expression a bit, because the fellow started in his chair, turned his frown upside down and said, “May I help you?”
“We need to see Detective Rotondo, please. It’s an emergency.” I didn’t smile back.
“If it’s an emergency, perhaps I can help you,” said the fellow at the desk.
I squinted at the name tag on his uniform. “Officer Johnson, you can’t do anything for us. We need to see Sam Rotondo. Now!”
“But—”
“I’m his fiancée, and I need to speak with him now!” The entrance to the police station was largish and not well insulated, and my voice echoed a trifle.
Officer Johnson gave another start and picked up the receiver to his telephone. I was in a nervous fidget by the time someone answered on the other end of the wire. Officer Johnson said, “Detective Rotondo? Yes? Yes, your—”
I grabbed the receiver from the poor fellow’s hand and shrieked into it, “Sam! Sam, Vi’s gone missing! We can’t find her!”
A brief pause preceded Sam’s, “Daisy? Is that you?”
“Yes!” I bellowed. “Vi’s missing! She’s been kidnapped! Oh, Sam, she’s gone!”
“Cripes. Quit yelling. Give the receiver back to poor Johnson. I’ll be right there.”
So I did. Give the receiver back to Officer Johnson, I mean. He had pushed his chair out a ways from his desk. He looked upon me as he might look upon a lunatic escaped from an asylum, probably because I was behaving like one. All of a sudden, I turned and crumpled into Harold’s arms.
“Oh, Harold! Where is she?”
“Take it easy, Daisy,” Harold advised. “I’ve never seen you fall apart like this. Well, except when that car ran you down.”
“But it’s Vi! Vi’s missing!”
The other door in the room banged open and Sam appeared, big and solid and reassuring. I forsook Harold and threw myself at poor Sam, who evidently felt compelled to put his arms around me, although he didn’t keep them there long. After giving me a brief squeeze, he pushed me gently away and, holding on to my shoulders, frowned down at me.
“Very well, what’s this applesauce about Vi being missing?” He said, shifting his gaze from me to Harold and back again.
As I was snuffling and attempting to stop shedding tears, Harold took over, bless him. “She seems to be…well, missing, Detective Rotondo. There was a disturbance at my mother’s house this morning, and then, after Daisy finished dealing with Mother—for which service she deserves a medal of valor—we were unable to find either Mrs. Gumm or Cullen O’Hara, Mother’s new chauffeur.”
Handing me a handkerchief, and leading me to a chair in the lobby of the police station, Sam said, “What kind of disturbance?”
So Harold told Sam what had happened. I hate to admit to heaving intermittent sniffles of despair as he did so, but it’s true. Sam kept one of his big hands on one of my shoulders as Harold spoke, which gave me a modicum of comfort.
But, oh! Vi was missing!
“What do you know about this O’Hara character?” asked Sam of Harold.
“Not a damned thing. My mother hired him after she decided Jackson was too old to be driving her around all the time.”
“He’s not old!” I cried from my chair.
“Shut up, Daisy,” said Sam, not unkindly.
I sniffled some more.
“O’Hara’s an Irish name, isn’t it?” Sam asked.
“Yes, and he has an Irish accent.”
“Hmm,” said Sam. “Wonder if he’s mixed up in the mess in Ireland.”
This comment caught my attention. “Wh-what mess?”
“The Irish are always fighting each other and England,” Sam explained. “Their civil war supposedly ended in 1922 with the establishment of the Irish Free State, but factions are still killing each other. Some folks in the United States are encouraging one side or the other.”
“Oh, Lord, it would be just like my mother to hire an Irish rebel or an Anglo-Irish fighter,” grumbled Harold. “Maybe that’s why O’Hara has that expensive radio.”
“Radio?” said Sam. Then he shook his head. “Listen, you two. You’re only confusing me. Come to my office, and maybe we can figure out what’s going on. I don’t like it that you can’t seem to find Vi.”
Sam’s words set me off again, and I wailed, “I don’t, eeeither!”
“Sheesh, Daisy,” said Harold. “Keep it down, will you? The day’s already awful. I don’t want to end up deaf along with everything else.”
“Amen,” said Sam. “I need more information before we can begin doing anything at all. So come along.”
I stifled my sobs as Sam led us through the door and down a hallway to another door, opened that door, and we entered his office. Harold and I had both been there before, I more often than Harold, but I can only think of one other time when I’d felt so awful in Sam’s office. This time might even have been worse than the other one. More detectives—or maybe they were just plain old policemen—sat at other desks in the office, and they all stared at our little procession. Sam ignored them. I tried to. Not sure what Harold did.
Sam held a chair for me to sit in, so I sat. He opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out another handkerchief, and handed it to me. This action on his part surprised the tears out of me. “You have spare hankies in your desk drawer?”
“You’re not the only person to come in here and cry all over me,” said Sam drily.
“Oh.” Guess police detectives see a lot of human unhappiness in the course of doing their jobs.
“So, tell me again what happened.” Sam looked at Harold. “You’d better tell it, Kincaid. Daisy’s a wreck.”
I deny Sam’s assessment, mainly because it was true.
So Harold went over the events that had transpired in his mother’s home earlier in the day. Sam took notes, frowning the whole time. It wasn’t a grumpy frown, but one of intense concentration.
“Did you call Joe, Daisy?”
Joe’s my father, in case you wondered.
I nodded. “He sounded confused. I was afraid to tell him I feared for Vi’s safety, because I don’t want him to h-have a-another h-h-heart attack!” I nearly started bawling again, but didn’t. Small blessing.
Sam nodded and turned his attention to Harold. He did pat my shoulder, which was nice.
Just as Harold finished the retelling of how we’d discovered Vi’s disappearance and how we’d searched for her, a man from across the room pushed his chair back—making a scraping sound on the police department’s worn-out linoleum floor—and hurried to Sam’s desk, waving a piece of paper.
“Detective Rotondo,” said the man. “You’d better take a look at this.”
“Thanks, Carpenter,” said Sam, taking the paper.
His eyes widened as he read the words written thereon, and then he scowled ferociously. To Carpenter, he said, “When did this come in?”
“Right now. Thought you’d better see it right away.” Carpenter stood there, looking unhappy and staring at Sam for a couple of seconds before he said, “I’m really sorry, Sam.”
After heaving a gigantic sigh, Sam said, “Me, too, Carl. Thanks.”
Carl Carpenter? If my last name were Carpenter and I bore a son, I wouldn’t name him Carl, but that’s probably just me.
“Let me know what we in the department can do to help,” said Carpenter.
“Thanks, Carl,” said Sam again. Then he peered at Harold and me and flapped the paper Carpenter had handed him in the air. “My buffle-headed nephew’s broken out of jail.”
“Frank?” I asked a trifle too loudly.
“He’s the one,” said Sam. Gazing at Harold, he said, “Are you sure the chauffeur who’s gone is Irish? He isn’t maybe a secret Italian, is he?”
“Cullen O’Hara?” said Harold. “Name sounds Irish to me, and he sounded Irish, too.”
“Huh.” Sam sat and pondered Cullen O’Hara and Frank Pagano, his awful nephew, for a few minutes.
I was too astounded by this latest news to say anything.
Harold asked Sam something that sounded pertinent. “Wait a minute here. Isn’t the jail right here in City Hall?”
“Yeah,” said Sam.
The Pasadena City Hall sat on the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and Union Street. It, too, was scheduled to be replaced soon, although it had only been in use since 1903. Seemed like a short lifespan for a building, but what did I know?
“Then how the heck could he escape?” I demanded, trying with what little internal fortitude I still possessed to keep my voice level.
“He walked off a work crew,” said Sam.
I stared at him for a second or three. “A work crew? What was he doing on a work crew? Your nephew doesn’t work! He steals and cheats people for a living!”
Sam gave me a perfectly hideous scowl, and I stopped speaking so loudly. Even put my hand over my mouth. I honestly hadn’t meant to yell.
“Yeah. I know. I told them to keep him locked up.” Standing, Sam added, “And I aim to find out why my orders were disobeyed.”
I sensed somebody was going to be demoted or lose his job over this day’s work. Fine by me. Frank Pagano, Sam’s ghastly nephew, had tried to murder me not too many months prior. I said, “What should Harold and I do, Sam? Do you want us to come with you?”
Sam stared down at me as if I’d asked him if he’d like to join me in jumping off the Colorado Street Bridge. “God, no! You go home. Try to keep Joe and Peggy calm. If you can locate him, get Lou Prophet to go to your house and stay there. He might be down the street.”
“Down the street” was Mrs. Mainwaring’s house. Mr. Prophet and Miss Li, who worked for Mrs. Mainwaring, had rediscovered each other the prior week. They’d known each other in Tombstone. They made…quite a pair.
Sam went on, “We’re going to have to have a council of war about this. I’ll take care of the police angle.”
“But you’ll come home in time for dinner?” I asked hopefully. Then I remembered Vi was missing and said, “Oh, Sam!”
To Harold, Sam said, “Take care of her, will you? Is her car still at your mother’s place?”
“Yes, it is.”
“We’ll get it later. Just take her home and take care of her, all right?”
Gazing at me doubtfully, Harold said, “I’ll try.”
“Thanks. I’ll bring something to the house for dinner.”
“Eh, don’t bother. I’ll get the Castleton to bring something up.” Harold stopped speaking suddenly and then burst out, “Aw, hell! My mother’s going to have hysterics, too. Gawd, I hate this!” Nevertheless, he was relatively gentle when he hauled me out of my chair and guided me to the door.
Sam said in a distracted tone of voice, “Thanks, Kincaid. I’m going to the jail now to see what happened.” He added in an entirely different sort of voice, “And why.” I’d heard this tone of his before. It was the one that pretty much told whoever he was talking to they’d better have a good reason for having done a deed, or they’d find themselves flayed alive and thrown off the Santa Monica Pier wearing cement overshoes, and he hoped the sharks would have a tasty meal.
As Harold guided me gently to the door, I said, “I don’t think I can handle your mother’s hysterics about Vi, Harold. Can you tell her I’m sick or something?”
“Don’t worry about my mother, Daisy. Let’s just get you home and try to keep the rest of your family calm.”
“Oh, Lord! I don’t want Pa to have another heart attack!” I said.
“Cut it out, Daisy,” said Harold. Sharply, too. “Between us, Sam and I will take care of things.”
“And Lou,” said Sam.
“And Lou,” Harold repeated.
“Oh, my Lord,” I whispered.
Harold said, “Shut up, Daisy.” His voice was not gentle.
I shut up.