Harold’s brilliant yellow Kissel Gold Bug had already arrived at Mrs. Bissel’s house by the time Sam, Mr. Prophet, Frank and Officer Doan arrived in Sam’s big black Hudson. A couple of other automobiles sat in the circular driveway, but I saw no police vehicles. Then I thought, Of course there are no police vehicles parked in the circular drive, you idiot! Except for those of us in the know—more or less in my case—nobody else was supposed to realize the police would be there.
I drove up to Mrs. Bissel’s house with the Wilson contingent, following closely on Sam’s Hudson’s heels. Or wheels. When we got out and Sam and his passengers did likewise, we all sort of clumped together for a couple of minutes.
“That there’s one yellow car,” said Mr. Prophet, eyeing Harold’s Gold Bug with disfavor.
“You don’t like yellow?” I asked him.
“Don’t mind yellow. That car is too yellow.”
Sam had brought his Hudson to a stop a little farther up the drive than Harold’s machine, although he could have parked beside it because the drive was so wide. Not that I cared where he parked. Made no never mind to me, as Pa was fond of saying. Later on in the evening, I understood why he’d parked where he’d parked.
“Don’t think I’d want a yellow automobile,” said Doan from the back seat. “It would be too conspicuous.”
“As long as you’re not breaking the law or anything, it shouldn’t matter how conspicuous it is,” I said. Then I wondered if I’d spoken the truth. “Would it?”
“You never know,” said Sam. “Pasadena doesn’t have much trouble with gangs, but back in New York City, if you drove around in a car like that, you’d be a moving target for kids with bricks and bats.”
“Kids?” I said faintly. “Kids are armed with bricks and bats and they hit people’s automobiles with them?”
“Sometimes,” said Sam.
I mused about this fact of life in New York City and wondered if Sam wouldn’t rather honeymoon somewhere else after we married. But I didn’t broach the subject then. The upcoming evening was enough to occupy my thoughts. As Sam took my arm and prepared to walk into the house with me, I touched my gown under which Mrs. Jackson’s juju lay against my chest. It hadn’t given me any sort of hint or heat rush for a couple of days. I hoped it hadn’t run out of juice.
“You look gorgeous tonight, Daisy,” said Sam when I stood beside him with my black bag under my arm.
“Thank you. I hope I won’t ruin this dress. I was saving it for our honeymoon, but thought it might make me feel good if I wore it tonight.”
“Good thinking. Has it?”
“No.”
A rustling noise came from the canopy made by the monkey puzzle tree’s branches. When I turned to see what had rustled, I saw Officer Oversloot, out of uniform, ducking under the tree’s spiky leaves. Sam turned to speak to him.
“Everything in place?” asked Sam of Oversloot.
“As planned,” said Oversloot to Sam.
How come everyone seemed to know what was going on this evening but me?
I told myself to stop whining. According to Sam, I knew everything except the intricate details of the police tactics. Then something almost relevant occurred to me.
“But wait a minute,” I said to Sam. “I thought the L.A. County Sheriff was in charge of things in Altadena.”
“We’re cooperating this evening,” said Sam, smiling down upon me.
“Oh,” I said.
“Try to stop worrying, Daisy. We’ve got the evening’s activities as choreographed as if we aimed to stage a ballet.”
“That’s comforting.”
He gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “Everything will go perfectly. Trust me.”
“I trust you. I don’t trust the crooks.”
“This evening there are more of us than there are of them,” he said.
“That’s comforting, actually.”
“You bet.”
So Sam and I walked to Mrs. Bissel’s back door, where a smiling Keiji Saito awaited us. Officers Doan and Oversloot each took one of Frank Pagano’s arms and led him to the side-back door of the house, the door leading onto the service porch. Lou Prophet limped along behind them with his gut-shredder aimed at Frank Pagano’s back.
It wouldn’t exactly break my heart if Mr. Prophet had to plug him full of lead pellets, but it would sure be a mess to clean up. Therefore, I hoped Mr. Prophet’s gut-shredder wouldn’t be called into action, as I didn’t want Mrs. Bissel to lose any staff over this night’s shenanigans.
I think shenanigans is an Irish word. Or maybe it isn’t. It might as well be, as far as this evening went.
“Good evening, Daisy,” said Keiji, grinning broadly. “And good to see you again, Detective.”
“Good to see you again, too, Keiji,” said Sam as he escorted me into the house. Through the back door. That’s because the front door could only be accessed by traipsing across a mile or two of terraced front yard or from a side walkway leading from the Maiden Lane side of the house to its massive front porch. “I trust we got here before everyone else?”
“You sure did, except for Mr. Kincaid.” Keiji looked at his own wristwatch, squinting a bit because the light had begun to fade. “Most of your people are already on the roof, Detective, and Mr. Buckingham is on the service porch to lead the rest of them up the servants’ stairs.”
“Good. Did anyone have any questions you couldn’t answer?”
“No.” Keiji laughed and amended his statement. “Well, that Wilson kid asked if he could go upstairs in the dumbwaiter, but his father told him no.”
Sam and I laughed, too. “Oh, my,” said I. “We never had a dumbwaiter in any of our houses—not that we’ve had awfully many houses. If we had, I’m sure Walter would have broken it trying to ride it up and down in it.”
“It is tempting to a kid, I guess,” said Keiji.
He took my black imitation-silk stole—plain, since I’d sewn about fifty-million sequins on my gown and bandeau—and hung it and Sam’s hat on the coat tree inside the back door. The back door, by the way, led off the pretty patio and into the sunroom. I loved Mrs. Bissel’s house. It wasn’t a grand palace like some of the places in which I worked, but it felt homey. Or have I already mentioned that?
Never mind.
I saw Harold and Mrs. Bissel chatting together in the living room, so I sucked in a deep breath and said to my beloved, “Ready if you are.”
“Ready,” said Sam.
So he and I walked through the pocket doors leading into the living room from the sun porch, and Keiji took off for the kitchen. I expect Mrs. Cummings, Mrs. Bissel’s cook-housekeeper, was already there and preparing coffee, tea and assorted edibles for the crowd soon to gather.
“Oh, Daisy, there you are!” said Mrs. Bissel, hurrying over to Sam and me. “What a beautiful gown!”
“Thank you,” I said modestly.
“And Detective Rotondo. So good to see you again.”
How come everyone was glad to see Sam again?
Never mind again.
“Thank you for allowing us use of your home for this operation, Mrs. Bissel,” said Sam, sounding genial.
Startled, I peered up at him, and darned if he didn’t look genial, too. Mind you, Sam could be relaxed and happy sometimes, but not often when he was working. I guess he truly did expect this evening to go smoothly. His attitude made me feel quite a bit better. I patted my juju again for the heck of it and smiled at Mrs. Bissel.
“Glad to help, Mrs. Bissel,” I lied nobly.
“Wonderful!” She rubbed her gloved hands together. “Now Daisy, when you lead people to the séance, please take them through the hallway and not the sunroom. Will you do that? The pocket doors leading to the sunroom will be closed.”
“Of course,” I said, thinking Sam had most likely already posted guards outside the sunroom’s closed pocket doors. Soon-to-be closed pocket doors.
“Excellent,” said Mrs. Bissel, beaming.
I patted my juju again, wishing it would wake up and tell me something.
“Is your lucky charm getting hot?” asked Harold as he walked over, too. He and Sam shook hands. Men always shake hands, even if they’ve been separated for only a couple of hours. I don’t understand, but I’m not a man.
“Nope,” I told him. “It’s just sitting there, doing nothing.”
“Well, let’s hope it behaves itself when the bad guys get here.”
“I don’t even know who the bad guys are,” I told Harold, not entirely truthfully. “I know there were at least a couple of Costellos, and an O’Hara or two. I guess a few Italians, if the groups have merged.”
“Don’t ask me,” said Harold. “All I do is dress women for the moving pictures. I don’t have anything to do with the financial side of things.”
“You’re lucky,” said Sam, inserting himself into the conversation, which was all right with me.
“Darned right. The studio bosses are evil geniuses. Well, most of them are evil anyway. Not sure about the genius part. I don’t want anything to do with them.”
“Really?” I’d never heard Harold say such a thing. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain later. It’s too complicated now. Let’s just say I’m not surprised the back-east gangs want some of the money the flickers are making.” He shook his head in a disgusted sort of way.
“Golly, maybe some of the Mrs. Grundys who are always deploring the motion-picture industry aren’t merely being prudes,” I said.
Harold looked at me for a second or two, his eyebrows lifted in two incredulous arches, then said, “William Desmond Taylor. Wallace Reid. Fatty Arbuckle. Alma Rubens. Charley Chase. Mabel Normand. Want me to go on?”
Shocked, I blurted, “Alma Rubens and Charley Chase? You mean they’re…” I couldn’t find a nice word in my head to use.
“Morphine for Rubens. Alcohol for Chase. The pictures are full of dope fiends and dipsomaniacs, Daisy. You already know all this.” Harold sounded as if he despaired of me.
“Well, I guess I knew some of those people had problems, but…” Again I ran out of words.
“For the love of God, Daisy,” said Sam, sounding a smidge irritated. “We’ve had this conversation before, remember?”
And then I did remember, so I said, “Yes.” It didn’t make me feel appreciably better to recall the bleak conversation.
“That’s a gorgeous gown, Daisy,” said Harold, changing the subject, which was a good thing. “You made it yourself, right?”
“I did. I even sewed every tedious sequin on it myself.”
“It’s beautiful. It reminds me of…something. I can’t remember where I’ve seen a gown like it.”
“Dior?” I suggested. “In the latest issue of Fashion Service?”
“That’s it!” Harold said happily. Harold and I could talk about clothing and china patterns forever if given the chance.
That evening we weren’t. People began showing up at the front door during our conversation. The front door faced the staircase to the second floor and was reached by walking through some pocket doors in the living room into a huge hall. There wasn’t a whole lot in the hall except for a telephone table with a telephone on it. The hall then led—through another set of pocket doors—into a gigantic dining room containing a gigantic dining room table. Mrs. Bissel used the dining room only for grand occasions, according to Keiji. The rest of the time, she took her meals in the breakfast room, where the séance would take place.
A shiver raced through me, and I wished I hadn’t thought about the evening’s séance. Unless someone told me something different, it looked as if I’d have to chat with the late Mrs. Baskerville again. Unless Miss Betsy Powell showed up with her gentleman friend, and he wanted me to haul up the ghost of the recently deceased Mr. Costello, in which case I could simply tell him it takes a spirit time to adjust to the Other Side, so he wasn’t available yet. I’d come up with this excuse when I was a kid, and it had served me well ever since.
“Oh, Mrs. Majesty!” came a voice I recognized only too well. Sam had been correct. Miss Betsy Powell could say hello and make it sound like a whine.
Nevertheless, I turned to look at the couple entering the living room from the vast hall, pasted on a sweet smile and said in my low-pitched, mellow spiritualist’s voice, “Good evening, Miss Powell. I trust you’ve recovered from whatever malady felled you yesterday?”
She giggled, patted her stomach, and said, “Yes, thank you. Although I’m a little sore from the exercise class. I didn’t realize how many muscles we ladies have.”
“Indeed,” said I.
“But what a beautiful dress, Mrs. Majesty. The color matches your eyes!” said Miss Powell.
My feelings toward her softened a trifle, but no more than that.
“Thank you.”
Simpering at the gent by her side, she went on, “Oh, but do let me introduce you to my special friend, Mr. Costello. Albert, this is Mrs. Majesty. You’ve heard me talk about her. She’s not only a spiritualist-medium, but she also sings in our choir at church.”
Mr. Albert Costello bowed and said, “How do you do, Mrs. Majesty? I’m looking forward to the evening’s séance.”
Was it my imagination, or did he have cold, sinister, ice-blue eyes?
“How do you do, Mr. Costello?” I held out my hand for him to shake, which he did.
My imagination had probably overreacted to his ice-blue eyes, but not to his icy-cold hand. In fact, I couldn’t quite repress a shiver after I’d shaken it. Unfortunately, the evening continued to progress as planned, icy hands or no icy hands.