I don’t know how long Spike and I had been sleeping the sleep of innocents—or innocence—I’m not sure what the precise term is. Anyway, I probably don’t qualify for either one, although Spike sure does.
How’d I get sidetracked already? Don’t bother even trying to figure it out.
At any rate, a soft knocking on my bedroom door—the one leading to the deck outside—startled me awake and roused Spike to utter a subdued bark. If he’d been more awake, he’d probably have barked louder, so it’s a good thing he wasn’t. Half-asleep and groggy, I sort of fell out of the bed and staggered to the door. Spike raced ahead of me, wagging like mad. Wagging on his part generally meant the knocker was a friend; however, because I wasn’t completely over my fear that someone might be out there with a gun, ready to shoot me to pieces, I didn’t instantly open the door. Rather, I stood close to the crack and whispered, “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” said Sam. “And Lou. Open up. We need you.”
“Wh-what?”
“We need you,” Sam whispered with some urgency. “Open the door.”
“Why?”
“Just open the damned door, will you?” said my charming spouse-to-be.
So, after grabbing my robe from where I’d tossed it on the foot of the bed, I opened the door—very slowly. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I already didn’t like it.
Sam and Mr. Prophet shoved me aside and entered the room. Spike started leaping on them, but a sternly whispered, “Spike, sit,” from me interrupted his gleeful greeting. He sat. I squinted into the darkness
“What’s going on?” I asked in a whisper.
“Is everything all right in there?” came my father’s voice from the kitchen. “Are you all right, Daisy? I heard Spike bark.”
“Everything’s fine, Pa,” I said, wondering if I’d just lied. “I rolled over onto poor Spike, and he protested.”
My father laughed and said, “All right. Just wondered. Sleep tight.”
“You, too. Thanks, Pa.”
Then I stared, thinking I must be in the middle of a nightmare when Sam and Mr. Prophet, each carrying a limb of the unconscious Li, walked her to my bed. “What the—?”
“May we lay her on your bed, Daisy? I don’t think she’s bleeding anymore.”
I gaped at my fiancé. “Bleeding?”
“She’s not bleeding,” Sam said in a savage whisper. Without waiting for my permission, he told Mr. Prophet, “Put her on the bed, Lou.” Turning to me, he said, “Can you boil some water for tea or something?”
“Tea, hell,” said Mr. Prophet. “She can sip some of this here good tanglefoot.” He took a flask from somewhere on his person, probably a pocket, and uncorked it.
Tanglefoot? I’d heard him call rye whiskey tangleleg. Maybe tanglefoot meant tangleleg, and the two words meant the same thing: whiskey. Three words. However many words there were. I was too groggy to count.
Li had begun to stir. Mr. Prophet went to where her head rested and put one of his big hands over her mouth, I guess so she couldn’t cry out or scream or anything. He still held the flask upright and ready. He’d spilled a bottle of what he’d called good rye whiskey on Sam’s horrid nephew, Frank Pagano, a month or so earlier, and I guess he was being careful not to spill any of his current stock of the precious stuff on Li.
“What the heck is going on?” I asked again. “What happened to Li?”
“I’ll have to tell you later, Daisy,” Sam said.
“The heck with later! I want to know, and I want to know now!”
“No sense keepin’ it from her, Sam,” said Mr. Prophet. Never thought I’d consider him the voice of reason, but in this case I did. “Her brothers come from China to take her back.”
“They what?” Thinking I wasn’t sufficiently conscious yet, I shook my head hard. Didn’t help.
“You heard him,” said Sam.
“How did they know she was here?” I thought the question pertinent, but neither man answered it.
Sam went on, “When Missus Mainwaring brought Lou and Miss Li back home, three big Chinese fellows were waiting for them, and tried to grab Miss Li. That’s the story I got from Lou, anyhow.”
“It’s the truth, dammit,” said Mr. Prophet.
“Oh, stop swearing!” I groused at him. He shook his head and snarled, sounding not unlike Spike when we played a game of tug.
“Leave him be, Daisy. He’s worried about Miss Li. According to him and Missus Mainwaring, three men claiming to be Miss Li’s brothers were waiting at the gate.”
“Yeah,” said Prophet. “Good thing Cyrus used to be a championship boxer.”
“Cyrus? Missus Mainwaring’s chauffeur?”
“Cyrus Potts. Yes. He’s Hattie’s husband,” said Sam. “And he serves as Missus Mainwaring’s bodyguard.”
“Good Lord. I didn’t know she needed one!”
“Ain’t you been payin’ attention, Miss Daisy?” asked Mr. Prophet, looking at me as if I were one of the duller knives in the drawer of his life. “She used to run a whorehouse in Tombstone, fer cripe’s sake, and a man tried to shoot her today. She tries to save whores from their lives of sin and degradation—or so she claims. You think the fellers who run them houses are just gonna let her do that without objecting?”
“But…but I thought the man you shot today had come after Sally.”
“He probably did, but he aimed to get Angie first,” said Mr. Prophet. “Anyhow, there’s a lot more where they came from.”
“I thought you said this latest batch came from China.”
Impatient, Sam said, “Yes. Three of them. They are from China, and they damned near carried Li back to China with them. Good thing Lou’s got a Bowie knife and knows how to use it. And Cyrus is a fighter. And Missus Mainwaring doesn’t mind hitting people over the head with heavy objects.”
“Good heavens.”
“I doubt good or heaven has anything to do with the current circumstances. Lou tied them all up and came to fetch me. Cyrus is going to see if he can borrow his brother and his brother’s truck and drive the three Chinamen to the Port of Los Angeles. There, they’ll send them on a steamer back to China. Unfortunately, they managed to hurt Miss Li before Cyrus, Lou and Missus Mainwaring subdued them.”
I looked at Mr. Prophet and said, “Did you use your ketch rope?” Don’t ask me where that question came from, because I don’t know. Lucidity wasn’t my best pal after I’d been rudely awakened from my beauty sleep, I guess.
Squinting at me, Prophet said, “My ketch— Who the hell cares?”
I flinched but didn’t chide him for his use of bad language this time. Wouldn’t have done any good anyway.
He went on, “I tied ‘em up, and we’re gonna load them into the bed of Cyrus’s brother’s truck, and they’re going to drive them to the ocean and send them back to where they came from.”
“You say they came for Li? Why?” If anyone cares, I was still whispering.
“Yes,” said Sam, also still whispering. “Missus Mainwaring said they’re her brothers, and they wanted to take her back to Canton, because she’s worth a lot of money. Evidently, when she left China, she did so because her father aimed to sell her to man she didn’t like.”
“Her father wanted to sell her?” Incredulous only partially describes my fuddled thought processes.
“She ran away from home,” said Prophet.
“She ran a long way, if she came all the way from China,” I muttered.
“Can we talk about this later?” asked Sam. “Missus Mainwaring plans to give the men enough money to make up for Li’s father’s loss, but we have to get rid of them before morning. We don’t want the whole neighborhood to know what’s going on.”
“Yeah,” said Prophet. “Just take care of Li for a few minutes, will you, Miss Daisy? Then we’ll come back, and I’ll take her to Angie’s place.”
I looked doubtfully from his face to his peg. He shook his head and said, “Kee-rist! Will you just trust me for a few minutes? Or trust Sam, if you don’t trust me.”
“Listen, Daisy,” said Sam. “I don’t like this any better than you do, but if we get the police involved, it’s going to get complicated. In fact, it’ll probably involve the federal governments in two countries, and I don’t want to go through that. Neither do Miss Li, Lou or Missus Mainwaring. And I really don’t want everyone in the neighborhood to know what’s happened tonight.”
“I can’t believe her father was going to sell her,” I said, zeroing in on the main point of Sam’s speech and glancing at Li.
Her eyes had opened, and evidently she’d been listening to us chat. If you can call it chatting. “Believe it,” she sort of croaked. “Common practice where I come from.”
“Oh.” Well, all right then, that knocked the wind out of my sails.
“Please, Daisy?” Li pleaded. “I’ll tell you everything while Lou and your detective get my loathsome brothers out of Pasadena.”
“Of course. Of course,” I said. “Sure. Happy to help.”
What was one more little lie? For the good Lord’s sake, I lied for a living. At least I’d be helping Li and Angie with this lie. At any rate, I hoped I would be.
“But you’ll have to tell me everything when you get back, Sam Rotondo.”
With a mock salute at me, Sam said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Shit. Let’s get out of here.” Mr. Prophet pointed a finger at Li. “And you. Stay here until we get back. Need a shot of this?” He held up his open flask.
After scowling and shaking her head, Li requested Lou do something the words for which I’d never heard issue from a woman’s mouth. Or a man’s, either, probably because I grew up in refined and respectable Pasadena, California. Anyhow, I don’t think it’s humanly possible for anyone to do that to himself. Or herself.
I was kind of rattled. Can you tell?
Rattled or not, Li lay on my bed and I didn’t. Therefore, after Sam and Mr. Prophet left my room, silently shutting the door behind them, I pulled my rocker nearer the bed, sat on it, and gestured for Spike to join me. He did, then leaned way over and wanted to give Li a little kiss, but I said, “No, Spike. We’d better wait until we know if Li approves of being kissed by dogs.”
Li uttered a short laugh, then grabbed her ribs and said, “Ow. Damn, that hurts.”
I didn’t know very many women who swore, either, but I decided not to be prissy about Li’s language. She was injured after all, and she also used to…well, be in a profession most people consider disreputable if not downright sinful.
“Your brothers hurt you?” I asked, thinking my own older brother, George, might like to tease his little sister, but he’d never, ever, hurt me on purpose. In fact, one day when I was on the playground at school, he’d knocked a kid down for bullying me. I love my brother.
“Yes.” The way she spoke the word made it sound like a hiss.
“That’s…horrible. Why…? I mean, did they really mean to take you back to China so your father could sell you?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “They were probably just going to throw me into the ocean and redeem the family’s honor.”
“Killing you would redeem the family’s honor?”
“I ran away and humiliated my family. They lost face.”
“Lost face?”
“Honor,” said Li with a shrug, which must have hurt, because she then winced. “Respect. It’s China. What can you do?”
Since I didn’t know, I didn’t speak.
“Say, Daisy, do you have a couple of aspirin tablets or something?”
“Oh, my goodness, yes! I’m so sorry, Li.”
“No need to be sorry.”
“Would you like a cup of tea? I’ll be happy to make a pot of tea.”
“No. Better not. I don’t want to wake up anyone else. I’m sorry Lou and your detective disturbed you. I could have stayed at Angie’s, and she’d have taken care of me.”
“I don’t mind. Probably Angie was busy. Or something. Anyhow, I’ll get you a glass of water so you can take your aspirins.” I thought of something else. “I also have some morphine syrup left over from—”
“No!” Her whisper was emphatic.
“Well, I don’t blame you. The stuff tastes vile.”
“It’s also caused too many women I know too much trouble.”
That was a melancholy thought. Naturally, her words made me think of my late Billy. “I understand completely.”
With a wry grin, she said, “I somehow doubt that.”
“You shouldn’t. My husband was shot and gassed in the war, and he killed himself with morphine syrup.” My whisper was perhaps a teensy bit sharp.
“Oh, my goodness. I had no idea. I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
“But…I thought you were engaged to the detective.”
“I am. Billy killed himself three years ago.”
“Oh.”
I left Li and Spike, tiptoed to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. Then I tiptoed to the bathroom, shook three aspirin tablets from the bottle we kept there and brought them back to Li.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you.” She took the glass in one hand, the aspirins in the other, and swallowed the pills with the water, wincing as she did so. “Ow. I should have thought to take some aspirins at Angie’s.”
“Things there were probably a bit complicated when Sam and Mister Prophet brought you here.”
“Complicated is a good word for it,” said Li. “Angie was busy making sure Cyrus didn’t kill Fa, Chen and Jian, and I didn’t want to interrupt her.”
Mercy sakes. The only thing I could think to say was, “Are those your brothers’ names? I mean, the ones who aren’t Cyrus?”
“Yes. Assholes, every one, so I don’t know why I’m glad Angie stopped Cyrus from killing them. Well, I guess Angie and Cyrus would have got into trouble if Cyrus had succeeded, so in that way I’m glad she stopped him. My father is an asshole, too. I ran away thirty years ago. I’m surprised they even remember me.”
Deciding to ignore her language, I said, “Thirty years does seem a long time to hold a grudge.”
“Grudge, my ass. My father wants the money he’d have made off me. He probably sold his last daughter and decided to send the boys after me.”
There was certainly a whole lot I didn’t know about Chinese culture. “How did they know where you were living?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“Wasn’t it expensive for him to send his sons here to get you?”
“I doubt it. They probably worked their way over on the ship that brought them.”
“Oh.” I guess that made sense. “Um…Do Chinese people often sell their children?”
“People the world over sell their children, Daisy. Only folks in some countries are more subtle about it than we Chinese are. Do you think all those young women in England who marry old men want to do it?”
“Um…I’ve never thought about it. Do young women in England marry old men? Why do they?”
“Because the old men have already gone through a wife or two and need a young woman to give them an heir. A son. Not a daughter, of course.”
“Why not a daughter?”
“Because women can’t inherit. Only boys can. So old men who don’t have sons will take young wives to give them a son or, preferably, two. I think they call it an heir and a spare.”
“But why do the women stand for it? I wouldn’t marry an old man just for the sake of giving him male children.”
“That’s because you were born here, and your parents aren’t rich,” said Li as if I should have known as much already. “You don’t have to secure your family’s living.”
“I do, too.”
Li lifted her head and peered at me. “You do?”
“Well…Yes. I do. My father has a heart condition that prevents him from being a chauffeur to rich people. That’s what he used to do, but he can’t anymore. We all live in mortal terror that he’ll have another heart attack. I don’t think I could stand it if my father died. He carries nitroglycerin tablets around with him, but you never know.” I shook my head and told myself to stop babbling. “Anyway, both my mother and my aunt also work, but I make more money than either of them.”
“As a spiritualist-medium?”
“Yes.” A fake one. I didn’t speak the last phrase aloud, not knowing precisely how the information would be received.
Musingly, Li said, “Angie said you’re a really good spiritualist-medium.”
“That was kind of her. Especially since the reading I gave her wasn’t…um…rosy, I guess is a good word for it.”
Li laughed, cringed, and pressed her arms over her ribcage again. Her hurt ribs worried me.
“Are you sure you don’t need a doctor? You keep clutching your ribs. Do you think any of your ribs are broken? Broken ribs can be terribly dangerous. A broken rib might puncture one of your lungs.”
“No, none of them are broken. Hattie already checked.”
“Is Hattie a physician?” I asked, astonished.
“Not a physician with a degree in medicine, or whatever you call it, but she’s the best doctor I’ve ever known. She gave me a thorough once-over, and she’ll keep an eye on me for the next several days.”
“So you’re going to stay here and not go back to Orange Acres?”
“For a few days, yes.”
“Doesn’t Angie need you to look after Sally at Orange Acres?”
“There are other people at Orange Acres to look after things when I’m not there. I really didn’t want to leave Sally after today’s shooting, but…” Her words faded away.
“But you wanted to stay with Mister Prophet a little longer?”
Eying me with an expression I couldn’t decipher, Li said after a few seconds, “I suppose I did. I’m such a fool about that damned man.”
Aha! I’d been right about the two of them.
I’m not sure where Louisa What’s Her Name fitted into this picture, but— Wait! I finally remembered Louisa’s last name! Bonaventure. Louisa Bonaventure. According to Mr. Prophet, she was probably six feet under by 1925, but he hadn’t seemed absolutely sure about the status of her health. Anyway, if she were still alive, she’d probably be in her seventies. As was Mr. Prophet.
Therefore, if one used Li’s logic, Louisa Bonaventure, the purported love of Mr. Prophet’s life, would be too old for him by this time.
I believe I’ve mentioned that I’ll never understand men for as long as I live.