The second time I drove through the big wrought-iron gate at the Pinkerton mansion that day, I stopped to chat with Jackson, the Pinkertons’ gatekeeper.
“Good to see you again, Miss Daisy,” said Jackson, his big pearly-white smile gleaming in his dark face.
“You, too, Mr. Jackson. Is your son still playing at the Coconut Grove?”
When I’d first glimpsed Mr. Jackson’s son paying his horn, it had been in a speakeasy to which I’d gone with Harold—on his mother’s behalf. I’d never enter a speakeasy for myself—and I’d been shocked. However, the lad was evidently a talented musician, because the last I’d heard, he was playing with a band in the Coconut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Mr. Jackson said he had to enter the hotel via the kitchen because of his skin color, which I thought stank, but nobody’d asked me.
“He is, Miss Daisy. He’s doin’ real well.”
“I’m happy to hear it,” I told Jackson. “And how’s your mother faring these days?”
“She’s just fine, thank you, Miss Daisy. She’s been saying special prayers for you and your auntie, too.”
I felt my eyes widen. “Has she? Why?”
Jackson shook his head and laughed. “Laws, I don’t know, Miss Daisy. She gets these notions in her head, and there’s no telling why. But she told me to tell you to keep your juju close by.”
I lifted the chain upon which my Mrs. Jackson-made juju hung and showed the juju to Jackson. “I wear it all day, every day. Please tell her so. And if she ever lets on why she thinks Aunt Vi and I need special prayers, please let me know that, too, will you?”
With another laugh, Jackson said, “Sure will, Miss Daisy. I sure will.”
“Thank you!” said I, and continued my trip up the long drive to the front of the Pinkerton palace.
The bright yellow sports car I’d noticed when I’d dropped off Vi earlier in the day still sat in the circular drive. Because this seemed odd to me, I wondered if it had anything to do with the reason Mrs. Jackson deemed it necessary to say special prayers for Aunt Vi and me.
Then I told myself not to be an idiot, parked the Chevrolet, grabbed my bag of tricks—which contained my Ouija board and tarot cards—and walked up the stairs to the massive porch’s massive doors. I patted one of the massive marble lions on my way to the door, then rang the chimes. Sometimes, because it was there, I’d use the brass lion’s brass knocker on its brass knocking plate, but that morning I felt like chimes.
Lo and behold, Harold Kincaid opened the door!
“Good Lord!” I cried. “Where’s Featherstone!”
“And a bright and cheery good morning to you, too,” said Harold with something of a snarl.
“I’m sorry, Harold. I’m just so accustomed to Featherstone opening the door, you surprised me. Besides, I didn’t see your car.”
“Yes you did, unless you’re blind as a mole,” Harold told me.
“Are moles blind?” I asked, honestly curious.
“How the devil should I know? You’re blind as a bat then. Is that better?”
“I don’t understand,” I told him, confused.
“You saw my car, dammit!”
“What?” I turned around and scanned the circular drive and surrounding grounds. They were beautiful, but I saw no bright red Stutz Bearcat lurking anywhere. Turning back to Harold, I said, “Where?”
“Right in front of your eyes, Daisy.”
I whirled around again and stared at the circular drive. “That yellow thing?” I asked, astonished.
“That yellow thing, as you so inelegantly call it, is my brand new Kissell Six Forty-five Gold Bug Speedster. For your information.”
“Wow! I didn’t know you’d bought a new car!”
“I told you I was going to.”
“Well, yes, I know you did, but I didn’t think you’d buy a new automobile and not tell me about it.” I felt a trifle hurt, although I’d never let on to Harold. We were great friends, but I guess he didn’t have to tell me everything he did every time he did it.
“I had planned on popping by this afternoon to take you for a spin in it.”
His words made me feel better. “Thanks, Harold. What does Del think about it being bright yellow?”
“He hates it, but I already told him I wouldn’t buy a Ford just because it’s black. I like a machine that reflects my personality.”
“Interesting. So you used to have a bright red personality, and now you have a bright yellow personality?”
Harold rolled his eyes. Sam does the same thing a lot. “Something like that.”
“But what are you doing opening the door? Where in the world is Featherstone?”
“For the love of God, don’t just stand there interrogating me!” Harold snapped. “I opened the damned door so you could come inside.” And darned if he didn’t take me by the arm and yank me into the foyer.
“Goodness sakes! You’re a bit miffy today, aren’t you?”
“I’m a lot miffy today, and goodness has nothing to do with it,” he chuffed, shutting the door behind me. It closed with a sound that will always and forever remind me of money: solidly. No slamming, no crashing, no squeaking, no clinking; just a good, solid, quiet clunk. The sound of money.
“What’s wrong, Harold? You’re not mad at me for some reason, are you?”
“Good God, no!”
“Well, I’m glad, but what the heck’s the matter?” Harold had shoved my sleeve out of whack when he’d pulled me inside, so I smoothed it out again. It wasn’t like Harold to be irrational and irritable or to manhandle people. He had a temper, as do we all, but I’d never known him to get into a tizzy. Tizziness was his mother’s specialty, not his.
“There was an incident here today,” he said, not clearing things up one little bit.
“An incident? What kind of incident? Calm down, Harold, and just tell me about it.”
Wiping his brow with a hastily-grabbed-from-a-pocket handkerchief, Harold sucked in a huge breath. “I’m sorry, Daisy. But Featherstone and the new chauffeur were injured, and your poor aunt’s been busy all morning making tisanes for my blithering mother and cold compresses for poor Featherstone’s bruised knee and O’Hara’s head. Doctor Benjamin just left. He said the knee’s not broken, but it’s definitely strained, and poor Featherstone will have to take it easy for a few days. No butlering for him for a while. At least O’Hara doesn’t have a concussion, according to the doctor.”
“Good Lord!”
“The good Lord had nothing to do with it, either, if there is one, which I doubt, but don’t tell Del I said so.”
“Del already knows,” I said. It was true. Del Farrington, Harold’s life partner—sort of like Ma and Pa are life partners, if you know what I mean—was a strict Roman Catholic and attended Saint Andrews Catholic Church every Sunday. I’m not sure what the Roman Catholic Church might have to say about Del and Harold being life partners, but I also don’t care. I’ve held a grudge against the Catholic Church ever since Sam told me his parents disapproved of me because I’m neither Italian nor Catholic. “Now tell me what the heck is going on, Harold Kincaid!”
“Sit here,” Harold said, shoving me onto a magnificent hall bench, the seat of which had been upholstered in a beautiful brocade fabric. I felt almost as if I were desecrating it by planting my hoi-polloi-ish bottom on it. But my bottom was clothed gorgeously—because I’m a crackerjack seamstress—so I don’t suppose I should have entertained the thought for a second. Besides, the bench wouldn’t care.
Harold sat next to me, sprawling, his legs stretched out, his head tilted back, and his arms dangling. This posture was most unlike him.
“Gawd, what a morning.” He gave an eloquent shudder.
“So quit whining and tell me about it! Featherstone and What’s-His-Name got injured? How did they get injured?”
“It was awful.”
I restrained myself, although doing so was tough. I wanted to smack Harold around until he told me what had happened. “I’m sure it was. What was it that was so awful?”
“An interloper shoved his way into the kitchen while your aunt and Featherstone were resting and having tea a little earlier this morning. The man was hollering something, although no one seems to remember what. Featherstone, alarmed, tried to stop the man from barging farther into the house, and the man knocked Featherstone to the kitchen floor.”
“What?”
Harold squinted at me. “You heard me.”
“What man? Why did he barge in and knock Featherstone down?”
“I have no idea. On either count,” Harold said in an awful voice.
“Oh, my word!”
“There’s more,” Harold said, squinting at me balefully, which I didn’t deserve.
“What more?” I asked in a tiny voice.
“After the man socked Featherstone, and the butler hit the bricks—”
“Linoleum,” I corrected.
Harold rolled his eyes again. I probably deserved this one. “He hit the linoleum, then. That’s when the man stamped on his knee.”
“Ow!”
“That’s what Featherstone said. Then your aunt had the presence of mind to conk the encroaching creature over the head with a cast-iron skillet. So then he howled and ran out the door he’d just barged in.”
“That’s nuts, Harold.”
“I agree. Eventually, your aunt got Featherstone onto his feet and into a chair. Then she headed outside to see where the man had gone.”
“Oh, Lord. Aunt Vi shouldn’t have gone out of the house! The man might have killed her.”
“I told her the same thing, but your aunt is fearless. Or stupid.”
“She’s fearless,” I said, my tone emphatic.
“If you say so. Anyway, she went out through the kitchen door, but all she found was the new chauffeur, O’Hara, out cold on the driveway with a knot on his head the size of a rutabaga, if your aunt is correct. I have no idea how big rutabagas are. There was no sign of the man who’d attacked him and Featherstone.”
I left the rutabagas issue alone, although I wasn’t surprised Harold didn’t know much about them. Harold, being wildly wealthy, had probably never eaten one. “You mean a stranger knocked out O’Hara and then bulled his way into the kitchen, socked Featherstone and then stamped on his knee?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Don’t get mad at me, Harold Kincaid. I believe you. It’s just…It sounds insane. Why would anyone do such a thing?”
“I have no idea. Your aunt has no idea. Featherstone has no idea. O’Hara said he has no idea after Doc Benjamin brought him around again. My mother has no idea. My stepfather has no idea. No one has any idea!”
“Did someone call the police?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“What’s good about it? I swear to God, Daisy, the police have been to this house more often in the past few years than any whorehouse Mrs. Mainwaring used to own in Tombstone.”
“Harold!”
I don’t believe I mentioned Mrs. Mainwaring thus far. Well, she was one of the wealthiest people in Pasadena, but she’d earned her initial wealth by marrying men, leaving them without bothering to divorce them first, and eventually running a parlor house in Tombstone, Arizona. Maybe she had parlor houses in other places, although I only know about the Tombstone one for sure. Nobody except Harold, Sam, Mr. Prophet, the people who work for her, and I know about her prior career before she took up the cultivation and sale of oranges in Pasadena.
“It’s the truth.”
“Maybe, but it’s not a nice thing to say.” My feeble voice wouldn’t have convinced even me, and it certainly didn’t convince Harold, who guffawed.
“Don’t be a ninny, Daisy.”
“I’m not a ninny!”
“Sometimes you do a fair imitation of one.”
“Harold Kincaid, that’s flat mean!”
After taking another swipe at his forehead with his handkerchief, Harold had the grace to apologize. “I’m sorry, Daisy. It’s just been a hell of a morning. And, of course, my mother is hysterical.”
“Oh, goody. I can hardly wait. When did all this barging and bashing happen, anyway?”
“Maybe an hour ago. The police are outside talking to O’Hara now. They’ve already questioned everyone in the house, but Doc Benjamin made them wait to talk to O’Hara until he was sure the poor guy didn’t have a concussion or need to be hospitalized.”
“I love Doctor Benjamin.”
“He’s a good man.” Harold turned his head and stared at me for a second or two. “Do you think you’re up to handling my mother?”
“Of course, I am. I’m used to her hysterical frenzies. I’ve been working for her for more than half my life, you know.”
“Yeah. Don’t know how you’ve lasted this long. Want to talk to your aunt first?”
I glanced down the hallway to see what the hands on the beautiful mahogany casement clock said. They told me the time was almost eleven o’clock. “I’d better not. I’m already a half-hour late for my appointment. Although,” I added, “being late isn’t my fault. You’re the one who kept me yakking in the hall for twenty minutes.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blame it on me. I’m used to it. Mother will understand. Believe me. I told her I’d be talking to you before she got her mitts on you. I also told her to go easy on you.”
“Thanks, Harold. You’re a true pal.”
“Damned right, I am.”
I stood up and girded my loins—in a manner of speaking. I have no idea how one girds one’s loins. But I knew I’d need stamina to get through the next hour or so with Mrs. Pinkerton. She’d already been through the meat grinder, what with her stinky daughter Stacy landing herself in jail and getting ready to stand trial for attempted murder. After the shenanigans in her home during the past hour or so, I knew she would be an emotional wreck.
I glanced at Harold sadly. “I don’t want to do this, Harold.”
“I don’t blame you, but it’s your own bloody fault. You’ve made yourself indispensable to my ridiculous mother.
“It’s not nice to call your mother ridiculous.”
“The truth, my dear, is the truth,” said Harold, sounding as though he meant it. “But here. I’ll lead you into the lion’s den. Then I think I’ll visit your aunt and maybe make her sit down and take it easy for a few minutes. She works awfully hard, you know.”
“I know she does. And after she works hard here, she goes home and works hard for us, her family.”
“My mother should probably offer her a pension. Poor woman’s on her feet all day long, cooking over a hot stove. Your aunt, not my mother.”
For the first time since I walked into the house that morning, I grinned. “I knew whom you meant.”
So Harold walked me down the hall to the drawing room—that’s either a front parlor or a living room to most of us mere mortals—and I braved a step inside. Fortunately, Harold held onto me so his mother didn’t knock me down when she leapt from the sofa and barreled into me. Madeline Pinkerton was a large woman.