My toilette took me longer than usual because my hands trembled slightly when I lifted the eyebrow pencil to darken—just a teensy bit—my eyebrows. No flashy makeup for this spiritualist-medium. I cultivated the pale-and-interesting look on purpose. I’d already donned my lovely gown and fixed my hair. The sequined bandeau looked wonderful, if I do say so myself. My hand, however, still shook a little.
“Bother,” said I when the pencil dropped from my nerveless fingers. “What the heck is the matter with me, Spike? I’ve never been this edgy about a séance before in my life. That’s probably because I don’t know what I’ll be doing or whom I’ll be resurrecting, huh?”
Spike, who’d curled himself up like a cinnamon bun on the bed, didn’t bestir himself to answer my answerless question. I took this to mean he foresaw no trouble to come of the evening’s activities.
On the other hand, Spike was a dog. What did he know?
No. Spike was correct. I needed to get my anxiety under control. Therefore, after I retrieved my eyebrow pencil, I stood before the cheval mirror in my bedroom, shut my eyes, and breathed in and out slowly for about a minute. I’d read somewhere that deep breathing was supposed to calm one’s nerves.
“There,” I told the sleeping Spike. “That’s a little better.” I held my hand out and, sure enough, it no longer trembled. So I took in one more deep, soothing breath…
…and let out with a scream when a noise like an exploding bomb came from the kitchen.
My bedroom door crashed open, and Sam stood in the doorway, gaping as if he expected to see my blood-drenched corpse lying across the bed. “What the devil is wrong?” he bellowed, frantically scanning the room for criminals.
Spike barked and jumped down from the bed to say hi to Sam.
“What was that noise?” I bellowed back.
The thrice-cursed man rolled his eyes!
“Whatever is the matter, Daisy?” I saw Ma standing behind Sam on her tiptoes, peering over his shoulder and looking frightened.
“You all right, sweetheart?” came Pa’s voice from over Sam’s other shoulder.
I sat on the rocking chair beside the mirror and smacked a hand over my thundering heart. On the verge of tears, I forced myself not to shed them. I’d just put on my makeup, darn it! I wasn’t going to allow a loud noise to make me spoil my efforts.
Therefore, I took in two or three deep, calming breaths until I was pretty sure I could speak without hollering. I even cleared my throat. “Wh-what was that noise?” I asked in a soft, measured tone.
Sam stopped glancing frantically around my room and his gaze landed on me. His eyes looked like ripe olives—their color, I mean, under his lowered eyebrows. “What noise?”
“What…noise?” I repeated, not sure I’d understood him correctly.
“Oh, I know!” said Pa, who started laughing. “When Pudge sounded the alarm, it scared her.”
“That was…Pudge?” I asked, again in a soft, measured voice.
“Yes,” said Sam. “For pity’s sake, Daisy, we’re practicing for tonight’s séance.”
That did it. I jumped to my feet and hurled my eyebrow pencil at Sam. My aim was good, and Sam stepped back a pace, dislodging my parents, as the pencil hit him in the chest and bounced off. All three of them seemed surprised by my reaction.
“For pity’s sake nothing!” I shrieked. “I’m already as nervous as Daniel in the lion’s den, and you ‘for pity’s sake’ me? Why am I hosting a séance this evening? What do you aim to accomplish? I can’t just show up at Mrs. Bissel’s house, have everyone sit around the table and say nothing! A séance needs a purpose! I need a purpose! What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to ask if one of them is holding my aunt captive? People hold séances to get in touch with dead relatives, and I pray to God Vi’s not dead yet!”
“Daisy,” said my mother, in her disapproving-mother voice.
Nertz! I disapproved, too, even though I wasn’t a mother. What’s more, I was the one putting her life on the line by conducting a séance a horde of gangsters might attend. “Daisy nothing!” I regret to say I still shrieked. “Well, Sam? What am I supposed to do after the séance attendees gather around the table? Just sit there and stare at them all? Well, no, I can’t do that, because the room will be pitch black!”
Sam stepped into my bedroom, gently closing the door—shutting my parents out—and walked over to me. As I quivered with rage, I supposed this was a brave, daring deed on his part.
I do believe I’d broken my no-tantrum record. Ah, well. I deserved a good tantrum under the circumstances.
I sat on the rocker again, wrath a searing forest fire within my bosom. This time the heat in my chest had nothing to do with my juju. I stared daggers at my fiancé as he knelt in front of the rocking chair and took my hands in his.
“I’m sorry, Daisy. I didn’t realize how tense you were. I also didn’t realize you needed…I don’t know. What do you need in order to perform a séance?”
Gently, I withdrew one of my hands from his and patted gingerly at the corner of my right eye, just to blot any tears that might have collected there. I did the same thing to my left eye. When I thought I could speak without bellowing, I said softly, “A dead person’s name would be a good start. So long as the dead person has something to do with one of the people at the séance.”
“Ah. I understand now. No wonder you were…a little jumpy.”
He chose that word, jumpy, carefully. I saw him do it.
“Well?” I demanded. “What’s the reason for the séance?”
Without raising his voice, Sam said, “Kincaid and I drove up to speak with Mrs. Bissel this morning, and—”
“You did, did you? And why wasn’t I involved in this conversation?”
“I didn’t think about it.”
“Sam Rotondo, if you’re not the most aggravating—”
“I apologize.” Sam took my hand back and kissed both of my palms, one after the other. “Kincaid said you should go with us, but I vetoed his idea.”
“Oh? And why was that?”
Fury began building inside me again like lava about to erupt from Mount Etna, but before I could screech again, Sam said, raising his voice a little, “I’m sorry. I should have brought you with us. Until this minute, I forgot we hadn’t told you what we decided in this morning’s meeting. And before you batter me to death with that pencil of yours, I apologize. I figured you’d had a bad enough time yesterday at the exercise class, and I didn’t want to burden you with anything else.”
“Oh? So it never occurred to you that I might need a reason to be holding a séance, even though I told you so?”
“Well…yeah, it did. That’s why Kincaid and I talked to Mrs. Bissel.”
“But I, the leader of tonight’s séance, wasn’t important enough to be included. Or at least told about your conversation until this minute?”
“I’m sorry! I’m truly sorry, Daisy. There’s been a lot going on recently, and I’ve had to babysit with Frank, too.”
“You mean he’s not back in jail?”
“No. He has to watch with us tonight and tell us when members of the Irish-Italian gang arrive. Unless Lucky Luciano himself shows up. I’ll recognize him, but I kind of doubt he’ll be there.”
“In case it’s slipped your mind, Sam Rotondo, I conducted a séance for a murdering gangster once before and nearly got shot to death for my efforts. That one was your fault, too, and you wouldn’t even let me tell my parents or Billy what was going on. I’ll be forever cursed if I’m going to walk blindly into a room full of murderers tonight without knowing precisely why I’m there and what I’ll be doing. So talk to me, blast you.”
“Daisy, I love you.”
“Don’t use underhanded tactics on me,” I growled even as my heart softened a teensy bit.
With a grin, as if he could tell the danger was over and I—probably—had passed the I’ll-scratch-your-eyes-out-with-my-fingernails stage, Sam said, “It’s not underhanded. It’s the truth.” He saw me take in a deep breath, but before I could use it, he hurried on. “Mrs. Bissel said you got in touch with a dachshund-breeder named Baskerville once. She figured, since we don’t know yet the name of any other dead people anyone might want you to summon, you could summon Mrs. Baskerville again, if that’s all right with you.”
“Ah, yes. I remember Mrs. Baskerville. According to Mrs. Bissel, Spike is a hound of the Baskervilles. Well, not Spike precisely, but his mother was. Mrs. Bissel got Lucille from Mrs. Baskerville. Not sure about Lancelot.”
Sam’s nose wrinkled. “Lucille and Lancelot?”
“The name’s aren’t Spike’s fault. Billy gave Spike a manly name.”
“He did indeed.” With a gentle squeeze of my hands, Sam added, “So do you think you can conjure up whoever needs to be conjured tonight? I think Miss Powell mentioned her gent friend might want to commune with a late relative.”
“What’s the name of the person who wants his kin raised from the dead?”
“Costello.”
My temper spiked—with apologies to my beloved hound—again. “Costello! I thought Costello was dead!”
“There were two Costellos,” Sam said hurriedly. “Now there’s only one of them. I thought I told you that.”
“Ah, yes. Yes, you did. And Miss Powell isn’t stepping out with the dead one, whoever he is. Was.”
“Exactly.”
I would have cradled my head in my hands, but I didn’t want to smear my eyebrow pencil or the faint blurry line of mascara under my lower lashes. That blurry line looked tremendously dramatic in a certain light. “Sam Rotondo, if you don’t tell me everything else you know about this evening’s agenda right this minute, I’m going to scream and faint.”
“You know pretty much everything now, Daisy. Truly. Anyhow, if everything goes as planned, you might not have to conjure anything at all.”
I sat up straight and yanked my hands from Sam’s. “What do you mean, ‘If everything goes as planned’? What’s planned? Darn it, you’re still keeping things from me!”
Does that count as a second tantrum, or is it still part of the first one?
Sam lifted his left hand, shook his coat sleeve down and peered at his wristwatch. “I’m not keeping anything else from you. I’ve told you where all the policemen and everyone else will be stationed. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you about the Baskerville and Costello angles. There’s nothing more to tell. Harold has seen to it that everyone we think is involved in Vi’s kidnapping will be at Mrs. Bissel’s house tonight.”
“Oh? How’d he do that?”
“He has an ‘in’ with the motion picture studios.”
“Yes, he does. So these gangsters really do have a connection to the flickers? That’s no longer just idle curiosity?”
“It never was idle curiosity. We’ve known for some time that gangs from New York and Chicago are trying to horn in on movie money. We weren’t sure until yesterday the gang my contemptible nephew wants to join was part of any of them.”
“And you discovered he is?”
“We discovered he is.”
“Do you know for sure where Vi is, Sam? Is she at the estate on Lake Avenue?”
He hesitated for so long I nearly blew my stack again. Before I could, he said, “We think she’s there. On a mansion on North Lake Avenue. If we’re right, everything should be settled tonight. I really can’t tell you anything else, Daisy. You know I can’t discuss ongoing police business with anyone.”
“Right. You don’t seem to have any trouble discussing police business with Harold and Lou Prophet. And Flossie Buckingham.”
“They don’t know any more about police matters in this case than you do. They understand we’ll know more once we get Vi back and safe.”
“I’ll just bet,” I said, sounding like a sulky child.
“Cheer up, sweetheart,” Sam said, putting his arms around me—carefully so as not to wrinkle anything or dislodge a sequin. “With everyone helping, I think all Vi-related mysteries will be solved tonight.”
“And all will be revealed,” I added bitterly.
“And all will be revealed.” Sam chuckled.
I didn’t. I did, however, get up from my rocking chair and resume my place before the mirror. I had to straighten my sparkly bandeau. When I lifted my eyebrow pencil, I saw I needed to sharpen that, too, because its point must have broken either when I dropped it or when I hurled it at Sam. “Phooey,” I muttered.
“Want me to sharpen it for you?” asked Sam, all solicitousness now that I no longer raged with fury.
“Yes.” I handed the pencil to Sam. “Thanks.”
Sam took the pencil and retired to the kitchen to sharpen its pointy end. As soon as he left, Pudge Wilson stood in the doorway, his bugle hooked over his arm, looking crestfallen.
“Hey, Pudge,” I said.
“I’m really sorry, Miss Daisy. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Pudge. My nerves are a little…on edge this evening. Thank you for helping Sam and the Pasadena Police Department with the case they’re working on.” I figured slathering on a little honey wouldn’t hurt. “Is there any kind of badge you can get for assisting the police?”
“If anybody gets hurt, I can do some first aid. Maybe even lifesaving.”
Aghast, I said, “Oh, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“I’m already working on my merit badge for music.” Pudge stood ramrod straight, smiled brightly and lifted his bugle.
“Wonderful!” I said loudly and added in a rush, “But there’s no need to sound the alarm again!” Another blast from that infernal instrument might just succeed in sending me into full-blown insanity.
“Oh, I won’t. Pa told me I shouldn’t have sounded the alarm inside the house. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Bless Mr. Wilson for a saint. “It’s all right, Pudge. I appreciate you and your father’s willingness to help.”
“Oh, sure,” said Pudge. Then he said, “You look…real pretty, Miss Daisy. That’s a real pretty dress.”
“Thank you, Pudge.” I glanced down at my sequins and wondered if I was a trifle too sparkly for the occasion.
But no. I loved this dress, wearing it made me feel good, so I’d darned well wear it tonight. It seemed as if I couldn’t control a single other thing about what had happened and was going to happen to my aunt, but I could jolly well control my appearance.
Thank heaven Sam returned with my eyebrow pencil—sharpened to a wicked point—just then, because thinking about the evening’s plans had begun to nibble at the edges of my confidence again.
I would be so glad when the evening was over and we could all go home again. With Vi.