Exercised Spirits

  Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery Series, Book Sixteen

  Alice Duncan

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2020 by Alice Duncan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64457-139-2

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Before You Go…

  Wedded Spirits

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Alice Duncan

  About the Author

  One

  By the time Easter Sunday in 1925 arrived, I’d begun harboring the irrational feeling that 1925, as a year, had it in for me. I tried to tell myself to snap out of it, that years can’t bedevil individual persons, and, if one took a peek at the rest of the world, the year was being hard on darned near everyone.

  I mean, looked at objectively, the whole world seemed to be reeling. For instance, the Irish and the English persisted in blowing each other up. Russians still starved in droves even as the Red Army under their new revolutionary leaders kept snapping up Eastern European countries and stomping the countries’ natives to bits under their boots. Bones from soldiers and civilians killed during the Great War continued being dug up by farmers in Belgium and France, seven years after the war’s end. Belgium, by the way, didn’t look as if it would ever completely recover from German depredations.

  Then there was my own personal week before Easter, which had resulted in a host of bruises to my leg and injuries to several other people.

  But I suppose all that is neither here nor there. 1925 had been rough so far, but Easter should signify a new beginning —at least according to Mr. Merle Negley Smith, the pastor of our Methodist-Episcopal Church—and I was prepared to give it another chance. Therefore, I changed into my Easter duds, which, natch, I’d made myself, and came in a slow second to Spike, the family’s black-and-tan dachshund, as we hied ourselves to answer the knock upon front door. My bruised leg hurt, darn it!

  My astonishment at seeing Mr. Lou Prophet—clad in a suit and tie and with his left arm residing in a sling (another souvenir from the prior week)—arrive for Easter breakfast at our house made thoughts about my sore right leg and my grudge against 1925 fly right out the window.

  I suspected Sam Rotondo, my fiancé and detective at the Pasadena Police Department, had more or less bullied Mr. Prophet into attending church with us. Sam, you see, had hired Mr. Prophet to be caretaker of the charming bungalow Sam had bought right across the street from my parents’ house on South Marengo Avenue.

  Well…I don’t suppose Mr. Prophet couldn’t be called a proper caretaker. Then again, I’m pretty sure Mr. Lou Prophet and propriety stayed as far away from each other as they could get. But I liked the guy. He’d saved my own hide a few times since the beginning of the year.

  Told you 1925 had been mean to me.

  Mr. Prophet, who had come into our lives in a particularly harrowing manner, fitted into the staid and proper society of Pasadena, California, sort of like a Gila monster might fit on top of a frilly wedding cake. Mr. Prophet, you see, was a character straight out of the Old West. People had even written dime novels about him. He used to be a bounty hunter, for heaven’s sake. Actually, I’m pretty sure heaven and Mr. Prophet didn’t have much to do with each other, either.

  He’d managed to lose a leg during his long and adventurous life, only not in a noble way—if there is a noble way to lose a limb. What happened was, he was in a car with two ladies of the night and a crate of bootleg liquor when whoever’d been steering the machine drove it smack off a cliff in Malibu. He was the only survivor but managed to lose a leg in the process. The lost limb put paid to the work he’d been doing, which was serving as an advisor in some of the three million western flickers being produced at the time.

  But all that is beside the point. He came to our house for Easter breakfast and aimed to attend church with us! These two events might figure as wonders of the Western world, but I don’t think the people who keep track of such things pay much attention to us folks in Pasadena.

  “You look like an Italian duke again, Sam,” I told my fiancé, getting on my tiptoes and kissing him right on the lips.

  “And you look lovely, too,” said Sam, eyeing me up and down.

  Mr. Prophet said something that sounded like “Rmmph.”

  Shoving fear aside, I beamed at Sam’s guest and said, “It’s so good to see you up and about, Mr. Prophet! How’s your arm feeling?”

  “Uh,” said he.

  Okey-dokey.

  “He’s just crabby because I’m making him come to church with us this morning,” said Sam, patting Mr. Prophet on the back. He got a vicious frown for his effort, but it only made Sam’s grin broaden.

  “Consarn it, ain’t it bad enough I got a bullet hole in my arm? Now you’re gonna make me pray?” Mr. Prophet sounded sorely aggrieved.

  “You don’t have a hole. You have a little graze. Besides, you don’t have to pray,” said Sam. “I never do.”

  “Sam!”

  My exclamation was solely for show and my shock feigned. I knew my Sam.

  “Ain’t never met me a gospel-grinder worth the meat to make him into a man,” grumbled Mr. Prophet.

  “I beg your pardon?” I tilted my head, not sure I’d heard correctly.

  “Never mind,” said Mr. Prophet.

  “Very well,” I said, figuring if he was going to be that way, I’d just let him.

  Then I suddenly understood what his quaint words meant. Had to stifle a giggle as I thought of our minister. I considered Pastor Smith a fine Christian gentleman, but he did look rather as if God had run out of meat before he’d quite finished creating him. However, Mr. Smith wasn’t the only good Christian gent Mr. Prophet and I knew. Frowning at Mr. Prophet, I demanded, “What about Johnny Buckingham?”

  Johnny Buckingham and his wife, the former Flossie Mosser, ran the Salvation Army Church in Pasadena. They were loving, generous, charitable people. And Johnny definitely hadn’t been slighted in the meat department. Or the good-looks department.

  Scowling spitefully at me, Mr. Prophet growled, “He’s different. He’s a man.”

  “Whatever that means,” I growled back.

  “Huh,” said Sam and Mr. Prophet together. I led the way to the dining room.

  After we’d finished the wonderful breakfast my aunt, Viola Gumm, had prepared for us and were making last-minute spiffing-up efforts, Vi put a leg of lamb in the oven, where it would roast as we attended church. I saw Mr. Prophet eyeing the big hunk of meat with befuddlement.

  Therefore, as Sam helped me on with my pretty, lightweight spring coat, I said, “Do you like leg of lamb, Mr. Prophet? Vi’s is the best you’ll ever eat.”

  His pale blue eyes grew round in their nest of wrinkled flesh—the fellow was old—and he said, “You people eat sheep?” He kept his voice soft, probably so Vi wouldn’t hear him. He sounded horrified.

  To the accompaniment of my fiancé’s laughter, I gazed in astonishment at Mr. Prophet. “What do you mean, do we eat sheep? We eat lamb sometimes. Haven’t you ever eaten lamb?”

  “Sheep?”

  “Lamb.”

  “Lambs grow up to be sheep,” he said firmly.

  “The one whose leg is in our oven won’t.”

  “He’s a wild westerner,” said Sam, still chuckling. “I think wild westerners prefer beef to lamb.”

  “Never ate no sheep in my life,” Mr. Prophet a
nnounced as if he didn’t aim to break this personal record any time soon.

  “You’ll eat some of this one,” said Sam, “if you aim to keep Vi happy.”

  “Dammit,” said Mr. Prophet.

  “It’s Easter Sunday, Mr. Prophet,” I said in an insufferably prim voice. “I hope you can refrain from swearing in church, at least.”

  “Aw, hell.”

  So much for him.

  Two

  However, in spite of Mr. Prophet’s blasphemy, the Easter service went beautifully. The choir sang our processional hymn, “The Day of Resurrection,” admirably, and Mr. Finster and Mr. Warden carried off their duet well. Not as well as the duet Lucille Zollinger and I sang on the fourth verse, but I’d never say so aloud.

  After church, I joined my family as soon as I’d doffed my choir robe, hung it neatly on its hanger in the closet, and returned my hymnal and music folder to their assigned cubby in the choir room. Mr. Prophet stood with Ma, Pa, Sam, and Aunt Vi in the courtyard outside the choir room. He didn’t look as though he’d experienced a religious epiphany, but he and Vi chatted with each other, and both looked happy. And this, in spite of lamb to come!

  Taking my life into my hands, I asked, “Did you enjoy the service, Mr. Prophet?”

  “Singin’ sounded good,” said he. “Only I want a quirley.”

  “Not in the courtyard,” I snapped. A quirley, by the way, is a cigarette. He rolled his own, although people could buy tins of cigarettes in stores by 1925.

  “I’d never darken your courtyard with smoke from a coffin nail, Miss Daisy. You should know me better’n that by now.” He actually sounded as if I’d hurt his feelings, although up until then, I hadn’t known he possessed any.

  “I do know it. Sorry I was mean to you.”

  “You? Mean?” He chuffed a snort of laughter. “Miss Daisy, you don’t know what mean is. You couldn’t hurt my feelings if you tried. Why, I've been ridden over roughshod by some of the meanest, nastiest curly wolves to ever ride the long-coulees under an owl-hoot moon. I been shot so full of lead I rattle when I walk. I had the stuffing kicked out of both my heathen ends more times than I can count on my hands and both feet. I been given Dutch rides over sharp rocks—”

  “What kinds of rides?” I regret to say the words came out a bit shrilly, although nobody else seemed to notice.

  With a snaggle-toothed grin, Mr. Prophet said in his rusty voice, “That means I been drug by a rope behind a horse.”

  “Goodness gracious.”

  His faded blue eyes twinkling devilishly, he said, “What’s happened to me had nothing to do with either one o’ them things.”

  Very well, then. “I guess not.” Peering at him and wondering how he’d survived so long, I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Fer what?”

  “For the awful things people have done to you.”

  He chuckled. “Miss Daisy, ain’t no more than what I’ve done to others.” He tilted his head in what might have been contemplation. Or it might not have been. Have I mentioned I can’t judge a person’s mood by his expression? Well, I can’t. “Ain’t that one o’ them…Whatcha call ‘em? Christian principles or something.”

  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” I asked in a faint voice. By this time Sam was actively laughing, confound him.

  “Yeah. That’s the one,” said Mr. Prophet.

  I said, “Oh.”

  Lucy Zollinger, soprano to my alto and a lovely young woman, approached me along with several other ladies of our congregation. I eyed them with suspicion, mainly because I suspected every one of them was heck-bent on forcing me to participate in the idiotic exercise class Lucy had asked me to join. Actually, she wanted me to lead the confounded class, based on exercises from some health book she’d been given by her precious Albert. Her husband.

  “I think our duet went quite well,” I said, hoping to forestall any talk of exercises from Lucy.

  No such luck. “Albert said we sounded lovely. Oh, Daisy!” she went on, evidently in raptures, “I can’t wait to start our exercise class.”

  Smiling at her, I was about to give a noncommittal rebuttal, when Miss Betsy Powell rushed up to me, beaming. She grabbed my arm. “Oh, Mrs. Majesty, I’m so looking forward to your exercise class!”

  Darn Sam Rotondo anyhow! I saw him roll his eyes heavenward and steer the rest of my family and Mr. Prophet toward his big old Hudson. He’d parked it on the other side of Marengo from the church’s east entrance. The least he could have done was take me with him! Nevertheless, I spoke to Miss Powell, figuring I could holler at Sam later.

  “You are?” I said, baffled. Miss Betsy Powell wasn’t one of my dearest friends. For one thing, she screamed at the drop of a hat. For another thing, she seemed doomed to attract the most evil and vicious men on the face of the earth. Maybe it wasn’t her fault, but I tried to steer clear of her in case her particular malady was contagious.

  “Oh, yes!” she cooed as if in ecstasy. “Oh, and Mrs. Majesty,” she continued, her ecstasy waning, “I know your aunt is positively famous for her cooking skills.”

  “Yes?” I said, looking her slanty-eyed.

  “Yes!” cried she, hands clasped at her bosom and looking as if these were the End Times and Jesus was calling her home. “My new gentleman friend’s employer needs a new cook! I don’t suppose your aunt would know anyone who might like the job, would she?”

  How the heck should I know if Aunt Vi knew any cooks needing employment? Rather than say those words, I hedged. “I don’t know, Miss Powell, but I’ll be happy to ask her.”

  “Oh, thank you!” she said. And she waltzed off, probably to visit her new male friend. I wondered what kind of criminal she’d picked this time.

  How unkind of me, huh?

  Phooey. You don’t know her, or you’d wonder the same thing.

  At any rate, by the time Sam drove us all down the hill to my parents’ bungalow on South Marengo Avenue, my mood had taken a nosedive, and my grudge against 1925 resurfaced. I attempted to repress it, although conversation on the way home didn’t help.

  Nor did the sudden flash of heat from my Voodoo juju, made especially for me by Mrs. Jackson, mother of Mrs. Pinkerton’s—she’s my most lucrative client—gatekeeper, Mr. Joseph Jackson.

  I considered this juju-related jolt of heat as something of an ill omen, and it worried me.

  When we were halfway home, Mr. Prophet asked, “Y’know that lady who talked to you right before we left?”

  “Miss Betsy Powell?” I said.

  “Guess that’s her name. Isn’t she the lady who screams all the time?”

  After heaving a gigantic sigh, I turned my head, peered into the back seat, and said, “Yes. Miss Betsy Powell. She not only has a God-awful scream, but she selects the lousiest men in the entire universe with whom to fall in love.”

  There it went again. I slapped a hand over my dress under which my juju lay. Good Lord, what did this mean?

  “Daisy,” said my mother in the voice telling me I was being unkind.

  Nertz. “It’s the truth, Ma. So far, two of the men she’s been madly in love with tried to kill me!”

  “Yeah?” Mr. Prophet, who’d been sitting in the back seat with his eyes half-shut, evidently only nominally interested in the question he’d asked, suddenly opened the same and appeared much more interested.

  “What do you mean, ‘Yeah!’ You were there the last time one of them tried to do me in!” I said in a snarly voice. “You witnessed the event!”

  “By golly, yeah. I remember. Never saw nobody try to kill somebody else with a lion before.” He gave a rusty chuckle.

  “You think it was funny?” I roared, reminding myself of Miss Betsy Powell, which didn’t improve my mood, especially when my mother, my aunt and my father all winced.