Ancient Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) (11 page)

Before a fight could break out on our front porch, Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Longnecker both took one hand each and squeezed.

“Have a wonderful trip, Daisy. I’ll look in on your folks while you’re away,” said Mrs. Wilson.

“Me, too!” said Pudge.

“I’ll miss seeing you walking that adorable dog of yours,” said Mrs. Longnecker.

That did it for me. Spike, who was looking as hangdog as a dachshund could—which was awfully hangdog—reached out a paw and nudged me. My tears spilled over, and I squatted on the porch to give him a hug. “Take care of everyone for me, Spike.”

He licked my chin.

“We’d better be going,” said Harold. I knew he hated scenes.

Sam and the chauffeur had already packed my suitcases—there were three of them, stuffed to the gills—into the limo, and Harold took my arm and hauled me upright again.
Although I was normally a crackerjack seamstress, I hadn’t bothered to alter any of my dresses to suit my new size, mainly because I lacked any kind of motivation for anything in those days. If everyone was correct, I’d soon regain any weight I’d lost. Anyhow, there was less of me to haul than there used to be.

“I’ll be sure she stays out of trouble, Detective Rotondo
,” said Harold, not even out of breath. “And I’ll take good care of her, Mister and Missus Gumm. I’ll miss your cooking, Missus Gumm.”

“Get along with you, Mister Harold.”

So I wasn’t the only one she told to get along with himself or herself, eh? I guess it was some kind of—what do you call them? Colloquialisms?

Vi continued, “You’ll be dining in wonderful restaurants run by expert chefs.” Her own words must have sparked an idea, for she hurriedly said, “If you eat something particularly delicious, Daisy, try to find out how it’s made. Will you do that for me?”

Oh, brother. Vi knew all about cooking and me, and how very much we didn’t get along. Nevertheless, I said, “I’ll do my best, Vi.”

“Come along, Daisy,” said Harold, his voice and hand on my arm both firm.

“I’ll miss you all!” I said from the bottom of my heart, still fighting tears. Upon my last glance at Spike, I nearly broke down again.

Harold, who knew me well, said, “Yes, you’ll miss your family and that dog. But you’re going to be seeing and doing wonderful things, Daisy Majesty, so just don’t you start crying again.”

I sniffled my tears back and said in a shaky voice, “I’ll try, Harold.”

“Nuts to that. You either try or you do. I think you’re the one who told me that once.”

“I don’t remember that.” And I didn’t, but the advice was good, and it got me to thinking, which was probably what Harold had intended.

“Did Mother give you your bonus?”

The mention of my “bonus” brought any thought of tears to a screeching halt. “My Lord, yes! Harold, do you have any idea how much money she gave me?”

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough,” said Harold, who’d been tormented by his sister all his life, while she’d only made my life miserable for several years.

“Well, it’s a lot more money than I’ve ever seen before, and that’s even after various bonuses paid to me by contented clients. Heck, even when that Russian duke or whatever he was gave me that bejeweled bracelet, I don’t think it was worth as much as the amount of money your mother gave me.”

He smiled. “Good. You deserve every penny.”

I eyed him thoughtfully. “You really think so?”

“I really do.”

Hmm. Maybe he was right. Perhaps the five thousand—five thousand—dollars Mrs. Pinkerton had insisted I take wasn’t too much money for all the years I’d been at her beck and call.

Naw. It was way too much money, even if you figured Stacy into the equation. But I knew better than to argue with Harold, who’d had access to gobs of money his whole life. Anyhow, my family could use some of that five grand while I was away and not earning money for them.

At any rate, it didn’t take long for the chauffeur to get us to the train station, which was on Fair Oaks Avenue and Del Mar Boulevard. When we got there, the chauffeur opened our doors (mine first), and I got out and looked around, not knowing what to do with myself.

Fortunately, Harold knew what to do with the both of us. He once again took my arm and began guiding me to the station. “Come along, Daisy. Folks will be out to get our luggage.”

“Without you telling them where to put it?” I asked, feeling stupid, but curious anyway.

“They know. I booked all our plans in advance. Believe me, they’re being well tipped to follow my instructions.”

“Oh. That’s right. Servants get tips, don’t they?” Kind of like I got tips from my clients every now and then. Which made me on a par with a servant, I supposed. Well, heck, I already knew that. Some of my best friends were servants of one sort or another, waiting on people who were no better nor worse than they were, but had more money than we.

There went those bitter thoughts again. Shoot, if it weren’t for the rich people in the world, how were the rest of us expected to survive? I should be grateful to them, not thinking snotty thoughts about them.

Nuts. At that moment, as we entered the Pasadena Train Station, I figured I’d never regain my good humor again.

But Harold had been absolutely correct about our plans working smoothly. I watched from the window as various people, from the chauffeur to uniformed train-station attendants, unloaded the limousine. Boy, until I saw how much luggage Harold had brought with him, I’d thought I’d packed heavily. But they unloaded five huge trunks full of Harold’s stuff.

“Good Lord, Harold. How many sets of clothes did you bring?”

“Hundreds, darling,” he said. I heard the grin in his voice.

“I didn’t think men had to dress up in different clothes all the time like women do.”

“We don’t. Most of those trunks are filled with things I thought you might use.” As I opened my mouth to protest, he held up a hand. “And don’t start bellowing at me. I know you’ve never traveled, and most of the things I’ve brought along are from the studio and would never have been used again in this lifetime if I hadn’t taken them. Better to give them a second chance to shine on you than to let them hang, neglected forever, on a back lot somewhere.” He eyed me up and down, making me feel like squirming. “I brought along various sizes, since I aim to fatten you up.”

I opened my mouth again, but nothing came out. There seemed to be nothing to say. If Harold wanted to lug five trunks’ worth of ladies’ clothing from one coast of the United States to the other, across the Atlantic Ocean and all over Europe and Egypt, what could I say? Anyhow—and I don’t like to admit this—I’d worked on a moving-picture set recently and had been agog at the gorgeous clothes the women had worn. Mind you, that particular movie was set during the Civil War, but still and all, my folks and I—and Billy—had gone to enough pictures for me to have envied the stars their wardrobes.

Not that mine was anything to sneeze at. As I’ve said before probably too many times, I followed the fashion trends and made all of my family’s clothes, mainly from bolt ends and sale-price merchandise from Maxime’s Fabrics on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. The fact remained that I’d never spent more than a dollar and a quarter on any outfit I’d ever sewn for myself, not even the exquisite (if I do say so myself) evening ensembles I’d managed to patch together for my spiritualist business. I was nothing if not a skilled and thrifty seamstress. Which took a little of the sting out of not being able to cook anything more complicated than toast—but not much.

Speaking of dressing well, that day I wore a lovely, lightweight, dark lavender traveling suit with a beige hat, shoes and bag. I’m not all that fond of purple as a color, and especially not on me, who’s more or less a redhead. Still, the color was appropriate both for travel and for mourning, so I wore it.

A train shrieked into the station, a whistle nearly blew our heads off, and Harold and I moved from the window to the boarding platform. It wasn’t long before the station attendant called, “All aboard for Los Angeles,” we boarded the train and we were on our way.

Whether I wanted to be on my way or not.

In a little more than an hour, we were in Los Angeles. Boy, the L.A. train station is a bustling place! I thought it was quite lovely, too, although Harold told me it didn’t hold a candle to Grand Central Station in New York City.

“But you’ll see it for yourself in four days,” he said complacently.

“You’ve been to New York a lot?”

“Oh, my, yes. Del and I like to take in the theater sometimes.”

“In New York?” I gaped at him, agog that anyone would travel across an entire country to watch a play.
I mean, I knew Harold and Del traveled together sometimes, but going all the way to New York to see a play seemed somehow excessive to me.

“Broadway is the heart of the American theater, darling. We’ll catch a play or two in London, too. You’ll enjoy that.”

I would, would I? Well, maybe I would.

“Sure,” I said. What else could I say?

We had a three-hour delay in Los Angeles before our train was to take off for Chicago, so Harold again took my arm and led me out into the hot August sunshine. “I’m taking you on a tour of downtown Los Angeles,” he declared, hailing a taxicab with the ease of someone brought up to the action. Well, I guess he had been.

“Top of Angels Flight,” Harold told the driver.

“Sure thing, mister.” The cab sped off with a grinding of gears that made me wince.

“What’s Angels Flight?” I asked Harold, holding on to my hat so it wouldn’t fly off. The traffic was terrible, and the cabbie swung in and out of it as if he did it every day—which I guess he did. But it made for a bumpy ride.

“It’s an adorable little railroad.”

And it was. Only one block long, it was almost vertical and had been built because people didn’t like to climb steep hills, I suppose, and that’s all the two cars of Angels Flight did: go up and down that one block from Olive to Hill all day long. I thought taking a train for one measly block might be the least little bit self-indulgent, but I didn’t dare say so to Harold.

After we rode Angels Flight, which I have to admit was fun, Harold took me to lunch at a place called Musso and Frank’s Grill. It was quite lovely, and I think I noticed a couple of people I’d seen in the pictures, although I couldn’t place them with names, having little interest in the flickers at the time. I managed to eat several bites of my chicken pie, Harold keeping an eagle-eyed stare on me the whole time. His close scrutiny became kind of annoying after a while.

“You know, Harold,” I said at one point. “You can stare at me all you want, but I’m not going to eat more food than my stomach can hold.”

He shook his head sadly. “You amaze me, Daisy.”

“I do?”

“You’ve managed to lose a hundred pounds in a month without even trying, and I can’t lose weight even when I live on celery and carrots for weeks at a time.”

I gaped at him. “You actually did that? Eat celery and carrots, I mean.”

“Yes. It was the most miserable experience of my life, and Del finally persuaded me that he loved me in spite of my avoirdupois.”

“Del’s a good man,” I said. The thought crossed my mind that if Del died, Harold might understand what I was going through, both with food and my emotions, but the notion was so awful I didn’t voice it.

“Yes,” Harold said. “He is. And I know what you were just thinking, Daisy Majesty, so I promise not to badger you about eating more any longer.” He shook his head. “If anything happened to Del, I don’t think I could survive.”

I stared at him for a second or two and finally said, “That’s the problem, though, Harold. You probably would survive.”

He sighed and said, “I suppose you’re right.”

We got back to the station in plenty of time to catch our train. My astonishment could hardly be measured when I found out that Harold had hired an entire railroad car for only the two of us!

Chapter Ten

“If anyone asks, just tell them you’re my sister,” Harold said as train employees bustled about us, tending to our luggage and our every need. “Not that people really care about such nonsense any longer, but still, it’s better to lie than to be ostracized.”

Boy, the thought that anyone might find it strange or objectionable that I, a woman, would be traveling with Harold, a man, and that we were neither husband and wife nor kin had never occurred to me. Sometimes I can be remarkably dim.

“Right. That’s probably a good idea.”

I scrutinized Harold, who was shortish, chubby, pink-cheeked and merry, with thinning brown hair and eyes, and compared him to me. I, too, was short, but I had dark red hair and blue eyes. And I sure wasn’t plump any longer, if I ever had been. A hundred pounds, my eye!

The last porter left after asking if we required anything, Harold said, “No, thank you”—he was invariably polite to the people who worked for him—and I took a good gander at the railroad carriage.

It was an impressive car. Red plush furnishings; polished wood. Don’t ask me what kind of wood, because I don’t know. Two bedrooms were curtained off, one at each end of the carriage, and there was a bathroom just for us off to the side. It was snazzy, all right. And for some inexplicable reason I felt extremely lonely, even with Harold there with me. Did being rich mean you had to be by yourself all the time? What if you wanted to mingle with other passengers and strike up acquaintances? I thought the point of all this traveling and so forth was that I was supposed to meet new people. Not that I felt much like being introduced to a bunch of strangers or anything, but still . . .