Hungry Spirits Read online

  Hungry Spirits

  Alice Duncan

  Acknowledgments

  Joan and Johnny Young have helped me out so often in the writing of my books, I can hardly thank them enough. I especially want to thank Johnny for his help with this book and another book called Angel’s Flight. Not only did he tell me how to gauge when a 1920 Chevrolet needed to be refueled, but he assisted me in helping my heroine in AF escape from certain death through deft use of the gearshift in that automobile. I don’t know what I’d do without either of you. Thanks for being my friends!

  And then there are Mimi Riser and Dr. Alice Gaines. I’ve requested a couple of times now that Alice and Mimi and I do some kind of Vulcan mind-meld, but they keep refusing, dang it. But they’ve both helped me out of more plot problems than I can count—and this time Alice even did it in German!

  Also, I’m still intensely grateful to my cousin Jan Rotondo and my up-the-street friend, Virginia Majesty, for continued use of their last names.

  I swear to heaven, I don’t know what I’d do without my friends.

  Chapter One

  In a blissful bout of self-deception, I had imagined that when Anastasia “Stacy” Kincaid, daughter of my longtime best customer Mrs. Madeline Kincaid, got religion and joined the Salvation Army, many, if not most, of my problems would be over.

  I should have known better.

  Now, not only did I continue to get hysterical calls from Mrs. Kincaid herself, begging me to come to her mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard and read the tarot cards or conduct Ouija board sessions, I was now getting calls from Stacy herself. Wanting me to teach people to cook. Me, Daisy Gumm Majesty, who not only could, but did, burn water. Well, not the water itself, but I burned the pot so badly that it had to be thrown away.

  But you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. Please let me explain.

  My name is Daisy Gumm Majesty. In late 1921, when the above transpired, I lived with my husband, my parents, and my wonderful aunt Viola in a neat little bungalow on South Marengo Avenue in the beautiful city of Pasadena, California. I pretended to commune with spirits for a living.

  I guess further explanation is called for here. You see, in those days, shortly after the Great War and the dreadful influenza pandemic that, according to newspaper accounts, killed nearly a quarter of the world’s population, you can’t even imagine how many people had lost loved ones. Many of them, the ones with more money than sense, paid me good money to get in touch with said departed loved ones. I made it my duty to assure those left behind that their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, and/or cousins, aunts, uncles and friends were happy on the Other Side (whatever that is) and expected those remaining to be happy here on earth until they were called to the Great Beyond by God himself. Heaven forbid someone should contemplate suicide in order to be reunited with a deceased loved one.

  That may sound weird and perhaps even slightly callous, but it’s not really. Trust me. I helped many, many people in my own small way. Heck, I did it as much for myself as for them for I, too, had been horribly affected by the Great War and the influenza pandemic.

  You see, my husband Billy Majesty, who lost both of his parents to the influenza and had been the love of my life since I could walk, had been set to enter the world of business as an automobile mechanic for the Hull Motor Works before the war. The wretched Kaiser and his accursed mustard gas had other ideas. Billy joined the US Army right after we were married in 1917 and went off to war, his regular handsome, jaunty self.

  Slightly more than a year later, he came back a ruined man. According to all the doctors who worked on him in the US Army hospitals and at home, Billy probably would have recovered from the bullet and shrapnel wounds he’d suffered, although he’d have been in pain and limped a good deal, but the mustard gas had done him in. Not completely. Just enough to render him unable to walk, breathe or function properly for the rest of his life. His pitiful US Army pension wasn’t enough to keep us fed, so I had to work. It was difficult for me to look at the Billy with whom I lived now and compare him to the Billy who went to war all those years ago. He’s the same, but . . . well, he’s not the same. He’s a wreck of the formerly jolly, happy-go-lucky Billy Majesty I grew up with. Of course, his condition was tougher on him than it was on me, but still. . . .

  At any rate, I have hated Germans ever since, even though I know not all of them are evil. In some ways, Billy was more philosophical about the catastrophe his life had become than I was.

  “It was a war, Daisy. Lots of people suffered.”

  “Not everybody used that blasted mustard gas.”

  “The Kaiser will get his reward eventually.”

  “I want him to get his reward now, Billy. The same way he got you.”

  Billy would have sighed, but it was early in the morning when this conversation took place, and he couldn’t take a deep-enough breath.

  See what I mean? Do you blame me for hating the Kaiser? I guess his soldiers were only doing what they’d been told to do, but I still had no use for Germans. Irrational, I know, but that’s life.

  Anyhow, ever since I was ten years old and Mrs. Kincaid, the aforementioned best customer, gave her cook and my aunt, Vi, an old Ouija board, I’d been fiddling with spiritualism. By this time, in November of 1921, I made a good deal of money at it. More money, certainly, than I’d have made doing anything else available to a young woman at the time. Sure, I could have worked at Nash’s Dry Goods and Grocery Emporium as an elevator girl or a sales clerk, but I wouldn’t have made a third as much money as I did summoning the dead.

  Gee, it sounds awful when put that way. Still, it worked. And as I mentioned before, I did my level best to bring comfort and solace to the bereaved. When I was ten and began my career, I decided Daisy was too pedestrian a name for a spiritualist, so I began calling myself Desdemona, which sounded much more elegant. At the time, I didn’t know that Desdemona was a world-famous murderee or I might have selected another cognomen but that, too, is life.

  Billy didn’t like my trade. He felt bad because he couldn’t earn our living for us. I figured that when one was born into our station in life—that is to say, not rich—one did what one had to do in order to earn one’s keep. And I earned a darned handsome keep doing what I was doing, by gum, even though Billy claimed what I did was wicked.

  In some ways I understood his qualms. I suppose it’s not very nice to fool people. However, the people I worked for wanted to be fooled. If I’d refused to work for them, they’d have dug around until they found somebody else to do it for them, and at least I was an honest fake. I only worked for people who could afford me, and I never did anything underhanded like send trumpets flying through the air or manifest disgusting ectoplasm, or anything like that.

  At any rate, that’s how I earned a living for Billy and me, and my generous income also helped to support the rest of my family. Ma worked at the Hotel Marengo as the chief bookkeeper, which was a pretty darned important job for a female in those days. Naturally, she didn’t get paid as much as a similarly employed man would have earned. I think that stinks, but it’s the way the world works.

  Pa hadn’t been able to work for a few years because of heart problems. His first heart attack nearly killed him, and we wanted to keep him around for as long as possible. He’s a good man—and they’re almost as hard to find as honest spiritualists. When Pa had worked, he’d made a good income as a chauffeur for rich people, a class abounding in the fair city of Pasadena.

  As I mentioned before, Aunt Vi worked as Mrs. Kincaid’s cook—and ours, too. Thank God for that, because neither Ma nor I could cook anything more elaborate than fried eggs. Even then, my yolks were always hard as rocks and the whites were burned on the edges.

  I guess God g
ives each individual a different gift. That’s another reason I don’t consider my line of work wicked. If God had wanted me to be a ballerina, He would have blessed me with grace. He didn’t. He blessed me with a gift for spiritualism.

  So there, Billy Majesty.

  But I digress.

  To get back to my main point, Mrs. Kincaid had been my best customer for years, primarily because of her daughter Stacy, who was a pill. Stacy Kincaid had hated my guts for not quite as many years as her mother had employed me. She started detesting me when she became a “bright young thing” and I remained a sober and well-dressed Pasadena matron—well dressed because I sewed my own clothes. Not for me the devil-may-care, smoking, drinking, carousing life, believe me. I had an image to protect and project, and I took my job seriously. I could waft better than anyone else I knew. Stacy had never held a job in her life and would never have to, either, so she felt free to fritter her life away in unsavory pursuits.

  Frittering was exactly what she did, with utter abandon, until earlier that year when a series of unfortunate events transpired in a speakeasy and we both got arrested. I wasn’t there to carouse, but to conduct a séance. Nevertheless, I got picked up anyway. The result of that disaster was that I helped the Pasadena Police Department capture a couple of vicious gangsters and an inside snitch. Inside the police department, I mean.

  As I was going about this assistance—to be honest, I was forced into it by Billy’s best friend and my bête noire, Sam Rotondo, a Pasadena police detective—Stacy was introduced to a friend of mine who was a captain in the Salvation Army. Said captain, Johnny Buckingham, ended up marrying Flossie Mosser, former gangster’s moll, and Stacy ended up donning the uniform of a Salvation Army maiden. I’m not sure what her rank was. As far as I was concerned she was still rank.

  The particular morning when all this started, Billy and I had eaten the delicious breakfast Aunt Vi had made for us, and she and Ma had gone to work. Pa was walking Spike, the black-and-tan dachshund I’d got for Billy the year prior, as payment for a job of exorcism I’d performed for a client named Mrs. Bissell. I’m not a priest or anything, and the exorcism had been as much of a sham as anything else I ever did in the spiritualist line, but I’d helped Mrs. Bissell rid her home of its so-called “ghost,” and acquired Spike for Billy, so it worked out all right. Mrs. Bissell, you see, breeds champion dachshunds. Her primary goal in life is to have one of her dogs entered in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City. Clearly, she didn’t have to worry about earning a living, either.

  Billy and I were in a philosophical mood that morning—well, there were two philosophical moods going on, but you understand I’m sure—and we had been discussing the events of the passing year. Nineteen twenty-one had started out a humdrum affair and then had grown into something rather more interesting, what with starving Russians dropping like flies; Sacco and Vanzetti being tried for their bomb-throwing escapade; Fatty Arbuckle being arrested; Rudolph Valentino making his smashing debut in the moving pictures; the World Series being broadcast over the radio for the very first time ever (and Billy even got to hear it, because I’d bought him a radio-signal receiving set earlier in the year); race riots in Oklahoma of all places; and a cloudburst killing hundreds of people in Colorado; and Babe Ruth breaking tons of homerun records (in spite of him, the Giants beat the Yankees in the World Series). The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was scheduled to be dedicated on Armistice Day, which was a few weeks away, and would take place in Washington, D.C. Naturally, I planned to push Billy’s wheelchair down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena’s parade as I’d done every year since the Armistice. There had also been a big gas explosion in Germany that had killed hundreds of people. Don’t tell anybody, but I was glad about the last item. Billy told me I was being unnecessarily mean, and that the people who died were just working stiffs like we were, but I couldn’t help it. It had been Germans who’d ruined my darling Billy, and I didn’t care what happened to them, working stiffs or not.

  Before we could get into a huge argument, the telephone rang so I got up to answer it, glad as I did so that I hadn’t pressed the German issue, since it would have ended badly. Billy didn’t like the way he was any more than I did, and it wasn’t fair of me to rub his nose in it. So to speak.

  When I learned who was on the other end of the wire, I stared at Billy, who was drinking his coffee at the breakfast table in the kitchen. I know my eyes opened wide and my eyebrows must have soared, because Billy looked slightly alarmed. I shook my head to let him know it wasn’t anything serious.

  Ha. Silly me.

  It took me a minute or two to shoo the worst of our party-line neighbors, Mrs. Barrow, off the wire. As I did so, I tried to think of something to say to Stacy Kincaid, who, to my utter astonishment and dismay, was the caller. No luck. “Um . . . Stacy, I’m not the one to whom you should be talking. I’m not a good cook. My aunt Vi is, as you know, but not I.”

  “Yes, yes, I know about your aunt, but she’s busy all the time. I thought you might have more time.”

  Of all the nerve! As if I didn’t work just as hard as Aunt Vi. My working schedule, moreover, wasn’t restricted to the daylight hours, as was Vi’s. Why, many’s the time I’d had to work day and night, as spiritualism is often a nighttime pursuit. And I made more money than Vi. Still, Stacy was a fool if she didn’t know I was a working woman with limited time in which to play games devised by her. I opened my mouth to tell her so, but she forestalled me.

  “I know you work hard, too, Daisy, but this is important.”

  Nuts. I’d been going to throw my status as a hardworking, beleaguered breadwinner in her face, and now I couldn’t do it. Still and all, I also couldn’t cook, and that was that. “I truly can’t help you, Stacy. I’m a lousy cook.”

  “Oh, but Daisy, this is for such a good cause.”

  If anyone had asked me as much as six months before if I thought Stacy Kincaid would ever be interested in assisting a worthy cause, I’d have said no after I stopped laughing. That day I only said, “Oh?” politely. Although I’d blown up at Stacy once and told her exactly what I thought of her and her selfishness, I’d tried since that one slip to be polite just in case any of my customers got wind of my behavior.

  “Yes. Don’t you see? People need your help.”

  I was already helping people, darn it, and decided to say so. “I always try to help people, Stacy. And I do it using the one talent I have. You need to find someone who can cook. The notion of me teaching a cooking class is. . . .” I couldn’t think of an appropriate word that wouldn’t ruin my somber spiritualist image. “Um, it’s just ludicrous. Trust me. You don’t want me teaching your class.”

  “Yes I do.”

  Oh, brother. Making the face I wished I could make at Stacy, I looked at Billy. He only smiled back at me. Big help.

  “No,” I said more forcefully, “you don’t.”

  “But, Daisy, I do!”

  Somber spiritualist or no, I was beginning to lose my temper. “Stacy, there are undoubtedly hundreds of women in the City of Pasadena who would be better at teaching a cooking class than I would be. In fact, I’d wager that most of Pasadena’s matrons are better cooks than I am. Why, I can’t even fix toast without burning it.”

  I heard Billy snicker in the background, but I paid him no mind.

  “Really?”

  She sounded pleased to hear about this failure on my part, and I regretted my honesty. Still, nonsense was nonsense, and Stacy was full of it. Among other things. “Yes.”

  After the slightest of hesitations, Stacy said, “Well, be that as it may, we still need you to do it.”

  This made no sense whatsoever. I felt like banging the receiver against the wall in an effort to make the words come out of it in another way. But I knew banging wouldn’t have made any difference. It seemed that Stacy was still the bane of my existence, whether she was a Bright Young Thing or a Salvation Army maiden. Blast!

  “But why?” The faintest hint o
f a whine had crept into my voice, and I told myself to stop doing that. I had long ago determined never to show Stacy the least hint of weakness. She was the type who’d pounce on a weakling and rip her to shreds with her well-manicured fingernails. Kind of like a lioness in the jungle who preys on the youngest, oldest or feeblest. She was that type. I didn’t trust this religious transformation of hers one teensy bit.

  “Because Captain Buckingham said you were the only one who would do.”

  My mouth fell open for a second. When my wits returned, I all but screamed, “Johnny? Johnny said that?”

  “Yes. He did.”

  I couldn’t believe that my friend Johnny Buckingham, bosom pal of my Billy for many long years, had sold me out to the enemy. Johnny, of all people! Why, I’d found a wife for him not very many months ago! And he’d turned on me in this unaccountable way! Well. We’d just see about this.

  “Let me get back to you, Stacy. I really can’t imagine teaching a cooking class.”

  “Captain Buckingham said you were the only one who could do it.”

  “So you said.” The rat. I never in a million years would have thought Johnny Buckingham to be such a scoundrel.

  “He did.”

  Sez you. “I’ll call you back.”

  “Thank you, Daisy.” The way she said it made me think she thought I’d agreed to her idiotic plan.

  “I haven’t said yes yet.”

  “You will,” said Stacy. And she hung up the receiver, sounding as happy as the proverbial lark in springtime.

  In his own quiet way, Billy was laughing when I slammed the receiver onto the hook and turned toward the kitchen table.

  “I can’t believe it,” I told him as I went back to the table, sank into a chair, and picked up my coffee cup. After taking a big swallow—its contents were cold by then, thanks to Stacy Kincaid; I swear, the girl wouldn’t get out of my life, no matter what—I said grumpily, “It’s not funny,” since Billy still appeared amused.