Unsettled Spirits (36 page)

I was about halfway to the ladies' room when I heard my name being called softly from a room on my left. I turned to behold Mr. Gerald Kingston smiling at me. Hmm. I smiled back, deeming it only polite to do so.

"Mrs. Majesty, could you come here for a moment? Miss Powell isn't feeling well and asked for you."

"Betsy? What's the matter with her?"

"I'm not sure, but she asked for you. I hope you don't mind. She insisted only you will do."

This seemed quite odd to me. On the other hand, most of my interactions with Miss Betsy Powell of late had been odd to one degree or another. Mr. Kingston, in his mild, meek way, appeared pleasant enough, and he showed, I thought, fitting concern that his special lady friend wasn't feeling well.

"I hope she's not getting what I had. The influenza can really knock one for a loop."

"I hope she isn't," said he, opening the door wider and gesturing for me to enter.

So I entered. The room was one used as a Sunday-school room for second-and-third-graders. I remembered it well from my childhood. We'd learn Bible verses and recite them to our teacher, and we'd get a little colored paper with the chapter and verse number printed on it as a reward. My mother and I had glued my brightly colored papers to a ribbon, which still hung in my bedroom at home, although I barely noticed any longer.

I also didn't notice Betsy Powell in the room. I turned around in time to see Mr. Gerald Kingston shut and lock the door and turn to face me, still smiling his meek-and-mild smile.

Whatever did this mean?

"Where's Miss Powell?" I asked, beginning to feel a little nervous.

"I don't know," said Gerald Kingston, reaching into his jacket pocket and revealing a syringe wrapped in cloth. He carefully unwrapped it.

Eyeing that syringe with grave misgiving, I said, "What are you doing? What's that, and why did you bring me here?"

"My dear Mrs. Majesty, you have a terrible habit of getting in my way, did you know that?"

"I what?"

"It was bad enough when you sent those sheriff's deputies into the foothills to discover my brother's still. You have no idea how difficult it was to set that thing up. Naturally, I didn't do the manual labor, being the brains in the family, but I worked out the formula for the whiskey, and that still produced a truly high-quality product. None of your bathtub gin for us. We went for quality, and we were well on our way to becoming quite wealthy, thanks to Prohibition."

My mouth fell open and my eyes goggled. That is to say, I'm pretty sure about my eyes. I couldn't see them for myself, but I was definitely stunned. "But... I don't know what you're talking about."

Oh, boy, how I wished my voice worked. I'd have screamed the entire church down if it did.

"Don't be ridiculous, young woman. You're a meddling busybody. And then, when Miss Powell told me she'd confessed everything to you, including her tawdry affair with that blackguard, Mr. Underhill, the most unworthy specimen of mankind ever to bide upon this earth, and her failed attempt to poison him during communion, I knew I had to do something about you. Your close friendship with that detective fellow makes you too dangerous for me to leave you be. You see that, don't you?"

"Wh-what?" I wish I could say I couldn't believe my ears, but I could and did. What's more, Mr. Kingston started walking toward me with that blasted syringe in his hand, tapping it with his finger and squirting a little bit of whatever was in it out, I presume to make sure it worked.

"Mind you, I realize you might already have blabbed Miss Powell's secrets to the fellow, but if you had, I'm sure the police would have picked her up for questioning by this time."

"But I wasn't even going to tell Sam about her trying to poison Mr. Underhill! And I'd
never
reveal so private a secret about their affair to anyone!" There I went, lying again.

Evidently Mr. Kingston didn't believe me, drat the man.

"Don't be silly, Mrs. Majesty. Women can never keep secrets. Now, don't worry. This won't hurt much at all, and after a second or two, you won't feel a single thing."

"Is that what you did to Mr. Underhill?"

"Of course. Only I used a different poison." He frowned. "This one is better."

"But... Does Miss Powell know?"

"About what?"

"About you killing Mr. Underhill!" It would have come out as a holler, if my voice had allowed it to. Darn and heck.

"Certainly not. She's a sweet, innocent woman."

"She tried to kill a man!" Again I tried for a scream, but all that emerged was a sort of whispery rasp. Drat it! "And she had an illicit affair with him, too!"

"That only proves her innocence. No woman with an ounce of worldliness would have fallen for the lies told to her by a fellow like that."

As he approached, syringe extended, I sidled around a desk, wishing the room was equipped with weapons. As with most Sunday-school rooms, it wasn't. But surely there must be something I could find that might stop Mr. Kingston in his murderous pursuit of me. Glancing around wildly, I didn't see much in the way of villain repellents.

"You might as well not try to run away or fight me, Mrs. Majesty. One little prick with this needle, and it will be all over for you. I'm sure your family will mourn your loss, but you've been
so
ill, I'm sure they'll chalk up your demise to natural causes."

"Is that cyanide?" I asked, thinking maybe if I could keep him talking, he'd delay his lunge, if lunge he planned.

"No, my dear. This is something else entirely. I made a mistake with Underhill. Didn't think the matter through. This will leave no telltale pink stains upon your lovely, if pallid, cheeks. You really have been ill, haven't you? If you were diabetic, this might even help you. However, insulin injected into a healthy person—"

"But I'm not healthy!" I whispered madly.

"Come, come. You know what I mean."

"Yes," I whispered, scanning the room for anything I might use to thwart his evil intentions. "I do." So much for that topic. I searched for another, less lethal one. "So you belong to a bootlegging gang?"

He laughed, sounding quite merry, which irked me. Here he was, aiming to murder me, and he was laughing? The little, mild-mannered rat. Maybe a mouse. "Heavens, no. My brother Rodney was quite the dull fellow. He was fit for nothing but manual labor, so I decided he might as well make us some money while laboring. He was a fool to kidnap the Evans fellow, because that led the police on a search. I understand you were responsible for that, too." He'd quit laughing and glared at me.

"I didn't mean to." Shoot, I couldn't even work up a good whisper for that one.

"You did it anyway, or so I've been told." He shook his head. "You're
such
an interfering woman."

"No, I'm not."

"Ptah!" I swear that's what he said. "At any rate, Rodney knew better than to... What is that term the gangsters use? Squeal? Yes. He knew better than to squeal on me, because he was aware of my capabilities with chemicals and so forth. To be on the safe side, however, I made sure he suffered a heart attack the evening of his arrest."

"You killed your own
brother
?" Good Lord. "Are you planning to marry Betsy Powell?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but yes. She's a sweet lady. Well, I don't suppose the term
lady
applies any longer, but I'm a forgiving man. She'll make a perfect mate for a scholarly bloke like me." He moved closer, and I continued sidling away from him.

"A murderous bloke, you mean," I whispered bitterly.

And then I spied a pile of Bibles on a shelf behind the desk.

"Now, now, now. It's not polite to call people names. Miss Powell is a most lovely and predictable woman, and just the sort of person I need to keep my house in order and cook my meals.
She
won't do outrageous things like tell fortunes or visit chemical plants on spurious errands."

"She works in one," I pointed out, still sidling. I'd reached the stack of Bibles. What I wanted was a baseball bat or a loaded gun, but this particular Sunday-school room wasn't equipped with either of those items, a serious deficit under the circumstances. I did lift my arm, as if to cover my face. In fact, I wanted to be able to reach those heavy books in a hurry. This turned out to be a good thing for me to have done.

Because he lunged. I swept the pile of Bibles off the shelf. They fell with a resounding crash right in front of Mr. Gerald Kingston, who promptly fell over them, dropping his syringe. I didn't stoop to pick it up, but stomped on it, shattering it to bits. Then I ran for the door like a spooked hare.

"Come back here!" he screamed, sounding oddly like Miss Betsy Powell.

"Not on your life."

"It's
your
life in peril here!"

I heard him scramble to his feet, but I'd reached the door, unlocked it, and flung it wide. Then I bolted out of that room, hit a brick wall, and nearly bounced back into the felonious grip of Mr. Gerald Kingston.

But it wasn't a brick wall. It was Sam Rotondo. I threw my arms around him and whispered as loudly as I could, but less grammatically than I might have wished, "It was
him
!
He
killed Mr. Underwood! He killed his own
brother
! He's a bootlegger! He's a murderer!"

"Nonsense," said Gerald Kingston. "The woman's gone mad."

Sam picked me up and set me aside, then he collared Mr. Gerald Kingston. Literally. He grabbed him by the collar of his Sunday suit, twirled him around, and picked him right up off the floor. There wasn't a whole lot Mr. Kingston could do about it, since he no longer faced Sam. He tried kicking, but he only hit the wall of the church corridor.

Shaking like the proverbial aspen leaf, I told Sam, "There's a syringe in there. He was going to stick me with it. I stomped on it because he was going to kill me. It probably has... whatever he said was the kind of poison in it. He said my death would be chalked up to natural causes because I've been so ill."

Sam twirled Gerald Kingston around again and punched him in the jaw.

Bless his heart! Sam's, not Mr. Kingston's.

Miss Betsy Powell began screaming, and it was only then I realized a sizeable crowd had gathered in that corridor. Someone else was going to have to shut her up this time. I wasn't well enough to do it.

Dr. Benjamin finally had the bright idea of injecting Miss Powell with a sedative to make her stop screaming. Then the church was overrun with uniformed police officers. Sam carefully led what he called the "forensics team" into the Sunday-school room where Mr. Kingston had held me captive and tried to kill me. I'm sure the team scooped up what was left of the syringe and whatever had been in it.

* * *

While we were still at the church, one of the uniforms asked, "How'd Kingston get that big bruise on his jaw? It's swelling like a balloon."

"He resisted arrest," said Sam.

The officer looked from the puny Mr. Kingston to the massive Sam Rotondo and said, "Oh." Then Mr. Kingston, without protest, was led away, I suppose to a cell somewhere at the police station. I wanted to hug Sam, but I restrained myself.

Then we all had to trek down to the police station, which sat on the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and Walnut Street at the rear end of Pasadena City Hall, and gave statements. I was the only one with anything interesting to report, but the whole family went with me, and so did Dr. Benjamin, who thought his medical expertise might be needed. His wife, Mrs. Benjamin, declined the pleasure of visiting the station with us. Couldn't fault her for that.

My voice died completely before my interview was over, although I spilled everything I knew or had been told by Miss Betsy Powell, including her having tried to kill Mr. Underhill and thinking she'd killed Mrs. Franbold instead. I also told them what she'd told me about her sordid affair with Mr. Underhill. I felt kind of like a hoarse rat, but darn it, that woman's gentleman friend had tried to kill me. He'd already killed at least two other people.

The day didn't really get any better from then, but after a fairly harrowing afternoon we, including Dr. Benjamin, who'd stayed with us—on my account, he said. Guess he feared I'd faint from exhaustion or drop dead or something—were allowed to go home. As other people spilled their guts to the police and on the way home, my voice gained a tiny bit of volume, but I didn't use it. I was totally done in by all the goings-on that day.

Once we got home, we gathered around the dining room table for a very late dinner, although I was drooping like a wilted lily. Sam wouldn't even let me set the table. But that was all right. All we were having were sandwiches and soup, and neither Ma nor Pa minded filling in for me as far as table-setting duties went.

"Do you want your meal on a tray in your room?"

After looking from Pa to Dr. Benjamin, I realized Sam had asked the question.

I pointed at my chest and croaked, "Me?"

Wrong thing to say. Sam glowered at me. "Yes, you. You're sick. You were nearly murdered, and it's been a grueling afternoon. You probably should rest.
I'll
fix you a tray if you're worried about overworking your mother or your aunt."

Vi said, "Pish."