Hungry Spirits [Spirits 04] (29 page)

“
If you knew what was good for you, you would have,” Eugene said.

Right. This wasn’t the first time my basically honorable nature—if you discount my profession—got me into trouble.

“
But I don’t want to listen to you whine. Just shut up and drive, damn you,” said the ever-sweet Eugene.

So I figured it was time I did as he commanded. No point in pushing things, after all. As we drove through Pasadena, there was quite a bit of traffic on the road. The farther south we went, the scarcer the automobiles became, and farming wagons and horses started showing up. This area was all over farms and orange groves.

After about an hour, we were well past Pasadena, and we were encountering no traffic at all, which I might have considered unusual had I been thinking about traffic. I wasn’t. What I was doing was coming up with and rejecting schemes to get me out of this pickle. Even if I drove the Chevrolet into a ditch, thereby ruining our lovely new car, there was no guarantee I’d survive the crash. Or that Gertrude and Eugene wouldn’t. Automobile accidents were unpredictable at best.

Not only that, but I was beginning to worry about gasoline. I couldn’t recall when I’d last refilled the fuel tank. Mind you, it might be best merely to let the machine run out of fuel. That would bring us to a definite halt. I got the impression, however, doing that would also bring me to a halt, since I couldn’t figure Gertrude and Eugene needing me any longer if I no longer had the use of an automobile.

Therefore, summoning my courage in both hands and sending a heartfelt prayer heavenward, I dared ask a question. “Um . . . I think we’re going to have to refuel pretty soon.”

“
Huh,” said Eugene. “How much gasoline do you have in this thing?”

“
I don’t know.”

I think, although I’m not positive, that Eugene made as if to hit me with his gun again, because Gertrude’s hand shot out, and my flinch proved unnecessary.

“
Let her talk, Eugene. We don’t want to run dry.” She squinted at the innards of my lovely new auto. “How can you tell when you need gasoline? Is there a gauge in here somewhere?”

“
I’ll have to stop the car and use the dipstick,” I told her. “It’s marked in gallons, but it’s been quite a while since I got gasoline.”

“
Goddamned women,” said Eugene. “Why the devil didn’t you get a machine with a float and a marker?”

I didn’t even know what a float or a marker was, so I couldn’t answer that question. Not that I sensed he wanted an answer.

“
Well, pull over to the side of the road,” he grumbled. “I’ll check the level of the gas. Where the devil are we, anyway?”

“
Um . . . I’m not sure. I think we’re either in or near El Monte. Or maybe Monrovia.”

“
Do they got gas stations in El Monte or Monrovia?”

As Eugene himself might say,
How the devil should I know?
Recalling my manners, not to mention my desire to cling to life a little bit longer, I said, “I’m not sure, but they use a lot of farm equipment, like trucks and stuff, so I imagine they do.”

“
Shit. Well, pull over.”

I did as he requested. I kind of hoped the two Minnekes would allow me to get out and stretch my legs, but I didn’t expect such cooperation from them. I wasn’t disappointed. Gertrude said, “Just stay right there and don’t move. I’ve got my gun on you.”

Oh, goody.

I’m sure you’ve already figured out long since that I saw Billy’s best pal Sam Rotondo a good deal more often than I wanted to. That particular day, however, I would have given anything to have Sam show up with a squad of policemen. Unfortunately, the police are never around when you need them.

Eugene yanked the hood of the auto up, making me wince, since I didn’t want him to mark the lovely black finish. After all, the machine was less than a year old and, since we Gumms and Majestys weren’t rolling in wealth, it was going to have to last us a long time. I heard him snatch the dipstick from its little metal holder and unscrew the cap of the gasoline tank. Then we all heard a
clink.
Whoops. That didn’t sound like a good thing. Perhaps I waited a little too long to remember about fuel.

“
God damn son of a bitch!” hollered Eugene, from which I gathered I was correct in my suspicion.

“
Is it empty?” Gertrude asked, leaning out the window, her gun hand wavering in a way that made me quite nervous.

“
No, it’s not empty, but it might as well be. Where the hell are we, anyhow?”

When I leaned out my own window—mainly because I didn’t like to see that gun waving at me—I discovered I still couldn’t enlighten him. We seemed to be on a paved road that was winding through a lovely grove of orange trees. Oranges were certainly not uncommon in Pasadena and the vicinity at the time. Heck, they were all over the place. But under Eugene’s stern, not to say nasty directions, I’d driven and not asked questions. As I’d already told the man, I thought we were maybe in Monrovia or El Monte, although I didn’t know for sure.

“
You got any ideas?” he asked his sister, to whom he was no more polite than he was to me.

“
How should I know?” asked Gertrude, sounding exasperated.

“
And you?” Eugene said to me. He stomped to my side of the car. “What the devil were those towns you mentioned?”

I jerked my head inside, not wanting another tap from his gun. Oh, boy. If I said the wrong thing, I’d probably get more than tapped. Therefore, I sucked in a very deep breath and said, “I’m not sure, but we might be in El Monte. I saw some cows a ways back, and El Monte has some dairies. We’ve been driving for about an hour, haven’t we, or maybe a little more?”

Without answering my question, Eugene reached into an inner coat pocket and hauled out a watch, at which he squinted. “Yeah. It’s been about an hour and a quarter.” He stuffed the watch back into its pocket. “Why the devil didn’t you say something about gasoline before?”

Because he’d scared the words out of me, of course! What an idiot. Naturally, I didn’t say that. I shrugged, which was the wrong thing to do, as I might have known it would be. Anything at all would have been the wrong thing to do.

Eugene proceeded to stamp and stomp up and down the road. Gertrude said to me, “Wait here. Move, and I’ll shoot you,” and she got out, too.

If I’d had more courage—or more gasoline—I might well have gunned the engine and taken off, leaving the two miscreants in my dust. Of course, they’d certainly have shot at me, and I had no way of knowing if they were as proficient with their weapons as they were with profanity. Or I might have run off into the orange grove. Unfortunately, orange groves are planted in neat little rows, and I’d be very easy to spot and, as mentioned before, shot.

Therefore, I sat in the Chevrolet, trying my hardest to figure out what to do.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to figure out anything after all, which was a good thing, since my brain was abnormally empty at the time. The two Minneke siblings stormed back to the automobile, shouting at each other as if they hated one another’s guts. Mind you, I didn’t blame either one of them for their sentiments, but I sensed they might be going to have an uneasy alliance in their future criminal career together. I was sure glad I had my Billy. He might be grouchy a good deal of the time, but at least he wasn’t a Minneke.

As soon as Eugene got into the tonneau, he growled, “Start the damned car and drive slow. It’ll use less gas that way, and then stop at the nearest farmhouse or service station you see.”

That made sense, since lots of farmers kept stores of gasoline and oil and so forth in their barns to use with their equipment. I nodded my assent, pressed the self-starter, and let out the clutch. We inched along for a moment or two before Eugene snapped, “You can go faster than that, dammit! If we do run dry, we can push the damned car!”

Yes, sir. I sped up a bit, his previous words making me feel the tiniest bit optimistic. Surely, if we stopped at a farmhouse, I could somehow or other convey my distress to a resident there. I hoped.

And then, as if God were out to get me for my many sins, darned if one of my tires didn’t blow! It made a
pow!
sound as if somebody’d shot the silly thing with a bullet. Although we weren’t going fast, the automobile swerved like mad for a second or three before we ended up perilously close to one of those orange trees. And the right front wheel was sunk in a ditch.

“
God damn son of a bitch!” screeched Eugene, as ever with the
mot juste
for any occasion. Provided it was a scary one.

“
What happened?” asked Gertrude, sounding shaky. When I glanced over at her, I saw that she’d hit her head against the window frame. Good. I only wished she’d knocked herself out.

And then a miracle occurred. Honest to goodness. To say I was flabbergasted, dumbfounded and struck all of a twitter would be to minimize my feelings.

As if God Himself roared from heaven, a voice shouted—I learned later it shouted from a bullhorn—“Come out of the car with your hands up! Throw your weapons out and climb out!
Now!
”

Well, boy howdy—as a person I knew who came from Texas used to say—I didn’t need to be told twice! I also didn’t trust my companions, so rather than leaping out and running, I kind of pushed my door open and rolled out of the car. As the car was slanted into the ditch, I unfortunately rolled underneath it.

That, however, didn’t turn out to be a bad thing, since Eugene leaped out of the Chevrolet with his gun blazing. It didn’t blaze long, and neither did he. He dropped like a rock as soon as the coppers fired back. I didn’t see what Gertrude did, but I gather she threw her weapon away. I did hear her scream, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s not my fault!”

A likely story. I couldn’t see a whole lot from my vantage point, but as soon as the shooting stopped and people started running toward the machine and I heard a voice holler, “Daisy! Damn it, where are you?” I knew this was rescue and not a rival gang of criminals. Only Sam Rotondo could stir up such a wealth of emotions in my bosom. I was ever so grateful to be rescued, but did the stupid man
have
to swear at me as he did it?

Well, never mind. I crawled out of the ditch—evidently the orange trees had been irrigated recently, because I was all over mud—and the first words out of
my
mouth were “She is, too, at fault!” I regret to say that the next words were “Curse you, Sam Rotondo, if you’d only told me why you were interested in Gertrude Minneke, maybe I could have
helped
you. But
no!
Not
you!
You always have to—umph!”

The umph was occasioned by Sam grabbing me and shaking me as if I were a sheet he aimed to hang out on the line to dry. “Shut up! Tell me what happened! All I know is that your friend Buckingham called the Pasadena Police Department with some wild story about a Swiss girl claiming you’d been abducted at gunpoint!”

I took a deep, calming breath. I also realized I was really cold. December had just descended upon us, I was wet and muddy, and I was shaking like a leaf in a strong breeze. Part of my shakiness was probably due to nervousness, but it was still darned cold. I opened my mouth to tell Sam the saga, but he yanked off his coat and put it around me.

“
Here. You’re shivering. Damn it, get out of the cold!”

“
Stop swearing at me! And your coat is going to be filthy!”

Naturally, he paid me no mind. He hauled me over to a police car and shoved me inside. It relieved what was left of my mind that he stuck me in the front seat. Evidently this time, at least, he wasn’t holding me responsible for the shooting and escaping part of this fiasco. Well, if he didn’t care about the state of his wardrobe, why should I? I hugged his coat close to my body, drew up my knees so that they were covered, too, and sat there, staring at the action taking place on the street.

It didn’t make my heart swell with relief to see that Eugene was still alive. I guess he was shot in an unimportant part of the body, like maybe a leg or an arm or something. I suppose that makes me a bad person. Or maybe it just makes me human. But I would have been just as happy if he’d been shot dead. As for Gertrude, I aimed to do my level best to make sure she suffered any punishment she deserved. It already appeared that she was going to try to pin everything on her brother, but from my perspective, she was as guilty as he. She, after all, was the one who’d lied to me, told me idiotic stories, and was the first of the siblings to shove a gun at me.

And then there was Hilda. As soon as I could function properly again, I aimed to telephone Miss Emmaline Castleton, tell her of Hilda’s heroism, and make sure her father included Hilda in his letter to his congressman or the president, or whoever he aimed to write to regarding Kurt Grünfeld.

It occurred to me then that I’d have to tackle Sam on the Hilda issue, too. That knowledge didn’t make my heart sing, but I’d got around Sam Rotondo before, and I’d be darned if I’d let him bamboozle me this time. Hilda had saved my life, and my life was worth something, even if Sam didn’t often think so.

And . . . aw, nuts. Billy and my parents were simply going to love this latest attestation to my inability to stay out of trouble. Darn it. None of these things were my fault!

Shoot. I sounded like Gertrude. Perhaps I’d do well to spend the entire ride back to Pasadena making what was truly an innocent involvement in crime sound even more plausible than it really was.