Free Genteel Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) by Alice Duncan

mind’s eye pictured her holding out a treat to the infant Monty Mountjoy as an enticement to get him to sit up and beg. I shook my head to rid it of the silly image. “He’s a lovely young man. Um . . . did he choose the last name Mountjoy himself?” Was that a snoopy question? Well, too bad. I’d already asked it.
    “Good Lord, no. The studio tacked that one on him. I don’t mind, though. Hanratty isn’t exactly a name you’d expect to see on a theater marquee, would you? Mountjoy is much more . . . romantic.”
    “I suppose so,” I muttered, recalling where Monty Mountjoy’s romantic interests lay.
    “And isn’t that Lola de la Monica a stitch ?” Mrs. Hanratty went on. “Now you know somebody at the studio tacked that moniker on her. Lola de la Monica, my hind leg .”
    Pa, Billy and I all laughed. “I told them about her phony Spanish accent and what she sounds like when she’s not putting it on. ”
    Mrs. Hanratty shook her head in good-natured wonder, Pa and Billy joined Billy’s war-injured friends, Spike and I walked with Mrs. Hanratty to join the circle of dog-obedience trainees, and then commenced the only truly good hour of my weekend.
    Oh, very well, so life wasn’t all bad. At church the next day, we choir members produced a rousing rendition of “Come, Christians, Join to Sing,” and following that, we all partook of the covered-dish social in Fellowship Hall. Generally we only had cookies and coffee after church, but one Sunday each month was designated covered-dish Sunday. Aunt Vi had brought one of her more delicious chicken-in-cream-sauce dishes and a caramel cake. What with Vi’s contribution and the rest of the wonderful food the other women of the church brought, about all that went on in the Gumm-Majesty household that particular Sunday afternoon was a whole lot of napping.
    And then it was Monday. Or Doomsday, if you were me.
    Mind you, I’ve been in worse places and predicaments in my life. I was arrested in a speakeasy one time, for pity’s sake, and all I’d been doing there was conducting a séance, being too intelligent to drink my hard-earned money away or to break the law . . . well, not on purpose , anyway . And I’d darned near been killed by a couple of thieving anarchists a few months earlier , and I hadn’t done anything wrong that time except teach a cooking class for which I was totally unqualified . But except when Harold had been driving me to that wretched speakeasy, I can’t recall a single other time when I’d experienced such dread as when I headed to a job .
    I didn’t mind so much being spiritual advisor to Lola de la Monica, although I can’t really say I liked the woman very much. But attempting to discover who was sending poison ed -pen letters to Monty Mountjoy—under Sam Rotondo’s nose, and without allowing Sam to find out what I was doing and why—was a prospect that thrilled me not at all. In fact, it made me want to run away and hide.
    Also, why was Sam going to be there? He wouldn’t tell me. Did he know about the threatening letters? Why would the Pasadena Police Department deploy a detective and two uniformed outriders to seek out the author of threatening letters? I feared there was a deeper and far more sinister purpose for Sam’s attendance at the picture shoot, and he’d already let slip that it concerned Monty Mountjoy.
    Was Monty Mountjoy a secret drug addict?
    Was he a secret drug pusher ?
    Was he hand in glove with bootleggers?
    Was he, God forbid, some kind of perverted person who enjoyed dallying with children? The mere thought made me sick.
    I n any case, i f he was any of those things, I didn’t want to know. My initial impression of Monty was that he was a kind and gentle and genuinely nice man. I didn’t want him to be a crook.
    And I really and truly didn’t want to have to hang out anywhere near Sam Rotondo for a job that might well last for weeks and weeks.
     
     

Chapter Five
     
    As soon as I entered the