Dear Diary,

Well, I'm not sure if we really did a very good job with our last case, but the client seems happy, and we got paid. So I guess we did ok.

The client was one of these rich society dames. Well, she looked rich anyway. Her aunt, though, the one she wanted us to help, was only semi-rich, I think, so maybe Esme (that's her name, Esme Carrington-Danforth. What sort of name is that, I ask you!) just likes to look like that. Anyway, she wanted help for her Aunt, Miss Elena Saravelda. Miss Saravelda seems like a nice enough old bat, makes most of her living with this fancy tea shop of hers, and a little extra cash on the side running scam seances for other rich ladies who've lost their loved ones. (Although she got the Prof. to one of them. I wouldn't have thought he'd go in for that sort of thing...)

So she had this problem, from one of her seances, where someone else faked stuff better than she did. Instead of her normal thumping and bumping, things got out of hand, as candles blew out, loud noises were heard, and someone chucked a vase at one of the guests, Mrs. Maria Genelli. Mr. Joseph Marino, Mrs. Genelli's "friend," had taken some offense at this, and was causing some trouble at the Tea Shop. We were called in to find out who was responsible, and straighten things out.

With a little poking around, Eddie quickly figured out that Marino was a mobster, and Mrs. Genelli was a flake, with an attack of the guilts over being "friendly" with Marino. The seance going wrong had apparently upset her greatly, and Marino was set to cause all sorts of trouble if Mrs. Genelli wasn't calmed down. (You have to wonder, diary, if he was more upset because she'd been injured, or because Mrs. Genelli wasn't being so "friendly" while she was upset... She had some marks on her neck that made it look like he isn't the safest of guys to be going with.).

Charlie volunteered to stay at the Tea shop for a couple of days and keep things under control, and he bravely managed to chase off Marino's goons when they showed up. But they started showing up at night, and Charlie couldn't stay there forever. He had to get back to work at the docks if he's going to make enough money so we can get married, after all.

Eddie had figured out by then who the bad guy was. One of the other seance attendees, Mr. Emil Maillet, was a stage magician and "seance debunker." He'd apparently hypnotized the young lady he came to the seance with, Miss Julia Pritchard, and gotten her to help him with his nefarious plan to disrupt the seance. I'm not quite sure exactly what his plan was (Eddie didn't explain that part), but I'm guessing she wasn't supposed to actually hit anyone with the vase, it just shattered when she threw it at the table, and Mrs. Genelli got hit.

Since Emil had caused the problem, though, Eddie got him and Miss Pritchard to show up to help fix it. We set up another seance, and made sure Mrs. Genelli was there. Emil made sure some more stuff happened (he must be a really good magician. He gave us fliers, maybe I'll go see his act sometime), and then threw his voice into the middle of the table, so that Mrs. Genelli thought it was her husband talking to her, and mostly said it was ok for her to be with Marino. She seemed to calm down after that, and Marino hasn't been causing any more problems at the store, the last couple of days, so it looks like the boss pulled off another one! (I do wish he'd tell me before he sets up one of these dramatic denouments, though. I'd have loved to get to look for Emil's set up before hand, if Eddie'd filled me in...)