Fallen Angels (2 page)

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to dress
like a flapper any more than you have to live on your income.”

I sighed. “True. But don’t you see? Every
time I dip into Great-Aunt Agatha’s legacy, I’m defeating my entire
purpose for getting a job in the first place.”

“All right. I understand. But I still think
you could spiff yourself up a little bit. I’m sure Mr. Templeton
wouldn’t mind.” Chloe liked Ernie.

I’m sure Ernie wouldn’t have minded, either.
Ernie was a very casual individual and totally unlike any other man
I’d ever met before. My father is a banker, for Pete’s sake, and so
is my ghastly brother, and you know how bankers dress and act.
“That’s true,” I admitted.

“Very well. Then I’ll help you find
some duds that look good
and
that go with your so-called
position.
”

“Oh, all right. If you’re not too tired after
lunch, maybe I’ll go look at a new dress or something. I understand
the Broadway sells women’s fashions off the rack these days.”

“Mrs. Martinez can make you something,
although you’re right. There might be some nice things off the
rack, and it might be fun to look.” Mrs. Martinez was the
seamstress Chloe patronized and who did a great job keeping my
sister clad in the very latest and loveliest of fashions.

This day, for instance, Chloe was clad
in a peach-colored drop-waisted day dress in a lightweight
seersucker fabric. She wore cream-colored shoes, gloves, and hat
and carried a cream handbag, and she looked the epitome of
early-autumn elegance without disgracing the family legacy by
wearing white after Labor Day. Not that my family had anything to
do with Labor Day on a regular basis or anything. As far as most of
my family is concerned, Labor Day is a Socialist holiday and a
disgrace to the great capitalist culture rampant in the United
States. I don’t agree with that. And no matter what my mother says
of me, I’m
not
a Socialist. I
figure one can appreciate those who labor to produce the goods one
consumes without turning Socialist or becoming a Communist or an
anarchist.

But I digress.

I myself was clad in one of the suits I wore
to work. It wasn’t fancy, but it was relatively cool, since the
sleeves were short and it was made of a crisp piquet rather than
the wool our mother deems necessary in order to maintain decorum.
Nuts to decorum, I say, when the weather hovered in the nineties. I
didn’t look as fashionable and cool as Chloe, but I wouldn’t have
done so even if I’d been dressed by the most skillful modiste in
Los Angeles. For one thing, I don’t have Chloe’s angelic looks,
with her blond hair and blue eyes. My eyes are blue, too, but my
hair is brown, and there’s just no getting away from the fact that
Chloe is prettier than I am. Not that I’m ugly or anything, but the
truth is the truth, after all. I sighed deeply. The truth might be
the truth, but I didn’t necessary have to like it, did I?

No, I did not. However, Chloe’s always been
my best friend, so I’ve never envied her beauty. Well, not very
much, anyhow.

I said, “We can look around a little after
lunch if you’re up to it. Don’t want to wear you out.”

“I’m fine,” said Chloe, munching another soda
cracker. “Anyhow, I can always take a nap this afternoon.”

“That’s so.” I planned to write this
afternoon. With Buttercup at my feet. I’d just started a story
based on some of my experiences—see how important experiences
are?—and I could hardly wait to get back to it. It was going to be
a murder mystery, by gum! My mother would faint if she knew.

Our pretty little waitress, who also looked
cool even though she wore a black dress with a white apron,
delivered our lunches—a chicken sandwich for me and clear soup for
Chloe, along with more soda crackers—and we dug in. Politely, of
course. There’s no reason to discard all of one’s childhood
training merely because one doesn’t approve of some of one’s
parents’ precepts, after all.

After a few sips of her soup, Chloe sat back
and looked at me. I took another bite of my sandwich and looked
back at her. She seemed a trifle troubled about something. After I
swallowed, I said, “What’s up, Chloe?”

She sipped another spoonful of soup before
answering. “Harvey wants us to move.”

“Move?” The meaning of her words didn’t
register at first.

“Yes. The studio is going to be building a
huge new site to the west of Los Angeles, and he wants us to move
west, too.”

“I thought this
was
the west.” I laid my sandwich on my plate
and sipped some water.

She smiled at me. “Overall, yes, this is the
west. But there are lots of places farther west than Los Angeles,
you know.”

“You mean like the beach?” Chloe and I had
been to the beach once before. We’d taken a red car all the way to
Santa Monica and made a day of it. It had been fun, although I
didn’t much appreciate all that sand sneaking into my bathing
costume or the rather significant sunburn I’d sustained.

“Not quite as far west as the beach, but
maybe Culver City or thereabouts.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure where Culver City was,
although I expected it was somewhere between Los Angeles and Santa
Monica.

“He’s thinking of having a house built in
some hills over that way. A big house. I think he called the area
Beverly Hills.”

“I do believe I read something about Beverly
Hills in one of Hedda Heartwood’s columns.” Then I grimaced. Hedda
Heartwood had been the premier gossip columnist in Hollywood for a
while. I had been seated in the very room, at the very table, at
which Hedda Heartwood died, at the very time she was murdered, and
I still didn’t like to think about it. Fortunately, other
gossip-loving columnists have taken her place. Well, not
fortunately for her, but . . . Oh, you know what I mean. “I
understand a lot of picture people are moving out there. Didn’t
Cecil B. DeMille just build a huge house in Beverly Hills?”

“Yes, he did, and lots of others are moving
there, too. It’s a very pretty area, and the houses are amazing.
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford live there, and so do Vilma
Bankey and John Barrymore. Not together, of course.”

“Of course.” As I’ve mentioned, I’d seen John
Barrymore at a party once, and Douglas Fairbanks, too. They were
both drinking heavily. And this was supposed to be Prohibition
time. Ha! If you have enough money, you can always skirt the law.
Just ask Al Capone, or whatever that murdering gangster’s name
is.

“So you’re going to build your own
house?”

She heaved a weary sigh. “That’s what Harvey
wants to do. I don’t have the energy for it myself, but I’m sure
he’ll hire someone to draw up the plans and everything like that. I
hope I won’t have to be too involved. I just don’t feel up to
it.”

I was sure he would. As I mentioned before,
Harvey was rich. “It won’t be built until after the baby comes,
will it?”

“He might begin making the plans, but no.
There’s not enough time to hire an architect, have the architect
create plans, and build a place in six or seven months. Frankly,
I’m not sure I want to move anyway. Harvey says Bunker Hill is
going downhill, but I don’t see it.”

“I don’t, either.” I thought Harvey and
Chloe’s neighborhood was swell. Granted, it was on a hill right
smack in the middle of Los Angeles, and perhaps film people
preferred to live away from it all. But I thought the Nash home was
wonderful, and Bunker Hill was a sweet place. Besides, the almost
vertical railroad, Angels Flight, which took me from Bunker Hill to
downtown every day, was darling.

“You’re more than welcome to live with us
after we move, Mercy,” Chloe said in a hurry.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose. You’ll have
enough to do when the baby comes.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll hire a maid to take
care of the baby when I need to rest.”

I knew rich people did that sort of thing all
the time, but it seemed kind of cold to me. I’d never tell Chloe
that, however. “Besides,” I said, “I love my job and wouldn’t want
to leave it.”

Chloe nodded. “I’ve already thought about
that. Beverly Hills is kind of far from here. You’d have to
drive.”

Which would be a problem, since I didn’t know
how to drive.

Chloe knew that. “I’ll teach you, and you can
always get a machine.”

True, although not on the salary Ernie paid
me.

“I’ll have to think about it. I really don’t
want to quit my job.”

“I know.” Smirking, Chloe drank some of the
seltzer water she’d asked for in deference to her tender-tummy
problem. “I’d hate to take you away from Ernie. And vice-versa, of
course.”

I didn’t appreciate that smirk. Chloe
thought I was more fond of Ernie than our mother would countenance
if she knew about it, which she didn’t. Not that there was anything
to know about. It was true that I liked Ernie. I even admired him,
but I certainly didn’t have any romantic designs upon him. The very
notion was absurd. However, I knew better than to respond to
Chloe’s smirk. Denial, in my experience, only firms up the other
person’s convictions. I think Shakespeare wrote something like that
once. In
Hamlet
, if I’m not
mistaken.

“It will be exciting to have a new house,” I
said in order to divest my sister of that blasted expression on her
face.

My ploy succeeded. Chloe sighed. “I suppose
it will be nice to live in a brand-new house. I just loathe the
notion of moving.”

I hate to say it, but Chloe was kind of
indolent. She didn’t resent our upbringing nearly as much as I did,
except insofar as it had been too confining for her fun-loving
personality. She possessed none of my passion about social issues,
for instance, or the fact that thousands of people in our glorious
nation lived in poverty and ignorance and near-starvation. I doubt
that she gave a rap about the downtrodden worker proletariat,
although I’m sure she’d feel sorry for and give money to a beggar
should one appear directly before her. Since she confined herself
to the wealthiest circles in L.A., I doubt one ever did.

“You’ll certainly be able to hire people to
do all the packing and moving for you, won’t you?”

She sighed again. “I suppose so. I guess I’m
just so tired, I can’t bear the notion of doing anything at all,
much less moving into a new home. And one so far away from so many
of my friends. I wonder if Francis will still visit.” Francis
Easthope was one of Chloe and Harvey’s closest chums.

“Oh, I’m sure he will. After all, he has that
darling little Bugatti that he loves to drive.” I’d never been
“with child,” as the saying goes, so I couldn’t truly appreciate
Chloe’s condition, but I said, “I understand how the move might be
upsetting to you, though,” because I figured I should.

At any rate, we finished our luncheon and
decided to stop in the ladies’ dresses department in the Broadway
before we went home. There I delighted my sister by buying two
(count ’em) lightweight, pretty dresses that were suitable for the
office. Lulu LaBelle, who sat behind the reception desk in the
Figueroa Building, would be almost as pleased as Chloe.

Then I spent the remainder of the afternoon
writing my detective novel. I’d decided to hold the murder in a
grand home at a house party, although I hadn’t yet come to the
murder part, decided who the corpse would be, or determined who
would do the evil deed. But I still enjoyed myself.

Chloe napped. So did Buttercup. On my feet,
come to think of it.

* * * * *

On Monday morning, I donned one of my new
dresses, pinned my hat to my hair, stuck my gloves in my handbag,
picked up said handbag, ate the nice breakfast Mrs. Biddle, Chloe’s
housekeeper, fixed for me, kissed Buttercup good-bye, left Chloe’s
house and walked to Angels Flight. There I handed the engineer my
nickel, boarded the car, and the rest of the passengers and I
zipped to the bottom of the hill. From there I walked to Seventh
and Hill and entered the lobby.

I felt mighty jaunty that day, and not
merely because I was clad in a pretty new dress of light blue wool
jersey with a perky jacket and a dropped waist, but because I
positively
loved
my job. I
greeted Lulu with a cheery, “Good morning!”

Lulu, who possessed a rather flamboyant sense
of style and none of my qualms about proper working attire, sat
behind her desk filing her nails and chatting with Mr. Emerald
Buck, whom I also greeted cheerily and who worked as the custodian
at the Figueroa Building. Mr. Buck was ever so much more competent
than our last custodian, who liked to hide in the basement and read
when he was supposed to be doing his job. Mr. Buck actually enjoyed
keeping the building looking neat and tidy. He dusted all exposed
surfaces daily, and even polished the brass plate confirming the
building’s identity and kept the sidewalk outside the front door
swept.

This morning Lulu wore a vibrant purple dress
with huge white flowers on it. Her bottle-blond hair was cut into a
curly bob, and her lipstick, a glossy red, clashed violently with
the purple of her clothing. What’s more, she had before her on the
receptionist’s desk a bottle of nail varnish the same red color as
her lipstick. Lulu was nothing if not colorful. In fact, she pretty
much personified the nation’s notion of the flapper.

“’
Lo, Mercy. Ernie left you a
note.”

My happy mood slipped a notch. “A note?
Ernie? He’s already been here?”

“Yup. He left you a note.”

This was strange behavior, indeed. My
boss, Ernie, never got to work at eight o’clock, when I was
expected to show up. He generally ambled in at nine or nine-thirty,
carrying a copy of the
Los Angeles
Times
, an insouciant grin, and an aura of detachment
that had initially been as foreign to me as the weather in my new
hometown. Now I liked it. For him. I certainly wasn’t ready to
adopt a slouch or casual walk. Not that I wanted to do either, mind
you. It was up to one of us to add the professional touch to the
firm of Ernest Templeton, P.I., and that someone, I’d learned very
early in our relationship, sure wasn’t going to be Ernie. Besides,
I considered my crisp efficiency something of a
hallmark.