Fallen Angels (9 page)

He held chairs for Mother, Chloe, and then
me. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, which was nice.

Naturally, as soon as we were seated, Mother
started in on me. “You’re deplorably underdressed for dining in
this restaurant, Mercedes Louise.” She looked around the room with
an upper-crust sneer. “Even if it is in Los Angeles.”

“I didn’t know you were going to make me go
to the Ambassador for luncheon, Mother,” said I, snapping my menu
open.

“Make
you go
to the Ambassador? I should think you’d be grateful for a nice meal
instead of devouring one of the corned-beef sandwiches Chloe has
informed me you feed on regularly.”

I shot a scowl at Chloe, but I couldn’t
really blame her for telling on me. After all, she had to say
something to our mother, who was a difficult conversationalist at
the best of times. Therefore, my scowl only lasted a second before
I grinned at my sister. “I adore corned-beef sandwiches,” I said to
Mother. “With sauerkraut, especially.”

Mother would have shuddered had she been
another sort of woman. She wasn’t. Instead, she pressed her lips
together and decided to save her guns for the bigger battle, which,
I suspected, would be that of forcing me to move in with her and
Father.

* * * * *

Talk about grueling! I’m surprised I survived
that luncheon with Chloe and our mutual mother with my skin intact.
The entire meal, except when we were chewing, was devoted to my
lack of family feeling, disgraceful behavior, and general moral
laxity.

I more or less staggered into the Figueroa
Building at one-thirty or thereabouts, having left Mother steaming
in Chloe’s machine, and not from the heat of the day, but from the
heat of her anger with me. Thank God Lulu LaBelle had returned from
her own lunch (short form) and occupied the desk in the lobby,
where she sat in one of her more astonishing costumes, filing her
nails. She filed her nails almost constantly. I’m not sure why.

As soon as Lulu saw me, she jumped to her
feet. “Oh, Mercy! Ernie told me about your mother. I’m so
sorry!”

Removing my hat and sinking slowly into the
chair before Lulu’s desk, I whimpered, “It was awful, Lulu.”

“Where’d she take you?”

Lulu asked the question almost avidly, and I
might have resented her tone except that I understood Lulu knew I’d
come from “money,” as Ernie so inelegantly put it, because she’d
told me Ernie’d ratted on me. Lulu came from the same small town in
Oklahoma where her brother had originated. I’m sure she expected me
to have gone somewhere grand. And I had. Not that I’d wanted
to.

“The Ambassador,” I said, still
whimpering.

“The Ambassador? Oh, my!”

Lulu’s breathy voice told me how much she’d
like to go to the Ambassador for a meal someday. Next time my
mother ordered me to go to luncheon with her, maybe I’d send Lulu
in my stead.

But no. I couldn’t do that to Lulu. She
didn’t deserve my mother any more than I did.

“Did you see any stars?” Lulu asked.

“Stars?” Had I seen any? Boy, I hadn’t even
dared look around. I’d pretty much just tried to choke down my
lobster thermidor and not wither under Mother’s blistering scorn.
“I’m sorry, Lulu. I didn’t notice.”

Lulu gasped. “You didn’t
notice
?”

I’d have felt guilty except that . . . well,
Lulu had met my mother. I only stared at her.

She gazed sorrowfully upon me. “I’m sorry,
Mercy. I’m glad my mother isn’t like yours.”

“For your sake and Rupert’s, I’m glad,
too.”

As I’ve already mentioned, Rupert Mullins was
Lulu’s brother. Mind you, Lulu’s last name was LaBelle, but she’d
chosen it for herself, figuring LaBelle would look better on a
theater marquee than would Mullins. She aimed to be discovered one
day by a talent scout or a director or a producer. I wasn’t sure
this was a sound plan on her part, since it didn’t seem to me that
talent scouts were thick on the ground in the Figueroa Building,
but I’d already carved out my own career. If sitting behind the
receptionist’s desk was how Lulu planned to carve hers, who was I
to judge? Anyhow, Rupert was employed by a dear friend of Chloe’s
and, now, mine, Mr. Francis Easthope, one of the world’s most
gorgeous men—but a really nice one.

“But didn’t you even see one star? Not one
little teensy little star?”

I gazed as woefully upon her as she’d gazed
upon me seconds earlier. “I’m sorry, Lulu. Would you like it if I
took you to lunch at the Ambassador one of these days? I’m sure
I’ll have a better time with you than with my mother, and it would
be fun to look around and see if we recognize any picture
people.”

She gawked at me as if I’d lost what
was left of my mind. “
You
can’t get into the Ambassador! You have to be famous to go
there.”

Puzzled, I said, “I’m not famous, and they
let me in there today.”

“But your sister is married to
Harvey Nash
, one of the picture
business’s most important people! The Ambassador would let a Nash
in.”

Was Harvey really that important? Gee, I
hadn’t known that. How fascinating. “Oh,” I said, befuddled for a
moment. Then I thought of an answer to the Ambassador problem. “I
can still take you. I’ll just ask Chloe to call for a reservation.”
And then I’d bribe Houston when we got there, but I didn’t need to
tell Lulu that part.

Lulu clutched her clasped hands to her heart.
I hoped she hadn’t just applied a coat of varnish to those pointy
nails, or her alarmingly fuchsia dress might be ruined. “Would you
do that, Mercy? Really and truly?”

“Really and truly.”

“You’re a real pal, Mercy.” There were
honest-to-God tears in Lulu’s eyes.

For some reason, having made Lulu happy
lessened the debilitating effect of having spent the better part of
an hour being vilified by my mother. It was a brighter Mercy
Allcutt who climbed the stairs to the third floor of the Figueroa
Building to begin my afternoon’s work. The understanding that
Mother would soon be on her way to Pasadena as I climbed helped my
mood, too. With any luck, she wouldn’t be marring the atmosphere in
Chloe’s house when I got home from work, and I wouldn’t have to
deal with her again for a few days, at least.

When I entered the office, I saw that Ernie’s
door was shut. Darn. He must have someone in there with him. I
hoped it wasn’t an L.A.P.D. officer like that O’Reilly character
who’d come to arrest him. I removed my hat and put it and my
handbag and gloves into the drawer where they always resided when I
was at work and wondered if I should knock on the door and ask if
Ernie needed me.

He very seldom needed me, but that didn’t
mean he didn’t need me at that particular moment, particularly if
the L.A.P.D. was giving him the third degree. Whatever that was. Or
whatever mean-tempered L.A. coppers did to people.

Mind you, having held my own against my
unreasonably formidable mother for an hour didn’t exactly make me
yearn to deal with yet more difficult people. Still and all, Ernie
was my boss, and as a loyal employee it was my duty to make his
working life easier in any way that I could.

Steeling my nerves—I seemed to be doing that
a lot in those days—and squaring my shoulders, I retrieved my
secretarial notebook and a sharpened pencil from the cunning little
pencil cup I’d bought in Chinatown and headed for Ernie’s door.
There I rapped sharply. If the police had Ernie tied to a chair and
were shining a bright light in his eyes, I aimed to stop them, by
gum.

“Yeah?”

Hmm. Ernie’s voice didn’t sound as if he were
being coerced into confessing to a murder he hadn’t committed.
Nevertheless, I took a deep breath for courage and opened the
office door.

Phil.

Well, nuts. Here’d I’d had Ernie being
tortured, and the only person in his office was Phil Bigelow,
detective with the L.A.P.D. and Ernie’s best friend. What’s more,
Ernie’s feet were propped on his desk and he had his hands behind
his head, cupping it as he lounged back in his swivel chair.

“Good
luncheon
, Mercy?” Ernie’s grin was positively
wicked.

I wanted to heave my secretarial notebook at
him, but even I realized the impulse to be unfair. After all, Ernie
couldn’t have known of my worries on his account.

“My luncheon was hellish, thank you,
Ernie.” I don’t believe I’d ever used a word like
hellish
before. For some reason,
saying so shocking a word bolstered my courage. I turned to Phil.
“Have you caught Mrs. Chalmers’ murderer yet, Phil?”

A duet of heavy sighs filled the air.

Phil answered first. “Not yet. But we will.
We’re working hard on it. Don’t forget, it’s not my case. It’s
O’Reilly’s.”

I huffed my opinion of that circumstance.

“And they don’t need any help from you,
Mercy,” Ernie added, as if he hadn’t already told me that six or
seven hundred times already.

“I’m sure,” I said, using as much sarcasm as
I was able to use, which wasn’t a whole lot. No matter how much I
wished it were otherwise, I had been reared by my mother, after
all.

“Have a seat,” said Phil cordially.

I eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”

“She can’t add anything to what she’s already
told you, Phil.” Ernie’s voice exuded peevishness.

Feeling the need of a target at the
moment, although I don’t really know why, I turned on my boss with
fury. “And how do you know that, Ernest Templeton? I’m the one who
found Mrs. Chalmers, after all, not to mention
you
. For all either of you know,
I
killed the stupid woman!” For the
life of me, I don’t know why I said that.

Ernie had the everlasting gall to burst out
laughing.

When I squinted at Phil, I could tell he was
trying not to do likewise.

Very well, I knew I was a most unlikely
suspect as a cold-blooded murderer. Still, I didn’t like being
laughed at. Sniffing, I took up Phil’s offer to sit and sat.

You may have noticed that I neglected to
mention that the men in the office rose from their chairs upon my
entry into it. That’s because they didn’t rise upon my entry. They
remained seated solidly on their chairs. I think this behavior,
rather than being ungentlemanly in terms prescribed by my mother
and father, only means that secretaries were considered by the
populace in general not to be ladies. Not that secretaries were
thought of as scarlet women or anything else in that sense, but
rather that we weren’t considered the types of ladies for whom
gentlemen rose politely upon their entry onto a scene. We
secretaries were of the working classes—or most of us were,
anyhow—and, therefore, not ladies in the gentlemen-rising sense of
the word.

But that’s neither here nor there, although
the behavior of the two men helped solidify my opinion that people
like my mother didn’t know anything at all about the real
world.

I sat, and Ernie and Phil remained seated.
Then, sensing Ernie was a lost cause, I turned my attention to
Phil. “You did know, did you not, that Mrs. Chalmers was a recent
convert to the Adelaide Burkhard Emmanuel school of religion and
spent tons and tons of money there? Mrs. Emmanuel is the one who
built that gigantic Angelica Gospel Hall.”

“Sister
Emmanuel,” Ernie corrected snidely.

“Right,” said Phil. He did not say it as
Ernie might have: that is to say with biting sarcasm. He only said
it.

“And that Mr. Simon Chalmers, Mr. Chalmers’
son, resented her spending a lot of his father’s money at the
place.”

Phil’s right eyebrow rose. “He did?”

Aha! I’d managed to tell him something he
hadn’t known before! I’d have smirked at Ernie, but I didn’t do
things like that. Very often. “That’s the impression I got when I
spoke to him yesterday. That he resented it. He sounded quite
scornful about her affiliation with the place, anyway.”

“Hmm,” said Phil. “I didn’t get impression
that the elder Mr. Chalmers minded his wife’s involvement with the
Hall. In fact, he said he didn’t mind at all.”

A little deflated, I said, “Mr. Simon
Chalmers told me the same thing. He said his father loved his
stepmother and didn’t care what she did.”

With his left eyebrow lifting to join his
right one, Phil said, “He didn’t express that exact sentiment to us
when we spoke to him.”

“I imagine he didn’t,” I said, and rather
drily, too, I admit.

“Damn it, Mercy, will you stay out of this
investigation?” Ernie. Mad at me. Again.

I sighed.

Phil said, “Face it, Ernie. She was an
important witness at the scene. She’s the
only
witness, in fact. She’s the one who found
the body. And, according to the two of you, you. You know darned
good and well that O’Reilly will pin this on you if he can. He’s
hated you ever since you told him what you thought of him during
the Taylor investigation. The more people we can get on your side,
the better off we’ll be. Under the circumstances, Mercy almost has
to be involved in the solution of the case.”

Exactly what I’d said. So why was it, I
wondered bitterly, that Ernie would probably agree with Phil when
he absolutely refused to agree with me?

But I was wrong about that.

“Damnation, Phil! You know how she butts in!
For God’s sake, she’s almost been killed twice in the past couple
of months because she insists on getting herself mixed up with
suspects in murder cases. I don’t want her any more involved with
this one than she absolutely has to be!”

“I’m right here, Mr. Templeton. You can just
as easily speak to me as to Phil.”