Angel's Flight (A Mercy Allcutt Mystery) (23 page)

      Who’d’a thunk it? “Very well, Mrs. Chalmers. We’ll see you at nine-thirty. You have our address from the advertisement, correct?”

      “Oh, yes. Yes, I do.”

      “Fine, then. We’ll see you at nine-thirty.” Because I really didn’t want to make her life worse than it evidently already was, I added, “Please try not to worry. Mr. Templeton will be happy to help you.” Especially if she was young and pretty and had money and what everyone was calling SA, an acronym for sex appeal, at which descriptive phrase my stuffy Boston soul cringed even though I didn’t want it to.

      Because I was still irked with both Ernie and Phil—Lulu LaBelle as an accomplice, indeed—and because I’d been told that Phil was on his way down to interview Lulu, which was his job, blast it, and which he wasn’t doing as he sat and blabbed with Ernie, I decided to interrupt the two irritating men. Therefore, I strode to Ernie’s door, gave a quick rap, and without waiting for Ernie’s usual, “Yeah?” I marched right on in.

      “. . . blue pictures. I’m not sure about that, though. My men are checking into it.”

      “Lucky then.” Ernie’s chuckle was cut short by the door opening.

      Phil sat up with a start. He’d been leaning on his elbows over Ernie’s desk, and it looked as if the two men had been whispering. Just like a couple of silly schoolgirls. Schoolboys, I mean.

      Ernie’s head snapped up. He’d been leaning over his desk, too. Men. “Yeah?” he said to me, clearly irked by my intrusion.

      “A young woman named
Missus
Persephone Chalmers has an appointment to see you at nine-thirty, Ernie.” Even her name made me want to gag.

      Ernie lifted an eyebrow. “Persephone?” He grinned at Phil. “There’s a name suitable for blue movies if you ask me.”

      Phil grinned back.

      I didn’t have any idea what the beastly men were talking about.

      “Okay, kiddo,” said Ernie, dismissing me with a wave.

      Furious, I stamped back to my desk, although, since I’m a good secretary no matter what the provocation, I did close the door behind me. And without slamming it, too.

      As I waited for Mrs. Persephone Chalmers (and shouldn’t she be using her husband’s first name? Mrs. Adonis Chalmers, or whatever?) to show herself in the office, I strained all my powers trying to figure out what “blue pictures” and “blue movies” were and if they might possibly pertain to the Heartwood/Hartland murders or if the two men had gone on to other topics altogether. I had planned to ask Phil when he finally went downstairs to do his policemanly duty, but what with one thing and another, primarily the telephone’s constant interruptions, I was unable to do so. On my own I had come to no definite conclusion about them when, at precisely nine-thirty, the outer office door opened and a young woman floated in as if borne on a cloud.

      I had just replaced the telephone receiver in the cradle, and I looked up. My heart sank. “Mrs. Persephone Chalmers?” I said.

      It had to be she, and, if anything, she was worse than a vamp. Clad head to toe in cream-colored fabric from her veiled hat to her lovely linen summer suit to her silk stockings to her dyed-to-match pumps, she radiated both money and distress. One or the other of those commodities and Ernie, who was a sucker for distressed females and who had no aversion to money, was sunk. When both were added to the face discernible through the veil, which was young and lovely and fragile and frightened, not to mention blond-haired, and Ernie had no chance at all of remaining unmoved. I sensed it in my bones, which felt particularly cold as I watched Mrs. Chalmers waft to a chair before my desk.

      “Oh,” she whispered. “Yes. I am Mrs. Chalmers.” She hovered near the chair, as if afraid to touch it or sit in it.

      With a sigh, I rose from my desk feeling entirely too sturdy, brunette and self-sufficient, and wishing it were otherwise. Oh, well . . .

      I tapped lightly at Ernie’s door.

      “Yeah?”

      I heaved another sigh as I opened the door a crack.

      “Mrs. Persephone Chalmers is here to see you, Mr. Templeton.”

      “Ah. Right. Send her in.”

      So I drew his door wider, smiled at Mrs. Chalmers even though it was a struggle to do so, and said, “Please come this way, Mrs. Chalmers.”

      “Oh,” she said. It was more of a whisper, actually. “Thank you.” And she drifted across the floor and into Ernie’s office, leaving an only-faintly-discernible trace of a captivating fragrance in her wake. I didn’t slam the door that time, either.

      As Ernie spoke with Mrs. Chalmers, I made appointments for a woman who wanted Ernie to spy on her husband, a husband who wanted Ernie to spy on his wife, and an insurance firm that wanted Ernie to determine if a man really had been badly injured in a mishap at the Broadway Department Store or if he was merely faking. Evidently, he’d tripped getting out of an elevator on the third floor, and he claimed the elevator operator hadn’t leveled the elevator cage properly. The insurance company clearly believed the man was lying. Personally, I didn’t care, although I thought he should have been more careful.

      I felt particularly grumpy during that period and I knew why. I didn’t want my boss, Mr. Ernest Templeton, to succumb to any more beautiful clients, darn it. Last month’s flirtation with a black-clad siren who was being blackmailed had been bad enough. This month’s cream-clad seraph with her air of delicate innocence seemed to me to be even more dangerous.

      Not, naturally, that I cared on a personal level. I was only concerned about Ernie’s welfare and the state of the business.

      Oh, whom am I trying to kid?

      But I don’t want to think about that now.

      I didn’t want to think about it then, either, and the task was made easier for me when Lulu burst into the office while Ernie was sequestered with the lovely Mrs. Chalmers.

      “Oh, Mercy!” cried she, her face awash with tears.

      “Oh, Lulu!” I cried in return, and I rushed out from behind my desk to embrace the poor thing.

      “They think
I
did it!”

      “I’m sure they don’t, really,” I said, sure of no such thing. I was beginning to think Phil was, if not as corrupt, then at least as stupid as his fellow cohorts in the police department. Not a single thinking human being could believe that Lulu LaBelle
or
her brother could kill the two Heartwoods. Hartlands. Whoever they were.

      Guiding Lulu to the chair beside my desk, I sat her down, then reached into my desk drawer (not the one I kept my handbag and hat in, but the other one, which was deeper) and withdrew a water glass. “Stay right there, Lulu. I’ll get you a drink of water.”

      “Th-thank you, Mercy.”

      I dashed down the hallway to the ladies’ powder room and filled the glass. By the time I got back to the office, Lulu had stopped sobbing hysterically and was mopping her cheeks with an already-soggy handkerchief. She took the water with a shaking hand. “Thank you.” She sipped the water between hiccups.

      “Lulu,” I said gently. “Try not to worry too much about this. I’m on the job, and I
know
neither you nor Rupert could commit cold-blooded murder.”

      I expected her to thank me again. Instead, she lifted her head abruptly—she’d had it bowed as she wiped tears and mascara from her cheeks—and said, “
You?
”

      She sounded incredulous and I resented her tone, but she was already upset so I didn’t take her to task for it. “I.” Since she still gaped, I said tartly, “I’m the only one who’s tried to help you and Rupert so far, am I not?”

      Lulu bit her lower lip for a second, then nodded.

      “I’m the one who got him the job with Mr. Easthope, am I not?”

      Her head sagged again. “But that’s when all the trouble started!” she wailed pitifully.

      Shocked by the note of accusation in Lulu’s voice, I did a little sagging of my own. “But . . . I was trying to
help
you. I didn’t know some fiend was going to murder Mrs. Heartwood. Hartland. Whatever her name was.”

      Lulu put her hand on mine and appeared chastened. “I know it, Mercy. I’m sorry. I’m just so upset.”

      Hmm. “Of course.” I still felt as if she’d slapped me.

      Ernie’s door opened at that point, however, and I didn’t have time to brood. Lulu jumped up from the chair, muttered, “I’d better get downstairs,” and raced from the office, leaving Ernie, Mrs. Chalmers and me all to gape after her. I guess Lulu didn’t want to be seen with her makeup smeared. And she hadn’t even taken a good gander at Mrs. Chalmers first, either. I hate to admit it, but Mrs. Chalmers in all her cream-colored loveliness made me want to hide somewhere, too.

      However, I am an Allcutt, and we Allcutts are made of stern stuff, whether we want to be or not, so I turned and smiled at the duo exiting Ernie’s office.

      Ernie hooked a thumb at the door. “What’s the matter with her?”

      I wanted to shriek at him that having been falsely accused of a vicious crime was the matter with her, but since Mrs. Chalmers was present I didn’t. “She’s upset.”

      “I guess.”

      And that was it for me as far as Ernie’s attention went. As if he were guiding a fragile spun-glass angel, he walked Mrs. Chalmers to the door. Chalmers herself didn’t bother to say good-bye to me—or even say, “Oh,” once more. She just gazed up at Ernie through that stupid veil with wide blue eyes and smiled tremulously. I wanted to heave a brick at her.

      Ernie was straightening his tie when he turned from the door after her exit. He had a sappy grin on his face, making me want to heave a brick at
him
.

      “What’s her problem?” My voice sounded faintly caustic.

      “Jewel theft,” said Ernie. And he swaggered to his office and shut the door.

      Curse all men.

Chapter Fourteen
 

Buttercup had been banished to Chloe and Harvey’s beautifully landscaped backyard—Mother, who didn’t like dogs in the first place, detested it when they begged at the table, not that Buttercup ever did anything so unrefined—and we were all sitting around the dinner table wondering what to talk about. Since Mother’s advent into our lives, the general flow of cheerful, inconsequential dinner-table chatter had dried up completely.

      I already felt fairly glum. Valentino’s death had cast a pall of melancholy over the entire nation, it would seem. Ernie Templeton, my boss, whom I . . . respected, had evidently fallen under the spell of another
femme fatale
. Lulu LaBelle and her brother Rupert Mullins had been falsely accused of murder. As for me, I didn’t have a solitary idea in my muddled brain what to do about any of those things. This was particularly true since my prime suspect, George Hartland, and my second-prime suspect, Jacqueline Lloyd, were out of the murder stakes.

      “Mercedes Louise Allcutt, stop toying with your food.”

      I dropped my spoon, startled by Mother’s booming accusation. As I hadn’t been toying with my food, I dared to frown at her. “I wasn’t toying with my food, Mother. I was trying to fish out a cucumber bit.” Mrs. Biddle had served us a cold soup called
gazpacho
, which she claimed was a Spanish concoction, for dinner. It was quite tasty and refreshing on such a hot August evening.

      “Nonsense,” said Mother, completely uncowed by my defiance. “
Fishing
out cucumber bits is toying with your food, and it is impolite.”

      I heaved a sigh as big as I was, and internally acknowledged defeat. Nobody, and especially nobody as inconsequential as a daughter, would ever get my mother to admit to being wrong about anything at all, ever. Therefore, I gave up the fight and turned to Chloe and Harvey, determined to clear up at least one puzzle.

      “What’s a blue picture?” I asked in all innocence.

      Chloe gasped. “I beg your pardon?” She stared at me, plainly horrified.

      Harvey apparently swallowed the wrong way, because he started to cough and Chloe had to slap him on the back. Mother, naturally, glowered at all of us.

      Realizing I’d said something wrong, although I didn’t know what—well, I guess I knew what, but I sure didn’t know why—I stammered, “I-I mean . . . um . . .”

      Quickly, in an attempt to rescue the moment and me both, Chloe said, “We’ll talk about it later, all right?”

      “Certainly,” said I, relieved. “That’s fine.”

      “And why would you talk about it later, young woman?” Mother scowled at me as she asked the question. Of course. I, being the least obedient of her children,
always
got the brunt of her wrath. “If you have introduced another topic unfit for dinner-table conversation, Mercedes Louise Allcutt, you should be ashamed of yourself. Your father and I didn’t rear you to be such a hoyden.”

      Oh, brother. “I just asked a question, Mother,” I said in my own defense, knowing it was useless. “I didn’t mean to bring up an unfit topic.”

      “I’m beginning to think you’re a lost cause, young woman.”

      “Fiddlesticks,” I said, losing what was left of my ragged temper. “At least I didn’t leave my husband!”

      Mother’s hard, marble-blue eyes widened amid a duet of gasps from Harvey and Chloe.

      Uh-oh. I’d really done it this time. I saw Mother’s jaw bunch as she clenched her teeth and knew I was in for it. Why hadn’t I just kept my fat mouth shut?

      Thank the good Lord, a knock came at the front door just then, and Mrs. Biddle, muttering under her breath—she didn’t care to have her dinner-serving duties interrupted—hurried to answer it. I silently blessed whoever was at the front door for saving me, at least temporarily, from my mother’s wrath.

      After sending me a last fulminating glance—evidently she was going to save the worst of her fury for later, probably to deliver in private—Mother said, “You need to hire another servant, Clovilla. Your poor housekeeper is being run off her feet.” She sniffed regally.