Fallen Angels (20 page)

“Gee, I hope I’m not interrupting anything,”
a voice came from behind me, making me leap up and utter a cowardly
squeal.

“Damn it, Phil! Why’d you want to do that
for?” Ernie didn’t seem any more pleased than I that his best
friend had sneaked up on us. “Knock first, will you? Christ, you
almost gave Mercy a heart attack.”

Well, I liked that! As if he hadn’t been as
startled as I. But I decided it would be useless to quarrel about
the point since we had bigger fish to fry.

Phil appeared a little abashed. “Sorry, guys.
But what were you doing?”

I was still mad as a wet hen, as a maid
of ours in Boston used to say, so I spoke first, and not kindly.
“We were doing something
you
should have done last Thursday, Detective Philip Bigelow! We
were looking for traces of rope burns on Ernie’s wrists. You
wouldn’t believe
me
about
finding him bound and gagged, but you couldn’t have denied evidence
you could see with your own blind eyes, now, could you? And there
was no way on this green earth that I could have tied him up as a
cover, either, since I’d only been in the house for a short time
when I found him.
Which
can
be verified by placing a call to the taxicab company!”

“Uh—”

I honestly don’t know if it was Phil or Ernie
who had tried to interrupt, but I was having none of it. “And,
what’s more, Ernie saw a physician yesterday—at my insistence, by
the way—and the doctor found bruises upon his body that are
absolutely consistent with his having been tied and hauled up a
flight of stairs!”

This time it was Phil who blinked at me.

Ernie said, “She’s right, Phil. On both
counts.”

“Oh, my God,” said Phil, as if that would do
any good. “I’m sorry, Ernie. We should have taken more notice of
your health at the time. Although, in our defense, we generally
concentrate on the corpse in situations like that, you know.”

“Well, you might have better spent some of
your time by concentrating on the fellow who’s going to be blamed
for creating the corpse, if you don’t start doing your job better!”
I was still blazing with fury. Can you tell?

“Mercy,” Ernie said. “Simmer down, will
you?”

Ooooh. I could have killed him myself
in that instant. Since I couldn’t do that, I ranted on. “No! I will
not simmer down. I won’t simmer down until I find the murderer of
that ridiculous woman and you’re cleared absolutely of a crime you
didn’t commit. If neither you nor the Los Angeles Police Department
cares about justice,
I
do!”

And with that, I flounced out of the
room and into my office, where I plunked myself down into my chair
and darned near burst into tears. But I wouldn’t give either of
those awful, officious,
stupid
men the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

Therefore, I decided to go down to the lobby
and talk to Lulu. Maybe by the time I got back upstairs, I’d have
calmed down some. I ran down the stairs as if pursued by demons,
but was brought up short when I saw Lulu behind her desk in the
lobby, filing her nails and talking animatedly with Mr. Emerald
Buck, who’d propped himself on his push broom whilst he
listened.

“I tell you, that house was like a castle or
something,” Lulu told him. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She was telling him all about Chloe’s house,
no doubt. Ah, well. At least it was a change of topic from murder
and mayhem. And at least Emerald Buck was a kindhearted gentleman
who never told me to simmer down. Striving to attain some sort of
inner peace, I strolled over to Lulu’s desk.

“Oh, hey, Mercy!” Lulu said happily. “I was
just telling Mr. Buck about your sister’s house.”

“Sounds like a grand place,” said Mr. Buck.
He had a lovely voice, deep and velvety. He’d told me once he sang
in his church’s choir, and I could well believe it.

I said, “It’s nice, all right. Too bad
they’re going to have to sell it.”

Lulu heaved a huge sigh. “Yeah. Boy, I’d give
anything to live in a place like that.”

And that, as they say, was that. I decided
then and there that if none of the men in my life gave a rap about
what I did, said, or discovered, at least it might be possible for
me to make Lulu happy. So I sat myself down in the chair facing
Lulu’s desk and said, “I’ve actually been thinking of buying the
place myself, Lulu. If I did, I’d have to get some tenants, since I
don’t think I could make the payments all by myself.”

That wasn’t strictly the truth, since
Great-Aunt Agatha had been most awfully generous in her gift to me
after her death, but I didn’t want Lulu to know that. What I wanted
was for Lulu—and perhaps another working girl or two—to have a
chance to live as I’d lived my whole life long and had believed the
rest of the world did, too, until I’d learned otherwise.”

I think Lulu had been stricken dumb, because
she stared at me with her mouth open, and no words emerged.

It was Mr. Buck who broke the silence.
“That’s a right kindly thing to do, Miss Allcutt.”

“I don’t think of it as being kindly,” I told
him truthfully. “I just really like the house and the location, and
would hate to live there all by myself. Well, with Buttercup, I
mean.” I’d told Mr. Buck all about Buttercup. He approved of dogs,
so I approved of him.

Which reminded me of something else. “Say,
Mr. Buck, didn’t you mention once that your wife works as a cook
and housekeeper for some folks on Carroll Avenue?”

“She do that,” Mr. Buck agreed, nodding.

“We’d need a cook and a housekeeper if I
bought the house, wouldn’t we, Lulu?”

But Lulu still sat at her desk mute, her
fingernail file held loosely in her hand, and stared at me as if
I’d just offered her the moon and the stars and all the diamonds at
that big jewelry store in New York. What’s the name of it?
Tiffany’s? I think that’s it.

Unfortunately, it now looked as if Mr. Buck
had been stricken with Lulu’s muteness. I hadn’t realized until
that moment that such things were contagious. Or perhaps I’d been
too precipitate again. I really had to work on moving up to things
in a roundabout way so as not to shock people.

Well, it was too late for that now. I rose
and said, “Please think about it, both of you. I’m going to talk to
Chloe and Harvey about buying the house from them, and I’d love to
have people I already know to share it with me.”

I figured I’d better get back to the office
now that I’d calmed down a little, although I wasn’t sure I
wouldn’t explode again if Ernie or Phil said or did something else
to annoy me. It seemed I was a trifle touchy that day.

Chapter Twelve

Lulu and I went to lunch together at
twelve-thirty. We decided to stop at the little hot dog stand on
the corner of Broadway and Sixth. I had sauerkraut and mustard on
my dog to spite my mother, Ernie, Phil, and everyone else in the
world who’d ever aggravated me. I don’t know what Lulu had on hers,
but we sat on a bench in Pershing Square, listened to the street
preachers rant, and my own personal lunch was very tasty.

Naturally, Lulu wanted to talk about my plans
to buy Chloe’s house, so we discussed that. I wasn’t awfully
interested in the topic, since I was more concerned about the case
of Mrs. Chalmers’ murder, but I let Lulu rhapsodize. Although this
is kind of embarrassing to admit, I think one of the main reasons I
wanted to buy the Nash home was so that I could continue taking
Angels Flight down to Broadway every day. But that sounds so
trivial a reason to buy a house that every time I thought it, I was
ashamed of myself. Imagine buying a house because of a tiny
railroad line! I’d bet money, if I ever bet on anything, that poor
people didn’t use inane reasoning like that when they set about to
buy houses. Anyhow, I didn’t divulge my reason to Lulu, so I guess
it doesn’t much matter.

I also couldn’t use the excuse that I needed
to keep my job and that’s why I wanted to buy the house, because I
didn’t really need my job. I didn’t tell Lulu that, either.
Besides, she already knew it.

“Oh, boy, it would be fun to have a friend to
go to work with every day,” said Lulu.

“I think so, too.”

“I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Buck would like the
idea.”

“I don’t know, but I do know there’s a lovely
apartment off the kitchen that has a bedroom and a bathroom and a
sitting room. Do you know if they have any children?”

Lulu shrugged. “I think Mr. Buck told me
about a daughter going to school back east somewhere. I think I
heard him talk about a son, too, but I’m not sure.”

“Hmm. I wonder what school she goes to that
it has to be back east. There are lots of schools around here.” I
wiped mustard and sauerkraut on a napkin and wished my spite hadn’t
been quite so great, since the napkin was small and the mess was
largish.

“Well,” said Lulu. “She’s going to college,
and there aren’t a whole lot of colleges that take Negro students.
Especially girl Negro students. I suspect they found one in the
south somewhere. Mr. Buck says she wants to be a teacher.”

It was my turn to gape mutely at someone.
Don’t ask me why, but it had never once occurred to me that
colleges might not accept students because of their race. That
didn’t seem fair to me. “But . . .”

“Face it, Mercy. You’ve lived in heaven all
your life. This is the real world. Mr. Buck is a nice man, but he’s
a Negro, and his kids are Negroes, and there’s nothing you or me or
him or anyone else can do about it.”

“But . . .”

“Would you want your kids to go to school
with his kids?”

Her question stunned me. I thought it over.
Presuming I ever had children, would it bother me if they were in
classes with students of other races?

Oh, dear. I didn’t like it that I was
thinking what I was thinking.

Lulu smirked at me. “See?” She, not
having had my type of manners shoved down her throat from birth,
licked the mustard from her own fingers. “Personally, I think Mr.
Buck is a heck of an improvement over that Ned creature who used to
kill women, and I also think he’s smarter than Ned ever was. But
he’s still not white. And
that
, Mercy Allcutt, is the only thing that
matters, when push comes to shove.”

“Good heavens,” I whispered, feeling
depressed and defeated. Then it occurred to me to wonder if Sister
Adelaide Burkhard Emmanuel would allow Negroes into her Angelica
Gospel Hall. I hadn’t seen a single one there that first week I’d
gone. Did God judge people by their color, too?

I didn’t believe it.

“When did the Civil War end?” I asked, still
feeling kind of faint.

“How the heck should I know? I was never any
good at history.”

“Eighteen sixty-five, I believe. And the
Emancipation Proclamation was passed a couple of years before
that.”

“What’s the Emancipation Proclamation?” Lulu
didn’t sound as if she much cared.

“It was the proclamation freeing the slaves.”
But it hadn’t freed all of them. I remember being shocked when I’d
learned that.

Bother. My heart gave a big twist. In that
moment I wished . . . But I didn’t have the time, money, or energy
to save the entire world from its follies. My purpose in life at
this moment was to clear Ernie of murder charges. Therefore, I
attempted with my whole self to shove the question of prejudice and
unfairness out of my mind and concentrate on the problem at
hand.

I even gave myself a shake, as if by doing
so, I could shake irrelevancies out of my head. If they were
irrelevancies.

But no.
Stop
it, Mercy Allcutt
, said I to myself. And I did. Stop
it, I mean.

Therefore, I said to Lulu, “I’m going to be
visiting a lady named Mrs. Pinkney this afternoon for tea. She was
a friend of Mrs. Chalmers.”

“That’s the lady who was murdered,
right?”

“Yes. Mrs. Chalmers was, not Mrs.
Pinkney.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I’m going to ask questions and see if I
can discover anything with relevance to the case. Mr. Pinkney
doesn’t like his wife’s involvement with the Angelica Gospel Hall.
He even called Mr. Chalmers to see if he could get Mrs. Chalmers to
stop inviting Mrs. Pinkney to go to church with her, and I’m
wondering if he might be a suspect.”

“Gee, Mercy, be careful, okay?”

“Don’t worry, Lulu. I’ll be very
careful.”

“Does Ernie know you’re doing this?”

“Um . . .” Did he? I thought over my morning
and, although I could remember Ernie and even me shouting and
swearing a good deal, I didn’t remember telling Ernie I was taking
tea with Mrs. Pinkney. “I think I forgot to tell him. I was so mad
at him by the time Phil Bigelow got there, I just stormed off.”

“Phil Bigelow,” said Lulu in a tone that left
no doubt whatsoever what she thought of him. I didn’t blame her,
Phil having once arrested her brother and all.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. If Ernie’s still in
the office when we get back from lunch, I’ll tell him then.” I
turned to look at Lulu and grinned. “Did I tell you he threatened
to fire me if I didn’t stop investigating the Chalmers case?”

Lulu gasped. “No! He didn’t!”

“He did. So I told him to go right ahead.
That would leave me all day, every day, to investigate the
case.”

I was glad when Lulu laughed, because her
amusement did something to brighten my thus-far gloomy day.

By the time we got back to the office,
Ernie had left it again. With the police. My heart crunched when I
read the note he’d placed on my desk:
Gone
with Phil and O’Reilly to the station. Stay out of
trouble.

I didn’t mind the
stay out of trouble
part, because I’d become
accustomed to Ernie telling me stuff like that. It was the
going to the station with Phil and
O’Reilly
part that bothered me. A lot. Why had he gone
to the station again? Had Phil made him go? Had O’Reilly? Had Ernie
decided to go on his own for some reason beyond my understanding?
Since he never divulged anything of importance to me, I had not a
clue in the world about anything at all.