Angel's Flight (A Mercy Allcutt Mystery)

by Alice Duncan

  Angel’s Flight

  Book 2 in the Mercy Allcutt Series

  by Alice Duncan

  Copyright © 2009 by Alice Duncan

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  First Edition

  First Printing: July 2009

  Published in 2009 in conjunction with Tekno Books and Ed Gorman.

  Set in 11 pt. Plantin.

  Printed in the United States on permanent paper.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  (attached)

  Dedication

  For Anni and Robin, the best daughters any mother ever had.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks ever so much to Alice Gaines, who gave me the perfect reason for the murder!

  Chapter One

  When I opened my sister Chloe’s front door that fine Monday morning in August, I was looking forward to the start of another interesting workweek. I’d only had my job for a little over a month, and I absolutely loved it.

  My name is Mercedes Louise Allcutt, and I am the first female person in my entire family who has ever dared step forth into the world and obtain a real job of real work. That probably doesn’t sound like a big deal to lots of people, but, believe me, I’d struggled mightily and bucked not only family tradition, but stern denunciation from my mother and father and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins to become part of the worker proletariat. I’d done it because I needed to gain experience in order to write the novels I had burning within my bosom, but which had been stifled for the entire twenty-one years of my life. Trust me, you can’t write significant novels when you’re trapped in an ivory tower.

  Very well, I know most people would probably love to trade places with me. I wanted experience.

  That, however, is off the subject. On that particular Monday morning, I was eagerly anticipating a brisk walk of two blocks from Chloe’s house on Bunker Hill in Los Angeles to the tiny, almost vertical railroad called Angel’s Flight that would take me from the land of milk and honey (Chloe’s neighborhood) to the so-called “real” world, where my job lay. I put the word real in quotation marks because we’re talking about Los Angeles here, where the economy is based on fantasy. My job, however, was very real.

  I worked for Mr. Ernest Templeton, P.I. In case you don’t know what the initials P.I. stand for (I didn’t until Ernie told me), they stand for private investigator. I was his assistant.

  Oh, all right, that’s an exaggeration. Actually, I was his secretary, but I aspired to the position of P.I.’s assistant, and I was learning fast and trying my very best to become completely indispensable to Ernie. At that point in time, if you were to ask Ernie, I hadn’t done it yet. Nevertheless, I kept trying.

  My plans suffered an almost paralyzing, not to say catastrophic, check when, flinging the door open (quite a feat, since it was a very solid, very heavy, carved oak door), I came face to face with my own personal mother. My mother, who was supposed to be in Boston, queening it over her exalted social set. My mother, who considered it her duty to squelch any hint of individuality in any of her children. My mother, who scared the socks off me.

  “Mother!” shrieked I, horrified.

  “Mercedes Louise Allcutt, you cut your hair!” said she, similarly afflicted.

  Staggering backward across Chloe’s gorgeously tiled front entryway, I patted the bobbed hair peeking out from under my tasteful hat almost hysterically. My mother! Could anything be worse than this?

  The answer to that question is a resounding no. Well, unless you’re talking about death or dismemberment. Mrs. Albert Monteith Allcutt, affectionately known to her friends as Honoria, and to her two daughters as The Wrath of God, was the absolutely last person on the face of the earth whom I wanted to see at that moment in time, unless you count a couple of loathsome murderers I’d encountered in the past few weeks.

  The commotion brought Chloe to the front door, holding my adorable French poodle puppy Buttercup, so named because she was sort of an apricot color. She was being held by Chloe in order to prevent her from following me to work. Chloe isn’t an early riser as a rule, but that morning she’d staggered out of bed a few minutes before I was to leave the house in order to get ready for a doctor’s appointment. She hadn’t said anything to me yet, but I suspected my sister and her husband Harvey Nash, who did something important in the motion pictures although I’m not sure what, were going to have a baby. I was terribly excited about it. I think Chloe was, too, although she tried not to show it. I guess it was fashionable to affect an attitude of ennui about things like that.

  When Mother saw Chloe, her attention veered to her. It’s cowardly, I know, but I was glad of it. Mother is an extremely formidable woman, and she frightens me positively to death.

  “Clovilla Allcutt Nash, what are you doing dressed in that scandalous outfit?” Mother cried, perhaps even more aghast at Chloe’s pretty-but-short, silk Chinese breakfast coat than my pretty-but-now-short hair. Mother is the only person in the universe who calls Chloe Clovilla, which is her real name, but who’d want it? Certainly not Chloe, and I didn’t blame her. I didn’t like my own name a whole lot, but at least it wasn’t Clovilla. “And what is that animal in your arms? Is that a dog?” She said the word “dog” as if it smelled bad. Buttercup, a very sensitive pooch, hid her nose in Chloe’s armpit. Smart dog.

  Since Mother’s attention had swerved away from me, I did something utterly despicable, and that I will probably regret for the rest of my days. I sneaked past my mother and got ready to bolt. Poor Chloe, who had been kindness itself in allowing me to move in with her and Harvey when I left Boston, didn’t deserve my desertion. But I was honestly rattled.

  Mother heaved an exasperated sigh and said, “Well, don’t just stand there Clovilla and Mercedes Louise. Surely you have a servant who can carry in my bags and pay the cab.”

  Chloe said, “Uh . . .”

  And I, coward that I am, said, “I have to get to my job!” And I scrammed out of there as if I’d been shot from a gun, practically running down the long walkway from Chloe’s massive front door to the black wrought-iron gate surrounding her and Harvey’s property atop Bunker Hill.

  Chloe called after me, “Mercy!” I know she wanted to call me another name or two, but didn’t dare, what with Mother standing right there and all.

  Mother bellowed, “Your job?” You’d have thought I’d just told her I was going to strip naked and dance down Beacon Hill in tap shoes, waving pom-poms.

  Once I got out the gate, I tottered the two blocks to Angel’s Flight in something of a blind panic, paid the engineer my nickel, and shook in my sensible shoes all the way to Broadway, from whence I walked to my place of employment, the Figueroa Building, on Seventh and Hill. Even in my agitated state, I was pleased to see that the old building looked much spiffier than it had when I’d first become employed there. The brass plaque declaring its name had been polished until it shone, and Mr. Emerald Buck, the new custodian who had been hired after the old one turned out to be . . . um . . . unsuitable kept the sidewalk swept and the lobby spic and span.

  My shocking experience must have still showed on my face, because when I entered the building, Lulu LaBelle, the receptionist at the Figueroa Building, a job she intended to keep on
ly until she was discovered by a motion-picture magnate and became a movie star, looked up from the blood-red fingernails she’d been filing and said, “’Lo, Mercy. What’s wrong?”

  “N-nothing,” I said, lying through my teeth and heading to the elevator, a self-serve number without a permanent operator.

  My mother had come to Los Angeles. My mother. And Chloe’s mother, too, although that notion didn’t bother me as much as knowing that, as much as Mother would deplore Chloe’s wardrobe and shingled hair, still more would she disapprove of me, her younger daughter and the only child in the family who had ever dared to question her authority.

  With shaking fingers, I unlocked the door to my office workplace and stepped inside. I paused in the doorway, gazing around, telling myself that having a job was nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it was something I ought to be proud of. I’d taken typewriting and shorthand classes (Pitman method) at the Boston Young Women’s Christian Association, and was a whiz at both. I wasn’t a shameless leech on society. I didn’t use my privileged birth and position in society to grind widows and orphans under my boot heels. Never mind that I didn’t wear boots. I was a member of the working class, as of a month ago last Thursday, and I was proud of myself.

  So why, when I sank into my chair and removed my little brown hat and placed it in my drawer along with my little brown handbag, did my heart feel as if a funeral procession was rumbling through it, playing a dismal dirge?

  My mother! Good God, what next?

  As if answering my unspoken question, the telephone at my elbow jangled. I eyed it warily, suspecting who was at the other end of the wire. Taking a deep breath and bracing myself, I unhooked the receiver from the candlestick and spoke firmly, “Mr. Templeton’s office. Miss Allcutt speaking.”

  “Traitor!”

  It was as I’d feared. The voice that had spat the word was my sister Chloe’s, tense and low, probably because Chloe was trying to hide from our mother.

  “You ran out on me!”

  I shut my eyes, feeling guiltier even than I had when I’d defied our parents and moved west. “I’m sorry, Chloe. It was a cowardly thing to do.”

  “It sure was. Darn it, Mercy, what am I supposed to do now?”

  Not having a clue, I said, “Um . . . find her a bedroom?” Something occurred to me. “Did she say why she’s visiting? And why she didn’t warn us?”

  There was a pause at the other end of the wire. I got the impression Chloe was glancing around to make sure Mother wasn’t near enough to overhear what she aimed to tell me. Then she said, “Oh, Mercy, it’s awful. She’s left Father!”

  I felt my eyes widen. “She did what?” I couldn’t recall another time when our mother had left our father behind when she traveled, except during the summer when she went to Cape Cod and Father only visited on weekends.

  “Don’t screech at me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “She left Father.”

  “Without telling him about it?”

  “Of course she didn’t tell him!”

  I shook my head, trying to understand. “Well then, why didn’t she tell you she was going to visit?”

  “She didn’t leave him that way,” Chloe whispered harshly. “I mean, she left him. As in separation. Divorce. That sort of thing.”

  I’m pretty sure my mouth fell open. I’m surprised I didn’t drop the telephone receiver. I couldn’t believe it. People in my family didn’t leave other people in my family. It wasn’t done. It had never been done before that I knew of. And . . . Mother? Leaving Father? It wasn’t possible. Managing to get my jaw working again, I stammered, “Um . . . I think you must have misunderstood her, Chloe. She couldn’t have done anything so outrageous.”

  “You tell her that,” said Chloe bitterly. “I tried, and she didn’t buy it.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “You might say that.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Mrs. Biddle is showing her to the Green Room.”

  “Ah.” Mrs. Biddle was Chloe and Harvey’s housekeeper, and the Green Room in their house was the one reserved for royalty—or movie stars, which was as close to royalty as anything got in Los Angeles, except for when an exiled Russian grand duke paid a call a year or so ago. I wasn’t in Los Angeles then, so I didn’t get to meet him. Anyhow, it made sense that Mother would be deposited in the Green Room. “Um . . . did she say why she left Father?” I still believed Chloe must have been mistaken about that part. Perhaps she missed the end of the sentence, the one that mentioned she’d left him to go on a little holiday to visit her daughters in California or something.

  “Evidently she discovered he was having an affair.”

  This time my mouth fell open so far, my chin almost hit my desk. So much for my pleasant-little-holiday theory. “He was what?” I regret to say I screeched again.

  “Ow. Stop doing that.”

  “Sorry.” My mind reeled. My head whirled. My stomach cramped. My thoughts scattered like so much chaff in the wind. “But . . . but . . .”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “With whom?”

  “What do you mean, ‘with whom’? Do you mean who did he have the affair with?”

  I liked my grammatical construction better than Chloe’s, but I didn’t believe it was the time or place to call her on it. “Yes.”

  “His secretary.”

  His secretary. A woman in a position much as mine. “I . . . I can’t take it in.” And my incredulity wasn’t entirely due to the fact that no son or daughter relishes discovering his or her father has feet of clay, either. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the notion that some young woman, perhaps as young as I, was actually . . .

  Ew. I decided not to think about it.

  “I can’t either, but I don’t have a job to run away to.” Again, Chloe sounded rather bitter. I could hardly fault her. I was even gladder than I’d already been that I had my job.

  “True. Oh, Chloe, what are we going to do? How long is she going to stay here?”

  “I don’t know.” Chloe’s voice took on an edge of despair. “Forever?”

  “Oh, Lord.” My own voice had sunk to a whisper.

  “I’ve got to go now. She’s coming back.”

  Poor Chloe. I whispered, “I’m really sorry, Chloe. Good luck.”

  Chloe said something that sounded a good deal like a snort and replaced the receiver. I did so on my end, too, and sank my head into my cupped hands. Head and hands were propped up by my elbows, which were resting on my shiny desk—shiny because I polished it each and every week with LOOK UP Furniture Wax. I took the maintenance of my job’s accouterments seriously.

  Elbows, hands, and head were still propped as before when the outer door to the office opened and Ernie Templeton strolled in, tallish, handsome in a rugged sort of way, eternally casual, and looking as rumpled as ever. He stopped short when I lifted my head, dropped my hands, and tried to appear efficient.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, my left hind leg. Something’s wrong. What is it?” He snatched the hat from his head and marched up to my desk. I must have looked as shocked and demoralized as I felt because I detected honest concern on Ernie’s face. He was generally a nonchalant, kidding-around sort of person, so this expression surprised me.

  I sighed deeply. “My mother has come to visit.”

  He squinted at me. “Well, that’s a great thing, isn’t it?”

  I eyed him sternly. “You don’t know my mother.”

  A crack of laughter rent the air, and Ernie’s expression of concern vanished. “Aha! You mean stuffy old Boston’s come to nasty old Los Angeles, home of the playboy and playgirl? Boy, I bet Mama’ll make you mind your Ps and Qs.”

  I resented that. Ernie had pegged me for someone from the upper echelons of our supposedly classless society the moment he’d first set eyes on me. He’d assumed that, given my background, which he’d divined by so
me means known only to investigatory professionals I suppose, that I was an easterner, that I’d never held a job, that I “came from money,” as he would have it, and that I was a dilettante who would soon tire of having to do a real job of real work, none of which assumptions were correct. Oh, very well, they were all correct except the last one.

  I wanted to work, curse it! I wanted to be useful! I didn’t want to fritter away my time being nothing more than a decoration in some wealthy Bostonian’s mansion on Beacon Hill. I’d already done that for twenty-one years. Well, I’m not sure how decorative I was, but I certainly hadn’t ever done anything worthwhile. I’d been as useless as your average appendix.

  Until I’d secured this position as Ernie’s secretary and started earning a living. Why, I’d helped rescue an abandoned child, capture a murderer, thwart a blackmailer, and liberate a kidnapped poodle during my first two weeks on the job! Not the poodle I now owned, but the one that had inspired me to buy Buttercup. Who had cost more than I earn in a week.

  I buried my head in my hands again and might well have uttered a moan, although I don’t remember.

  “Hey, kiddo, I was only joking. Why are you upset about your mother visiting?” Ernie pulled out one of the chairs in front of my desk and sat on it.

  “Well, for one thing, she didn’t know I’d cut my hair.”

  He goggled slightly. “Your hair?”

  I glared at him for a second before reburying my head in my hands. “Yes.”

  “Yeah? She was . . . uh . . . unsettled by the knowledge? I mean, is cutting one’s hair a sin or something in your family?”

  Peering at him through my fingers, suspecting him of sarcasm, I muttered, “You have no idea.”

  “Sorry, kiddo.”

  I heaved a deep and heartfelt sigh. “Oh, Ernie, she’s . . . she’s . . .” She was a battleaxe, but I couldn’t say that aloud. I settled for, “She really, really disapproves of my having a job.”