Angel's Flight (A Mercy Allcutt Mystery) (2 page)

      “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 some 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.”

      “Well, hell, so do I,” said my irritating employer with a shrug.

      I glared at him. “That’s not fair, Ernest Templeton, and you know it. I’m a good secretary!”

      He gave me one of his cocky grins. “You’ll do. But did your mother come all the way from Boston to scold you for having a job? That’s seems kind of excessive to me.”

      This time I know I groaned because I couldn’t repress it. “She didn’t know I had a job until this morning when she showed up at Chloe’s front door just as I was leaving.”

      His eyebrows arched like soaring larks. “You didn’t tell her?”

      I shook my head. “I knew she’d disapprove. She’s always disapproved of me.”

      “She has?”

      “Yes.”

      “She disapproves of
you
?”

      I didn’t particularly care for his tone of voice, but I merely gave him another, “Yes.”

      “What’s to disapprove of?”

      I gave him a smallish glare. “I’m the only person in the entire world who’s ever defied her.”

      Ernie’s eyebrows lifted into an arch of incredulity, and his lips quivered as if he were suppressing a grin.

      “It’s the truth, darn it, Ernie Templeton! Don’t you dare laugh at me! My mother considers that my holding a job as your secretary is only slightly less mortifying than if I’d gone to work for one of her society friends as a housemaid. And it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know I’m a secretary yet.” Which made me think of something else, and I took up what was becoming my normal pose of the day with my head in my hands. “And when she finds out, she’ll be furious, because she claims my father is having an affair with his
own
secretary.” I’m pretty sure I whimpered.

      Ernie’s expression sobered. “Wow, I’m sorry, kiddo.”

      “It’s all right.” My voice belied the words.

      The phone rang again, and Ernie rose from his chair, patted me on the back and sauntered to his office, where he flung his hat at the hat rack in the corner, slipped out of his suit coat—since already the August morning weather hovered around the ninety-degree mark—sat behind his desk, propped his feet up, and flapped open the morning edition of the
Los Angeles Times
. Mind you, I couldn’t see him doing any of those things, but I knew from experience that this was the way Ernest Templeton, P.I., started his workday.

      “Mr. Templeton’s office. Miss Allcutt speaking.” My voice lacked conviction, even though I’d spoken nothing but the truth.

      “Mercy, it’s me again.”

      Chloe generally chose her words more carefully than that, but, again, I wasn’t going to point out her grammatical lapse this morning. “’Lo, Chloe.”

      “Listen. Mother is going to go with me to the doctor’s office.” I heard her suck in a deep breath on the other end of the wire, and my heart gave a hard spasm in anticipation.

      I knew what was coming.

      I was right.

      “Then she insists on seeing where you work. We should be there about ten-thirty or so.”

      I think I whimpered again.

      “So spiff up the place, okay? And tell Mr. Templeton to brace himself.”

      “Thanks, Chloe,” I whispered and hung up the receiver.

      I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the pretty picture of Angel’s Flight that I’d bought from a street artist in Pershing Square and hung on the office wall, but it was long enough for Ernie to notice.

      “Who was that?” he called from behind his newspaper.

      “Chloe.”

      “Your sister?”

      “Yes.”

      “What’d she want?

      I heaved a sigh loud enough to have been heard by all my relatives in Boston. “She and Mother are going to visit me so that Mother can see where I work.”

      “Well, that’s nice.”

      “No, it isn’t.”

      “Hey, Mercy, snap out of it. She can’t be all that bad.”

      Showed how much he knew about anything. I said, “Huh,” something I’d never have done as little as six weeks earlier. Ernie chuckled, and I considered throwing something at him, but I didn’t want to get fired. Especially not when my mother was going to visit my place of employment.

      But moping would accomplish nothing and if it was possible, which I sincerely doubted since it’s very difficult to penetrate closed minds, I aimed to make my mother admit that I was not only rightly and properly, not to mention gainfully, employed at a job I liked, but that my working conditions sparkled. Therefore, I opened another desk drawer, grabbed the dust cloth I kept in there, and began dusting for all I was worth.

      I’d just climbed down from the chair I’d pushed over to the wall behind my desk so I could straighten the two pretty flower pictures I’d hung a few weeks ago when the office door opened. Aha! A client! For a moment I was happy I wasn’t stuck on the chair when the client arrived until I recognized Francis Easthope, one of the world’s most handsome men, a great pal of Chloe’s, and a man who had done an enormous favor for me once upon a time. Mr. Easthope worked as a costumier for Harvey at the studio, and he knew everything there was to know about ladies’ fashions. He was also a sweetie pie.

      “Mr. Easthope! How good to see you.”

      “Good morning, Miss Allcutt.” He was always impeccably polite. He removed his hat now, and bowed slightly.

      Did I detect a hint of nervousness in his mien? By gum, I think I did. Instantly, I adopted my soothing-secretary attitude in spite of my dust cloth, which I hastily tucked in my desk drawer. “What can we do for you, Mr. Easthope? Won’t you sit down?” I gestured to the chair beside my desk. Usually I seated clients in one of the chairs in front of my desk, but I liked Mr. Easthope a lot.

      He sat with a sigh. “Thank you.” Placing his hat on his lap and leaning his stick against my desk, he appeared pensive for a moment, as if he didn’t relish having to divulge his reason for calling. I gave him my most sympathetic smile, and he sighed again. “I need Mr. Templeton’s help,” he said at last. Then, with a quick, apprehensive glance at me, he added, “And yours.”

      “Certainly,” said I, glad he’d acknowledged my usefulness, even belatedly. After all, he knew everything about the previous cases in which I’d been involved, so he understood how helpful I could be. “What can we do for you?”

      Ernie poked his head out of his office and frowned slightly when he spotted Mr. Easthope, who turned and glanced at him. After lifting an eyebrow in surprise, Ernie said, “Mr. Easthope,” in a neutral voice.

      “Good morning, Mr. Templeton.”

      For some reason, Ernie had always been a little touchy where Francis Easthope was concerned. Perhaps he resented Mr. Easthope’s degree of handsomeness, although that didn’t sound quite like the Ernie Templeton I knew. Anyhow, I didn’t understand it, but I aimed to quash any petulance on his part before it leaked into the conversation. “Mr. Easthope is here for our help, Mr. Templeton.” I always called him
Mr. Templeton
when we had clients.

      “Yeah?” Ernie seemed minimally interested.

      “Indeed.” I gave him a good frown to show him he needed to shape up and treat Mr. Easthope as a gentleman and a client ought to be treated.

      I have to admit that the differences between the two men couldn’t have been much more marked. Francis Easthope was dressed in the very height of fashion, in a summer-weight tan suit and hat, crisp bronze-colored four-in-hand necktie, highly polished shoes and a lion-headed walking stick. Ernie had come to the office clad in a cheap seersucker suit, limp tie and the same old brown shoes and hat he always wore. Of course, Francis Easthope worked in the pictures and made a lot of money and Ernie . . . didn’t. Either one of those things.

      “Yeah?” He gave every appearance of not being overly delighted when he said, “Why don’t you come into my office, Mr. Easthope? You can tell me all about it.”

      Drat. I’d been hoping he’d tell
me
all about it. Oh, well.

      Mr. Easthope rose from his chair and said, “Thank you.” Turning to me, he said, “And thank you, too, Miss Allcutt.”

      I have a feeling my smile was wan.

      My dispirited condition didn’t last very long, thank heaven. Before I could do more than begin fretting about my mother’s looming visit, Ernie’s office door opened and his head popped out again. I looked up, ever hopeful.

      My hopes were dashed almost at once. Ernie stepped back and Mr. Easthope came through the door, looking unhappy. Ernie stood at his back, rolling his eyes. Well, pooh.

      “I’m sure sorry, Mr. Easthope,” said Ernie, sounding not at all sorry. “But that just doesn’t sound as if it’s in my line.”