Fallen Angels (18 page)

After giving herself a once-over as I had
done, she said, “Y’think so?”

“Well . . . yes. I mean, well, you
favor such bright, lovely,
lively
colors. Nobody’d ever forget you once they saw you.” I then
thought, far too late, to say something kind. “And no one could
ever forget your beauty, either. Why, you have a face no man would
forget.”

“Really?” She cheered up considerably, and I
blasted myself for a fool for not mentioning the beauty angle
earlier. Not that Lulu was a God-given beauty, but art had done a
good deal to perk up what she’d been born with, which wasn’t bad to
begin with, and she was definitely unforgettable, so that wasn’t
even close to a fib. “Well, I still wish I could help.”

Something then occurred to me that was
downright brilliant. Or maybe it wasn’t. But it couldn’t hurt. “I
know! Why don’t you attend the Angelica Gospel Hall with me next
Sunday?”

Poor Lulu must have thought I’d lost my
sanity. “Do what?”

With a laugh, I said, “Don’t worry, Lulu. I’m
not trying to convert you to Sister Emmanuel’s church or anything,
but you see, Mrs. Chalmers had recently joined that church, and
according to the people I’ve spoken with so far, she spent every
waking hour and nearly every cent she had on the place. I went to
church there last Sunday and met some people who knew her. Perhaps
you can come with me, and we can both do some snooping.”

“Oh, gee, you think so?” Her face almost
glowed for a moment before it fell again. “I dunno, Mercy. I don’t
think I’d fit in very well with those folks.”

“I don’t fit in, either, Lulu, but they
didn’t seem to notice.”

“But I don’t have any church clothes. All my
clothes are bright.” She sniffed. “Bright colors make me
happy.”

“I could let you borrow one of my dull
working costumes.”

Her eyes began glowing once more. “Oh, would
you? Really?”

“Sure. We’re about the same size.” I peered
more closely at Lulu’s shapely figure. Lulu didn’t bother with a
bust-flattener. “Or thereabouts.”

“Golly, Mercy, that would be swell!”

We were darned near bosom buddies by the time
I’d finished off my dill pickle spear (yet one more thing for my
mother to deplore if she ever found out about it) and walked
together back to the Figueroa Building. As we walked, something
else struck to me, but I decided not to bring it up with Lulu yet
since to mention it at that moment would have been premature.

It hadn’t occurred to me that Ernie might
have come back to the office from the police department, since I’d
pictured him there, tied to a chair and with bright lights shining
in his eyes while big, ugly coppers smacked him around with their
billy clubs. Boy, was I wrong.

“Where the hell have you been?” he yelled as
soon as I walked through the door into the outer office. It looked
as if he’d been roaming the office searching for me, as if I might
be hiding in a desk drawer or something. Oh, dear.

Bracing myself against another of his
assaults upon my senses, I told the truth. “I went to the Chalmers
house, where I interviewed the two house servants and the two
Misters Chalmers.”

“Christ.” And Ernie, clutching his hair in
both hands, staggered back to his office and all but fell into his
chair.

I followed him into his lair, which I
consider mighty darned brave of me under the circumstances.

“How many times have I told you to stay out
of this investigation, Mercy?” Ernie’s voice was calm now, but I
knew he wasn’t.

“Too many to count,” I said, standing erect
and dignified before his desk.

“And you refuse to obey my direct
orders.”

“Yes.”

“And if I fire you, you’ll continue to
investigate, right?”

“Right.”

“Shit.”

“But I discovered some things that I think
you ought to know,” I said, even though I hadn’t really.

He didn’t let go of his hair, which was quite
a mess by this time, but he looked up at me. “Yeah?”

“I know, for instance, that Mr. Simon
Chalmers thinks Mrs. Chalmers took her jewelry and sold it to give
to the church and only called you in as a cover-up. I know that the
jewels were kept in a safe behind a picture of a horse in Mr.
Chalmers’ library, and that nothing but the jewelry was taken. I
also found out that none of the servants know where the safe is or
what the combination to it is.”

“So he thinks.”

“Exactly. So he thinks. However, I also
learned that Mrs. Gaylord Pinkney’s husband—Mrs. Pinkney was
evidently one of Mrs. Chalmers’ greatest friends—called Mr.
Chalmers and demanded that he stop Mrs. Chalmers from leading Mrs.
Pinkney astray by involving her in the Angelica Gospel Hall.”

Ernie said, “Huh.”

“Naturally, since he was perfectly content
with his wife’s involvement with the Hall, Mr. Chalmers ignored Mr.
Pinkney’s demand and told him not to call again.”

“Going to church being better than running
around with another man, I guess,” grumbled Ernie.

I decided to ignore this salacious comment.
“I also learned that Mrs. Chalmers entertained people from the Hall
at her home quite often.”

And then I couldn’t think of anything else to
say, so I shut up.

Ernie lifted his head and tried to smooth his
hair down. His attempt was not awfully successful. “That’s it?”

“That’s more than we knew before,” I told him
sharply. “And I fully intend to pursue my own inquiry with Mrs.
Pinkney. Perhaps she knows something she hasn’t told me, but that
will emerge with shrewd questioning.”

I ignored Ernie’s “huh.”

“What’s more, I’m going to her home, and I’m
going to attempt to meet her husband and find out exactly why he’s
so adamant against his wife’s involvement in that church. Mind you,
while I can almost appreciate Mrs. Emmanuel’s message of love, I’m
no convert. But attending church services does seem a fairly
innocuous thing for a woman to do, and I don’t understand her
husband’s strenuous objections to it. She could be out robbing
banks or something instead, don’t you know.”

I resented that blasted eye-roll Ernie was so
fond of employing in my presence. Rather than reacting to it, I sat
myself down on one of the chairs in front of his desk and said,
“How long did the police keep you? Were they kind to you? They
didn’t hit you or anything, did they?” My worry leached into my
voice, and I was embarrassed to hear it.

“Hit me? Hell’s bells, Mercy, we live in the
twentieth century. People don’t torture people in order to get
information nowadays.”

“That’s not what I’ve read in certain books,”
I told him.

“Books,” he dared to grumble, as if he
thought my statement was idiotic because I’d read about such things
in books. Ernest Templeton, in whose desk I’d discovered, my very
own self, an issue of
Black
Mask
, in which appear many, many stories featuring the
police giving innocent citizens less than lovely treatment in their
departments.
Huh
, himself,
blast the man.

“Nevertheless, I want to know what happened
at the police station,” I told him, my voice registering the fact
that I was serious and would brook no nonsense from him.

“Not much. I told them I arrived at Mrs.
Chalmers’ house about eight o’clock last Thursday morning. She’d
called and said she needed to tell me something important, and I
had to get to her place early because I had an appointment with
Phil at nine. I don’t know what she wanted to tell me, because I
don’t think we got that far, although I honestly don’t remember.
The last thing I remember is drinking tea, of all things, with her
on her living room sofa.”

“You don’t remember anything else at all
after that?”

“That’s right. I don’t.”

“But how did you get upstairs?”

“How the hell should
I
know? The last thing I remember is
sipping that damned tea. Disgusting stuff, tea.”

“Temper, temper,” I said, trying to hold on
to my own.

He sighed. “I don’t know how I got
upstairs.”

“You had no bruises on your back or
anything?”

“Bruises? What the hell would bruises
prove?”

Pinching my lips together for a moment, I
reminded myself that here was an innocent man who was suspected of
murder, and who, if we didn’t learn the name of the real murderer,
might well be tried and convicted of said murder. Therefore, rather
than screaming at him, I said quietly, “If someone drugged you
downstairs and then hauled you upstairs by your feet, you’d
probably have bruises on your back and perhaps your lower limbs.
Maybe even the back of your head. Of course, you might have
staggered up the stairs yourself, but I should think you’d remember
that.” Unless he was under the influence of drugs and Mrs.
Persephone Chalmers. I decided to keep that bit of unpleasant
thought to myself.

Ernie’s eyes opened a little wider, and he
rubbed the back of his head. “Say, you might just have something
there, Mercy Allcutt. The back of my head has hurt like hell for
the past few days, and my back has felt like shit, too.”

Ignoring his foul language was putting a
tremendous strain on my nervous system. However, I controlled
myself. “Did you bother to look at your back in a mirror?”

“Well . . . no. My head hurt and . . . well,
it was lower than my back that hurt, actually.”

“Lower than . . . Oh. I see.” His posterior
had bumped against the stair steps, I presumed from his modest
hesitation. That surprised me, actually, since I didn’t consider
Ernie Templeton to be a particularly modest man. “Well, did you
look at your . . . lower regions in the mirror?”

“Hell, no! I don’t go around looking at my
butt in the mirror.”

“Well, you might want to do so this time, if
it means clearing you of a murder charge.” My voice had risen in
spite of my concerted effort to keep calm.

He didn’t speak for a moment, although his
lips writhed as if a number of oaths were squirming to get out. At
last he said, “You’re right.”

“If possible, you should have Phil take a
look at you, too, just so he won’t think you’re making it up. In
fact, it’s a shame they didn’t take pictures of your back at the
scene of the crime at the appropriate time.”

“I’ll be damned if I’ll have Phil Bigelow or
anybody else looking at my ass! And I’ll be double damned if I’ll
have anybody take pictures of it!” roared Ernie.

This latest outburst was too much for me. I
rose stiffly from my chair and said, “Fine. In that case, I’ll
continue my own investigation in my own way, without your
help.”

As I marched toward the door into my own
office, Ernie said, “Damn it, Mercy. Give a fellow a break, can’t
you? You wouldn’t want me looking at your ass, would you?”

Would I? Well, that might just depend . .
.

So shocked was I when that thought entered my
mind, I stopped dead in front of the office door and whirled
around. “Ernest Templeton, if you aren’t the most aggravating,
horrible—”

He held up a hand, effectively stopping me in
mid-rant. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should get a doctor or
someone to look and see if I have any bruises. Not that bruises
would prove that anyone hauled me up those damned stairs.”

“Nevertheless,” said I, regaining my control
and my thoughts, which had scattered momentarily, “I shall place a
telephone call to Dr. Vernon Piper, whose office is on the second
floor of this very building, and set up an appointment for you. You
can tell him why you want to know about bruises or not, as you
choose, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt you to have that head of
yours examined.”

With that skillful jab, I left Ernie’s
office, sat in my chair, grabbed the Los Angeles telephone
directory, looked up Dr. Piper’s number, and made an appointment
for Ernie for that very afternoon. After that, I told Ernie about
his appointment and went back to my desk.

From there I telephoned the Pinkney
residence and asked to speak with Mrs. Pinkney. Curse Ernie and the
entire Los Angeles Police Department. If
they
didn’t intend to prove Ernie didn’t kill
that idiotic woman,
I
did.

“Oh, Miss Allcutt,” said Mrs. Pinkney in a
breathy voice. “I’m so glad you telephoned!”

She was? My goodness, I hadn’t expected this.
“Um . . . well, I wanted to know how you were getting along, you
know,” I said, thinking it a feeble thing to say.

“I miss Persephone dreadfully,” she told me
with meaning, “and I just discovered something I think you should
know. Perhaps I should telephone the police, but—”

“No!” I cried, interrupting her. Rude, I
know. “Please, Mrs. Pinkney. I . . . I’m sure I’ll be happy to hear
what you’ve discovered. Then, after we’ve discussed the matter, we
can decide if the police should be told.”

Curse Ernie and the entire
L.A.P.D.,
I
wanted to be the
one to break this case.

“Oh, thank you, Miss Allcutt. You relieve my
mind. Won’t you please come to tea tomorrow afternoon, then? It
will be such a relief to get this off my chest.”

“I will be delighted to take tea with you
tomorrow afternoon, Mrs. Pinkney,” I said, meaning it
absolutely.

Chapter Eleven

Lulu went home with me that night. I think
Chloe was surprised, but she was as gracious to Lulu as she was to
all her guests. So was Buttercup, who loved visitors from all
stations in life. Shoot, Buttercup even welcomed my mother when she
came to visit, although her enthusiasm had not thus far been
returned, my mother being who she was.

“We’re only here to get Lulu some boring
clothes to wear to the Angelica Gospel Hall on Sunday,” I
explained.