Lost Among the Angels (A Mercy Allcutt Book) (28 page)

      I was supposed to browse in Mr. Li’s shop until the criminal element entered. In case I didn’t recognize them, which was entirely possible since I’d only viewed the men via photographs, Mr. Li, who had been let out of jail for this express purpose, was to give me a signal. The signal might be anything from a nod to a screech of warning. I was to leave the shop, wave at Ernie and Phil, who would be holed up in Charlie’s noodle shop across the plaza, and they and the policemen accompanying them would scoot into the shop and arrest the bad guys.

      It was rather heartening to know that Ernie worried about me, although if looked at from another angle, I suppose his concern indicated a lack of faith, which I don’t believe I deserved. It had been I, after all, who’d saved Mrs. Von Schilling’s poodle. If that hadn’t proved my overall usefulness in the private detecting business, I don’t know what did. 
 
 

      
Fifteen
 

At eleven o’clock, the three of us (I’d had to shoo Ned off twice by then) piled into Phil’s big Ford and tootled to Chinatown and Mr. Li’s shop. Because I didn’t want to be weighted down with extraneous things to fuss with, I stuck some money in my skirt pocket and left my handbag in the drawer of my desk. I did, however, put on my hat, since to do otherwise would have been in poor taste since proper women didn’t appear in public without hats. Clearly, I needed more practice in California living.

      We gathered in the little noodle shop across the plaza from the shop, and Phil escorted Mr. Li and me to the shop, which had been closed since Monday’s arrest of Mr. Li on kidnapping charges. According to the plans that were made between Mr. Li and the police, those charges might be lowered to false imprisonment (I didn’t understand the difference, to tell the truth) if he cooperated fully in this day’s events.

      Poor Mr. Li was a nervous wreck, a fact I hoped wouldn’t tip off the bad guys to possible police involvement. When I whispered as much to Phil, he said not to worry. Anybody with half a brain would be nervous when faced with an interview with Mr. Carpetti, even when the law wasn’t involved. He went on to say that he doubted Mr. Li’s state of anxiety would seem out of place to Carpetti or his henchmen.

      “He’d have been nervous anyway, since he lost Babs Houser and didn’t get any ransom to show for her.”

      Mr. Li whimpered. Phil eyed him coldly. “You don’t get any sympathy from me, Li. You play with fire, you get burned.”

      “I know. I know,” mumbled Mr. Li.

      Since his shop had been closed for so long, it was terribly musty and stuffy. I offered to help him dust the place, but Phil nixed that idea. “You’re supposed to be a tourist, Mercy. Act like one.” His voice was sterner than I’d ever heard it.

      “Very well,” I said. I said it meekly, too, what’s more, since I didn’t want him to have second thoughts about my involvement in the day’s activities.

      That day I had worn one of my sober, pre-bobbed hair suits and a very sensible pair of shoes, since I’d anticipated standing around for an hour or more in that dumpy little souvenir shop before anything of interest transpired, but my feet were aching after about the first half-hour or so. The shop was very small, and Mr. Li had it filled with knickknacks of one sort and another, primarily manufactured either in China or made to look as if they were Chinese. There were a few silk brocade robes in various colors, and they held my attention longer than anything else.

      Some pretty pottery vases and porcelain goddesses, too, caught my eye—for about five minutes. Face it, when you’re in a ten-foot-by-ten-foot shop for an hour and a half, unless it’s stocked with fascinating books or something equally entertaining, you’ll be bored in a very few minutes. I was bored. And I wished I’d brought a novel along with me until I realized that I couldn’t just stand there reading, either, because that would negate my pose as a tourist. Nuts.

      Ernie had told me that a lot of private investigation work was tedious. I had believed he’d been attempting to dampen my ardor for the profession, but that day I discovered he’d been telling the absolute truth.

      I’d just picked up a tiny porcelain teacup, which went with a tea set made up of a tray, a teapot, and six little cups, for about the seventeenth time, attempting to look like a lady trying to make up her mind, when I heard Mr. Li utter a frightened squeak. I almost dropped the teacup. When I glanced at him, he jerked his head in the direction of the front door.

      Acting very relaxed and touristy, I replaced the teacup, picked up another one from a different set, and glanced at the front door. The jolt of excitement that shot through me when I saw two swarthy gentlemen approaching from the direction of Hill Street made the breath catch in my throat.

      Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as the men entered the shop. Neither one of them carried a violin case, which was a relief, although I’m sure they had guns tucked away somewhere. Maybe gangsters only carried guns in violin cases when they aimed to “shoot up the joint” (another phrase used by the police and the criminal element). I didn’t relax, however, since Phil and Ernie had both warned me that these were genuine gangsters who used real weapons and killed real people. The two men noticed me right off the bat, and one of them frowned, which was rather disconcerting. I guess they didn’t want to transact illicit business with Mr. Li as long as anyone else remained in the shop. They both paused a few feet and an aisle away from me and pretended to be interested in some rose-scented soap. I hoped I looked more like an innocent tourist than they did.

      It was fine with me if they didn’t want me around. By that time I was rethinking my desire to be a part of any action that might involve gunplay. Casually putting the teacup down—I am proud to announce that my hand did not tremble the least little bit—I made my way to the front door. The man who’d frowned at me continued to do so. I felt his eyes boring into my back as I left the shop, and it was a most uncomfortable feeling, I can tell you. My shoulder blades itched and my breathing was unsteady.

      I confess to sucking in a deep breath as soon as I was out the door, although I knew it was too soon to celebrate. My job wasn’t over yet. On knees that felt as if they’d been sculpted of aspic, I walked across the plaza toward the noodle shop.

      What happened next I couldn’t have anticipated if I’d been given a year to contemplate possibilities, although I’ll keep it in mind when I start writing my novels. Out of nowhere, somebody rushed up and grabbed my arm. I’m pretty sure I screamed, since I was already in a state of anxiety due to the brutes in Mr. Li’s shop, although I don’t remember doing so.

      I do remember whirling around, sure my accoster would prove to be the frowning man.

      You can imagine my astonishment when I discovered Mr. Hiram Godfrey clinging to my arm. The expression on his face looked like one of pain, although, to judge by what he said to me, I guess it was ardor.

      “Miss Allcutt! Mercy! You must come with me. I adore you. I love you! We can be married right away!”

      Trying to shake him off, I cried, “Stop it! Let me
go,
you murdering fiend!”

      I was terrified lest this interruption of our carefully laid plan would spell its failure. If I could help it, Mr. Hiram Godfrey, mad murderer that he was, wouldn’t thwart our purpose.

      Mr. Godfrey did not release me. He looked mighty puzzled, however, when he said, “Murdering fiend? What do you mean?”

      I kicked him hard in the shin with my sensibly shod foot. He released me then. He also clutched his shin and started hopping around the plaza on his other foot, looking rather like an overweight flamingo, since his face had turned a brilliant red by that time. “Why did you do that? Don’t you know that I
love
you?”

      Forsaking caution as well as an answer, I raced to the noodle shop, hoping that if the criminals in Mr. Li’s shop saw me doing so, they’d chalk up the cause to Mr. Godfrey’s assault. Which it was, primarily.

      By the time I reached the noodle shop, I was in such a panic, I wrenched the door open and practically fell inside—right into Ernie’s arms. He propped me up and said, “What the hell?”

      “It’s Mr. Godfrey!” Reminded of the original purpose of this trip to Chinatown, I added, “And the men went into Mr. Li’s shop!”

      I know I was being almost incoherent, but darn it, I was in a real state by that time and believe my lapses might be excused. As uniformed policemen poured out of the noodle shop, Ernie and Phil exchanged a look of surprise.

      Phil said, “You take care of Godfrey. I’ve gotta be in on the arrest.”

      “Right.” Squinting down at me as if he suspected I’d lost my mind in the excitement of the moment, he said, “What’s this about Godfrey?”

      “He’s
there,
” I cried, pointing in the general direction of the plaza. “He grabbed me! He said we had to get married!”

      Ernie’s squint got narrower. “Geez, the guy really
is
nuts, isn’t he?” He yanked the door open and rushed out.

      I wasn’t sure how to take that, but it didn’t seem to be the right time to ask how Ernie had meant his comment. I hurried after him, eager to see Mr. Godfrey arrested and locked up for the brutal murder of June Williams.

      Fortunately, in the several seconds it took to achieve the above results, Mr. Godfrey hadn’t gone anywhere. In fact, he’d sat on a bench in front of the good-luck pond that was in the middle of the plaza, rubbing his shin. His piggy eyes, when he lifted them from his trousers, conveyed an expression of hurt bewilderment until Ernie reached him. Then he looked up and smiled at him. Really, the man was truly mad!

      “Hello, Mr. Templeton,” said Mr. Godfrey, nodding at Ernie as if he hadn’t recently murdered anyone or just assaulted me on a public plaza. “I’ve been meaning to get to your office. I owe you some money.”

      “Yes,” said Ernie, standing before him and looking down at him, his fists on his hips. I had sort of expected him to grab him, or at least point a gun at him. Instead, he said, “Hiram Godfrey, you’ve really got to stop expecting every woman you meet to marry you.”

      Mr. Godfrey’s smile faded and the hangdog expression returned to his chubby features. “You mean Miss Allcutt doesn’t want to marry me, either?”

      “I’m afraid not,” said Ernie, much more gently than I believed was called for.

      “Ernie,” I said, “what are you doing? Do you realize this man just attacked me?”

      “Attacked you?” Mr. Godfrey said in a hurt voice. “But I thought you wanted to marry me.”

      It was my turn to put my fists on my hips, only my voice was anything but gentle when I spoke next. “What in the world made you believe that?”

      “But you were nice to me.”

      “I’m nice to everyone.”

      “Oh.”

      I turned to Ernie. “Aren’t you going to arrest him?”

      “Arrest me?” Now Mr. Godfrey appeared alarmed. Past time, if you ask me.

      “Sorry, Mercy, I’m not a cop. Besides, we have some real criminals to pick up now, it looks like.”

      I realized his gaze was fixed on Mr. Li’s shop. “But …” I didn’t get to finish my sentence because suddenly shots rang out. The front window of Mr. Li’s shop exploded, sending a spray of glass out onto the plaza. I said, “Oh!” and covered my head with my hands, although I’m not sure why. Shock, I guess. What I should have done—and what I’ll try to remember to do the next time I’m in the vicinity of a gunfight—was to flatten myself out on the ground. Getting one’s clothes dirty was a much more pleasing alternative to getting drilled by a stray bullet. Ernie told me that later, and quite sarcastically, too. I didn’t appreciate his tone of voice, but I did understand and agree with the sentiment.

      He didn’t speak in that moment. What he did was grab me around the waist and hurl me to the ground, landing on top of me. He said later that he was covering my body with his so that nobody in my family could accuse him of putting me in harm’s way, but I honestly don’t believe that. I think he has the instincts of a gentleman, no matter how hard he tries to pretend he doesn’t. His first impulse is to protect a person he perceives might be in danger. His impulse didn’t prevent me from ending up with torn garments and skinned knees (and you should have seen my stockings!) but I didn’t blame him for those minor casualties. I thought he was sweet. I’d have told him so, but I sensed he wouldn’t have appreciated it.

      Before I had gathered my wits together, Ernie shouted, “Stay there!” and he took off, crouched over and running, toward the shop.

      I shrieked, “Ernie! Get back here, you idiot!” but I didn’t mean it. The idiot part. The getting back there part I meant with all my heart.

      “Miss Allcutt!” Mr. Godfrey, who, I discovered, was on his stomach on the plaza alongside me, said. “Are you all right?”

      “Of course, I’m all right! Stay away from me, you maniac!”

      “But …”

      I’m not a fool. Nor am I stupid. I didn’t want to get myself shot. However, I was absolutely
dying
(so to speak) to know what was going on in the shop. And I also didn’t want to remain lying next to a man whom I believed to be a cold-blooded murderer. Therefore, I decided not to perform a citizen’s arrest on Mr. Godfrey—he was ever so much larger than I and probably would have objected if I’d tried—but crawled on my hands and scraped knees to the shop, trying to stay behind things such as the wishing well, a restaurant sign, a potted plant, etc., on my way.

      Before I got there, the shop’s front door slammed open, and one of the two Italianate gentlemen, the one who’d frowned at me when I’d seen him entering the shop a while back, pelted out onto the plaza, a gun in his hand. His attention was riveted on the shop, so he didn’t see me there on my hands and knees. It was but the work of a second to scoot myself directly into his path.

      It hurt like mad when he ran into me, but the result was most satisfactory. He went sprawling, his gun flew out of his hand and went spinning across the plaza, and he said,
“Damn!”
a second before he said,
“Ow!”