ANGEL'S FLIGHT

by Alice Duncan

Five Star, November 2008

ISBN: 978-1-59414-695-4

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, so 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 backwards across Chloe’s gorgeously tiled front entryway, I patted my bobbed hair 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 assume 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 don’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 escaped. 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, 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 a homicidal maniac, 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 only 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.

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 jaw dropped. 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 more glad 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 town? 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 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.

“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.”

I couldn’t repress a soft groan. “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 larks soaring. “You didn’t tell her?”

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

“She has?”

“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 moaned.

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 century mark—sat behind his desk, and flapped open the morning edition of the Los Angeles Times. Mind you, I couldn’t see him doing all 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.

“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 week or so 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. 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.”

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Easthope sadly. “I feared as much.” And he walked farther into my office as Ernie shut his door and, I presume, went back to perusing the Times.

Mr. Easthope sighed heavily, and my heart was stirred. “Do you think there’s anything I might do for you, Mr. Easthope?” I asked, not expecting much in the way of excitement to ensue.

He gazed soulfully at me long enough for my heart to take to fluttering like a hummingbird. He was a very handsome man. “Well … would you mind listening to my tale of woe? Maybe you might be able to offer an insight or two.”

Would I mind? Would I mind seeing King Tut’s Tomb? I would not! “Heavens, no. I’d love to hear your problem. And I promise I won’t tell another person. We’re the soul of discretion at Templeton’s.” At least I was, and I was pretty sure Ernie was, too, or he’d have gone out of business long ago. Smiling at him, I said, “I’ll even take notes.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you.” I grabbed my lined, green stenographer’s pad and a pencil as Mr. Easthope resumed the chair beside my desk. Then I smiled at him as if he were offering me reprieve from doom and destruction instead of merely my mother. Did I say merely? I didn’t mean it. There’s nothing mere about my mother. Both her stature and her personality are imposing.

I poised my pencil—I always kept several sharpened pencils at the ready—over my pad. “All right. Fire away.”

With a sigh, Mr. Easthope turned to me and, with a small, strained smile, commenced to do as I had asked of him.