Angel's Flight (A Mercy Allcutt Mystery) Read Free Page A

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