by Alice Duncan
“Even though your client is . . . deceased?” Chloe, too, was occasionally hampered by her upbringing. The Allcutt daughters weren’t supposed to say “dead” in front of others. We were supposed to use euphemisms like “passed away” or “gone to a better place.” Heck, “deceased” was a relatively bold word for her to use.
“The client’s expectation of privacy doesn’t die with him or her, I’m afraid. After the case is all cleared up, I’ll be able to talk more about it,” Ernie said gently, understanding Chloe’s frustration.
“Oh.” Disappointed, Chloe lapsed into silence.
“I guess that makes sense,” said Harvey, sounding doubtful. “Sort of like a client’s privilege of privacy when he consults with an attorney.”
“Exactly,” said Ernie. “Only I’m not trying to cheat anybody.”
Which goes to prove that nothing’s changed since Shakespeare’s time. To this day, nobody seems to trust lawyers. A month before, I’d been envious of the secretary of a lawyer who’d moved into the Figueroa Building. No longer. I’d stick with Ernie. His clients might sometimes be less than impeccable citizens, but at least they didn’t pretend to be otherwise.
Chloe didn’t take sherry, since she didn’t believe alcohol and pregnancy belonged together. I agreed with her, although I’m not sure why. Probably our mother had told us so once upon a time. See how difficult it can be to overcome one’s upbringing?
“Well, I’m sure you’ll catch the crook in no time,” said Harvey heartily. He liked Ernie, too.
“I sure hope so. Otherwise, it looks as if I’ll end up in the slammer.”
“Oh, surely that won’t happen,” said Chloe, appalled. “Mercy says she’s not going to rest until she discovers who really killed that woman.”
Ernie, blast him, rolled his eyes.
Chloe tutted. “Mercy’s been quite upset about how the police have been treating you, Ernie. She’s only trying to help. I should think you’d welcome her assistance.”
“That will be the day,” I grumbled, irritated by Ernie’s dismissal of my usefulness.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate her help, Chloe,” Ernie explained patiently. He was seldom so patient with me. “It’s that she’s my secretary. I hired her as a secretary, not as an assistant P.I. And,” he said with emphasis, “as her employer, I feel responsible for her welfare. I don’t want her to get hurt again.”
“I haven’t been hurt!” I cried, stung.
“No? What about when that maniac tried to kill you? And what about the time when that other maniac tried to kill you? You might not have been killed, but I remember those scrapes and bruises pretty darned well.”
So did I. Nevertheless, I lifted my chin. He would have to bring up those incidents, wouldn’t he? “I haven’t been badly hurt,” I said primly. “And I did help catch the criminals. You can’t deny that, Ernest Templeton.”
He downed the last of his sherry. “I won’t deny it.” With a sigh, he stood. “But I have to get going now. It’s late, and I’ve had a bad day.”
“Oh?” Chloe’s eyes brightened. “What happened?”
“Chloe, the poor man’s exhausted,” said Harvey in as close to a chiding tone as he ever used, at least with Chloe.
“I’m sure Mercy can tell you all about it.” Ernie gave me what I could only consider an evil grin. “She’ll probably even embellish the tale to make it more dramatic.”
“I will not!”
He laughed and took his exit while I continued to fume.
However, fuming didn’t accomplish anything, and I thought that perhaps if I talked the matter over with Chloe and Harvey, I might come up with an idea I hadn’t thought of yet as to whom I should next interrogate.
Even after I’d carefully explained what I’d done that day, and how the wicked policemen had treated Ernie, neither one of them had much to offer.
“Well,” said Harvey at one point, “it sounds as if you’ve covered all the suspects, and so have the police. Doesn’t anyone look good to you? That Pinkney guy, maybe?”
I puzzled over that question for a moment before I realized that good in this instance meant appropriate, as in an appropriate suspect.
“I’ve pinned my hopes on Mr. Pinkney,” I told him. “After all, he’s the one who wrote those terrible threatening letters. Unless he turns out to have a rock-solid alibi, he’s the man I think probably did it.”
“In the pictures, the ones with the solid alibis are always the ones who turn out to be the real killers,” said Chloe.
“I know,” I said, wishing for once that real life was more like the flickers.
* * * * *
The rest of that week passed uneventfully. Phil came to the office daily to chat with Ernie, but he didn’t take him down to the station to grill him again, and fortunately, O’Reilly stayed away. Phil attempted to be friendly with me, as he’d been in the good old days, before the L.A.P.D. began trying to pin a murder on my boss, but I remained chilly toward him.
After his visit on the day after our dinner at Chinatown, I went into Ernie’s office to find him slumped in his chair, looking discouraged.
“What’s the matter, Ernie? Did that man O’Reilly—”
“O’Reilly didn’t do anything to me. But Pinkney didn’t commit the murder.”
“But he must have!” I cried. “He’s such a logical suspect!”
“I thought so, too. But he didn’t do it.”
I plopped myself in one of the chairs in front of Ernie’s desk, determined to have the whole story. If what Ernie said was true . . . My heart creaked painfully. This was awful. “How do you know that?”
“He has an alibi.”
Huh. As Chloe had mentioned about the pictures, in all the books I read, people with alibis are always the ones who did the deed. I sensed I’d be better off not telling Ernie that. “What’s his alibi?”
“He was in San Bernardino on the day Mrs. Chalmers was killed.”
“How do the police know he’s telling the truth?”
“The L.A.P.D. got in touch with his employer, and his employer told them he was in San Bernardino, dealing with an account.”
“Do they know this for certain? How do they know he’s telling the truth? What does he do, anyhow?”
“He works for a shipping company. On Thursday last, he was visiting an orange-processing plant in San Bernardino. He’s got the paperwork to prove it.”
“There’s no way he could have forged the paperwork? He seems to be pretty handy with pen and ink,” I said dryly.
“Phil’s convinced Pinkney’s telling the truth. Pinkney’s boss corroborates his actions that day, and when the L.A.P.D. put a trunk call through to the San Bernardino orange-processing plant, they confirmed his visit.”
I heaved a big sigh. “What a shame. He’d be a perfect suspect, and his wife would dearly love to be rid of him.”
Although I could scarcely believe I’d actually said that out loud, Ernie laughed, so I guess it was okay.
Still and all, I was sorely disappointed. I was so hoping Mr. Pinkney would turn out to be the killer. I was almost positive that Phil didn’t consider Ernie a truly viable suspect, but he didn’t seem to be relenting on his persistent questioning of him. The way I saw it, when I tried to do so from the perspective of the L.A.P.D.—which wasn’t easy for me, as you can well imagine—was that if they ruled out Ernie, nobody else was left to fit the frame. That’s another piece of L.A. argot I picked up from Ernie. Frame, I mean.
“That stinks, Ernie,” I said.
“I agree,” he said, running his hands through his hair.
* * * * *
At lunch that day, which we took at a diner across the street from the Figueroa Building, Lulu and I made arrangements to meet at the Angelica Gospel Hall for services on Sunday. I aimed to take a cab. I didn’t ask how Lulu planned to get there. I have to admit to having some slight trepidation about how Lulu would present herself, but when, on the following Sunday, the cabbie dropp
ed me off in front of the church, darned if Lulu wasn’t there waiting for me, sans red lipstick and nail polish, and with her bottle-blond hair covered demurely under a black hat. I almost didn’t recognize her. In fact, I was about to walk right past her and on into the Hall when she spoke.
“Well?”
I whirled around and gasped when I recognized her. “Lulu! You’re perfect!”
She looked quite pleased with herself. “Told you I was a good actress.”
Actually, she hadn’t told me that. She’d told me many times that she wanted to get into the pictures and be a star, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about acting. Not that it matters. “You certainly are.”
Lulu looked up at the huge cross on top of the Hall. “I’ve heard a lot about this place, but I never seen it before.”
“Whereabouts do you live, Lulu?”
“In a boardinghouse on Clay. It’s not fancy, and there are a lot of Chinese around, but I don’t mind that.”
“Oh, my. Angels Flight goes right over Clay Street. Do you live near the railroad? It must be quite noisy.”
“It’s noisy everywhere around there,” she said. “But it’s cheap. I can’t afford anything better.”
She gave me kind of a slanty-eyed look, as though she were warning me about her financial circumstances for my future reference. I got the point. “Well, Ernie said that if I do decide to buy Chloe and Harvey’s house, he’ll help me establish fair rentals for tenants.”
“Yeah? Ernie’s a good guy. I just hope ‘fair’ will include me. I’d sure love to live in a joint like that. It’s like a . . . a palace or something.”
“I suppose it must seem like that,” I said, thinking that Lulu hadn’t seen very many palaces in her life if she thought the Nash home anything close to resembling a palace. On the other hand, my own personal education had included a trip to Europe during my sixteenth summer, so I’d actually been inside a palace or two. Yet another indication, if one were needed, that the United States of America did indeed have a class system, even if it wasn’t as overt as those of some other countries. Shoot, Chloe and I had even dined with the daughter of some duke or other in Great Britain during that trip. I decided not to tell Lulu that. She’d think dining with a duke’s daughter was something special, and it had only been lunch, really, and the duke’s daughter was a pallid, insipid creature with no conversation. In other words, she was the sort of girl our mother wanted Chloe and me to be, which really didn’t bear thinking of, so I stopped thinking of it.
We climbed the stairs leading into the Hall, and I saw Brother Everett handing out bulletins at the door. We smiled at each other, and I said, “Good morning, Brother Everett.”
“Good morning, sister.”
He’d forgotten my name, I have no doubt.
“I brought my friend Miss LaBelle with me today.”
“Good for you, sister!” He spoke with the enthusiasm of a true believer. “We’re so happy to have you join us, Sister LaBelle.”
After a moment of hesitation while she absorbed Brother Everett’s zest for his church, Lulu said, “Um . . . likewise, I’m sure.”
I hustled Lulu into the sanctuary before she could say anything else. Not that I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t want Brother Everett to know we were, in effect, there as spies. I don’t suppose it would have mattered if he knew the truth, but I felt better having him think I was there out of ardor for Sister Emmanuel’s message rather than in an investigatory capacity.
We sat in the pew I’d sat in the Sunday before. My choice was made on purpose, because I hoped this was Mrs. Pinkney’s regular pew.
“What’s this ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ stuff?” Lulu whispered in my ear when we were seated.
“Well, according to Sister Emmanuel,” I whispered back, “they believe that titles like ‘mister’ and ‘missus’ are designations of this earth and, as such, are not intended by God. Therefore, they eschew those types of social titles . . . and ‘doctor,’ too, I suppose.”
Lulu said, “Huh?”
I could understand her confusion, since the “brother” and “sister” stuff puzzled me a bit, too. Therefore, I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, Lulu. I think they prefer to think of themselves as siblings in this new religious endeavor, so they use the words ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’ Like they’re all brothers and sisters in God’s eyes or something.”
Because Lulu still looked at me blankly, I don’t think I’d explained the matter any better. She said, “I guess.” Then she said, “Do I have to call you Sister Allcutt?”
“Good Lord, no. Just call me Mercy. Please. And I’ll call you Lulu. We’ll let the others call us Sister LaBelle and Sister Allcutt.”
“If you say so.”
“Sister Allcutt!”
Aha! I’d been correct about this being Mrs. Pinkney’s usual pew, because when I glanced up to see who’d spoken, there she was, beaming as if I were the one person on earth whom she wanted to see this bright, hot Sunday morning. I thought that was sweet, so I smiled back at her and introduced her to Lulu LaBelle, leaving out the sister part.
“I’m so very happy to see you here today, Sister Allcutt, and so very, very happy to meet your friend.” Her smile for Lulu expressed so much rapture, I felt guilty. I’d been doing that a lot lately. “The more people who get the message, the more sinners will come to God.”
From the furrow in Lulu’s brow, I got the impression she didn’t much like being called a sinner, but I grimaced at her to beg her not to react, and her forehead smoothed out. “Mercy’s told me so much about this place, and I’m so happy to be here” said Lulu, trying on a simper that didn’t quite fit the Lulu I knew, but that went well with her boring gray outfit. My boring gray outfit.
Hmm. Perhaps my sister was right about my wardrobe. But this wasn’t the time or place to worry about that.
“That’s wonderful,” said Mrs. Pinkney. “I do so miss Persephone.” She hauled a hankie out of her handbag and dabbed at a corner of her eye. “It’s nice to have new people to speak to now that she’s gone.”
Oh, dear. I hoped the poor woman wouldn’t be too disappointed when Lulu and I vanished as soon as we discovered who’d murdered her best friend.
“Do you think the police are any closer to finding who the murderer of poor Mrs. Chalmers was?” Mrs. Pinkney asked in a whisper, looking around the sanctuary as if she didn’t want to be overheard.
“I’m not sure.” I decided not to tell her the police had cleared her husband, for fear the disappointment would make her faint. “But they’re working hard on the case, and so is my employer.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that, but I hope they find the fiend who killed her soon.” She shook her head and frowned. “You wouldn’t think it would be so difficult to find a murderer, would you? I mean, just look at . . .”
I think she was going to say, “Just look at my husband,” but wasn’t sure. Anyhow, I got the impression she was also hoping the fiend would turn out to be Mr. Gaylord Pinkney. What an odd thought.
“How do you do, Sister Allcutt?” a female voice said. I turned to discover Sister Everett smiling at me. Although it sounds odd, she had a severe, somewhat strained smile. I’d noticed that quirk of hers that before. It was still difficult for me to picture her as the wife of the insubstantial Mr. Everett.
“Very well, thank you, Sister Everett.”
“I must say I’m rather surprised to see you here today,” she said.
I lifted my eyebrows. “Oh? Why is that?” I didn’t know whether or not to be offended, but I leaned toward the pro side.
Now her smile seemed a trifle too sugary to me, as if she had to force it. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps I didn’t sense great spiritual awakening in you when you attended services here last week.”
“I’m sure it’s up to God to decide a person’s worth, Sister Everett.” My tone was frigid, and I guess it made her back off from making any more judgmental statements about me.
She o
nly said, “Of course.”
“Besides, there were other things going on that rather interfered with my total absorption with Sister Emmanuel’s message,” I reminded her. I didn’t want to outright blame Mrs. Pinkney for having made a scene and distracting my attention from the church’s message, even though she had.
“Yes, of course there were. I meant nothing by my comment.
“I see,” I said, my tone still chilly. “May I introduce my friend, Miss LaBelle? Lulu, this is Sister Everett.”
Sister Everett looked Lulu up and down in what I didn’t consider a very Christian way, but her smile didn’t fade. It didn’t look too awfully sincere, either, and I was beginning to think maybe she couldn’t help herself. Perhaps she was simply a cold woman with a cold demeanor. For all I knew, she wanted to be warm and friendly, but had been stifled in her childhood. I understood such things better than most people. “How do you do, Sister LaBelle?” she said, and held out her hand for Lulu to shake.
Taking the proffered hand, Lulu said, “Swell, thanks.”
Was there the hint of a wrinkle on Sister Everett’s nose? I couldn’t tell, but I suspected her of not being quite as zealous about this Angelica Gospel Hall thing as her husband. Not that I knew a single, solitary thing about the woman except that she’d brought tea to Sister Emmanuel when requested to do so after last week’s faint on Sister Pinkney’s part. She and I shook hands next, and then Sister Everett moseyed along the aisle, looking for other prey.
Lulu leaned over and whispered, “I don’t think she likes me much.”
I whispered back, “I don’t think she likes anyone much.”
“Please don’t take offense at Sister Everett,” Mrs. Pinkney told us. I don’t know if she overheard us or only suspected what we’d been talking about. “She does so much for the church. It’s . . . unfortunate that she doesn’t . . . um, project the warmth and so forth one might expect from a follower of Sister Emmanuel. Her husband . . . well, he’s another story. He’s most enthusiastic about Sister Emmanuel’s message. And he absolutely adores his wife.” She spoke the latter sentence in something akin to awe.
Lulu and I exchanged a glance that was undoubtedly similarly awe-inspired. So the weedy Mr. Everett adored the Herculean Mrs. Everett, did he? Well, nobody ever said life made sense.
