Fallen Angels (7 page)

With studied nonchalance, Ernie reached into
an inner jacket pocket and pulled out the wretched flask that had
so upset me the first time I saw him use it, and took a long
swallow. I guess I could understand that he might be thirsty after
having that gag in his mouth for . . .

“How long has Mrs. Chalmers been . . .” I
looked around and lowered my voice. I didn’t want to upset Mr.
Chalmers any more than he was already upset. Provided, of course,
that he hadn’t done the deed himself. “How long has she been
dead?”

“We won’t know that until the coroner gets
here,” said Phil. He looked worried, which worried me. “I don’t
like this.”

“Neither do I,” said Ernie.

“Nor I,” I said.

Plaintively, Ernie said, “Doesn’t anyone have
any headache powders?”

I led him to the kitchen, where Mrs. Hanratty
dumped a paper of powder into a glass of water and stirred. Ernie
gulped down the resultant cloudy mess with a grimace of
distaste.

“Thanks,” he said to Mrs. Hanratty.

“Humph,” said she. I got the feeling she
blamed Ernie for not protecting her employer. I suppose I
understood her attitude, although I didn’t appreciate it.

Ernie and I returned to the living room and I
got my first look at Mr. Simon Chalmers a couple of minutes after
that, because a police officer escorted him into the room. I eyed
him thoughtfully. He looked like a younger, spryer version of his
father, whom he approached with what seemed like touching
solicitude. I’d learned early in my career as a private
investigator’s assistant—I mean secretary—that it was best not to
take anything for granted. For all I knew at that point in time,
Simon Chalmers had cracked his stepmother on the head and dumped
her down the stairs. And then gone out to play golf? I eyed him
some more. His current clothes didn’t look anything at all like the
stupid knickerbockers my brother always wore when he went out to
play at golf tourneys. Perhaps Simon Chalmers was an employee of
the Sierra Vista Golfing Academy. Or whatever its name was.

“I’d like for you to make a statement to one
of our officers who takes shorthand, Mercy,” said Phil,
interrupting my survey of the younger Mr. Chalmers. “Is that all
right with you?”

No. It wasn’t all right with me, mainly
because I was mad at Phil Bigelow and the entire L.A.P.D. However,
for Ernie’s sake, I agreed to be interviewed. It would have been
easier for me to go back to the office and type out a statement,
but I sensed that would be going against another one of the
department’s idiotic rules.

I tried not to let the young officer who took
my statement know exactly how put out I was that my words, which he
took down using the same Pitman method of shorthand that I used,
might not be believed. His face—I looked at his shield, and it said
his name was Officer Ronald Bloom—was about as expressive as a
block of granite, so I couldn’t tell if he believed my story or
not. At any rate, it didn’t take long to relate it in its entirety
to him.

He closed his notebook, which was just like
the ones I used at work, and nodded his head. “Thank you, Miss
Allcutt. I’ll have this typed up, and then you’ll have to sign it.
Would you prefer to come to the station or have someone bring it to
your home?”

I thought about offering to type it up
myself, but didn’t. If these people weren’t going to believe
anything I said, why should I help them? “I expect you or one of
the other representatives of the law will be visiting Mr.
Templeton’s office tomorrow sometime. Just bring it there, why
don’t you?” I smiled sweetly at him. “I did tell you I was his
secretary, did I not? Don’t you believe that, either?”

Officer Bloom didn’t bat an eye over my
sarcasm. “It’s not my business to believe people, ma’am. I’m just
supposed to get the story.”

Oh, brother. He made his job sound like
that of a newspaper reporter. “Very well. Bring it to Mr.
Templeton’s office tomorrow, and I’ll sign it—
if
the typewritten version of my report
corresponds to the story I told you.” I gave him a good, hot frown.
“It’s not my business to believe people, either, Officer Bloom, but
I won’t sign any statement that is incorrect in any
way.”

“You’ll have the opportunity to read it over
and make corrections,” he said. I got the feeling he was accustomed
to people being unpleasant to him, which made me wonder why anyone
would want to be a police officer, if all they got was guff from
folks. Ah, well. Mine was not to reason why, as the poet wrote.
That’s always sounded redundant to me, by the way. Not that anyone
cares. But I really don’t think one should put a “why” after the
word “reason.”

Oh, never mind.

When Officer Bloom walked away from me, I
glanced around the room and saw that Ernie was being interviewed by
Phil and another fellow who, I presumed, was also a detective
because he was wearing a suit rather than a uniform. The fellow who
wasn’t Phil had an unpleasant grin on his face, and I wondered if
he was Detective O’Reilly. For Ernie’s sake, I hoped not. O’Reilly
looked as if he’d enjoy locking Ernie up for a number of years, and
I aimed to ask Ernie exactly why he and O’Reilly didn’t like each
other. I’m sure the fault, whatever it was, lay with O’Reilly.

I thought the poor fellow—Ernie, I
mean—needed to go home and lie down, but I suspected he was going
to be detained for some time yet, especially if the police actually
suspected him of murder, or wanted to, as I imagined was the case
with O’Reilly. I shook my head. Ernie might be lots of things, but
I didn’t for a minute believe he’d kill anyone. Anyway, how could
he have killed Mrs. Chalmers if he’d been tied up and drugged at
the time the murder had been committed?

Then I reminded myself that nobody
believed me about that, and Phil had actually suggested I might
have tied Ernie up myself in order to divert suspicion from Ernie,
which was so ridiculous as to be . . . well, ridiculous. What an
absolutely
stupid
day this
had been.

I noticed Mr. Simon Chalmers sitting
dejectedly on a sofa in a corner of the room and decided it might
be a good time to speak with him and learn what I could about Mr.
and Mrs. Chalmers and how they lived, since there had to be
something
in their lives that had
led to Mrs. Chalmers’ decease in so disturbing a way. Perhaps the
younger Mr. Chalmers had resented his stepmother’s presence in his
life. Or maybe he feared his father would leave
her
all his money, and had done her in to
prevent the possibility. That was a good thought. I strolled over
and sat on the sofa beside Simon.

He glanced at me and rose about halfway.
Manners. Evidently, Mr. Simon Chalmers had been taught some, too.
“I’m sorry. I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said politely, if a
trifle dully.

“I’m Miss Allcutt. I’m the person who
telephoned you with the unfortunate news.”

“Oh. Well . . . thank you, I guess.” He gave
me a wan smile.

“This is a terrible thing, isn’t it?”
Sympathy oozed from every word I spoke.

“Ghastly,” he agreed.

“I’m awfully sorry about your
stepmother.”

“Thank you.”

Hmmm. This conversation, so far, was going
nowhere. That was probably because of my own good manners.
Therefore, I decided to drop any remnant of Boston from my demeanor
and reached out to touch Mr. Chalmers’ arm. “It must be simply
horrid for you and your father to lose someone so very close to
you.”

He didn’t seem alarmed by my boldness. He
only nodded and appeared sad. “Yes. It’s terrible. I feel really
sorry for Dad. He’s crushed.”

In truth, it had been Mrs. Chalmers who’d
been crushed, but I didn’t say so.

“Indeed,” I said, virtually bleeding
compassion. “How long have your father and Mrs. Chalmers been
married?” I braced myself for a rebuff, but evidently the younger
Mr. Chalmers was accustomed to Los Angeles behavior and didn’t seem
to realize how rude I was being.

“Oh, about five years, I guess.”

“I see.” I shook my head to show how much
sympathy I felt for him. “Your father must be devastated.”

Simon shot a glance at his father and nodded.
“Yeah. He sure is. Devastated is the word for it, all right.”

I tried to discern by the expression on his
face if he approved of his father’s love of his—Simon’s—stepmother.
The English language really needs another pronoun, although this
isn’t the place for that discussion, I suppose. “You must have been
very fond of her, too. After all, she’d been your mother for five
years.”

For the first time, a glint of humor appeared
on Mr. Chalmers’ face. “I was grown up when they met and married. I
didn’t know her that well, but she was all right.”

“All right?” I lifted what I hoped was an
expressive eyebrow.

Tilting his head to one side in a sort of
considering posture, Simon Chalmers thought for a minute. “Well,
she was nice,” he said. “I was happy for my dad, because he’d been
really lonely since my mother died. But Persephone was a little . .
. I don’t know.”

And then, darned if he didn’t lift his right
hand, point his first finger, and twirl it beside his head in the
classic gesture one makes when one is trying to convey a degree of
mental instability about another person. Ha! So he’d noticed that
fey characteristic in Persephone Chalmers, too, had he?

I bit my lip for a second and then decided to
plunge ahead. “You know,” I said softly, “I work for Mr. Templeton,
the private investigator whom Mrs. Chalmers hired to find her
stolen jewelry.”

He made a kind of “pfff” noise. I don’t know
how else to describe it, although it indicated to me that Mr.
Chalmers was as unsure about the stolen jewelry as he was about his
late stepmother’s sanity.

I lifted another eyebrow. Or maybe it was the
same one I’d lifted before. “You didn’t believe her jewelry was
stolen?”

“Oh, sure, it was stolen—or at least
taken—but I don’t think there’s much mystery about where it
went.”

“Oh?” Now I was genuinely surprised. “What do
you mean? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Heck, no. I don’t mind. But you see,
my stepmother had recently joined that crew of crazy folks at the
Angelica Gospel Hall and was a devoted follower of Adelaide
Burkhard Emmanuel.
Sister
Emmanuel, she calls her. Called her. I think somebody from
the Hall took the jewelry.”

“Oh. My goodness. I’ve read a good deal about
Mrs. Emmanuel’s work. That’s an amazing church she built.”

“The money of deluded people like my
stepmother is what paid for that building,” Simon Chalmers said
with a flat note in his voice that told me he’d disapproved of his
stepmother’s contributions to Mrs. Emmanuel’s cause.

“My goodness. Did your . . .” I swallowed,
aghast at what I’d almost asked him. Then I told myself that
Ernie’s very life might be on the line here, and I asked my
question anyway. “Did your father mind that Mrs. Chalmers donated a
lot of money to the Angelica Gospel Hall?”

One of his shoulders lifted and dropped in
what might have been meant as a shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t live
here anymore. Haven’t for years. Only visit once in a while.”

“I see. Do you work at that golfing
academy?”

He stared at me as if I’d said something
absurd. “Work? I don’t work anywhere. Investments. That’s what’s
needed in today’s society. I do like to play golf, though.”

“Ah. Yes.” A man after my mother’s heart. My
father probably wouldn’t like him, since, according to him,
men—even men from his family—should at least try to earn their way
in the world. His standards, as I may have mentioned several times
before, were different for the women in his family, who weren’t
supposed to do anything but sit still, look decorative, and attend
tea parties. “So you don’t know if your father approved or
disapproved of your stepmother’s religious inclinations?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think he minded.
Anything she wanted to do was fine with him.”

“But you do believe that someone from the
church stole her jewelry?”

He heaved a huge sigh. “I don’t really know,
but I wouldn’t put anything past one of those crazy people.”

“I see. But Mrs. Chalmers enjoyed her
association with the church?”

“Enjoyed it? She loved it. She’d go on about
that Emmanuel character for hours, but Dad didn’t seem to mind.”
Simon Chalmers shook his head. “She’d have driven me nuts, but he
loved her.”

I hesitated to say what popped into my mind,
but I said it anyway. “I gathered a rather odd impression from Mrs.
Chalmers when I first met her.”

This time he actually chuckled. “Odd? I
always thought she was crazy as a coot. But the old man couldn’t
see it.”

“Yes,” I said. “I understand love does have
that effect on some people.”

“She was always good to him. Waited on him. I
think she doted on him as much as he doted on her.”

“How nice for both of them.” I decided
we’d drifted off topic, so I said, “But you think someone from the
church might have stolen Mrs. Chalmers’ jewelry? Do you think that,
perhaps when she confronted the culprit, he or she . . .”
Bashed her on the head
sounded so
undignified. “Um, did her in?”

Again he shrugged. “I don’t know. What
I wonder is if she sold the jewelry and gave the money to
Sister
Emmanuel. Or maybe she just
gave her the jewelry and then told Dad that it had been
stolen.”

Merciful heavens! Now there’s an idea I
hadn’t thought of before. Perhaps Mr. Chalmers, disgusted with his
wife’s extravagance, had, in a moment of sublime rage, killed
her!

“My goodness, that doesn’t sound like very
Christian behavior on her part.”