Chapter One

 

“Is September always this hot in Los Angeles?” I wiped my perspiring brow with a handkerchief hastily snatched from my handbag before I could disgrace my sister and drip on our luncheon table. “Back east, the leaves are starting to change by this time, and the weather’s getting brisk.”

“In September, it’s generally hotter than it is in August, actually,” aforementioned sister, Chloe, murmured.

I thought that was kind of depressing but didn’t say so. I’d only lived in Los Angeles since late June, and three months isn’t really a long-enough time by which to judge a city. Besides, there were so many things I loved about my new life away from Boston that I really couldn’t complain about anything as trivial as hundred-degree heat in autumn. Well, except that my parents (and Chloe’s, too, of course, since we’re sisters) had decided to buy a winter home in Pasadena. When I first moved out here to the City of Angels, I’d hoped to keep a couple of thousand miles between our parents and me forever, barring certain holidays and stuff like that. Still, Pasadena is twenty-some miles away from Los Angeles, so Chloe and I shouldn’t be bothered inordinately by them. We hoped. Hard.

“Hmm, I guess, all things considered, I can live with the heat. I like everything else about Los Angeles, including the people I’ve met so far.”

“So do I. It’s ever so much more fun than Boston.”

Los Angeles was that, for certain. Fun isn’t the first word that springs to mind when one thinks about Boston. Not only was Boston and its upper-crust society dull, but my sister and I had been given ghastly names to go along with them. Chloe was actually Clovilla Alexandria, and I was Mercedes Louise. Is it any wonder that Chloe chose to call herself Chloe and I answer to the name Mercy? I don’t think Mercy is as nice as Chloe, but at least it isn’t Mercedes. Or Clovilla, for that matter.

Chloe and I, you see, were born into a family of Boston Brahmins and had grown up feeling pretty darned—a slang word I’d never have been allowed to utter in Boston—stifled thereby.

Chloe’d had the good fortune to meet the man who was to become her husband, Harvey Nash, at a big society party in New York City. Although our parents weren’t as smitten by Harvey as Chloe was, they didn’t kick and scream when Chloe and Harvey decided to marry, probably since Harvey was considered a big cheese by the same New York society that had hosted the party in his honor. Since Harvey owned and worked at his own moving-picture studio in Los Angeles, it was considered natural for her to move there with him after they were wed. Mother didn’t like it, but she didn’t have much say in the matter. I don’t think our father cared a whole lot, to tell the truth.

My own story entailed considerably more drama than Chloe’s. I not only decided to move west to live with my sister without the lure of a groom to prompt me, but I did so with the intention of securing employment, which is something no other female in my family has ever done. I prepared myself to do so, moreover, by taking shorthand (Pitman method) and typing at the Young Women’s Christian Association. Naturally, I didn’t bother to tell Mother and Father what I was doing until I’d graduated from the classes.

However, when I announced my intention to depart Boston for sunny California, my parents were livid. That is to say my mother was livid. I don’t think my father cared any more about my moving than he had about Chloe marrying, although he and several aunts, uncles, and cousins, not to mention my beastly brother, George, lectured me endlessly on my unfilial behavior. But really, Father didn’t pay as much attention to his daughters as Mother did, more’s the pity. Not that I wanted him to pay more attention to us, you understand, but I surely did wish Mother didn’t pay as much attention to us as she did.

At any rate, I did all of the above regarding shorthand and typing, and Chloe generously invited me to come west and live with her and Harvey. Harvey was probably richer than my parents, but his money didn’t count because it was “new” money. That’s according to our mother. Personally, I figure money’s money, and I wanted the novel experience of earning some of it on my own. This wasn’t so much because I craved money, of which I have plenty even without having to work, thanks to a nice, deceased great-aunt’s legacy, but because I wanted experience.

Living as a rich and pampered female person in Boston does not prepare one to face the world of regular people. Trust me on this point, because I’ve learned from experience. My mother discounts my ambitions, mainly because she thinks regular people are beneath her. I know better. I mean, now that I’ve started working at a real job and all, I’ve actually met some of them and, with a few remarkable exceptions, they’re quite nice. So, by George, I got myself a job.

It took a few days of searching in the searing heat of a Los Angeles June, but I finally secured a real, honest-to-God job!

Then, for two glorious months, I got to live Mother-free in Los Angeles in a charming, albeit huge, house on Bunker Hill. My mother detested the fact that Los Angeles had usurped the name Bunker Hill from her eastern betters, but that’s merely one more thing Mother cared about that I didn’t. What’s more, I was earning my own keep, more or less, by working as a secretary to Mr. Ernest Templeton, a private investigator. He used to be a policeman, but the corruption of the Los Angeles Police Department got under his skin, and he quit. I know that for a certified fact, and not merely because Ernie told me so. Several other people have told me the same thing, so it must be true.

What’s more, I have been personally responsible for solving—well, helping to solve, at any rate—a couple of really puzzling murder mysteries. Both times I’ve been in a teensy little bit of danger at one point or another, and both times were a tiny bit scary toward the end, but afterward I mainly recalled the thrill of having been part of the solution of some honestly vicious crimes.

When my mother learned about my employment, she was outraged. When she learned exactly what my employment entailed, she would have suffered an apoplectic fit if she were a woman who did such things. Being from Boston, she wasn’t. She was as icily stoical as any of our Boston forebears and/or their friends. In short, she despaired of me and called me a disgrace to the family.

I think her attitude is total bunkum. Why should it be considered disgraceful to earn the space one takes up on this green earth rather than expect it as a birthright paid for by others? It isn’t, confound it! My mother thinks I’ve given myself over to the dark side—or to Eugene Debs, who is the personification of it—but I haven’t. I just want to earn my way in the world and gather the aforesaid experience, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, Mother or no Mother.

And why, you might ask, do I want experience? Very well, I’ll tell you: I want to write books. Not frivolous books about rich people who don’t care about anything and their parties, a la F. Scott Fitzgerald, but books with meat to them. Never mind that his books are critically acclaimed and nobody’s ever heard of me. I want to write books that don’t skirt social issues, but perhaps expose them. Even my mother would have to admit, if she ever admitted anything, that one can’t expose social issues, or even write about them with conviction, if one doesn’t know what they are. She, therefore, is keen on ignoring them, but not I.

Why, during my very first week on the job, I met a little girl who not only washed car windows on street corners in order to earn coins upon which to subsist, but whose mother worked in a speakeasy and lived with a man who wasn’t her husband. Not only that, but she—the girl’s mother, not the girl herself—had disappeared, leaving the little girl parentless. I never did learn if the child had a father extant. Since that time I’ve also met a couple of gangsters; a homicidal maniac and a couple of sister siblings who were not nice people; and some phony spiritualists. Talk about experience!

I’d also met, in person, a few Los Angeles cinematic celebrities, including Charlie Chaplin, John Barrymore, and Lillian Gish, but they weren’t nearly as interesting as the crooks. Maybe that’s because I’d been too tongue-tied to speak to them, but I’m not sure about that.

Anyhow, after my—or Ernie’s and my—first case, the one involving the homicidal maniac and a certain elevator shaft, and which also involved a black toy French poodle named Rosie, I bought myself a precious and wee apricot-colored French poodle whom I named Buttercup. She’s the joy of my life, although another joy is expected soon, because Chloe and Harvey are going to have a baby. Chloe’s going to do the hard work, of course, but Harvey participated in the child’s creation. Chloe pretends not to be excited, because that’s the current fashion trend in Los Angeles where image is everything, but I know she’s excited because she tells me so when we’re alone.

On this particular Saturday, a little after noon, Chloe and I were taking luncheon in the tearoom atop the Broadway Department Store on Fourth and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. My workplace was a very few blocks away, in the Figueroa Building at Seventh and Hill. On the third floor. Chloe and I were in the Broadway because we’d been shopping for baby things. I hadn’t realized how much fun shopping for baby things could be until that day.

“I hope you have a girl, Chloe. Just think of how much more fun girl clothes are than boy clothes.”

Chloe nibbled on a soda cracker. She was occasionally bothered by sickness in those days and claimed the crackers helped to calm her tummy. “Harvey wants a boy.”

“Boys are fine, too, I guess.”

“I don’t really care whether it’s a boy or a girl.”

“If you have a boy, please don’t name him George.” I had meant the comment as a joke, but Chloe looked at me with real disgust.

“I would never,” she declared, “name a child of mine after my brother.” She shuddered, although that might have been because of her tummy troubles.

“I’m glad of that. But I want you to have a girl because girls wear prettier clothes than boys do.”

She eyed me with something akin to disfavor. “One would never know it to look at you.”

Chloe had been after me to modernize my wardrobe ever since I arrived in Los Angeles. And I had done so, up to a point. Heck, I’d even had my hair bobbed and shingled. The latter had almost given our mutual mother a heart attack. This day I told Chloe the same thing I always did when she ridiculed my wardrobe: “I’m a working woman, Chloe. I need to appear professional for my job. I can’t wear fancy flapper clothes, because they wouldn’t be acceptable or professional for someone in my position.”

“It’s Saturday,” she reminded me. “And Mr. Templeton doesn’t expect you to work on Saturdays. Not even half days like most people.”

“Well, yes, I know that. Mr. Templeton is a very fair and considerate employer.” In actual fact, Ernie didn’t have enough business to keep the office open on weekends, but I’d never say that to anyone. “However, my salary doesn’t run to fancy clothes, even of the non-flapper variety.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to dress like a flapper any more than you have to live on your income.”

I sighed. “True. But don’t you see? Every time I dip into Great-Aunt Agatha’s legacy, I’m defeating my entire purpose for getting a job in the first place.”

“All right. I understand. But I still think you could spiff yourself up a little bit. I’m sure Mr. Templeton wouldn’t mind.” Chloe liked Ernie.

I’m sure Ernie wouldn’t have minded, either. Ernie was a very casual individual and totally unlike any other man I’d ever met before. My father is a banker, for Pete’s sake, and so is my ghastly brother, and you know how bankers dress and act. “That’s true,” I admitted.

“Very well. Then I’ll help you find some duds that look good and that go with your so-called position.”

“Oh, all right. If you’re not too tired after lunch, maybe I’ll go look at a new dress or something. I understand the Broadway sells women’s fashions off the rack these days.”

“Mrs. Martinez can make you something, although you’re right. There might be some nice things off the rack, and it might be fun to look.” Mrs. Martinez was the seamstress Chloe patronized and who did a great job keeping my sister clad in the very latest and loveliest of fashions.

This day, for instance, Chloe was clad in a peach-colored drop-waisted day dress in a lightweight seersucker fabric. She wore cream-colored shoes, gloves, and hat and carried a cream handbag, and she looked the epitome of early-autumn elegance without disgracing the family legacy by wearing white after Labor Day. Not that my family had anything to do with Labor Day on a regular basis or anything. As far as most of my family is concerned, Labor Day is a Socialist holiday and a disgrace to the great capitalist culture rampant in the United States. I don’t agree with that. And no matter what my mother says of me, I’m not a Socialist. I figure one can appreciate those who labor to produce the goods one consumes without turning Socialist or becoming a Communist or an anarchist.

But I digress.

I myself was clad in one of the suits I wore to work. It wasn’t fancy, but it was relatively cool, since the sleeves were short and it was made of a crisp piquet rather than the wool our mother deems necessary in order to maintain decorum. Nuts to decorum, I say, when the weather hovered in the nineties. I didn’t look as fashionable and cool as Chloe, but I wouldn’t have done so even if I’d been dressed by the most skillful modiste in Los Angeles. For one thing, I don’t have Chloe’s angelic looks, with her blond hair and blue eyes. My eyes are blue, too, but my hair is brown, and there’s just no getting away from the fact that Chloe is prettier than I am. Not that I’m ugly or anything, but the truth is the truth, after all. I sighed deeply. The truth might be the truth, but I didn’t necessary have to like it, did I?

No, I did not. However, Chloe’s always been my best friend, so I’ve never envied her beauty. Well, not very much, anyhow.

I said, “We can look around a little after lunch if you’re up to it. Don’t want to wear you out.”

“I’m fine,” said Chloe, munching another soda cracker. “Anyhow, I can always take a nap this afternoon.”

“That’s so.” I planned to write this afternoon. With Buttercup at my feet. I’d just started a story based on some of my experiences—see how important experiences are?—and I could hardly wait to get back to it. It was going to be a murder mystery, by gum! My mother would faint if she knew.

Our pretty little waitress, who also looked cool even though she wore a black dress with a white apron, delivered our lunches—a chicken sandwich for me and clear soup for Chloe, along with more soda crackers—and we dug in. Politely, of course. There’s no reason to discard all of one’s childhood training merely because one doesn’t approve of some of one’s parents’ precepts, after all.

After a few sips of her soup, Chloe sat back and looked at me. I took another bite of my sandwich and looked back at her. She seemed a trifle troubled about something. After I swallowed, I said, “What’s up, Chloe?”

She sipped another spoonful of soup before answering. “Harvey wants us to move.”

“Move?” The meaning of her words didn’t register at first.

“Yes. The studio is going to be building a huge new site to the west of Los Angeles, and he wants us to move west, too.”

“I thought this was the west.” I laid my sandwich on my plate and sipped some water.

She smiled at me. “Overall, yes, this is the west. But there are lots of places farther west than Los Angeles, you know.”

“You mean like the beach?” Chloe and I had been to the beach once before. We’d taken a red car all the way to Santa Monica and made a day of it. It had been fun, although I didn’t much appreciate all that sand sneaking into my bathing costume or the rather significant sunburn I’d sustained.

“Not quite as far west as the beach, but maybe Culver City or thereabouts.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure where Culver City was, although I expected it was somewhere between Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

“He’s thinking of having a house built in some hills over that way. A big house. I think he called the area Beverly Hills.”

“I do believe I read something about Beverly Hills in one of Hedda Heartwood’s columns.” Then I grimaced. Hedda Heartwood had been the premier gossip columnist in Hollywood for a while. I had been seated in the very room, at the very table, at which Hedda Heartwood died, at the very time she was murdered, and I still didn’t like to think about it. Fortunately, other gossip-loving columnists have taken her place. Well, not fortunately for her, but . . . Oh, you know what I mean. “I understand a lot of picture people are moving out there. Didn’t Cecil B. DeMille just build a huge house in Beverly Hills?”

“Yes, he did, and lots of others are moving there, too. It’s a very pretty area, and the houses are amazing. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford live there, and so do Vilma Bankey and John Barrymore. Not together, of course.”

“Of course.” As I’ve mentioned, I’d seen John Barrymore at a party once, and Douglas Fairbanks, too. They were both drinking heavily. And this was supposed to be Prohibition time. Ha! If you have enough money, you can always skirt the law. Just ask Al Capone, or whatever that murdering gangster’s name is.

“So you’re going to build your own house?”

She heaved a weary sigh. “That’s what Harvey wants to do. I don’t have the energy for it myself, but I’m sure he’ll hire someone to draw up the plans and everything like that. I hope I won’t have to be too involved. I just don’t feel up to it.”

I was sure he would. As I mentioned before, Harvey was rich. “It won’t be built until after the baby comes, will it?”

“He might begin making the plans, but no. There’s not enough time to hire an architect, have the architect create plans, and build a place in six or seven months. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to move anyway. Harvey says Bunker Hill is going downhill, but I don’t see it.”

“I don’t, either.” I thought Harvey and Chloe’s neighborhood was swell. Granted, it was on a hill right smack in the middle of Los Angeles, and perhaps film people preferred to live away from it all. But I thought the Nash home was wonderful, and Bunker Hill was a sweet place. Besides, the almost vertical railroad, Angels Flight, which took me from Bunker Hill to downtown every day, was darling.

“You’re more than welcome to live with us after we move, Mercy,” Chloe said in a hurry.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose. You’ll have enough to do when the baby comes.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll hire a maid to take care of the baby when I need to rest.”

I knew rich people did that sort of thing all the time, but it seemed kind of cold to me. I’d never tell Chloe that, however. “Besides,” I said, “I love my job and wouldn’t want to leave it.”

Chloe nodded. “I’ve already thought about that. Beverly Hills is kind of far from here. You’d have to drive.”

Which would be a problem, since I didn’t know how to drive.

Chloe knew that. “I’ll teach you, and you can always get a machine.”

True, although not on the salary Ernie paid me.

“I’ll have to think about it. I really don’t want to quit my job.”

“I know.” Smirking, Chloe drank some of the seltzer water she’d asked for in deference to her tender-tummy problem. “I’d hate to take you away from Ernie. And vice-versa, of course.”

I didn’t appreciate that smirk. Chloe thought I was more fond of Ernie than our mother would countenance if she knew about it, which she didn’t. Not that there was anything to know about. It was true that I liked Ernie. I even admired him, but I certainly didn’t have any romantic designs upon him. The very notion was absurd. However, I knew better than to respond to Chloe’s smirk. Denial, in my experience, only firms up the other person’s convictions. I think Shakespeare wrote something like that once. In Hamlet, if I’m not mistaken.

“It will be exciting to have a new house,” I said in order to divest my sister of that blasted expression on her face.

My ploy succeeded. Chloe sighed. “I suppose it will be nice to live in a brand-new house. I just loathe the notion of moving.”

I hate to say it, but Chloe was kind of indolent. She didn’t resent our upbringing nearly as much as I did, except insofar as it had been too confining for her fun-loving personality. She possessed none of my passion about social issues, for instance, or the fact that thousands of people in our glorious nation lived in poverty and ignorance and near-starvation. I doubt that she gave a rap about the downtrodden worker proletariat, although I’m sure she’d feel sorry for and give money to a beggar should one appear directly before her. Since she confined herself to the wealthiest circles in L.A., I doubt one ever did.

“You’ll certainly be able to hire people to do all the packing and moving for you, won’t you?”

She sighed again. “I suppose so. I guess I’m just so tired, I can’t bear the notion of doing anything at all, much less moving into a new home. And one so far away from so many of my friends. I wonder if Francis will still visit.” Francis Easthope was one of Chloe and Harvey’s closest chums.

“Oh, I’m sure he will. After all, he has that darling little Bugatti that he loves to drive.” I’d never been “with child,” as the saying goes, so I couldn’t truly appreciate Chloe’s condition, but I said, “I understand how the move might be upsetting to you, though,” because I figured I should.

At any rate, we finished our luncheon and decided to stop in the ladies’ dresses department in the Broadway before we went home. There I delighted my sister by buying two (count ’em) lightweight, pretty dresses that were suitable for the office. Lulu LaBelle, who sat behind the reception desk in the Figueroa Building, would be almost as pleased as Chloe.

Then I spent the remainder of the afternoon writing my detective novel. I’d decided to hold the murder in a grand home at a house party, although I hadn’t yet come to the murder part, decided who the corpse would be, or determined who would do the evil deed. But I still enjoyed myself.

Chloe napped. So did Buttercup. On my feet, come to think of it.

* * * * *

On Monday morning, I donned one of my new dresses, pinned my hat to my hair, stuck my gloves in my handbag, picked up said handbag, ate the nice breakfast Mrs. Biddle, Chloe’s housekeeper, fixed for me, kissed Buttercup good-bye, left Chloe’s house and walked to Angels Flight. There I handed the engineer my nickel, boarded the car, and the rest of the passengers and I zipped to the bottom of the hill. From there I walked to Seventh and Hill and entered the lobby.

I felt mighty jaunty that day, and not merely because I was clad in a pretty new dress of light blue wool jersey with a perky jacket and a dropped waist, but because I positively loved my job. I greeted Lulu with a cheery, “Good morning!”

Lulu, who possessed a rather flamboyant sense of style and none of my qualms about proper working attire, sat behind her desk filing her nails and chatting with Mr. Emerald Buck, whom I also greeted cheerily and who worked as the custodian at the Figueroa Building. Mr. Buck was ever so much more competent than our last custodian, who liked to hide in the basement and read when he was supposed to be doing his job. Mr. Buck actually enjoyed keeping the building looking neat and tidy. He dusted all exposed surfaces daily, and even polished the brass plate confirming the building’s identity and kept the sidewalk outside the front door swept.

This morning Lulu wore a vibrant purple dress with huge white flowers on it. Her bottle-blond hair was cut into a curly bob, and her lipstick, a glossy red, clashed violently with the purple of her clothing. What’s more, she had before her on the receptionist’s desk a bottle of nail varnish the same red color as her lipstick. Lulu was nothing if not colorful. In fact, she pretty much personified the nation’s notion of the flapper.

“’Lo, Mercy. Ernie left you a note.”

My happy mood slipped a notch. “A note? Ernie? He’s already been here?”

“Yup. He left you a note.”

This was strange behavior, indeed. My boss, Ernie, never got to work at eight o’clock, when I was expected to show up. He generally ambled in at nine or nine-thirty, carrying a copy of the Los Angeles Times, an insouciant grin, and an aura of detachment that had initially been as foreign to me as the weather in my new hometown. Now I liked it. For him. I certainly wasn’t ready to adopt a slouch or casual walk. Not that I wanted to do either, mind you. It was up to one of us to add the professional touch to the firm of Ernest Templeton, P.I., and that someone, I’d learned very early in our relationship, sure wasn’t going to be Ernie. Besides, I considered my crisp efficiency something of a hallmark.

I took the envelope Lulu flapped at me and voiced my thanks. Then I climbed the stairs up to the third floor, since the exercise was good for me. Besides, ever since a certain episode involving the elevator shaft, I haven’t felt particularly comfortable using that mode of transport. Elevators in other buildings didn’t bother me, but the one in the Figueroa Building sure did.

After I unlocked the office door, removed my gloves, put them and my hat and handbag in my desk drawer, and sat in my chair, I slit the envelope open—using, by the way, the cunning letter opener I’d bought a day or two prior in Chinatown, which was a short walk from the Figueroa Building. Frowning, I read the note.

Mercy. Gone to Mrs. Chalmers’ house. Back some time. Ernie

Hmm. I didn’t particularly care for the message, probably because I didn’t much care for Mrs. Chalmers.

Mrs. Persephone Chalmers, who possessed a name darned near as horrid as Chloe’s or mine, had wafted into Ernie’s office a week or so before, exuding an aura of exotic perfume and fragile femininity that bothered me considerably, and not merely because she began practically every sentence with a breathy “Oh.” I also didn’t like it that Ernie had been taken in by her. I knew, if Ernie didn’t, that there was something mighty fishy about Mrs. Chalmers. She’d told Ernie she wanted to hire him to find some jewelry that had allegedly been stolen from her home. It seemed to be taking Ernie a mighty long time to deal with what seemed to me to be a fairly minor matter. Of course, it wasn’t my jewelry that had been stolen, but still . . .

Not that I knew for a rock-solid certainty that she was a faker—yet—but I considered the possibility quite likely. For one thing, if she were truly a married lady, as implied by that Missus, wouldn’t she call herself Mrs. George Chalmers, or something like that? Didn’t proper married ladies introduce themselves using their husbands’ first names? I know my mother always did. She was Mrs. Albert Monteith Allcutt, and nobody had better ever forget it. Mind you, I didn’t especially approve of that fashion, since it seemed in my estimation to devalue women, but society as a whole wasn’t nearly as forward-thinking as I.

For another thing, she was just too . . . too . . . wafty. I mean, she acted as if she were a fairy princess who’d managed to get herself lost from a children’s storybook and dumped into the middle of Los Angeles, for crumb’s sake.

Oh, very well. The main reason I didn’t care for her was that Ernie seemed to be positively smitten with the stupid woman. How could a reasonably intelligent person, which Ernie was, fall for a phony like that?

Stupid question. Men adored women who exuded helplessness. Nuts to them all, the women and the men, is what I say.

Not that it mattered. Ernie had gone to her house, and there wasn’t a single, solitary thing I could do about it.

Phooey.