Lost Among the Angels (A Mercy Allcutt Book) Read Online Free

that was only because Mrs. Biddle didn’t understand that I had a job now! Or, if she did understand that, she didn’t consider having a job anything unusual, since she and probably everyone else she knew also had jobs. It crossed my mind that there might even be people in the world who wished they didn’t have jobs—or at least wished they didn’t have to have them. Hmmm. I decided to think about that later.
          I was so excited, I could scarcely sit down to eat my toast and drink my tea. As soon as I’d swallowed the last bite, I jumped up from the table and assembled my cleaning supplies into a canvas sack I’d found in the basement. I hoped Mrs. Biddle wouldn’t need the sack for anything before I got home from work, but I didn’t ask. By that time I’d decided I’d best not fuss her anymore that morning. Then I left the house, walking the two blocks to Angel’s Flight with a spring in my step, perhaps aided in the endeavor by the fact that the weather hadn’t turned hot yet.
          Goodness gracious, but Los Angeles was a bustling city. You could see a good deal of it from the top of Angel’s Flight. According to Harvey, Chloe’s husband, much of the city’s wealth sprang from the burgeoning moving-picture industry. I thought that was interesting, but to tell the truth I also thought it was a trifle distressing. Perhaps that’s my moralistic Boston upbringing rearing its ugly head, but wealth based upon illusions seems … well … unworthy, somehow.
           My job, on the other hand … well, my job was worthwhile. That is to say, it was going to be worthwhile. Uplifting, even. Because Mr. Templeton, a private investigator, assisted people with their problems. I thought that was quite noble, actually, even though Mr. Templeton himself, upon first acquaintance, didn’t necessarily strike one as a particularly heroic soul.
          At lunch the day before, however, he’d explained to me exactly what kind of work a private investigator did. I came away not merely filled to the brim with good Chinese food, but bursting with enthusiasm.
          Oh, boy, if I wanted to gain experience, this sounded like the way to do it. I’d be working with honest-to-goodness criminals . Sometimes. Rarely, according to Mr. Templeton, but still, sometimes. I’d never met a real, live, honest-to-goodness criminal before, unless you counted a business associate of my father’s, who had been locked up for embezzling funds from the bank he owned in order to support a mistress. That had been a shame, true, and a terrible embarrassment to his wife and family, but it didn’t really count as far as experience went, since I didn’t know him well and, besides, it was more in the nature of cheating. I mean, he didn’t kidnap anybody or anything.
          In this job, I’d get the opportunity to meet real criminals, like robbers and people who shot other people and that sort of thing. More, I’d learn all about how to investigate things. Like, for instance, insurance fraud. Mind you, that sounded moderately boring, but Mr. Templeton said that sometimes he was asked to find missing persons. That should be interesting, shouldn’t it? I doubted that I’d find it satisfying to spy on roving spouses, but that went with the territory, and I decided that I would just cope in cases like that.
          Naturally, I didn’t see myself as sitting on the sidelines, answering the telephone and typing, at least not in the long run. Until I became fully acquainted with Mr. Templeton’s business, of course, those would be my duties. Long-term, however, I wanted to be more than a secretary. I wanted to be Mr. Templeton’s assistant!
          He hadn’t mentioned needing assistance, but I figured I could work up to it.
          Before climbing the stairs to the third floor, I stopped by the reception desk to speak to the girl with the blood-red fingernails and white hair. It was slightly before