“Well, that may strengthen my theory that Truely was killed by a hired gun. But no, that’s not it. Do you remember the second night I was staying here, I think it was the second, and I fell asleep down here and woke up and saw someone trying to get in the house?”
“That was the night I’d had too many pills and too much alcohol. But I remember you and Will fighting about it the next morning.”
Heaven wanted to respond to that but decided to stay on message for a change. ‘Yes, well, last night I was checking all the doors to make sure they were locked and I stepped out on the front porch and the same man was across the street, just watching the house. I thought it was difficult to get on this street, what with the guard and all.”
“It’s supposed to be difficult. I’ll stop at the gate when I leave and give someone hell. How do you know it was the same man?”
“Because this is the third time I’ve seen him. He was at Truely’s office a month ago when I went down for my tour, he was on the porch trying to break in, I guess, and then last night. This is a big man, six foot five or so and two hundred fifty pounds at least. He’s the kind of person who makes a visual impression.”
“Do you think I should call the police?” Mary asked seriously. She, unlike Will, didn’t disregard Heaven’s opinions totally.
“Well, I think you should tell them that twice I’ve noticed this guy lurking around here. They’ll probably take it better coming from the homeowner than the guest, who has been a pain in the butt to the police already.”
Mary went right to the phone. Heaven grabbed a cookie from the plastic storage container she’d left on the table. “Do you want me to cook us something?”
Mary shook her head. “I’m sorry that the help is all out at the plant. I’m not hungry but I’ll take you out for breakfast if you’d like.”
“No,” Heaven said, thinking she’d go sit at Café Du Monde, or go to Camellia Grill for breakfast. “I’m going to run up and take a shower. Tell the police I’ll be glad to talk to them if they need me.” She started up the stairs and remembered she wanted directions to the roasting plant, in case she and Mary arrived there separately. As she came back toward the kitchen she heard Mary saying, “I know, but it’s the second time Heaven’s seen him around the house. What are we going to do?” She had assumed that Mary had dialed the police. So she was surprised to hear her say next, “Will, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a million things to do before tonight. I’m going to tell Heaven I called the police and they’re sending a car by every half hour. That should keep her mollified.”
Heaven quickly went back up the stairs. She guessed she’d been too quick to think Mary believed her. Will had poisoned her mind about Heaven’s theories, that was clear. Mary could be in danger because of that stupid Will and his attitude.
When Heaven got out of the shower she was determined to simply confront Mary and tell her she was listening to the wrong friend. She put on her robe and called down the stairwell. “Mary, where are you?” It didn’t take long for Heaven to realize the house was empty. Her voice left a hollow echo in the air. It made her uneasy and she dressed quickly, wanting to get outside.
Then she remembered Mary’s excellent suggestions about the cross problem. She sat down again at the kitchen table and picked up the phone, then put it right back down. So many people had caller ID now. She didn’t want Sotheby’s or the nuns bothering Mary about something she wasn’t really in on. She probably shouldn’t use her cell phone either.
She slipped out the back door to locate a pay phone. She found a whole bank of them outside the library on the Tulane campus. In just a few minutes she’d called Sotheby’s and told some sleepy assistant curator who was pouty to be working on Saturday morning how he could save his company some embarrassment if he called the New Orleans Police Department and asked about the recent problems at the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Trinity. Because the young man seemed so dense, she spelled it out for him, yelling “That eighteenth-century French cross in your sale is stolen,” right before she hung up.
Then she called the convent, and when one of the volunteers answered she told them their cross was a fake and that the real one was being auctioned off in New York at Sotheby’s and that shouldn’t happen to such nice folks who have helped so many poor New Orleanians. She said it with the worst Southern accent anyone had ever tried to fake but she figured the woman on the other end would be too flustered to be able to recount who had called with any accuracy.
“Well, that’s one thing I can cross off the list,” she muttered out loud as she went back to her illegally parked car. “Now for a costume.” It seemed like a problem that could only be solved in the French Quarter.
When Heaven got home with the ingredients for her outfit, Mary was walking out the door with hers. She had a cigarette girl’s box around her neck and a clothing bag in her arm.
“Are you going to give away cigarettes and Tiparellos to the crowd?” Heaven asked. “How decadent.”
“Yes, as soon as I stop and get a few cartons of cigarettes. It’s a vice now, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” Heaven answered. She was a little surprised that Mary was actually going to appear in costume at this affair. Shouldn’t she be wearing a demure black mourning dress?
“I’m sorry I have to leave you to drive out by yourself. It’s not far, just in Saint Bernard parish. I left you a map on the kitchen table.”
“That’s fine. Do you need any help?”
“Just come out when you get ready. I’m sure I’ll find something for you to do,” Mary said as she rushed to her car.
Heaven felt a tinge of paranoia. Mary certainly hadn’t included Heaven in executing this party. Was she trying to keep Heaven away from the plant? That was nonsnse, sense, of course. She’d asked Heaven to go with her to the warehouse. Why would she not want her to go to the roasting plant? Heaven shook her head. She might be getting wacky with all her ideas. Will might be right.
For the next couple of hours, Heaven spent a relaxing time covering a black leotard with tiny plastic food of all kinds; vegetables, fruit, little cakes and cookies with the aid of a glue gun. It gave her imagination plenty of time to run wild over all the things that had happened to her and others this last week.
She even shed a few tears for Truely, sitting in his beautiful house. She was mad at herself for telling Mary about the big man. She should have just waited until tonight or tomorrow night and, when he showed up, snuck out to confront him herself. Mary hadn’t mentioned calling the police and Heaven was pretty sure she hadn’t, according to what she’d overheard Mary say to Will on the phone earlier. So, when she got home from the party, maybe the big man would be here waiting for her.
While she was finishing her get-up, Heaven thought about Nancy Blair and the cross. That sly old broad could very well have switched the crosses. Heaven knew that even with her new religious tendencies, Nancy was a scoundrel at heart. That was one of the things she liked about her. Heaven stopped short of thinking Nancy had the cross stolen in the first place. It seemed more likely she just couldn’t help but take advantage of an opportunity when it came her way. Heaven hoped Nancy never found out that it was Heaven who had ratted the whole scheme out. She wanted to still be able to have lunch with Nancy when she came to town. She was so interesting.
Heaven looked at herself in the mirror. She hated costume parties but today it had given her something diverting to think about. She had on the leotard covered with food. She had on fishnet stockings and black high heels. She had on her cutest chefs jacket, open. Then she had a big basket she’d bought cheap at the Farmers’ Market, filled with vice-ish foodstuffs: pralines and chocolates and small bags of Zapp’s potato chips and other salty snacks. She was the edible equivalent of Mary’s cigarette girl and she planned to give out her vice food like party favors to whoever asked. Not that they’d be hungry with the menu Truely had planned for this event.
Heaven checked her watch. She still had a few minutes. N
ow that the cross was “solved” she’d like to tie up the explosion and Truely’s death, her pet theory that no one else seemed to like.
She went into the library to see if there was a medical reference book. She saw a laptop computer on the desk that she hadn’t noticed before. Maybe she could get on-line. She should be able to sign on using her password as a guest. In a minute, the screen was glowing and even though it wasn’t a Mac, Heaven’s computer of choice, she was able to stumble through turning the thing on.
She was scrolling around looking for the Internet connection when she saw a heading, “Recent Documents.” Without thinking about the ethical implications, she moved the mouse toward it and took a look. There were several letters that looked like legal work from Mary. Maybe this was Mary’s laptop from her office. There was a mailing list that Heaven figured Mary had used for the invitations. And there was a document titled “menu.” Heaven figured it was Truely’s last will and testament about his party, but why would it be under recent documents? She clicked on it and saw the date it had been created. It was the date of last Sunday, the day after Truely was killed. So did that mean Truely didn’t really write the menu for his own wake, as Mary had insisted?
Heaven was stunned. She stared at the date on the screen for a while. Even with her vivid imagination she couldn’t figure out why anyone would invent this elaborate party plan if it wasn’t really what Truely wanted. Why bother? And that bullshit last night when Mary was crying and talking about remembering the very moment when Truely wrote the menu for his wake, what was that all about? Every time this party was mentioned, Mary and Will insisted it was Truely’s big idea.
Heaven reluctantly turned off the laptop and left the house, grabbing her basket of junk food in the kitchen. There was probably a simple explanation. Truely had probably told Mary a hundred times about how he wanted a big party for his wake and she, being a lawyer, put it in black and white, like Truely should have but had never got around to doing. Maybe she felt that would justify the money this shindig was going to cost to the banks or the court or whoever might someday be looking over Truely’s financial picture. Heaven relaxed a little. Yes, that was something an attorney would do, have back-up documents. And even if it wasn’t technically ethical, Heaven could understand the why of it, even the lying to support the story. If that was what had happened.
She consulted the map Mary had left for her and drove out to Saint Bernard parish, located on the other side of town from the Whittens’. She saw the plant blocks before she got there. It was a former sugar refinery that had gone out of business in the early sixties. Heaven wasn’t sure when Truely’s family had converted it for coffee roasting and shipping. The tall, old-fashioned smokestacks towered over an area of little, one-story houses. Heaven figured they were the houses of the sugar workers, who then became the coffee workers. There was a big Catholic church, a V.F.W. clubhouse, and then the street turned toward the gates of the plant. A chain-link fence around the perimeter of the place gave it a slightly ominous look. All the buildings were old and patined with the residue of years of burnt sugar and coffee ash. The road up to the plant now ran right by the river, the levee hiding the water from view except for occasional glimpses where a wharf and dock had been built. The fence gates were open. A guard in a gatehouse asked for her name and wrote it on his clipboard. Other cars were lined up to enter in front of her.
She followed the traffic and pulled up in front of a huge white house that looked like it belonged on a coffee plantation in Africa or Brazil. Palm trees had been planted in rows leading up to the house. A stately screened-in gallery lined the house on three sides on both the first and second stories. Heaven could see people strolling up on those porches. She imagined them promenading in their dress-your-favorite-vice apparel. The house itself was made surreal by being butted up against the ugly, plain plant. Heaven figured it for the offices of a sugar refinery owner who didn’t want to admit he had to leave the plantation and do actual work.
It may have been offices at one time, but the Pan-American Coffee Company had turned the house into a lovely period postcard. It was a visitors’ center with conference rooms. The history of coffee was presented in words and pictures on the walls. There were antique couches and chairs with a French flair, damask drapes, lots of small tables and chairs for cupping, as they called tasting coffee. It was a great party house. Heaven looked for Mary or Will or someone she knew but it was a room full of strangers.
She walked up the big staircase and out on the porch. The vice that seemed to be on most people’s minds involved sex. There were lots of slutty outfits and some leather and bondage stuff going on. Heaven saw a man with a leather hood on and a golf ball taped in his mouth being led around on a dog leash held by a woman in six-inch stiletto-heeled boots who looked like she’d done this sort of thing before.
The night was perfect; less humidity than usual, and a breeze that was almost cool. The overriding aroma in the air wasn’t magnolias, however, but the strong odor of roasted coffee. The sun had long gone down, but it wasn’t true night yet, the sky a velvety blue that you felt on your skin. Over on the other side of the levee a huge freighter glided by, the top of its smokestacks showing over the rise of land that kept the Mississippi River in its banks. It was Felliniesque and disquieting to Heaven, tons of steel gracefully floating on unseen water.
Heaven enjoyed being out on the porch where she could watch newcomers come up the palm-lined walk. Riverboat gambler outfits were a favorite with the men, many of whom Heaven was sure had a predilection for that vice. A few had copped for the easy ones like sports fan or fisherman, costumes that didn’t require any effort other than going to the basement. Being from Kansas City, Heaven knew lots of football fans who were addicted in a vicelike manner to the Chiefs.
Suddenly, there was yelling. Leon Davis was walking rapidly up to the house, cutting through the plant parking lot from the direction opposite that everyone else was coming from. A single security guard was trying to shout him down. He kept going. “Mary Whitten, I know you’re in there,” he yelled, waving his hat. Guests laughed, not taking anything seriously. This was Truely’s wake. Of course the man who owned the other coffee importing company would be there. Quickly Will Tibbetts appeared out on the sidewalk and spoke to the guard, who reluctantly turned and went back to his post. Will talked right in Leon’s ear for a while and then the two of them went in to the party together. Strange. Heaven wondered what Will had said to calm down Leon.
The walk was lit by sunken spotlights, giving every entrance a Hollywood vibe. Heaven noticed a woman entering in what Heaven was beginning to recognize as Uptown ladies’ church fashion; a fancy suit and a big hat and gloves. Lace was involved. As was a huge diamond pin. Heaven was amused by the irony of the costume. Who among this group would admit the love of excessively fancy clothes was a vice? As the woman got nearer the house, Heaven was rocked by recognition of that diamond pin—and the woman wearing it. The pin was shaped like a bouquet of flowers. It was the pin that she’d seen a Polaroid of in Truely’s office, the one that Mary said her mother-in-law gave her. But it wasn’t Mary wearing the pin. It was Amelia Hart.
Heaven made it through the crowd and down the stairs as fast as she could but the crowd stopped her for snacks several times. She tried to stay in character as a food vamp, ready to lead folks astray with the vice of snacks, but she wanted to just dump the whole basket on the floor and let it go. By the time she made it down to the first floor, Amelia was nowhere to be seen.
Heaven grabbed the arm of a man dressed in a diaper. “Have you seen Amelia Hart, the television reporter?”
“Look out in the plant. That’s where the band is,” he replied and started sucking his thumb coyly. Heaven took it for flirtation and turned quickly away.
There was a steel-and-glass walkway between the house and the plant similar to those used to connect the garage and the home in “moderne” homes. In Kansas, they called them breezeways. Now Heaven heard music coming
from the other end of the breezeway. Just inside the plant proper, a large space had been cleared, a stage had been constructed, and the Iguanas were playing. There must have been three hundred people at least, crowding the dance floor and lined up for drinks at bars set up in the corners of the room.
Heaven saw Mary for the first time tonight, looking like a cigarette girl in a 1940s nightclub. She spotted Heaven and waved happily. It was the first true smile Heaven had seen on her face since last Saturday. Could it just have been a week ago she was plating up Nola Pie with no inkling of what was to come?
Heaven looked frantically for Amelia Hart in the crowd. If she didn’t find her and snatch that pin off her pretty little suit, Mary wouldn’t be smiling too much longer. It seemed that when Truely told Will he bought Amelia something nice at the end of their affair, he had borrowed something nice that belonged to his wife instead. What nerve. And what nerve of Amelia Hart to wear a piece of jewelry that Mary Whitten would recognize as her own to a party for the memory of Truely Whitten. Midwesterners just wouldn’t even try to pull this stuff off, it was way too nervy. Then Heaven realized Amelia might not have an inkling that the pin had been Mary’s. Amelia could be in for a nasty surprise right along with Mary Whitten.
Heaven was stymied.
She hadn’t seen Will.
Mary was swallowed up in the crowd.
No sign of Amelia.
Heaven walked slowly around the dance floor, craning her neck. She saw Leon Davis talking to Mary and they were laughing. Maybe Mary had decided to sell the business to Leon. That would explain why Will went out and retrieved him from the guard.
She spotted Nancy Blair but she was surrounded by people, so Heaven kept looking. Behind the stage area there were wide sliding doors, similar to the ones at the warehouse. She looked down that wall and found a people-sized door that seemed to go into another section of the plant. What the hell. She hadn’t given this place a look-see. It couldn’t hurt and it would be better than the frustration of trying to head off the inevitable confrontation between Mary and Amelia. Maybe she’d be lucky and they’d see each other while she was taking the tour in the back. She could survive very well without witnessing that cat fight and the enjoyment it would bring the crowd.
Red Beans and Vice Page 20
