Red Beans and Vice (25 page)

Heaven cocked her head. “I’m all for recreational relaxation but you have a big party to put on tomorrow, so maybe we should just stick to one. I’ll take the other one,” she said and calmly took one of the pills and popped it in her mouth.

Mary giggled. ‘You don’t even know what it is.”

“I do too. Ten-miligram Valium. I left the Xanax upstairs. Now take your medicine.”

Mary took her pill and sat back down, sniffling.

Heaven thought this was a good time to do a little digging. “Having that guy from the warehouse drop in reminded me. I’ve been wanting to ask you something. When I took the tour with Truely,” she lied, “I saw this room with a sewing machine and a whole lot of coffee bags. It looked like they were making something out of them. What’s that about?”

“Oh, sometimes these independent coffee houses want those bags to decorate with. Maybe they were repairing them to resell,” Mary said reasonably.

That made sense. Heaven started looking through the drawers for the baking sheets. “I have to tell you something about the cross. You’re gonna love this.” She spooned cookie dough onto a baking sheet and put them in the oven as she told the tale of the phony cross. “So, Mary, you’re a lawyer. What should I do? We have no real proof that Nancy Blair pulled a scam.”

Mary laughed. “You’re a lawyer, too. Just because you don’t practice anymore doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten all your lawyer tricks.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it. I fucked up and I can’t practice anymore. But if that hadn’t happened, I would never have found out how much I love cooking for people. So maybe it’s for the best,” Heaven said wistfully, knowing that wasn’t all true. Nobody likes being kicked out of something.

“All right, as a lawyer, I don’t think you should accuse her of a thing. You could call Sotheby’s and tell them they’re selling stolen artifacts. Or you could call the sisters and tell them to take a look under that faux finish on their cross. Anonymously, of course.”

Heaven was impressed. “Not one, but two good ideas. You should be the one out on the mean streets doing the investigating.”

The phone rang and Mary got it. She looked puzzled. “It’s for you. I think it’s Amelia.”

“What does she want?” Heaven asked as she wiped her hands on a kitchen towel.

Mary held her hand over the phone. “She said it was concerning the John Doe you asked about.”

Heaven grabbed the phone. She listened intently, said thank you, and then hung up.

“Heaven, what was that?”

“They found the body of James Smith just a little
while ago. He was dumped, I mean his body was dumped, right in front of the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Trinity in the Quarter. But they said he’d been dead more than a day, or at least that’s what the detective told Amelia.”

“Heaven, for goodness sake, who is James Smith and why does that name sound familiar?”

“Because I talked about him yesterday. He was one of the people that worked the benefit that the employment agency had never used before. I’m sure his name isn’t really James Smith. Maybe he has fingerprints on record. Mary, I think this dead person killed Truely. I thought he’d left town but I guess he didn’t have the chance.”

“How can you be so sure that this person killed Truely?” Mary stared blankly at the cell phone. The Valium was working.

Heaven took her dirty dishes over to the sink and found the soap. She filled the empty mixing bowl with soapy water and washed off the measuring cups as she talked. Her Valium was working too but she wasn’t numb yet. “That’s the sad part about this latest news, isn’t it, Mary? Now we’ll never know for sure.”

T
he house was quiet and dark. Heaven had sent Mary up to bed and then finished up in the kitchen. She’d found a storage container for the cookies, ate a couple, and put them away. She dried her dishes and put them away. Then she turned off the lights and sat down at the kitchen table. She wished she’d felt surprised about the discovery of James Smith. But from the moment the boys at Vertí Mart said he hadn’t been to work since
Saturday, she knew he was either gone or dead. Just because she’d gone around town telling everyone she thought the suspect was back in New Jersey didn’t mean she’d believed it.

Heaven had some worry about her culpability in James Smith’s death. She’d gone all over the French Quarter looking for this kid. If she’d kept her mouth shut, would he still be alive? The fact that Heaven believed him to be a paid assassin didn’t make her any more comfortable with the fact that she might have hastened his death with her big mouth.

She ran that around in her brain for a while, then got up to check the kitchen door. She had started talking to Mary as soon as she walked in and maybe she hadn’t locked it behind her. It was locked, but it got Heaven thinking about the doors so she went around the whole first floor, checking the windows, jiggling to make sure everything was secure. When she got to the front door she stepped out on the porch.

The air was full of scent, heavy and moist. Shadows thrown by the streetlight played all over the gallery, but it was beautiful, not frightening. New Orleans had its own brand of enchantment, that was for sure. There was no other place like it. Heaven turned to go back in the house and saw him.

The big man. He was just standing across the street smoking a cigarette. Heaven knew he had seen her come out on the porch and that he was waiting for her to see him. But he didn’t run away like he had the last time when she’d caught him on the porch. He very methodically stamped out his lit cigarette and got into a Lincoln town car and drove away.

He was obviously watching the house on a regular
basis. But why? Heaven locked up and went quickly up to bed before something else could happen.

She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, with only one question in mind. How could she talk to the big man?

I
t seems like we were sitting in this kitchen just an hour ago,” Heaven said as she poured coffee for Mary.

“It was seven hours, but who’s counting?” Mary said. She had one of her legal pads in front of her and she was already making lists.

“I don’t have a vice costume yet. I thought it should have something to do with food. Gluttony, is that a vice or one of the seven sins?”

Mary smiled. “I think it’s one of the seven sins and surely they qualify as a vice. What are you going to do, carry a turkey leg around and gnaw on it all night?”

“I hope I can come up with something more dramatic than that. Mary, I have to tell you something.”

Mary’s eyes clouded up. “Something besides the fact that a mysterious man was shot and dumped in front of the convent and you think it’s Truely’s killer?”

Heaven felt her pulse quicken. “Where’d you get the info that he was shot? I don’t think Amelia mentioned how he’d died last night.”

“I turned on the television early this morning. It was on the news. Little Miss Amelia herself. She said it was execution-style, two shots in the back of the neck.”

There was some undercurrent in Mary’s voice when she mentioned Amelia. Heaven thought for a moment that Mary knew about the affair. But she certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. If she was wrong, if Mary didn’t know, this was not the time to find out her dead husband had been cheating, when she was about to throw him the biggest wake of the century.

“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.

W
hen 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.