Red Beans and Vice (3 page)

T
he room was filling up fast now and the babble of feminine voices grew louder. Heaven had finally figured out what made this different from the dozens of other committee meetings she’d attended over the years. It was the perfume. Heaven would have laid odds that every woman in the house, with the exception of herself and the ordained sister present to represent the nuns, had applied a different brand of perfume with abandon. Heaven felt slightly nauseated from the assault on her nose. She hardly ever wore the stuff herself because it interfered with her ability to judge the aromas of food and wine. She would have to have a no-perfume zone if she ever opened a restaurant in the South, she thought.

“Who is this gorgeous creature with the red hair?” a voice cooed.

Heaven turned to see who was flattering her and at the same time spotted her old friend from Kansas City hurrying in the door.

Mary Whitten had informed Heaven on the phone that she was still practicing law with an international trade firm. She wore a tailored brown dress and the look of a harried attorney who was running late. Other than the harried look, Mary appeared very much the way she had when she and Heaven went to law school together twenty years ago. She was tall, thin, with short dark hair and a classic American profile, including a cute, small nose and good cheekbones. Her dark hair had one shock of white streaking through it that hadn’t been there twenty years ago but Heaven thought it made Mary’s appearance more striking.

As Heaven waited for her friend to make her way across the room, she returned her attention to a gray-haired grande dame type in an expensive navy blue suit, the stranger who had addressed her. “I’ll answer to ‘gorgeous creature’ any time,” she said to the older woman, and smiled. “I’m Heaven Lee. I own a restaurant in Kansas City.”

“Oh, dear Lord. A Northerner,” the grande dame said with chuckle. “I used to hire some of your musicians. That Count Basie was a hoot.”

“I wish I’d met him,” Heaven said, catching herself before she mentioned how long the Count had been pushing up the tulips. She herself couldn’t stand it when people marveled at the fact she actually saw the Grateful Dead play concerts live. “Did or do you own a restaurant or jazz club here in New Orleans?” Heaven asked politely.

“Oh, mercy me, no,” the dowager replied. “I used to own a whorehouse, and a damned good one it was, too. We could afford to have the likes of Count Basie play for the amusement of our clients, darlin’.”

Heaven was not going to let this old gal get the best
of her. “If you could afford that kind of entertainment in the parlor, I can only imagine the treats waiting in the bedrooms.”

A big laugh came out of the little old woman. “Nancy Blair, Heaven. Nice to have you on board.”

Mary Whitten hurried over to the women, giving air kisses to both Nancy and Heaven. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get you at the airport. Did you find this place all right?” she said breathlessly.

“The taxi driver gave me a history of the sisters when I told him where I wanted to go. His version was much more colorful than that book you sent me,” Heaven said. “You didn’t tell me the nuns were all going to go back to France in a huff when the United States bought this territory.”

“But Thomas Jefferson sent them a handwritten letter and begged them to stay. Said he couldn’t do it without them.” Mary gave a little wave to Nancy, who was already embroiled in another conversation, and then pulled Heaven to two empty chairs at the conference table. She sat down and fanned herself with one hand as though she were exhausted.

Heaven sat down beside her and leaned in. “I want to hear little Miss Nancy’s story later, like how does a madam get to be on the committee for the nuns’ party?”

“Like everything else in this town, Heaven, it’s a long saga but a good one. Maybe we’ll get around to Nancy tonight. I’m glad you’re staying with us. I haven’t seen you in years. Where’s your luggage?”

“In the gatehouse. I thought we could get it when we leave and I wouldn’t have to lug it in here. I didn’t realize this wasn’t the actual convent anymore. I was trying to respect the nuns and not act like it was a hotel.”

“This is actually the site of convent number one and number two. Then they moved downriver, in 1824, I think. Even then, the Quarter must have gotten too racy for the sisters.” The two women laughed just as Susan Spicer called the meeting to order.

For the next hour, everything went along just fine. Tea and coffee appeared along with profiteroles filled with some kind of Brie-and-artichoke deliciousness. The two chefs from New Orleans, Susan Spicer and Anne Kearney, plus Heaven from Kansas City and Rozanne Gold from New York, who was on a cookbook tour and in town, figured out who should cook what course, deciding for the chefs not present, like Lidia Bastianich and Edna Lewis and Joyce Goldstein.

The other committees gave their reports and Heaven could see a lot of work had been done already. Sometimes preparing the food was the easy part. Filling the tables with paying guests was usually the hard part and that was going well. A month before the event and it was ninety-five percent sold out.

They talked about sticking a few more tables out in the inner courtyard and to that end they all got up to go take a look; Susan showing where the tent kitchen would be placed and Mary and her committee figuring out that they could get four more round tables for ten in by the herb garden without killing the herbs. When they arrived back inside at the conference room, someone was waiting for them.

“Uh-oh. It’s Amelia Hart,” Mary whispered.

“Who’s she?” Heaven asked, noticing that this woman had already changed the dynamics of the group without saying a word. The easy talk had died down and everyone was eying the newcomer.

“A local television reporter and a real troublemaker,” Mary replied.

Amelia Hart was one of those burnished African-American women that, had they chosen a life outside of New Orleans, could have passed easily as a white person from a Mediterranean country. She was extraordinarily beautiful, tall and haughty-looking, her hair up in an elaborate but professional French twist, her bronze-colored outfit expensive enough to give Nancy Blair a run for her money as the best dressed in the room. It was in fact Nancy who spoke to Amelia’s presence first, before she herself gave them any indication why she was there.

“Amelia, darlin’. So nice of you to come but we’d rather save the publicity until a little closer to the night of the dinner. We don’t want the sisters to be criticized for working on a fund-raising project during Lent, now, do we?” Nancy said firmly as the committee members silently took their places around the long oval table.

Amelia had taken the best seat for herself, at the head of the table where Susan Spicer had been sitting. Susan found a side chair and quietly pulled it to the table downstream from Amelia, who now stood up dramatically. “Thanks, Nancy, but I’m not here professionally. Truth is, I could give a rat’s ass if the lovely Sisters of the Holy Trinity here were the laughingstock of New Orleans for hustling during Lent. They were slave owners themselves, you know.”

Nancy Blair had remained standing until now, the better to face down her opponent. “Well, then what in the hell are you doing here, Ms. Hart? And I’m sure you’re gonna tell us.” Her voice held about equal parts ice and
humor as she took her seat. Heaven noticed she had changed the way she addressed the other woman from Amelia to Ms. Hart. When you want something, she’s Amelia. When they want something, she’s Ms. Hart.

“Boy, no one worries about cursing in a religious institution, do they,” Heaven whispered to her friend.

Mary, intent on what was going to happen next, shushed her with a finger over her lips.

Amelia was ready to let loose now. “What I want to know is, if you Uptown ladies, and you too, Nancy, have so much time on your hands and need to help someone, why the sisters? There’s another religious order that is just as much a part of our history and they always get passed over for the blessed sisters. The Sisters of the Holy Trinity may be dying out but they get more attention than they worth, that’s fo’sure,” she said, losing a little of her anchorwoman pronunciation.

Nancy Blair, ignoring the cut that Amelia had slipped in to make sure everyone remembered Nancy was no Uptown lady, seemed to be enjoying her role as spokesperson for the group. “I’m not going to argue our choice with you, Ms. Hart. And you know as well as I do that the sisters have educated thousands of underprivileged children over the years, black and white. But go on. Who’s more deserving, in your opinion?”

Amelia had her own script and timing worked out in her mind. Heaven wondered if she’d been lurking outside waiting for the group to take a break so she could make her stand. Now she smiled for the first time, a dazzling smile. “When I decided to have a career in television, I legally changed my name to Amelia Hart, in honor of my great-great-great-grandmother of the same name. Does that ring a bell to any of you who are so interested in preserving history?” She made a brief
sweep of the table with her eyes. “Amelia Hart was the daughter of the sister of Henriette Delille, the founder of the Sisters of the Holy Family, the free woman of color who dedicated her life to the education of the children of slaves and other people of color. She is who you should be honoring, not a group who were brought to this country to continue the exploitation of others.”

Heaven couldn’t believe it. Nowhere in Kansas City could you get a bunch of folks to argue about the past like it was just yesterday. This woman was talking about stuff that happened in the eighteenth century with a passion most midwesterners couldn’t muster for a crisis that happened last week. But enough was enough. Amelia Hart could create a serious problem for the event they were trying to plan. Heaven tried the old outsider ploy. She stood up and the room became all atwitter.

“Amelia, I’m Heaven Lee, a chef from Kansas City. I know very little about those you speak of, yet as an outsider it sounds to me that both groups have done good for the children of New Orleans and especially for their education, yes?”

Amelia narrowed her eyes at Heaven, trying to figure out where she was going with this. But around the table there were enough yeses for Heaven to continue without waiting for Amelia to counterattack.

“As a member of the Women’s Chefs and Restaurateurs, and also of Chef’s Collaborative 2000, I’m dedicated to the education of children and women. That’s why I’m here. And I’d be glad to come back next year and do the same thing we’re doing now for your aunt’s order. We could make it an annual event, one year for one group, the next year for the other.”

Well, if the feminine racket before the meeting had been loud, now it was deafening. Everyone had an opinion
and they wanted it heard by everyone else. Heaven had blown Amelia totally out of the saddle and Amelia knew it. Even the Uptown ladies, who never would have come up with such a compromise on their own, were having trouble finding fault with it. From the look on Amelia’s face, so was she.

“Nice work, girlfriend,” Mary hissed through her teeth with a little pat on Heaven’s hand and a laugh.

The meeting would have been hard to call back to order after Amelia and Heaven’s exchange, but then something happened to ruin that possibility forever. The janitor burst into the room with a wild look on his face. “Sister, you better come,” he gasped, indicating the nun at the table. “You better all come. Streetside courtyard. I’m calling the police,” he said, and turned around and hurried out.

Not only did the former convent have a spacious inner courtyard, where the dinner was to be held, but it had a second courtyard between the high brick fence on Ursu-lines Street and the building proper. Boxwood shrubs formed elegant patterns. As the group poured out into this space, elegance wasn’t what they saw. The walls of the courtyard were splashed with red paint, ugly words scrawled all around: Parasites, Bloodsuckers, Witches. But as upsetting as that seemed to Heaven, most of the women were aghast at something else, or the lack of it.

“Oh my God,” Mary Whitten said. “They’ve stolen the cross that the sisters brought from France on that first trip in 1727. It’s the sisters’ most prized possession.”

T
he Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone had a real merry-go-round in the middle of the room. A round, garish confection that rotated slowly, the bar supplies
and bartender were located in the middle of this affair. The room was filling up fast with a combination of local businessmen and tourists too shy to start out their drinking at Pat O’Brien’s over on Bourbon Street. Mary and Heaven rushed in. They were meeting Mary’s husband and they were late.

The crisis at the convent had taken time, what with the police and the archdiocesan people, who had offices at the convent, all hovering and asking the committee members questions they couldn’t answer, like what time had they gone outside to the inner courtyard, had they heard any strange noises, and stuff like that. For every question there had been multiple answers from the ladies:

“We were outside for at least thirty minutes.”

“It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes we were in the garden.” “I thought I heard something.”

“You couldn’t hear yourself think what with all the expert opinions in that room.”

“Well, you know, Amelia Hart did show up uninvited to the meeting with trouble on her mind. Maybe she …”

Heaven herself tried not to jump in the middle of a police investigation as she would if she were in Kansas City. She felt Amelia certainly wouldn’t feel bad about defacing the convent property on moral grounds. But why would she come in and let them know she was gunning for them if she’d just tossed paint around on the other side of the entry hall? And where was the cross? Certainly not with her in that meeting. She could have hired an accomplice to do the dirty work, but Heaven thought she was smarter than that. And not quite so twisted.

A man Heaven vaguely remembered as Truely Whitten stood up as they crossed the dimly lit barroom. He had been sitting with two men, one of whom was red-faced with anger. As Truely stood up and buttoned his jacket, he offered his hand to the angry man, who jumped out of his chair, ignored the hand, and went out of the bar into the hotel, away from Mary and Heaven.