Red Beans and Vice (11 page)

Now, of course, Heaven wanted to kick herself for not going straight back to the hotel right after dinner. But if this guy wanted to spook her tonight, or was being paid to spook her tonight, he must have had a plan for the hotel, too. Heaven felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of her neck. She usually never broke a sweat, not even in the kitchen on a hot Saturday night.

She made a dash for the door, looking for a security guard. There was one standing by the cash-in booths and she made for him and turned to pinpoint her man.

Heaven grabbed the guard’s hand. “Thank God you’re here. My ex-husband,” she pointed at the attacker, who still hadn’t seen her, “is here looking for me. He said he’d kill me if I gambled again. He’s a religious fanatic and I’m afraid of what he’ll do if he sees me. I’m leaving, but please don’t let him follow me.”

“Where is he?” the guard asked gruffly.

Heaven pointed. “Right over there. The one with the gray windbreaker.” As Heaven pointed, she knew she’d screwed up. Her excited energy flowing toward the man made him turn in their direction. He started toward them instinctively, then saw the guard. He paused and Heaven turned and ran toward the door.

“Help me,” she shouted over her shoulder in the guard’s direction.

Heaven stopped just once to look over her shoulder. She saw what she had feared. The guard was standing
empty-handed in the middle of the room, hands on hips, looking around. Her man, as she now thought of him, was nowhere in sight.

She slipped off her high heels and took off running down Poydras toward St. Charles, past the new W hotel, past Mother’s. She wasn’t a runner and by the time she got to St. Charles she thought her lungs were going to burst. The St. Charles streetcar pulled up to its stop right across the street. Heaven grabbed some of her quarters and got on.

The trip out St. Charles was painstakingly slow. At every stop, Heaven debated getting off. At every stop, Heaven was sure her man would walk up the steps and in the door of the streetcar. She looked around. There were other people with her, it wasn’t just her and the driver. Most of them looked like hotel and restaurant workers going home. She wasn’t sure when the last run was but she thought it was around midnight, which must be soon.

She checked her money. With what she’d had before and the quarters, she had forty-seven dollars and a credit card. She thought about getting off at Tulane University, or by the gates to Audubon Place, where Mary and Truely lived. But then she would have to get to their house and it was way down on the other end of the street. Plus it was gated and what if they’d gone back to the Napoleon House for a nightcap and the guard called and the Whittens weren’t home?

The streetcar lurched on and that option was behind her in the dark New Orleans night before Heaven realized that she could just ask the guard to call the police. She was mad at herself that, with all the times she’d seen them, she hadn’t asked for the business cards of the two patrol officers who always showed up at the convent. She
didn’t have the name of a police officer who might be familiar with the trouble she seemed to be involved in.

Heaven changed seats several times, peeking out on each side of the avenue. Now she went to the back of the car, half expecting her tormentor to be running behind the streetcar. When it slowed to turn onto South Carrollton, she decided enough was enough. She put her high heels on, pulled the buzzer and got out. Just across the street was the famous Camellia Grill. She headed for it and was about halfway there when she heard a car door slam. In the strip mall parking lot a half block from the Camellia, standing there coolly lighting a cigarette and leaning against his car, was her man. She wanted to get a good look at him. She hadn’t really seen him. But as usual he was just far enough away to escape a positive identification later. She was sure he wanted her to see him, though, and for her to know that he’d followed her all the way with no problem, that she was dead meat if he wanted her to be.

The door of the grill opened and three people came out. Heaven searched the double horseshoe counter for the places they’d vacated. It was a quiet time for the grill, after dinner and before the tipsy late-night crowd hit the doors needing a pecan waffle to sober them up. There were no waiting customers and Heaven slipped onto a stool and, even scared and confused about what just happened to her, was immediately drawn, into the scene before her. African-American waiters in starched white jackets and black bowties spoke their own language with short-order grill men of amazing grace. One minute the grill was covered with a shimmering mass of raw eggs, the next minute that mass had been transformed into three beautiful omelettes, each with different ingredients nestled in the middle. Beside the grill,
waffle irons spat pieces of batter onto the stainless-steel tables they were bolted to, great collars of built-up batter creating a crusty outline. With two grills and two waffle irons, the horseshoes of the counter created a mirrored universe: different dancers, same dance.

Heaven jumped when her name was suddenly called.

“Heaven!”

She spun around, ready for the worst. It was Will Tibbetts, grinning his charming grin as if nothing had happened since he last saw her.

“Will, you scared me to death. What are you doing here?” she demanded crossly, stealing a look outside as she spun her stool around.

Will sat down beside her. “I’ll answer that question but then you better be ready to do the same. I followed Truely and Mary home for a nightcap. When I left their house, I decided I needed a piece of grilled pecan pie. Now, what about you, the one who said she just had to get home to her list-makin’?”

Heaven felt a wave of apprehension. She didn’t believe him for a minute. But she couldn’t help but be relieved to see him. She got up and walked outside looking up the street. Her man was gone. He was just playing with her, showing her he could keep track of her. And what, if anything, did Will have to do with it? She went back inside. “He’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?” Will asked.

“It all started when I was walking through Jackson Square.”

The waiter came and gave them glasses of water, a look of expectancy on his face.

Will smiled. “Hello, Henry. I’ll have a piece of that good pecan pie, grilled nice and warm, and a freeze. And what is it for my bride?”

Heaven smiled in spite of everything that had happened. Will was so corny with the winking and the “my bride” stuff. All of a sudden she was starved. “A hamburger with everything but onion, a piece of pecan pie, and what’s a freeze?” If she was going to die, she’d be full.

W
ill pulled his fancy Porsche up to the locked gate at the hotel and honked. “Things sure are interesting with you around, Heaven. That was quite a story. I don’t want to leave you here alone. I suggested either staying with you or taking you home with me. Those are two good offers still on the table.”

Heaven shook her head. “I do still have to make prep lists for tomorrow. Now that I’ve survived another night here in New Orleans I’ll be expected to produce some product tomorrow. Thank you for seeing me home. You still think I shouldn’t call the police?”

“More trouble than it’s worth, in my opinion. But talk to Mary about it in the morning.” He reached over and kissed her on the lips.

She was too wrung out to give him any static and the next thing she knew she was kissing right back. She broke away finally. The concierge was standing at the open gate watching them. Without saying a word or letting Will say one, she quickly got out of the car and waved good-bye.

H
eaven, you have a delivery,” a voice called from the front of Peristyle.

Heaven had been working at the restaurant for several hours, trying to get most of the work done on her two starters today so she could concentrate on her dessert tomorrow.

Heaven was no pastry chef and Pauline Kramer, the pastry chef and bread baker at Cafe Heaven, had sprained her wrist badly and couldn’t come to New Orleans to do her thing as they’d planned originally. But with the help of the whole Kansas City kitchen staff Pauline had formed four hundred thirty—thirty extra for breakage—individual pie crusts made out of a very special shortbread dough in throwaway pie pans, baked them, frozen them, and sent them overnight UPS to Heaven packed in dry ice. Heaven was going to have to do the rest.

Heaven went up to retrieve her package. It had been relaxing to work in the kitchen, after the stress of the
night before. Now, in the cold, clear light of day, she was embarrassed she hadn’t just gone straight to a phone and called the police.

“And Susan said to remind you and Annie that there’s a short meeting over a bottle of wine at Bayona around 5:30. The others chefs will all be here by then,” the maitre d’ reported. He was there confirming reservations for the evening.

Heaven took her package to the back and opened it, to check the condition of the pie shells. They looked good. Pauline had packed them well with bubble wrap and other materials plus plenty of dry ice. Heaven set them in the freezer. They would defrost tomorrow in the time it would take to assemble the rest of the dish.

Committee members and local chefs had rounded up a group of volunteers to help with the preparations and at the dinner. Two volunteers had been helping Heaven with the rice cakes. They were cutting small rounds out of sheet pans filled with the thick rice batter and placing the rounds on baking sheets covered with parchment paper. Tomorrow the cakes would be finished on the flat top grill that was part of the portable kitchen.

While they were cutting out the cakes, Heaven had worked on the other starter, assembling all the pieces so the volunteers could put them together.

“What’s next?” one of them asked Heaven as they smooched the last rice into a biscuit cutter and tamped it down.

“Next is something I’ve named a French onion soup beignet. I’ve already rolled out the beignet dough. Now what you do is take one of these cubes of Gruyere cheese and wrap some of these caramelized onions around the cube. I cooked the onions earlier and cooled them down so they should be easy to work with.”
Heaven looped some of the cold onions around the cheese. She’d brought a full set of biscuit cutters with her and now found a small one and cut a little round out of the dough. “Then you wrap the cheese and onion into a ball with the dough pulling the dough slightly and sealing it with a little water on your fingers and rolling it round again,” she said as she did just that to show them how. She had two shallow bowls of water there for them to work with. “We’ll put these in the walk-in and chill them good so they stay together. Then tomorrow night they get fried and tossed in Parmesan cheese.”

“Now that’s what I call a New Orleans-style appetizer,” one of the volunteers said approvingly. “Fat and grease.”

Heaven worked with them for a while, making sure they got the hang of it. She was lost in thought when once again a voice called to her from the front of the restaurant. “Heaven, a friend of yours wants to see you.”

Heaven walked out, expecting Mary. They hadn’t actually talked yet so Heaven could tell her about the attack. She’d left an urgent message but Mary was in court until this afternoon. To her surprise it was Amelia Hart, gorgeous in a peach-colored sleeveless shift.

“Amelia, what are you doing here? I mean, after last time, I didn’t think you’d ever speak to me again if you didn’t have to.”

“I didn’t think so either,” Amelia said with a slight grin.

There was an awkward pause.

Amelia cleared her throat as if she was going to recite in grade school. “I thought about what you said, and I realized I took the wrong tack with those women. I laid myself open to exactly what I got from you. There are plenty of reasons for people to support my auntie’s order.
I didn’t need to put down the precious Sisters of the Holy Trinity to make that point and I especially didn’t need to make my aunt vulnerable by attacking the sisters’ slave-holding.”

A little part of Heaven wanted to stick her tongue out and say, “I told you so.” Instead she tried to sound sympathetic. “I’ve gone out on longer limbs than that. I think if you remind these society Catholics that your aunt’s order could use some help in giving out scholarships, they would respond. They seem like they’re good-hearted.”

“I hate saying anything close to ‘I’m sorry,’ so I’m glad that’s out of the way,” Amelia said. “Now I want to ask you something in my capacity as a reporter.”

Heaven assumed Amelia was going to ask her about last night’s attack on the Moonwalk, not that she could figure out how Amelia would know about it. Did the German joggers call the police and tell them a woman had been attacked on the Moonwalk? But how would that lead anyone to Heaven? Could it be Will giving Amelia a news tip?