We both giggled, until Cal banged on the wall and threatened to make us sleep in the bathtub if we didn’t cut it out. We threw the quilt over our heads and laughed under there instead, until Marion abruptly stopped. It was pitch-dark under the quilt, and I couldn’t see his face.
“She apologized, you know.”
“Who?” I asked, but I knew.
“In that letter. That’s what it was—an apology.”
“Oh.”
We both fell silent, our breaths mingling quietly together under the quilt. I wanted to see his face, but I didn’t need to really. I’d heard everything in his voice. He was forgiving her, slowly. Maybe her being dead made it harder to hold a grudge.
Again in the blackness, I saw her blank eyes staring, the crooked angle of her head, her mouth dark and open.
“We’ll catch the guy who did it,” I whispered into the dark. I scrabbled for Marion’s hand until I found it and squeezed. “I promise you that.”
The promise was for Marion, but it was for Arimentha, too.
Marion squeezed back, firmly. “Yes, we will.”
* * *
Bennie arrived after dark on Saturday night, laden with Marion’s suitcases and boxes like an overworked bellhop in a movie. It was a good thing there were no banana peels for him to slip on.
“I made it,” Bennie said breathlessly, and I rushed to start unloading him.
“Good thing you’re so strong,” Marion said, coming to help, too. He slid a sly look at me. “Don’t you think so, Millie?”
I shot him a glare. “We’re all very glad he didn’t drop your stuff all over Royal Street.” I glanced at Bennie and tried to soften my voice. “Thank you.”
Bennie smiled and mopped his brow with a handkerchief now that he had one free hand. “Anything to help.”
I picked up a brown leather suitcase. “I didn’t know you had so much stuff, Marion,” I said, eager to change the subject. “When you got here, you had just this one little suitcase.” My thumb ran across a brass plate near the handle I’d never noticed before. The letters R. L. were engraved into it. I knew now that his last name had been Leveque, but he hadn’t mentioned the R. So there was still a piece of Marion’s old life he hadn’t forked over. In a way, I was glad. He should keep whatever he wanted for himself, now that he was being forced to hand over so much. When I looked up at him, he was looking back at me apprehensively, as if waiting for the question, but I didn’t ask it.
He smiled to himself and turned to Bennie. “Did you get my Bessie Smith record?”
“Sure did!” With some effort, he slid it out of the middle of a stack and handed it over.
Marion peeked inside and shut his eyes a moment in relief. The note was still there and untouched by the police. I breathed a little easier, too.
Marion carried his record and suitcase and an armload of other stuff into my room.
“Are you ready to go to the ball, my lady?” Bennie said to me, smoothing back a strand of hair that had gotten mussed.
“Almost. Marion’s got to fix me up.” I gestured to my hair, which still hung down in a sharp curtain around my cheeks. I turned to Marion, who was returning from the bedroom. “I could just cut it off.”
“Not necessary.” Marion grabbed my arm, hauled me into Cal’s room, and plopped me down on the stool in front of her mirrored dresser. “I’ll comb it back, and no one will be the wiser.”
I wrinkled up my nose at my reflection. “If you say so.”
“Is that all it takes?” Bennie asked.
“You’ll see,” Marion said. His roguish smile made my knee start jiggling.
Bennie looked anxious, too, as he watched Marion open the red makeup case Bennie had brought for him. When Marion started spreading makeup out on the dresser top, I sat up straighter.
“Now wait a minute!” I cried. “I didn’t agree to makeup!”
Marion rolled his eyes. “I’m a master of illusion. Let me work.”
I buttoned my mouth and dug my nails into the fabric of my trousers, but quickly I relaxed as I watched myself transform under Marion’s skillful fingers. He shadowed my jaw and throat so I looked almost like I’d have to shave later, and even shaded in a fake Adam’s apple. He added shading to my upper lip, too, and somehow even made my brow bone look more prominent. When he’d finished all that, he rubbed my hair with a dollop of pomade and combed it neatly back.
Bennie stood behind us, looking stunned. “You really are a magician!”
I had to admit the illusion was pretty good and would be even better in a dimly lit hotel ballroom. I stood and grinned, turning this way and that and enjoying the novelty of watching my transformed face in the mirror.
“All right, Benzo.” I deepened my voice and clapped him roughly on the shoulder. “Time to go do some manly stuff.”
Marion laughed. Bennie swallowed, eyes still on my face in the mirror. “Is it strange that I’m kind of attracted to you right now?”
Marion smirked. “Not strange to me.”
I laughed to hide a blush and grabbed my jacket. I winked at Marion. “Me neither.”
* * *
We walked to the Roosevelt so Bennie wouldn’t have to find a place to park his delivery truck. The front of the hotel was all elaborate stone, and an awning arched over the wide quadruple front doors to protect the posh guests from New Orleans weather. But Bennie took me around to the back, to a door that was small and plain and unsheltered.
Eddie answered Bennie’s knock quickly, as if he’d been hovering behind it waiting for us.
“Come in, quick,” he said, waving us inside. He did a double take, eyes widening at the sight of me. A grin started at the corner of his mouth.
I held up a hand. “Don’t say a word.”
Eddie scowled. “You oughta be more polite. I’m risking my job for this escapade.”
“Then maybe quit gawking and hurry it along before we get caught.”
“She’s right,” Bennie said quickly, stepping between me and Eddie. “Let’s go.”
Eddie shook his head, but he turned and led us down a dim hallway lined with doors. Women in maid uniforms and men in waiter tuxedos rushed by us, barely glancing at us. No one seemed to notice I wasn’t a boy, yet.
Eddie took us into an empty room filled with lockers. Apparently, all the others were already dressed and gone. He thrust two freshly laundered uniforms on hangers at me and Bennie.
“You got any pointers?” I said, already shrugging out of my jacket.
Eddie folded his arms over his chest. “Don’t look the guests in the eye unless they talk right to you. And don’t hand them a drink directly. Just hold out the tray and let them take it.”
“That’s an odd rule.”
Eddie sneered, but for once, it wasn’t directed at me. “They want to pretend we haven’t touched it with our dirty peasant hands.”
I pulled a grimace. Bennie looked down and studied his tan hands and fastidiously neat nails, as if contemplating their ability to offend with their very touch.
“I have to go back out or they’ll be looking for me,” Eddie said. “The party is in the Blue Room on the lobby level.” He looked at Bennie. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything to get me fired.” He gave me one last sharp glance, looked as if he was considering saying something, then changed his mind, turned, and left.
“You’re making him nervous,” Bennie said.
I rolled my eyes. “He’s always like that. Where do we get dressed?”
Bennie flushed and pointed toward a closet. “You . . . you go in there, in case somebody comes in.”
I pulled the chain to turn on the closet light and saw the little room was crammed full of brooms and mop buckets. It was a struggle getting out of my clothes and into the stiff uniform without knocking anything over or dropping the pristine white shirt and jacket on t
he floor. I was sure Bennie could hear me cursing through the door and slamming into things.
“You okay in there?” Bennie said after a few minutes. I swear I could hear the laughter in his voice.
“I’m fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “But . . .” I opened the door and flapped the bow tie uselessly. “I can’t tie this ridiculous thing.”
Bennie tried and failed to suppress a grin. “Come here then.”
I stomped out of the broom closet like a toddler, feeling hot and flustered. I pulled at my starched white collar so I could breathe easier. Bennie moved closer to me and started working on the tie.
“You shouldn’t fuss with your uniform when we’re out there,” he said mildly. “Just watch what the other waiters are doing and do it.”
I sighed. I didn’t see how anybody could work a job in this buttoned-up monstrosity. Whose genius idea had it been to put waiters in white jackets and white gloves anyway? Didn’t they know waiters got stuff spilled on them?
I had to admit Bennie looked handsome in his getup, though, with his black hair and dark olive skin contrasting sharply with the white. But I could also see he had sweat beaded at his temples, and his shoulders shifted under the white jacket.
“You don’t have to do this job with me,” I said. “You can stay here and wait, or even go home. I won’t blame you.”
He gestured toward the door where Eddie had exited. “My friend does me a favor this big, I got to stay here to make sure it goes right.”
“It’ll go right,” I said soberly, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt that Bennie didn’t trust me not to blow our cover. I nudged the toe of his shoe with mine. “What’s taking so long anyway?”
“I’ve never done this before on someone else.”
His face was only a foot in front of mine. His eyes were busy studying my tie, so I was free to stare at his face. At the hint of stubble at his jaw. At the lower lip that was fuller than the top. At the line that formed between his brows when he was concentrating.
“Hold still,” he said.
I held still. Held my breath. I’d never been this close to him before, especially not alone. I could lean forward and kiss him if I wanted to. Did I want to?
Before I could decide, he finished tying the bow tie, stood back, cocked his head to one side, and studied it. “I guess that will do.”
I set my hands on my hips and stuck out my chin. “Do I look handsome?”
“Don’t you always?”
Something about his voice made me pause. Something that sounded a lot like honesty. “You think I’m handsome?”
Bennie’s shoulders lifted. “You are.”
I stared at him. I considered returning the compliment, but then he cleared his throat.
“You ready to go get some dirt?” he said.
I dismissed whatever had just happened between us and smoothed my lapels. “Ready when you are.”
CHAPTER
14
MY FINGERS JITTERED against the side of my leg as Bennie and I pushed through a swinging door and entered the public part of the hotel. Minty’s killer might be here, or the person who could lead me to that killer. And finding them depended on me pulling this off.
“Just watch what I do,” Bennie said. “Stay in the shadows so no one will look too closely at you—not that many of them ever think to look at us.”
“Got it,” I said, resisting the urge to tug at my stiff white collar again. Bennie led me to the famous Blue Room, where those with enough cash could dine and dance and see big-name jazz performers who used to live in New Orleans but now just passed through town. I’d heard about the place a million times but was still stunned enough to stop in the doorway a moment and stare. The ceiling and walls were all blue, with two huge chandeliers and massive columns painted in a swirling floral pattern of green and gold. Tables covered in crisp white cloth glittered with silver and crystal. Beyond a parquet dance floor was a shallow platform, on which a small orchestra sat playing something dull in front of a massive plaster seashell. The combined effect was tacky as hell, and my first thought was my mother would love it. And Marion, too.
“Come on,” Bennie said, gesturing for me to join him in the back corner of the room.
The wall directly across the room from us was one giant mirror, and the corner of my eye caught Bennie’s reflection. I looked at the waiter next to him, and it took half a second before I realized it was me. My breath caught in my throat. My own black hair, pomaded and neatly combed back, looked just as fine contrasted with the white jacket as Bennie’s. I did look handsome.
“Told you,” Bennie whispered, as if he’d read my face, and bumped his shoulder against mine.
I wanted to grin, to giggle even, but I focused on Bennie’s reflection and copied his stance, legs a bit farther apart, shoulders back.
Dirt on Arimentha. That’s what we were here for. Not to stare at ourselves in the mirror.
“Okay,” Bennie said, still facing out into the room, “serving food is beyond your skills, so don’t even try. But you can circulate with a pitcher of water or tray of champagne.”
“Lucky me.”
“This was your idea, remember.”
“I know,” I groaned. The idea of mingling with all these fancy people with their fancy rules made my skin itch, but I had to do it. It was clear how little attention they paid to the waiters serving their food and wiping up their spills. They would surely talk about their private business—and the private business of their friends—as if I wasn’t even there. Kitty Sharpe had been right.
I scanned the room to see if I could spot her, lurking somewhere like a gossip-gathering spider, but I couldn’t see her. Then I realized I was keeping an eye out for bright red, but she wouldn’t be wearing that. Without it, a girl with her white skin, brown hair, and small stature would be easy to miss in this crowd, filled with more of the same.
“You!” someone said beside us, and Bennie and I both turned our heads. It was another waiter, this one with a blue pocket square, which Bennie had told me meant he was a head waiter. He gestured with an impatient flick of his fingers. “Come help me with this tray of hors d’oeuvres.”
Bennie looked back at me, eyes wide. “Are you going to be all right on your own?”
“Course I am,” I whispered. “Go.”
“Lay low,” he said.
“The lowest.”
“Now!” the head waiter said imperiously.
“Sorry. Coming.” Bennie scurried off after him, casting me one last anxious look. He was worried I couldn’t handle it alone. Butterflies tickled the inside of my belly for the first time. What if he was right?
I couldn’t think about that. I had a job to do. I approached another waiter who was carrying a pitcher of water.
“Let me have that one,” I said. “Eddie said they need you for something in the kitchen.”
The waiter sighed. “What else is new?” He handed over the pitcher, which was surprisingly heavy. “Table’s over that way.”
He pointed toward the long row of tables on the left side of the dance floor.
“Got it.”
I took my time strolling toward the tables with my pitcher, taking in every face as I passed. There were a lot of people in this room, and I needed to find my primary targets soon. All of Minty’s friends from the night of the murder—Jerome Rosenthal, Fitzroy DeCoursey, Daphne Holiday, her brother, Claude, and Symphony Cornice, not to mention Marion’s horrible older brother, Philip Leveque—would be here tonight, according to Kitty Sharpe.
I figured it would be pretty easy to spot Symphony, at least, with her auburn hair, and blond Fitzroy with his film-star sleekness, but the rest of the room was a sea of brunette white people, as easy to miss as Kitty herself.
I approached the table and started pouring water, ears pricked for names I recognized, though it w
as hard to pick out anything in the general rumble of voices and music.
Then I heard it—somebody said “McDonough.” I poured slower, easing closer to the older woman who’d been talking. She had about twelve strings of pearls around her neck and a mountain of gray hair coiled on top of her head.
“It’s horrid what happened to that poor child,” she said in a genteel, nasal voice to the old gentleman next to her, who was wearing an actual monocle. “I heard she will be buried in the family tomb with her mother.”
“Lafayette Cemetery number one, if I’m not mistaken?” the gentleman said.
“Indeed. It’s a shame. Judge McDonough is devastated, I heard. Wife and child both gone, and now he is alone in that big house.”
“Do you think he will sell it?”
“The house?”
“Yes, it has a rather nice garden.”
“He may. You should ask Sanders, the attorney. He may know.”
“I will.”
They moved on to discussing their own various health ailments, and I moved on with my water pitcher, feeling a little sick. Kitty had been right about how quickly people would be ready to discuss Minty with callous detachment. I was no better, of course, but then I hadn’t known her. I hadn’t even liked her. These people were supposed to have been her friends.
My pitcher emptied into the last glass on the row, and I turned, still stuck on the image of Minty buried with her mother in a cold tomb in the Garden District. My gaze immediately landed on the familiar face of Symphony Cornice, not ten feet away. She was looking down at her plate, and I whirled around quickly before she could glance up, in case she recognized me in my disguise. I hurried down the row and traded in my empty pitcher for a full one at a table near the swinging kitchen door. Then, from that safe distance, I chanced another peek at Symphony. She was sitting next to a dark-haired boy who, after a moment, I recognized as Jerome Rosenthal, the one I’d thought of as Rockefeller the night of the murder. They were leaning close together, talking intently.
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