The Cornbread Killer

by Lou Jane Temple

  “I’m afraid I have another piece of bad news concerning this hate mail thing.” Murray couldn’t put it off any more. “Sal and I decided that I shouldn’t call any of my contacts at the newspaper. Why get people thinking about something they may not have any reason to think about, right?”

  Heaven sighed. “And?”

  “Well, one of my contacts called me. A reporter, someone with a City Hall beat. He read his letter to me and it said the same thing yours did.”

  “Great. Why the City Hall beat? Why not the food editor?” Heaven asked.

  “Oh, maybe going for the food safety angle. That’s what we guessed. Now don’t worry. My guy talked it over with his editor and they would never print something like that, coming unsigned and unsubstantiated. But it does get folks thinking.”

  “Thinking about what? What folks?” Heaven asked heavily. She shot back another gulp of champagne.

  “Well, it made the editor think about doing a story about people in food service who are HIV-positive . . .” Murray’s voice trailed off.

  “So even if it doesn’t affect us, some poor waiters somewhere could be outed as having HIV?” Heaven moaned.

  “You know, does the public have the right to know who touches their food, that kind of thing,” Murray said quietly, wishing he wasn’t having this conversation.

  “Next it will be produce pickers with TB, cooks with hepatitis. This could win someone a Pulitzer,” Heaven said. “In the meantime, do you think anyone else got that letter? If they sent it to one reporter, they could have sent it lots of places.”

  Murray patted Heaven’s hand. “Just go on your trip and leave this at home. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway. I called my friend at the FBI.”

  “Oh, boy, I thought we weren’t going to tell anyone,” Heaven broke in sarcastically.

  “I didn’t. I asked him some general questions about paper documents. Said I was doing a piece about hate mail, which I may do. My friend said it’s hard to trace if the perp wishes to remain anonymous and has used gloves and generic paper, but that sometimes the person wants to let their victim know who they are.”

  Heaven moaned again. “Something to look forward to, the maniac revealing him- or herself. Wonderful.”

  Suddenly a familiar voice came from the vicinity of the front door. “What does a doctor have to do to get a nightcap around this place?” It was Hank, Heaven’s boyfriend who worked in the emergency room of the Medical Center a few blocks away from the restaurant.

  Heaven turned toward Murray with fire in her eyes.

  He quickly put up his hands in defense. “I did not call because you decided to drink an entire bottle of Vueve by yourself and then drive home. I called because Sal and I were worried about you. This is creepy stuff, Heaven. I didn’t want you driving all the way downtown by yourself tonight, just in case this nut has something else in mind. So I called Hank and I told him about the letter. Sal said you’d wanted to tell him anyway.” Hank had been standing between the two, listening to Murray try to explain his way out of a tongue-lashing. Now he kissed Heaven on the cheek. “Got a beer for a poor ER dog?”

  Heaven smiled in spite of herself and threw her arm around Hank’s shoulder. “People are so screwed-up, you know that, honey? Tony, get this man what he wants, please.”

  “Just a Boulevard. The honey wheat if you’ve got it,” Hank said, requesting the popular local brew. He smiled over at Heaven and tapped her champagne glass with his beer bottle as soon as it arrived. “Don’t tell me about screwed-up humans tonight. I’ve had a good dose of them today, including my last patients who were two sisters that had stabbed each other. They’re each still alive and mad at the other one, I’m happy to report.”

  “And it’s only Monday,” Murray observed. “I thought you saved the good stuff for the weekends in ER.”

  “Take me home,” baby,” Heaven said to Hank as she got up and finished the last bit of wine in the bottle, tipping it up to her mouth grandly, then tossing it over her shoulder for effect. It landed with a thud on the carpet behind her. “I’ll leave the van here in case the kitchen needs it for something. I can hardly wait to get to New Orleans where everyone knows folks are crazy.”

  Murray got up and shook Hank’s hand, gave Heaven a little hug. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be just fine here.” He sure hoped he was right.

  The room was filling up fast now and the babble of feminine voices grew louder. Heaven had finally figured out what made this group 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 representing the nuns, had on a different perfume that had been applied with abandon. Heaven felt nauseated from the assault on her nose. She hardly ever wore the stuff because it interfered with her ability to judge the aroma of food and wine. She would have to have a no-perfume zone if she had a restaurant in the South, she thought with a smile.

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

  Heaven turned to see who was flattering her and spotted her old friend from Kansas City hurrying in the door. As she waited for Mary Whitten, she stuck out her hand to a gray-haired grande dame in an expensive navy-blue suit. “I’ll answer to gorgeous creature any time,” she said to the older woman with a smile. “I’m Heaven Lee. I own a restaurant in Kansas City.”

  “Oh, dear Lord. A Northerner,” the grande dame said with a 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 had actually seen the Grateful Dead play a concert. “Did 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 place 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 pulled Heaven down to two chairs around the conference table, where she then sat down and fanned herself with one hand as though she were exhausted.

  Heaven 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 nun’s party.”

  “Like everything else in this town, Heaven. It’s a long saga but a good one. 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.”

  “This is actually the site of convent number one and number two. Then they moved down river 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. The two women from New Orleans, plus Heaven and
Rozanne Gold, who was on a cookbook tour and in town, figured out who should cook what for themselves and the ones not present, like Lidia Bastiavich and Edna Lewis and Lidia Shire.

  The other committees gave their reports and Heaven could see a lot of work had been done already. Fixing the food was the easy part. Filling the tables with paying guests was always 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 in the inner courtyard and to that end they all got up and toured the area, Susan showing where the tent kitchen would be placed and Mary and her committee figuring out that they could get four more ten top rounds 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, seeing how this woman had already changed the dynamics of the group without saying a word.

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

  Amelia Hart was one of those burnished African-American women who, had they chosen a life outside of New Orleans, could easily have lived as a white person from a Mediterrean country. She was extraordinarily beautiful, tall and haughty, her hair up in an elaborate but professional French twist, and her bronze-colored suit tailored and expensive enough to give Nancy Blair a run for her money. It was, in fact, Nancy who spoke to Amelia’s presence first.

  “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 seated as this was the first time the chefs had met with the rest of the committee. Susan found a side chair and pulled it to the table quietly downstream from Amelia, who now stood up dramatically. “Thanks, Nancy, but I’m not here professionally. Truth is, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if the lovely Sisters of the Holy Trinity here were the laughingstock of New Orleans. 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,” she said with about equal parts ice and humor in her voice as she took her seat.

  “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 Heaven with a finger over her lips.

  “What I want to know is, if you Uptown ladies, and you too, Nancy, have so much time on your hands, why don’t you at least choose someone to honor who is an integral part of our history that is constandy getting the short end of the stick. The Sisters of the Holy Trinity are dying out, honey.”

  Nancy Blair, ignoring the cut that Amelia had slipped in when she made 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 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 at the group 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-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 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 Mid-westerners couldn’t muster for a crisis that happened last week. But enough was enough. This woman 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 was all atwitter suddenly.

  “Amelia, I’m Heaven Lee, a chef from Kansas City. I know very little about those that you speak of, yet as an outsider it sounds to me like 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 Restauranteurs and also of Chef’s Collaborative 2000, I’m also dedicated to the education of 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 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. You could see on Amelia’s face, so was she.

  “Nice work, girlfriend,” Meaty hissed with a little pull on Heaven’s hand and a laugh.

  The meeting would be hard to call back to order after Amelia and Heaven had said their pieces, but that possibility was soon gone forever. The janitor burst into the room with a wild look on his face. “Sister, you better come,” he said, indicating the nun at the table. “You better all come. Front 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 front courtyard between the high brick fence on Ursulines Street and the building proper. Boxwood shrubs formed elegant patterns. But 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 like “Parasites,” “Cunt,” “Bitches” all around. But as upsetting as that seemed to Heaven, most of the women were aghast at something else, or the lack of something else.

  “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 their most prized possession.”