“Hestia, what got into you? I almost fainted when you said that…. About Nessa’s…” Words failed Calista.
“For a moment”—Hestia squeezed Nessa’s fingers—“it seemed as if we were sitting here with our family.”
“They are not our family,” Nessa said fiercely.
“I know, dear. It’s just that they’re familiar now, and I remember so well those days when all our sisters dined here, and little Buddie and Daddy and Mama.” Hestia turned to Nessa. “Little Buddie, that was your grandpa.”
“I know, Aunt Hestia.”
“I remember, too,” Calista said. “We’d sit around this table, little Buddie in his high chair, having the most marvelous breakfasts, teasing each other—”
“About your virginity?” Nessa’s voice rose.
“Well, no, not that.” Yet Hestia smiled.
Calista smiled, too. “But almost. We could tell our mother anything, so when Daddy got up to go to work, we would laugh about our gentlemen callers and ask advice and—oh! it was wonderful. Lots of times we had company—relatives or friends—and they’d stay for days. We used to complain about going to see the same sights over and over again, but before the war and that wicked hurricane, New Orleans was a grand city, and we were awfully proud of it.”
“I don’t understand how we could have been so many and dwindled to so few.” Hestia shook her head in bewilderment.
“We Dahls don’t breed well,” Calista said.
“Daddy and Mama did.”
“Yes, but Daddy was always chasing Mama around the kitchen.”
“Lucky Mama!”
The aunts were lost in their memories.
But Nessa could think of only one thing worse than talking about her great-aunts’ sexual history, and that was talking about her great-grandparents’ kitchen romps. “Whatever! But while you’re near to my heart, aunts, I don’t even want to talk about it with you!”
“You can! It’s not as if we’re virgins,” Calista said.
“Of course, I was married,” Hestia said.
Nessa wanted to stop her ears with her fingers. “Yes, so I assumed you—”
“And my young man didn’t make it back from the war.” Calista’s smile crooked with remembered pain.
Hestia put her veined hand over Calista’s and gently squeezed.
Nessa took Calista’s hand, too. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” Calista said, “but I’ve always been glad I didn’t wait. Ever since I got that phone call from his parents, I’ve tried to live my life so that I had no regrets. You need to do that, too, Nessa!”
“For once, Calista’s right!” Hestia said. “You listen to her, Nessa.”
“What regrets could I have? I have the two best aunts in the entire world.” Nessa stood hastily before Hestia and Calista could point out that a young woman should have more in her life than her family and her career.
Because maybe that was true, but Nessa had a goal.
Her darling aunts had mortgaged the house to pay for Nessa’s expensive education. They claimed it was well worth it, that she’d brought them such pleasure they were in debt to her.
But Nessa knew better. Every day her aunts got up and spent the day cleaning, changing sheets, shopping for groceries, and the hundreds of tasks necessary to run their boarding house.
So she would pay them back, get the boarders out, and her aunts would never have to change another bed or make another breakfast.
“Now I’m off to work and a fabulous new promotion.” Nessa kissed her aunts on their papery cheeks. “And tonight we party!”
Three
Easter was late this year, so Mardi Gras was late, too, and Nessa walked outside and into a humidity so dense she could taste it. Or maybe it was New Orleans she could taste. She caught the streetcar to the French Quarter, and hopped off at the Canal and St. Charles streets stop.
Eight o’clock was early enough that she could see only the exhausted shopkeepers sweeping the debris of last night’s party into the gutter, the occasional tourist staggering toward his hotel, and Georgia Able, Nessa’s best friend from grade school and a police officer for the New Orleans police department.
Georgia’s family had been in New Orleans as long as Nessa’s, at first as slaves, then as free blacks, and she knew every inch of the city. Her wide, melting brown eyes, slow drawl, and curvaceous figure hid a steel-magnolia personality that she used as skillfully as she used her service revolver.
Now she perched on a police horse, a riding helmet on her head, grimly surveying the streets from behind dark glasses, but at the sight of Nessa she smiled and lifted a hand.
Nessa stopped to pet Goliath. “The parades start today.”
“Don’t I know it!” Georgia said fervently.
“Are you still on shift from last night or are you going on now?”
“I’m going on shift now, but they called me in last night because the crowds were out of control. I’m working on four hours’ sleep, and I’m about this far”—Georgia showed Nessa an inch between her thumb and forefinger—“from strangling the first tourist who throws their beads at Goliath.” Leaning down, she patted his neck. “Poor boy, he’s as tired as I am.”
“Fat Tuesday is only nineteen days away.” Nessa gestured toward a cart. “Want me to get you a café au lait?”
“No, thanks. I’ve had so much coffee I’m sloshing.” Georgia lowered her warm, gentle voice to a whisper only Nessa could hear. “And I’m on the rag so I have to pee all the time, anyway.”
Nessa grinned. “Want me to make a sign? OFFICER WITH CRAMPS AND BLOATING. GO AHEAD, MAKE HER DAY.”
“Can you tell I’m bloated?” Georgia slid her dark glasses down her nose, aimed a lethal glance at Nessa, and fingered her pistol.
“I didn’t say that!” Nessa said in fake alarm. “Your bulletproof vest makes you look dangerous, not bloated.”
“For true?”
“For true. Just keep saying—only nineteen more days. Nineteen more days and the parades will be over, the tourists will be gone, and it’ll be Lent once more.”
“Nineteen more days, seven hundred more arrests for public intoxication and lewdness, and, God help us all, Fat Tuesday looming at the end of it all.”
“I’m glad I work in a bank,” Nessa said with heartfelt sincerity.
“As long as you’re not the bank that gets hit this Mardi Gras.”
“Hit? Oh. You mean the Beaded Bandits. No leads?”
Nessa’s fond tone seemed to aggravate Georgia. “Sure, you and everyone else in New Orleans think they’re captivating, and the press has come up with such a cutesy name for them. But how do you get leads with robberies like that?”
“Don’t forget that they steal from a coldhearted corporation based in Philadelphia.”
“There’s that.” With an alertness that belied her complaints of exhaustion, Georgia scrutinized a group of tourists who straggled out of a bar, looking as if the night before had been long and difficult, and shook her head. Returning her attention to Nessa, she added, “We’re getting pressure from the CEO to stay on top of the situation, but it’s Mardi Gras. I can barely stay on my horse.”
“Is ol’ MacNaught being a jerk?”
Georgia leaned on the saddle horn. “From the top of his balding head to the tip of his shiny black shoes.”
“I heard a rumor that he looks like Danny DeVito.”
“Could be. I heard he’s a hermit who hides from the press.”
“Yankees.” Nessa sighed.
“Bless their hearts.”
The women exchanged understanding grins.
“Where y’at?” Georgia asked.
In the New Orleans patois, she was asking how Nessa was, and Nessa could hardly contain her sarcasm. “Great. Just great. This morning, I’ve been talking about sex with my aunts.”
Georgia straightened up. “Did you learn anything?”
“Yes. I learned neither of them are virgins.”
/> Georgia winced. “I thought you were talking about your sex life.”
“God, yes, that, too. Nothing is sacred anymore. Are you coming to the party tonight?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t care what riot occurs today. I wouldn’t miss the party at the Dahl House.” Georgia lowered her voice. “I don’t know how many of the cops are going to be able to drop by, but we took up a collection. Not much, just a little to help with the expenses. I’ll bring you the envelope tonight.”
“Thank you. Thank the others.” The tradition of giving the Dahl girls a few dollars in an envelope to offset party expenses had started long before Nessa’s birth, and she felt no false pride in admitting, “We couldn’t do it without your help, and if we couldn’t have the party, it would break my aunts’ hearts.”
“The party at the Dahl House is Mardi Gras,” Georgia said.
“Are you bringing a date?”
“No.” Georgia was brief to the point of curtness.
Which didn’t stop Nessa. “Why not? You could stand to see some action.”
“Civilians can’t deal with a woman who can knock them down and beat them up, and they really can’t deal with the hours I work during Mardi Gras.” Georgia patted her horse and stared down the street. “That leaves only cops, and they’re all married or jerks.”
“Except for—”
“All of them are married or jerks.” Georgia glared at Nessa.
“Okay. If you say so. But I like Antoine, and I know for a fact he’s available.”
“I don’t know why you’re so hung up on Antoine Valteau.” Everything about Georgia—her expression, her posture, her movements—radiated irritation.
That didn’t impress Nessa. “I’m not. You are. And he likes you, Georgia.”
“I’m not interested in a one-nighter.” Georgia held up her hand. “Just drop it, Nessa. Just…drop it. I’ll tell the aunts I had a date, but he couldn’t get off work….”
Nessa narrowed her eyes in thought. “Maybe that’s what I should say. He couldn’t get off work….”
“Who couldn’t get off work?” Georgia must be tired. She wasn’t following.
“I don’t know. Some mythical guy.”
“You’re not bringing a date tonight?”
With an exasperated glance at the officer on the horse, Nessa asked, “Remember three years ago when I brought Brad Oglesby, he looked around, decided he liked the Dahl House, and moved in? A single date became a yearlong ordeal of me locking my door every night to keep him out.”
“I’d forgotten that one.” Georgia relaxed. “That was great.”
“Yeah. Great. Not to mention two years ago when Rafe Cabello got drunk and spent the whole evening throwing up in the bathroom.”
“He’s still pining after you, you know.” Georgia visibly perked up at Nessa’s recital of the past horrors. “You have to stop rejecting these guys. They take it so badly.”
“And last year was the worst ever. The weatherman from Channel 6.” Nessa shuddered in real horror.
“Rayburn Pluche brought the TV cameras, and proposed.” Georgia burst into laughter. In between gasps, she asked, “Remember the Elvis costume? And the blue suede shoes? My God, Nessa, the look on your face when you realized…”
Nessa watched her friend in disgust. “This is what I live for. To entertain you.”
“No. Really. Sorry.” Georgia wiped at her face and tried to control herself. “I’m just…worn out…and when I remember the sequins on his collar…the sideburns…it was so…” She went off into another gale of laughter.
“If you’re entirely done”—Nessa gave Goliath a last pat—“I have to get to work.” She started toward the bank.
“Hey, Nessa?” Georgia called.
Nessa turned back.
“Are you bringing a date?”
Four
Nessa shot Georgia the one-fingered salute, then walked through the French Quarter to the distinguished old bank on Chartres Street. At eight thirty, she climbed the steps and tapped on the glass door.
Their uniformed guard let her in, and the blast of air-conditioning felt like heaven. “Good morning, Miss Dahl.”
“Morning, Eric.” The old-fashioned lobby gleamed with marble floors and polished wood counters, and glittered with Mardi Gras tinsel hanging from the lights and masks decorating the walls.
She put her purse away in the locked drawer in her desk, the one that sat against the wall in the lobby—the one she would soon be leaving behind forever—then made her way behind the counter to the vault. She punched her code into the electronic panel, and the round steel door silently opened.
Last Friday, she had checked the amounts in the tellers’ cash drawers and put the totals into individual bank bags. She placed the bags on the shelves and the drawers on the table. Today, soon, the armored car would come and take most of the cash, the bank would open, and the banking cycle would begin again.
Now Nessa took the stacks of bills off the shelves, counted them, then filled the drawers for the tellers. Stacking the drawers, she hefted them in her arms and marched out to the counter. One by one, she distributed them, waited until the teller counted and confirmed the amounts, and glanced at the clock.
Eight fifty a.m. The system of checks and balances took a while, but with that one mistake she’d made seven years ago, she had proven how necessary it was to take the time and do it properly.
Five women and one man stood waiting at their stations. Each one wore a costume that represented a period in New Orleans history. The older tellers, Julia, Donna, and Mary, had been through this bank promotion the year before. Julia and Donna wore gowns from the roaring twenties. Mary wore a nineteenth-century serving maid’s black-and-white costume. Jeffrey wore the formal suit of a Southern planter, grew his sideburns down his cheeks, and greatly enjoyed the irony of his attire; Jeffrey was black. Those four looked cool and comfortable.
Lisa and Carol, new to the bank, young and attractive, had both opted for glamorous costumes from the old South. They were now paying for their vanity in misery and discomfort.
“Hey, Carol, how’s it going?” Nessa asked the most pitiful-looking teller, a slender Cajun with large, doe-brown eyes, a glorious fall of glossy brown hair, and a low-cut, lacy gown with a massive antebellum hoop skirt.
“Scarlett O’Hara my ass. This corset is killing me.” Carol grabbed her waist and tugged. “No air-conditioning, all these petticoats—how could those poor women stand these things?”
“That’s why they fainted so much,” Julia said.
“And had the vapors.” Carol watched Julia with envious eyes.
“You’d have the vapors, too, if your waist was cinched so tight you couldn’t pass gas.” Donna, old enough to be everyone’s grandmother and frank to a fault, grinned at Carol’s expression of horror.
“Makes you long for the good old days, doesn’t it?” Mary checked her supply of hand disinfectant.
“Not me,” Jeffrey said.
“Me, neither.” Dainty, tanned Lisa shook her head, and the lacy widow’s cap perched atop her curls slid sideways.
“Here, honey, let me.” While Lisa squirmed, Donna briskly took the pins out of her hair, rearranged the cap, and stuck it back on.
“What about you, Nessa?” Lisa asked. “You’re not dressed up at all.”
“Here.” Eric hustled over with a couple of strings of beads. “Better get them on before the Stephabeast sees you. You know how she is.”
The others concealed grins at the nickname and waited for Nessa to reprimand Eric. With her stiff-necked demands and her grim surveillance, Stephanie had earned their enmity.
Instead Nessa cranked her neck toward the open door of Stephanie’s corner office. “She’s here already?” Stephanie usually didn’t arrive until a minute before the bank opened. Or a minute after.
“Oh, she’s here.” Eric did the Frankenstein walk. “With a stick up her behind. But that means good news for you, right, Miss Dahl?”
Nessa supposed Stephanie’s secretary had spread the news about Nessa’s new office. She showed everyone her crossed fingers.
“We hope you get that promotion this time, Miss Dahl,” Julia said.
The others nodded.
“I know not to get my hopes up.” Yet Nessa invariably got her hopes up. She couldn’t help it. She was the kind of optimist who not only saw the glass half-full, but knew it was lead crystal.
With a glance at the clock, Nessa moved behind the counter and paced the line of tellers. “It’s one minute to nine. Do you need anything? Are you ready?”
“We’re ready.” Mary squared her shoulders.
“Another day in paradise,” Donna said.
“All we have to do is get through today, and we have the party at the Dahl House tonight.” Jeffrey smiled.
Nessa glanced toward the door and saw the tall, narrow figure of a man dressed in a rumpled black suit. His gaze darted from one teller to the other, the tip of his long nose fogging the glass. “Mr. Miller’s waiting for us to open.”
The tellers groaned.
“After that, the day can’t get worse,” Mary said cheerfully.
“You’re just saying that because he won’t come to you,” Carol said.
“Nope, he sure won’t. He’s one of those guys who loves to fall into that trap of yours.” Mary nodded at Carol’s cleavage.
“It’s nine.” Nessa signaled Eric. “Open the doors.”
Eric did as he was told.
As always, the line of customers waiting for the bank to open was long, and as always on Friday, Mr. Miller led the way. He disappeared into the men’s room, coming out with a roll of toilet paper beneath his arm.
Carol flashed a smile and some cleavage at the first man in line, and she was busy when Mr. Miller stepped forward.
He headed for Julia, who muttered, “Guess I drew the short straw.”
“Good morning.” Mr. Miller claimed to be a minister, was inevitably friendly, and perfectly polite. He should have been the ideal customer, but in a disagreeable ritual, he unwound a strip of toilet paper and used it to thoroughly wipe his nose before counting out his money and making his deposit.
Thigh High Page 3