We were in … well, not exactly an alley but a street as narrow and unimportant as it can be before it is designated an alley. It was neat and tidy, though, and looked to be the backs of buildings which must front onto a larger street. The shiny blonde opened a steel door that was not locked although it had a formidable padlock. We went in, our circular formation transforming into a line order, then, inside the door, I inhaled …
There was no mistaking that odor—we were in a restaurant. It had that solidly comforting smell of a superior restaurant, too—no garlicky overtones, no rancid-fat undertones but a nicely rounded, richly satisfying, good food smell.
I was instantly reassured. This was familiar territory. I felt I was on safe ground and I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
Our squad marched past the kitchen but I didn’t get enough of a glance inside to see much. I got a glimpse of the main dining room and it looked pretty classy though it wasn’t open yet, shrouded in a curtained gloom. We went up a flight of stairs and into a private dining room. It was intended for banquets and had one large table that was fully occupied once we sat down—about fifteen women were already there.
The black-haired miss with the almost perfect features opened the proceedings. “You’re probably wondering what this is all about,” she said, and I didn’t answer. It had been the understatement of the year.
“Each of us is a restaurant owner,” she went on, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief though I managed not to let it show. If they owned restaurants, they weren’t real kidnappers. If not, though, why did they pretend to be? She was continuing, “We call ourselves the Witches.”
I had been glancing at the faces at the table meanwhile, trying to get a clue. Not all were as good-looking as the quintet chosen for the actual snatch but a few smiled and none looked downright dangerous. Several were somewhat older, but again, none looked as if she came from the criminal classes so my tension was easing.
The shiny blonde muscled her way into the arena. “Let’s get civilized here.” She showed a magnificent set of gleaming white teeth that could have admen from half a dozen toothpaste manufacturers fighting over her. “I’m Jenny Kirkpatrick. I have a restaurant over on Swallow Street, it’s called The General’s Tavern.”
The other members of the hit squad didn’t want to be left out of the act. The black-haired, long-lashed, nearly perfectly featured number said, “My name’s Marguerite Saville. My place is the Bistro Bonaparte.”
The next contributor said, “I have a place on Waverley. My name’s Leah Rollingson.” She had a delightful smile that brought out two tiny dimples. They were a contrast to her almond-shaped eyes and as I wondered about some Asian origin, she added, “It’s really Li—spelled
L-i.
My parents are from Singapore but everybody called me Lee until one day, a Louisiana native called me Leah. I’ve been Leah ever since, sounds more Southern.”
The brown-haired, brown-eyed lass who had waved to me and started all this, tossed in her contribution. “I’m Emmy Lou Charbonneau, born and bred in New Orleans. My place is called Café Cajun—and it’s authentic as all get-out.” I could believe it. Her accent was as Southern as hush puppies.
“Della Forlani,” said the refugee from an Italian fashion catwalk. “My parents brought me here from Italy when I was three. My mother taught me to cook and now I have the Villa Romana.”
“So you all own and operate restaurants when you’re not kidnapping people,” I said. Most of them laughed amiably. I was about to add,
And the rest of you are accessories, presumably before the fact,
but bit it off just in time. The fewer references to crime, the better. I substituted, “And you call yourselves witches.”
“W-I-T-C-H-E-S,”
Marguerite corrected me, spelling it out letter by letter. “It stands for ‘Women in the Catering, Hotel and Eating Services.’”
“From what I’ve heard of New Orleans and its history of voodoo, ‘Witches’ is very appropriate,” I said.
“This is a male-dominated town,” said Jenny. She really was quite attractive. Her blonde hair didn’t look that shiny anymore and she had steady blue eyes. Her chin was proud and determined, especially the way it jutted out a little bit further now as she spoke up on behalf of the dominated class. They sure didn’t look like they took any domination, I thought—but then, that was their point.
Jenny went on. “Men own this town, men run it. They think women should stay home and cook for the family—”
“—And mind the babies,” added Emmy Lou. “Well, all of us wanted to cook, but not just for a family. We wanted to make it a career, we wanted to make a name for ourselves, to be known, recognized, applauded for our efforts and our achievements.”
“We all wanted to become chefs and have our own restaurants,” said Della.
“It caused a stir at the time.” One of the women who had already been at the table took up the tale. She was in her fifties and looked as if she could run the kitchen at the White House and be able to write half a dozen books about it. “I’m Harriet Vance. The culinary institutes round these parts had never had any women chefs. They were as masculine as the marine corps—”
“The marines take women now,” a wispy girl with long hair, clearly a stickler for detail, interrupted.
“They didn’t then,” Harriet went on without pausing, “so we all had to go elsewhere. It just happened that several of us came back to New Orleans about the same time. A few of us knew each other and as we were all striving toward the same goal, we got together, informally at first, then we formed ‘the Witches.’”
“And we’ve been using it to exert what leverage we can,” another woman said. She had prematurely gray hair, very fashionably styled, and a smooth unlined face. “I’m Eleanor McCardle. I have a cooking school and placement bureau for the trade. As Witches, we’ve been able to help a number of women to advance in the food and restaurant trades.”
“Very laudable,” I said, “and now you want to improve your cash flow by going into the kidnapping business. I hope you’re not helping those other women by advising them to follow your career change.”
That brought numerous smiles, even a few laughs. My comment was a bit snippy but I was still feeling the relief from learning they were not ill-intentioned, so I was sure I could get away with it. Marguerite was one of the smilers.
“From time to time,” she said, “whenever someone comes to town who we think might help our cause, we bring them here and put our case. We like to call it kidnapping—I hope you didn’t take it too seriously. I mean, I’m glad you didn’t have a heart attack or anything.”
“The only effect on my heart was being pulled into a limousine by five beautiful women,” I said. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen to me very often—in fact, I can’t remember the last time.”
More smiles greeted that, the first of them appearing on the faces of the Famous Five. It was still true, I reflected, you can never overdo flattery. “All that remains,” I pointed out, “is for you to tell me what you want from me. Now I know that you’re not going to throw me into a kind of harem-in-reverse, you can talk freely.”
“It concerns the chef’s book from the Belvedere.” Jenny, the blonde, delivered this message.
I winced inwardly. Complications might be getting into this case.
“H
OW DO YOU KNOW
about that?” I asked for openers. It was only one of several questions I was going to need the answers to before I committed to this particular female cause, no matter how worthy.
The older woman was ready for that. “First, all of us in this room are in the restaurant business. Second, New Orleans is not that big a town, it’s hard to keep a secret here. Third, the Belvedere family is famous, anything that is connected with their name gets some visibility. When you put all of these together—well, you can understand how we know.”
“You knew about the book already?”
“Of course we knew,” piped up another voice. It belonged to a stern-looking woman who probably ran a very tight restaurant but had a warm smile when she wanted to use it. “Like Eleanor said, the Belvedere family is famous in New Orleans. In the trade, it’s always been common knowledge that Arturo Belvedere wrote a chef’s book and that his heirs have carried on that tradition. Naturally, when we heard about the auction, we were interested in the book.”
“A coup for the Witches?”
“We try never to miss a chance of getting our name out there. Besides, the book could get more and more valuable. It could increase in value faster than any stock, so we were able to justify the idea financially. Of course, we had to set a limit.”
“That’s why we decided to bid on it.” This was Della, the dark-haired, Italian-flavored beauty. “Oh, we knew we didn’t stand a chance if the bidding went way up, but we thought it was worth a try.”
“So one of you went and bid on the book? Which one?”
There was a pause. “Actually, it wasn’t one of us,” said Jenny. “Well, she used to be one of us. She gave up working in the trade and started her own agency doing publicity for food fairs, food trade conventions, TV and radio, putting out a newsletter, setting up Web sites—that sort of thing.”
“Why not one of your own members?” I asked.
“This lady has a … well, let’s call it an aggressive personality. We thought she was so much better suited to handling an auction than any of us.”
I asked the question slowly. “Is she blonde, pushy, impatient, loud, big-mouthed?”
“He’s already met Elsa,” giggled the wispy girl with the long hair.
“Attractive,” I added hastily, “late thirties—”
“She says she’s thirty-two,” a new voice called out indignantly.
“I’m bad on women’s ages,” I explained.
“Her name is Elsa Goddard,” said Marguerite. “She managed to get her name in the newspaper report—”
“The bookseller who was murdered,” said Della. “Maybe some of you saw it on the TV news.”
“I missed that, I was working late,” said another, and two or three of the other members gave her a composite account. “So the Belvedere book hasn’t been found?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“What were you doing there?” It was Della asking.
“I was hired to do the same thing as Elsa Goddard, apparently,” I answered. “Go to the auction and buy the book.”
“Who hired you?” asked Della.
“I can’t answer that,” I said.
“So you can’t act on our behalf, then?” Della sounded disappointed.
“Of course he can,” Marguerite said firmly. “There’s no conflict of interest. He was unable to carry out his assignment and buy the book at the auction. So now he can work for us.”
“I have to wait and see what my principal wants me to do,” I said, getting all official. I went on quickly. “You may well be right, in which case I will be glad to do what I can.”
Nobody seemed to have an argument with that.
“Am I released from captivity?” I asked.
There was a titter or two then Della said, “We hope you’ll visit our restaurants, sample some genuine New Orleans cooking, get to know us.”
A few assenting murmurs came, then business cards fluttered across the table like a cloud of white butterflies. I gathered them up. “Thank you. I’d like to do that. Tell me something—have you really kidnapped two or three others before me?”
“Oh yes,” Harriet said.
“Get anything for them?”
There was a laugh at that. “They were kidnappings in the same sense that yours was,” Jenny said. “They were all people we wanted to help us.”
“In your fight for recognition as Witches?”
“That’s right.”
“Did it work?”
“We’re still fighting the good fight,” Marguerite asserted firmly.
“One unpleasant subject I have to bring up,” I said, “and that’s the matter of a fee.” That brought absolute quiet to the room. “I’m prepared to be reasonable and I’m well aware that the restaurant business isn’t as lucrative as people who eat in them think it is.”
“Unless you’re Wolfgang Puck or Alain Ducasse,” said Jenny.
“And we’re not,” Delia said. “We’re not even Alice Waters.”
“But we will be, one day,” Harriet said bravely. Then she spoiled it by saying, “I think the best way would be a flat fee for getting us the book—say, a thousand dollars.”
A woman who had not contributed until now chose that moment to add, “Of course, there would be no payment for failure.” She looked like one of the Witches, I thought; all she needed was a bubbling cauldron to stir. Still, it was a convenient approach for me to fall in with, as it avoided any problem I might have with serving two masters. If I didn’t bring the Witches the book, they didn’t have to pay me. Besides, I still had these niggling doubts about Eric Van Linn, who might not have told me everything.
“Eating at any of our restaurants would naturally be without charge,” Jenny said brightly. “That’s worth quite a lot of money.”
“How about expenses incurred during my investigations?” I inquired.
A few dubious expressions showed around the table but Della, who had clearly paid close attention to the financial part of the curriculum when she had studied cooking, said, “Up to twenty-five dollars a day; anything over that to have prior approval. All fully receipted.”
I tried to get that up but without success. I had done business with women before many times, but it had been in the singular. How different they were when pluralized.
“Reporting,” said Marguerite. “We will want frequent reports.”
“How do you want me to do that?”
“You can do it through me,” Marguerite offered, and I saw nothing wrong with that idea but Jenny said brightly, “Or I can be the contact.” This was good, now they were fighting over me.
The discussion continued briefly, then Harriet broke the deadlock and said to the group, “If he’s going to be eating at our restaurants, let him make the reports then. We’re all in touch with each other frequently.”
That was deemed a good solution by all.
“Am I released from bondage, then?” I asked.
“Paroled,” said Eleanor. “Be on your best behavior.”
“The poor man,” Emmy Lou said. “Here in New Orleans!”
The stretch limo had gone when I went out but it was easy to get a cab. Before leaving, I had asked which television station Elsa Goddard worked for and learned that it was WKNO. I had phoned and asked if she was there. She was indeed and I hung up and went for the cab.