If a ghost could choke, Cameron was doing that right now. Or maybe those were peals of laughter. “Your boyfriend will murder you in your sleep.”
She ignored the boyfriend comment. Cameron was trying to get a rise out of her. “Ladybird’s a perfect partner, and she knows how to keep a secret.” She crossed her fingers behind her back and hoped Ladybird did indeed know how to keep secrets.
“Fine. Take Ladybird. Just don’t get her killed, Max.”
*
“Oh my, oh my,” Ladybird chirped. “We must have champagne cocktails. I love the bubbles, you know.”
Ladybird also loved Max’s little red convertible. She’d insisted they drive with the top down. With her hair tucked securely beneath a multi-colored scarf, she resembled a parrot.
Max was fine on the way up, until she got to the City, then her hands tensed on the wheel. She hated driving in the City, the one-way signs, the congested streets that all looked alike so that she was never sure exactly where she was. It reminded her too much of her days as a CPA when she’d driven regularly into the City and regularly gotten lost. Max breathed a sigh of relief when she finally parked in the underground garage in the middle of Union Square and put the top up against the evening cold and thieves. Not that a vinyl cover would stop a thief if he really wanted something.
Armed with Ladybird and the address of the Embassy Hotel, Max headed up the hill. Ladybird’s navy suit brought out the highlights in her blue-tinted hair. The jacket, edged with braided piping, reached the palms of her hands, the pleated skirt landing somewhere in the middle of her calves. At her throat, she’d fastened a mother-of-pearl cameo, and on her feet, she wore a good pair of orthopedics. She looked every inch the society matron—despite the shoes—like her namesake, Ladybird Johnson. Of course, Witt’s mother had been born with the name Ethel, a signature she hated and had somehow eliminated back in the sixties.
The walk was less than half a mile, but Max’s feet ached in her high heels by the time they reached the hotel. The doorman was absent—perhaps they were too early for him at eight o’clock—but the door was embossed with gold and the carpeting in the lobby was the same shade of green as the kid’s uniform in her dream. Everything was as she’d predicted.
The bar was to the right, past the elevators. Max led Ladybird to the soft music. Piano again. This time she wasn’t sure of the song.
Ladybird smiled. “Oh, that’s a lovely tune.”
Max agreed. “What is it?”
“‘Laura,’ I think.” As she walked, Ladybird swayed to the music.
Being only a little after eight, the tables were mostly empty. Three older couples had taken to the dance floor while two younger men in business attire nursed cocktail, one a lanky blond with a white band of skin where his wedding ring should have been, the other a dark-haired brooding type a la Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights. She and Ladybird sat at a small round table in a back alcove, and Max ordered Ladybird’s champagne cocktail. She splurged on one herself. One was her limit, she being the designated driver for the evening.
“Who are we looking for, Max?”
Max weighed how much to tell Ladybird. So far, she’d only said she needed to see the bar itself. Ladybird, while patient, wasn’t bad at mathematics, easily putting two and two together and leaping ahead to five. “It’s your latest murder case, isn’t it?” As if Max were truly a detective instead of a psychic with nothing more than visions and guesses.
Max answered with equal seriousness. “A man was murdered this time. In the dream, I saw a dark-haired woman. I’m not sure who she is or how she fits in, but I saw the two of them here together. She’s a little taller than me, maybe five-seven. Unless she’s wearing high heels.” Which Max was almost sure she would be. “I’ll know her when I see her.” She hoped.
Of course, there was Witt’s description of the blocky, no-neck man seen lurking nearby on the night in question. Max would be on the look out for him as well. Too much of a coincidence for the mysterious man to be hanging about aimlessly in the vicinity of a murder.
A candle decorated the center of each table. Runner lights edged the carpet and guided the way to the restrooms and the dance floor. All three older couples, now joined by a fourth, moved smoothly around the twenty-four foot square of hardwood.
“Isn’t dancing the most beautiful thing,” Ladybird murmured dreamily, chin in hand, attention rapt. “Horace and I took ballroom dance classes, but...” She shrugged. Horace had died.
At this point, the average age of the room’s occupants was somewhere around sixty-five. The Lawrence Welk crowd, they were defined by their music. All that was needed now was the bubble machine.
It came in the form of their cocktails. Ladybird took a sip and giggled. Hard for a woman of seventy-eight to giggle, but Ladybird managed it without appearing silly.