“You live here, Minka?” Helen asked politely.
Minka nodded. “Yes, I am a proper American now,” she said. Her features were pure Slav: wide, flat cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Her style changed from week to week, but today she was dressed like an extra from a French film with a striped boatneck tee and a little scarf scattered with polka dots. She’d cut her hair again, cropped short, and dyed jet black with cherry highlights. She was wearing a tiny pair of reading glasses with round frames. All she was missing was the bicycle basket with the baguette sticking out of it.
Helen gave me an appraising look. “Is the house in your name?”
“Nope. A holding company from the Caymans. There’s no way to trace it to me.”
“I’ll be damned,” Mary Alice said. “You have your own safe house.”
I shrugged. “A reasonable precaution, in our line of work.”
“I don’t have a safe house.” Natalie was sulking, but Helen still looked thoughtful.
She didn’t say anything else and Natalie turned to Minka. “I hope Billie has at least provided you with an indoor bathroom. It’s a bit rustic.”
Minka’s eyes narrowed like a cat’s. “Billie has provided me with everything.” She stuck around for a few more minutes, but the atmosphere was distinctly chilly, and when she excused herself, Natalie turned to me.
“What did I say?” Nat demanded.
“It wasn’t what you said,” Helen told her. “I think it was the suggested criticism of Billie she resented.”
Before Natalie could roll her eyes, Helen stood up. “I am about dead on my feet.”
I pushed myself up from my chair. “I’ll show you where you can sleep.”
Mary Alice stayed put. “We need to figure this out. We need a plan.”
Helen turned as if to sit down again, but she swayed a little and I put a hand to her shoulder, holding her in place. “Yes, Mary Alice. We do. But we’re exhausted and in no fit state to think straight. We sleep, then we eat, then we plan. Halliday rules.”
I could tell Mary Alice didn’t like it, but she got up and followed as I showed them to the building across the courtyard, the one with the brick tunnel running through the ground floor. On either side of the tunnel were two large rooms, one packed so full of junk, it was impossible to get inside. The other was empty except for a small spiral staircase. Upstairs was a long hallway with a dozen doors opening off of it.
“Nuns’ dormitory,” I told them. “The rooms are small but at least they’re private.”
I opened the first door. Inside, the floorboards were wide and scrubbed clean. A twin-sized mattress, still in the plastic, was shoved against one wall, leaving just enough room to walk past. A niche in the wall held a plaster statue of a saint without a head.
Natalie opened her mouth, but Helen gave her a warning look.
“It’s very nice,” Natalie said faintly. She headed straight for the bed and collapsed down onto it, pulling her sweater over her head.
“Nat, dear,” Helen called. “Don’t you want to at least put sheets on your mattress?”
“Nope.” The word was muffled but the flap of the hand was clear enough.
We closed the door on her and Mary Alice and Helen took the next two rooms in line without a word. I went to mine and dropped to the bed, falling straight into sleep, the heavy kind of sleep that leaves you feeling gritty all over and worse than if you hadn’t tried at all. I woke up at sundown with the sheets twisted around my legs, sweating off a hot flash. I rolled out of bed and had a quick wash, then reached for the small stack of clothes I left in the house. Bootcut jeans and a ratty Janis Joplin T-shirt would do just fine for what I had in mind. I threw on my favorite cowboy boots, a bomber jacket older than Minka, and my sunglasses. I snagged a baseball cap on my way out the door. I hadn’t seen any signs we’d been followed, but I wasn’t taking chances.
I eased out of the gate and headed down Ursulines towards Decatur. My stomach growled as I passed Central Grocery, calling out for a muffaletta, but the closed sign was out and I kept on walking. I made a circuit of the quarter, zigging and zagging a bit, poking into a few alleys, but nothing triggered my Spidey sense. I stopped by Café du Monde for five orders of beignets and got back to the house with my arms full of paper sacks wilting from steam and grease and smelling like heaven.
Helen must have showered. Her hair was damp and combed neatly into its platinum bob. She was paging slowly through an issue of Vanity Fair from 2009 while Nat, wrapped in my favorite kimono, was drumming her fingers on the table. Mary Alice liberated the bags of beignets, passing them out with paper towels and the cups of chicory.
I looked around the room. “Where’s Minka?”
“Out,” Mary Alice said shortly.
“I think I just ovulated,” Natalie said as she lifted the first beignet. She bit into the warm dough with a low moan, puffing powdered sugar into the air. “Heaven.”
I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed my cap onto the table. “Beignets in New Orleans is a cliché but it’s a good one.” They were quiet, eating with studied enthusiasm, and I looked around, sizing them up. They were a little the worse for wear, but hanging in there. Just then Minka returned with bags from the carryout kitchen around the block—gumbo and potato salad, with bottles of red wine from the corner grocery. There was bread and a king cake that was so early for the season, it could have only come from one of the tourist traps on Bourbon Street.
“Bless you, child,” I said as Minka unpacked the bags. She turned to get bowls and spoons as I opened the first container. “We can talk while we eat.”
Helen took one of the bottles and a corkscrew, giving a narrow look at Minka’s back.
“Pas devant la petite fille,” she warned me.
Minka didn’t turn. “La petite fille parle fran?ais, madame,” she replied.
“Merde,” Helen said.
Minka faced us. “If you don’t want to talk with me, I will go to my room.”
“Of course not,” Mary Alice said, smoothing things over. “We all know what we owe you, Minka.”
She shot Helen a warning look and Helen handed over a glass of wine with a thin smile. “Certainly. I just didn’t know how much of the specifics of the next steps we wanted to bore Minka with.”
It was a bullshit piece of politeness, but I was too tired to call her on it.
Minka shrugged and ladled her gumbo over a scoop of potato salad, digging in her spoon while Nat watched in fascination. “Is that good?”
“Try,” Minka ordered.
Natalie did as she was told and took a spoonful, her eyes rolling back. “Holy shit. That’s amazing.”
Minka grinned and they applied themselves to their food with the enthusiasm of teenagers.
“You’re going to need an antacid later,” Mary Alice told Natalie when she reached for a bottle of hot sauce.
“I’ll sleep sitting up,” Natalie said. “It’s worth it.” She turned to me. “So, what now?”
“Time to take stock,” Helen said briskly. She ate a beignet with small, dainty bites, then pushed her sack aside. Not even a speck of sugar on her hands. Her bowl of gumbo was untouched but her wineglass was half-empty.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s take stock. We have obviously been targeted by the Museum for termination, but we still don’t know why.”
“I keep thinking it must be a misunderstanding,” Helen offered. “I mean, we’ve all been competent and occasionally exceptional at our jobs. And we’re finished. Why take us out now?”
“That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?” I said. “If we know why, everything else will make sense, because right now, nothing does.”
“What is this Museum?” Minka asked through a mouthful of gumbo.
Natalie looked at her curiously. “You know what Billie does for a living?”
“Yes,” Minka said. “You are friends from work? You kill people too?”
“They do,” I confirmed. “The Museum is the organization that we work for. And it seems the Board of Directors has decided to terminate our existence.”