Fairbanks, Nancy Page 5

  Vastly amused by the conviction that, like her namesake, Lazarus, she will rise from the dead to terrify her droves of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, Lazara has arranged to have this dish served at her funeral dinner. It in­volves sauteing chopped onion and chili peppers, mixing in the hominy, then baking the whole with grated longhorn cheese on top. You will never mistake this dish for some wimpy breakfast cereal.

  Of course, I didn't find the chef, although I wanted to ob­tain the instructions for his barbecue sauce, but I did take notes on every bite I ate. That practice earned me impatient glances from my friends, puzzled stares from strangers, and a visit from a waitress who asked if I worked for the Tunes-Picayune. She seemed disappointed to hear that I didn't.

  While I tasted and took notes, Lester, Carlene, and my husband chatted about the amazing growth of research on "bucky balls," a huge, soccer ball-shaped molecule discov­ered in the relatively recent past. Broder told Miranda about the lamentable lack of impact made by Calvinist theology on African-American Christians. Miranda responded with the suggestion that Calvinist hymns might not be lively enough to attract converts, a theory that Broder declared frivolous. Never having considered herself a frivolous per­son, at least since leaving jail in the early seventies and electing a career in law, Miranda refused to talk to Broder any further and turned her attention to the heretofore silent Nils.

  "Did she take her clothes with her?" Miranda asked.

  Startled, Nils looked up from his peach cobbler (which tasted of fresh peaches, although March is certainly not the peach season) and barked, "No."

  "Isn't that just like Julienne?" Miranda responded. "Run­ning away without a word to her friends, causing us all sorts of worry—"

  "Well, she meant to worry me," Nils interrupted, "but I'm not falling for that ploy."

  "Julienne may be intelligent," Miranda continued as if he hadn't spoken, "but she's always been flighty, thoughtless, and self-centered."

  If I hadn't been so worried by the revelation that Julienne had left her belongings behind, I'd have taken exception to Miranda's harsh assessment of my oldest friend. Flighty, thoughtless, and self-centered didn't describe Julienne at all. "Nils, if she were leaving you, she'd certainly have taken her clothes," I pointed out. "Could she be staying with rela­tives or friends?"

  "There aren't any left alive."

  "Then you've got to contact the police and report her missing."

  Nils glowered at me. "I have no intention of asking the police to find my runaway wife," he muttered. "Why should I embarrass myself when she's probably staying on the riverfront with Linus Torelli?"

  I almost exclaimed, "Without her clothes?" but caught myself in time. Such a remark would not have convinced Nils of anything but the presumed sexual infidelity of his wife, a suspicion I didn't entertain for a moment. However, I was considering the idea of contacting the police, even if I had to do it myself, when the lights on the stage bloomed, music drowned out conversation, and the gospel show began. It was an experience! Choruses of young people, fea­tured performers in sequins, and a master of ceremonies/ preacher wearing red boots and a gray Ghandi suit with flashing gold chains and medals. By the end of the performance, the audience was indeed clapping, swaying, and dancing in the aisles—well, not at our table. College profes­sors and tax lawyers aren't given to dancing in the aisles, al­though some of us did join in the clapping, and I noticed that Carlene was tapping her foot.

  6

  Hurricanes

  New Orleans is the birthplace of the cocktail, the first having been concocted by Antoine Peychaud, who es­caped the slave rebellion on Santo Domingo in the late eighteenth century and set up a pharmacy in New Or­leans. There he sold a brandy-based drink guaranteed to cure whatever ailed his customers. His cocktail, the Saz-erac, was served in a coquetier or eggcup from which the word cocktail derived. Peychaud himself invented the bitters that, with a dash of absinthe, added flavor to the Sazerac brandy.

  One can imagine the traumatized Frenchman, hav­ing barely escaped with his life from the violence in the Caribbean, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder by sipping his new medicinal cocktail from the large half of an egg cup. Would he have approved of the changes made in his recipe over the years? Probably not. The brandy has been replaced by rye whiskey and the absinthe, now outlawed in the United States, by Herbsaint, an anise liqueur, but the bitters still carry his name.

  So delighted was I with this delectable piece of culi­nary history that I determined to sample as many of the famous cocktails of New Orleans as I could. In moder­ate amounts, of course.

  Carolyn Blue, Eating Out in the Big Easy

  When the performance at the Praline Connection ended, Nils took the opportunity to slip away while Jason and I ' were saying good-bye to the rest of the party, all of whom had different plans for the time between one and the open­ing of registration at the convention center. I assume that Nils's plan was to avoid going to the police station to report his wife missing. Therefore, I did it for him.

  We asked directions from the young man taking tickets for the second show, and he, looking insulted, demanded to know if we thought something had been stolen from us dur­ing our visit. Given the master of ceremonies' many narra­tions about young people being saved from unfortunate circumstances by embracing Christ and the Praline Connec­tion, I can see that my inquiry was ill advised. I assured the young man that we had been not only unmolested but also pleased with our experience and wanted to consult the po­lice about a missing friend.

  Miranda, who was directly behind me, muttered, "Oh, for heaven's sake, Carolyn, give it a rest. Think how embar­rassed she'll be when she turns up and finds that the police are looking for her."

  I replied, "If you read your guide book, you'd know that female tourists are warned against walking alone at night."

  "You got that right, lady," said the young man. "Some fe­male friend a yours been walkin' 'round after dark by her ownsef an' ain't turned up, you best be headin' fo' the Vieux Carre station." His input on Julienne's disappearance was frightening, but he did provide directions to the police de­partment, which had a branch near the corner of Royal and Conti, a little over a block from our hotel. Perhaps the ad­vice of a native convinced Jason, who had not previously been much inclined to make a fuss about Julienne's strange . absence.

  At any rate, he agreed to make the long walk back to our hotel, although he would have saved himself steps by going to the area of the convention center instead. Fortunately, Jason is not averse to exercise, whereas I, had I not felt that Julienne's well-being was at stake, might have preferred to explore the river area. Back we trudged along South Peters, Canal, and Chartres, past our hotel to the corner of Conti and Chartres, then left on Conti to Royal.

  The station proved to be an impressive sight: cream stucco with two-story columns holding up an elaborate roofline, trees and shrubs growing green and healthy out­side, and a black wrought-iron fence behind which sleek white police motorcycles were parked on the flagstones sur­rounding the coche portiere. I found the handsome building reassuring, but once inside, both the decor and our reception were less so. The desk sergeant wanted to know what our re­lation to the missing person was, and he took the news that we were simply friends as no cause to leap into action. Fur­ther questioning elicited the information that Julienne Mag-nussen had a husband in town. The sergeant wanted to know why the husband hadn't reported her missing. The final blow to our case was the admission that our friend, whose husband hadn't seen fit to come in himself, had been miss­ing less than twenty-four hours.

  "Ma'am," drawled the sergeant, "we don' go lookin' for no adults 'less they been missin' forty-eight hours. Likely this lady jus' run off from her husband an' don' wanna be found. No use us lookin' for a woman don' wanna be found."

  "You're not going to do anything?" I cried.

  "Well, when she been gone forty-eight hours, y'all send in the lady's husband. Then we might—"

 
; "But she disappeared between Etienne's and the Hotel de la Poste," I protested as Jason tugged at my arm. "She must have been kidnapped."

  The sergeant picked up his ringing telephone and turned his back on me. And to think my mother always told me that policemen were my friends! I scowled at his back and al­lowed Jason to escort me out the door, through the lines of motorcycles, and out onto the sidewalk. Where, I wondered, were the policemen who were supposed to be riding the mo­torcycles and protecting the public from the dangers of the Big Easy? The only policeman I had seen was that recalci­trant sergeant.

  "How about a hurricane at Pat O'Brien's?" Jason asked.

  "A what?"

  "It's a famous New Orleans rum drink." He steered me resolutely along Royal Street toward Saint Peter Street and O'Brien's, which was housed in a delightful, late eighteenth-century brick building with tall windows and a wrought-iron balcony but marked only with a discreet round, green sign. By the time we arrived, I had discovered in my guidebook that the building had originally been a the­ater built by a Spanish military officer.

  Perhaps foolishly, I wanted to sit on the patio, which, even with the ever-impending rain, was crowded with noisy young people. Our waiter, an ancient black man wearing a green jacket with white piping and a black bow tie large enough to dwarf the back of a lady's head, wiped off two seats and served us the largest alcoholic drinks I have ever seen—and the pinkest. However, they were very tasty and just what I needed.

  Now searching for information on the drink, I discovered as I sipped that the hurricane was reputedly the result of an imprudent overbuying of rum and glasses in the shape of hurricane lamps by the owner in the 1930s. What fun! I made notes and told Jason I might just order a second. Jason replied that he thought the four ounces of rum in the drink I had ought to be enough for one afternoon. I think he was afraid eight ounces of rum might disable me to the extent that I wouldn't be in any condition to walk out of the bar on my own, and he was probably right, although at the time I thought he was exaggerating the alcohol content.

  Fortunately, I took his advice and managed to exit Pat O'Brien's in a ladylike fashion, even remembering to claim the deposits on the glasses. What a strange custom that is. Of course, the management wanted to sell us the glasses as souvenirs, but I didn't want a souvenir of a day when the police refused to assist in finding my best friend. Furthermore, tourists evidently used the glasses to hold beads they ac­quired during Mardi Gras parades. No Mardi Gras parades would be held during our visit, so we didn't need bead re­ceptacles.

  Pat O'Britn'j Hurricane Punch

  Mix 4 oz. of dark rum with 2 to 4 oz. of Pat O'Brien's Hurricane Mix. (Buy the passion fruit cocktail mix in New Orleans; then try to duplicate it at home—good luck!)

  Serve in a hurricane glass filled with crushed ice. (The glass resembles the lamp of the same name, but without lighting apparatus, and is available at Pat O'Brien's, but you won't get your deposit back if you don't return it. Any very large, 12- to 16-oz. glass will do.)

  Garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry.

  Because the police had not been at all obliging, I decided to investigate Julienne's disappearance on my own, beginning with Professor Linus Torelli, who Nils seemed to believe was Julienne's lover. Therefore, I went to the convention center with Jason, another long walk, and while he was reg­istering at the table that included people whose names begin with B, I sidled over to the T table. Rendered ultragregari-ous and none too truthful by the hurricane, I breezily in­formed a pleasant and helpful young lady wearing a convention badge that I was looking for my friend Linus Torelli. Had she seen him?

  Much more obliging than the police, she ascertained that he had already registered; she even provided the name and telephone number of the hotel at which he was staying, the same nearby high-rise where Miranda and Lester Abbott were registered. With any luck I wouldn't run into them. No doubt, they would have disapproved of my mission, as I sus­pected Jason would, had he been aware of my intentions.

  I ventured out with Jason's umbrella raised against a slanting new rainstorm that soaked my shoes and spattered my raincoat. Thank goodness for my New Orleans guide­book, which had advised carrying an umbrella at all times in this season. Jason had read it ahead of time. Otherwise, I would have been soaking wet instead of just damp and squishy of foot when I arrived at the reception desk and asked for Dr. Torelli. The clerk should have taken helpful­ness lessons from the T registration lady at the convention center. He would not give me a room number; he would and did call the chemist in question, which is how I came to in­terview Julienne's colleague in the lobby of his hotel.

  Linus Torelli was a slender man of medium height with olive skin and tightly curled black hair without a trace of gray, a good ten years younger than my friend, if I was any judge of age. More convinced than ever that he could not be her lover, I blurted out, immediately after the introductions and not long enough after the hurricane, "What's your rela­tionship to Julienne, Dr. Torelli?"

  Not surprisingly, the man was taken aback to be so ad­dressed by a mature female, who was somewhat the worse for rain and totally unknown to him. He coughed and stam­mered and finally managed to tell me that they ran a com­bined seminar for their graduate students. Then he seemed to reconsider this innocuous explanation and added, "Of course it goes without saying that Julienne and I are good friends."

  What does that mean? I wondered testily. Was he her lover or not? "When did you last see her?" I demanded.

  "Madam," he snapped, but got no further for I repeated my question more aggressively. Normally, I am a very lowkey person; alcohol and worry seem to have caused an un­fortunate personality change. Was I, by any chance, experi­encing a testosterone surge? Could menopause be creeping up on me? And did menopause actually trigger the produc­tion of testosterone in women? Probably not. While I was worrying about my uncharacteristic aggressiveness, Dr. Torelli was mumbling that he had not seen "Julie"—he called her Julie! Surely that was significant!—since Friday, the day before she left for New Orleans. Did that mean he hadn't left until this morning?

  "She's missing," I told him. "She hasn't been seen since 7:30 last night—unless you've seen her." I thought I saw alarm on his face. "Have you? Seen her?" He was taking much too long to answer a simple question.

  "No. No, I told you," he stammered. "Not since—ah—at the department. Last Friday."

  I didn't believe him, and he seemed to realize as much, for he hastened to add, a slight sneer in his voice, "Why don't you ask Nils? Her husband." With that, Dr. Torelli walked out the front door. Into the rain. Without a raincoat. I'm sure that was significant! I just didn't know of what. Or exactly how he had lied to me, although I was convinced that he had. And I didn't like the man. There was something sneaky about him. Not Julienne's type at all. So nothing made sense.

  I plopped down onto a deep-cushioned sofa, inexcusably indifferent to the damage my damp clothing might be doing to the expensive upholstery, and tried to reason my way through the evidence I had. Julienne and Nils had been quar­reling. She had left the dinner because of his unpleasant at­titude. And disappeared. Kidnapped? Off to see the man her husband claimed was her lover, a man who denied having seen her? Before I could carry my thought processes further, Linus Torelli reappeared, brushing rain from his curls and sports jacket.

  He planted himself in front of my sofa and said, "She's chairing a session, you know. And giving a paper. No mat­ter where she is, she'll be back for those." Spoken like a true scientist, I thought as he strode toward the elevators. Evidently, he had changed his mind about es­caping from me by going for a walk. Two ojher people got on with him, but I noted all the floors where that particular elevator stopped: seven, fifteen, and twenty-two. That nar­rowed down the location of his room, but not much. What if Julienne was up there? I should have rushed after him and boarded the same elevator. Not very subtle, but wouldn't he have been surprised?

  Instead, I fished my wallet from my hand
bag and looked through the pictures until I found an old one of Julienne, her brother Philippe, and myself, taken at least fifteen years ago on the lakeshore when we had been visiting her family's summer cottage. It was the only picture of her that I had with me, so I slipped it from its protective plastic envelope and went to the reception desk where, after waiting through six check-ins and one check-out, I arrived at the head of the line and showed my photo to the clerk.

  The woman nodded. "I remember her. At least I think it was her. She was wearing a red dress."

  "Yes!" I agreed enthusiastically. "She was. When did you see her?"

  "Last night. I worked a double shift yesterday."

  "When last night?"

  "Oh, eight-thirty or nine. Somewhere around then. She had me call one of our guests."

  "What floor?" I asked breathlessly.

  The clerk gave me a narrow glance. "I wouldn't remem­ber that. Why do you want to know?"

  "She's missing." I'm sure I looked as worried as I felt. "And the police won't do a thing."

  "Really?" The young woman's eyes went wide. "Well, he came down—"

  "What did he look like?"

  "I don't know. Dark-haired. Cute. I figured he was her brother. I mean he was younger and had the same color hair."

  I shook my head. "What happened then?"

  "They went out and came back after midnight. She went upstairs with him. That's when I got curious because I was sure there was only one person registered to that room. The management doesn't like people having nonguests staying overnight. Still, I thought she was his sister, so I didn't... Well, you mean she wasn't?"