Crescent City Connection

because she was intrigued, the dessert they called bread pudding. Every bite was an adventure and not only because she liked the stuff—because she was trying to figure out how it was done.
    Partly because her mother was so lame, Lovelace was a good cook—someone in the family had to be. As she was trying to figure out how you turned day-old French bread into the dessert she was eating, it suddenly occurred to her that there were other ways to make a living besides slaving in an office.
    She went back to finish the afternoon’s work, feeling not nearly so choked. The frog started to leave her throat, her voice to return to normal.
    She finished out the week at the oil company because Lovelace was conscientious by nature—and because she needed the money.
    Meanwhile, she read the ads and even applied for a restaurant job or two, but she knew she wasn’t going to get them—she didn’t know how to fake the references.
    She also felt weird about trying to fake the work itself. How did you translate little quantities into big ones? Just for openers. She was sure there was a lot of professional stuff she’d be expected to know that she didn’t. But it occurred to her she didn’t have to work for a restaurant. All she needed was a job cooking. Maybe for an old lady or an old man who couldn’t manage anymore. She daydreamed about the kind of house her employer would live in—ten thousand square feet in the Garden District, perhaps; rooms no one had entered for years; dust an inch thick on the ancestral brocades; a garden that was a tangle of ancient climbing roses choking out sedate camellias.
    Of course, she’d probably have to cook on a woodstove.
    But who else would need a cook?
    Maybe a young family with a mom like hers—one who was never home. A divorced lawyer or doctor, somebody like that. White canvas at the windows instead of precious tatters. Maybe she could even live in.
    On Sunday the ad ran in the Times-Picayune for exactly the kind of job she wanted: “Part-time cook for family of four. No Louisiana dishes. Low fat.”
    Her heart pounded like John Henry’s hammer. She didn’t answer the ad.

Eleven
    ONE GOOD THING about working with the FBI—they were everywhere. Skip and Shellmire stayed in Atlanta while special agents in Chicago checked out Lovelace Jacomine. Skip was waiting in a conference room when her partner came in. “She’s not at Northwestern. Her dad told them she’d come home unexpectedly.”
    “Daniel phoned them?” It sounded far too pat.
    “He’s her dad, right?”
    Skip was irritated. “Well, where’s home?”
    “Fort Lauderdale, according to their records.”
    “And have your crack agents been there yet?”
    “We should have a report in a couple of hours. Meanwhile, they did talk to her roommate, whom they found uncooperative. They think she knows somethin’.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Michelle Greene.”
    “They just questioned her a little and took no for an answer? That was it?”
    “Not exactly. That’s where we come in. Apparently, she never reported Lovelace missing—what does that say to you?”
    “She knows where Lovelace is.”
    “Yeah. She’s so hinky they didn’t want to let her go, but what were they gonna do? She hasn’t committed a crime or anything. They want to know what we want to do about her.”
    “Are you kidding? I’m going to see her. Want to come?”
    He laughed. “I kind of thought you’d say that. But no thanks. You’re the Jacomine expert.”
    She called Cappello to say she was going—didn’t ask; told her. There was no question of being sent—the department didn’t have the money for a trip like this. Skip would have to pay for it herself, and, given that, Cappello wasn’t about to put her foot down.
    She got lucky and got a flight almost right away. The agent who met her in Chicago had a report on the Fort Lauderdale end—the neighbors said no one was home, and apparently no one had been for weeks. He took her to Michelle Greene.
    Shellmire had briefed her on everything in Michelle’s school records—she was from Charlotte, North Carolina, where her father was a banker and her mother was a lawyer. She’d been a straight-A student in high school and president of the student body. At Northwestern, she was doing well, and in her spare time, she did fund-raising for AIDS research. In short, she was the kind of girl who probably had no reason to think she didn’t own the Earth.
    Still, if anyone could intimidate