Chapter Six #2
Billie surveyed the tables. The ones closer to the middle were especially exclusive.
She recognized two judges at one such table.
Gray-haired and sitting in that puffed-up way older gentlemen sometimes did, they were very familiar, but she couldn’t quite get their names to surface.
Not connected with any of her recent cases, thankfully, though her mother would likely know them.
The ma?tre d’ was fussing over another central table and drew Billie’s eye.
Champagne flowed there. The real French drop, no pretenders.
A well-fed and smooth customer in tails—the only tails Billie had seen so far in the joint—was brandishing a small, velvet-covered box.
On one side of him a lean man wore summer whites, like Sam, but would look more at home in denim and an Akubra, astride a horse.
His face was deeply lined, tanned, and weathered, as if being indoors was a habit he avoided.
He seemed relaxed, and he appraised the box with faint interest, holding his coupe glass in a rough hand that almost engulfed it.
Beside him was a blond woman with a somewhat fussy veil-and-flower combination on her head, reminiscent of the top of a wedding cake.
She wore a glass-eyed fox fur over an apricot gown and looked positively taken with whatever was in the rotund man’s box.
Gems, Billie guessed. The blonde leaned over to the grazier type and said something in his ear.
He smiled languidly. A large, glittering ring flashed on her finger.
A well-to-do country couple come to town for some solid spending, Billie decided.
Across from the assumed grazier, and on the other side of the tails-wearing, rosy-cheeked gentleman, was his absolute opposite: a tall, slender, pale man with almost iridescent skin and a snow-white head of hair that his body and neck looked a touch too young for.
Billie caught the side of his face, and it looked strange, pulled.
An honorable war wound, no doubt. A skin graft for airman’s burn, she speculated, thinking of the lift operator, John Wilson.
Those damned planes had a habit of catching fire on a whim.
Perhaps he was one of the lucky, unlucky ones who’d made up Dr. Archibald McIndoe’s Guinea Pig Club in Sussex?
Maybe it was a plastic job. She’d seen many of those since 1945.
Wars provided surgeons with an influx of test subjects and much had changed since the Great War.
What a man could survive these days was remarkable.
The pale man sat stiffly and sipped from his glass, holding it gently at the base in the French way, so the champagne would not warm in his hand.
Beside him a fifth figure padded out the small table but seemed not to belong.
It was a young brunette woman in a violet couture number.
Though beautiful, the clothing had the effect of a dress-up.
Had that ravishing dress been made for someone else?
Billie wondered what her story was. She sat among this interesting circle of characters but looked at none of them, appearing almost bored and wishing she was elsewhere.
“If you were trying to blend in, you shouldn’t have worn that dress,” Sam commented quietly, pulling Billie’s attention back to him.
She turned swiftly, eyebrow arched. “I say, you can be an impudent young man,” she scolded playfully.
“Except that you may be right. Ella said the same.” A few heads at the closer tables were craning their way, possibly drawn to that ruby red.
It was better than the beaded option, though. She still felt sure about that.
“I didn’t mean—” Sam began sheepishly, and Billie waved her hand as if to change the subject, their drinks arriving just in time to close the conversation. They were still figuring each other out, she and her secretary-cum-assistant. He couldn’t always tell when she was teasing.
“Cheers,” she said to the barman, and swiveled back to her partner. “Here’s to a successful case.”
She and Sam clinked glasses, her coupe making a dainty tinkle against his larger, heavier glass. She took a delicate sip of her cocktail, which went down a treat, and soon most of it was gone, before Sam was halfway through his beverage. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Where’d you learn to drink like that?”
Billie ignored the question, pushing her empty glass aside. “I’m going back downstairs. You hold up the bar, Sam. If I don’t come back in fifteen minutes, come and save me, hey?”
He gave her a look, as if to say, “You? Need saving?” and stayed put as she slipped away through the ballroom and down the staircase, a wisp of satiny red drawing the eyes of staff and patrons.
In moments she emerged on Victory Lane and took a deep breath of the humid night air, the cocktail providing a pleasant buzz.
Here the doormen were helping people out of their cars and letting them in through the beautiful Art Deco doors.
She leaned against a brick wall and observed the new arrivals.
Yes, everyone let into the place looked extremely well-heeled.
What had Adin and Maurice been thinking?
“Miss? May I help you?”
“I just need some air,” Billie said and pulled her slim cigarette case from her handbag.
The doorman stepped forward with a lighter.
Sure enough, he was as lean as a greyhound, with a face almost as long, just as Maurice had described.
She removed a fag, tapped the case shut, and placed the cigarette between her red lips. He lit it in a polished move.
“Thank you,” Billie said, looking up to make eye contact, sure she had found the right man and the right moment for her purposes. There was a lull in the arrivals.
“Pleasure,” he said, locking his deep brown eyes with her green-blue ones.
She reached out with her gloved hand and slid a few shillings into his.
He seemed to appreciate the gesture. Tips would be generous at The Dancers, and she seemed to have picked the right amount.
In seconds the tip was secreted in his coat, another well-practiced move.
He’d barely broken eye contact. “You were here last weekend?” she asked casually, smiling that professional, disarming smile.
“Always am, miss. Six nights a week,” he responded cheerfully.
“Isn’t that every night they’re open here?”
“Indeed it is,” he confirmed. His smile made deep lines in his lean young face. “I didn’t see you here.”
“Do you remember a young man, curly hair, perhaps out of his depth, about seventeen?” Billie asked. “He spoke with you, as I understand it. His name is Adin.”
At this the doorman stiffened. The smile dropped. “I couldn’t say. I meet a lot of people,” he replied cautiously.
“Oh, I think you could say. You’d remember this one. He couldn’t get in.” She smiled some more and took a drag of her cigarette.
The doorman shifted uneasily. “We don’t allow minors in the club, miss.”
“Precisely.” She took another puff and let the smoke drift in the night air.
The lane was still quiet, the comings and goings of patrons conveniently halted for the moment.
“He spoke with you. I’d be interested in what was said,” she pressed and handed him a card.
He read it over. It could be that he flushed a little, though it was hard to tell under the lighting of the entryway.
She wondered why he was so cagey. If there was nothing to it, he wouldn’t respond like this.
Could it be that Maurice had given her a good lead?
A shilling was in her hand, but he hesitated this time. “I’d like to help you, miss, but I don’t recall,” he said in a flat tone, looking away. But he was agitated. He could be swayed.
Sure you don’t, she thought. It wasn’t the right moment to show him the photograph.
This wasn’t about that. He recalled. He recalled the boy well.
“I can perhaps . . .” she began, but then his focus shifted suddenly.
Billie followed his eyes. A man stepped through the front doors and looked at him; it was the round-faced man from the table she’d been watching, and though he only appeared for a moment, the doorman’s back went as straight as a board.
He moved away from Billie and walked into the club, but not before their eyes met again.
He knew something. And she could get it, but not tonight.
Recognizing temporary defeat, Billie stubbed out her cigarette and sashayed up the staircase to the small ballroom, feeling eyes on her once more.
The staff opened the doors for her again with their white gloves, and she spotted Sam still at the bar, surveying the room over a fresh, hefty glass.
Three shillings for, on the face of it, a whole lot of nothing.
She’d have to do better than that if she hoped to stay afloat.
Still, there was something to it, the little woman in her gut told her.
The doorman had looked scared when the round-faced man emerged.
He must have been afraid of losing his job, Billie thought.
She’d make another pass at it, when things cooled down a little. He’d tell her something, she felt sure.
“Sam, are you all right to come into the office at ten tomorrow?” Billie asked, sliding in next to her assistant once more.
She looked at her thin gold watch with the tiny mother-of-pearl face.
It was not quite eleven thirty, not so late by her standards, but she had to get to the morgue soon if she wanted to get any sleep at all.
“I’ll have a chore for you,” she told him.
It wouldn’t make for the most pleasant Saturday morning, but it wouldn’t be difficult or dangerous.
He nodded. “Of course. Ten it is. You don’t need me earlier? But let me drive you home. It’s late.” She paused, deliberating. “Ah, the death house,” he added, remembering. “Let me drive you there, at least.”
She considered his proposal. She had a small gift set aside for Mr. Benny, who would be working at the morgue, but it was back at the office.
She didn’t mind being overdressed, but her silk gown, not to mention the sapphires, was perhaps not best for a visit to Circular Quay West, where the city morgue was located.
Or maybe it was the thought of her fabric-soled shoes on those less-than-clean floors that put her off.
She’d need to walk back to the office for the gift and then go home to change before heading out again, or else ask Sam to drive her.
It was all less than ideal, she had to admit.
She screwed up her even features. “We won’t get much further tonight, but I want to come back here.
Maybe our fellow will have calmed down a touch by then.
I spoke with him, but he’s a bit . . . nervous.
How about we hit this place a touch earlier tomorrow, and I’ll bring what I need for the death house.
” She swiveled back toward the main floor.
“I don’t think that’s where we’ll find this kid, anyway,” she murmured under her breath.
It was the little woman in her gut again. Adin Brown was not on a slab somewhere. It was going to be a lot more complicated than that.