Occasionally, I glanced up at the clock. The phone refused to ring. It was eleven before I finished cutting the black silk. I carried the pieces into my study, placed them on the desk, and then went into the spare room Lisette used for ironing and for watching television, not necessarily in that order. From her sewing basket I took a needle, a spool of black thread, and a thimble. The last sewing I’d done was aboard the U.S.S.
It rang at twenty minutes to midnight.
I snatched the receiver from the cradle.
“Hello?” I said.
“Ben, this is Henry.”
“I’ve been waiting.”
“I’m outside an abandoned church on Haley and Somers,” he said. “The Fletcher girl is in there with a baldheaded guy. There’s something going on.”
“Give me ten minutes,” I said.
“The truck’s parked across the street, near a boarded-up Chinese laundry. If I’m gone by the time you get here, it means they took off, and I’ll call you later.”
“Right,” I said, and hung up.
I took my holstered .38 Detective’s Special from the bottom drawer of the desk and clipped it to my belt. I did not know what to expect at the church on Haley and Somers, and whereas a rolling stone may gather no moss, a stitch in time most certainly saves nine. Gathering up my own stitchery, I stuffed the products of my handiwork into the pockets of my topcoat, and then left the apartment.
It was raining outside, and I’d just cut up my only damn umbrella!
“How long have they been in there?”
“They went in maybe five minutes before I called you,” Henry said. “I wanted to make sure they were staying before I looked for a phone booth.”
We were sitting in the cab of his truck. The engine was running, and the windshield wipers swept aside the heavy rain, affording us a good view of the dark and silent church across the street.
“There’s condemned signs all over it,” Henry said, “and the windows are boarded up. I counted maybe two dozen people going in since Fletcher and the bald guy got here. They been going in one at a time or in pairs, Ben, through the back there—you see that gate in the iron railing?”
“Yes, I see it.”
“A patrol car went by about ten minutes ago, but either they been paid to ignore it, or they didn’t see nothing.”
“Where’d you pick up Natalie?”
“Outside that building on Ninety-sixth, like you said. I followed her out to Hainesville. She went in a rooming house there, didn’t come out again till almost dark. Then she drove down near the Tolliver Street Bridge—you know the bridge down there? Something must’ve happened down there, Ben. There were fire engines and police cars all over the place. Anyway, she picked up the bald guy about four blocks away from the bridge. He was carrying two heavy suitcases.”
“Where’d they go after she picked him up?”
“They went to eat, and then to a movie. They came out about eleven-fifteen, and I followed them here.”
“Good, Henry. You ready to go in there?”
“What’s in there?” he asked.
“A wedding,” I said.
He cut the engine, and we walked through the rain toward the church. An iron railing surrounded the small graveyard behind it. We went through the gate. As we approached an arched wooden door in the rear stone wall of the church, I reached into my pocket.
“Put this on,” I said.
“What is it?”
“A hood. I hope the eyeholes are in the right place.”
He took the hood and pulled it on over his head. “Very nice,” he said.
“I made it myself.”
“Very nice. I dig silk,” he said.
I pulled the second hood over my own head, and then I knocked on the wooden door. We waited several moments. The door opened a crack.
“Yes?” a man’s voice said.
“We’re Cleopatra’s guests,” I said.