“An eyepatch, sir. All of the guests will be wearing them. In honor of Mr. Monroe and the publication of his new book, An Eye for an Eye.” Mandy and Brother Simon looked at each other, then around the ballroom, and saw that indeed all of the guests, both men and women, were sporting the same eyewear. Mandy shook her head. “They’ve got to be kidding.”
The bespectacled Brother Simon now fumbled with his eyepatch and said with a sigh: “When in Rome, mademoiselle...”
“Brother Simon and Ms. Mandy McHenry,” the announcer’s voice boomed as the two of them approached the receiving line, which was headed up by the man of the hour, Toot Monroe. He was an imposing figure: a tall white-haired bird who looked like a double for the old movie actor Burt Lancaster. That is, if Burt Lancaster had worn an eyepatch. Toot Monroe liked to tell people that he’d lost his eye and his virginity at the same time, at the age of sixteen, in a bawdy house in Baton Rouge, to a three-hundred-pound woman by the name of Miss Petula — who was famous for, among many other things, having very long, sharp nails.
Next to Toot Monroe stood his current wife, Rusty, thirty years his junior, a petite but top-heavy girl with abundant red hair. And next to her stood, surprisingly (or at least to Mandy it was a surprise), none other than Dahlia Manning.
After exchanging brief pleasantries with Toot Monroe and Rusty, Mandy shuffled over a step and faced Dahlia Manning and looked at her now eye to eye and patch to patch. If Dahlia had any idea that Mandy was the one who had shot and killed the man responsible for her husband’s death, a little over twenty-four hours ago, she showed no sign of it. Instead, she simply nodded and smiled and said something in a voice so low only dolphins could have heard it.
Mandy, moving on, glanced over her shoulder as Brother Simon went down the line to be greeted, in his turn, by Dahlia Manning. She reached out and took Brother Simon’s hand in hers while leaning down and saying something in his ear. Brother Simon smiled, as he said something in return, then kissed her hand. Watching this unfold, Mandy began to wonder just how well those two really knew each other and what exactly was going on here.
The steady flow of guests arriving had pushed Mandy down through the ballroom toward a large buffet table, where Brother Simon caught up with her. “You and Dahlia Manning seem awfully chummy,” she said.
Brother Simon looked at her. “Why not? We’ve known each other for many years. As a matter of fact, I knew her father, the late Sir Monte Willingham. He was a well-known, highly respected financier and philanthropist — also, he was a confidence man, and a very good one at that.”
“Not exactly the grieving widow, is she? Although she is wearing black.”
“La dolce vita, mademoiselle, la dolce vita—”
Brother Simon suddenly fell silent and threw his head back. In a low hoarse whisper, he said: “He is here.” Mandy looked at him questioningly as he rushed past her over to the buffet table. There he stood, seemingly immobilized, looking down at one of the large food trays. Mandy followed his gaze down to a white and yellow mountain of gourmet egg salad that had at its peak, planted like a flag, an extinguished cigarette.
“Yuck,” Mandy said. “Who in the world would put their cigarette out in the egg salad?”
“Monsarrat.”
“What makes you think he did it?”
Brother Simon reached over and plucked the offending butt out of the egg salad and said: “Because, mademoiselle, he hates eggs — with a deep and abiding passion, he hates eggs.”
For a moment Mandy thought he was joking, but then she realized the little man was quite serious. As if to drive home the point, after closely examining the remains of the cigarette in his hand, he added: “And this, of course, is his brand, very rare. Turkish.”
A number of guests were approaching the buffet table and Brother Simon and Mandy moved cautiously away. The party was in full swing now, with the orchestra playing disco music as couples, all eyepatched and dressed in black and white, gyrated about the dance floor, while other guests stood around and watched with determined enthusiasm. Trays carrying glasses of champagne disappeared as quickly as they appeared. Voices were growing louder, the laughter more raucous-sounding. The temperature inside the ballroom was definitely going up.
Mandy, elbowing her way through the crowd, saw Brother Simon moving ahead of her past the edge of the dance floor. She believed, after the incident with the cigarette, that The One-Eyed Cat was indeed at the ball — which meant, reasonably enough, that one of the otherwise respectable-looking guests had to be the fence. She hurried to keep up with the little man, his legs moving him fast across the spacious ballroom over to the French doors that led out to a garden terrace. A small hanging sign that read No Admittance, he quickly got rid of. Just as quickly, he jimmied the door’s lock open. Over his shoulder Brother Simon then said: “Are you ready, mademoiselle?”
Mandy looked at him and at that moment she could feel her heart beating faster. Suddenly, she could see herself marching into Chip’s office with the Sunburst Diamond and plunking it right down on his desk. Suddenly, she could see herself getting a promotion and a bonus, with old man Dodge himself shaking her hand and congratulating her. Suddenly, she could see herself going up to the boys in Legal and telling them to go suck an egg. Drawing in a breath at all that, Mandy nodded.
Brother Simon pushed open the French doors and moved quickly out onto the garden terrace. Mandy followed and was greeted by the October night air sending a chill right down her spine — her face and bare shoulders hot and moist from the crowded ballroom.
The garden was large and elaborate, in the style of a Tudor garden, with its archways and darkened corners. She watched as Brother Simon, just ahead of her, paused and looked up at the moon hanging low and wide along a horizon of buildings and bridges and blinking lights. And she too looked up at it — for in all of her thirty-four years she had never seen such a moon. It was as though you could reach out and touch it; it seemed that close.
Then something happened to her. While looking up at that moon, in the stillness and chilled air of the garden oasis, with the sweet scent of flowers and earth all round, Mandy had a kind of frozen moment: She suddenly felt herself transfixed, or moonstruck, by an exquisite sense of wonder — a feeling of rapture that totally eclipsed all thoughts about the Sunburst Diamond and promotions and handshakes and the boys in Legal.
And in the next instant, still looking rapturously up at that moon, she could think of only one thing: She wished she were in love.
“The moon’s an arrant thief, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun.”
The Bard’s words, coming from behind, spoken in a posh British male voice, startled her. She turned and saw the tall figure of a man in a tuxedo who was standing with his face in the shadow of an archway. “I’m sorry,” he said, coming forward now into the moonlight and holding two glasses of champagne. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, you didn’t startle me,” she lied. She spoke softly, for her heart was in her throat.
The tall man smiled as he handed her one of the glasses of champagne and she looked at him closely now in the moonlight: He was the very picture of the dashing English gentleman thief, right down to the rakish moustache and dimple in his chin; his dark hair appeared thick and full and, of course, there was the eye-patch. Truly, she thought, that Spanish prison mug shot had not done him justice. And with that thought, she remembered Brother Simon.