The Mystery of Moonlight

The phonograph crackled in the corner, thickening Billie Holiday’s voice to a husky slur as she crooned from the grooves of the black disk.

Jules flipped one of her long red curls over her smooth, white shoulder. She still caressed her whiskey glass, unable to drink it because of its strength. Her fingers slipped along the sides of the icy glass, swirling the water into circles.

Black stared at her intently over his glass of brandy. He leaned in toward her, fiddling with his tie.

“So where—”

“I don’t know why you want to bother with asking me that again,” Jules interrupted. “I’ve already said I don’t know anything about it.”

Black tipped his fedora back, away from his brows with his forefinger. “You were last one who saw him, doll face. All signals point to you.”

Jules swiveled on her stool to face Reginald Black, perhaps the best P.I. in Chicago. She crossed her legs under her red sequined dress. She touched her forehead lightly with her moist fingers, finally cooling off from the spotlights from her earlier performance. They always got too hot as she crooned to the room full of sailors and madams at the Moonlight Club.

Now she just wanted to go home. She and Black sat in the deserted club, almost alone after it had closed for the night. A busboy mopped the floor and stacked the chairs high in the back of the club as they talked.

“Look, Dizzy’s been missing for three days now, Red. I need you to tell me where he is.”

“Do I look like I would know?” Her brown eyes arrested his baby blues. “Do I look like a murderer?”

“You look murderous in that dress,” Black replied, groping her sequined breasts with his eyes only.

Jules giggled softly, that country girl laugh that hadn’t changed with her big move to the city. “Is that a compliment?”

“Couldn’t have been more complete.”

Black slammed back the rest of his brandy. He swallowed hard and quietly gasped for breath, his throat burning from the drink’s touch.

“I haven’t see him, Black,” Jules whispered, gawking up into his eyes. “I’m just as worried as you are.”

He hadn’t noticed how big, how soft her eyes were until now. From nowhere rose the desire to press her crimson lips to his, to caress her as she did her full glass of whiskey. He sighed. Maybe she was telling the truth. He stood.

“Fine, Red, I believe you.”

He pulled his fedora back down to his brow and started for the door with cool, thoughtless strides that exhaled audacity. At the knob, he turned back to Jules. She was standing now, stiff, by the bar, her hands together as if pleading for mercy. Her eyes sang in her voice’s silence.

“Call me if you hear anything,” Black said.

She nodded and he winked at her. He opened the door and stepped outside Moonlight, shrouded in an endless mystery.

The Carltons

“Ellington, please pass the corn,” Ms. Carlton requested, touching her pearl necklace femininely. The necklace’s creamy color melted beautifully with her chocolate skin.

“Sure, darling.” Mr. Carlton passed her the porcelain bowl, trimmed with golden-laced flowers. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose and cleared his throat. “Shall we say grace?”

Mrs. Carlton smiled a yes. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I folded my hands in my lap, unsure of what else to do with them, until another hand reached across my leg. Smiling slyly, I opened an eye. Elliot grinned, his hand out, waiting for mine. I slipped my hand into his, lightly enough to not come off desperate, firmly enough to get the point across.

“Gracious God in Heaven,” Mr. Carlton started, “bless this food, the cook—”

Mrs. Carlton cleared her throat.

“—and the company.”

Elliot squeezed my hand.

“Amen.”

“Amen!”

We all lifted our heads and passed the identical plates and bowls of food back and forth, until heaping piles of hot, roasted vegetables and wheat rolls decked our plates. Mrs. Carlton had made spinach quiche, with cheese instead of eggs, as Elliot had requested for me. I dug in eagerly.

“So, Miss Audrey, what do you study?”

I looked up from the quiche. Mrs. Carlton stared at me with wide eyes, thirsty for my reply.

“Finance,” I said. “I plan to go into investment banking.”

“Whoa-ho-ho!” Mr. Carlton released, dropping his fork in shock. “We’ve got a smart one on our hands. Keep this one, Elliot.”

Elliot giggled softly in his deep voice, the same jubilant sound he’d make in the bend of my neck after candlelit dinners or in the back of jazz theatres. He smiled at his family, flashing teeth that cost as much as a new car.

“Sure will,” he grinned.

I smiled through thin lips; blushed, actually, though it wasn’t visible. I looked back down at my plate, where my quiche still sizzled slightly, beckoning my fork to pierce it.

“How did you two meet?” Mrs. Carlton inquired as I cut into the quiche.

“Psychology class,” I said.

“Social psychology, to be exact,” Elliot finished. “We did a project about attraction and, lo and behold, it worked!” He pecked my cheek.

His parents giggled identical laughs. I let out a smaller one.

“So, how—” Mrs. Carlton began again. My stomach rumbled. I had to beat her if I ever wanted to eat.

“How did you meet?” I forced, shoving a forkful of quiche between my lips as soon as the sentence parted them.

The elder Carltons glanced at one another, replacing their grins with satisfied half-smiles.

“Ellen worked at the performing arts center,” Mr. Carlton said.

“And Ellington played in the orchestra,” Mrs. Carlton resumed.

“Sax,” Elliot declared, filling in his spot in the script that they must have told a thousand times.

I nodded, my mouth still full of breathtaking quiche. The cheese melted into the crevices of my mouth and the spinach lay submissive on my tongue, missing my teeth by miles. It must have taken her years to make this, I thought.

“And then she said, ‘Sir, that’s for seeing eye dogs!’”

The Carltons laughed together at Mr. Carlton’s line. I chuckled, pretending to have heard the story. They all sighed as the wind left their laughter, and resumed eating.

I swallowed. “This quiche is incredible, Mrs. Carlton. It must have taken ages to make.”

Her lips spread into a long line that could have been interpreted as a hint of a smile. “Yes, dear. Not all us girls can be investment bankers, can we?”

I blinked at her, twice, in fact. I looked down awkwardly and began eating again, more vigorously, to replace the words that I had lost at her statement.

“So Audrey, are you a Democrat?” Mr. Carlton’s voice tweeted.

"What?"

He smiled as I looked up, like a mask against offensiveness.

“Um, well, I don’t really consign to either party—”

“Good, Elliot! She can be groomed! A great Republican she’ll make!”

Elliot chuckled. He turned to me. “Dad’s president of the Black Republicans Association.”

“Lifelong members, the Carltons are. We always have been, since 1865. Always will be.” Mr. Carlton beamed, as if he’d just won the Nobel Prize for modesty.

“Oh, how ‘bout that!” I said, trapped behind a fake smile that wouldn’t set me free.

“She can be in whatever party she’d like,” Elliot said. “I’d like her regardless.”

They all released that giggle, curtly.

“So what do your parents do?” Misses poked at her pearl earring as she spoke. I glanced at her plate; still full. Perhaps that’s how she’d maintained her slim figure. Only having one child and interrogating dinner guests.

I took a large bite of quiche, just as she finished the sentence. I chewed slowly, smiling shortly, hoping she’d forget what she’d just asked. But she nodded back at me, waiting for my jaws to relinquish my worth for her son.

Swallow.

“My mother is a homemaker,” I invented.

Architects make homes. While my mother built skyscrapers, it was possible that someone lived in one.

“And my father is a railway engineer.”

So he just happened to take a random train, abandoning my mother and me fifteen years ago. Same diff.

My false smile took me prisoner again, sealing my statements as true to the Carltons.

“Wow!” Mrs. Carlton’s eyes widened upon hearing about my blessed family. They even sparkled, outshining the Tiffany diamond that Mr. Carlton picked out himself twenty-one years ago. She turned to her husband. “She’s from good blood,” she declared. “She’ll make a great Carlton.”

I sat, mouth empty and soul escaped, as Ellen, Ellington, and Elliot Carlton’s identical grins branded me as one of their own.