Free Little Girls Lost by J. A. Kerley

grateful the gumbos would be under the watchful eyes of Marie Belfontaine. Fifty-two, dark as chocolate, able to set one-hundred-fifty pounds into motions that still pulled whistles from street corners, Marie was his kitchen confidante, his whisper-hoarder, his Richelieu. She’d appearedthree weeks before opening, sawdust on the floor, wires dangling from the ceiling, Sandhill wondering if the idea of opening a gumbo joint was divine inspiration or one of his darker urges gone hideously awry.
    “You can tear this up,” she’d said, handing him the HELP WANTED sign from the door.
    “Actually, I’ll probably need a few more people,” Sandhill said, a scarlet handkerchief wrapping the thumb he’d mistaken for a nail minutes earlier.
    “You already thinking of expanding?” Marie said, looking at the space destined to become his dining area. “Your gumbo that good?”
    “I’m planning sixteen four tops. To wait on them I’ll probably need—”
    “To find me more work to do, if that’s all the piddling number of folks you gonna put in here.”
    “I might need kitchen help, too,” Sandhill said, not really knowing what he was looking for, never having hired anyone before.
    Marie narrowed an eye. “Cook?”
    “Prep help, maybe. Pot-watching if I make a shopping run. But I do the main cooking.”
    Marie smiled at Sandhill like he’d cleared a high-set hurdle. “Good. You gonna make gumbo, you got to have one cook. Gumbo may look like committee food, but good God Almighty it surely ain’t. Let me tell you…”
    Marie’s five-minute discourse on gumbo was less science than theology and when she’d finishedSandhill was uncertain whether to hire her or propose.
    Sandhill tied his tie for the fifth time. Though the new windows were triple-paned for insulation, he heard voices from the street drifting up to his second-story digs. He lived above the restaurant in a failed dance studio, a box sixty feet long, thirty wide, fourteen high. The former dressing room was subdivided into a small bedroom and large bathroom. Cabinets and a counter, hanging implement rack and appliances turned a corner into a kitchen.
    Before moving in, Sandhill had painted everything white: floor, walls, ceiling, trim. Then, like arranging thoughts in a clarified mind, he’d added furniture and decorated. His major furnishings were blond maple. The back wall held five twelve-foot-long bookshelves, sixty running feet with few inches to spare. A large Oriental carpet beneath a table and six chairs suggested the dining area. Posters from local events hung on the walls, the controlled chaos of a Jackson Pollock reproduction hovered above the sofa. Six ceiling fans, a legacy of the dance studio, spun lazily overhead. The only sense of disarray came from books and magazines scattered throughout the apartment, some open, some closed, most cluttered with bookmarks.
    “Finally,” Sandhill growled, pulling the tie tight, it having acquiesced to near-evenness. He stepped back to put his head-to-toe image in the bathroommirror—the dark brown suit needing pressing he had neither the time nor skill for, white shirt, dark tie. His basic uniform for years. It felt tight and uncomfortable, an inch or two of gumbo new to his waist.
    He sat on his bed to put on his shoes, instinctively reaching for the ankle-holstered .32 on the nightstand. The small Colt didn’t offer much fire-power, but it was light and, when he wore floppy jeans, invisible to the ordinary citizen.
    The holster had been two hundred bucks, but the leather was molded glove-tight to the revolver and the strap was lined with sheepskin for comfort. Sandhill had made only one modification, carefully peeling a small section of the sheepskin from the cowhide strap, creating a small pocket, like the coin pocket in a pair of jeans. The pocket held a simple wire lockpick. Two years back a state cop had been blindsided by a canny felon and restrained with his own cuffs until being shot to death.