I glanced through the operating room doorway back at poor Holly, dead on the gurney, as Noah tried to gather himself.
Or am I maybe too tough? I wondered.
CHAPTER 60
LEAVING ALL OUR TROUBLES behind—well, at least for the current nanosecond—that Friday night, Mary Catherine and I found ourselves outside a flower-and-vine-bedecked little town house a stone’s throw east down Fifty-Second Street off Fifth Avenue.
Surrounded on all sides by towering office buildings, the whimsical little structure looked like a fairy-tale house conjured into the middle of Midtown Manhattan by some wizard’s magic spell.
Some French wizard’s magic spell.
“Welcome to La Grenouille,” I whispered to Mary Catherine in a terrible French accent as we stepped under the famous restaurant’s white awning from the taxi.
We stood there for a moment, peeking in through the plate glass at the heady swirl of waiters and well-dressed people inside.
“You ready for this?” I said to Mary Catherine, who had her blond hair up and her makeup on and was looking stunningly, amazingly, redundantly hot.
“No,” she said with her delicious-looking scarlet lips as she fussed with her pearl choker.
“Then that makes two of us. Geronimo!” I said as I tightly hooked her elbow and pulled open the door.
The maître d’ at the stand inside was pretty much exactly what you’d expect from the fanciest and most famous classic French restaurant in New York City. He was tall and handsome and dressed to the nines like a French Cary Grant.
“Good evening,” he said in a deep, smooth Gallic-accented voice. “May I have your name?”
“Bennett,” I said, lowering my own voice a little for the intimidating occasion. “Detective Michael Bennett.”
He unstiffened an iota and smiled brightly as he came out from behind the podium and firmly shook my hand.
“Oh, yes. Welcome, Detective. Claude mentioned you would be arriving. I am Michel, at your service. Bonsoir, Madame, and welcome to La Grenouille.”
“Thank you,” said a blown-away Mary Catherine as the très debonair son of a bitch actually kissed her hand with a little bow.
“We are delighted to have you,” he said a tad too smoothly for my liking as he batted his dark eyelashes at her. “Would you allow me to take your coat, Madame?”
As I was about to tell Mr. Handsome Frenchy to get his googly eyes and dirty mitts off my dame, he unwrapped Mary Catherine and my jaw dropped.
She’d been buttoned up in a raincoat when we met in the lobby of our building, so I hadn’t had a chance to see what she’d chosen to wear underneath. Now I could see that it was more like what she’d chosen not to wear.
Instead of the little black dress I was expecting, she was in a little red dress. A very little red strapless one that showed off a lot of back and even more leg.
Even the unflappable maître d’ looked a little flapped.
“Yes,” he said, finally recovering. “Welcome to La Grenouille. This way, s’il vous plaît.”
CHAPTER 61
LIKE I SAID, I’M not exactly what you’d call a gourmet, but even I thought entering La Grenouille’s famous and fancy dining room was dazzling, like stepping into a vivid French Impressionist painting.
There were gold damask wallpaper, bloodred banquettes, waiters in white berets performing tableside service from shining copper carts, waiters in white dinner jackets bearing bright-silver buckets of champagne.
And the flowers!
They were everywhere. Yellow firework bursts of chrysanthemums in huge vases, soaring whimsical constellations of late-summer flowers and grasses arching toward the high ceiling.
The patrons at the tables were pretty impressive as well. They seemed to fall into two categories, filthy-rich-looking older men with eye-candy models or skeletal grande-dame socialites holding court under thick layers of diamonds and pearls and Chanel.
A lot of the eyes in the room, both male and female, shifted discreetly toward us as Michel sat us side by side at a rear banquette. And by toward us, I of course mean toward Mary Catherine.