board and confidante.
Jasmyn played with a curl of her long raven hair. “Cuz, I’m thinkin’ of dyeing my hair platinum, the brassy but trashy color of Barbara Stanwyck’s pageboy wig.”
Val glanced at the screen. “Looks better than my brassy but trashy wig.”
Jasmyn’s gaze landed on Val’s hair, where it paused for a moment before darting down Val’s outfit, then quickly up. “Whoa, sugar, laissez les bons temps rouler!”
It was French for “let the good times roll,” a popular saying heard all the time in New Orleans.
“Actually, this wasn’t worn for fun.” She set the bag on the coffee table. “I worked my first investigation tonight.”
“Investigation?” Jasmyn punched a button on the remote. The room instantly grew quiet, the movie frozen on an image of Fred MacMurray looking at Barbara Stanwyck’s leg. “Isn’t that outfit the one you wore at that casino where you dealt blackjack and lip-synched Christina Aguilera’s songs?”
Val plopped down on the couch. “Has nothing to do with her, though. I dressed like this to...” Her heart and mind felt all jumbled up with everything that had happened tonight. She wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. “Hungry? I picked up some to-go from Aloha Kitchen.”
After shooting Val a knowing look, Jasmyn gestured at the bag. “I love them funny little rolls. You get some of them?”
“Lumpia Shanghai. Got extra just for you.” She handed her a few of the mini egg rolls stuffed with ground pork, carrots and onions on a napkin.
They ate in silence for a while. The air conditioner chugged quietly in the background. On the TV screen, Fred continued to stare at Barbara’s ankle. The way he looked at her—startled and hungry—reminded Val of the look on Drake’s face when she showed him the fleur-de-lis on her heels.
Like she cared. It was over. Dead. Gone.
She gestured to the screen with an egg roll. “What’s Fred looking at?”
“Her anklet. It’s a big deal in the movie.”
Chewing, Val made a keep-going gesture.
“The anklet is a symbol that represents sexual fascination.” Jasmyn grinned. “Read that in some film critic’s review on the internet. In my own words, that little gold anklet sends a signal as big and bright as a lighthouse beacon. It flashes ‘I’m a bad girl looking for trouble.’ Women who wore them were thought to be loose.”
Val wiped her fingers on a napkin. “This movie was made when?”
“Nineteen forty-four.”
“You just turned twenty-one, what, three months ago? And you know all about anklets worn nearly seventy years ago?”
Jasmyn gave a casual shrug. “It’s my thing, the forties and fifties.”
“Your noir thing.”
“More like my neonoir thing. Digging the old styles, but updating them, too.” She waggled a magenta fingernail at the screen. “Like that anklet she’s wearing. I’d wear one with peep-toe pumps, capri pants, a slim cardigan and Dita Von Teese’s bad-red lipstick, Devil.”
“You love that Dita Von Teese with her skintight dresses and corsets and elbow-length gloves.”
“She’s an artist, a burlesque queen.”
“I see you haven’t thought about this much.”
“I celebrate my life through my style, what can I say? I know you understand ’cause you go a little retro yourself, cuz.”
Val had a thing for simple, vintage black dresses. When she was a kid, she’d loathed reach-me-down—secondhand—clothes, and had sworn that when she grew up she’d always buy off-the-rack. But when that day came, she hated how stiff and scratchy new clothes felt against her skin. Missed the softness of reach-me-downs, so she’d started shopping at secondhand and vintage stores.
“Y’know,” Jasmyn said, “with your black-purple hair, pale skin and those hot-cute little black dresses you wear, you’d make a great noir chick.”
“I’m still not even sure what noir means.”
“It refers to the type of movies being made back in the forties and fifties. Dark and bleak with people who had no morality or sense of purpose.”
“Sounds like a badly lit casino in Vegas.”
“F’sure!” Jasmyn peeled off a throaty laugh. “That anklet is famous, by the way,” she continued, looking at the screen. “Right about here, Fred says ‘That’s a honey of an anklet you’re wearing’ and that term—honey of an anklet—is now one of the classic lines in film noir.” She paused, frowning. “Val, what’s wrong?”
“That word. Honey.” She picked up some wadded napkins and put them into the bag. “Tonight I did what in the P.I. trade is called a honey trap. Which is where a P.I. entices some guy to see if he’s unfaithful, which is a bunch of crock because enticing isn’t investigating.” Wouldn’t Jayne be proud to know Val finally understood? And sorely disappointed if she knew how Val reached that understanding.
“From the looks of you, cuz, you overshot enticing by a city block.”
“Thanks.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Got it.”
Jasmyn was thoughtful for a moment. “I thought your boss wasn’t going to let you do any investigations for four more months.”
“Jayne doesn’t know I did it.” Val felt ashamed to have repaid her boss’s trust with such insubordination.
“Dawlin’,” Jasmyn said gently, “what happened?”
“After she left work early, this new case walked in, and...you know my bullheaded streak.” She gave a halfhearted shrug. “Although that’s hardly an excuse for my misbehavin’. I’m feeling mighty bad that I took a case that I had no right to take because I wanted fast cash.”
“How much fast cash?”
“Two grand.”
Jasmyn emitted a low whistle. “That’s fast, all right. Now you can get your car fixed.”
“Already in the shop. I’m driving a rental until it’s ready.”
“You bad, bullheaded girl, you. Mama will be glad to know you got wheels.” She gave Val a knowing look. “Speaking of mamas, now that you’re a private eye in training, have you looked for yours?”
Val felt a stab of guilt. “No.”
During Katrina, when she and Nanny had been stuck on the roof of their building, her grandmother confessed she had lied about Val’s parents dying in a car crash when Val was two years old. Nanny’s daughter, Val’s mother, had survived, but left soon after that. “She was born Agnes Monte Hickory
