The Gold Digger's Ledger novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Table Nine

The first Friday envelope was on my breakfast plate, and the bills in it were all different sizes.

Seventy-five hundred dollars, in fifties and twenties, none of them new.

I went through the bills in front of Tristan and wrote the total in the book.

"You could trust me," he said.

"I trust numbers."

He almost smiled, and then he looked at the clock, because the Pemberton Foundation dinner started at seven.

It was held in the ballroom of the Marlowe Hotel.

I knew that ballroom. I had carried trays through it for two Christmases before they moved me behind the bar.

I wore my black bar dress and a bandage under my stocking.

Gus pressed his late wife's pearl earrings into my hand at the door.

"Wear them like you stole them," he said. "She did."

At the entrance, the hostess handed me a card with a number and a smile that went wrong halfway.

Table nine.

I found it at the far end of the room, beside the swinging kitchen doors.

Waiters went in and out of them with their elbows high.

Five empty chairs, no flowers, and a little gold name card in Lydia's looping hand.

Miss M. Dunleavy.

Across the ballroom, at table one, under the chandelier, Tristan sat between his mother and Lydia's father.

Lydia saw me and gave a small, apologetic wave.

I understood the card. I also understood that every guest in the room understood it.

So I did what I do when a customer is rude at my bar.

I smiled, and I went around the back.

The banquet captain was in the service corridor with a clipboard, and he lit up when he saw me.

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