Death With All the Trimmings: A Key West Food Critic Mystery

by Lucy Burdette

  I spent the next few hours glued to the stool in the corner of the kitchen, watching Edel’s people work. For a new staff, they came together amazingly well. The restaurant was nonstop busy, but from what I could see, all the customers seemed to get a meal and pretty much what they’d ordered.

  When the madness ebbed around nine thirty, I edged around the kitchen, watching the workers at each of the stations, from Rodrigo, the dark-skinned dishwasher who seemed to speak only Spanish, to the female pastry chef piping whipped-cream designs on her key lime parfaits, to the head sous-chef, who did his best to keep distance between himself and Edel since the scolding about the ruined sauce and the chunky carrots. For her part, Edel had shifted from irate to professional, flitting from station to station with suggestions, instructions, and even a few compliments …

  Every half hour or so, Edel exited the kitchen to make the rounds of the front of the restaurant, where her friends and invited guests were dining. I tasted whatever was offered to me and found every item delicious. Even the signature vegetarian dish—Edel’s takeoff on the more commonplace Key West shrimp and grits, only without the shrimp—which I would not have thought to order—was stunning. Lightly stir-fried vegetables—small carrot coins, bright green spears of broccoli, wedges of red onion, and purple radishes—served over cheesy polenta and garnished with golden Parmesan crisps were sublime.

  I was perched back on the stool near the grill when Edel came tearing in from the dining room, barreling toward Mary Pat at the salad-prep counter and brandishing a white plate.

  She slammed down the plate and the salad flew over the counter. A few pieces stuck to Mary Pat’s apron and a shred of carrot clung to her cheek. “What kind of dressing did you use on this?”

  “That’s our standard mixed-green salad with the house vinaigrette.” She swiped the carrot off her face and flung it to the floor.

  “Take a whiff,” Edel said. “Does it smell like balsamic and olive oil to you?”

  Mary Pat picked the plate up and sniffed. “Something smells a little off.” She crossed the aisle to the station where the vinaigrette had been made, picked up a large bottle of oil, and sniffed that, too. Looking puzzled, she lifted her shoulders. “There’s something different—this doesn’t smell like olive oil. But I made it exactly the same way as I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that. You told us no variations. You said people want to know what they’re getting.”

  “It doesn’t smell like olive oil because, dammit, it’s peanut oil.” Edel’s voice had risen to a shriek. “You understand that this could ruin me, right?”

  “But I didn’t use peanut oil.” Mary Pat hurried to the pantry and hauled out an enormous white plastic bottle of oil. She unscrewed the cap and took a whiff, then passed it to Edel, who had the red face of someone on the verge of stroke.

  “Peanut oil here, too. You can clock out right now,” Edel told her. “I’ll let you know whether to come in tomorrow.” Her hands shook as she picked up the jug of oil and carried it back into the pantry. When she didn’t come out for several minutes, I poked my head in.

  “Is the taste between the two oils so different? I suspect most people won’t even notice the difference,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t butt in, but hoping to calm her down. Her reaction to the salad dressing had seemed severe. Possibly even paranoid.

  Edel stared at me and then shook her head slowly. “It’s peanut oil. One of the customers felt his lips begin to swell and itch and so he asked the server to remove the salad. He’s highly allergic to peanuts and he knows what happens when he eats anything containing them—he’s suffered several trips to the emergency department.”

  I nodded with sympathy.

  “All I need is one case of anaphylactic shock in my customer base when I’ve insisted that we don’t use nuts in our mirepoix. Or in our pastry cream. Or especially not in our vinaigrette. We don’t chop nuts on the same cutting surface; we don’t even use the same pans. I put all this in writing on the bottom of every menu—we will tell you if we use nuts in a dish. We are scrupulously careful about our customers with allergies. And yet somehow”—she swabbed the perspiration off her face with the back of her hand—“somehow someone substituted peanut oil in every dish we cooked tonight.”

  “Every dish?”

  “All the oil in here smells like peanuts.”

  “But wouldn’t your chefs have noticed the bottles?” I asked.

  “I’m saying someone poured out the canola and olive oil and replaced it with peanut. Sabotage, pure and simple.”

  She sank onto a stool, a twin to the one on which I’d spent most of the night, watching the buzz in the kitchen.

  “We should talk about your staff, how long you’ve known them—”

  “Not tonight,” Edel snapped. Her head drooped and she buried her face in her hands.

  5

  So many relationships have been ended by metal utensils in nonstick.

  —Nicole Cliffe

  My psychologist friend, Eric, had insisted on picking me up and driving me out to the golf course on Stock Island, once he heard my tirade against my mother and her crazy plans, my second cousin and her professional golf career, and wasting a day by humiliating myself with a game I couldn’t bear to watch and had no interest in playing.

  “I can see you’ll need a personal shrink on board today,” he said, laughing as I waited for him to unlock his Conch car, a convertible Mustang painted with undersea and other tropical scenes by a local Key West artist.

  “Since when do you play golf?” I asked, flouncing into the passenger’s seat and clipping on my belt.

  “I caddied as a kid,” Eric said. “They let us caddies play for nothing on Mondays when the course was closed for maintenance. Sometimes the pro would come out with us and give us tips.”

  “Did you like the job?” I asked, a note of disbelief, and, yes, horror in my voice. “I thought you preferred your adventures in your mind.”

  Eric laughed. “Oh there was plenty of mental adventure to be had. You need to be something of a psychologist to carry clubs for rich guys playing a tough course. I never could understand why they expected to be good at something when they spent so little time working at it. Lots of them thought that with the right cutting-edge equipment and the right caddie, they’d be brilliant. But golf doesn’t work like that.”

  We crossed over the bridge to Stock Island, and Eric took a left at the first light. This road leads to just about all the landmarks of Stock Island—the sheriff’s department, the county prison (which also serves as a local jail), the community college, the animal shelter, the Quonset hut–style homeless shelter, Mount Trashmore (aka the dump), and the Key West golf course. Where else in the world would golfers share space with gators, egrets, prisoners, and homeless folks? Eric pulled into the farthest space in the golf club’s parking lot, to minimize the chances for scratches and dents on his hand-painted car. My mouth felt dry and I fought to keep from hyperventilating.

  He patted my knee. “Remember, you can’t expect anything of yourself if you’ve never played.” He glanced over at me and frowned. “It’s not so much about the golf, is it?”

  I yawned, trying to relax my jaw and pull in some air.

  “Cassie?” he nudged.

  I nodded. “I’ve only met her a couple of times. The last was the worst.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was maybe ten, still loved playing with Barbies. Mom had given me Barbie’s Dream Kitchen that Christmas.” I sighed, remembering the excitement and pleasure. “The package was wrapped in green polka-dotted paper with a big red bow. It was under the tree for almost a week. When my parents weren’t in the room, I’d shake the box until the little timer chimed. I couldn’t wait to open it.” I grinned. “No surprise I’m in the food business, right? The kitchen had a little pink oven and a pink stove, and somehow it all smelled like chocolate-chip cookies. It came with miniature cake mixes and pans, and Mom had sewed me a little apron th
at looked exactly like Barbie’s. I was so excited to show my big cousin everything.” I lapsed into silence, remembering the acute embarrassment that had followed.

  “But?”

  “But she was sixteen, way past dolls. And not the least bit interested in pretending to make cakes. She looked at the kitchen for about two minutes and then spent the rest of the visit hitting golf balls into the woods behind the house. My father was ultra impressed with her focus. ‘You need to find your passion. And then work at it like your cousin. You don’t want to turn out like your mother. Making dinner is not a career.’”

  “He said that?”

  “Yup, that’s what he told me. They were on the verge of a divorce, only she didn’t see it.” My voice trembled and I took another deep breath. “I didn’t, either.”

  “There was a lot more going on that day than a visit from Cassie,” Eric said. “You sensed that something ugly was brewing between your parents. All that angst got associated with your cousin’s visit.”

  I grimaced and flounced out of the car. “Thank you, Doctor. She could have at least pretended to be interested in my kitchen. It was really very cool.”

  He laughed and got out of the car, then popped the trunk and fished out a set of golf clubs in a red plaid bag.

  “You own golf clubs?”

  Before he could answer, a text message came in from my mother.

  Tell everyone that I moved the dinner reservation up to seven so Cassie and Joe can see the cat man before we eat.

  I groaned. This was turning into the day that would not die.

  We headed toward the clubhouse, an inviting white building with a metal roof, green shutters, and rocking chairs on its wide covered porch. “Suppose I wait for you all here? You can pick me up when you’re finished playing.”

  He poked me in the back. “Let’s go. This will be good for you. What if you marry a guy who loves golf and you have all this baggage around it? This outing will help you decathect from the game, but in a good way.”

  I bugged my eyes at him. “Decathect from the game? If you say so.”

  The pro behind the counter set me up with a battered bag of rental clubs and half a dozen balls, and Eric loaded my pockets with tees, plastic ball markers, and two stubby pencils. We began to argue about the need for golf shoes, which would have involved shelling out sixty dollars for saddle shoes with plastic spikes on the soles that I never would have worn again. Ever. My cousin and her husband arrived in the shop.

  “Ix-nay on the hideous shoes,” I hissed at Eric, then turned to hug Cassie. We assured each other how great it was to meet again; then I introduced the men.

  “Eric has a therapy practice here in Key West,” I said. “And Joe Lancaster is a sports psychologist on the LPGA tour.”

  “Specializing in my neurotic brain,” Cassie said with a laugh. “When we started working together, I was definitely sliding downhill fast toward a job as an assistant pro on a nine-hole course.”

  “You weren’t that bad,” Joe said, tousling her hair. “Your mind was on a lot of things besides golf.”

  The men began to chat like old pals while we stood by awkwardly. Cassie looked smaller and less imposing than I remembered—shorter than me by a couple of inches, her brown curls streaked with blond, her body muscular and tanned. She was athletic like a pacing jaguar, not pudgy and soft like an indoor house cat. Like me.

  “Are you guys ready? They want us on the tee in ten minutes,” Cassie said. She glanced at my rental bag, and then began to paw through the clubs. “Looks like they’ve set you up with some antiques.”

  “It won’t really matter,” I said. “Apparently Janet failed to mention that I don’t play at all.” I never call my mother by her first name unless I’m truly annoyed with her. This nightmare qualified; the closer we got to the first hole, the tighter I felt.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Joe. “Just swing a few times to advance the ball. If you start to slow the foursome down, pick your ball up and drop it on the green. No one’s worried about scoring today, anyway.”

  How did I explain that it wasn’t slow play I was worried about, it was making zero contact with the ball and looking like a fool? I’d been the kind of girl who was chosen last on every schoolyard team—T-ball, volleyball, soccer, field hockey. Cassie, I was certain, would have been first. Probably ahead of most of the boys.

  I was hoping to ride with Eric, but Joe loaded my bag on the back of Cassie’s cart. “It makes more sense for you women to ride together. Not that Cassie will be playing from the ladies’ tee.” Joe laughed. “But I’m dying to hear about Eric’s practice, and I know you girls have years to catch up on.”

  Behind Joe’s back, I made googly eyes at Eric and then shrugged. “Sure.”

  If such a thing was possible, the first hole went even worse than I had feared. After Joe, Cassie, and Eric had teed off, I grabbed my rental driver out of the bag. It had an enormous silver-and-blue head, with THE TERMINATOR written along the length of the shaft. I stood on the tee, feeling dizzy and helpless.

  “Hold it like a baseball bat and swing nice and easy,” Joe said.

  After three whiffs, I hit the ball. It caromed off at a ninety-degree angle and smacked the golf cart where my cousin waited. “Sorry!” I yelped.

  “No problem,” she said, faking a smile.

  By the time we reached the first green, I’d had enough. I’d been forced to play dodgeball back in grade-school gym class, but I didn’t have to do this.

  “I’m done playing,” I said, jamming the Terminator into my bag. “I’ll drive the cart the rest of the round.” No one argued.

  I tried to distract myself from that failure by noticing little bits of nature. Fat ducks waddled along the fairway, then took off in formation, as if to find their winter “V.” I hugged the cart path, which ran not two feet from someone’s condo. A rosemary plant flourished in a pot on the porch. Next to the steps sprawled a stand of motherin-law’s tongue that would have been a showcase houseplant back home.

  On the third hole, which paralleled Route One, I parked in the shade of a coconut palm. The other three walked to the tee. By now I’d calmed down enough to realize that I wasn’t the only one having trouble. In a soothing, low voice, Joe began to list the thoughts Cassie should and should not allow into her mind before she swung.

  “Remember, think while you’re at the driving range, but just feel on the tee,” he told her. “Soft hands and let it flow.”

  She teed up a ball and took a vicious cut. Her ball sailed out almost longer than I could see, then bent to the right, careened over the chain-link fence, and headed toward the highway.

  “Wow,” said an astonished voice from the bushes on the other side of the fence. “She whacked the hell out of that one.” A weathered figure in faded jeans and an old baseball cap with a fish on it emerged from the palmettos, a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. My homeless friend, Tony. He did a double take when he recognized me. “Hayley? What the hell are you doing out here?”

  “Good question,” I muttered, and waved him to silence.

  Eric dropped back a few yards to stand with me while Cassie and Joe discussed how she was holding the club. “Strong thumb,” “backspin,” “closed face,” “upright stance,” “lateral movement”—their voices grew louder and the lingo more foreign—a language I didn’t know and didn’t care to learn.

  “She’s got a little glitch in her game,” Eric whispered. “Joe was hoping that playing a casual round on a strange course would help her settle down.”

  “Not sure that’s working out so good,” Tony piped up.

  Cassie turned around, glaring at Tony. He lifted his brown bottle in salute and winked. She stalked down the fairway. Eric hurried to his cart to pick up Joe, and the men followed her.

  “Nice going, Tony,” I said, but couldn’t resist snickering. “Guess I’d better go get her.”

  “Wait,” he said. “What the hell’s going on with the Bistro on the Bight?
”

  I turned back to him, my face guarded. I was sure Edel Waugh wouldn’t welcome gossip among the Key West homeless. “What do you know about it?”

  “This week I’ve been swinging by the kitchen at the end of the evening. A couple of the staff are good guys. They hand out leftovers that didn’t sell but won’t keep.” He coughed and then dragged on his cigarette. “That lady can cook. Even better than my ex.”

  All the times I’d chatted with Tony over the past year, I hadn’t thought about him having an ex. Or a job or a house or kids. Hadn’t considered what twists in his life might have led him to drinking beer in the palmetto bushes before noon. Eric whistled and waved to me from the fairway ahead.

  “And last night?” I asked.

  “Last night I didn’t get a single bite. Rodrigo, the dishwasher, he told us the boss made them throw everything out. Even the chicken and rice dish with sausage and shrimp.” His stomach gurgled as if in protest and he put a hand to his belly. “I was looking forward to that ever since I read it on the menu.”

  “Peanut oil,” I said, and scrabbled through my golf bag’s pocket until I found the granola bar I’d stashed there for emergencies. I handed that and an apple over the fence to Tony.

  “Gotta go,” I said. “Will you let me know what you hear? You have my phone number, right?” He nodded, and I drove off.

  After nine holes, we visited the clubhouse to use the restrooms and grab drinks and snacks. An apple and almonds for Cassie; a hot dog, a Coke, and peanut M&M’s for Eric and me. Then I changed my mind and ordered a Miller Lite and picked up a glazed doughnut with hideous pink icing and multicolored sprinkles from a box lying open on one of the tables.

  “You eat like Cassie used to,” Joe said with a strained laugh.

  We motored down the tenth hole toward the water tower and heard dogs yapping from the animal shelter just past the green. Cassie grabbed her putter and rolled her head from one shoulder to the other, trying to work out some tension. She yelped and pointed to something moving in a tall pine. “What the heck is that?”