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

by Lucy Burdette

  Already he was looking annoyed. “Okay, your boss didn’t want the feature. But you went over there, anyway.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “before you start assuming I do whatever I want, no matter what the people in charge think.”

  “That sounds about right,” he said.

  I looked away, my hand on the door handle. “I have two bosses. Wally Beile is the editorial director. He’s the one who assigned me the piece.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “So I went to the restaurant, as I was asked. Edel was preparing for what she called a soft opening. She showed me around and had me observe for a couple of hours and then fed me dinner, along with the rest of the staff. Spaghetti Bolognese,” I added, “in case you’re interested.” Which I doubted he was. He was not the kind of man to slow down and swoon over the subtle meld of pork and beef, tomatoes and milk and fresh basil, all simmered for hours. And then nestled on top of authentic Italian pasta and sprinkled with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Or, I wondered, had she made the pasta herself right there in the restaurant? I remembered an incredible chewy texture and the way it had perfectly soaked up the sauce. But I hadn’t seen a pasta machine.

  “Earth to Hayley,” said Bransford.

  “Sorry. I was having a foodie moment.” I grinned. “So, then I learned that after Wally made the first contact, she asked for me specifically on account of the problems that she was having in her kitchen. I told you guys all of that. And the second day I visited was when she threw a fit over the change in cooking oil.”

  “What kinds of reactions did you notice from the staff?” Bransford asked.

  “They couldn’t get away from her fast enough,” I said. “She was scary, screaming at the top of her lungs. I mean, I understand why she was upset. A person could have died.”

  Bransford broke in. “A person did die. In fact, it was her husband.”

  “Her ex. But I know very little about that,” I said. “We did not discuss her personal life the two nights I was in her kitchen.”

  “And you never saw him come by?”

  “Never. I don’t even know what he looks like. I assumed he was still up north.” I pressed my hands to my cheeks. “That’s not quite it—I didn’t assume anything because his presence or absence didn’t cross my mind.”

  “And you know nothing about their relationship.”

  I squirmed. “We talked about it a little after the fire. And I did some reading. I’m sure you saw the Page Six article, too.”

  Bransford studied me, his lips twitching. “Listen, we’ve had our disagreements, you and me. And I understand how you react if you think someone is trying to influence you. Truth is, you’re the most stubborn girl I’ve ever met.”

  “Oh, how you flatter me,” I said, blinking my eyes like a debutante.

  He did not smile. “But you really don’t know what you’ve gotten into this time. This is a ruthless woman. If she’s killed once and tried to hide it, she would do it again in a heartbeat. If she feels threatened. And you probably make her feel threatened. Because you are nosy and relentless,” he said, ending that speech with a sputter.

  “Why, thank you,” I said. “What a lovely description.” I pushed open the car door and sprang out. “I know. I know. Don’t hesitate to call if I think of anything else.”

  I rattled off his phone number, which I wished I could erase from my brain at the same time that I eliminated Chad Lutz’s number from my memory. Then I poked my head back into the cruiser.

  “And since you’ll probably hear this, anyway, you might as well hear it from me. Edel and her ex-mother-in-law are coming to my mother’s home for dinner tonight. My mother is fully in the loop. Whether Edel killed him or not, both she and Juan Carlos’s mother are desperately grieving. And for the record, I don’t believe she did kill him. I think she still loved him. I believe she was devastated by his infidelity.”

  He shook his head, looking beyond annoyed. “Honest to god, you make me want to throttle you.”

  “So unprofessional,” I said, gritting my teeth and smiling. Wondering how I could taunt him back. “Since our boundaries are loose today, anyway, would you like to come for dinner, too?” I slammed the door and stalked off to my scooter.

  He rolled down his car window and called after me. “What time?”

  18

  She ripped open the cellophane bag and even though it was before dinner, they both sat there, eating cookies and not talking, ruining their appetites and not even caring.

  —Caroline Leavitt, Is This Tomorrow

  With my hands still trembling from the dustup with Bransford, I punched my mother’s number on speed dial. “I’m afraid I just invited another mouth for dinner,” I said when she answered. “The rest of his body’s coming, too.”

  “Wonderful! I’d love to spend more time with Wally.”

  “Unfortunately.” I paused and cleared my throat. “It’s not Wally who’s coming, it’s Detective Bransford.”

  Mom was stunned to silence for a moment, which doesn’t happen often. “Well, honey, if that’s who you like now, why, we’ll try to like him, too.”

  “I don’t like him,” I said and started to describe how the invitation came about. But how to explain that I felt like he’d been needling me so I needled him back? And then why in the world had he turned the tables and accepted my offer, which I’d not really meant? “Bottom line is I think he believes Edel killed her own husband but he can’t quite nail her. I think maybe he hopes she’ll say something to incriminate herself.”

  “Odd,” said my mother, but she sounded distracted. “We’ll figure it all out when he arrives. And if he acts rude, we’ll ask him to leave. Wait until you get here—the sauce smells divine. Could you possibly find something to fill in for dessert at Fausto’s? I’m running a little behind.”

  “I’ve got cookie dough in the freezer on the houseboat,” I said. “I’ll bake some up this afternoon and get Miss Gloria to help with the decorating.”

  “Sam wants us all here by six,” Mom told me. “He’s making special cocktails and he says he has a surprise.”

  After hanging up with Mom, I tried to imagine who might know more about Edel and Juan Carlos than I’d found out so far. I tapped through my apps until I found the WhitePages. Then I typed in Mary Pat Maloney and found her address, located in a small neighborhood in New Town, just ten minutes from where I was standing. How could it hurt to swing by and have a chat with her?

  I started up my scooter and headed south on Duval Street toward the Atlantic Ocean and then took a left on South Street. As the holidays got closer, the hordes of tourists seemed to grow larger. Was it my imagination or were more of them Asian, speaking in languages that sounded utterly foreign? I had to wonder what they made of our little island, and whether this was the only place in the United States that they were visiting. If that were true, what a peculiar sense of our country they would be taking back with them.

  I found Mary Pat’s home in the small neighborhood a stone’s throw from the Publix supermarket. New Town is still Key West, but set outside the district of wooden homes with eyebrow windows and gingerbread trim that constitutes historic Old Town. Also set outside of HARC, the Historical Architecture Review Commission, with its strict guidelines. These houses were mostly built of concrete, with small yards of thick spiky grass, shaded by palm trees and prickly bougainvillea hedges in full pink bloom.

  The trunks of the palm trees in Mary Pat’s yard had been wrapped with red and green Christmas lights. Inside her picket fence, enormous blow-up figurines of Santa and his elves had pride of place. Every window, door, and roofline was draped with blinking icicle lights, and the outline of Santa fishing flashed on the roof. Three towheaded boys wrestled in the yard in front of the plastic Santa. I stopped outside the gate.

  “Hey, guys,” I called, “is your mom around?”

  The boys paused for a minute to look me over, then the middle boy hollered, “Mom! A lady wants to talk to y
ou.”

  Mary Pat came to the door, a denim apron hanging around her neck and tied loosely around her waist. Both she and the apron were dusted with flour, and she clutched a spoon dripping with some kind of batter. The incomparable scent of baking cookies wafted out behind her.

  “Oh my gosh,” I said, “it smells divine. Gingerbread?”

  Mary Pat squinted as she studied me, but finally she nodded. “We’re going to build our gingerbread house this afternoon.”

  “We’re making a castle!” screeched the two bigger boys in unison.

  “With a moat,” added the smallest one.

  “And knights and warlocks and cowboys and Indians,” shouted the others.

  Mary Pat shrugged and grinned. “You see what comes of not producing a daughter?”

  I smiled back. “I guess it’s not the best time to bother you, with a castle in the oven,” I said, “but could I come in and ask you a few questions? I won’t take long. But it’s really important. You know about Edel’s husband by now, I assume.”

  She pinched her lips together with her left fingers and wiped her face with her right arm, leaving a sweep of flour across her forehead. “I don’t have much time.”

  “I swear it will be just a few minutes,” I said, sniffing the air. Was something burning?

  She rushed into her house and I followed. The screen door banged closed behind us. “Boys,” she called back over her shoulder, “stay in the yard.”

  Her kitchen might have been eligible for disaster assistance—the counters and sink stacked with pots and pans and bowls and dishes, all spattered with butter and sugar and flour. A battered copy of The Joy of Cooking lay open on the kitchen table. She hurried across the linoleum floor, flung open the oven door, and yanked out a tray of cookies in the shape of castle building blocks, with the edges crisped almost to black. She sighed.

  “At least these pieces are the roof. They’ll be covered in white icing, so a little extra brown along the edges won’t hurt a thing. So, what did you want to know?” she asked.

  I tried to frame my questions carefully. Here was a woman accustomed to making the best of situations that weren’t perfect. And yet she’d made that comment a few days ago about her dreams getting trashed.

  “I wondered how long you’ve known Edel and her husband. How did you start working for them? And how did it happen that you made the move from New York City to Key West?”

  “That’s three questions,” she said with a smirk. Then she began to roll out more gingerbread dough on the one clear counter that had been sprinkled with flour. “I met them years ago when they were down here on their honeymoon,” she said. “That was BK.”

  I looked puzzled.

  “Before kids,” she said. “Life was a lot simpler. I was a newlywed myself, working for Blue Heaven back then. I was semifamous for creating a beautiful tropical salad. At the center was a pan-fried grouper, surrounded by mango and avocado slices and then drizzled with the most amazing lime vinaigrette.”

  “Sounds glorious.” My mouth was watering. “What kind of vinegar did you use in the dressing?”

  “Trade secret,” she said with a laugh. “Edel and Juan Carlos asked their waiter the same question. When he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, they asked to meet the chef responsible for such a masterpiece. So when the lunch rush was over, I came out from the kitchen. At first they tried to wangle the recipe out of me. When I refused to hand it over, they started talking about the restaurant they had opened in New York. And how they were always looking for the best of the best to come and work for them, and would I be interested in joining them? What did I have to lose?”

  She heaved an enormous sigh and began to scrape the gingerbread forms onto an oiled tray. Then she slid the tray in the oven, set the timer, and plunked onto the seat across from me. She dipped her finger into a bowl of green icing. “Ahhh … Sugar. Want a hit?”

  “No, thanks.” I watched her lick the icing off her fingers like a grooming cat. “I’m going to be blunt. Do you know of any reason someone would have had it in for Edel? Had she ruffled feathers getting her new restaurant off the ground?”

  Mary Pat unloosed the band that held her ponytail, then smoothed her hair and gathered it back up. “I’ll tell you this because you’ll find it out, anyway. I really got along better with Juan Carlos. But, on the other hand, I was dying to get back to this island. During our eight years in New York, my husband and I had the three boys, and we were all squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment.” She jerked her thumb at the front yard. “I thought we could make a better life for them if we could get down here. I didn’t know that my husband wouldn’t be coming along. We didn’t have a big blowout or anything; he’s a musician and he just wasn’t prepared to leave New York.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that—you’ve suffered a loss, too.” I rested my chin in my hand. “And raising the boys alone—that sounds hard. How do you manage?”

  “My mother lives in the back bedroom—it’s her house, anyway. She’s here whenever I’m working. Or whenever I was planning to be working. I don’t know if that darn place will open, the way things are going.”

  “But you’ll find work, anyway.” I smiled. “The island was probably devastated when you left with your vinaigrette recipe. Did Juan Carlos object to Edel establishing her own restaurant?”

  “He was a fiery man with flashes of brilliance and also flashes of idiocy,” said Mary Pat. “The ladies loved him. And I think he expected that Edel would stick with him no matter what he did on the side. He didn’t even imagine that she could get along without him.” She shook her head. “And to come back to Key West without him, his island paradise …”

  I screwed up my nerve. “Were you involved with him?”

  She scrunched up her face and almost spat the green frosting out. “You’ve got to be kidding. Where would I find the time between working sixty hours in the kitchen and raising three boys?” Her voice was irate.

  “Sorry—I had to ask.” I ducked my head. “I’m just trying to figure out who she angered—who didn’t want her opening. Who might have wanted her to fail? And could it have been Juan Carlos himself?”

  The timer chimed and she pushed away from the table, grabbed a pair of oven mitts, and pulled the cookie sheets from the oven.

  “Juan Carlos would not try to destroy her. He wasn’t that kind of man. And, besides, he did love her.” She ripped open a bag of gumdrops, dumped them into a glass bowl, and brought them to the table. “Boys!” she yelled out to the yard. “Ten minutes and we’ll put this damn house together.”

  “But why was he here?”

  “You’d have to ask her that,” Mary Pat said. “And while you’re at it, ask her neighbors on the bight what it was like to have a pushy New Yorker sail in and try to take over the harbor. They’ve had colored lights and flashing reindeer and lighted beer cans and everything else for years. And suddenly she wants them to put only white lights up? Ridiculous! That’s all I have to say.” She clamped her lips, stood up, and stomped outside.

  I scored one red gumdrop and followed her to the yard, where she was herding her boys back into the kitchen. “Thanks for chatting,” I said. “And good luck with the gingerbread house.”

  I mounted my scooter, reminded by Mary Pat’s gingerbread that I’d promised to bake cookies for dinner. I dialed up Miss Gloria and asked her to pull the cookie dough and the icing out of the refrigerator and the freezer. Then I made my way across town, trying not to get annoyed at the holiday traffic. Parking in the Tarpon Pier lot, I could hear Schnootie the schnauzer’s hysterical barking all the way up the finger to our houseboat.

  Mr. Renhart poked his head out of their living area and yelled to his wife. “Could you shut that fool dog up? Or I’ll take the thing back to the pound.”

  Mrs. Renhart gathered the animal into her arms. “Daddy doesn’t mean it,” she whispered to the quivering dog. “It’s just that he’s working the night shift this week and he’s tired and crabby.” They disap
peared into the cabin, both of them sniffling.

  On the counters of our tiny galley, Miss Gloria had laid out the sugar cookie dough, the colored icing, and the colored sprinkles, and she’d preheated the oven. I washed my hands and rummaged through the drawers to find my heavy-duty rolling pin and the new cookie cutters I’d ordered from Sur La Table. Miss Gloria danced across the room to turn on her favorite CD of Christmas carols.

  “I love this season,” she said. “Almost enough to make me want to go back up to Michigan for the holidays. The snow was so pretty.” She laughed. “But the winds off the lake were wicked—more than an old lady who’s thin as a spare rib can bear.”

  I laughed along with her and whirled her off her feet. “And we would miss you so much! And your sons are coming next month, right?”

  She nodded. “I tried to get them to come for Christmas, but it’s a devil of a time to travel. Prices are jacked up so high.”

  I began to roll out the dough, dip the cookie cutters in flour, and cut out the shapes of palm trees, sunglasses, iguanas, and roosters. Once the cookies were baked and cooled, we painted green fronds and white lights on the palms, red frames and white lenses on the sunglasses, and wild colors not seen in nature on the roosters and iguanas.

  Outside, the not so dulcet barking of Schnootie the schnauzer had started up again, drowning out Emmylou Harris’s version of “Silent Night.” The racket went on and on. I packed up a dozen of the cookies for the Renharts and stepped outside to see if Schnootie had identified someone suspicious on the dock. Miss Gloria trailed behind me and settled into a deck chair.

  The UPS man, wearing a holiday hat and jingle bells, was delivering a stack of packages to the boat at the end of the finger.