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

by Lucy Burdette

  This conversation, these thoughts, were so inappropriate for a dinner table that my gut clenched with the tension.

  Sam must have been thinking along the same lines. “Cassie, when is your first event on the Ladies Professional Golf Tour?” he asked as he got up to get another bottle of wine.

  “We’re talking that over,” said Joe before she could answer. “She might go to the tournament in the Bahamas in January, but we’re skipping Australia, Thailand, and Singapore.”

  “Don’t you girls play in the US of A anymore?” asked Miss Gloria. She giggled as though she were tipsy, which she probably was. I had to hope she wouldn’t drop off the back of the scooter on our way home.

  “I don’t know what I’ll decide,” said my cousin flatly. Joe reached across the table to take her hand, but she pulled away. After a moment, she pushed away from the table and stalked off to the porch. What was up between them?

  “Well,” said my mother in her brightest voice. “Shall we clear the table and serve the cookies? Miss Gloria and Hayley have outdone themselves in the decorating department,” she added.

  Bransford’s cell phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, muttered something unintelligible, and then stood up. “I have to get going. Thanks for dinner,” he said to my mother. And more generally to the rest of us at the table: “I’ll be in touch.” Sam sprang to his feet to see the detective off, and Wally followed, saying his good-byes as he left.

  “That’s an improvement already,” said Sam when he returned. “Sorry. That was rude. And I didn’t mean to dis Wally.” He grinned. “More wine, anyone?”

  “We should be leaving also,” said Mrs. Alonso. “I’m only now realizing how flat-out exhausted I feel.”

  “Do you need a lift?” Sam asked.

  But Edel’s motherin-law explained that she’d rented a car and was staying at one of the hotels near the airport. I escorted them to the front porch and then returned to the kitchen, feeling pretty much like a wet sandbag, too.

  “Has there ever been a worse dinner party?” my mother asked, nodding yes when Sam offered to fill her wineglass. “I feel like a terrible hostess, inflicting that cop on them in the midst of their grief.”

  “At least the food was good,” said Miss Gloria.

  Mom smiled, and then turned to me. “Why in the world did Bransford come, anyway?”

  “I suspect his investigation is stalled. He was hoping Something Would Be Revealed.” I wiggled my fingers in the air.

  “Oh come on,” said Sam. “He expected Edel to confess over a mouthful of pasta?”

  Miss Gloria leaned forward, bright pink spots of excitement blooming on her cheeks. “I happened to be able to read the text that came in. Something about a Mary Pat.”

  “Mary Pat Maloney?” I asked. “She’s one of Edel’s line cooks. I spoke with her earlier today.”

  My mother’s eyes bored in on me. “What do you mean, you spoke with her?”

  “I swung by her place in New Town because I thought she might know quite a bit about the tensions in the kitchen at the bistro.” I made a mental note to call Torrence tomorrow and see if he’d tell me what the cops really knew.

  “And?” Joe asked.

  “And she clammed up pretty quickly. That was after she told me flat out that she preferred Juan Carlos to Edel. So I can’t imagine she killed him. Why would she?”

  “Why would anyone kill anyone?” Joe asked. “Unless you’re a sociopath who cares nothing for human life. Or”—he rubbed his chin—“unless you’ve been backed into a corner and strike out in desperation. I suspect that’s why most murders occur. Someone makes a little mistake and tries to cover it up and the lies snowball …”

  He sat back and sipped his wine. A smart man, just like my friend Eric. Except with his own wife, who seemed to be his blind spot. If I’d been in Cassie’s position, mad at him for something, I’d have wanted him to come after me, comfort me, get me to talk about what was wrong.

  But where did I get off critiquing anyone else’s relationship when I was batting zero with my own?

  20

  “This is the Mr. Potato Head School of Cooking,” he said. “Interchangeable parts. If you don’t have something, think of what that ingredient does and attach another.”

  —Elizabeth Bard, Lunch in Paris

  After spending most of the day poking around the houseboat—organizing, cleaning, and baking more cookies to try to keep myself from sinking into the doldrums, I walked up the dock to Connie’s boat, where Ray would be picking us up for the lighted boat parade. Miss Gloria had decided to take a taxi up to the Truman Annex and watch the parade with my family from the less hectic viewpoint of Mallory Square.

  First thing this morning, I had put a call in to Lieutenant Torrence, begging for any new information on the case. He hadn’t returned it. Nor had Edel returned a text message asking if she’d heard when the restaurant might open. And my mother hadn’t answered my text, either, in which I’d wondered whether she’d made up her mind about Sam’s proposal. Worst of all, there had been no word from Wally about the status of the investors and Ava’s plans for Key Zest.

  Connie was out on her deck, watering her plants and picking off brown leaves from the undersides. “Ahoy!” she called. “So glad you could get away from work and family for a little relaxation.”

  “I desperately need the distraction,” I said as I boarded. Her boat felt utterly familiar, as I’d lived with her for several months when I first arrived in Key West. I missed the day-to-day contact with my friend, but not my tiny closet of a bedroom, which had also functioned as storage space for the cleaning supplies for her business. The smell of Clorox and pine-scented industrial cleanser to this day made me feel a bit claustrophobic.

  “There is no work to speak of,” I added glumly. “If you have an opening for a house cleaner, I may be available.” And then I filled her in on the upheaval at the magazine.

  “What does Wally say?” she asked, a look of concern on her face.

  “We had the dinner from hell last night,” I told her, “and he hardly said a word except to question me about why Bransford and Edel were there, too.”

  Her eyes bugged wide. “Bransford? Edel? What kind of weird dinner party is that?”

  I sighed and then welcomed the sight of Ray chugging up the channel toward us in his little motorboat. “I’ll tell you later,” I said. Listing all my worries out loud would only make them feel more real.

  Connie ran inside to get her costume and equipment for the parade, while I moved to the back deck to grab Ray’s bowline. As he glided closer, I noticed that on the bow’s point he had wired a reindeer like the ones I was used to seeing adorning snowy front yards in New Jersey. The body and antlers were wound with blinking, multicolored lights. Pecking around the deer’s hooves were three lighted chickens. More lights were strung up the poles that supported the Bimini top over his console. Ray himself wore a red T-shirt and a Santa hat that blinked in a cadence that matched the chickens. Christmas music pumped out over a hidden speaker. Ray had recorded himself singing “Rudolph the Red-Fowled Reindeer.”

  “Fantastic!” I cried, laughing so hard I could barely get the words out. “You’ve got a winner there.”

  “Strictly amateur hour,” said Ray with a wry grin. “We don’t really stand a chance against the sailboats with their big masts and riggings. But we had a lot of fun putting it together. Ready to go?”

  I waved the elf hat I’d worn in the Hometown Holiday Parade and called back to Connie. “Captain says he’s casting off.”

  Connie popped out of her cabin, dressed all in red and green, with a blinking hat to match Ray’s and a blinking necklace, too. She carried a small cooler and a large flashlight. We scrambled onto the boat and Ray backed it up and turned it around. Then we exited Garrison Bight through the cut by Trumbo Point and chugged through the narrow sluice dividing Key West from Fleming Key, en route to the historic harbor. Dusk had fallen; the air felt chilly and lights sparkle
d all along the edges of the coast. I could almost believe it was the Christmas season.

  “Do you miss being up north for the holidays?” I asked Connie.

  “Not a bit,” she said. “My father has left four messages inviting me to New York City for a weekend and it doesn’t tempt me in the slightest.”

  “Not even seeing the tree at Rockefeller Center? Or the Rockettes? Maybe a little white Christmas?” But I knew what didn’t tempt her—spending time with her father, who’d almost torpedoed her marriage before she and Ray had reached the altar.

  “You sound homesick,” Ray said, peering over the steering wheel to check out my face in the gathering darkness.

  “I guess I am. A little. This has been a tough week. Besides the murder and my job—” I paused. This wasn’t really my business, but it bothered me. I liked Sam. A lot. Once I got used to the shock of my mother dating, I hated to see her throw away a good chance at happiness. A lurking suspicion had started to take shape in my mind: Maybe she was as bad at accepting good fortune in the love department as I was. Maybe I had inherited the trait from her.

  Anyway, since Connie was my closest friend and Ray was dependably closemouthed, I spilled the details about the dinner with the bereaved chef, Bransford, and Wally. And then I described the sweet gesture Sam had made buying the tree and shipping our ornaments down, the mysterious box at the bottom, the gorgeous ring, and my mother’s tap dance around Sam’s proposal.

  “I know how it feels to be on his end of things,” said Ray. “Horrible.”

  Connie gave him a playful punch in the ribs, a little harder than he expected. “I had reason to believe that perhaps you were not husband material.” She turned to face me. “What do you think’s going on?”

  I merely shrugged.

  “Did this happen at dinner last night? I can’t believe your guest list. You fed all of them?”

  “Mom did the cooking. And, fortunately, the Bolognese sauce recipe makes enough for an army regiment,” I said, blowing out a big, tension-filled breath. “I was starting to tell you earlier—Sam invited Wally. And I invited Edel because she was so blue about her ex-mother-in-law arriving, and Juan Carlos’s death, of course. And then Bransford was pushing me so hard about my connection with her that I told him to come see for himself. I never expected he’d actually do it.”

  “What’s happening with his wife?” Connie asked, her tone a touch cool. She’d seen me through some disappointing times while I attempted to date Bransford last year. Like me, she hoped for the best until the worst was demonstrated. Which Bransford had done by resurrecting his moribund marriage rather than continue our relationship. At least this was “the worst” when seen through the eyes of my loyal friend.

  “I haven’t heard a peep about the wife.”

  Ray slowed the boat down and we circled outside of the dock where the Hindu and other day-tripping sailboats were docked. It was hard to hear over the noises of motors and the festive crowd gathering, so I turned away. Not that I wanted to continue that conversation, anyway.

  Ray cut the engine and we glided into the historic harbor. There were dozens of boats lined up for the parade, which would wend past the crowds at Schooner Wharf and then around the point out to Mallory Square—assuming the weather held up. Ray had been right: Though his reindeer were definitely more original than some of the other arrangements, his decorations paled in comparison to the bigger boats. There were enormous sailboats with lights snaking up their masts, curving down their lines, and twinkling across their sails. There were motorboats carpeted in lights—blue, red, yellow, and green. And there were smaller boats with Key West–themed decorations—like Santa rocking in a hammock under lighted palm trees and leaping sailfish outlined in blue.

  A man with a megaphone announced that all the boats should line up according to the number they had been issued when they signed up for the parade. We squeezed in between a Fury party boat and a small yacht that Ray estimated might have cost a cool million. Connie swayed in the bow, waving at the other participants, and Ray grinned like a monkey from his seat behind the console. This was the kind of night that made living in Key West worth every bit of the hassle: the traffic on Roosevelt, the tourists clogging Duval Street and all the streets radiating from it, the expensive or nonexistent vegetables. I snorted softly. Only my mother or I would add that last item to the list of island hardships.

  I moved to the small bench at the rear of our boat and waved to the other contestants as they passed by. We motored slowly toward the Schooner Wharf Bar, where loud music piped from the rooftop speakers, and in the distance firecrackers popped. The tourists were piled up four and five people deep along the docks and sidewalks that lined the perimeter of the harbor.

  A hollow cracking noise echoed above the holiday music. I felt a stinging, sharp and painful, in my left arm, almost as if I’d been bitten by an animal with big teeth. I looked down, puzzled. And dropped to the deck, woozy, when I saw that I was bleeding.

  “Ray!” I screamed. “Ray! I need help!”

  Just as it had taken me seconds to realize I was hurt, it took Ray time to understand why I was writhing on the deck of the boat. Blood gushed from my arm, seeping into the seawater that had splashed into the boat on the ride over, coloring the fiberglass a delicate pink. Feeling faint and weak, I dropped my head to my hands. Over my moaning and the Christmas carols pounding from the bar’s speakers, I could hear Ray shout to Connie. Finally our boat swerved out of the queue and shot off toward a Coast Guard cutter that idled on the pier near a Key West Police Department cruiser.

  “My passenger is injured!” Ray shouted.

  Within minutes, Coast Guard personnel boarded our boat and helped Ray load me onto a stretcher, then transfer me and the stretcher to shore and then into a waiting ambulance. Connie scrambled in beside me, her eyes wide with worry. After a bumpy ride over the worst of the Roosevelt Boulevard construction, we arrived at the hospital on Stock Island.

  Once we’d stopped moving, the paramedics whisked me through double doors to a big waiting room, which stank of antiseptic and fear. An orderly rolled me right past the intake windows and a white-coated clerk followed us to a treatment staging room. In answer to the clerk’s questions, Connie found my insurance card and reeled off my important statistics: name, address, policy numbers, birth date, next of kin. The clerk tapped all of that into the iPad she carried.

  Finally she looked up. “And what happened here?”

  I rolled over a little so she could see the bloody shirt tied around my arm.

  “I may have been shot.”

  She paled, thin fingers grazing her neck to pluck at a gold chain. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  I groaned in response.

  “Thanks a lot. How do you think she feels?” Connie said, stroking the curls back from my forehead. I croaked out a laugh.

  After a few minutes, I was whisked through the next set of doors and ensconced on a hospital bed, separated from the rest of the room by an off-white curtain. In the adjoining cubby, I heard someone coughing hard enough to dislodge their tonsils, and farther down, the sound of a patient vomiting.

  A nurse bustled in and took my vitals, tapping the results into a computer by the door. Then she unwrapped the bloody vestiges of Ray’s shirt and the gauze squares that the paramedics had applied and examined my arm. “Looks like you got lucky,” she said, swabbing the dried blood from my biceps. “It appears to have grazed the outside of your arm without nicking anything essential. Hang on. I’m going to clean it up a bit. Then we’ll bring the doctor in to have a look, okay? He can decide whether you need an x-ray or a CT scan.”

  But I didn’t get the idea she was asking my permission. I whimpered with pain as she cleaned the wound. Connie dropped my hand and sank into a chair at the edge of the cubicle.

  “Sorry, Hayley,” she said, “I’ve got a weak stomach. Not much better than the clerk.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

  “Almost finished,” sai
d the nurse. “It’s not as bad as it probably felt, but we’ll call the doc in just to be sure.” She had me hold a wad of clean gauze to the wound and she hurried off to find the doctor.

  Connie tried her best to keep my mind off the throbbing and the fright of having someone shoot at me by chatting about the lighted boats and the silly costumes worn by the sailors. My mind pinged between fear, confusion, and outrage.

  Finally the nurse returned, accompanied by a white-coated doctor with wispy blond hair who looked younger than any of us. “Gunshot wound,” she told him. “It looks like it grazed the outer flesh of her arm. Fortunately, she’s not that thin or I believe it would have hit bone and muscle.”

  He nodded hello, snapped on a pair of white gloves, and repeated the probing the nurse had done earlier, only deeper. Then he asked me to move my fingers as though I were playing scales on the piano, squeeze a fist, and lift my arm above my shoulder.

  “Looks like you got lucky here, young lady,” he said.

  Twice they’d told me I’d gotten lucky. “Not sure how getting shot qualifies as lucky,” I grumbled.

  But the doctor barely smiled. “Let’s bandage her up,” he said to the nurse. And to me: “There are some gentlemen who would like to speak with you.”

  I groaned again. “I doubt they’re gentlemen.”

  The doctor laughed and began scribbling notes on a prescription pad and tapping more notes into an iPad. “We’ll give you something for the pain. Don’t drive after taking it. And antibiotics, twice daily. Make sure you finish the whole bottle.” He ripped off the top page of his pad and handed it to me. “You can change the dressing tomorrow. Have you had a tetanus shot recently?” I nodded. “Call us if you experience any excessive bleeding or swelling. Also if you notice pus or a foul discharge or you develop a fever. And follow up with your personal doctor in about a week. Questions?” he asked as he started out to the next patient.