Not a bad point, really, though founding a restaurant, hiring the right staff, and churning out good meals every day was a lot harder than it looked from the outside. I didn’t blame a new chef one bit for wanting to exert his creativity over the menu. My phone rang, jarring me out of my imaginary argument with the online reviewers: Analise was calling.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
“It’s been a good day. I think we have a new contractor for the houseboat, and they already moved tons of trash off our deck, which will mean fewer comments from my father when he sees it.”
“He would do that?”
“He hates the idea of me living on a boat in a hurricane zone, and a trashed-out boat would’ve been even harder to defend. Worst of all would be if he said something to Nathan, who’s probably already having serious second thoughts about his decision to buy it.”
“I suspect Nathan can hold his own in any conversation with your father,” said Analise. “He doesn’t strike me as a man who is easily cowed.”
“True!” I laughed. “I think he’s in the right business.”
“So you’re not feeling desperate or overwhelmed about anything—am I reading that right?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, bracing for what was to come.
“I had another phone call, this time from Audrey Cohen’s sister. She doesn’t believe Marcel about how Audrey died and she’s asked to speak with you.”
“Oh good gravy,” I said. “She should talk to the medical examiner—I don’t know anything. And how would she have any idea that I’m involved?”
“Once I admitted that I’d already left the brewery by the time her sister collapsed, she flipped out.” Analise described what sounded like a terrible mixture of wailing, fury, recriminations, and regret.
“But how did my name come up?”
“I’m so sorry; I let slip that you’d met with Marcel for coffee, and then she wouldn’t let it go until I promised to ask whether you’d talk with her too. I’ll simply call her back and tell her you’re not available. That you’re getting married this week and your plate is full.”
I hated to let my friend down. And I couldn’t imagine how terrible it would be to have to deal with a loved one’s death and tie up details from a distance. Key West can feel like the end of the earth even under the best of circumstances. A friendly voice could really make a difference. “I’ll do it. One phone call won’t hurt, right? But I wish I had some training in grief counseling. I guess I can beg off and hang up if it gets too painful.”
A moment of silence. “Well, it wouldn’t be a phone call. She’s in town now. She flew down as soon as she heard about her sister.”
“Don’t tell me, she’s waiting somewhere with a glass of wine?”
“The bar at Seven Fish.”
That at least told me the sister had good taste. I’d loved that restaurant from the first time I’d eaten there and used it for my trial-run restaurant review for Key Zest a few years back. And now that it had moved to its new spiffy location, you could actually get a seat at the bar without calling a month ahead or knowing the owner. On top of that, I was way too wired to go to bed this early. And besides, it was an easy drive from Houseboat Row, and only blocks away from the Buoys’ Club. On the way home, I could circle around the block and see if Nathan’s car was still parked there. Though I felt guilty even thinking that.
“One glass of wine. I’ll meet her in half an hour after I finish up what I’m doing. But truthfully, I don’t know what I can possibly tell her that you wouldn’t have already said.”
“You’re a good friend. I’ll make this up to you, I swear.”
Before I went out, I decided to have another chat with Audrey’s husband. I’d ask him if he knew either JanMarie Weatherhead or Zane Ryan. And maybe he’d have something new to report about his wife’s death that the official sources hadn’t yet released. And I was super-curious about what he’d say about his sister-in-law.
He picked up on the first ring, answering with a curt “Yes?”
“This is Hayley Snow; we spoke the other day? I’m following up to see how you’re doing. I imagine some of the shock must be wearing off, and I’ve been thinking of you.”
“Thank you,” he said.
We sat in silence for a moment, and I wondered whether the conversation was over before it began. I decided to mention Audrey’s sister to stir the pot a little. “I’m going to have a drink with your sister-in-law tonight—”
“That bitch!” he shouted. “Sorry, but I wouldn’t listen to a word she says. She’s an old sourpuss who never approved of our relationship and did her best to poison it from the beginning. And she had a completely skewed view of her sister.”
“In what way?” I asked in a quiet voice.
“She had no idea how hard it was to be married to Audrey. She had no idea what I gave up. Or how bad things had gotten.”
“Tell me,” I said.
Now the words poured out of him. “Honestly, I was ready to call it quits. I could not take the mood swings, the accusations, the way she spent money, the men she slept with, the way our lives had gotten so far off the track of what any reasonable person would consider normal.”
“Men she slept with?” I repeated.
He huffed into the phone. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration. She had one boyfriend. She insisted that was over and that it hadn’t meant a thing.”
“Sounds so very difficult,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I simply didn’t have the guts to ask him who the boyfriend was. Maybe Audrey’s sister would tell me …
“Audrey wanted to make things up to me by coming on this trip, and insisted that she was feeling better and that things would change for real this time. They changed all right.” It sounded as if he was either crying or hyperventilating, and I felt like a heel.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “Have you had any other news about the cause of death?”
“Her sister demanded an autopsy, and that could drag on for weeks, I’m told.”
“She doesn’t believe that Audrey had a stroke?”
“Apparently not. She despises me, and the feeling is quite mutual. She’s exactly the kind of woman who would suspect me of dropping a poison pill in Audrey’s wine glass. I would have fought her on the autopsy, but that would make me look guilty as hell, wouldn’t it?”
Yikes. He’d laid that right out on the table. I made some sympathetic noises.
“One last question and then I’ll let you go. Did you know either of the other people on our tour? I’m supposed to be writing an article about the experience, but in the rush of your wife’s illness, I forgot to get their names.”
His breath seemed to hitch, and the next words tumbled out. “Never laid eyes on either of them before and wish I’d never met any of you or come to this godforsaken backwater town.” After that, he hung up. He had obviously moved past the stage of denial about his wife’s death and was well into anger.
I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to remind myself how sad he must be and how none of his rage was really directed at me. But by now, my neck and shoulder muscles had tensed back into hunks of concrete. I ran a comb through my curls and trotted out to the parking lot.
Within minutes, I’d arrived at Seven Fish. I paused in the entrance to get my bearings—swearing to myself that this was absolutely the last person I was going to question.
The new restaurant had a soaring ceiling, so it wasn’t as cozy as their old space, but it had more seats and less noise. The bar and counter were stunning, constructed of wavy metal to simulate the sea. I spotted Audrey’s sister in the far corner seat of the bar, nearest the kitchen. She had on a red shirt, as Analise had described. I approached her and introduced myself. Behind her tortoiseshell glasses, her eyes looked red from crying.
“Thank you so much for agreeing to come. I’m sure it’s not convenient right before the holiday. I wanted so much to talk with someone who had been with Audrey on her last day.” She g
lared. “Someone other than Marcel, I mean, who couldn’t be bothered to spend the evening with a member of his own wife’s family.”
“It’s no trouble,” I said. “I’m so very sorry for your loss.”
She wiped away a tear with her sleeve and signaled for the bartender. I ordered a glass of Spanish white albariño and she ordered a double scotch, though the longer I sat here, the clearer it seemed that she was already on the verge of drunk.
“I gather that you and Marcel are not great friends,” I said, once the bartender delivered my wine.
“I blame him. We know she was a handful, but he was a terrible match for her. She never felt that he loved her enough; she always felt that he considered her to be damaged goods.” She took a big slug of her new drink. “And I suppose she was, if you have to look at that way. But a more stable person might have been able to balance Audrey. Honestly”—she looked at the mirror behind the bar, then back at my face—“nobody in the family ever liked him.”
I tried to reconcile what she was telling me with what I remembered. “They seemed so cozy on the tour, holding hands and talking together. And she had a million plans for how they were going to celebrate this visit to the island,” I said, wanting to give her some kind of good news to take away. “I understand that she suffered from depression.”
“Ha,” said Audrey’s sister. “She was sheer cuckoo, bordering on nutso. We shouldn’t have been surprised that Marcel gave up on her over the years. We tried everything: psychotherapy, Reiki, meditation, electroshock, inpatient therapy, outpatient therapy, group therapy. She was a tough customer, but that didn’t mean that we didn’t love her. But he married her and whisked her out of Seattle to Minnesota, so it was harder for us to keep track of her, and to help him with her. He promised to love her and care for her, and I don’t believe he was doing either.”
“Wonder why he didn’t file for divorce, if things were that bad?” I asked.
She frowned, sipped her drink, and rubbed her fingers together. “All the money was hers,” she said. “If he divorced her, he got nothing. And that would mean no more funding of his wacky schemes from our family’s trust, no more anything.”
“What line of work was he in?” I asked. I wanted to ask if there was a clause in her will about the distribution of her money in case of suicide or murder, but I didn’t have the nerve.
“The food industry, but he never held a job for long. He fancied himself to be a great chef—ha! When that didn’t pan out, it was as if he thought everything else was beneath him. As if he’d been destined for great things and refused to do anything normal. Well, let me tell you, we all start out thinking we’re destined for great things. Did he think that Audrey wanted to be sick her entire adult life? Did he think that I wanted to work as a clerk in the Department of Motor Vehicles? All day long, I have to listen to annoying people with their sob stories.”
She sounded so bitter and angry that I was finding her increasingly difficult to sit with. I still didn’t really understand what Marcel had done for a living over the years, but I didn’t believe I would get many facts from her. Outside on Truman, sirens wailed and two police cars with lights flashing sped by in the northbound lane. “Did you ever get the sense that she felt she was in danger with Marcel? Did he hit her, for example?”
“If he did, my sister wouldn’t have told me.” She plucked an ice cube out of her glass, popped it into her mouth, and crunched it to nothing. “Even the times she called when she was way down in the dumps and we begged her to come home, she refused to tell us what was going on. It was like he had a hold on her, emotionally anyway.” She rambled on, describing more instances of him behaving like a lout.
“Was there ever any hint that she was having an affair?” I asked.
That shut her down like a quick twist to an old garden hose. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “And if she was, more power to her.”
“Is there anything else I can tell you about my time with your sister before I go?” I asked. “I have a date with my fiancé. We’re getting married on Friday.” We were getting married, though I sure didn’t have a date with Nathan tonight. But neither did I want to stay here for the evening absorbing more of this woman’s venom. It seemed as though the one thing Marcel and his sister-in-law could agree on was Audrey’s mental distress. I couldn’t help wondering whether the seemingly impossible had happened: Marcel had become desperate enough to poison his own wife in such a way that it looked like a stroke. Maybe he did it by using something that would get into her bloodstream from her skin and leave no trace?
How could a relationship get that bad? Where did the slip-sliding even begin? I found it painful to think about for too long, with my own wedding only days away.
After wishing Audrey’s sister well and expressing my sympathy again, I retrieved my scooter, and took a left onto Truman. I drove the two blocks to Watson, turned left, and paused next to the Buoys’ Club parking lot. The cop cars that I’d seen rush by while in Seven Fish were parked in a semicircle around the dumpster behind the gentlemen’s club. The police were out of their cars, flashlights bobbing, and I could make out the shapes of at least four officers. I was relieved to see that none of them was Nathan. Nor was his rental car parked along the side street where I’d seen it the other day.
I hit the redial button for Marcel’s number, thinking I’d really like to talk with him one final time so I could compare his description of Audrey’s cycles of depression with that of his sister-in-law’s. The phone rang a few times, then went to voicemail, so I left a short message, asking him to call me when he had a moment.
Once home, I changed into pj’s and settled on the couch with the cats and a pecan pie bar to wash away the grimness of Audrey’s sister, and Audrey’s life. I tapped the website for the strip club into my phone’s Google search bar. The description promised sexy, nude dancers, and the perfect place to host a bachelor or birthday party. The FAQ for dancers promised earnings of $200 to $700 per night, plus inexpensive housing on the premises.
What would convince a woman to take this job? I couldn’t imagine working there under any circumstances. This would be a good question for my psychologist friend Eric. I was lucky not to have to consider a choice like that, and I knew it.
Chapter Fifteen
He was eating the soup, lifting his spoon with mechanical regularity, chewing and swallowing as if his life depended on tipping the steaming liquid into his mouth.
—Ann Cleeves, Red Bones
Early the next morning, I rode over to Nathan’s apartment to walk Ziggy. To be honest, except for the exuberance of the dog, my guy’s place was not a warm and welcoming space. But Ziggy more than made up for the guy-style furniture, the bare walls, and the refrigerator empty of everything other than grocery store–brand condiments, good beer, and cereal. Each time I saw the dog, he made it clear he couldn’t believe his luck that I’d turned up again. And that right there was the difference between a cat and a dog.
Though I loved Evinrude with all my heart, he would never come running up to fling himself on me and lick my face to show his complete adoration. A cat’s affection was more subtle, expressed by lap lying and purring, all at his convenience. Having both kinds of animals would be a joy, at least for me. I was not so sure that Nathan would interpret the early-morning feline face patting as a sign of Evinrude’s affection. Nor would he appreciate it.
I tiptoed to Nathan’s bedroom, tapped on the door, and stuck my head in, in case he was sleeping. But the bedcovers were neatly made and there was no sign that he had been there the night before. I was tempted, sorely tempted, to rustle through his nightstand and the top of his dresser to look for hints as to what he was up to. He would kill me for that invasion of privacy, and rightly so. So I grabbed Ziggy’s leash and raced him down the stairs and out into the dawn instead.
“Which would you rather do, my little pal?” I asked the dog, who was bounding from one side of my feet to the other, doing his best to wind the leash ar
ound my ankles. “Shall we take a fast walk along the Atlantic? Or go to the dog park?”
Those last two words, dog park, sent him into paroxysms of doggy joy.
“Dog park it is, buddy,” I said, “and luckily for you, this happens to be the time of day that Eric goes there with Chester. And Chester and you are a match made in heaven.”
I texted Eric that we were on the way, strapped Ziggy into the crate on the back of my scooter that I use to carry groceries home, and drove to the Higgs Beach dog park located across the road from the water. The city had planned to move the road so the parks and playground could be located directly on the water, but during an infrared survey, graves were discovered and identified as the remnants of an old cemetery, and the renovation was scrapped.
Eric and his dogs were waiting inside the double-latched gates, and Ziggy began to leap and bark when he saw them. “Let me unhook you before you hang yourself,” I told him once we’d made it through the second gate. I unhitched him and he roared off with Chester, with the smaller, shorter-legged Barkley in hot pursuit.
“Phew,” Eric said. “That’s a lot of energy. Chester has certain pals he plays with. I bet Ziggy will love them too.” He pointed out Bella the Boston terrier, in a purple dress, Roman the Yorkie, and two mini Aussies. Eric introduced me to a few of the other dog owners on the way toward a concrete picnic bench, where we could watch the dogs and chat privately. The dogs tore around the fenced-in space, looking as happy as any creatures I’d ever seen. Across the road, the turquoise ocean lapped at the beach, with seagulls calling overhead.
“How are things going?” he asked once we were settled. “You look a little tense.”
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