A Deadly Feast

by Lucy Burdette

  “Of course,” said my mother and I at the same time. She filled a white Styrofoam cup with ice and water and handed the cup to me. Nathan sipped and nodded his thanks.

  “Since I was undercover and driving a rental, I didn’t have the police radio or the scanner.”

  “You told me your brakes were bad and that’s why it was in the shop,” I said. “I can’t believe you’d take a risk like that—chasing him without backup. And no phone, either.”

  “It fell between the seats and I was in a hurry,” Nathan said, looking sheepish.

  Steve Torrence looked sheepish too. “We had half the department combing the island and all the way up to Big Pine for the last twenty-four hours looking for this guy,” said Steve. “And you found him, right under our noses.”

  He sighed and nodded for another sip of water.

  “It was easy enough to get over the fence around those old buildings. And there were plenty of handholds in the bricks. Not so easy after you’ve been shot.”

  I winced as he reached for the bandaged leg.

  “I was halfway in that window when he whacked the other leg with something and I fell inside. Both legs hurt like hell. After that, things get a little foggy. He tied me up and gagged me.” He shuddered and smoothed the sheet over his chest. “Honestly, I didn’t see myself getting out of there alive. And I felt terrible about that in many ways—mostly to do with you. But sometimes you have to be realistic.” He reached for my hand, grimacing at the movement or the thought—I didn’t know which.

  I hated hearing how close I’d come to losing him.

  “And then he set fire to something. I clearly couldn’t drag myself out of there.”

  I sucked in a big breath of air, thinking about the serendipity of noticing that smoke. What if I’d gone home on the other route and not thought about avoiding the drunken crowds on Duval Street? What if I hadn’t seen his car parked on a nearby street and realized something was off? He would have been burnt to a crisp in that fire. I shook my head to try to clear those images out of my mind.

  The nurse bustled into the room and clucked her tongue. “No more chatting for you tonight, mister. You need your beauty rest.” Steve and my parents got up and headed toward the door.

  “I’d like to stay the night with him,” I said, gearing up for a tussle.

  “And I’d rather you come by first thing in the morning with a large Cuban coffee, and possibly even a doughnut.” Nathan flashed a big grin and kissed the tips of my fingers. “Then I can spend the rest of our life together thanking you properly for your premonition.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  It is a gesture of love, my dear. The tender flakiness, the soft crumb, the delicate sweetness. These are the things that speak to the heart.

  —Krista Davis, Color Me Murder

  When I arrived at the hospital Friday morning, Nathan looked light years better than he had the night before. His face had lost the bluish hue that had scared me half to death, he’d shaved, and he was dressed in his own blue plaid flannel shirt over a pair of hospital scrub pants.

  “I loved you in that johnny coat,” I said, kissing him softly, “but I love you even more looking a little healthier.”

  On the way over, I had given myself a stern talking to—I would not regret the lost wedding, I would be only grateful that my Nathan was alive. The ceremony on the beach and the party with the Hemingway cats were small potatoes in the big picture of what I hoped would be our long life together.

  I perched on the side of the bed and stroked his face where a big red bruise was forming above his right eye. He grabbed my forearms and pulled me closer. His familiar scent was mixed with the smell of industrial soap and something medicinal.

  “I love you, too,” he said, and I could have sworn that tears were shimmering in his green eyes. “I’m ready to get hitched today. I don’t want to wait one minute more.”

  I gulped. When had it ever been any girl’s dream to get married in a hospital room? But I was certain that it had been done before, and what the heck, the outcome would be the same. And it would make a great story for our descendants, should we have any.

  “I’ll call Steve Torrence and see when he can get over here,” I said, my voice as chipper as I could make it. “We can fit another ten to fifteen people in this room—at least the out-of-towners and family, if they all stand sideways.”

  “I’m not marrying my best girl in a hospital, johnny coat or no johnny coat. I’m blowing out of here. And then we’ll do it right.”

  I tried to picture him in a wheelchair or even on crutches making his way down the sandy path to the water at Fort Zachary Taylor beach. Even strong, determined Nathan would have difficulty managing that with two bad legs.

  “Honestly, I don’t mind at all tying the knot right here in the hospital,” I said. “I want to see you get well, and I think we should follow doctor’s orders. I almost lost you once, and I don’t—”

  But he’d already rung the nurses’ station and announced that he wished to be discharged. When the woman on the other end of the line started to argue, he hung up and rang the call button furiously. As he began to throw back the covers and swing his legs out of bed, his face crumpled in pain. He smoothed that expression away before I could begin to protest in earnest.

  “You shouldn’t be going anywhere,” I said, “let alone to the beach.”

  He began to chant:

  Would you marry me here or there?

  Would you marry me anywhere?

  Would you marry me on the beach?

  Would a houseboat be out of reach?

  I wondered just how much morphine they’d given him this morning. “Shhhh,” I said, patting his shoulder, “we’ll figure it all out when you’re feeling better and are up and around. Right now the doctor said you need to rest.”

  “The houseboat would be perfect,” he announced, ignoring my attempts to coax him back into bed. “There’s plenty of food—I’m certain your mother and her minions made sure of that. They can bring it over to the docks. All the people we love will be there. It’s a beautiful day in paradise.” He gestured to the morning sun streaming through the slats of the blinds and pooling on the hospital floor.

  Then he scrambled for his phone on the bedside table and punched in a number. “Steve Torrence, please.” He winked at me while he was on hold for a minute, beginning to hum “Going to the Chapel.” I could not believe he even knew the tune.

  “Hello! Feeling great,” he answered to Torrence’s query. “Hayley and I want to get married. Today. This afternoon. At Houseboat Row. Can you make it?”

  I could barely hear Torrence’s tinny argument in the background.

  “Can you make it or not, man? Or do we have to track down a justice of the peace?” Nathan waited. “Four o’clock is perfect. Can you send over a couple of our biggest guys to the hospital to spring me out of here and help get me cleaned up? Hayley needs to go do her bride stuff and I look like hell.”

  Once he’d hung up with Torrence, he called my mother and explained the plan. He turned back to me after my mother had agreed to phone the guests, get the food delivered, and ice the champagne.

  “I’m not waiting one more day for this,” he said, cupping my cheeks in his palms. “Do you understand? You’re too precious to me.”

  I felt hot tears slide down my face as I nodded my agreement.

  “Four o’clock, then. Now go do whatever you women think women need to do before they get married. For good this time.”

  * * *

  Later that day, after I finished showering and had emerged onto the deck in my bathrobe with a towel wrapped around my head, my heart wobbled with gratitude and excitement. Someone, probably my mother and stepmother and Connie and Miss Gloria, had set up all our decorations so they lined the finger leading to our boat. There were white balloons and swooping white ribbons and bows, and exactly the tropical flowers I’d chosen for the beach arranged at the posts along the dock. A banner had been hung, con
necting Miss Gloria’s houseboat to the wreck that belonged to Nathan and me. CONGRATULATIONS HAYLEY AND NATHAN! WE LOVE YOU!

  My mother came up behind me and put her arms around my waist. “Pretty, right?”

  “How did you do this so quickly?”

  “We had it ready and waiting at our place. Sam ran it over here and we put it up. Done! Pouf! I’m thinking we seclude ourselves in the laundry room before Nathan arrives so he doesn’t see your dress.” She looked over at me, and I nodded my OK. “The dock will serve as the aisle. As long as your father doesn’t hog the space, the three of us will fit just fine. And if he does hog the space, I’ll hip-check him into the bight.” She winked. “The musicians can set up on your new boat so they’re out of the way of the crowd. Meanwhile, my hair wizard, Freya, is here to do your hair and makeup.”

  When my hair was dried, the curls subdued and woven with small white flowers and topped with a delicate, waist-length veil that had been worn by both my grandmother and my mother, I stepped into the dress I’d finally chosen after multiple trips to shops in Miami. My mother zipped up the back as Connie adjusted the spaghetti straps.

  “You look gorgeous, sweetheart,” said Miss Gloria from her perch on the couch. “Like Audrey Hepburn. Just don’t get your heel caught in the decking and pitch into the drink.”

  I laughed. “Thanks for getting that image stuck in my brain.”

  * * *

  By three thirty, the food had been set up on Miss Gloria’s deck and the guests had begun to stream in, sipping champagne and mojitos while they waited for the ceremony to start. Just before four, I watched from the laundry room window with my parents as three of Nathan’s burly police department friends and Steve helped Nathan out of the black SUV that pulled in close to the entrance of Tarpon Pier. One officer handed him the crutches that had been stashed in the back seat. Torrence straightened the knot of Nathan’s blue striped tie and smoothed his hair. It was a moment too sweet for words.

  “Ready?” I heard him ask. Nathan nodded curtly, but then grinned. And I saw him wince with pain as he began to walk—or stump was more like it—the length of the dock. A trumpet and two violins, courtesy of Connie’s husband’s friends, began to play Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” My stomach lurched so hard I had a little trouble breathing.

  “Deep breath in,” said my mom.

  “Deep breath out, too,” said my dad, and then he looked at her with a tender smile that gave me a tiny window into what their relationship might have been like at the beginning. Staying married took commitment and a little luck and family support and lots and lots of tending, which they had been too young and too overwhelmed to manage back then.

  Connie’s baby came toddling down the dock wearing her pale-yellow flower girl dress that picked up accents from Connie’s. When they reached the laundry building, Ray gave her a tiny basket of rose petals.

  “Remember what we did yesterday?” he asked. “We will walk toward the people and you throw the flowers.” Claire looked back at Connie, as if to ask permission.

  “Go ahead, baby girl,” Connie said. “I’m coming right behind you, just like we practiced.” Claire broke into a heartbreaking smile and began to throw fistfuls of petals.

  Next to me, my father in his neatly pressed khaki trousers and blue blazer had a glaze of tears in his eyes. “I remember when you were that small,” he said. “You never stopped chattering.”

  “So nothing’s changed much,” I said, grinning.

  “I’m sorry I missed any time with you at all growing up. Thanks to your mother, you’ve turned out to be the best person I could have imagined.”

  I stood on my toes to kiss him on the cheek, too choked up to say more than thanks. Then Erik Powell and Christy Haussler from Steve Torrence’s church began to sing the most beautiful wedding duet I’d ever heard—“Whither Thou Goest” from the Book of Ruth.

  “And thy people will be my people love …”

  Erik’s voice soared to an impossibly high note, and I reminded myself that this day could not have been more special if I’d planned it exactly this way. And wasn’t that a lesson for the future, too?

  For one brief moment, I wondered what the wedding day had felt like for Audrey and Marcel, before things went so badly sour. Regardless of the trappings of dress and food and venue, I hoped they felt a little sliver of the joy and hope that I was feeling now. I could have sworn that they had looked happy during the food tour, though Marcel had made it sound as if their marriage had been mostly unhappy when I talked to him later. Which was achingly sad. Maybe he’d gotten so caught up in his drugs and his criminal activities that he’d forgotten the good parts. Maybe he’d been so disappointed in the turn his career had taken that he didn’t see his wife at all.

  At last it was time for my parents to walk me up the wooden finger all the way to Miss Gloria’s houseboat, where Nathan balanced on his crutches next to our dear friend Steve. When we reached them, my parents kissed and hugged me, my father shook Nathan’s hand, and then they moved aside, leaving the two of us. Steve looked around at our family and friends. I glanced around too, seeing all the people I’d grown to know and love on this island, and others who’d traveled long distances to support us.

  “We are gathered here—rather unexpectedly”—Torrence continued with a big grin—“to celebrate the union of Hayley Catherine Snow and Nathan Andrew Bransford. I’ve gotten to know both of these people well, so I think I understand the basis of their relationship. Hayley grounds Nathan by sharing the good things in her world—her friends, her family, her food.” He paused and smoothed his mustache. “And Nathan provides his sturdy and steady presence.”

  “And don’t forget,” shouted out Miss Gloria, “he’s a hunka hunka burnin’ love!”

  Our guests broke into hysterical laughter, and Nathan turned the color of a bougainvillea bush in full bloom.

  “By now you’ve all heard about the events of last night,” Steve continued when the chaos died down, “and how Hayley noticed the smoke from the fire where Nathan was trapped. This is a very good sign for their relationship and their future as a married couple, because Hayley sensed that something was wrong. And that led her to noticing the smoke and calling the police department. There is a deep connection between the two of them, and knowing them both, I can say confidently that it goes both ways. And so I charge you:

  “Nathan and Hayley, treat yourselves and each other with respect, and remind yourselves often of what brought you together. Give the highest priority to the tenderness, gentleness, and kindness that your relationship deserves. When frustration, difficulty, and fear assail your relationship—as they threaten all relationships at one time or another—remember to focus on what is right between you, not only the part which seems wrong. And when you are troubled, remember to call on God.”

  The rest of the ceremony whooshed by in a blur of joy and tears—I did, he did, I would, he would, I had a ring, he didn’t. Finally Torrence called for a kiss and our friends and family cheered and I knew I’d never been happier.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  First we eat, then we do everything else.

  —M.F.K. Fisher

  At the end of the ceremony, Ziggy Stardust, in a bedraggled white bow, streaked across the deck through Steve Torrence’s legs and onto the Renharts’ boat. With our two cats in hot pursuit, he scattered Mrs. Renhart’s three elderly pets like bowling pins. He’d already fallen into the pecking order of our pier, and my tiger Evinrude was still king of the dock. And somehow he’d managed to communicate to Nathan’s dog that Sparky was second in command.

  The musicians shifted into playing dance tunes, joined by the cheerful keyboard sounds of Allison Millwood, and the caterers began to circulate with trays of champagne and mojitos. The drinks were followed by mini crab cakes, and steamed pink shrimp with two kinds of sauce, one sweet mango, one tomato-based and fiery with horseradish. Sam had supplied his specialty, another one of my favorite foods—his famous cornmeal-crusted e
mpanadas filled with spicy beef, which were served with bowls of pale-green guacamole, sour cream, and hot red salsa. And to suit Nathan’s taste, the waiters also passed thick slices of pink roast beef on Cuban bread toasts with horseradish and mustard—and not a shred of greenery.

  Finally, as the dusk fell and the fairy lights on the boats began to twinkle more brightly, Nathan and I cut the wedding cake. Then my mother’s catering assistants, Irena and Maria, brought out an enormous tray of shimmering Cuban flan. “Remember how you asked us last winter to make this for your wedding?” Irena asked. “You helped so much when our brother was murdered, we wanted to do something special for you in return.”

  As the flan and cake were dished out and distributed, a familiar figure struggled up the dock. I recognized Martha Hubbard; she was balancing a heavy tray covered with cheesecloth. Sam took the tray and Martha gave me a big hug.

  “I wanted to bring you something delicious to thank you for all you did for me. And celebrate your wedding.”

  “You’re very welcome,” I said. “Thanks so much for thinking of us.” I didn’t have the heart to ask if she’d brought her special mini key lime pies. Because it might be forever before I could tackle anything key lime. Unfortunately, based on the shape of the little jars under the cheesecloth, that’s what her offering looked like.

  “Ta-da,” she said, pulling the cloth off the tray. “Heavenly strawberries-and-cream trifle, made with lime-kissed sponge cake and Florida berries. I knew you’d never go for key lime pie.”

  I burst out laughing. “You couldn’t have chosen better. I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt your feelings, but key lime is not going to be on my menu anytime soon.” I gave her another big hug. “We’d love it if you’d stay for a while.”