I wrote down “hypermodernist” and “trouble breaking even.” “But this year’s topic seems a lot more accessible. And at least for opening night, the crowd was standing room only.”
She nodded vigorously. “He simply couldn’t afford a misstep this year. That’s why he agreed to focus on food writing. But trust me, we’ve been to dinner many times to discuss business and he’s no foodie. He orders only what’s safe—steak, chicken, chocolate. Never touches a piece of fish or a chef’s special.”
“And who’s in charge of his hiring and firing?”
“The board,” said Cory. “I’m certain they’re watching the bottom line very carefully this season.”
“And the bottom line means?”
“Filling the seats and keeping the sponsors happy.”
“And his contract—”
“Is up for negotiation in February. Whether he is invited to continue will depend very heavily on how the next two days go.”
She handed me a business card and stood up. “I have to get to a showing. But feel free to contact me if you have any other questions. Or if you’re in the market for a house or condo.” The skin around her eyes crinkled pleasantly as she smiled.
“Don’t I wish?” I said. I considered myself vastly lucky to have a rent-free room on Miss Gloria’s boat, as long as I kept an eye on her and helped her with errands. I couldn’t afford the down payment on a parking space in Old Town Key West.
As I left the real estate office, my phone rang. Wally. “I didn’t want to say this in front of Danielle, but you need to know that Ava Faulkner has insisted on a meeting first thing Monday morning. She intends to go over everything—receipts, articles, reviews, anything to do with your position. She wants us both there. I can’t defend you if you give me nothing to go on. I can’t defend any frivolous expenses.”
“Understood,” I said, working to keep the shakes from showing in my voice. “I appreciate your confidence.”
“Huh,” he answered, and hung up. Which left me wondering how much confidence he actually had. Was he getting tired of backing me up?
I had forty-five minutes to kill before the conference. I could march back up to my office and try to fit the same five hundred words I’d been struggling with all morning into some reasonable facsimile of a hard-hitting food editorial. On the other hand, my brain felt like overcooked oatmeal. And scribbling more random words would only ratchet up the spiral of my anxiety. And thinking of anxiety made me think of Eric.
It occurred to me that he usually met with two therapy patients on Saturday mornings. If I surprised him at his office, might he tell me what had driven him into seclusion the night before? Worth a try.
I drove back up Truman Avenue, which was already alive with blasts of noise and diesel from the weekend traffic. I parked in the lot behind Eric’s office building, wondering whether to ring his doorbell. For reasons of both privacy and safety, he monitored carefully who entered, admitting only folks he expected or grilling them over the intercom first.
As I deliberated over whether surprise or a direct attack would produce better results, a UPS man rang the bell for the upstairs law firm. I drafted in after him and settled into Eric’s outer waiting area, listening to soft classical flute music and leafing through Modern Yachting magazine, the latest issue. Eric developed seasickness just looking at a boat, but maybe his customers needed the sense of possible escape while waiting to spill their darkest secrets. His office door swung open and he appeared with a welcoming smile. The smile fell off when he saw me.
“Hayley. What are you doing here? I’m expecting a patient any minute.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, he’s late. If he gets here and finds you in the waiting room, we’ll have to spend the next six months talking about how I double-booked him.”
“Can I come in for a second? I swear I’ll be in and out. I just want to be sure you’re all right.”
His gaze swept the room and he looked again at his watch. “Two minutes,” he said as he whisked me into his inner sanctum. A jungle of orchids bloomed on the shelves around the window, and in the corner, a soothing babble of water washed over beach stones in his Zen fountain. I reacted the same way I had the few other times I visited—my stress dropped instantly. No wonder his patients loved him.
“I’m sorry to bust in on you like this, but we’re all worried,” I said after he’d closed the double doors behind us. “Mom, Bill, Toby, me, even Miss Gloria.”
“Please don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” he said with a tight smile.
But he didn’t look fine. His skin had a grayish pallor, his tailored white shirt was wrinkled, and his hair stuck up in little tufts along the part line, as if he’d forgotten to comb it once he’d stepped out of the shower. Not fine. No way.
“Okay, so, what happened with the cops last night? Obviously you didn’t kill Jonah Barrows. So, what’s all the drama?” I tried to keep my voice light, thinking he’d be more likely to respond to that than to direct pressure. This wasn’t the way things usually went in our relationship—usually I was in some kind of trouble and he was talking me through it.
His eyes closed, he rubbed the back of his hand over his chin so I noticed the patches of whiskers he’d missed when shaving this morning. Then he blinked them open and focused on me.
“Hayley. The police don’t have a leg to stand on. They’re doing the usual, casting about for suspects when they don’t have a clue whodunit.” His laugh sounded thin and a little bitter. “You know what that feels like.”
“Of course I do. That’s why I’m worried. When I was a murder suspect, I had a darn good motive for the crime and no alibi. They weren’t targeting me randomly.”
He squeezed his hands together and looked away, his lips pinched into one straight line.
“Okay, what about this? Mom’s scared to death that she sicced the police on you by telling them you were getting a drink near the dipping pool right around the time of the murder. But how does that make any difference if you never met the guy? So, did you know him?”
His eyes got wide, but at that moment the buzzer rang with the arrival of his first morning patient. “Gotta go, Hayley,” he said. I stood up and he strode across the room to open the parking-lot-side door for me. He gave me a little push. “I’ll talk to you later.”
9
Each time I see a Michelin star in a small town, I say, well, that’s a boring place, and it always is.
—François Simon
I left Eric’s office and hustled over to the San Carlos Institute, heartsick at the thought that Eric had really been involved in this murder. Gentle, thoughtful, and above all, self-contained Eric: From everything I knew about him, it was impossible to imagine.
But why wouldn’t he defend himself?
And who else might have done it? Had Jonah threatened to expose something about the conference infrastructure? And did Dustin love his job enough to consider killing a man over it—a man he’d been involved with, by some reports? Soured love was famous for inciting rage. He had certainly sounded angry the first night when I’d gone looking for him at the opening reception. On the other hand, if he’d been entertaining a cluster of sponsors, he couldn’t very well have killed Jonah. How could he have managed to get to the other side of the Audubon House grounds, swing that statue, and mow Jonah down? It would require not only ice in his veins but lightning speed. Another puzzling question: Why would Jonah have wanted to ruin the very conference for which he was the featured speaker by disclosing its financial woes?
While I waited for my mother to show up for the first panel, I rustled through my backpack, looking for a piece of gum. I caught sight of my brand-new, unsigned copy of You Must Try the Skate, which I’d been carrying around for three days without a chance to read it. Most likely Jonah Barrows wouldn’t have mentioned Eric or Dustin in his memoir, but maybe I’d recognize some kind of connection in their history. Skimming through it, I was reminded that Jonah’s honesty kick was really nothing new—mo
re of a loud revival of sorts. Like accidentally hitting the volume on the TV clicker and blasting yourself out of the den.
The first three chapters were devoted to his family and their complete lack of interest in food. His mother produced a weekly rotation of meals that began with a well-done roast accompanied by mashed potatoes on Sunday, moved on to hamburgers fried to hockey-puck consistency, and ended with “Oriental Night”: slimy chop suey glopped out from a large can to the pan on the stove top and heated to lukewarm. The only saving grace was the crunchy noodle topping. Vegetables also came limp from a can, and the family’s weekly salad consisted of a wedge of pallid iceberg lettuce doused in bottled Wishbone Russian dressing. There was no talk about food over the dinner table—there was no talk, period. Jonah’s father had been a bricklayer who preferred to eat in silence. Cooking was one of his mother’s chores; food was fuel for the family, nothing more. There was no room at the table for a sensitive son’s passionate interest in all things culinary.
His upbringing could not have been more different than mine. Every meal that came out of my mother’s kitchen had been fresh, local, and made from scratch, except for the very occasional box of macaroni and cheese. And even that had been Annie’s certified-organic, rather than the bright orange mixture I craved because it was served at my friends’ homes. Over dinner, my parents discussed flavors and recipes and brainstormed about variations that might turn out even better. After we recovered from the tectonic shock of Dad moving out, I took over his role as appreciative food critic.
An entire new world had opened up for Jonah during his first job as a dishwasher in New York City. As he scraped the remnants of patrons’ plates into the trash, he took the opportunity to taste their upscale meals. That led him to choose a program in hospitality at New York University and then to a gig as a sous-chef in a French restaurant in the city. And then followed his famous application for a job as a Guide Bouchée restaurant critic. During his interviews, he so wowed them with the accuracy of his taste buds and the novelty of his descriptions that they hired him with practically no experience whatsoever.
In the next chapter, Jonah went on to discuss his training in France and England and the apprenticeship that followed back home in New York. “At first, I savored my work with the Guide Bouchée. They helped me understand the importance of what I chose from a menu—the dish should represent a challenge to the chef without being too fussy or peculiar. I learned to spot critic traps on a menu—dishes that no ordinary diner would select. I had some astonishingly good meals and others that were marginally edible. And some memorable bouts of food poisoning. I was taught to notice the restaurant’s ambience, the service, the presentation of the meal, the freshness of the ingredients, and finally, their preparation.
“But the life-and-death matter of awarding the stars—this began to weigh heavily on me. Many people will have read about the two well-known cases of chefs driven to suicide after their slide in ratings. One was demoted from three to two stars; the other had his star stripped altogether. Which is not to say there may not have been other personal issues contributing to depression or despair—a perfectly balanced person would not choose this profession to begin with.”
I could imagine Jonah cackling with laughter as he wrote this.
“But to contribute to the possibility of a man’s despondency and ultimate suicide … that was no longer acceptable. And of course, lying or even stretching the truth about food was never an option.
“And finally, the secrecy demanded by the Guides began to press upon me like a lead apron. Because how can prospective diners judge the criticism rendered upon a restaurant if they have no idea who’s provided it? Would you choose your spouse or your hometown or even a movie based on anonymous recommendations?”
I skimmed over the next chapter, in which Jonah had quit his job as restaurant critic, moved to the West Coast, and founded a restaurant in L.A. He described the same grinding schedule that I’d heard other chefs talk about, but he did not mention using alcohol or other drugs to keep up the pace. And I doubted he would have held that information back. The chapter after that was devoted to his life through the distorted lens of love.
“Like Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones—if you can believe the words of a heroin addict—I never put the moves on someone else. I preferred to stand back and let things develop. Let the tension mount until it felt almost unbearable, and then watch the other party’s reaction.
“Take Z,” he said, “a brilliant chef who lurched toward me and ravaged me like a starving grizzly. Or A, ebullient on the page but more like a trembling schoolboy approaching his principal when I met him in person. When I noticed myself rating these last two men as though I would be responsible for writing up their performance (no stars at all in these cases), I knew it was time to take a break from ‘love.’”
Feeling a little sickened by that much personal disclosure, I marked my place in the book and leafed through the program, checking to see which writers he had been scheduled to appear with today. I imagined that all of them had secrets they would be loath to expose, but which ones were worth killing over? What about zero stars in the romance department? I would definitely feel murderous if I were Z or A, who’d had their amorous advances described and rated in a bestselling memoir. I really, really hoped that one of those letters didn’t stand for Eric.
Mom slid into her seat as I reached the page in the program detailing this morning’s session: “Food as Metaphor: The Resurgence of Food Writing as an Expression of Culture.”
“Sorry I’m late,” Mom whispered. “I took Miss Gloria to breakfast. Wow, can that lady eat! Have you had any news about Eric?”
“Nothing really,” I whispered back. “I did see him for a few minutes at his office, but he wouldn’t say much. I’ll tell you more at the break.”
Dustin burst onto the stage from the wings and strode to the podium, a wide, forced smile on his lips. “How’s everyone doing this morning in beautiful Key West?” he inquired. “We’ve planned a glorious day to go along with this glorious January weather!”
But the energy in the audience had wilted—only a few audience members called out in response. He went on to make some general announcements about the day’s events, while the panelists mounted the side stairs. Sigrid Gustafson came first, barging across the stage as though she couldn’t wait to sit down. Two other women we didn’t recognize took their places on either side of Sigrid.
“Isn’t Yoshe supposed to be on this panel?” my mother asked, tapping my open program.
I shrugged. “I guess they’re switching everything around with Jonah out of the picture.”
Dustin assured us we were in for an amazing day, a day that would leave us wrung out and famished. “Those students who have signed up for a special restaurant meal tonight should remember to appear at their chosen venue at seven o’clock sharp. Unfortunately all seats have been sold out, but of course you are all warmly invited to our closing luncheon tomorrow. And breakfast as usual before our final panels. How about our catering company? Aren’t they doing an amazing job?”
Tepid applause rippled through the crowd, surely more of an indication of low energy than unhappiness with the food because everything I’d sampled had been delicious.
“Should you need a restaurant recommendation for this evening, please don’t hesitate to flag one of us down,” Dustin continued. “And don’t forget that we are taking deposits for next year’s seminar, ‘The Art of the Mystery.’”
Apparently he had taken to heart the advice of his board and chosen another topic that would appeal to a mass of common readers. Though I had to wonder if this was the right topic, following on the heels of a suspicious death right here at the conference.
“Now on to our first stellar panel.” Dustin looked at his notes, frowned, and then introduced the three women on the stage.
For forty-five minutes we listened to the three writers bat around the topic of food as a metaphor for changes in culture—man
y of Sigrid’s comments we’d heard already at lunch yesterday. A second woman hailed from Colorado and had a lot to say about cowboys and beans. The third woman, a writer from Thailand, broke into tears several times as she described the process of cooking her grandmother’s food and how it brought childhood memories to life.
I got up to stretch and run to the ladies’ room during the break. As I came out of the bathroom, Dustin waved his arms furiously from across the room. I wove between the clusters of attendees until I reached him, surprised that he would single me out to chat when we barely knew each other. When in fact our only interactions this weekend had been unpleasant conversations around Jonah’s death.
“Have you seen Yoshe King?” he demanded in a low voice. His skin was a deep color of violet and the veins on his neck throbbed ominously. “Sigrid Gustafson said you appeared to be friendly with her. She missed her morning panel altogether and now she’s scheduled for a reading from her memoir.” He looked at his watch, a cheap plastic item whose hands were shaped like a knife and fork. “She’s supposed to be on that stage alone in fifteen minutes and I haven’t heard a word. We could cover for her in the panel—God knows all of those women abhor a vacuum. But when she’s supposed to be performing solo…” He rubbed a chubby hand across his face. “We’re very, very clear that every panelist is supposed to be in the greenroom at least fifteen minutes before they go onstage. I’ve called and texted her—nothing!”
“I haven’t seen her today,” I said. He seemed like he was about to bust a gut with worry—I should do what I could to calm him down. And maybe a small kindness now would pay off later in a private interview? “Would you like me to look around the auditorium? There have been so many adjustments to the program. Probably she just got mixed up.”
Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery Page 9
