Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery

by Lucy Burdette

“Barely—my mom and I did have lunch with her yesterday. Mom was a big, big fan. Sigrid Gustafson joined us too.” I tipped my head to the end of our table where Sigrid was slathering butter on a piece of bread and loudly describing her recipe for kick-butt goulash. Her tips included browning the cubes of meat in a full stick of butter—never olive oil—adding extra onions and garlic, and simmering for hours.

  “That must have been telling,” said Olivia. “Get those two women together, and the competitive juices fly.”

  “Thinking back, there was some talk about the fat content of each dish Sigrid considered ordering,” I said. “Yoshe tried pretty hard to steer her toward a salad.”

  “And that would make Sigrid certifiably loony,” said Olivia, sotto voce. “She’s been on every diet known to mankind and some you’ve never heard of. And still she’s big as a house. And trust me, those caftans don’t disguise anything. She couldn’t stand the fact that Yoshe seemed to eat so much and stay so slender.” She patted her own plywood-flat belly. “And Yoshe’s books sold much better than hers too. Have you read her novels?”

  I shook my head. “I read the first one, but I haven’t gotten to Dark Sweden.”

  “Two words,” Olivia said. “Deadly. Tedium.”

  A trio of waiters circled around us to fill our second set of wineglasses with a white wine and deliver the first course. “Stone crab with Ibérico ham and calamondin,” the second waiter muttered as he set the plate in front of me. I had no idea what the last item was, but I certainly wasn’t going to inquire within earshot of Olivia Nethercut. I already felt like a food nincompoop in her company.

  “We are pouring you our signature sauvignon blanc,” said Christine the wine maven. “See if you notice the penetrating aroma of melon, and lemon verbena, which is grown in the field next to our vineyard.”

  I kept my gaze pinned on my plate to reduce the chance I’d roll my eyes and embarrass myself by snorting with laughter in front of the other diners, who seemed to be taking the wine talk more seriously than me.

  “This particular sauvignon blanc is aged for seven months in French barrels, which adds a gentle oak integration to the wine. We chose it to complement the stone crab, of course.”

  The room fell mostly silent except for the scrape of forks on heavy-duty china. I gobbled the crab and the Spanish ham, determining that calamondin must be a kind of citrus with a fancy name. The combination was delicious and the wine wasn’t bad either.

  Olivia laid her fork on her plate and patted her lips with her napkin. “Did the chiseled detective call to inform you about Yoshe’s death as well?”

  I startled, then smiled at her description of Bransford. “‘Chiseled’ is a good word,” I said, thinking it applied to both his chin and his body. “But it was much worse than that. My mother and I discovered her body.”

  “No way,” said Olivia. She touched slender white fingers to her throat, which pulsed like a captured bird.

  I nodded, taking a gulp of wine and feeling again the horror of that moment, as that colorful pile of rags had come into focus. “It’s true. And the police were pressuring my mother pretty hard, poor thing. She was absolutely devastated when we spotted Yoshe on those rocks.” I shivered and nodded to the waiter who’d circled around the table with another bottle of wine. “Mom came down for a vacation and instead she stumbled into the middle of a murder investigation.”

  “Murder? I heard it was suicide,” Olivia said, her eyes widening.

  “What do I know, really?” I said. “But it wouldn’t have been easy to throw yourself over that railing. Though I suppose she could have stood on a chair. In that case, the cops would have found the chair positioned on her balcony.” I shuddered. “If that’s true, imagine how desperate she would have been feeling.”

  Olivia turned a little more pale—it must have felt dreadful to have a colleague in that much distress and have noticed nothing.

  I added quickly, “But I can’t say what avenue the cops are pursuing.”

  We worked our way through hogfish and shrimp steamed in lettuce, duck breast with capers and marrow, plus a chardonnay and a pinot noir. Our plates were cleared yet again and a fourth course delivered, along with glasses of red wine. “Braised oxtail with potato gnocchi,” the waiter whispered.

  “Our Insignia wine combines cabernet sauvignon, petit verdot, and merlot wines,” said Christine. “The grapes are harvested early in the morning and soaked for five days. After that comes forty days of maceration and twenty-four months of aging. See if you recognize the hints of dark-roasted coffee and graphite.”

  Feeling slightly hysterical after a little too much wine and way too much ornate description, I choked back a rush of giggles. Who wanted to taste graphite in expensive wine? This dinner was, if nothing else, a good reminder to keep food jargon to a minimum in my reviews. I took a sip of the excellent wine and started in on the braised oxtail. Better than any beef stew I’d had in years. Even rivaled Mom’s.

  The woman across the table from me addressed Olivia. “Tell us more about your Bread for Kids Foundation. It sounds like such a marvelous idea.”

  Olivia laid her fork down and smiled. “Over the past few years I realized how much money gets poured into the high end of our food industry. For example, there are people who will pay forty dollars a pound for ham, or a hundred fifty bucks a head to eat out at a restaurant without blinking an eye.” She said that with a straight face—we’d all paid close to that for tonight’s dinner. “Shouldn’t we make sure that some of this money trickles down to the kids who don’t have enough to eat on a daily basis? It’s that simple. A hundred percent of our income goes to feed children—and best of all, no politicians are involved.” Laughter rippled around the table and she resumed eating.

  “Sounds wonderful,” said the woman who’d asked the question, and then excused herself to visit the restroom.

  Olivia swirled one last fat lump of pasta through the deep brown gravy on her plate. “If they think it was really a murder, do they have any leads?” she asked me, the pale white skin of her forehead gathering into lines. “That detective wouldn’t tell me much.”

  “Their technique is a little heavy-handed,” I said. “Just because you were the last person to see the dead person alive doesn’t mean you did her in.”

  She looked horrified.

  “That sounded bad. What I mean is, they seem to be pressuring people who have nothing to do with the crime. First my friend Eric. And then today my mother. Actually I don’t think they have a clue. But two deaths in one weekend—they must be related, don’t you think?” Now I was really blathering—this was exactly what I warned my mother not to say. Even if I did think it was true.

  “I can’t imagine what those two would have had in common, other than food, of course,” Olivia said. “Yoshe was controlling and particular and meticulous about how she dressed and spoke. You could tell she cooked exactly by the book. Jonah, on the other hand, threw in a dash of this and a pinch of that. And I doubt he ever spent a minute thinking before he spoke.” Then an odd expression flitted across her face, but before I could ask anything else, Christine broke into our conversations again.

  “For dessert and our final wine, we are asking some of you to switch places so you’ll have a chance to experience the company of others at your table.” She came around and tapped some of us on the shoulders and had us trade places.

  After a few minutes of chaos, we were reseated with new napkins, plates, and cutlery. This time I found myself at the table next to Sigrid, who was holding forth on her own theories about the deaths of Yoshe and Jonah.

  “I suspect both of them could have been killed by rabid fans,” she said. “No offense to anyone here, of course.”

  She cackled with laughter and I fidgeted with my fork and shifted uncomfortably, thinking of the e-mails Jonah had rebuffed.

  “I don’t suppose the franchise he was talking about will get off the ground now,” she said.

  “The franchise?” I aske
d.

  “Oh,” she said, “it was an utterly plebeian idea. He wanted to take what’s best about Key West cuisine and bring it down to the lowest common denominator.”

  “I didn’t know him personally,” said a woman across the table, “but that doesn’t sound like a project Mr. Barrows would endorse.”

  Sigrid rubbed the tips of three plump fingers together. “Anything for the right price. Besides, Jonah was always trying to stir something up,” she continued. “No wonder at all that someone had it in for him. He looked for whatever mattered most to somebody else and then stabbed holes in it. You should have seen the review he wrote on my first novel. My agent had to talk me off the ledge on that one—she’s the one who helped me realize that a scathing review reflects a whole lot more on the person writing than the author of the book. And it turned out to be excellent publicity.”

  “Sure, Jonah loved controversy,” said the man on the other side of Sigrid, a twig in comparison to Sigrid’s spreading live oak. “But I wouldn’t say the same about Yoshe. She was a lady.”

  Sigrid twisted the white napkin, her pink cheeks flushing darker. “She was no lady. She was simply more subtle than Jonah. Unless you were the target of her commentary, you might hardly notice how vicious she was.” She put the napkin down, picked up her dessert fork, and plunged it into the apple praline tart that had just been delivered. “Nothing subtle about that.”

  After a small silence, talk turned to where the party would move next. Once I’d demolished my tart and taken a few tiny sips of the dessert wine to satisfy the wine lecturer, I said good-bye to my tablemates and slipped out. Not that anyone begged me to join them. Besides, I had more work to do than I could fathom, and a late-night hangover would not help. Olivia Nethercut followed right behind me, stumbling slightly on the last step.

  She grabbed the railing and caught her balance and we made our way out into the crisp night. “Do you think that detective is single?” Olivia asked.

  “The detective? Oh, Bransford.” I nodded. “I believe so. Probably divorced.”

  “Maybe I’ll give him a call. He was definitely hitting on me,” she said. “You know that feeling you get when someone is doing their job but at the same time sending the signal that if it was after hours, they’d jump your bones?” She smiled and tripped down the street toward Duval.

  Mom was still awake when I got home at eleven, standing by the deck rails and looking out at the harbor. The water had picked up to a good chop, but she was handling the rocking like an old salt. It felt like high school days, when Mom waited up most nights when I was out. I never quite figured out if she was checking on my state of mind. Or just lonely. Tonight with almost three glasses of Dennis Jensen Vineyard wine down the hatch, I might not have passed her high school sniff test. Luckily, I’d eaten enough to sop up some of that alcohol before driving home.

  “How was your night?” she called when she spotted me coming up the finger.

  I hopped from the dock to the boat. “Food was amazing. And the company most entertaining.” I described my chat with Olivia, and then Sigrid’s mention of Jonah’s attack on her novel and his new franchise. “But the tension we noticed between Yoshe and Sigrid while we were at lunch? We definitely didn’t make that up. Though Sigrid’s conclusion was that rabid fans killed them both.”

  “Convenient,” Mom said with a laugh. “She only wishes she had a few fans like Yoshe did. I’m glad you had fun. What was the best thing you ate?”

  I told her about the braised oxtail stew with its partner gnocchi swimming in gravy.

  “Sounds delicious,” she said. Her eyes narrowed as she looked me over from top to bottom. “But you seem a little down.”

  She patted the seat beside her. Might as well tell all—she’d sit here grilling me until I spilled out the truth. I sat.

  “On the way out of the dinner, Olivia mentioned that she thought the detective hit on her today. She’s planning to call him.”

  “Your detective? That would surprise me,” Mom said. “Sounds more like a figment of her imagination than anything else.” She squinted and brushed a strand of hair off my forehead. “I never would have said that she was his type. Besides, he’s sweet on you. I’m sure of it. And she must be closing in on forty, don’t you think? Even though she’s very glamorous, she’s getting long in the tooth. Like me.”

  “Forty’s not old,” I said, grinning. “You’re older than that and you’re in the prime of your life. Miss Gloria and Lorenzo are right, you know. You should consider dating.”

  She started to say something but stopped, her face frozen. Then she bobbed her head and clucked her throat clear. “Well, I might as well tell you.” She took my hand and squeezed the fingers. “I am dating. I mean, I’ve gone out a couple of times with a very nice fellow. The other ones hardly count….”

  “The other ones?” I stuttered, my mouth feeling too dry to form the words cleanly.

  Mom laughed. “It’s a jungle once you get started on Match-dot-com. All these fellows winking at my profile. It took me a couple of weeks to realize I could pick and choose. I wasn’t obligated to chat with someone or even have coffee, if their profile wasn’t appealing.”

  “M-M-Match-dot-com?” More stuttering.

  “I started with eHarmony,” she explained. “It seemed more civilized. I thought those nice people would screen the men for me and tell me exactly which ones I was compatible with. But I couldn’t make it through the questionnaires.” She giggled. “They wanted so many details. I figured any man who was willing to fill out this much information on a form couldn’t possibly be my type. Sam seems like a dear man, but I’ll keep you posted. If it really turns into something, I’ll introduce you next time you’re home. Or bring him down here.” Her expression brightened. “Now, that would be fun! Don’t worry. We’d get our own place.”

  I watched in horror as her face blushed a fierce pink.

  14

  I wonder if a certain sort of chromosomal stodginess can ever really be completely leached out of the Michelin guide and the system.

  —Frank Bruni

  I woke up before anyone else to the sounds of the Renharts fighting about the size of their electricity bill. Last night on the way home from dinner, I’d seen them sitting by the open window of the Bull and Whistle Bar on Duval Street. He’d had his arm slung around her shoulders and they were singing along with the featured Elvis impersonator, who undulated onstage in a blue-sequined jumpsuit. But this morning, without beer and music and the congeniality of a Duval Street bar, their marriage had lost some luster.

  I twisted restlessly on the sofa bed, hovering on the edge of a headache myself from too much wine. And too much information from my mother. This was the kind of day I could have happily spent in bed with the Sunday papers or a good novel or best of all, a couple of new cookbooks. But my bed was occupied by a snoring parent. Instead I dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and zipped down the island to Key Zest.

  After making a pot of coffee, I rummaged through the minirefrigerator and came up with half a blueberry muffin, probably Danielle’s. She had a terrible time resisting the baked goods at the Old Town Bakery on her walks to work, but she was almost always hit with buyer’s remorse part of the way through eating them.

  Then I started to rough out the review of Santiago’s Bodega. I’d been studying reviews from well-known restaurant critics, searching for how they described the nuts and bolts of the food while adding the stamp of their personalities. I wanted to write the truth. I wanted to use zingers that would capture readers’ attention. But without hurting anyone’s feelings. Maybe the combination was impossible. For the next forty-five minutes, I struggled to hammer out the first paragraph, despairing of ever getting it right. My cell phone rang—Mom.

  “Good morning, darling!” she chirped, probably relieved to have dumped the details of her secret life on me. While I was, to be honest, still reeling.

  “You’ve been scooped,” she said. “Do they still ca
ll it that? Go online to the Metro section of the New York Times, page one.”

  I saved the file I’d been working on and clicked over. “Tropical Tapas Make Key West Top Ten: Santiago’s Bodega by Olivia Nethercut,” the headline blared. She’d reviewed the same restaurant where we’d seen her two nights ago, including a few of the dishes we’d suggested, even using some of our words. My spirits sank to a new low as I read her piece.

  “The best chickpea dip outside of Athens … pita bread as a litmus test of the meal to come … Maybe not a standout in New York City, but a fin’s distance above the competitors swimming in this small fishbowl.”

  I couldn’t really blame Olivia for writing the review—she had chosen to eat there, not gone on our recommendation. And she hadn’t asked for our help or our opinions—probably hadn’t even realized she was including them. All that said, I was going to have to learn to be more ruthless and guard my words in front of the competition.

  “Don’t feel too bad about it,” Mom said. “It’s a tough business and chances are your audience is entirely different from the Times. But anyway, that’s not why I called. Did you check your e-mail? Did you hear that the panels this morning have been canceled? The only thing left standing is lunch at one p.m. And then the tribute to Jonah and Yoshe afterward. Can you imagine how mad all the attendees are going to be at Dustin? Well, I suppose he made the best decision he could. Shall I meet you there?”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m going to turn off my ringer until lunch, okay?”

  Half an hour later, the Key Zest landline rang, and my mother’s cell phone came up on the caller ID. What now? She knew I was working—but what if it was something important? So I picked up, feeling hassled and annoyed. And underneath that, worried.

  “Have you checked your messages?” Mom asked.

  I tried not to snap churlishly. “I’m working, Mom. I turned the ringer off so I wouldn’t get distracted. Some of us don’t have alimony for life to fall back on.” I was sorry I said those words the moment they tumbled out. Mom was silent for a moment.