Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery

by Lucy Burdette

  “And you said…”

  “Not at first. She came down for breakfast yesterday just like normal.” She pointed across the room to the table where Yoshe must have been sitting on the day she died. “And she had a cup of tea while she worked. She travels with her own tea and a strainer. Even though I have a very good selection. But this is something special—from her childhood in China. Lapsang souchong. She said it has a strong, smoky flavor and most people don’t care for it.” She pressed her hands against her cheeks. “Listen to me, talking about her as if she’s still here.”

  I bobbed my head with encouragement, trying to be sympathetic, but wondering if she’d ever get to the point.

  “So, as I told your mother, she nibbled on one of our croissants from the bakery down on Eaton Street. We’ve switched over to them lately and I’ve gotten a ton of compliments.”

  “So she seemed normal at breakfast. Tea and pastry. But then…”

  “But then she got a phone call on the house phone. One of the girls who helps me with breakfast and cleaning the rooms answered it and called her over. I did quiz my girl about this, but all she remembers is that the voice was female.” She paused and slid her glasses back on. “Do you think it’s okay for me to be telling this to anyone who asks?”

  “Not just anyone. Naturally you should tell the cops if you remember any details you didn’t tell them yesterday. But you see, my mother is missing.” I tapped two fingers on the counter. “And I’m wondering if she might be following up on something that the two of you discussed.”

  The manager squirmed, suddenly making herself very busy with straightening the sightseeing literature on the rack.

  “There’s something else?” I asked, holding the fear out of my voice, trying to keep my tone pleasant and nonchalant so I didn’t spook her into silence.

  “I did let her look through Miss King’s belongings.” She pointed to an upholstered suitcase and a brown snakeskin briefcase stashed under a table in the back office. “It’s the high season,” she explained. “Miss King was scheduled to check out this afternoon anyway, and I really couldn’t afford to leave her belongings all over the bedroom. We have another guest coming in today. So once the police were finished and gave me the go-ahead, I packed everything up. Her niece is arriving midafternoon to retrieve her bags. I wished I could have offered her a free room, but we have a full house. And she said she didn’t want to stay in the establishment where her aunt died, so not to worry.”

  I steered her back to my initial question. “Mom looked at this stuff and then took off? Did she find something in particular?”

  The manager shrugged. “I wasn’t watching very carefully. Maybe she said she was looking for her passport? But that doesn’t seem right. Miss King may have looked Oriental, but she’s as American as you or me. So maybe it was a diary or a date-minder.” She nibbled on her thumbnail. “I did mention to your mother about the tea and how Miss King said her grandfather used to smoke this kind of tea on his farm in the Hunan Province of China. And your mother said that was odd, as she recalled the tea originating in the Wuyi Mountains.”

  “That’s my mother,” I said. “She knows a lot about food. Do you mind if I take a quick look at Yoshe’s belongings?”

  “I’m not really authorized—”

  “The horse is already out of the barn door. Don’t you think?” I asked her. “Look, Mom’s disappeared and I’m worried. I’m sure you don’t want another death associated with your bed-and-breakfast.”

  The woman paled and stepped aside so I could go into the office. I quickly shuffled through the clothing in the suitcase, feeling a little ill as the citrusy scent I’d noticed Yoshe wearing on Friday wafted from the fabrics. At the bottom, I found a copy of Jonah’s memoir, You Must Try the Skate. I riffled through it, taking note of the pages that Yoshe—or someone—had dog-eared. Underneath Jonah’s book there was a manuscript labeled with dozens of small yellow sticky notes and marked up with a red pen.

  “Your mother was very interested in that, now that I think of it,” said Reba, hovering close behind me as I picked the papers up. “I think it was a version of Ms. King’s new cookbook.”

  Of course my mother was interested in this—she’d lamented several times the possibility that it wouldn’t be published posthumously. I skimmed a sample of the comments from the copy editor—recipe needs to be double-checked, tastes different than your description—is this person related to your ancestors? Cannot find— I couldn’t make out the rest of the words, but in general, it looked like a load of revisions would have been required to meet the publisher’s standards. The last page in the stack was an editorial letter.

  Not up to your usual standards … question the authenticity of a number of the recipes … four weeks to make substantial revisions or contract will be canceled.

  Serious, horrifying notes for an author. Maybe even enough to have made her feel suicidal. “You said Ms. King took a phone call. Could it have been from someone at her publisher?”

  “I simply don’t know. But your mother asked the same question,” said Reba. The phone rang at the front desk and she hurried off to answer it.

  Without thinking too much about the ethical dilemma, I folded the editorial letter in quarters and slid it into my pocket.

  17

  I LIKE MEAT

  Cold meat or hot meat,

  Sliced thick or thin.

  I guess I’ve just got meat

  Under my skin.

  —Roy Blount Jr.

  I left the bed-and-breakfast, tapping down little niggles of worry that sprouted up faster than I could squash them down. I sat on my scooter for a few minutes, my face lifted to the midday sun, trying to decide what should come next. What was my mother’s theory about Yoshe? And how was she pursuing it? And most disturbing of all, why hadn’t she called me? What I really wanted to do was go to the police station, burst into the detective’s office, and beg him to put his best men out looking for my mother. Of all people, wouldn’t he know what it felt like to almost lose someone you should be taking care of?

  On the other hand, it was really too early to worry. I’d feel totally ridiculous when Mom turned up, having spent the afternoon admiring and photographing the descendents of Hemingway’s cats. Or lowering her blood pressure with a spin through the Butterfly Conservatory. Which would explain why her cell phone was silent. Though a dead battery would explain that as well.

  And besides, Bransford had made a dinner date with Olivia Nethercut. Which made the possibility of blathering in front of him very unappealing.

  I zoomed back to the oldest house in Key West and combed through the tables of conference folks who were now chowing down on conch chowder and salad. No sign of Mom anywhere. Though the soup looked incredible, a briny, milky broth studded with potatoes, celery, onions, and bits of orange conch. At the table farthest from the buffet line, Fritz Ewing, the culinary poet, recited doggerel in between bites to a group of star-starved women.

  “This is a pseudohaiku called ‘Conch Chowder,’” he said to the ladies. “Golden conch,”—slurp—“shoe leather texture”—slurp—“trophy wife after humble clam.”

  His tablemates snorted with laughter; the blonde next to him patted his shoulder with congratulations. I recognized two of them as the women Mom had befriended the first night at the opening reception. Crouching down between them, feeling like a children’s cartoon character, I asked, “Have you seen my mother?” Neither had. I asked them to have her call me in case she made a late appearance.

  I left the grounds, walked west on Duval, and turned up the block to Whitehead toward the Audubon House, thinking I could distract myself by reviewing the facts of the first murder. Surely the cops would have thought of this, but might someone from one of the neighboring properties have witnessed an altercation involving Jonah and the killer? Considering the noise level of the party that night, it was unlikely that any nearby residents could have retired early. And it had been a lovely evening with a spect
acular full moon—a perfect evening for sitting out on the porch, any porch, and thanking the universe for winter in Key West.

  I hadn’t noticed before that a tiny clapboard house with a full porch and a miniature front yard outlined with conch shells was tucked in between the Audubon House and the much larger time-share condominium on the other side. Two dirty white cats slept on faded striped cushions on the porch swing in the shade of an enormous banyan tree. I hesitated for a minute, wondering if the weathered “Private Property” sign stabbed into the lawn really meant no visitors ever. The larger of the cats lifted his head, blinked green eyes, and mouthed a silent meow. Taking that as a sign of welcome, I unlatched the gate and approached the front porch. “Hello!” I called from the bottom of the stairs. “Anybody home?”

  After several minutes, a man creaked down the center hallway to the door, leaning on an aluminum walker with tennis balls on its legs. He peered through the screen, white-tufted eyebrows lifted, a wary look on his craggy face.

  “So sorry to bother you,” I said, one foot on the bottom stair, smiling like a stewardess delivering peanuts to coach passengers. Which is to say, I gave him the best I had under the circumstances. But he looked like the kind of guy who would doubt that a food writer had any business nosing around in the aftermath of a murder. A reasonable conclusion.

  “I’m attending the writing conference,” I told him, and rattled off my name and credentials. “You’ve probably read the news that we had a death this weekend. And I’m sure the police have already asked, but I wondered if you might have heard anything unusual Thursday night? Say around nine o’clock or a little later?” I pointed to the tangle of overgrown shrubbery that separated his lawn from the far end of the manicured Audubon House grounds. “There’s a tiny pool right over there behind your bushes. And that’s where the dead man ended up.”

  The man lifted one shaky hand to rub his chin and then pinch together his cracked lips. At least he wasn’t chasing me out. Yet. He pushed open the door and struggled onto the porch with his walker. “I did hear the sirens,” he said. “Right close yonder.” He pointed to the roof of the Audubon House, barely visible through the greenery.

  “Anyone arguing?” I asked. “Maybe just before the sirens?”

  He leaned into his walker and took another step. “Sometimes with the TV running, I don’t hear so good. My daughter’s always telling me I’d do better with hearing aids, but I heard too many horror stories about the damn things. Those companies are just out to cheat the old folks. So I turn up the volume and put on the TV captions and I get along just fine.”

  I kept the encouraging smile plastered on my face, but my heart was sinking. An elderly, hard-of-hearing man with a hearing-aid conspiracy theory and his TV cranked to max wouldn’t make much of a witness, no matter how sweet he turned out to be.

  “Maybe you were watching TV between nine and ten—maybe America Has Talent?” I suggested, trying to get him thinking about Thursday night. “Or Dancing with the Stars?” I had no idea—the few programs I watched were cooking shows, showcasing the only talent I really cared about.

  “I think I saw a crime show this week,” he said. “There was a murder and some cops on the take.” He snickered. “Not too original, hey?”

  “They do all start to run together,” I agreed. “Did you go outside at all that night? Maybe during commercials? The evening I’m talking about, the moon was full. The paper made a big fuss about how high the tides would be and all.”

  He lifted his walker an inch off the wooden floor and banged it down. The fat white cat thumped to the floor and sauntered over to wind between his legs. “That’s right! I came out to look because that columnist I like in the Citizen said you wouldn’t see anything like it but once in a lifetime.” He looked wistful. “I don’t have all that much time left.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “So you had a good view.”

  “Good enough. Those branches”—he pointed to the big tree in front of his house—“keep things private so I can look out without everyone in the world peeping in.”

  Nodding again, I said, “I’m sure it gets crazy here most evenings, lots of people trooping by. Did you notice anyone who seemed out of place?” Leading the witness, but so far, he wasn’t following.

  His eyes lit up and he swiveled his wobbly head and pointed a trembling finger at the sidewalk behind me. “Right here a young man came barreling down that sidewalk so fast he would have run me down if I’d been out there.”

  “Are you sure it was a man? Would you be able to describe him?”

  He scratched the back of his neck and scowled. “More tall than short.” He touched the rim of his heavy tortoiseshell frames, so old-fashioned they were coming back in style. “With glasses.”

  Which really didn’t narrow things down in the way I had hoped. If he’d said a heavyset woman, I’d have thought of Sigrid. Or a tiny Asian woman—Yoshe. Or a stocky, lumbering, round-faced man, Dustin. Unfortunately, tall with glasses fit Eric’s description. But then I remembered Fritz, the meat poet. He wore glasses too, like a lot of men. This old man’s recollection didn’t have to mean anything about Eric. I tore a deposit slip from my checkbook, blacked out the account numbers, and jotted my name and cell phone number on the back of it, reminding myself to remind Danielle that I needed more Key Zest business cards. Assuming I still had a job at the magazine come Monday.

  “In case you think of anything else.” I handed over the paper, leaned down to stroke the dusty tomcat, and then wished the man good night. If he’d seen one person running down the street in the space of forty-five minutes, chances were there’d been a dozen more. And that man could have been anyone. Going anywhere. And coming from any place, not necessarily the Key West Loves Literature opening night party.

  On the way back to the office to collect my bike, I passed a raucous crowd spilling out onto the sidewalk from Sloppy Joe’s Bar. A woman in shorts too small for her ample behind was waving at the webcam and shouting into her cell.

  “Can you see me now?” she shrieked. “I’m wearing jean shorts and a white top. You should have come. We’re having the best time!” A florid-faced man stumbled out from the bar to join her, thrusting a bottle of beer at the camera and handing a second bottle to his lady friend.

  “I don’t ever want to come home!” the woman yelled at the camera. The couple clinked their drinks and toasted their missing friend.

  I skirted around her, thinking of how many thousands of people in the cold North had been subjected to the braggadocio of sunburned tourists over the years. I’d done the same thing when I first moved here—called up everyone I knew to insist they look at the Duval Street webcam so they could see me in summer clothes while they suffered in their winter parkas. I walked back to the office to get my bike, and then decided I would stop in to regroup. I vaulted up the stairs. Danielle’s reception area was dark and quiet, but Wally’s form was silhouetted through the blinds that shielded his glass-enclosed office.

  “Your restaurant piece is terrific,” he called out to the reception area.

  Feeling a momentary rush of euphoria, I paused in his office doorway on the way to my cubicle to bask in his praise. A pool of light spilled from the lamp on his desk, illuminating neat stacks of articles, a steaming mug of coffee, and several newspapers. Should I mention Olivia’s New York Times review of Santiago’s Bodega? I was terribly afraid mine would look tired and amateurish in comparison. On the other hand, what if I said nothing and he discovered it later? Or even worse, what if Ava Faulkner found it and used it against me? I couldn’t stand feeling like a fraud. Best to spill it right out.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I was worried you might not want to use the review because Olivia Nethercut beat me to it.”

  He waved a couple of dismissive fingers over his head. “I’m going to make a few little edits and we’re good to go. What’s really strong about the writing is the way your status as an outsider who now lives here allows you to see the food and the s
etting in a way an insider might miss. Someone who grew up here might not feel the same excitement about the flavors of Key West worked into the tapas. But you’ve been here just long enough to understand our culture without taking it for granted. Olivia Nethercut missed the importance of the local angle altogether. For her, everything is compared to New York. She seems to think she never left.”

  He grinned and then glanced up. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen Hemingway’s ghost.”

  I heaved a great sigh and slumped in the wicker chair beside his desk. According to Danielle, he’d refused a tropical upholstered chair like the ones in the reception area because he didn’t want visitors lingering. But I needed to talk to someone. And he’d asked….

  “I’m worried about everything,” I said.

  “Such as …?” he said.

  So I filled him in about the latest on the two deaths and what I’d learned about the folks at the conference and why they might have wished either Jonah or Yoshe dead. I skipped lightly over Eric’s arrest, assuring Wally the police were way off the mark on that one. I only left out the part about the detective making a dinner date with Olivia—way too humiliating to discuss with my boss. And also Dustin’s stinging remarks about me stalking Jonah. Ditto on the humiliation factor. I wrapped up with the troubling fact that my mother was not answering my calls and had not appeared at lunch as planned.

  “My mom’s like me: she doesn’t miss meals,” I added with a shaky smile.

  “You need to get organized,” Wally said.

  He pulled a new yellow legal pad from his drawer and began to sketch out a chart, with the names of the two dead writers across the top of the page and the people with connections to them down the left margin: Yoshe, Sigrid, Dustin, Fritz, Olivia, and finally Eric. “The two deaths may be related or may not, correct? For example, it could have been Yoshe who killed Jonah and someone else who did her in.”

  “Possible,” I said. “But hard to imagine. She was so tiny. Hard to picture her swinging that bird statue with enough oomph to knock him out.”