I shook my head. “Her grandmother’s recipe stash?”
They both laughed.
“No,” he said. “She’s super loyal. She understands my vision and she wants to help me achieve it.”
“You deserve it, knucklehead,” she said, chuckling again.
Grant scrubbed his hands at a small sink in the corner of the kitchen and then took his place at the stove located on the central island. I slid onto the stool across from him and began to ask him about the menu, the touches that made their burger special (blue cheese, bacon, and a homemade sweet red pepper relish), the double frying process they used for potatoes, their patented tweaks in the Key West Cobb salad, substituting shrimp and mango for the usual chicken and avocado. As he talked, he cracked an egg onto the sizzling griddle, flipped it over once the edges crisped, and swaddled it with a thick slice of orange cheese. Then he loaded the whole thing onto a toasted roll, along with five strips of perfectly crunchy bacon.
“We believe that bacon goes with everything,” he said. “And cheese, too, everywhere we can think of. Sweet dreams are made of cheese, you know?” He sliced the sandwich in half and put it in front of me. “Coffee?”
“Heaven,” I said. “With a splash of milk? Thanks.” I bit into the sandwich, savoring the slightly runny yolk, the melted cheese, the perfectly crisped bacon. Then I remembered I should have taken a photo. I put the breakfast roll back down and rearranged it so my teeth marks didn’t show, then snapped a few pix.
“So you own this place?” I asked.
“He will in a couple of weeks,” said Kat proudly. “It’s in the works. We were just thinking about names.”
“You don’t want to stick with Paradise Pub?” I asked. “You’d have the name recognition factor. This restaurant has been around awhile, right? I’ve heard the locals like it.” I blushed, realizing I was reminding them that even though I liked to consider myself a local, I’d never set foot in their place.
“Yeah, it’s been around,” said Grant. “But I’m not sure we want that kind of recognition. The former owner didn’t care a spit about cleanliness or trying out new recipes or anything. He wanted us to just serve the same slop every day.”
“What names are in the running?” I asked, wiping up a bit of melted cheese on my plate with the last nugget of hard roll. A shame to let any of it go uneaten.
“I think it should have his name in it,” said Kat. “All the famous chefs do that. Like Grant’s You That or Grant’s Grub or Grant’s Reef or Grant’s Gruel. Or how’s this: Granted! with an exclamation point at the end.”
“The famous chefs are full of sh—” He stopped and looked at me. “Hot air. That’s why they have to keep their names in the limelight. In case someone should forget how important they are.” He laughed, the skin around his eyes crinkling as he relaxed.
“Maybe something that highlights your food,” said Kat. “Say, Cheese Wiz or Mustard’s Last Stand.”
“The Daily Rind!” I added, pointing at the pile of bacon on the counter.
Grant groaned.
“What were you considering?” I asked.
“Something a little nautical, maybe, or Key West-y at least. Conch’d Out? Squealin’ Keel? Bar None? Salty Crock?”
“I like all of those,” I said. “A little bit funky, which I think is what you’re going for.” He nodded. “So the other day, at Beach Eats, what were you serving?” I asked.
“Zombie everything,” he said, smiling grimly. “Death stalks a cupcake with spooky green hands poking out of the icing, killer cookies with skulls painted on them, stuff like that.”
“And were you serving only to the royal court?” I asked.
“What sense would that make?” asked Kat, who was now banging pots and pans into the sink full of sudsy water. “The idea is to make money so we can get paid.” She laughed and wiped her forehead with a soapy hand. “Sorry, but I get annoyed when everyone thinks we should give our food away.”
Grant glanced over at her, then back at me. “Why do you ask?”
“One of the theories the police are considering about Caryn Druckman is that she was poisoned,” I said with way more authority than I had any right.
“You can’t think we poisoned her?” said Grant, his voice vibrating with outrage. “And then you have the nerve to come here and beg for breakfast?”
I held both hands up. “Slow down, I’m certainly not accusing anyone of anything. It’s just that my friend Danielle is on the hot seat and I don’t know where to turn to try to help her. My thought was you might have seen something that didn’t look right. Or maybe we’ll think of something together.”
Kat came across the kitchen to stand next to the chef. She put her hand on his arm, patting the golden hairs that shone above his tan. “As Grant said, we were serving sweet treats and lemonade, like that,” she said. “Our stuff was geared more to the younger set. There were other booths serving beer and wine—lots of booze goes down the hatch this week. And the cart with hot dogs—remember?” She glanced up at him and crooked a smile. “They were boiled, not grilled, and not one decent condiment to disguise them other than that hideous yellow mustard. And even worse, no-brand ketchup.”
She stuck her tongue out, and then wiped her hands on her apron. “Ugh. The thing is, if any of the food was poisoned, how in the world could there be only one victim? Surely she wasn’t the only person in that big crowd to eat whatever it was she ate.”
Sensing a stray bit of cheese, I patted my cheek with a napkin. “Yes, exactly. That’s what makes figuring it out so hard. What if Mrs. Druckman was terribly allergic to something, but all the other people who didn’t have allergies were fine?”
“Nice to meet you,” said Kat. “I need to get the stuff put away in the pantry before the crowds get here.” She waved and disappeared into a big closet on the far side of the room.
“We always worry about peanuts,” said Grant, who appeared to have recovered from my possible accusation. Or at least he was pretending. “We avoid them like the plague even though I have a killer recipe for Asian peanut sauce.”
I nodded, remembering how livid Chef Edel Waugh had been when someone replaced the olive oil in her kitchen with peanut last December. On her bistro menu, they’d made a big deal of insisting they used no tree nuts in their food. A customer’s anaphylactic shock could have cost her a fortune in money and reputation. “If you remember anything, give me a buzz, okay?” I gave him one of my Key Zest business cards and thanked him again for breakfast.
Outside in the parking lot, the stray kittens had finished the milk and were grooming each other. I paused for a minute, watching the little cats circle each other and finally curl into a fuzzy ball of black, orange, and white fur.
Could a man who fed stray cats kill someone? Of course it depended on the stakes. How much of his skin was in the game. And what was the game? I shook my head. Why was I even thinking about this? What sense did it make to accuse him—even in the privacy of my own mind—when there were plenty of other food trucks at the event, not to mention ten thousand zombies. Besides, he was a nice man, serious about his restaurant, who worked two jobs to make it happen. And made a killer breakfast. I was pricking the wrong soufflé. I puffed out some air and got on my scooter, pondering what to do next.
Considering the humidity and the fact that I’d exercised in my street clothes, I desperately needed a shower. Everything on me, down to the pores of my skin, now reeked of sweat and bacon. But I also needed to get to Key Zest and polish the final edits on my takeout article. And track down Christy Haussler, the face painter. And find Seymour, Danielle’s king. And by the way, find out what the heck was actually going on with Danielle.
16
Do not allow watching food to replace making food.
—Alton Brown
First stop, I decided, would be Duval Street and chatting with Christy. Then the office. Then home for a shower before chasing down Seymour. I drove a few blocks south on Caroline Street and parked
in front of the Coffee Plantation. As I approached Duval, I had to remind myself that it was barely nine a.m. This four-block section of the street had been designated by the city as the “fantasy zone.” In a nutshell, this meant that so-called costumes that would not be acceptable anywhere else could be trotted out here. I would not try to tackle the question of why a person would want to wear them in public.
Keeping my eyes averted from the more daring ensembles, I hurried along the sidewalk to find the painters. A woman resembling the description that Jennifer had given me was working in a booth between Caroline and Charles Streets. The booths were set back from the sidewalk and about two feet above street level. Jennifer’s friend, a stocky woman with short hair and a pleasant smile, faced out toward Duval with her paints spread out on a tray, while her customer faced in. The woman being painted wore an athletic bra top and shorts. Still revealing for ordinary social circles, but modest in fantasy zone terms.
“Good morning, are you Christy?” I called. “I’m Hayley; Jennifer mentioned me to you yesterday?”
She laughed, a lovely silver tinkle. “I wondered if you’d been scared away. Come on up. How can I help?”
I made my way closer and took a seat on a folding chair that had been squeezed into her booth. My legs were almost touching those of her customer. I paused, once again wondering how much to say and how to explain my own involvement. I pulled out my phone and showed her the photo of the scene at West Martello before the parade had begun. The direct approach had insulted Grant and his sidekick Kat, but I shouldn’t have that problem here.
“See the person with the zebra stripes on her face? Is that kind of painting familiar to you? It seems that the police consider her to be a person of interest in the zombie bike ride death.”
Which wasn’t true exactly, as Torrence had told me the zebra face was no longer a lead they were following. But honestly I didn’t believe him. And I was beginning to feel desperate.
“Excuse me for a second?” Christy asked her customer. She put her paintbrush down, took my phone, and studied the photo. While she looked, I noticed a photograph on her tray that her customer must have brought, and compared it in my mind to the painting emerging on the woman’s face and neck. The backdrop was a deep blue, speckled with planets and stars in silver and gold. Sweeping across the woman’s chest and neck up onto her face, I recognized Orion’s Belt and one of the dippers. And Pegasus, Zeus’s horse, thundered across her forehead.
“This is completely lovely,” I said. “One of the most beautiful paintings I’ve seen.”
“Thank you,” the woman said. “This is my fourth Fantasy Fest and I wouldn’t go to anyone other than Christy.”
Christy blushed and nodded her thanks and returned my phone. “To me it looks like an amateur job. Do you see? The demarcation between the white and the black is blurry, almost as if they either hurried the work or the painter’s hands were shaking.” She held out her own hand and looked at the fingers. “That would be a career ender, right?”
Her customer nodded.
“You’re trying to figure out what happened to the woman who died while cycling.” Christy rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
“Do you remember painting this woman’s face?” I flicked through my photos until I found a decent one of Druckman. “Jennifer wondered if it might have been you because the transitions were so sharp.” I pointed at the woman beside me. “Similar to what you’re doing here.”
Christy shook her head. “Nope, not mine. And I didn’t get there until almost four because I was busy here, so I missed the excitement.”
“You were riding in the parade too?”
“Oh no,” she said, laughing again. “There is no rest for the wicked this week. I sell ice cream most nights at Mallory Square. But if there’s another event on the island that allows food vendors, I try to be there too. So I had towed my ice cream cart over to East Martello for the last couple of hours of the party. I was parked over there.” She tapped the right side of the screen. “You can’t quite see it in this photo. And then once the zombies took off toward Duval, I had to hustle up to Mallory Square and set up all over again.”
I certainly wasn’t going to say it aloud, but if Caryn Druckman ate ice cream right before she collapsed … “So can you think of anyone who paints like this?” I asked.
“None of my friends off the top of my head,” she said. “I’ll keep my eyes open though.”
Once I thanked her and admired the constellation painting again, I hustled back to my scooter and zipped over to the office. Nine o’clock. I had just enough time to tighten up my article, add a snippet about Grant’s breakfast sandwich, and check in with Danielle.
Palamina had beaten me to work. For today, she’d dyed her hair a deep red, and she wore a flowing purple sash or scarf over what appeared to be a black cat body suit. I stuck my hand in her office to wave hello—a miracle that she and Wally could survive in that small space—and trotted back to my cubby.
I scratched out a tentative first line.
One thing about Key West, it’s an island. A small, compact space with lots of restaurants to choose from within blocks of most domiciles. And that means the urge for takeout food is not quite so, well, urgent.
A lousy lead if I’d ever written one. But even though Palamina tended to drive me bonkers, hovering over our schedule and our work as though we hadn’t a brain cell flickering among us, she had given me one tip that I used over and over: You can fix anything, but you can’t fix words that haven’t been written. She was a fast writer—once she’d done the research for a story and had a little time to mull it over, she poured all her ideas out on the page. Then she could hone and shape and polish.
So I scribbled my fractured impressions of the visit to Grant Monsarrat’s kitchen onto the page. When I heard Wally clomp up the stairs, I saved the document and went down the hall to join them. “Morning, Wally,” I said. He smiled in response, but Palamina cut him off before he could answer.
“Where’s Danielle?” she asked as I took my customary seat. Nearest the door. A psychological escape valve.
“Sick,” I said, trying not to look guilty. I wasn’t technically lying, simply repeating what Danielle had said. Was it the truth? Doubtful.
Palamina frowned, tossed the fringed end of her purple scarf over her shoulder, and banged her fist on the desk. “Who’s going to put the magazine together? Dammit. We can’t wait for next week—we’re surfing the Fantasy Fest wave. Next week is way too late; we’ll be waterlogged trash on the beach of magazine life.”
Even furious, Palamina waxed poetic.
“Let me give her a quick buzz. I’ll be right back.”
I leaped up and raced down to my office, punching in Danielle’s number as I went.
“Palamina’s having a heart attack,” I said without greeting her. “Where are you?”
“Sick,” she croaked.
“Really?”
“Scared sick,” she said. “The police have been here again.” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “How can you be dating that man? I mean, he’s a hunk, for sure, but he’s so mean.”
Of course she meant Bransford. My first instinct was to defend him, until I remembered that he was probably entertaining his ex this week. “I think that nightmare’s over. I’ll tell you more when I see you. What did he do?”
“The worst was when he made me drag out my zombie costume and the two of them spent twenty minutes going over it.”
“Looking for what?” I asked, trying to imagine what kind of evidence might have rubbed off onto the killer from the victim.
“You think they told me anything? And then they took it with them.”
“I’ll see if I can find out what they’re looking for, but for now, get out of your bunny slippers and nightgown and get your butt in here. Thirty minutes, got it?” I trotted back into Palamina’s office.
“She got mixed up on the time—she’ll be here in half an hour. She’s taken so much cough syrup tha
t I think her brains are addled.”
I didn’t look at Wally, because he knew me—he’d be able to tell that I was lying. I caromed back to my office to do a little more work while we waited for Danielle. First, I texted Torrence to ask why the cops were bothering Danielle. Then I flicked through the messages on my phone and realized that I had not returned the call from Danielle’s aunt. And given how the cops had visited Danielle again, and how weird she was acting, and what Victoria witnessed between Danielle and Caryn Druckman at the Coronation Ball, it felt important to call her back.
I punched redial to return her call. “Marion, it’s Hayley. So sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday. I’ve been running from one thing to the next.”
“Not a problem,” she said, her voice pressured. “It’s just that we’re all worried about Danielle. I know she would never hurt a flea and her mother knows it and I think you do too, but I’m not so sure the police feel the same way.”
I channeled my psychologist friend, Eric—I missed his calming influence, but he was busy distributing extra therapy hours necessitated by the zaniness of the Fantasy Fest week. So instead of blurting out questions and suspicions and observations in my usual haphazard way, I said: “Uh-huh?”
“She was in over her head in this competition,” said Danielle’s aunt. “She never imagined it would turn out so cutthroat. I’ve been around the block a few times, so when there’s a competition, I always expect a few people to turn sour.”
“You were ready to stick up for her if she needed you.”
“Of course,” she said. “We’re family. And not just One Human Family, but blood.” One Human Family is the motto of the City of Key West, designed to remind us of our tolerance and acceptance of all kinds of people.
“Did she end up needing you?” This trying to let the other person talk without interruption in order to let the real story emerge, as Eric did in his therapy practice every day, was turning out to be harder than I’d expected.
“She did,” said her aunt with a curt laugh. “I gave that unpleasant woman a piece of my mind. And told her she’d have me to answer to if she didn’t back off.” She was silent for a moment. “I know you’re dating that detective. I was just thinking, if it comes up, you could mention to him that we Kamens stick together. I hope you don’t misunderstand me. I would never have hurt her, but I wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines and watch her badger my niece. You get what I mean. Don’t you?”
Killer Takeout Page 11
