“I would be so grateful,” she said. “And let me know about anything you learn? I’m just sick about this. How could someone want to harm my beautiful girl?”
She began to cry again. I said what I could think of to calm her down and signed off. Danielle could sometimes be a nervous Nellie, and now I was beginning to see that it ran in her blood.
21
This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that.
—Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
I Googled Seymour’s address and headed off to his Old Town apartment, located near the El Siboney Restaurant. My mouth began to water as I thought of their menu. Authentic Cuban food might be just the comfort I needed after this difficult start to the morning. And then either I could add a short review of that restaurant to my takeout piece or, better still, quit shaping that one and start a new feature for next week. Though lord only knew if I’d even have a job after the altercation with Palamina.
As I approached Seymour’s block, the smells of onions and cumin wafted from the restaurant next door to his home, exactly as I had imagined on the way over. I wondered if this bothered him after he’d lived here awhile—if he was always hungry or slightly sick to his stomach. Connie and I had lived above an Italian restaurant during our senior year in college, convenient for takeout during long nights of studying. New Jersey Italian food was the ultimate comfort, but we did wonder as we left town whether we’d ever crave a meatball hoagie again. Not to worry. I was over that after a month away from the neighborhood.
I debated calling Seymour once I had parked outside his place to make sure he was home and would receive me. But I decided it might work better to simply appear.
His apartment was on the top floor of an adorable eyebrow home that had fallen into disrepair, reached by a set of rickety wooden stairs on the side of the house. The gingerbread trim around the eaves of the porch had been cut into hearts and wine bottles that mimicked a bar on upper Duval Street, formerly a speakeasy and a brothel. But this trim badly needed scraping and painting, and the weeds were growing tall in the yard. I stepped gingerly onto the small porch at the top of the stairs, testing for rotten boards, and knocked.
Seymour answered the door wearing knee-length white corduroy shorts adorned with palm trees and a T-shirt from the Green Parrot bar. The apartment smelled of coffee and bacon.
“I’m Hayley Snow,” I said. “Danielle’s friend and coworker? I’m so sorry to surprise you like this, but I was in the neighborhood and wondered if you could chat a few minutes?”
“Sure,” he said after a pause. “Come on in. Excuse the mess.”
His living room was as neat and welcoming as the outside of the home had been off-putting. Not a whisper of a mess here—the only thing out of place was his Fantasy Fest king’s crown, perched on an end table so a beam of sunlight hit it and caused the faux jewels to sparkle. He gestured for me to take a seat on a flowered sofa draped with a cerulean blue fuzzy afghan. An enormous yellow tiger cat was tucked into one corner of the couch. As I sat, he lifted his head and greeted me with a silent meow. I glanced at Seymour and we both laughed.
“Meet Chucky Cheese,” Seymour said. “I was just finishing breakfast. Can I get you something?” He pointed to a plate on the counter. There was a smear of egg yolk and a tiny bit of fat from a strip of bacon on his plate, nothing more.
“I’d love a cup of coffee with a splash of milk if you have it.”
He padded across the worn wooden floor to pull a white mug from the cupboard and fill it with coffee. Then he splashed a dollop of half-and-half into the steaming brew and set it in front of me on a soapstone coaster. “I assume you came to talk about Danielle. Have you seen her this morning? Last night was terrible. I barely slept, thinking about all that’s happened this week.”
“So scary,” I agreed. “And you were so close to both of the mishaps. I imagine you must be feeling shell-shocked.” I paused a moment, took a sip of coffee, and waited for him to nod. “I was thinking that if we talked about what happened to Caryn Druckman, it might help us figure out what happened last night.”
With some prompting, Seymour described the events of the zombie parade from his perspective. “They told us to get there early that afternoon so we could spend a couple of hours mingling with the crowd and doing some interviews with bloggers and such. The days have started to bleed together a little bit,” he said, running his fingers through his reddish beard. “But I think that was the day they served us painkillers and cupcakes.”
When I did a double take, he added: “I mean Painkiller the drink, not the drug. I don’t drink, so I chose the nonalcoholic version—it’s not that easy to stay upright on a bicycle while wearing a costume anyway. Never mind adding in booze.” He picked up the crown sitting on the table near him, fingered one of the rubies, and then absentmindedly put it on.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said, hoping he was remembering the details of the day. “The Painkiller is some kind of fruit punch, right?”
“Coconut and pineapple, maybe some other things too. Always rum, and maybe nutmeg? They’re called Painkillers because they’re usually very strong.” He grinned. “You feel no pain after you’ve had one.”
“Where did the drinks come from?”
He shook his head, the faux jewels in his crown glinting in the sunlight. His cat hopped up onto the back of the sofa and slapped a paw at a reflected sparkle. “The police asked me the same question. We were so busy talking with the sponsors and the folks from the local TV station and getting our pictures taken with all these amazing zombies, I couldn’t have said where anything started. Someone dressed as a zombie had little cups on their tray.”
“So it wasn’t your Beach Eats truck?”
His jaw tightened and I thought I heard the click of grinding molars. “I don’t control their menu, but they know I’m not a fan of alcoholic beverages.”
“Did Miss Druckman seem sick right away, before you even got onto your bikes?”
“If she was feeling poorly, she didn’t mention it to me. I could very easily believe she died of alcohol poisoning—that woman could drink most people under the table.”
“But did she look sick right after you had the snacks? I mean did you notice a change in her color or her demeanor?”
“I understand what you’re getting at, but honestly, she wasn’t the kind of person that it was easy to get close to. She would never have asked me for help.” He shook his head, frowning. “We never bonded over the last few months. In fact, I tried to keep my distance from her after a while—including getting away from her physically.”
“She was mean to Danielle, I know that much,” I said. “According to her family, anyway. Was she negative in general?”
He stroked the big cat and took a minute to think. “I wouldn’t have said she was a bad person, but she was very focused on what she wanted. And so she didn’t hesitate to step on toes along the way.”
“Is that what happened at the Coronation Ball?”
The cat hopped down from the back of the sofa and began to knead his paws in Seymour’s lap. “Miss Druckman was bitterly disappointed at the results. Which I can sort of understand. We’d spent the past three months campaigning and begging people for contributions and setting up all kinds of events, and then to lose in the last moments of the contest … even though we all objectively understood that it wasn’t about us winning or losing, it was about raising money for AIDS Help.” He removed the crown and held it in his hands, studying it as though it was a foreign object. “But she loved the fuss, so I get that it might have felt harsh to her, as though someone had swept in and stolen her prize.”
“So was she only hard on Danielle after she’d won? Or were they butting heads all along?”
He shrugged and looked away. I hated to press him, because his face was beginning to redden and I could smell his perspiration. But the relationship between these two women seemed
as though it might be the life-or-death crux of the matter.
“I’m sorry to be a bulldog about this, but I’m worried about Danielle’s safety. Would you say there was tension between them right from the beginning, back in August when the planning for the campaigns began? How did Danielle behave toward Miss Druckman?”
“Their chemistry was flat,” he said. “Except for the catfight at The Bull and Whistle. However, sparks were evident all along between Druckman and Danielle’s family.”
Which I hated to hear, though it didn’t surprise me. The idea that Danielle’s mother or aunt could be mixed up in any of these troubles made me sick to my stomach. “Sparks?”
“They simply didn’t like each other, that’s all.”
“Any conflict between you and the other king candidates?”
He laughed. “I had it easy, because the only other person foolish enough to run for king was an outsider from the get-go.”
“John-Bryan Hopkins?” I asked. “In what way was he an outsider?”
“He doesn’t live in Key West—he comes from Alabama. But he visits all the time and knows a lot of people. And he’s a social media genius, so I suppose he figured he could lean on those skills.” Seymour put the crown back on the end table. “He loved the parties and he’s an amazing dancer, and he wanted to raise money for the charity; that’s it. It might be worth talking to him, though, since he was in the middle of everything. Winning didn’t seem personal to him, so he might have noticed some interactions that I missed.”
Which made me wonder whether the contest was personal to Seymour, but I couldn’t make myself ask it. “When is your next official royal responsibility? I’m wondering if the organizers will cancel?”
“Nothing official until the locals parade on Friday night,” he said. “And then the big parade on Saturday. As far as canceling, I doubt it. Though the weather may get us before the organizers do.” He crooked a grin and pointed to his laptop, open on the kitchen counter. From this distance, I could see the many-colored lines of the storm’s models and, overlaid on that, the cone of uncertainty, with Key West in its center. “They issued a hurricane watch for the county this morning.”
“Are you planning to leave town?” I asked, realizing how silly it was that I was polling people about proper behavior in the approach of a possible hurricane. But I couldn’t seem to help myself.
“Not unless the authorities absolutely say we should. I’ve stayed on this island through some pretty good blows. This time I have obligations, but also, driving off the Keys at a snail’s pace with a howling cat in the car is no picnic either. And the Green Parrot will stay open until the bitter end.” He plucked at his shirt. “I’ve got a lot of shifts to make up because of all the Fantasy Fest meetings and events and so on.”
“You’re not involved in Paradise Pub anymore,” I said, fishing for facts.
“I hope not,” he said, his expression freezing into a polite smile. “I got talked into investing years ago, and it’s been nothing but a headache.”
I thanked him for the coffee and returned downstairs to my scooter. Since I was close, I drove to the cemetery to see if I could catch Miss Gloria between tours. She had become the most requested guide since beginning the gig last winter. Everyone loved her sunny personality and chipper commentary, laced alternately with respect and humor. I popped my head into the sexton’s office, where Jane, the cemetery historian, told me Miss G had left for Houseboat Row because business was slow.
“Visitors are either recovering from last night’s parties or getting ready for this evening,” she said. “They don’t have time to absorb the peculiarities of the past.”
I left the office, wondering what to do next. Maybe walking among the dead and their markers would help me think through what Seymour had told me. When a murder has been committed, I can’t help wondering what desperate feelings incited the crime. Drugs and psychosis aside, how in the world does an ordinary person take the life of someone else? What twisted path must their reasoning take to justify killing?
In the case of Caryn Druckman, no clear suspect was emerging from the tangle of human emotions that seemed to surround the election of Seymour and Danielle—who liked who, and who hated who, and why in the world did the honor of the crown mean so much? And always, how well did I really know the people involved? In this case, Danielle.
I perched on a crumbling cement wall in the shade of a coconut palm, and Googled John-Bryan Hopkins. As Seymour had said, he had an active social media presence including a blog about food holidays and hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. I sent him a direct message asking him to call me, though I didn’t have much hope he’d respond.
Then I phoned my psychologist friend Eric. It always helps to mull things over with him. Plus, since Connie and Ray had left town, maybe I could persuade him and Bill to attend the tutu party with me.
I asked about the party first, really begging more than asking.
“We’re clearing out of town tomorrow,” he said. “We waited too long for the last storm, and then discovered that it’s impossible to find a motel room that will take dogs when you’re desperate. You really have to plan ahead. They say cats are even harder.”
“Great,” I muttered. “What about the party though? It’s tonight. Can’t you guys come, maybe just for an hour? One beer?”
“That’s what I started to tell you,” he said. “We’re cooking up everything in the refrigerator in case the power goes out while we’re gone. What about asking your mother and Sam to the tutu party? They like to have fun.”
“Think about that,” I said. “My mother at a tutu party?” Last year there were people wandering around wearing tutus and practically nothing else. I didn’t know who would be most embarrassed—probably me. “But wait, you’re leaving before her wedding? She’ll be devastated. You’re the person she’s known longest in the world—aside from me, of course.”
Eric and I had grown up in the same town, same neighborhood, though he was a few years ahead. And he’d used my mother as a sounding board many times when he couldn’t talk to his own about private teenage boy stuff.
“I broke the news to her this morning,” Eric said. “She’s sad but she said she understands. How about Miss Gloria? She’d look adorable in a tutu.”
I could only groan. “Really, Eric? Miss Gloria?”
He snickered. “Better idea—how about all four of you come over for dinner? Skip the tutu party altogether.”
I thought about how mad I was at Palamina and how little I felt like (a) attending the party and (b) writing about it. And besides, I’d told her I was taking the day off, so I should follow through, not act like a cowed employee who didn’t mean what she said. “Terrific,” I said. “What can we bring?”
“I’ve got a coconut cake in the oven, which will use up most of our butter and cream cheese,” Eric said. “So dessert and cholesterol count are covered. Do you have any tomatoes and basil left on your deck? Maybe pick up some mozzarella from the deli at Fausto’s? Potluck, so whatever you have will be fine. And bring the detective if you want to.”
“I don’t.”
22
I will bring you what you need.
—said by an arrogant waiter who couldn’t possibly know
After talking with Eric, I realized I had to see Danielle for myself. But as with Seymour, I was afraid she wouldn’t agree if I called. So for the second visit in one day, I planned to drop in without phoning ahead.
Last year, Danielle had purchased a tiny apartment in the Shipyard condominium complex in the Truman Annex. Here, hundreds of small condos were crowded onto a small space near the tip of the island and most often rented to tourists. But she insisted she enjoyed the steady stream of visitors, and she liked being able to walk to town and walk to work. And almost more than anything—although you wouldn’t guess this from her willowy frame—she loved her daily visits to our favorite doughnut shop on Eaton Street. This time, as I puttered toward her place, I coul
dn’t help noticing that she’d gotten about as far from her family in New Town as she could get on this island.
Her place was located on Southard Street, which led to Duval Street if you went north, and Fort Zachary Taylor State Park if you went south. I parked my scooter in the lot behind the mass of condos, and wove along the path through the vegetation screening the pool, to her front door.
She answered my knock wearing her hair in a messy topknot and dressed in cat-themed pajamas. She looked immediately guilty. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your text,” she said. “I’m just not up to dealing with Palamina right now. I simply can’t. Do you want to come in?”
I followed her into a living room wallpapered in sunny yellow gingham. The white wicker couches upholstered in a tropical foliage print mirrored the scene outside.
“Want coffee?” she asked as we both sat down.
“No, thanks.”
As she scuffed off her Hello Kitty slippers and tucked her feet under her bottom, I added: “I just had a cup with Seymour.”
Her eyes got wide. “I didn’t know you two were so friendly.”
“We’re not, though he’s lovely. You’ll enjoy spending time with him this year. If you get the chance, that is. If you can get hold of yourself and act like a normal person, not a guilty criminal.”
Danielle looked shocked. One dime-sized tear squeezed out of her eye and trickled down her cheek.
“How can you say that when I collapsed last night?”
I sat forward, my elbows on my knees. “And according to your mother, who called me because she’s so worried, they can’t find any physical reason for what happened. Honestly, you know what it’s beginning to look like?”
She looked away, twisting the hem of her pajama shirt between her fingers.
“It’s beginning to look from the outside like you’re tightly wound because you’re worried the authorities will catch up with you.”
Killer Takeout Page 15
