Feeling frozen brought to mind one of Chad’s final criticisms: “You couldn’t make a decision if you were offered a seat on a lifeboat alongside the Titanic.” Which stung hard since the decision I had been facing at that moment was whether or not to go home for Thanksgiving and how I could manage such a trip without hurting anyone’s feelings. If I had dinner at my mother’s house, how would I explain that choice to my father? Would he be satisfied if I explained that I preferred Mom’s mashed potatoes and gravy to my stepmother’s rice pilaf? Obviously not.
Chad was right: I was often afraid I would make a mistake I couldn’t recover from. And I’d made a whopper recently—I’d moved in with him on the basis of sheer lust and dumb hope when I barely knew him, and look where that had gotten me. (This, of course, was one of the things I had screamed at Chad when he was moving my belongings out. Only I skipped the part about lust because why give him the satisfaction?)
On the other hand, if I didn’t start making decisions and taking action, my life would continue to swirl the drain. Glug, glug, glug. I’d be headed back to New Jersey with my father’s “I told you so” ringing in my ears before I even crossed the Mason-Dixon line.
So I squared my shoulders, stepped up, and ordered both the burrito and the tacos—to go. Then I added a fresh-squeezed limeade to help pass the time, and slumped on the bench to wait for the food. With all the excitement at the police station and my detours to the Green Parrot and Lorenzo, I hadn’t had time for a proper lunch. Cheese and crackers did not, no way, constitute a meal. And besides, having danger read into my future had made me very hungry. Sliding my iPhone from my back pocket, I tapped in the opening bones of a possible review:
Fast food doesn’t have to mean greasy, bland, or caloric. Some of the absolute most mouth-watering food in Key West gets carried out of Bad Boy Burrito in a paper sack.
Then I snapped a few surreptitious photos of the glass counter loaded with limes, cabbage, and tomatoes, trying not to tip off the staff. Being the food critic for Key Zest would not bring the notoriety of that same job at the New York Times, but still, I would prefer to remain anonymous for as long as possible. Nothing would queer an honest review faster than special treatment from the restaurant chef. Or so I’d read.
Henrietta (Henri to her friends) Stentzel, one of the Bad Boy owners, called me up to the counter when my drink was ready. “Your order should be up shortly,” she said with a smile, wiping her hands on a white full-body apron.
I’d met Henri when I had come in for lunch soon after I arrived in town and got pressed into filling in for a shift at the soup kitchen. She was a foodie who had owned and run a hip restaurant in Miami Beach until she burned out on the late-night hours and the constant search for competent, sober staff. Several months ago, she retired to make burritos in Key West. She had this theory about helping the homeless folks who flock to the island in the winter and spill over into the shoulder seasons: With a spin of the karmic dial, we too could have been living out of a filthy knapsack on the beach.
Chad, of course, didn’t see things that way.
“These people are responsible for their own destinies, same as we are,” he’d told me over a fabulous steak dinner and the best Bloody Mary I’d ever tasted at Michael’s. “You’re only enabling their lifestyle choices.”
Looking back, there was a turning point I should have recognized.
At the counter in front of me, Henri busied herself wrapping a line of chicken burritos in tinfoil. I wondered, as I had the first time she’d mentioned her move from Miami Beach to Key West, whether she was truly satisfied with the change in her life path. It occurred to me that with her Miami and restaurant connections, she might have an inside track about Kristen’s murder.
“Did you hear the awful news about Kristen Faulkner?” I asked.
“Unbelievable,” said Henri, glancing up from her work. With the back of her wrist, she pushed a wisp of black hair off her forehead. “Not that she and I were close”—here she actually snorted—“but no one deserves to die eating something they love.”
I felt a jolt to the gut. “So it was something she ate?”
Henri frowned as she tucked the sandwiches into a brown paper bag. “That’s what I heard.” Then she pinched her lips together and shook her head, like she wasn’t going to say another word. “Hang on.” She moved across the small kitchen space to the six-burner stove and stirred my beef, adding a handful of cilantro before flipping the steaming mass into a flour skin and dousing the whole pile with fresh salsa. She paused and glanced up, her brown eyes questioning. “Jalapeños on this?”
“Of course.” I grinned.
“Say, listen,” she said. “Are you by any chance going home by way of Higgs Beach?”
“I could.”
She pointed to the sack of sandwiches she’d been working on earlier. “I packed up some leftovers for the guys who were in the soup kitchen yesterday. If you’re not in a rush, could you drop them off? I’m running late here.”
“No problem.” I tucked the bag of food into my backpack and carried my loot to the outside bench, nearly swooning from the smell. I paused for a minute to think about Kristen, who would never again have the chance to eat something exquisite and tease out its meld of flavors. Feeling sad for that, I held her memory in what light I could summon, considering the circumstances. Then I bit into the first fish taco. Crunchy shell, crisp cabbage, flash-fried grouper, with just the right spicy zip. Heaven.
Once I’d gobbled that taco, I wiped my hands clean and returned everything to my backpack. I would save the burrito for later. Then I started up the scooter and drove the few blocks to Higgs Beach. The three guys Henri had described from the soup kitchen were drinking beverages from paper sacks at a concrete picnic table beside the bike path. One was the thin, walnut-brown cowboy who’d scared the daylights out of me at the cemetery the night before. A Coleman lantern spilled a pool of light over the playing cards on their table.
“Are you guys hungry?” I called, then steadied my scooter onto its kickstand. “Henri sent some goodies. Chicken burritos. They’re still warm.”
“Dude,” said the cowboy. He stood, swept his hat off his head, and bowed. “You’re a lifesaver.”
The other two guys, a redhead with tangled hair, shaggy beard, and canvas shorts layered over his jeans, and a heavy man reeking of beer and wearing a Red Sox baseball cap, said nothing. Fifty yards farther, invisible in the darkness, the waves of the Atlantic Ocean hissed against the sand.
“Mah name is Tony,” the cowboy said, gesturing to the empty spot at the concrete picnic table. “Reckon we could get you to join us?”
To be perfectly honest, the idea of eating with them here in the shadows made me the tiniest bit nervous. But would they think I thought I was too good to share a sandwich? Only Connie’s kindness had kept me from similar circumstances. Though not really, I supposed, as I could always go home to New Jersey and mooch off my relatives. I dropped their food on the table, sat down, and pulled the second taco out of my backpack.
Tony unpacked and distributed the burritos to his friends and we began to eat. He swallowed his first mouthful and wiped his mustache on his sleeve. “Did we hear somethin’ about y’all making a visit to the cop shop this afternoon?”
“Good gravy,” I said. “How the heck did you know that?”
“Good gravy?” Tony chortled. “You sound like you stepped out of Mayberry.”
“My grandmother used to say it,” I explained stiffly.
He held up a grubby hand and grinned. “No offense. We were across from the station at Bayview Park this afternoon throwing a Frisbee for Poncho and hanging out.” Tony pointed to the mottled dog that lay at the feet of the silent redhead. In this light, it was hard to say if his short fur was gray or just filthy. He bared his teeth without lifting his head. “Turtle here”—now he pointed to the redhead—“he noticed you pull up in the back of a black-and-white. What’s up with that?”
Turtle’s pale
blue eyes flashed to my face for a minute, then back to his food.
“I don’t know exactly,” I said, and started to choke on the bite of fish going down my pipe. Tony pounded me on the back. I wiped my eyes and took a sip from my water bottle, wondering how much to say.
“You’ve probably heard about the murder, then.”
Three sets of curious eyes confirmed that they had. If they knew about my visit to the police station, they probably knew a lot more too. Give a little, get a little, Hayley, I thought.
“The lady who died was my ex’s new girlfriend. It was pretty much routine questioning—where was I between eight and five and so on.”
“But how come they brought you to the station?” asked Tony. “Couldn’t they ask you that stuff on your front porch?”
“The times I got taken to the station, they were pretty sure I done it. Whatever it was,” said the man in the baseball cap with a mirthless laugh.
“I think they wanted me to tell the chief what I knew.” I stopped talking, my stomach churning. What was going on?
My cell phone buzzed with a text message. I fished it out of my back pocket—Connie’s name flashed in a small box on the screen. I excused myself to read.
WHEN ARE WE EATING? NEED ME TO GET THINGS STARTED?
Her subtle way of saying: Where the heck is that home-cooked dinner you promised?
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, I texted back. Then I packed up my food in a big hurry. “Sorry, guys. Gotta run.”
5
“Time slows down in the kitchen, offering up an entire universe of small satisfactions.”
—Ruth Reichl
I stopped at Fausto’s Market on the way back to the houseboat and picked up a pound of shrimp, a length of andouille sausage, a sack of grits, and two packages of Whisker Lickin’s for Evinrude. This morning, in a fit of extravagant gratitude for putting up me and the cat, I’d promised Connie that I’d make dinner for her and her boyfriend, Ray. Just because I’d spoiled my appetite with the fish tacos and talk about the police didn’t mean they weren’t hungry. And I could cut up the beef burrito into finger food to hold off the starving masses while I cooked the supper. Besides, cooking always helped me think.
I parked my scooter in the lot beside the Bight, slung the food-laden backpack over my shoulder, and hurried past the green Dumpsters and the tiny building housing the marina Laundromat to the dock. Two boats in along the wooden finger and more often than not one season ahead of the rest of the world, Miss Gloria had strung Christmas lights on her porch. They winked a cheerful welcome. She was watching the news in her living room, one eye on the dock. I waved and called hello through the screen.
“Your place looks fantastic,” I told her.
She smiled modestly and ducked down to stroke her cat, a slim black tomcat named Sparky. “How’s Evinrude settling in?”
“He’ll never be a sailor,” I said with a laugh, “but we’re surviving.” Then, since Miss Gloria hardly ever left her boat, it occurred to me to wonder if she’d be able to vouch for me with the police. I hopped over onto her porch, her boat rocking almost imperceptibly under the change in weight. “Did you happen to notice that I was here this morning working?”
“This morning?” she asked, looking puzzled. “I don’t know. Were you? That nice young policeman came by, though. He’s got such a strong chin.”
“I know,” I said glumly. Her touch of dee-mentia, as she called it, wasn’t going to help me in this situation. “You two have a good night. And let me know if you need anything from the store tomorrow, okay?”
On the next boat over, the Renharts had decorated for Thanksgiving, their small front deck hosting a plastic turkey with a lighted sign around its neck that read “Eat More Ham.” I waved hello to Mrs. Renhart, silhouetted by lights from her galley.
The lights were also blazing on Connie’s houseboat, but only Evinrude greeted me, winding through my legs and offering a string of plaintive meows. A note on the counter explained that Connie and Ray had popped over to Finnegan’s Wake for a beer and would be back by eight. She had signed the note “starving!”—underlined three times. Another note reported that my mother had called twice on Connie’s landline since I didn’t seem to be answering my cell. And a third note reported good news—the editor of the local newspaper called to let me know that my article “A Taste of Key Lime Pie in Key West” would be appearing in tomorrow’s paper.
I read that last line two more times, vibrating with disbelief and then excitement. This would be my first official byline, sure to buff up my credentials for the food critic job. I cracked open a Key West Sunset Ale and toasted my change in fortune.
I started the water boiling for the grits, minced a pile of onions, garlic, and peppers and tossed them into a pan of crackling olive oil, and then grated a slab of sharp cheddar. While I sliced the sausage and shelled the shrimp, I gave myself a pep talk about calling home. I tried to keep things light with Mom. She’d had only that one official hospitalization, but she tended to feel things that happened to me almost more than I felt them. “Separation issues,” Eric had suggested. Whatever you called it, she panicked faster than a house cat in a rainstorm when she sensed bad news. A feeling I could relate to.
To make things worse, I was lousy at keeping my cards close to my vest. I was much more likely to blurt out exactly what was on my mind than to keep a secret. And there was a lot weighing on it right now: the tarot card reading, Kristen’s murder, my trip to the police station, and Chad. Heck, even the homeless guys were worried about me. I jotted these things down on the back of the Fausto’s receipt, wrote “Do Not Discuss” at the top in red ink, and dialed.
Mom answered on the first ring. “Hayley, what’s wrong?” Obviously her antennae were already quivering near the red position on the maternal concern dial.
“And hi back to you, Mom,” I said. “The only thing wrong here is I forgot to charge my phone last night.”
“Connie didn’t know where you were,” she said accusingly. “She said you’d promised to make dinner and then you didn’t show up.”
“I’m cooking right this minute,” I assured her, holding the phone over the frying pan so she could hear the comforting sound of vegetables sautéing themselves to satisfying limpness. “I’m making a cross between shrimp and grits and jambalaya.”
“Sounds delicious,” said Mom. “Tomatoes or no tomatoes? And how’s it going with your writing?”
“No tomatoes,” I said. “It’s more of a creamy cheese sauce.” Then I told her about my article getting published and how well I was doing on the critic assignment and finally eased her off the call to return to my cooking. Of all things, she understood the demands of a new recipe.
When it came to food, all roads led back to my mom, of course. I suspected my mother was secretly relieved to turn up pregnant her senior year in college—like her idol Hayley Mills, she showed a lot of career promise but flamed out early. My unexpected conception gave her a good excuse for settling down in suburbia rather than opting to attend law school or medical school as she’d told my father she planned. Instead of figuring out what she wanted to do with her life, she became a housewife and sank most of her talents and energy into raising me and cooking. She was the queen of local ingredients and fusion cuisine long before those trends ever got popular. She’d spend all day in the kitchen and then wait breathlessly for my dad and me to come to the table and make our pronouncements.
“The tarragon tries too hard,” my father might say.
“Can we have hot dogs tomorrow?” That would be me.
In the end, the tarragon business wasn’t a bad metaphor for the dynamic of my parents’ marriage, before it went belly-up. My mother was the tarragon in the relationship and Dad was the snooty critic.
Once I got past the hot dog phase, I learned to love food. My dream was to go to the culinary institute in Paris, become a famous chef, and then write cookbooks. But my dad was writing the tuition checks: I was to attend college for an educat
ion, not a trade. And so I earned my degree in food science, the closest undergrad major to cooking I could find. With the unemployment rate at an all-time high after graduation, I took a job clerking in a local bookstore and wrote food feature proposals for the local paper, none of them published. Twenty-five years old and still drifting, as my father pointed out often.
Then, almost four months ago, I met Chad Lutz. After a whirlwind weekend of dating and another couple weeks of highly charged text messages and phone calls, I followed him to Key West, where he had a partnership in a small law firm—and I’ve been floundering like my mother ever since.
To be honest, I didn’t think most people looked any further than what they thought they wanted from a relationship when they fell for a new lover. Shouldn’t the Hayley Mills obsession have tipped my dad off? A grown woman who connected most strongly with a ditzy Disney actress from the sixties was going to be a little “different.” As far as Chad and I went, there were lots of warning signals, if I’d only chosen to see them.
Connie clattered in the front door, with Ray bounding right behind her like a well-trained whippet. She was small and sturdy with the shortest haircut I’d ever seen on a girl, while he was tall and gangly and wore his hair in a ponytail. The long and the short of it. She heard that all the time. We’d bonded instantly in our freshman year at Rutgers, but then her mother died and she’d dropped out to move to Key West and start a business.
“Smells divine in here.”
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I said. “Wait until you hear about my day.”
I loaded three plates with cheesy grits and layered the shrimp, sausage, and vegetables on top. We poured glasses of white wine and carried our plates upstairs to the deck, which had an amazing view just off Connie’s bedroom. More anxious than hungry, I took a minute to sip my wine and breathe in the cool fall air. The full-timers in Key West waited for this weather all year long.
An Appetite for Murder Page 4
