An Appetite for Murder

by Lucy Burdette

  “Obviously, Miss Gloria can’t help because she’s unconscious in the hospital,” I said. “Some hospital, somewhere.”

  “Which is probably not coincidental,” Connie added, and scribbled two stars next to our neighbor’s name.

  I groaned. I had imagined that my friend had been attacked because she tried to stop someone from boarding our boat—which was bad enough. I hadn’t pictured her being put out of commission because of what she might know about Kristen’s murder.

  Connie typed “Easter Island restaurant proposal” into her computer’s search bar and scrolled through the list—two blog posts weighing in against the proposal, an article in the Citizen about the history of Easter Island, several fixed-price menus for Easter dinner.

  Connie clicked several links and finally reached the second page. “Here’s a YouTube video taken at the hearing about rezoning Easter Island for commercial purposes,” she said, and placed the computer on the coffee table so we all could watch it.

  The video, which appeared to have been captured on the phone of someone in the audience, jumped into action just as the man at the podium called for comments from the public. We could see the heads of the people sitting in front of the photographer and a grainy podium in the distance.

  Eric squinted at the screen. “I think that’s the chairman of the city council running the meeting.”

  A small man with a neat mustache shot up out of his seat, obscuring the screen for a moment. “Let’s face it—the rich people in this town have us by the short hairs. And our city council is more concerned with increasing revenues than any shoddy pretense of maintaining a decent quality of life on this island. The proposed development will cost the citizens of Key West for services such as electricity, water, and fire and police departments. And what will we get in exchange? A restaurant where most of us can’t afford to eat.”

  He looked like he wasn’t planning to cede the floor anytime soon, but the city council chair broke in from the podium to ask for other comments. He pointed to a man on the other side of the room, and the video swooped left.

  “We voted not to change the zoning on this piece of property five years ago,” said the second man. “Why is this issue back on the docket? What is the point of rehashing something that’s already been decided?”

  “Money!” a woman hollered in a muffled voice. The video swung around to the back of the room to focus on her. “The Faulkners have enough to buy the whole town off. Or at least our so-called public servants on the city commission.”

  “Order,” yelled the chair, barely audible above the comments now being shouted from the audience. He banged the podium with a gavel. The video ended abruptly and we played it through a second time.

  “That looks an awful lot like Wally Beile,” I said, leaning closer to the screen and pointing to the back of the head of the man who had asked why the vote was being revisited. “Kristen’s co-owner at Key Zest.”

  “So Wally was against Kristen’s restaurant?” Eric asked.

  I held my hands out. “No idea. Though they sure didn’t agree on everything else. She purged me from the list of food critic applicants and he stuck me right back on it. In fact, I nearly forgot—I made the cut! I’m one of the top two candidates. He wants us to submit a final review tomorrow.”

  “Hayley, that’s wonderful,” said Connie. The guys chimed in with their congratulations.

  “What restaurant are you going to write about?” Ray asked.

  “I have no idea. The idea of choosing turns me to jelly. What if I pick Louie’s Backyard and he’s looking for something really casual like B.O.’s Fish Wagon?”

  “Don’t overthink it,” said Eric. “Just make a decision and go with it. They obviously like what you’re doing, or you wouldn’t have made it this far.”

  Miss Gloria’s black cat pranced into the room and rubbed on Eric’s ankle. “Who’s this?” he asked, reaching down to stroke her.

  “Miss Gloria’s Sparky,” said Connie.

  “Any news about Evinrude?”

  I choked out a no and went outside to call for him yet one more time. The sympathy on their faces would only make me start crying.

  When I returned, Connie was explaining how we’d found the cat on Miss Gloria’s houseboat and taken him in until our neighbor came home. “Back to the list that was on your computer,” she said. “Anything else we should add?” She tapped the legal pad with her pen.

  “Related to the Easter Island restaurant,” I said, “is the business about the chef Kristen lured away and whether his leaving caused Henri’s place to fail. If it did, she must have been really pissed at Kristen. But other than interrogating Henri, I don’t see much that can be done there.”

  Eric got up to leave, kneading my shoulders while I packed a small plastic bag of cookies for him to share with Bill.

  “Why don’t you run home with me?” he asked. “Then you can borrow my car to get around town tomorrow. It’s supposed to be horrible weather and I’m not going out. You know how to drive a stick, right?”

  He overrode my weak objections and we dashed out into the rain. On the way across town, I filled him in on what Deena had told me about Chad’s love life. Which I’d been too embarrassed to mention in front of Connie and Ray.

  “You were right about this one. How dumb could I have been, not to pick up on the fact that he already had a serious girlfriend?”

  He laughed and patted my knee. “We all take our turns being fools for love. Obviously he showed you what he wanted you to see. He’s a champion at compartmentalizing. And he’s a divorce lawyer—he only sees relationships unraveling. That would make it hard to be an optimist when it comes to marriage.”

  “According to Deena, he prides himself on not allowing his clients to negotiate. I don’t think any good divorces come out of that office. If there is such a thing.”

  “Oh, there is,” Eric said. “Some of my patients are way better off having moved on from a bad match.” He turned onto Petronia Street in the Bahama Village section of town and drove past several thriving restaurants and shops, followed by a block of rundown concrete homes. Then he pulled over in front of the pale green conch house he shared with Bill.

  “Thanks for everything,” I said as he got out. “You’re the best friend I could imagine. I’m so lucky you’re here.”

  By the time I arrived back at the marina, the rain was pouring buckets so I gave up searching for Evinrude. No way he’d come out in this kind of weather—dark, wet, and cold—even if he heard me calling. I thumbed through my e-mail one last time and found a new message from my lawyer, Richard Kane.

  Had I had any luck on producing witnesses who could support my alibi?

  Not yet. And I’d also forgotten to ask Ray what was wrong with my lawyer.

  I popped one of my mother’s emergency sleeping pills and went to bed with Sparky tucked into the space between my chin and my chest.

  18

  “Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.”

  —Aristophanes

  When the black cat walked across my chest in the morning, I was groggy enough to think at first he was Evinrude. My heart ached, tallying yesterday’s losses: Miss Gloria, Connie’s plants, my computer, and worst of all, my cat. Through the sheet of steady rain that pattered against my porthole, the sky looked cold and gunmetal gray. I pulled on sweats and thick socks, fed the cat, and started a pot of coffee.

  After a quick breakfast of blueberries and granola from the Sugar Apple Natural Foods store (not quite as good as mine, but who’d had time to cook?), I got dressed to go out. Connie loaned me a voluminous yellow slicker with matching rain pants and I set off on my first mission. My thin maroon-colored rain jacket would be no match for this weather. I planned to hit every houseboat in the marina this side of Palm Avenue, asking three questions. Had they seen my cat? Were they at home the previous Tuesday morning? And had they seen any strangers at our marina yesterday afternoon?

  No one answered my knock at the boat t
wo slips down. The windows were so crammed with trash that the interior was virtually obscured. I’d never seen a live person there—either it had been abandoned or was inhabited by a night crawler.

  Then I tapped on the Renharts’ door. The missus answered, her blond hair pulled back into a limp ponytail. She wore a T-shirt that read: “Don’t bother knockin’ if our boat is rockin’.” There was an image I’d just as soon not get stuck in my mind.

  “Come in out of the rain and have a cup of coffee,” Mrs. Renhart insisted. She poured me a cup of dark roast that tasted so bitter I had to wonder whether the pot had been made yesterday and sat on the warmer overnight.

  “Joshua told me all about Miss Gloria’s mishap,” she said in a whisper. “He’s just gone to bed, or I’m sure he’d want to hear the latest.

  “It’s such a shame about her falling,” she added. “A marina is really no place for the elderly.” She lit up a cigarette and blew out a fog of smoke. “Honey, what in the world were you doing with the police the other day?”

  I sidestepped that question by telling her about our break-in, assuring her that the police felt it was related to the attack on our neighbor. Which wasn’t a sure thing at all, but I wanted to get off the Renharts’ worn-record-groove belief that Miss Gloria had fallen. And I hoped that mentioning the possibility of a stranger in the neighborhood would jog her memory. No luck—she hadn’t gotten off her shift until eleven. I thanked her for the coffee, refused a slice of Publix coffee cake, and moved on.

  After leaving the Renharts, I canvassed the green and white boat that looked like it had been airlifted from a trailer park, the boxy turquoise boat with faux gingerbread trim, and a brown house the size of a small apartment complex with faded siding and a full-sized bike rack. None of the residents had seen a cat or a cat burglar. Mrs. Dubisson, my last hope, began to cry when I told her about Miss Gloria.

  “The police asked all about this yesterday,” she told me. “We moved in around the same time. I’m going to say it was about fifteen years ago. Her son has never liked her living here, but she’s a spunky lady and she told him he could do what he wanted with her once she was an old woman and her mind was gone. Or her body.” She resumed sniffling. I found a clean-looking tissue in the pocket of Connie’s raincoat and handed it to her.

  “Do you remember her son’s name?” I asked.

  “Teddy,” she said, wiping her eyes with my Kleenex. “I promised him that I’d check on her every day and I have. I’d just stopped by to see her yesterday afternoon before all that commotion. She was fine—that’s what I told the police officer. But then I got so upset I couldn’t talk anymore and he had to help me go lie down.”

  All my early-warning systems went to alert. Maybe she’d seen something more that she hadn’t remembered to tell the cops.

  “And did you happen to notice anyone unfamiliar at our end of the finger?”

  She wrinkled her forehead in concentration. “There was a man with a backpack in the parking lot. Looked like one of the homeless guys you see over at the park. But he took off when he spotted me. I don’t think he came as far as Miss Gloria’s boat. But on the other hand, I don’t know if he was coming or going.”

  “What was he wearing?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I was in a hurry. It felt like it was going to rain any minute and Judge Judy was coming on the TV at four. I’m sorry. That’s all I noticed.” She looked like she would cry again. “It was important, wasn’t it?”

  Back home, I collapsed on the wicker love seat in front of Connie’s computer and checked my e-mail. Two messages from Mom, requesting a call sometime today. And the link I’d sent myself last night to the city council meeting on YouTube. I clicked on the link and watched it through a third time, this time noticing the smallest snippet of an interaction at the back of the room, almost offscreen. Between Kristen Faulkner and Henri Stentzel. I couldn’t make out the words over the crackling noises on the video, but neither one of them looked happy. I very much wanted to be able to eliminate Henri from the pool of murder suspects, but Eric’s voice echoed in the back of my mind.

  “What if she did it, Hayley? Are you willing to go to jail for her?” I imagined him asking.

  I dialed the phone number for Seven Fish Restaurant and asked to speak to Henri’s chef friend, Porter. She came on the line, shouting to be heard over the banging of pots and pans in the background.

  “Yes?”

  “Porter, it’s Hayley Snow. We met at Kristen Faulkner’s funeral the other day.”

  “Yeah, Hayley, hi. What can I do for you?”

  “This will sound odd, but it’s important. Were you at the hearing about the Easter Island restaurant a couple of months ago?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Reason I’m asking,” I added quickly before she could hang up, “is I saw a video of the event where Henri Stentzel was arguing with Kristen. Any idea what that was about?”

  “You don’t give up, do you? Listen, Henri didn’t kill Kristen, if that’s what you’re sniffing around at.”

  “I appreciate what a good friend you are,” I said, “but you have to understand that I didn’t kill her either.”

  I heard the whoosh of a cigarette lighter and I could imagine Porter inhaling a blessed hit of nicotine.

  “If you want the facts on what went wrong between them and Henri won’t tell you, talk to Doug. He took over as head chef at her restaurant. He still works there, as far as I know. He was there for the whole mess—I only have second- and third-hand gossip. It’s Saturday. I’m sure he’s working. Hola’s in Miami Beach. Speaking of that, have to go. Every table is booked tonight, including the seats at the bar, and I’m already behind.”

  I thanked her and got off the phone, no further along than when I’d started. My stomach rumbled, and I realized with a start that I hadn’t given any more thought to the food critic piece due in Wally’s office by five p.m.

  So I called my mother, figuring I could allay her fears and suspicions and get some help with a decision in one fell swoop. After the initial dodge and weave, performed with fingers and toes crossed—yes, I was fine, no more problems with the police, et cetera, et cetera—I told her about the request for one last review.

  “It has to be lunch,” I said, “because that’s all the time I have left. Fancy, casual, expensive, cheap—I have no idea what they’re looking for.”

  “Have you checked out the pieces their last critic wrote?” she asked.

  “There was no last critic, remember? It’s a brand-new position in a brand-new magazine.” I groaned. “It’s too much pressure to come up with a dazzling review in less than twelve hours. Six hours and fourteen minutes, to be exact.”

  “Obviously, they loved what you’ve done so far, sweetie. Do you have time to run up and consult with Lorenzo?”

  “I have to go this one alone, Mom,” I said. “Lorenzo’s not on duty until five, and that’s when the piece is due. And it’s raining here—I doubt he’ll show up anyway. Besides, he about scared me to death when I saw him yesterday.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He turned over the Tower card. And told me to watch out for the chaos. But you could see on his face that he was worried.”

  “Oh, I hate getting the Tower,” she said. “When I get that card, I know to keep things simple for a while. No fancy recipes, no specialty shops, no quail eggs in jellied goose liver.” She laughed. “What are you in the mood for eating? There’s no point in trying to force a meal down that doesn’t match your mood.”

  “Comfort food,” I said. “Something fried, not broiled or steamed. A burger. Fries. Fish and chips.” I laughed. “You’re a genius, Mom. I’m going to B.O.’s Fish Wagon as soon as we hang up.”

  19

  “When I asked how he was holding up, he just grinned—a cook likes to cook and he was, pardon the metaphor, on fire.”

  —Julia Reed

  It wasn’t the best day for lunch at B.O.’s, an eating establishm
ent with no real walls and no heat either. The front of the restaurant consisted of a narrow counter with stools that faced the street. The left wall was actually not a wall at all, but a rusted-out, vintage pickup truck with a manikin at the wheel. Above the truck, tropical foliage and strings of lobster buoys filled in the space. Inside, exposed beams were plastered with old license plates, more buoys, and signs to keep visitors entertained while they waited for their food. Concrete floors and listing wooden tables and benches completed the decor.

  Today the rain and humidity brought out a descant of the usual Key West restaurant odors—beer, fried fish, hamburger grease. At least the line at the ordering counter was short—only me. I perused the specials that had been scratched out with Magic Marker on wooden boards propped around the counter, and selected a representative variety: fried grouper with black beans and rice, grilled scallops with fried onions and a side salad, and a burger, medium, all the way. At the last minute, I added an order of conch fritters, which I didn’t care about but my future readers might.

  “Wow,” said the big man behind the counter after he’d scribbled my order on a small pad. “I hope you’re expecting company.”

  When I smiled without comment, he handed me an industrial-sized plastic glass of water and took my cash. I shoved three dollar bills into the glass tip jar and he squeezed a squawking rubber pig to celebrate. Then he clipped my order to a short clothesline over the sandwich counter and the chef set to work.

  I carried my glass of water laced with lime to a table at the back and shrugged off my raincoat. A skinny old cat was curled up on a newspaper on the bench beside me. I pushed away thoughts of Evinrude and slid my phone out of my jeans pocket to look over the notes I’d jotted from a previous visit.

  B.O.’s Fish Wagon, named after owner Buck Owens, is a must-try for visitors yearning for a taste of quintessential Key West. Go on a warm day and don’t look too closely at the dirt floors and rough wooden tables and you’ll find yourself picnicking in comfort-food heaven. B.O.’s calls its burger Mother’s Finest, and I have to agree. Order it grilled medium with the works—and prepare for a four-napkin feast. The grouper, when available—