Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (22 page)

The old man laughed. “Evinrude, that’s a name you don’t hear often.”

“He purrs like a well-oiled engine,” I said. “Always has, since he was a kitten. But anyway, you were saying you forgot to tell me…”

“After breakfast, Boris and I were walking the perimeter of the property and I saw him stop to rub his jowls on something in the bushes. You know how they like the way that feels, the way we like our neck and shoulders rubbed?”

I could picture the big white cat stalking around the yard behind the old man with his walker, stopping to scratch his cheeks on a tree limb or an old paint can or … I hoped it didn’t turn out to be something gross. “Uh-huh. So, what did Boris find?”

“It was a big metal statue of a bird. Only the legs were broken off. Couldn’t figure out how in the heck it got on my property, half-buried in the weeds. But I guess people throw all kinds of trash around in this town. So I picked it up and dragged it back to my porch. And that’s where the police officer found it.”

My heart started to pound. This had to be the egret that had disappeared from the scene of the crime on Thursday night. The bird that went missing and made me look like a fool. “Which police officer was that?”

“The detective with the horse face. Some name like Bran Flakes.”

I burst out laughing. In less than twenty-four hours, Bransford had been demoted from “chiseled” to “horse-faced.” And his name had morphed from some distinguished European heritage to breakfast cereal.

The old man chortled along with me. “He came back around again yesterday to ask what else I might have seen or heard. I guess they figure one old man can’t remember much, but if you go back a second time he might dredge something up. Or make it up, even.” He chuckled again. “Lucky thing Boris found that bird. And like I said, the detective saw it on my porch and his eyes got so big, I thought they might pop right out of his head and roll off into the dirt. So then he asked me if he could take it and I said, why not? It don’t belong to me. And he wrapped it up in his jacket and carried it off. I should have thought of this when you were here, but sometimes my brain just don’t go where it should.”

“Not to worry. Thank you so much for calling,” I
told him. “You and those cats enjoy the sunshine today.”

I hung up and sank back into my chair. Somehow the bird had to be connected to Eric’s arrest. Was this the physical evidence Officer Torrence had mentioned? But what were the chances Bransford would tell me anything about it? Slender. Still, I packed up my belongings and headed out—the chances of my getting any more writing done here were even more slim than that.

I drove superslowly on my way to the police station, looking down all the alleyways off Eaton Street and in the parking lots too, hoping I’d spot Mom or her bike. Of course, she could have gone anywhere—into New Town for grocery shopping at Publix or a quick sandwich—or even buzzed right off the island. But why, when we’d had lunch plans as clear as plastic wrap? And why not call me? None of it made sense. Unless she was in trouble. Or angry. I drove with a piercing sense of dread—and I wasn’t going to feel better until I spotted my mother puttering up on her bright pink scooter and knew Eric was safely back home, the arrest a nightmarish mistake in the past.

I parked in front of the peach-colored police department and picked up the intercom phone that hung outside the front door. A gruff male voice answered, “KWPD.”

“I’m hoping to catch a word with Detective Bransford?” I said, wishing my voice didn’t sound like a lost little girl’s.

“He’s not in.”

“Are you expecting him later? It’s about a missing person.” And clearing my friend of murder, I thought but didn’t say.

“Doubt it,” said the gruff man. “Torrence is covering the desk. I’ll put you through to him.”

I groaned aloud and considered slamming the phone down and running. But before I could make that move, Officer Torrence appeared at the double glass doors, pushed them open, and poked his head out. “Can I help you, Miss Snow?”

Too late to bolt. “My mother’s missing,” I said, and horrified myself—and probably him—as a trickle of tears started down my cheeks. The opening salvo for what felt like many more.

“Come in,” he said, swinging one of the heavy doors open wide and waving me through. “Coffee? It’s been sitting on that burner a couple hours, so I don’t recommend you say yes.” He smiled and I followed behind him down the greenish blue cement-walled hallway to his office. When we were settled, me on a folding chair, him behind his desk, I scanned the framed citations for bravery and excellence in community relations and marksmanship on the wall above his head.

After a minute, he asked, “So, about your mother?”

Now, in spite of my efforts to keep them inside, the trickle of tears turned into a torrent as the stress of the weekend gained purchase. Two deaths too close to me. And two of the people I was closest to in the world, one in jail, and the other maybe in danger. I put my face in my hands and leaned onto his pristine desk blotter and cried. Finally I gathered myself and peeked through
my fingers. Torrence, looking thoroughly alarmed, had nearly overturned his chair while flapping his hand behind him for a box of tissues.

“Let’s start fresh,” he said, grabbing the box and pushing it over to me.

I wiped my face and explained how Mom had failed to meet me as promised. And then, because why would he take me seriously otherwise, I told him that before she disappeared, she’d been asking questions about Yoshe King’s unfortunate death at the bed-and-breakfast near the Southernmost Point.

“I assume you know that we found her body on the rocks,” I said, parrying his disapproval before he could say anything. “I hope my mother didn’t get in over her head with her inquiries. She’s a little bit nosy, in a creative kind of way.” He looked annoyed now, his face darkening and fingers gripping the arms of his chair. “It’s not that we don’t trust you guys to do your job—”

“But?” he asked, leaning back in his chair until it squawked and the buttons on his shirt threatened to pop.

“But it’s gotten personal,” I said. “Our friend Eric Altman is in jail and we’re positive he didn’t kill anyone.” I sniffled away some tears for the second time in ten minutes. “Can you tell me why he was arrested? Just a hint maybe? Does it have something to do with fingerprints on a bird statue?”

His dark eyebrows undulated and he licked his lips as his chair snapped upright. “That would be an excellent reason to arrest someone,” he finally said. “As for your mother, it’s too early to file an official report, but
I can let our patrol officers know to keep an eye out for her.”

He jotted some notes about her appearance (auburn curls and hazel eyes like me, only twenty-plus years older and without my father’s widow’s peak) and what she might be wearing. This I had to guess from what I’d seen in her suitcase, but I assumed she would have dressed up for the luncheon. When he’d gotten all the details along with my phone numbers, he promised he’d let the detective know I’d come by.

“Not necessary,” I assured him. Bransford wouldn’t be calling me back tonight—he’d be drooling over a bloodred rare steak and garlic mashed potatoes in the cozy courtyard at Michael’s. Washed down with a bottle of expensive wine and then Olivia Nethercut for dessert.

I left the PD and drove the short distance to houseboat row. Water glinted in the sunshine, wind chimes tinkled, and the steady hum of someone power-washing their home pulsed in the background. Odd how life could look and sound exactly normal, when the truth couldn’t be more different. I felt acutely alone—meeting with Torrence had done little to dispel that—and eager to see the cheerful face of my elderly housemate.

I parked the scooter near the Laundromat and trotted up the finger to Miss Gloria’s place. “Helloooo!” I called. No answer. I jumped onto the deck and hurried into the houseboat. The living area was pin neat, the pillow and bedclothes I’d left tangled on the couch
folded away, the breakfast dishes upside down in the drainer, papers on the counter tidied into a neat stack.

I put the kettle on for tea and nibbled at the last remnants of strawberry-rhubarb cake, thinking sorrowfully of the lunch we were missing. Then I noticed a note scribbled in Miss Gloria’s old-fashioned script lying on the counter near the fridge, a copper-speckled rock on the corner for ballast.

Up the dock playing cards with Mrs. Dubisson,
the note read.
Bill called. Eric’s mom is coming into town this evening.
Then in parentheses:
Should we offer to put her up? She can share my double bed. I’ll let you call and suggest it.

Four women in this tiny space, all sharing a bathroom no bigger than a closet? “Absolutely not!” I yelped aloud, and then jotted on the paper:
I’m sure Bill will want her to stay with him or maybe get her a hotel room up near their home. We’ll have them over for drinks or dinner, okay?

I poured hot water over the green tea bag in my mug, and sorted through the stack of yesterday’s mail. Most of it was addressed to Miss Gloria, including a few bills, catalogs, and a postcard from Cory Held at Preferred Properties.

Who says real estate doesn’t move over the holidays? We sold four homes last month!
was splashed across the top of the card. Underneath were snapshots of two condominiums and two wooden conch houses, all staged to look adorable and tropical with red SOLD banners slapped across the photos. Someday. I restacked the mail, added honey to my tea, and dug the letter I’d lifted from Yoshe’s belongings out of my backpack.

Settling into a wicker chair out on the deck, I sipped my tea and read the letter again, slowly. I’d never seen actual correspondence between a writer and her publisher, but this seemed unusually harsh. The editor had taken issue with Yoshe’s food and her writing, but even more interesting (and probably devastating to Yoshe) were the questions about the authenticity of her recipes. I wondered if the call Yoshe had taken at breakfast had been from the publisher. But why call the bed-and-breakfast’s house phone instead of her cell? How would they even have that number?

I wished I knew more. My gaze swept over the letter again, pausing on the letterhead. Certainly this person would not talk to me. Unless I called and impersonated Yoshe’s next of kin? But I didn’t even know her name.

Then I remembered that Yoshe’s niece was expected at the bed-and-breakfast—maybe she had arrived. And maybe she’d have some insights about her aunt’s state of mind before the tumble from her balcony. Should I phone ahead? I hated the idea that she’d refuse to speak to me or that the manager would think I meant to stir up more trouble about the death in her establishment and tell me not to come. Better to take my chances in person.

Back inside the boat, I smoothed out the editorial letter, tucked it into a clean envelope, and put it in my pack. Not that I intended to hand it over, because how in the world would I explain where it came from? As I searched through my room for an official business card to offer Yoshe’s niece (because even I realized that a deposit slip with my name and cell number scratched on
it looked sloppy and unofficial), my phone rang. My stepmother Allison’s name came up.

“Hey, how are you?” I asked, ready to dance around why it had been too long since I called. Allison and my father have been married over ten years, but she and I had kept each other at arm’s length until last fall when she used her chemistry expertise to help me solve Kristen Faulkner’s murder. That definitely warmed things up between us.

We chatted about her job and mine, and the veterinarian’s annual checkup report on her dog, a dachshund named Alphonse. Not that he and I were close—he bared his pointy white teeth and growled every time he saw me—which probably stemmed back to the time Evinrude had pinned him on his home turf. He’d never gotten over the humiliation of getting whipped by a cat, and in his linear dog thinking, he seemed to place the blame on me.

But despite our small talk, Allison sensed something was up with me. “You don’t sound like your usual chipper self, Hayley,” she said, sounding just like my mother. Which honestly, under the present circumstances, felt like a relief.

So I told her about Mom’s visit, my impending job review, the two murders, Eric’s arrest, and finally admitted that Mom was missing.

“What an awful weekend,” she said. “I’m sure the police will find your mother. Or she’ll show up with a dead cell phone.”

“I know. I keep telling myself the same thing.”

“How can I help? Do you want us to come down?”

“Not yet,” I said, feeling a rush of gratitude, tinged with a little shiver of horror. Three parents on the scene would be two too many parents to manage. Even if one of them was MIA. “I’ll let you know if I need you.” But then it occurred to me that she might be able to help figure out what was going on with Eric.

“I do have a favor. Any chance you could run over to Eric Altman’s house in Mom’s neighborhood? Mrs. Altman is coming to Key West later on today and apparently she’s quite hysterical. Maybe you could help her sort through Eric’s boxes and see if she has any old yearbooks or letters or diaries from the years Eric spent at graduate school in New York? I’m looking for any clue about his relationship with a guy named Jonah Barrows.”

It sounded stupid and hopeless even as I asked her—whoever heard of a graduate program with a yearbook? Did I think Jonah would have inscribed a secret message to Eric on his photo like we did back in high school? But I was feeling desperate.

“I’ll call ahead and tell her you’re coming.”

After ten minutes trying to calm the frantic Mrs. Altman, I ran out to my scooter and puttered back over to the bed-and-breakfast, keeping an eye out for my mother all along the way. Tourists were everywhere, enjoying the temperatures in the seventies and the blue, blue water and cups of Cuban coffee and relief from their frozen realities back home. I squeezed my hands into fists, pumping myself up to fib as needed, and marched into the lobby.

Reba, the manager, was tucked into the back room with a slender Asian woman wearing stylish New York clothes—a short, belted dress and black leggings, boots so tall they extended above her knees, a fluffy sheepskin vest that looked hot as Hades, the shiniest black hair I’d ever seen. And me in red high-tops and tight jeans—face it: everything was a little snug
these days, considering the way I’d been eating. How could I make a connection so she’d answer my intrusive questions?