Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (23 page)

“There was no computer in the luggage,” Reba was telling the Asian woman.

“Yoshe brought it here with her,” the woman insisted. “That’s why I flew down instead of having you ship the stuff. She told me she was planning to work in her downtime. It was a MacBook Air, practically brand-new. She kept it in a soft-sided Burberry case.”

Reba shook her head. “I’m terribly sorry about the circumstances, but I don’t remember seeing anything like that. You understand that we can’t be responsible for missing items. As I explained, I locked her purse in our house safe. If the computer had been with her things, I would have put it there for safekeeping.”

“Yoo-hoo,” I called from behind the desk, thinking this conflict could work to my advantage.

Reba looked up but frowned when she recognized me. “Did your mother turn up?”

“Not yet,” I said. “She didn’t stop by here again, did she?”

Reba shook her head.

“Since I was in your neighborhood, I came to talk to Ms. King’s niece. As we discussed.” Which we hadn’t, but what could she say with me right there?

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I added to the young woman, barging around the counter with my hand outstretched. “My mother is the biggest fan you can imagine. And I adored your aunt’s recipes too—practically grew up on Yoshe King’s vegetable lo mein and her
crispy fried chicken. We spent some wonderful time with her this weekend. I’m Hayley Snow.”

“Mary Chen,” she said with a faint smile, placing a limp hand in mine.

Two women in flip-flops and bathing suit cover-ups rang the bell out in the lobby. Throwing a warning glare at me, Reba left the office to help them.

Up closer I could see that Yoshe’s niece’s eyes looked sunken and dull in spite of the thick band of eyeliner and multiple coats of mascara she’d applied. Food and caffeine, I thought, of course. I was desperate for both, but maybe she was too. And maybe while I plied her with calories and coffee, I could get her to talk about whether Yoshe was depressed. Or angry. Or frightened. Anything that might help explain her terrible death. And possibly my mother’s disappearance.

“You must be drooping after that trip. There’s nothing worth eating in the Miami Airport—that’s for sure. Want to grab a bite to eat before you tackle this?” I waved at Yoshe’s luggage. “The Banana Café is like two blocks from here and they make the best breakfasts and coffee.”

She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I’m catching the plane back to Miami at five.”

I glanced at my watch—almost one. “We’ve got plenty of time for brunch. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think well if I’m hungry.”

She stared at me for a few moments, finally heaving a grateful sigh and nodding. I grabbed her elbow and steered her past the desk. “Back in a jiffy,” I said to Reba.

The hostess led us to a table on the rooftop—just high enough to feel removed from the noise and grit but still enjoy watching the buzz of activity on the sidewalk below. A large green umbrella shielded us from the midday sun. Shortly after being seated, we ordered—an omelet with fried potatoes and caramelized onions and cheddar cheese for me and La Formidable crepe for Mary: sausage, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cheese. A mimosa for her and a coffee for me.

“This beats January in the Northeast, right?” I said after the menus had been whisked away and Mary’s drink delivered. “I moved down here from New Jersey early last fall. Never looked back.”

“Fifteen degrees and incredibly windy when we took off,” Mary said, sipping the mimosa. “Not that I’m planning to stay long enough to get used to it. There’s no point. And now this place gives me the creeps.”

“I really am so sorry about your aunt.”

“And how did you know her?” Mary asked, her face tipped toward the sun like a delicate bird’s.

“My mom and I took her to lunch on Friday with one of the other writers.”

“So you don’t really know her,” she said, furrowing her forehead and clutching her purse as though she might walk out. “Why are you so interested in speaking with me?”

I suspected that only the awful truth would keep her talking. “We found her body,” I said. “My mom and I. Honestly, we won’t feel right until we know what really happened.”

Mary grasped her stomach and winced, her
face puckered in pain like she’d been socked in the gut. Then she straightened, pursing her lips and tapping a glossy fingernail on the wooden table. A large tear rolled down her cheek, dropped off her chin, and sparkled on the hair of the faux-fur vest. “I can’t believe she killed herself like that.”

I leaned across the table to take her hand. “See, I’m not so sure she did.” I explained that my mother and I had been making some inquiries about conflicts among the panelists, and were wondering if someone might have pushed her off that balcony to the rocks below, though of course I didn’t put it that way.

“Was she worried about anything as far as you knew?”

Yoshe’s niece shook her head mournfully as our meals were delivered. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Obviously, a food writer doesn’t always generate what you’d call reliable and lucrative income. Last year I would have said she was down—it had been several years since she had something new published. But then she had that fabulous idea about recipes from the ancestors and scored the contract for the new cookbook. I hadn’t seen her this happy in a long, long time. Even though she had to work at warp speed to make the deadline. And she was so pleased to be invited to this conference.” She tucked a napkin into her black sweater and finally shrugged off the sheepskin.

Thank goodness, I was burning up just looking at her. She swallowed the rest of her mimosa and signaled for another.

“How did she seem to you? Emotionally,
I mean,” she asked, buttering a piece of whole wheat toast and then discarding it on the plate next to her crepe. Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears again and she fought to hold them back. Like she needed some good news.

“Spunky. Feisty. I would never have said she was depressed, though I know people can hide things. On Friday, she seemed upbeat, in spite of the dreadful start to the weekend with Jonah’s murder.” I told her about his opening lecture and described how the other panelists had been placed on the stage behind him like theater props. “I think all of the panelists were a little worried about his honesty manifesto. Maybe worried that they were in his bull’s-eye. And I’m certain some of them were.”

I took a small bite of my omelet, savoring the creamy browned onions in melted cheese and sighing with satisfaction. Food did amazing things for me even if the circumstances were completely dire. Mary had cut her crepe into tiny pieces, but so far I hadn’t seen her eat a single bite. Nor was she telling me much. So I kept talking.

“Even I—and trust me, I must be the lowest writer on the totem pole at this conference—was dragged through the mud a little.” I described the fangirl e-mails I’d sent to Jonah, hoping he’d have the time to chat with me about my career sometime over the weekend. Or at least, that I could score an insider interview that would help me write a great piece.

“Instead of helping me out, he told the organizer that I was stalking him.” I laughed lightly, though I
could still feel the searing embarrassment that followed Dustin’s accusation.

“I’m sure it was the same guy. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone?” Mary sniffled, and dabbed at the corner of her eye with a napkin.

My ears perked up. I handed over one of the spare tissues that Officer Torrence had pressed on me. “What guy?”

“She told me about an e-mail she received last week from one of the other writers. She was so upset. Probably the same person who was nasty to everyone, including you, right?”

I nodded quickly. “So Jonah Barrows was badgering her?”

“She never told me the name. But she did get an e-mail earlier this week warning that he was going to raise some issue about her background during the weekend. She called me on Monday, absolutely distraught. I told her not to pay one bit of attention to him—he was trying to steal the limelight from the real stars. I told her to ignore any question she didn’t like.”

“Her background?” I repeated. “What kind of issues?”

Mary hesitated, cupped her fingers over her eyes as if she was thinking hard. Then she drained her drink and leaned across the table, her words slurring a little. “Are we speaking in confidence? Her reputation has been damaged enough already.”

“Of course,” I said, pushing my nearly empty plate aside. “Go ahead.”

“What did it matter whether Yoshe’s grandmother really came from the Fujian Province?”

I sat back against the bench. “That’s where the tea she liked so much is grown, I remember. But her family didn’t live there?”

Mary shook her head. “Six generations in San Francisco. Yoshe did a lot of traveling in China, mind you. She talked to a thousand grandmothers in provinces all over the country, including the Fujian. They just didn’t happen to be her close relatives, that’s all.”

“But wouldn’t Yoshe think this would be found out?” I asked, madly wondering whether I could use what she told me in my article in some oblique way—to support the information I’d already stolen. And concluding in the end, of course I could not.

“I think she did worry,” said Mary, “though she never admitted it directly. Her other cookbooks weren’t as personal as this one was going to be. Nor were the print runs this large. And I think she underestimated how easy it is to research things in this day and age—how easily people could check her bio. But she couldn’t afford to backtrack.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance have a copy of the e-mail Jonah sent?”

“She read it to me, but I never saw it.” She nibbled on a bite of sausage but then pushed the plate away, the food barely touched. No wonder she looked half my size.

“How would Jonah have known about the deception?”

“Anyone who has lunch with her former agent hears all the dirt,” said Mary, dabbing her lips with the tissue. Then she extracted a lipstick from her bag and rolled on
a shiny pink gloss that matched her nails. “She fired that loser last summer because she was doing a lousy job retaining e-rights and selling apps. The agent took it very personally—acted as though Yoshe’s decision was a complete surprise even though Yoshe had to practically sell the new book herself.”

“How would Jonah know about any of this?”

Mary shrugged, rattled the ice in her glass. “Yoshe suspected the agent got hold of the revision letter and passed it along. Just for spite.”

“The revision letter?” I asked, feigning ignorance while feeling my cheeks turn pink. I didn’t dare glance at my backpack, where I imagined the purloined letter might be flashing like a cop’s blue light.

“Anytime an author turns a project in, the editor sends it back with suggested revisions. Yoshe and I were going to meet when she got home to figure out how she could tweak the manuscript and address the editor’s concerns.”

“But wouldn’t the agent have known about Yoshe’s background if she was the one who’d sold the project to the publisher?” I asked. “In that case, she’d be in as much hot water as your aunt.”

“She would simply claim that she was hoodwinked.” Mary forked up a piece of fried potato and nibbled at the crispy skin.

I stayed quiet, hoping she’d say more.

“Among other things, the fact-checkers maintained that the new recipes weren’t from our family. No one in our family cooked much except for Yoshe.”

“And this would have mattered a great deal to her
bottom line, right? Sales of her former cookbooks, and especially sales of the new one. Wasn’t the advertising for the new cookbook going to be focused on her history?” I remembered how she’d gone on and on about the place of history and authenticity in food in the panel discussion Friday morning.

“I suppose. One of the things we talked about doing when she got home was rewriting the preface. She was seriously considering coming clean about her own family and describing her recipes as emerging from archetypal Chinese grandparents. If the food tastes great—and it will—it really shouldn’t matter.”

Mary tapped her forehead, and tears filled her eyes. “When my mom died a few years ago, Auntie Yoshe came through for me in a huge way. So you see, I don’t care about all this—I care that someone made her unhappy. And that she’s gone.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again, but it sounded flat empty. “Could I ask one more question?”

She shrugged. “Why not?”

“Did she mention anything about a project she might invest in—a franchise involving a Key West–style fast food restaurant?”

“That rings a faint bell,” said Mary. “Though she didn’t really have a lot of cash on hand. We were both hoping the new cookbook would change that.” She clucked her tongue and pulled her fur vest back on. “It’s all such a damn waste.”

I nodded and called for the check. After paying the bill, I added the credit card stub to the pile growing in my wallet—no way I’d be able to write this meal off.
Unless I could whip up a review for the Banana Café for
Key Zest
’s next issue.

Then we headed back down the stairs and a block over on Duval Street so Mary could pick up her aunt’s luggage and catch her plane. By the time I returned her to the bed-and-breakfast, she looked slightly more cheerful than when I’d first seen her—probably the anesthetizing effects of two large mimosas and not much food. She didn’t yet seem to have connected the dots: that the story she’d revealed over lunch showed that Yoshe had plenty of motive to murder Jonah. And take her own life after that.