Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (25 page)

I exited through the garden of the bed-and-breakfast and walked quickly through the motel entrance and out back to the pool that overlooked the ocean. The area around the pool was blanketed with chaise longues—and dozens of people reading, sleeping, and soaking up the sunshine. I hardly knew where to start—it could take days to canvass all of them. But then I saw a girl in a purple bikini and a straw hat head for the outside stairs that led to the third floor overlooking the adjoining property. A room there would have had a view of Yoshe’s balcony. I trotted upstairs and rapped on the door into which she’d disappeared.

The door banged open. “We don’t need our room freshened,” said the girl.

I flashed a big smile. “I’m not from housekeeping. I’m looking for some information about an incident that happened next door. Maybe you heard about the woman who fell from her third-floor balcony yesterday?”

She shook her head, eyes wide. “We did hear the sirens.”

“It’s a long shot, but any chance you might have heard some folks arguing before that?”

“Oh my gosh,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. “I never put it together. We were trying to sleep in, so my friend got up and closed the window. Why would I want to travel all this way to hear arguments about money, when I could stay home with my boyfriend and fight for free?”

“So it was about money?” I asked. “Can you remember any details?”

“They both sounded pissed,” the girl said. “And the one woman was really out of control. But I’m sorry. That’s all I know.”

“So the woman was angrier than the man?”

“No,” she said. “It was two women.”

“Two women fighting? Are you sure?”

“Of that much I’m sure.”

I thanked her and headed back out to the street, my mind churning in confused spirals.

My phone buzzed. While I’d been chatting with the sunbather, Allison had left a message saying she’d helped Eric’s mother sift through the boxes of stuff from his school days. Mostly they’d found high school and college yearbooks, along with a couple of textbooks on abnormal psychology from graduate school.

“But Mrs. Altman did dig out one old letter—it was so painful,” Allison continued. “Eric felt his mother didn’t appreciate how important it was to be open about his sexuality. She’s almost certain, looking back, that he was involved with that Jonah Barrows. He was angry that she didn’t want to tell his grandmother the news. The poor old woman was almost ninety and half dotty anyway. And there was a clipping about a death—a young man who’d fallen from an eighth-floor balcony in the college residence hall. None of that probably helps, but I wanted to let you know that Mrs. Altman is en route—and she’s a basket case. Better have comfort food ready, because she’s going to need it. And call anytime if you need us down there.”

I sighed and tucked the phone into my pocket. I didn’t feel much like cooking—especially with Mom missing. And Eric in jail. If it turned out he had been romantically involved with Jonah, his arrest seemed more ominous. But I’d pretty much talked to all the people I could think of.

So I drove across town to Fausto’s Market and bought enough ground beef for a monster meat loaf, along with a big sack of potatoes and a bag of carrots. I packed the groceries into my scooter’s basket and motored back to the marina.

The houseboat was still empty when I arrived with my loot. I put everything away and then began to pace through the small rooms, out to the end of dock, and back again. Mom’s camera, I finally noticed, was sitting on the tiny driftwood coffee table, connected to her laptop with a cord. I brought the computer screen to life
and began to flip through the hundreds of photos she’d taken this weekend.

I stopped when I came to the opening night party. There were three shots of Eric and Bill on the sidewalk outside the picket fence surrounding the Audubon House. In the third snapshot, taken fifteen minutes later according to the time stamp, Eric had turned to the right and appeared to be talking to a small Asian woman. Yoshe. I flipped backward and then forward. He looked fine in the first two shots—not his most cheerful and photogenic ever, but then Mom was not as skilled a photographer as she was a cook.

But in the third frame, his expression had changed to a look of distress. I studied the photo, trying to figure out what might have happened in the intervening moments. What if Yoshe had sought him out and confessed to the killing? What if she’d told him she was feeling suicidal? Would he be able to come forward with what he’d heard? It would be just like Eric to go to jail protecting someone he barely knew. But how would she ever have found his name?

I tapped my fingers furiously on the coffee table. The computer was up and running. I’d already looked through Mom’s photo stream. As worried as I was feeling, it didn’t seem like that much of a stretch to check her e-mail. I found the Gmail icon in her sidebar, clicked on it, and typed in her password: HayleyMills. A string of messages came up on the screen. I scrolled down until I reached the ones that she had opened earlier today, including one from the new boyfriend, Sam.
About your inquiry,
the subject line read.

My phone vibrated on the coffee table. Incoming call from my mother. I snatched it up and pressed
Accept
. “Mom, where the heck have you been?”

She spoke in a low, raspy voice, almost whispering so I could barely make out the words. “Followed her….tall building … near the harbor.” And then the connection went dead.

I tried calling her number again but got shunted straight to her voice mail. I left a rather screechy message:

“Mom, I’m worried. Call me!”

Strands of panic unspooled as I imagined with more and more certainty that my mother had followed the killer—or someone she thought was the killer—somewhere. I gulped some air to try to calm myself down, searching for something positive to cling to. The only good news I could come up with was Lorenzo’s reading. In Mom’s cards, he had uncovered no devils, no death, no tower, no bad news whatsoever. And his interpretation was one hundred percent upbeat and entirely benign. She had to be okay.

Not so with my reading, in which the tower had appeared front and center—a tumbling free fall with no safety net. My teeth began to chatter, as a
gruesome run of possibilities flashed through my brain like a slide show on steroids.

Think, Hayley.

I was pretty sure she’d said “tall building.” There weren’t many of them in Key West. But it still could take hours to drive around aimlessly, searching their grounds for the dang pink scooter. Silly, fruitless idea, but what else did I have?

Then I thought of Cory Held. She knew the real estate on the island like her backyard. I hurtled the length of the dock, leaped onto my scooter and screeched down Southard Street, and pulled the bike up onto its stand. Then I ran into the real estate office and pounded on Cory’s door, brooding over how to impress on her that my mother was in danger without revealing that my instincts were based on a seven-word phone call and a tarot card reading.

“Come in!” she called, and looked up from her computer as I burst into the office. “You’re working some long hours today.” Then she took a second look. “What’s wrong? You don’t look good.”

My lips quivered, all my reasonable ideas about how to approach her evaporating. “My mother’s missing,” I said. “And I’m almost sure this is related to the two murders this weekend. She called me, but she got cut off.” I described the few words I’d been able to make out. “She’s in danger—I know it.”

“I’ll call the police,” Cory said firmly. “I know the chief quite well. I sold him a home on Frances Street this summer.” She reached for her cell phone and began to thumb through her directory.

“The cops know,” I said. “I was over at the station earlier. I hoped you might be able to help me think about the tall buildings in town. Anything near the water.”

“Near the water?” she said, looking puzzled. Looking like she suspected I’d lost my marbles.

I just nodded, rather than try to explain. “Please.”

She shrugged and sat back in her chair. “The lighthouse would be most obvious. I’m sure you’ve seen it—on Whitehead Street across from Hemingway’s home.”

“But on a Sunday afternoon, that would be open to the public, right?”

Cory nodded.

“So there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide. What else?”

She began to scribble a list on a pad of paper. “Here’s what comes to mind. The Beach Club Condos on Atlantic Boulevard along the ocean—in fact, there are a number of multistory condos and apartments and a couple of hotels on Atlantic. Then La Concha Hotel on Duval Street—I’m sure you know that one, though it’s a little ways inland. And the Steamplant Condominiums down by the ferry docks. Maybe the former Waterfront Market building? That’s right on the harbor—it’s painted with sea life murals. You can’t miss it.”

I felt a sizzle of recognition at the mention of the Waterfront Market—this would be exactly the kind of abandoned building where someone could disappear. “Is it being used for anything now?”

Cory shook her head and frowned. “They’ve had trouble finding a tenant. Though there’s a rumor about
a brewery.” She ripped the paper off the pad and pushed the list across the desk. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call Chief Barnes?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m going to buzz around town just once and see if she turns up.” I waved the paper. “Thanks for this.”

“Call if you need me.” She handed me a business card, which I stuffed into my back pocket as I hurried out of the office. I would start with the former Waterfront Market grocery store, which according to Cory had been empty for several years. Minutes later, I pulled up in front of the hulking concrete building, located in between B.O.’s Fishwagon and the harbor. The fine scent of fried fish and grilled hamburgers and onions drifted over from the restaurant, causing me a sharp pang of hunger. I zipped through the parking lot, looking for Mom’s scooter, but found nothing.

The Waterfront Market had been constructed three stories high of concrete, with no windows other than the double glass doors at the entrance. But the exterior was painted with über-life-sized colorful renderings of undersea scenes—leaping porpoises, lurking sharks, slapping skates, all topped with a colorful sunset just below the flat roof. Despite its cheerful exterior, the building was abandoned and spooky—the perfect place to stash a prisoner.

I parked my bike, dashed up the steps, and peered through the glass doors. Only the ghostly bones of shelving and checkout counters remained from what I’d heard had been the best place on the island to buy organic goods, fish, meat, and produce before the store went
belly-up. I dropped to a crouch, looking for new footprints in the thick coating of dust on the floor, but spotted no signs of recent activity.

Circling around to the rear of the building, I tiptoed along the alley behind the market until I reached the Dumpsters, which still smelled faintly of old fish and rotted garbage. A figure wrapped in a blue plastic tarp was tucked behind the last bin. My pulse began to pound furiously and I could hardly breathe. Should I call the cops right now? I couldn’t stand to wait. My hands clammy with perspiration and my heart leaping in my chest, I edged closer. If this turned out to be my mother’s body, how would I bear it? But I had to know.

Using a dried palm frond so I wouldn’t contaminate the scene, I eased back a flap of the blue plastic, exposing the face of a weathered-looking man with a scruffy beard. He opened one watery gray eye and blinked. “What the hell?”

“So sorry,” I said, dropping the tarp over his face and backpedaling to the parking lot. The abrupt surge and retreat of adrenaline left me weak and damp. I perched on my scooter for a few minutes to catch my breath and regroup.

The next nearest building on Cory’s list would be the luxury Steamplant Condominiums near the ferry docks. I zipped up Caroline Street, seriously tempted to refuel at the Cuban Coffee Queen. But if Mom was in danger, I couldn’t afford to waste precious minutes. As I drew closer to the docks, a huge ferry disgorged a mob of passengers—day-trippers and weekend visitors from Fort Myers. I paused by the gate, searching the
crowd for the familiar face of my mother. No luck. When the crowd had thinned, carried away in taxis and pedicabs, or pulling their wheeled luggage behind them, I crossed the street to the Steamplant Condominiums.

These condos had been developed in a gorgeous old art deco building tucked between the school bus depot and some new fair housing apartments. I’d seen several real estate open houses listed lately in the
Citizen
, touting big price reductions. Sales must be slumping.

Of a dozen parking spaces around the building, only two were occupied, one by a sports car wrapped in a protective tarp like the homeless man I’d disturbed earlier. And the other by a blue truck with rolls of carpet stashed in the bed. But then I spotted a glint of pink metal in the bushes at the far end of the complex. My heart drummed faster and my hands slicked up again as I trotted over to check it out. A pink scooter identical to the one my mother had rented had fallen over into the sea grapes near the back wall.