Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (28 page)

“Sorry I worried all of you.” Eric took off his glasses and laid them on the table, slumped a little, then rubbed his face with both hands. He sat up blinking.

“From way back, Jonah loved to think about himself
as a rule-breaker,” he said. “Not to say he didn’t start out playing by the rules—you don’t land a job reviewing restaurants for the
Guide Bouchée
if you’re not willing to do it their way. Or get a job as a line cook in a well-known restaurant. But once he learned their ropes, he wanted to break out and he was willing to take the risk of leaving a good job to do so.”

He slid his glasses back on. “I wasn’t his therapist, of course, but I think most of what he did was driven by his rage at not being accepted by his family. They would rather have pretended he didn’t exist than acknowledge he was gay. But with the publication of his memoir, pretending was no longer an option. In fact, Jonah discovered last week that they had filed a lawsuit for libel against him and his publisher.”

I cleared my throat. “But, Eric, something happened between you and Jonah. Your fingerprints were on that bird. And I don’t believe you left the party Thursday night because you had a migraine. You’ve never had a migraine in your life.” Then I confessed how I’d seen him on the Duval Street webcam, looking worried and guilty.

“Did you know there’s a time delay on that camera?” Ray interrupted. “It doesn’t show the street in real time. Did you look at who came by after Eric?”

Of course, I hadn’t. I went to get my laptop, set it up so the table could see the screen, and replayed the scene I’d studied a dozen times already.

“You see what I mean?” I asked as Eric’s figure hurried by in jerky slow motion. Eric nodded, wincing. Several minutes after that, Olivia Nethercut appeared
on camera, walking briskly away from the scene of the crime. Determined and angry.

I groaned. “If I’d seen this and managed to convince the cops that it meant something, Cory and I could have skipped the whole elevator nightmare. And saved you,” I told my mother, “a couple of hours locked in that closet.”

“Probably did me some good,” she said, blowing a kiss across the table. “Banished a nasty little lingering phobia.” Then she turned her attention back to Eric. “So, what really happened that night?”

Eric sighed and squeezed his mother’s hand. “Jonah e-mailed me last week and said he was done with secrets. Even old ones.”

He told us that back in their New York City graduate school days, they’d fallen in love. Or not really, but who believes it’s not real when all the hormones are raging? Jonah had pushed him to be truthful about everything, including his sexuality. “The more Jonah’s parents resisted facing who he truly was, the louder he got. And the harder he pushed the people around him.

“Unfortunately, I got caught up in his fervor. My mother can tell you how bad things were.”

She nodded sadly. “Not a high point in our relationship.”

“But worst of all, I made a terrible novice therapist mistake. I persuaded one of my patients to tell his parents he was gay. As a budding psychologist, I should have realized it wasn’t my job to persuade any patient to do anything—just help him understand himself and come to his own conclusions. This young man’s
parents reacted horribly to his news. They not only refused to believe it, but they refused to let him come home if he insisted on talking about it any further.”

Eric took off his glasses again and polished the lenses on a napkin. Then he looked around the table. “He didn’t show up for our next session. I found out later that he’d killed himself—jumped to his death from his dorm room. I’ve never forgiven myself for that.”

“Oh, honey,” said Eric’s mother, squeezing his arm. “You always did take things so hard.” My mother refilled the wineglasses, tousling Eric’s hair as she passed behind him.

“But how is that related to this weekend?” I asked. “Why did Jonah still care?”

“Jonah wanted me to talk about that incident now—publicly. He wanted me to testify against his parents in their lawsuit and demonstrate to the world how damaging secrets and lies could be. But that would have necessitated dredging up the story about my former patient.”

“The old clipping you found in Eric’s belongings,” I said to his mom. “But it didn’t mention a suicide.”

“No,” said Eric, fitting his glasses back on. “The papers referred to it as ‘an unexplained death.’ I couldn’t bear the thought of making the suicide public. Bringing up all that old pain for this young man’s parents. So I spoke with Jonah at the party that first night and begged him to let that story die. But he absolutely refused.”

Eric’s face reddened and he pulled his hand away
from his mother. “I was furious. I gave him a little shove. He stumbled, hit his head on the metal bird in the pool, and actually broke the thing off. There he lay, soaking wet, water lilies stuck to his head, and algae running down his cheeks—and still sputtering about how he insisted I tell the truth. I picked up the damn broken bird, picturing how satisfying it would feel to hit him. Hard. He was an impossible, obstinate man.”

He whistled air through his clenched teeth. “Obviously I didn’t hit him. But I didn’t help him out of the pool either. I dropped the bird and left him floundering.” He smoothed a wisp of hair off his forehead and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “At first, I thought I had killed him by not going for help—I’d let him drown. I thought I deserved to be in jail.” He looked at his mother, and then at Bill. “And I couldn’t talk about it without dragging that family through the muck again. And then all of you kept raising possibilities of other folks who might have killed him. So I kept quiet, hoping that the real killer would be exposed before I had to go to jail. I’m very sorry for all the worry I put you through.”

“So, what really happened to Jonah?” Miss Gloria asked.

“Our lawyer said Olivia came along after Eric left,” Bill said. “And Jonah called out to her to help him get out of the pool. She refused. She’d also gotten an e-mail, saying that he was going forward with her franchise idea, but taking Yoshe as his partner. He could no longer trust Olivia because of the financial irregularities he’d discovered in her charitable foundation. And he
planned to address them publicly. She was furious about being cut out of the franchise when she felt it was her idea. And furious about his threats. They had a nasty exchange and she grabbed the broken bird and clocked him.”

“Didn’t she say she only threw it at him?” Eric asked.

“Whether she actually swung the bird or threw it, either way Jonah collapsed back into the pool and she ran to the women’s bathroom,” Bill said, nodding at me. “Which is when you saw her.”

“No wonder she was too upset to be gracious,” I said, feeling stupid. “She was an obvious suspect, but I idolized her so much I didn’t see it.”

“It wasn’t your job to figure this out,” Eric said.

“Yeah, but we were concerned about
you
,” I said.

He nodded. “I appreciate that. I do.”

“Then Olivia got worried about whether Jonah was really hurt and she would be in serious trouble for letting him drown,” Bill said. “So she returned to the pool after Hayley had dragged him out and run for help. But Olivia could see it was too late to save him, so she grabbed the bird with the sleeve of her sweater and dropped it over the fence. She hadn’t thought one bit of this through—she obviously couldn’t carry the thing out of the party without drawing attention to herself. And who knows? Maybe she intended to come back for it later. The bird had Eric’s prints on it, along with those of the old man who found it, as the cops discovered.”

“But why did all this come up now?” I asked again.
“Why was it so important for Jonah to expose everyone else’s secrets?”

“I think it had to do with the memoir,” Eric said. “As I mentioned, his father is suing the publisher for libel, saying that Jonah lied about everything, starting with his childhood and right on up to the present. Jonah’s reaction was the flailing we saw—digging out everyone’s secrets. And some of them should have been exposed—the way Olivia was siphoning off money from the foundation, for example. He became more obsessed with honesty. And at first it might feel good to confess, but that can have terrible consequences for the people who have to hear the so-called honest truth.”

The timer chirped from the kitchen. My mother popped up from her chair. “Enough of that for now. Let’s eat supper.”

Connie and I helped her mash the potatoes and then bring out the platters of meat loaf and the buttery potatoes and a bowl of roasted carrots. When all the plates were filled, our talk turned to Yoshe.

“I’m guessing she figured out what Jonah had planned to reveal about Olivia. After Jonah died, she told Olivia she couldn’t in good conscience keep silent. Olivia went over to talk with her Saturday morning with lethal results,” Mom said sadly.

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “I bet it was Olivia who had lunch with Yoshe’s old agent and then threatened to tell the publisher about Yoshe’s exaggerations—not Jonah. Why would he, if he was going into business with her? But by then, Yoshe had already decided to tell the truth—about herself and about Olivia.”

“Which would have made Olivia crazy mad,” said Eric. “Crazy enough to throw her over the balcony.”

We sat in sorrowful silence for a few minutes.

“Yoshe made some mistakes too,” said Mom, “but I admired so much about her.”

As we finished eating dinner, the scent of warming chocolate wafted out onto the deck.

“I smell something amazing,” said Eric.

“I made another one of those fudge pies,” said my mother, grinning. “Since you guys weren’t able to really enjoy the last one.” Then her mouth made a little O of surprise. “Detective Bransford! You snuck up on us. Come down and join the party.”

I swiveled my head around and saw him waiting on the dock. My heart began to beat faster.

“We’ll set another place—there’s plenty of food left,” said Mom. She pushed her chair away from the table and started to get up.

“I only have a minute,” said the detective. “I’m on duty. But I was hoping to talk to Hayley.”

Mom gave me a little nudge. I glared at her but got up anyway and followed him down the finger almost to the parking lot, where his cruiser waited, motor running, door open.

“Must not be a lot of crime around here,” I cracked.

“I came by to make sure you’re okay,” he said, ignoring my lame joke.

“We’re fine,” I said, tipping my chin up. “Though it would be nice if you didn’t give me the mushroom treatment every time there’s a bump in the road.”

“The mushroom treatment?” he asked, unable to suppress a grin.

“Keeping me in the dark,” I said without smiling back.

He scratched his head and grimaced. “Civilians have no business following criminals. It’s too dangerous.” He sighed. “You got a little taste of that yourself today with your mother.”

Time to lay it all out on the table, now or never. “I know you had an incident with your ex-wife and I’m sorry about that. But I can take care of myself.”

“Figures you’d have sniffed that out.” He cleared his throat and frowned. “I didn’t handle that incident well. She could have been killed. I was scared and the more scared I got, the more out of control I felt. So I paid an off-duty patrolman to follow her whenever she went out alone—and I tried my best to keep her in the house. That didn’t go over too well,” he said, slumping against his cruiser. “She asked for a divorce. Said she felt smothered.”

“Mmmm, tough,” I said. “I can see both sides.”

“Maybe you don’t see that I’m starting to feel that way again. About you. I can’t stand the idea of you getting hurt. Olivia Nethercut noticed.”

“Oh,” I said, completely speechless for a minute. I looked at my watch. “I guess your date with Olivia was canceled? She was really looking forward to that. She kept telling me that you were coming on to her.”

“There was no date,” Bransford said. “That’s baloney. Maybe she thought if she made it look like I was
interested in her, it would keep you from reaching out to me.” Then he reached out, took both of my hands, and pulled me in close to him, close enough so I could hear his heart thumping and feel the heat of his skin. And we kissed.

“Played like a chump,” I said with a sigh, pushing him away before my knees got so weak, I buckled to the pavement. In front of a gaggle of my relatives and friends, who were certain to be watching. “It worked.”

“So, how about dinner at Michael’s next week?” he asked, grinning again so all his dimples showed. “No offense intended, but could we make it just the two of us?”

I considered not wearing the yellow shirt with the palm trees on it for the meeting with Wally and Ava Faulkner—it made me feel like a lightweight. Instead I tried on a pencil skirt with the starched white shirt my mother had insisted on giving me, along with a pair of low black heels. Ava would certainly be decked out in a stylish business suit, and at least this outfit would be in the same ballpark. But at the last minute, I changed back into my sneakers and the yellow shirt. These were my team’s colors. And more than anything, I wanted to avoid being cut.

I left for work fifteen minutes early, but by the time I arrived in the office, I could see Ava’s silhouette through Wally’s miniblinds, ensconced in the
chair closest to him. Danielle flashed me a worried thumbs-up as I hurried past her desk and settled into a gray metal folding chair that left me sitting a couple of inches lower than Ava. Score one for the visiting enemy.

“Morning, all,” I said cheerfully, refusing to sound as intimidated as I felt.

Wally nodded, but Ava barely grunted as she picked up the sheaf of papers in front of her. On top Wally had placed my restaurant review of Santiago’s Bodega. Ava skimmed it without comment. Next she paged through the piece I’d written in memory of Yoshe King, including quotes from the last public meal she’d enjoyed—the lunch with my mother, Sigrid, and me. And the comments from Mary Chen, Yoshe’s niece. And how there had been a groundswell of preorders for Yoshe’s cookbook and how her publishers agreed that Mary could rewrite the preface and some of Yoshe’s commentary so it reflected the truth about the origins of the recipes.