Murder With Ganache: A Key West Food Critic Mystery

by Burdette, Lucy

  “Is she breathing?” I asked, feeling my own life breath catch in my throat.

  The small knot of teenagers clutched one another and wailed. The girl’s body bobbed loose from the mangroves and started to wash away with the fast-moving current. I splashed after her, caught one clammy hand, and towed her toward land. On the shore, Jai screeched her scooter up onto the sidewalk, plunged into the water, and waded toward us.

  “Let’s get her to land,” I said, and, more for the benefit of the mourning teens than from any hope for the girl: “Let’s get her some help.”

  Jai took one of her arms and I took the other—my body sensing the chill of her flesh, my mind refusing to absorb it—and we guided her in. As we reached the concrete wall, two cruisers screeched to a stop, their lights flashing. An ambulance roared in from the other direction. A police officer burst out of his car and trotted over. With the help of the officer from the second cruiser, the girl’s body was dragged out of the water, onto the sidewalk.

  I watched the EMTs work on her, but they seemed to lack the surge of energy and urgency I’d seen when they recovered Rory from the sailboat. Focusing on small things to keep from getting sick to my stomach, I noticed the scraped skin on the back of Mariah’s calves and two nail tips broken off on her right hand. And I remembered how her green eyes had shone in the picture on the Courthouse Deli bench as she looked up at my brother. How flat they looked now.

  Meanwhile, a young woman in black pants, a black jacket, and a turquoise shirt emerged from an unmarked car and conferred with the two cops who were marking out a wide perimeter around the scene. She had a camera in her hand and a gun at her waist. She approached the girl on the sidewalk, spoke softly with Jai and the EMTs, and then began snapping photos. Another car pulled in behind hers. Detective Bransford got out of the vehicle, his eyes shielded by gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses. He had to have seen me, but he stood several yards away and did not acknowledge my presence.

  Finally Mariah was loaded into the back of an ambulance, which drove off with lights flashing but no siren blaring. I was quite certain she was dead.

  Jai collected the teens into a comforting huddle, rubbing backs, handing out tissues, and murmuring soothing words. “The police will need to speak with each of us,” she said. “So we can find out what happened to Mariah.”

  “Can we go be with her in the hospital?” asked one girl. “She’ll feel so scared if she wakes up alone.”

  Tears stung my eyes. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and whirled around, startled. Detective Bransford.

  Since his face looked almost sympathetic, I asked: “Do we know how this happened?”

  “Not yet. Not until the medical examiner gets a look.”

  “But did you notice the scrapes on her legs? Do you think she drowned, or was she strangled?”

  He scratched his head and adjusted his sunglasses. “The medical examiner will answer that. Doesn’t look like a straight drowning to my eyes.”

  Which was how it looked to me, too. My mind leaped to the worst possible scenarios, because who drowns on a perfectly flat sea in shallow water? Unless maybe she’d been drugged to the gills. Unless the boy she’d run off with had gotten stoned or drunk and attacked her and wrapped her chain belt around her neck. And left her for dead.

  “This is bad news for my stepbrother, isn’t it?”

  He stared at me. “Not such good news for her either,” he said, gesturing at the place where the girl had lain. “If you know anything more than what you’re saying, it’s important that you tell us.”

  13

  As my parents’ marriage wore on and she grew angrier, the eggs were medium boiled, their firm yolks like thick golden velvet, with spots of remaining tenderness just barely discernible.

  —Elissa Altman,

  “Angry Breakfast Eggs”

  Once the female detective had taken my statement and my contact information, she dismissed me for the time being. Jai’s traveling kids, the ones who’d found Mariah, were not so lucky. They were loaded into an unmarked car and transported to the station for further questioning. I buzzed back over to Tarpon Pier and called Lieutenant Torrence from the parking lot to fill him in on the latest, which he’d probably already heard.

  “I feel bad for those kids,” I told him, “finding their friend dead and now scared to death and dragged into the police department.”

  “The detective has to make sure she gets everything she needs from them while the story’s still fresh,” he said. “Once they calm down a little, they may remember more about the situation than they were able to tell her on the spot.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what shape the body was in when they found it. Anything unusual they might have noticed around the mangroves. And so on. You—we know how to find later if we need to. With those kids, you never know.”

  “I guess,” I said, thinking of how Rory had vanished so quickly into the Key West spring break party scene. And he was a “normal” kid with a loving family. Nothing to run from. As far as I knew.

  “At a crime scene,” Torrence added, “you never know whether a witness was more involved than they tell us at the beginning. It’s not uncommon for someone who looks like one of the victims initially to end up having been the attacker.”

  Which stabbed a jolt of fear to my gut. Was he talking about Rory? I thanked him for his help and trotted up the finger to our houseboat.

  Miss Gloria was snoozing on the couch, the cats curled up on either side of her, Evinrude’s motor idling. He blinked in sleepy recognition. I would have loved a nap myself, but I knew better than to think I could fall asleep the way my mind was racing. Instead, I took a long, hot shower, dressed in dry clothes, and set out across the island to the Casa Marina. I took a back way over, up Flagler to South Roosevelt Boulevard and along the beach. Other than the yellow police tape marking off the area, most of the traces of the crime scene that I’d left only forty-five minutes earlier had been cleared away, as if none of it had happened.

  A little farther down the beach, the food trolleys catering to spring breakers had opened for business and I could smell the tantalizing odors of tacos and hot dogs. Though how I could be hungry after what I’d witnessed this morning was beyond me. I pulled into the hotel parking lot, so distracted that I almost ran down the valet. He leaped from the driveway to the sidewalk.

  I parked my scooter and ran over to apologize.

  “No problem, I’ve got quick reflexes.” He grinned and pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. “How are your folks enjoying their visit?”

  “To be honest, there’s been a little more excitement than we bargained for,” I said. “My brother was injured last night and he’s in the hospital.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, frowning. “You mentioned something about him this morning. I wasn’t quite awake.”

  I nodded. “It was darned early. I suppose you heard about the girl who drowned just up the road,” I said, knowing news traveled fast in this town.

  “A little bit,” he said. “That’s so sad.” A look of concern crossed his face. “I hope she didn’t have anything to do with your brother.”

  “I hope not,” I said, feeling tears prick my eyes.

  A deep blue Mercedes pulled into the lot, and he started over to help the driver. “Please let us know if there’s anything we can do,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Thanks.” I turned away and dialed my mother. Sam answered her phone.

  “Your mom’s in the shower,” he said. “Can I give her a message? Is there news about Rory?”

  “Sort of,” I said, and told him about the dead girl washing up in the mangroves.

  “That’s horrible,” he said, his voice full of sympathy. “Where are you now? Does Allison know?”

  I choked up a little, thinking of how awful she’d feel when she got this news. Because however it had happened, the girl’s death would lead to more pressure on Rory. “I’m downstairs. I need to get to the office,
but I thought if you guys were decent …”

  “Come right up,” he said firmly. “Room 412.”

  I hurried into the lobby, which looked just as posh and welcoming as it had yesterday when we’d all gathered for what was supposed to be a joyous, relaxing week. But in that short time, everything around me had gone to hell. Silly as it sounded, I felt like I needed my mother.

  Mom met me at the door to their room, in her bare feet and a white terry bathrobe, her hair wrapped in a towel. She pulled me into a hug, then drew me into the room and closed the door.

  “Oh honey, tell us what happened.”

  So I sank into a plush white upholstered chair across from Sam, who looked like a teddy bear in drawstring flannel pajama bottoms, a faded Princeton sweatshirt, and tousled hair. After describing my visit to Project Lighthouse and then how the call had come in about the girl in the mangroves, I voiced the fear I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself: the possibility that my stepbrother could be accused of her murder, and the even more distressing possibility that he had in fact killed the girl or, almost as bad, gotten into a terrible accident and allowed her to die.

  “I think you’re jumping to the worst conclusions too quickly,” said Sam in a businesslike voice I hadn’t heard from him before. “There could be dozens of explanations for why she ended up where she did. She had an entire life’s history that we know nothing about, and she only met your stepbrother last night. Anyway, her body was discovered on the opposite side of the island from where we found Rory. And he isn’t a bad kid, just young and a little reckless. Am I right?”

  “Yeah.” I wanted so badly to believe his reassurance—he was a lawyer after all. And a smart and sensible man. But my picture of Rory was morphing like a fun house mirror. How much did I really know about him these days? I felt for my throat, suddenly filled with a lump so big it was hard to breathe around it.

  “The chain she was wearing around her waist ended up around her neck,” I said, fingering my phone and wondering whether to show the photo I’d taken. “I remember seeing the little skull on the end of her belt. And Rory had injuries on his hands that looked like they came from a chain. It’s going to be hard to explain that away.”

  Mom’s eyes widened. “She had a chain around her neck?”

  I nodded, kept the phone in my pocket. Saying it out loud was enough.

  My mother unwrapped the towel from her head and blotted her hair dry, worry lines radiating from her lips as she frowned. “Seems more likely that some third party attacked them both, doesn’t it, Sam?”

  Sam cleared his throat and leaned forward. “You have to allow the police to do their jobs—collect the evidence, interview folks, and then come to their own conclusions. You can speculate all day long, but it’ll only make you anxious.” He ran his fingers through his hair and squinted at me. “Did you tell your cop friend about the chain link connection?”

  “I only thought of it as I was riding over.” Which was not true, strictly speaking. But I hadn’t been able—or willing—to put it into words until now.

  He rubbed his chin, hard enough to make the sound of his whiskers audible. “Did you mention to the cops that she was wearing the chain belt in the photo?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They’ll figure it out,” he said, his brow furrowing. “Honestly, I’d keep your suppositions about Rory between us. Chances are, they’ll notice those details and put the rest together. And it won’t help your brother one bit to spotlight your worst fears. I had a case like this one time where my client’s mother blabbed to the cops and ended up getting him convicted.” He shook his head. “She hadn’t meant to harm her son’s case. She’d only meant to help.”

  Which made my heart rate tick higher—had I said too much already?

  I swallowed the saliva pooling under my tongue. “I did already mention the chain and the deli bench photo to Lieutenant Torrence. But he’s my friend.”

  “Remember though, he’s a cop first,” said Sam gently.

  “What can we do to be helpful to poor Allison?” Mom asked.

  “I’m certain Detective Bransford isn’t going to want a few citizen deputies traipsing around the island, looking for clues. Especially citizens who are peripherally related to a suspect,” I said, managing a weak smile. “If that’s what you were thinking.”

  Mom laughed. “I was thinking that at some point, everyone’s going to need to eat. And doesn’t Ray’s show open tonight?”

  I groaned. “Five o’clock at the Gallery on Greene. If you think we should still go. Is it disloyal to attend the opening if Connie’s called off the engagement?”

  “Surely not,” said Mom.

  “Nothing seems sure at this point,” I said.

  “I suggest we make a nice dinner to serve after Ray’s party. If it’s okay with Miss Gloria, we could ask people back to your houseboat. Ray has family coming in today too, doesn’t he? People will need a place to gather. And try to regroup. Someplace that feels warm and homey. That’s where you shine, honey.” She grinned.

  “Won’t that put a lot of pressure on Connie?”

  Mom shrugged and walked briskly across the room to comb her hair out in front of the bureau mirror. “I’ll call her,” she said. “Maybe I can take her for coffee and get to the bottom of this. What do you think about spanakopita? You can serve a dish like that hot or warm or even room temperature and it’s still yummy. And maybe a great big Greek salad.”

  My mouth began to water at the prospect.

  “What about your strawberry cream pie, the one with the chocolate crust?” my mother asked me.

  “Perfect. And pimento cheese with crackers and celery, in case people get there early?”

  Sam rubbed his stomach. “That sounds amazing. You’re making me drool.”

  “I’ll run to Publix and do the shopping,” Mom told me. “I know you have things to take care of.”

  • • •

  I zipped over to the Key Zest office to finish tapping out the piece on breakfast pastries. It wouldn’t hurt to stage a personal appearance, to reassure Wally that I was working hard on my assignments and making significant progress, regardless of the actual facts. I swore on the way over that I would not talk about the problems I was juggling: Act professional, turn one of the pieces in early, and be on my way.

  But I hadn’t counted on my coworkers’ solicitous comments hitting me as soon as I came into the office.

  “That was such a nice party last night! Did it go on forever?” Danielle asked. “You look a little peaked.”

  Wally emerged from his cubicle, pushed his glasses up to the top of his head, and looked closely at me.

  “Hayley, what’s wrong?”

  My lips started to quiver and pretty soon the whole story poured out.

  “Can I take something off your plate?” Wally asked. “Your family should come first.”

  I felt a rush of gratitude. On the one hand, giving up my writing assignments would make for less to worry about this week. On the other, I could picture Ava Faulkner panting for an opportunity to can me. Now was not the time to appear weak or vulnerable.

  “I’ve got the breakfast article practically in the bag,” I said. “But thanks. And I’ve already started to rough out the piece on the Hemingway cats. That one won’t be hard.” Not if I could think of some clever way to frame the darn thing. And fit in another visit that wasn’t interrupted by terrible news. “What else do I have?”

  Danielle ran her finger across the spreadsheet open on her computer screen. “The review of Paseo,” she said.

  “I need to go out to the hospital and check on Rory,” I said. “But I could swing by the restaurant and pick some food up to take to Allison and my father. He said they weren’t hungry—”

  “And he’s related to you by blood?” Wally joked. “I’ll call an order in and you get going. Anything they won’t eat?”

  “Get the salad for Allison, with grilled shrimp or chicken, maybe one of those enormous chicken sandwic
hes for my dad. And a pork roast dinner for me, just so we try a little of everything. Oh, and the roasted corn, better order two of those.”

  I thanked them both and trotted down the hall to stash the Hemingway cat notes on my desk and then wash my face and use the ladies’ room. I blew a kiss at them on the way back out, thinking how incredibly lucky I’d been to land this job, with these people. But Wally reached for my wrist as I went by, and pulled me into a hug. My head against his shoulder, I slowly hugged him back, overwhelmed with the minty scent of his aftershave. My heart began to beat faster and I pulled away before I could do—or even think of doing—something stupid with my boss.

  14

  I understood when I accepted this job that I was to think of myself as a kind of public functionary—a Designated Eater. I endured the caloric overload and the punishments to the body so readers could spend their time and money more sensibly.

  —Todd Kliman,

  “The Food-Critic Father”

  I roared across Simonton Street and took a right on Eaton. The spring break hordes had begun to clog the streets, which meant good news for the merchants. Not so good for us locals, as I had begun to think of myself. For us, more traffic, more lines, more need for reservations, more crap left on the streets; trash dropped wherever they finished drinking or eating, as if there was a giant housemaid who would come around at night after the bars closed and pick up after them. Which in a way, I suppose there was—the street sweepers that circled Old Town every morning. But even this was part of the Key West cycle, a phase you had to roll with if you wanted to make this place home.

  The food at Paseo’s wasn’t quite ready when I arrived, so I sat on the bench outside and made some notes about the “ambiance.” A parade of trucks and scooters rumbled by on Eaton Street, belching and honking at hapless bicyclists who didn’t know enough to use the bike lane one street over. Not exactly a garden spot for eating, but my mouth was watering at the smells of garlic and roasted meat wafting from the grills inside the restaurant. With the take-out food finally in hand, I set off through the traffic up the island toward the hospital. I phoned my father once I had parked and was walking to the entrance.