“Dad, I brought you some lunch. On my way up. How’s Rory?”
“About the same,” he said, his voice gruff with something. Exhaustion? Worry? Gratitude that I had come? Definitely the first two and hopefully the latter. “Nothing’s changed—nothing better, nothing worse. I’ll meet you in the waiting room and you can go in for a minute. Allison will be glad to see you.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. She was probably mired too deep in a pit of grief and fear to care who visited. I carried the fragrant sack up to the third floor where the intensive care unit was located, hoping the scent of Caribbean spices wafting from the bag wouldn’t bother the other worried families.
My father met me in the hall, and offered me a hug more substantial than his usual reserve allowed. He wore the boat shoes and jeans and polo shirt he’d thrown on this morning, and he smelled of body odor and salt air and bad coffee. His face was pale, carpeted with a blond stubble that was—for him—unusual. He hated to be underdressed or poorly groomed—even at home, but especially in public.
“She’s in with him,” he said, tipping his head at the door leading to the patient rooms. “Call the nurses’ station from the phone by the door and they’ll buzz you in.” He took the food from me. “Go on and say hello.” He sniffed at the bag. “This smells good. I didn’t think I was hungry.”
A nurse in pink scrubs let me in and pointed out Rory’s room. I used the Purell dispensed from a stand to clean my hands, then tapped lightly on the door to my stepbrother’s room and took a step inside. Rory looked young and vulnerable in the hospital bed, the sheets drawn up to his chest, the machines by his bedside beeping and hissing. Wires snaked out from under the sheet, leading to the portable heart monitor and then to a computer. He had an IV inserted in his arm and an oxygen tube in his nostrils. The scratches across his cheek bloomed red against his white face.
Allison was seated on the far side of the bed. She tried to smile but mostly failed. “Thanks for coming.”
I waved her thanks away. “Everything going okay?” I mentally pinched myself. Of course it wasn’t going okay. Her son was injured and unconscious—and god only knew how he’d ended up like this. “I mean, how are you holding up?”
Her eyes watered and one tear wandered down her face and dropped from her chin to her forearm. She looked at the damp spot as if she didn’t know what it was or where it had come from. “I can’t believe this is happening. I never should have let him go out by himself last night.”
“It was my fault,” I said. “I had no idea he would meet people that fast. And—”
A knock sounded on the door. Bransford entered, a grim expression on his face, trailed by the nurse swathed in pink. “Ten minutes,” she said to him, shaking a warning finger. “Out of the room. I don’t want him hearing anything stressful. And I’m sorry but you”—she pointed at me—“will need to leave.”
I forced a smile at my stepmother and glared at Bransford, trying to communicate that he needed to go easy on her. Allison sucked in her breath, her eyes glassy, and reached for my hand. “Please can she stay for a moment?”
The nurse made a tsking noise, then nodded. “Five minutes,” she told Bransford.
We shuffled just outside the door so Allison could maintain a sight line with Rory. Bransford leaned against the wall and turned to Allison, who had clasped the fingers of my left hand in a vise grip. He said in a gentle voice: “You’re probably not aware that the girl your son was seen with last night has expired.”
Allison squeaked and clutched my hand harder. Was it my imagination or had the beeping of Rory’s machines increased its tempo?
“We have an obligation to treat the death as a homicide until we find out that it’s something different,” Bransford continued. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Your son may have been involved with this young woman’s death.”
Her expression froze; a little spit bubbled in the corner of her mouth.
“When Rory regains consciousness, we’ll be able to ask him directly what happened, but in the meanwhile …” He shifted from one foot to the other. “Does your son have a history of theft? Violence? Cruelty to animals? Fire-setting?”
The machinery in the room hissed and cheeped and Rory seemed to sigh. Allison shrugged helplessly, let go of my hand, and returned to Rory’s bedside. She leaned over to stroke his downy cheek, which was marred by a few acne scars and the lattice of scratches. We followed her back in.
“I’m not aware of any kind of trouble like that. But …” Her words trailed off and she slumped back into the plastic chair beside his bed.
“But?” Bransford prompted her.
“But he is a teenage boy, and lately he’s been a challenge.” She paused again.
“A challenge?” Bransford asked.
“What does this have to do with anything?” I asked, thinking of Sam’s advice about how maybe the cops were not our friends. I touched the back of Allison’s free hand. “You don’t have to tell him anything,” I said gently.
Bransford glowered at me. “If she wants us to find the person who hurt her son, she will want to tell us what she knows.” He fixed his eyes on her, an empathetic smile on his lips. “You said your son had been a little challenging lately?”
Allison glanced at him, then back at me. “His grades took a nosedive this last year and my husband—ex-husband—is furious.” Her voice wobbled. “He hates the idea of wasting all the money he’s spent to send him to the same boarding school everyone in his family attended.” She shook her head and flashed me a shaky smile. “I always thought private school was ridiculous. Hayley here went to a public high school and then Rutgers, and look how well she turned out.”
I squeezed her hand, sure Bransford didn’t want to hear more about my plebeian pedigree.
He grimaced. “And so?”
“And so my ex decided a military academy would straighten him out. Of course, Rory was furious about that.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her son’s ear and then straightened the tube that was feeding him oxygen. “Is furious.” Her voice drained away.
“Do you have names of any friends who might be able to speak to his frame of mind before he arrived in Key West?” Bransford asked.
Allison’s face froze, only her eyes darting from Rory’s face to mine, and then to the detective. “Hayley? Can you think of anyone?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. We haven’t kept in good touch. It’s my fault. He’s just a kid. I should have reached out a little more.”
“It’s not your fault,” Allison said. And to the detective: “Maybe you had better speak with his father directly.”
“We have spoken with him. Briefly,” Bransford said. “Since he’s on the way down, we’ll talk in more depth when he arrives on the island.”
“He’s coming to Key West? Rutherford? Oh my god, he’s going to kill me.” She buried her face in her hands and began to weep.
“That’s enough for now,” I said to the detective. I stood up and pointed to the door. He turned to leave, and I followed him out to the waiting area, where my father had a napkin tucked into his shirt and the food spread out on the coffee table. He sprang to his feet, gripping the Caribbean roll, a dab of sauce on his chin and more on his fingers, still chewing.
“What’s going on?”
Bransford said nothing.
“Rory’s father is on his way down,” I explained. “And Allison’s in a million pieces.”
My father set the sandwich on the table and strode over to the phone hanging by the entrance to the ICU. “Could you buzz me into my son’s room?”
“Do you have a working theory here?” I asked Bransford, once my father had disappeared into the unit. “Or are you just trying to intimidate her?” How had I ever found this man attractive? He looked the same on the outside—tanned, fit, and handsome—but how had I missed that he lacked a heart?
“You can think the worst of me if you choose,” he said, his eyes narrowing as though he could read my t
houghts. “But the fact is that this boy was the last person seen with a girl who may have been strangled to death last night. And the marks on his face and his hands suggest that he was involved in a scuffle. Even a rookie would find that an interesting coincidence.” Then he straightened the knot on his thin black tie and strode down the hall toward the elevators.
I sank to the couch in front of the food, legs quivering. Why did fighting with him make me so hungry? It was pretty simple, really, according to my psychologist friend Eric’s assessment. Food meant love and comfort and even peace in my family. Quite natural that I’d crave something good to eat when I felt a little sad or angry, or like now, a lot of both.
I started nibbling around the edges of the Caribbean salad bowl with its rainbow of cabbage, beets, cilantro, and romaine lettuce, topped with grilled chicken, then worked my way through tasting the roasted pork with black beans and rice, and, finally, sampled my father’s sandwich. For the next half hour, I roughed out a review of Paseo’s food. On the one hand, eating and writing about food felt ridiculous in the face of my family’s crisis. On the other hand, it calmed me down and distracted me from fruitless worry.
Paseo’s Caribbean restaurant, while no dining garden spot, is loaded with fresh dishes that burst with flavor without tasting overly spicy. Don’t feel deprived should you choose to order the salad, as it’s chock-full of happy surprises like beets, cilantro, and grilled chicken or shrimp. I usually run screaming from corn on the cob out of season, but Paseo’s fire-roasted version, slathered with butter, cilantro, parmesan cheese, and lime, is to die for. Literally. I could see choosing this as my final death row meal. With something chocolate for dessert, of course.
Finally my father emerged from the ICU unit, looking exhausted.
“She’s sleeping, thank god,” he said, and then added: “I think he’s going to come out of this. His color looks a little better to me than it did when we first got here.”
I nodded. Whether it did or it didn’t, I wasn’t about to dampen his optimism.
“Allison told me about the detective haranguing her. That rat bastard.” He knotted his fists, scowling. “Surely that’s not the man you followed to Key West?”
“That was Chad Lutz,” I said, smiling sheepishly. “The divorce lawyer.”
“You deserve better than that, Hayley,” he said in a stern voice. “Just because your mother and I got divorced doesn’t mean you should settle for someone who doesn’t treat you well.” He sighed. “That didn’t come out right. What I mean is, there are good men who want real relationships with good women, and that’s what you deserve.” He squinted and sat down beside me, patted my knee. “I wasn’t always the father I wanted to be. But I love you dearly. I hope you know that.”
Then he picked up the sandwich he’d abandoned earlier and started to eat again, heading off any further sappiness.
“Thanks, Dad. I know.” I grinned and leaned forward to plant a kiss on his forehead. “Dad, what do you understand about Rory’s problems? Why is his father insisting on the military academy? It seems like such a bad fit for him.”
“Rutherford doesn’t like the kids he was hanging out with. Any of them. I think there was a girl whom he particularly considered a bad influence.” He rubbed his forehead. “To be honest, I wasn’t paying close attention.” He dropped his hand and heaved a heavy sigh. “Most of our communication with Rutherford these days is by text message. To Allison’s phone. So I only get snatches of it.”
He crooked a smile. “You know I’m not famous for my listening skills. And besides, he drives me crazy, always up on his high horse. The snotty tone alone slays me. More times than not, he starts in lecturing Allison about how she should be handling Rory. And just about every communication ends up with arguments about money. It makes me want to punch him.” He smacked his fist into his palm. “I’d better get back in there,” he said, and pushed off from the sofa. “I’ll call you later.”
However it could be managed, it sounded like keeping my father and Rory’s father apart would save a lot of misery. Though it was hard to see how that could be arranged. I gathered the trash up and wrapped the few leftover scraps into a plastic bag to carry downstairs to an outside garbage can. At least I could spare the other beleaguered families the smell of onions and garlic—the tantalizing promise of life outside the hospital.
15
Food blogs are not so much about cooking as about exhibitionists letting us peep at private lives in hopes we will be, ahem, smitten, a word usually applied to sexual attraction.
—Sandra Garson
I sped back down Route One, but then slowed to a crawl when I hit the traffic along the Roosevelt Boulevard construction strip, which seemed to have been torn up forever. The “Citizen’s Voice” column in the Key West Citizen had been bristling with complaints for months and months. But like everything else in this town, the project would get done when it got done, and not a moment earlier. As I inched along with the traffic, sandwiched in between an open air golf cart with RENT ME written on the back end and a flatbed truck full of Hispanic workers, I tried to sort and prioritize the jumble in my head.
My mother would be all over preparing tonight’s dinner, so there was no rush to get back to the houseboat. I could whip up my strawberry pies this afternoon once she vacated the kitchen. But I did need to put another half hour of work into my articles—on-site was probably better, so Wally would see that I was in fact working, not disintegrating into a puddle of stress. And then he could report that to Ava without being forced to lie.
Even more pressing was the question of what had happened with Rory and his new friend the night before. I felt sickened as the memory of the girl floating in the mangroves played through my mind like a jerky home movie. And worried about Bransford’s parting blow, because, yes, even a novice investigator would look at the Facebook photo, the Jet Ski theft, and worst of all, the chain marks, and link the two kids together in a damning way. No chance in hell Bransford would tell me anything that I didn’t already know, but it might be worth putting in another call in to Lieutenant Torrence. At least he would be sympathetic. If I didn’t wake him up. Which meant waiting until six, when his shift began.
Once I passed the Palm Avenue intersection, the traffic thinned out and I continued down Truman Street toward the teen drop-in center. Other than the cops, the person with her finger most closely on the pulse of Key West teenagers would be Jai Somers. I pulled over in front of Project Lighthouse and parked my scooter.
Unlike the quiet scene earlier this morning, now the big room was humming with teens. Girls with nose rings, bare stomachs, and tight jeans. Boys with black Tshirts, tattoos, and ponytails. And kids dressed and coiffed so it was hard to make out which sex they were. They sprawled on the overstuffed couch and chairs, ate sandwiches at the center table, and jockeyed for position at the two computer stations. Jai sat at her desk beside a tearful girl with pink hair and a pixie face who looked about fifteen. She glanced over as the bell on the door jingled to announce my entrance.
“Any news on your stepbrother?” Jai asked me.
I shrugged. “Not really. I just came from the hospital. Maybe his color looks a little better.” I dropped my voice low and moved closer so I wouldn’t telegraph my troubles to all the kids. “One of the detectives was just at the hospital interviewing my stepmother. He’s putting a lot of pressure on her about whether Rory’s been in trouble before. I wondered whether you could put me in touch with anyone who knew Mariah. Maybe even spent time with her last night?”
Jai reached for the pink-haired girl’s hand and whispered something to her. The girl swiveled around to look at me, then barely nodded. Now I recognized her as the second girl in the photograph with Rory.
“Daisy was Mariah’s friend. She says she’ll talk with you. Let’s see if I can find you a spot that isn’t quite so noisy.”
She ushered me and the pixie girl into the cubby where I’d seen kids sorting clothes this morning. Daisy sank into a
battered beanbag chair that released a puff of dust and mildew. I crouched on the floor with my back against the wall, so I wouldn’t block her path out. Nothing, my psychologist friend Eric once told me, spooks a troubled soul more than putting yourself between them and the door.
“Let me get you a chair,” Jai said.
I smiled. “I’m fine.” Second-to-last thing I wanted to do was create mental distance between the girl and me by acting like a creaky old fogey.
“Hi, Daisy, I’m Hayley.”
The girl drew her thighs to her chest, picking at the hole in her jeans where one bony knee poked through.
“I’m so sorry about Mariah.”
The girl buried her face in her knees and began to sob.
“It’s so hard to lose a good friend. How long did you know her?”
Daisy wiped her eyes on her sleeve, the gauzy fabric fluttering away to reveal a Teddy bear tattooed inside her forearm, above two horizontal scars, still pink from healing. The dark kohl outlining her eyes melted down one cheek, a luge run for her tears. “A couple of weeks? I don’t know. She was my best friend ever.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. And I was. Sorry for the dead girl and sorry for this little lost girl who’d taken a blade to her own wrist. Or so it appeared. Sorry that someone she knew so briefly was her best friend. And sorry for all the kids clustered in the drop-in center who had left home for reasons unknown, but probably unhappy. How in the world had Rory found them?
I pulled my iPhone from my back pocket. “You were with her last night?” I tapped through Rory’s Facebook page until I reached the photo of the kids on the Courthouse Deli bench. I passed the phone over to her. “This is my brother, Rory.”
“She loved him,” the girl said, tears leaking from her eyes again. “I can’t believe he’d hurt her like that.”
Murder With Ganache: A Key West Food Critic Mystery Page 13