A Deadly Feast

by Lucy Burdette

  “You asked me to explore; otherwise I wouldn’t press you.”

  “You’re right. Let me look things up and text them to you. If you feel you have to turn them over to the police, give me a heads-up?”

  “Of course.” I signed off and started to walk toward my scooter. Minutes later, her text came in.

  JanMarie Weatherhead, who appears to be a local resident, maybe something of a foodie—or at least she likes to eat. And Zane Ryan. He’s a chef at the Perry Hotel on Stock Island. I have a feeling he was doing some undercover research for when he opens his own little restaurant. And of course, Audrey and Marcel Cohen. Stay in touch.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It’s one of my top ten rules about living alone: Never eat from the carton. You’ll only feel more pitiful.

  —Roberta Isleib, Asking for Murder

  Finally back at the houseboat, I booted up my computer and began to research the two names Analise had texted me. JanMarie had lived in Key West for the last thirty years and was active in Steve Torrence’s church, according to her Facebook profile. She was a regular at Cooking with Love, a program that operated out of the church basement and provided hot meals to seniors and shut-ins on Saturdays. She’d posted many photos of the meals they cooked and delivered. I looked at the church’s website and found her name on the list of volunteers. She was spearheading the production and distribution of their Thanksgiving meal this coming Thursday morning. Unless she was on the hunt to steal Martha’s recipes for the soup kitchen, she seemed an unlikely suspect.

  Zane Ryan, however, was more complicated. He had opened a restaurant on Sugarloaf Key three years ago that had closed a year later. I did a search for reviews and learned it had been slammed by disgruntled customers on Yelp and OpenTable. Some diners thought that his food was crummy—undistinguished and not worth the prices on the menu; others that he was reaching for a brand—nouveau Keys—and had fallen short of what he’d promised.

  Why would a chef with some significant experience take a food tour, a busman’s holiday? Did he have a connection to Martha Hubbard? I didn’t remember any interaction between them, though she’d only made a cameo appearance while we sat at her kitchen counter. Without some bad history, he would have no obvious reason to sabotage her. Or Analise either, for that matter. Even if he was wildly ambitious about opening another restaurant, neither Analise’s tour business nor Martha’s cooking classes could be considered serious competition.

  And why would anyone who wanted to get at Martha arrange for Audrey’s death on the last stop? It seemed like such a roundabout—and difficult to the point of near impossible—way to punish an enemy.

  I turned away from these questions and worked for a while putting together the article about the food tour, but found it hard to remain focused. Would my bosses even want to run this after news of the death on the tour spread like melted butter across town? I sent in my short piece on where to eat Thanksgiving dinner, and then texted Wally and Palamina to ask about the tour. Meanwhile, the vision of Nathan’s car parked near the Buoys’ Club kept popping into my mind. After noodling over the right words to use, I shot him a text.

  Worried about how hard u r working this week. Can I help in any way? And can u share anything about what’s going on? I’m going to be a police officer’s wife soon enough and I might as well start learning the ropes right now.

  He texted me back a few minutes later.

  I’m fine, I’m safe. There’s a bad actor in town and it’s crucial that I play my part. Absolutely plan to be at the dinner with your father on Wednesday, and Thanksgiving dinner with your family Thursday, and the wedding on Friday.

  And then he’d added a smiley face blowing a kiss. All of that was great, and slightly reassuring, but also vaguely unsatisfying. A bad actor? That didn’t do much to lower my anxiety. A second message flashed in.

  But there is one way you could help. Ziggy’s dog sitter bailed for tomorrow morning. Can you pick him up early and take him for a run or something? I’ve got meetings at the police department until noon and then plan to come home and crash for a couple hours.

  Absolutely! Stay safe and sleep well.

  My best girlfriend Connie came up the dock and hollered out hello just as I was setting my phone down. “How is our bride-to-be holding up?” She hopped onto our deck and perched on Miss Gloria’s chaise.

  I grinned. “I think I’m OK. If it wasn’t for everything else going on, I’d be doing great. Though I’d feel better if my groom wasn’t on the night shift.”

  She clucked in sympathy. “I read about the food tour this morning in the paper. Tell me this isn’t the one you were attending for the magazine?”

  This confirmed my fear that nobody would be interested in a review article about stops on this tour. Not for a while, anyway. Unless they had some grisly interest in seeing the place where Audrey had died. “Unfortunately, yes. And it was an awful thing to witness. And then this morning, I had coffee with the husband of the woman who died. That was even worse.”

  “What do they think happened?”

  “Allergies? Stroke? Sabotage? Jealousy? Love, lust, and lucre, as P. D. James used to say?” I sighed. “Nobody’s really saying. Not to me, anyway.”

  “The paper said she collapsed at the brewery, right?” Connie asked.

  “Exactly.”

  Then she glanced at the notes I had sitting on the table beside my chair. “You’re not involved in this case, are you?”

  “I’m just asking a few questions as a favor.”

  “Does Nathan know?”

  Connie understood perfectly my tendency to get mixed up in dangerous situations and his concern that I not.

  “He doesn’t know anything about it because I haven’t seen him for days. And it sounds like I won’t see him until my father and his family show up tomorrow for dinner. He’s the one we should be worried about.” I told her about the so-called bad actor.

  “You poor thing. I guess you have to get used to stressing out since you’re marrying a cop. Or even better, get used to not stressing out. But I’m sure he’s fine. They are not going to send him into danger three days before his wedding.”

  “It’s his second marriage,” I said with a laugh. “If it was the first time around, they might have given him the week off.”

  “Speaking of time off, I came by to see if you could use my massage appointment with Renee this afternoon?” She held up her iPhone tuned in to a camera that showed her baby girl sleeping in their houseboat. “My babysitter canceled, so if you can’t, I’m going to have to cancel.”

  She and her husband Ray had both raved about how Renee had ironed out their muscular kinks and reduced the stress of raising a lively toddler. “Why don’t I watch Claire so you can go?”

  “Absolutely not. If you’re free, I’d like you to take it. I think you need it more than I do.”

  I rolled my shoulders, which felt more like a sack of rocks than muscles. The idea of taking an hour to calm down and chill out felt amazing. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded vigorously. “But you need to leave right now.” She gave me directions, and I gave her a big hug and went out to the parking lot to grab my scooter.

  I found the salon easily enough—the Tranquility Spa, located in a little strip mall on North Roosevelt. When I arrived, a slender woman with curly hair and lots of tattoos came to the door to greet me. “Hayley?”

  “Yes. You look so familiar,” I said. “I’m Connie’s friend. But I don’t think we’ve met, have we?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said as she led me down the hall. She showed me to a small room with a cork floor, a tin ceiling, a massage table, and not much else. She left me to undress and get on the table. As I positioned myself with my face in the cradle and settled the white sheet across my shoulders, I realized where I had seen her before. She was married to Chris, the owner of Fogarty Builders, the guy who had helped me solve the mystery of Gabriel Gonzalez’s murder last winter. When I’d gone to t
alk with him at his office, I’d seen Renee’s wedding photo on his desk.

  She returned to the room, turned down the lights, turned up some soothing music, and started to work. And I felt my tension begin to dissolve.

  “You had a few knots in your back,” she said once we’d finished and I was dressed again, sipping on a cold glass of water.

  I snorted with laughter, nearly choking on the water. “Only a few?”

  “Connie said you’re getting married this week? That would explain it.”

  Then I told her how I had met her husband last winter, and how discouraged Nathan and I were about getting our houseboat renovated anytime in the next decade. “And I don’t know where the heck we’re going to live. My fiancé has an apartment, but before the hurricane hit we’d agreed that he would let the lease lapse starting in December. They’ve already rented it to a new tenant. The other choices are to live with my mother”—Renee snickered—“or my octogenarian roommate.”

  When she’d finished laughing, she said, “What you need is a new contractor.”

  “I know that much; we’ve had two bail on us already. Everyone’s so busy after that hurricane blew through in September. This last guy’s attitude was essentially ‘I’ll get to it when I get to it,’ and underneath that, ‘I don’t need you; you need me.’ ” I sipped more water, feeling the calming effects of the massage already beginning to fade. “I’m afraid he’s right.”

  “I’ll text Chris right now—I think he had a customer pull out this week.”

  Minutes later, she came out of her room with a big grin on her face. “He says he can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  * * *

  Chris was a tall rugged man with a nice smile, intense blue eyes, and a beautiful yellow Lab dog who bounded out of his truck and dashed to the end of our dock, her leash trailing behind. The animals living on the pier scattered, crouching under chaise lounges or hiding behind potted plants.

  Chris whistled for her and shouted, “Lulu!” The dog ran back and sat at his feet, staring up at him with adoration, her tongue lolling. “Sorry,” he said. “We recently adopted her and she’s not completely trained.”

  Evinrude the cat peered round the miniature fig tree we had growing on Miss Gloria’s deck, the fur on his neck and back puffed up so that he looked twice his normal size. He growled at the dog, who instantly cowered. “That’s my guy,” I explained. “He’s the top cat and dog in town, and he’ll let anybody know it.” Evinrude lifted his lips and hissed, never taking his eyes off the intruder.

  Chris laughed. “She’ll get a lesson in cat-iquette today. So show me the project,” he said.

  By now, two of his workers had pulled into the parking lot and were standing behind him. We started up the finger, and I pointed at Nathan’s houseboat. One of the men’s eyebrows shot up and the other one whistled under his breath.

  “I know it looks bad. My fiancé and I have tried to pull some of the trash out, but life has a way of throwing distractions in our path. We’re getting married on Friday, and this was supposed to be finished by next week so we could move in.”

  “That’s ambitious,” said Chris, gesturing for his two workers to quit sniggering. They followed me onto the deck of the boat, kicking at the piles of debris—the carpet, the paneling, the pink bathroom sink, and some random beer cans tossed by passersby that I swore were a new addition since this morning.

  Once inside, Chris paced around the small space, examining what was left of the plumbing, the kitchen, and the lighting. “Surprisingly enough, the bones of the place look a lot better than I’d expected.”

  “That’s exactly what my roommate said,” I said, feeling a tiny bit of my despair recede.

  Then we discussed what I had in mind for the renovation, what I had already ordered, and how much chaos we were willing to live in while they worked.

  “Can you show me your architectural renderings?” Chris asked.

  I begin to giggle, almost on the verge of hysteria. I led the men over to two pencil drawings that were tacked on the one wall that remained untouched. “The last guy said we didn’t need an architect, so this is what we’ve got. I know we want to keep the Dade County pine floors that we found under the rug and on this wall. Unless you think we’re asking for trouble with termites?”

  “Most likely not,” he said. “That pine is much sturdier than many types of wood because it has more resin. And so as it dries, it becomes denser than concrete. That’s why it was used so often in Key West before they overforested. Though we often pretreat the wood before we build with it if we harvest it from demolition projects. Have you thought about using it for your kitchen cabinets?”

  My shoulders slumped. Again, the last contractor who bailed out had said he had a contact for recycled Dade County pine, which was hard to come by—and a craftsman who could fashion the wood into built-in cabinets and shelves. Obviously, he wasn’t going to share either of those names with me—I couldn’t even get him to call me back, never mind divulge insider tidbits. I explained all that, and Chris made a few notes in his phone.

  “Do you cook?”

  “I love to cook. Cooking and eating are in my blood. I’ve been dreaming of a double oven, and I’ve already ordered a German refrigerator that I think is narrow enough for this space. It’s sitting in my mother’s garage, along with some vintage drawer pulls and doorknobs.”

  “I get the picture.” He grinned and went back to his truck for a pad of paper, on which he quickly sketched and jotted down measurements as his workers read them out. He asked me a few questions about where I might want the cooktop, the dishwasher, the ovens, and how much of the view I was willing to sacrifice for cabinets. Then he scratched down some figures.

  “This is the general estimate of what I think it might cost. That will depend, of course, on the cabinets and fixtures you use in the bathroom and kitchen. I have a stash of old Dade County pine that I got in a barter with a decorator. And I know a guy who could produce your cabinets.”

  “Could he do built-ins in the bedroom with drawers under the bed and lots of bookshelves?” I described Miss Gloria’s beds and how useful it was to have the extra storage space.

  “He can do anything.” He wrote that down too.

  This all sounded way too good to be true. “How long do you think it will take?” I cringed, preparing for the worst, like maybe a year from now we could finally move into our place.

  Chris said, “I’m guessing three to four weeks for the cabinets. Two months, possibly three, to finish the job.”

  My eyes nearly popped out of my head. His estimate was one-third less time than the contractor who had just dumped us.

  “If you’re interested, I’ll go back to the office and run the numbers,” he said.

  “Absolutely interested. Nathan will need to see everything too, but I bet he’ll be thrilled.”

  “Where is your wedding?”

  “We’re getting married at Fort Zachary Taylor beach, and then going to the Hemingway Home for the reception.”

  “Are you planning to entertain here this week?”

  “None of the big parties will be held here on the pier. But knowing my family, they’ll be dropping in and out all weekend. My father and his wife and her son arrive in town tomorrow.” I glanced at the pile of junk on the deck and felt my heart sink a little.

  He turned to the two guys watching our discussion and poking around my disastrous piles. “Let’s get all the trash loaded in the back of our pickups.” He turned back to me. “If you’re having a bunch of out-of-town guests, you don’t want the place looking like this. If your fiancé approves of the price, we’ll start next Monday.”

  He stuck his hand out to shake.

  But because I couldn’t help myself, I gave him a big, full-body squeeze instead, too overwhelmed with gratitude to answer.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was not what Eli had said but the way he’d said it, as if he’d rolled a piece of bitter melon in sugar and was n
ow passing it off as candy.

  —Camron Wright, The Orphan Keeper

  It felt weird to have a night to myself, with Miss Gloria gone to her mah-jongg group, my mother and Sam out to dinner with friends, and Nathan who knew where. I made a salad with one of Miss Gloria’s homegrown tomatoes and other produce from the Bayview farmers’ market and heated up a serving of leftover lobster macaroni and cheese. I felt a little let down not to have someone else to celebrate the new contractor with, but I’d have to make do with the congratulatory texts that had flowed in from Nathan and Miss Gloria and my mother after I’d announced the great news. I picked up a culinary mystery that I hadn’t had time to read more than a few pages in and went out on the deck to eat my dinner and enjoy the evening.

  After I finished supper, I closed the book and went back inside to watch an episode of Say Yes to the Dress. The panicked bride on the show sent my anxiety skyrocketing and had me running to my closet to make sure I had chosen well. My dress wasn’t a long slinky column of satin like the girl on TV had picked, nor the frothy fairy-tale wedding gown that I’d pictured growing up. Instead I’d be wearing a sleeveless white douppioni silk with a sweetheart neckline and a full skirt that fell gracefully from a cinched waist to midcalf. It would be dressed up during the ceremony with my grandmother’s antique lace veil, but it would also be comfortable on the dance floor.

  My mother had cried when I’d tried it on in the store. When we brought it home, Miss Gloria had clapped her hands and then pumped her fist. And Connie declared it perfectly stunning. It was perfect, for me anyway. The one question remaining was shoes: whether to wear the white platform sandals my mother had surprised me with or the red-sequined high-tops that felt more like me. I could decide that at the last minute—maybe sandals on the beach and sneakers while dancing?

  I got out my computer and surfed through lukewarm Yelp reviews of Zane Ryan’s defunct restaurant for a second time. “Lost its umph before it ever got any,” “Staff was pretentious and rude,” and “Food fair, staff sullen” were some of the worst comments. I wondered how accurate these were. The most recent was a rant about why a local chef would import fancy ingredients to make dishes only a New Yorker would enjoy when he was blessed with the freshest and most delicious seafood in the world.