A Deadly Feast

by Lucy Burdette

  Miss Gloria and my mother each took one of her elbows and drew her into the celebration. “And besides,” Miss Gloria said, “we want to hear about your old pal Marcel.”

  “Tell us more about what happened,” I said, sitting on the deck next to Nathan and squeezing his hand. “You really didn’t recognize him while we were in your kitchen on the tour? And what about Zane?”

  “Am I allowed to talk about this?” she asked Steve.

  “Yes,” he said. “You gave your formal statement at the station earlier.”

  “I barely saw your group that morning,” she said, nodding in Analise’s direction. “I had so much to do to get ready for the Thanksgiving class. And besides, I’m not sure I would have known Marcel anyway. He’d lost a lot of weight since I’d worked for him, and he certainly didn’t dress like a middle-aged hipster back in those days. And the beard was new, too.

  “But last night when Hayley texted me about how the cops found a packet of glitter in the pockets of the dead man, that jogged something in my brain. Marcel was always on the lookout for weird ingredients. Culinary gold was something he had experimented with, especially in spotlight cocktails. He loved to see our customers’ eyes bulge when the servers delivered them something way out of the ordinary.”

  “Culinary gold?” My father looked puzzled. “Why in the world would you use a metal in something people are going to eat?”

  “There’s a fierce competition among chefs these days to one-up each other,” Martha explained. “Some end up feeling that if they want to make a name for themselves in the top echelon of restaurants, serving consistently excellent food isn’t enough anymore. The menu has to include recipes with an extra sparkle or truly exotic ingredients to get noticed by some of the influential critics. Even the amateur critics on Yelp and review sites like that have caught this fancy-food fever.”

  “I guess I didn’t get that gene,” said my father.

  Martha chuckled. “If you think culinary gold is weird, I’ve seen worse. Things like coffee beans that have been pooped out by civet cats, gelatinous bird’s nests, and saffron hand-harvested by young women in India. Some chefs insist they only buy from companies that hire virgins because that changes the flavor to something more pure.”

  My father looked horrified.

  “So chefs use ingredients like that to burnish their reputations with snooty foodies?” Allison asked. “I doubt my family would ever eat such a meal.”

  “Trust me, we wouldn’t,” my father muttered.

  “The gold is big in cocktails and cake decorations and all kinds of fancy stuff,” I said. “Even a couple of the cake decorators in town wanted to know if we’d like the glittery look on our wedding cake. But I don’t think these two guys were interested in appealing to an audience of home cooks. They wanted to reach big-name chefs who were striving to showcase their imagination and demonstrate how they could push the boundaries of what’s considered great food.”

  “And after the celebrity chefs come out with something new, chefs in the smaller restaurants often copy what seems to be all the rage,” Analise added. “They want to know what a Thomas Keller or a Bobby Flay or a Mario Batali is making.”

  “Unless the MeToo movement takes them down,” said Martha. “Then they aren’t making anything.” She snuck a glance at me. “Marcel Chaudoir had a similar kind of hubris. With his star long burned out, he had taken a series of dead-end jobs as a line cook. Then he started talking with Zane Ryan about this new business where they wouldn’t have to work as hard and they could make a lot more money.”

  “Figures they’d need to be chefs to know what to steal and who to sell it to,” I said. “And Zane Ryan getting involved in the smuggling enterprise makes sense, too. His own restaurant had failed, and he was working as a sous-chef out on Stock Island. His boss was certainly not treating him like a celebrity. I suspect he’d soured on becoming financially successful in restaurants even though he was telling me about his plans for the future—fancy recipes all the way.”

  “Give me meatloaf and mashed potatoes,” said Torrence. “Nothing fancy, and definitely nothing that would come out of an animal’s behind or glow in the dark.”

  My new husband blanched. “Please don’t ever serve me something like that.”

  “She never would,” said Miss Gloria. “She understands exactly what kind of man you are. But no law says you can’t learn to cook too and serve her once in a while. My Frank got very good at cooking.”

  I’d never have the heart to tell her that her recipes were bad enough that it was in her dear husband’s self-interest to take up the mantle of cook in their family.

  Nathan squeezed my hand before letting it go again. “I wouldn’t have the guts to compete with this woman, or her mother. My mother-in-law,” he corrected himself, grinning at my mother. She beamed right back at him.

  “So Marcel came to town to talk about distribution of the stuff Zane had collected?” my mother asked. “Were the products actually illegal?”

  Torrence nodded. “Some of it, yes, and some not. But the main thing is they had moved on to dealing drugs and using the foodstuff as cover. We suspect that Audrey had gotten wind of this and begun to worry about Marcel. And then he went a little crazy after she died. And that’s what we think the fight in the parking lot was about. Maybe Marcel had even decided he was going to turn Zane in to the police. Possibly he thought Zane had killed his wife. Zane saw him unraveling and believed he was going to the authorities. He didn’t plan to kill Marcel, but he had to act to save himself.”

  “But how did Marcel end up dead? And was his death related to his wife’s?” Sam asked. “Who killed her?”

  “According to Marcel, when Audrey got wind of the fact that he was flying to Key West, she insisted on coming along with him as a mini vacation,” Torrence said. “Audrey’s sister had reported that she had just started on the MAO inhibitor and was feeling remarkably better after a long stretch of depression. And manic enough to ignore any professional advice about diet and side effects. She also refused to take the lithium that’s supposed to act as a stabilizer.” He glanced over at my psychologist friend, Eric Altman, who was sitting on deck with Miss Gloria and his partner, Bill.

  Eric nodded.

  “Zane did not like the idea of Marcel’s wife getting involved—she was a loose cannon and could easily have said more than she should, giving the whole enterprise away,” said Torrence. “He began to feel that he needed to watch them both carefully.”

  “So he attended the seafood tour to keep an eye on them?” Analise asked.

  “Exactly,” Torrence said.

  “And then,” Martha said, “Marcel recognized who I was, because of course my name was plastered all over the literature, both for our kitchen’s events and Analise’s tour. Seeing me successful probably raised old feelings of rage. And as Officer Torrence said, after Audrey died, he went a little crazy. Maybe he even imagined that I had killed his wife as the final act in some long-delayed revenge. Maybe he snuck into the store later and spiked my Ol’ Sour. I don’t think he meant to kill anyone, only to pay me back.”

  “Are you saying the salt killed Audrey? I’m confused,” said my mother.

  “No,” said Nathan. “Her death was a result of her antidepressant interacting fatally with all the food and beer she shouldn’t have been consuming. Sadly, she had a massive stroke.”

  “Then Zane saw Marcel meet with Hayley after Audrey died,” said Torrence. “He panicked about what Marcel might have revealed in his grief-stricken state. He warned him to stay out of trouble and not talk to anyone about anything.”

  “Which explains why Marcel was so cool to me when I contacted him a second time,” I said. “Zane had warned him away.”

  Torrence said, “He claims, and the courts will decide whether to believe him, that Marcel pulled a knife on him in the parking lot of the Buoys’ Club when they were fighting. He clobbered him in the head with a two-by-four, allegedly in self-defense, but Marcel
keeled over dead. So he disposed of the body in the dumpster and fled.”

  “Must have been right after all that happened on Wednesday night,” my new husband said, “that I drove by those old brick buildings, thinking where would I stash things if I was a smuggler. Zane saw me sniffing around and shot me in the leg. As I was kicking my way into the window, trying to get away, he whacked my other leg with a two-by-four. I fell inside the building and he trussed me up like a turkey. He had twenty-four hours to stew over how much trouble he was in: he’d left in his wake one dead man, one injured, a kidnapped cop, and a big load of stolen merchandise and drugs. Last night, I believe he set fire to the building to get rid of the whole mess, including me. But I don’t know what happened to cause that late and final panic.”

  He wasn’t going to be thrilled to hear that my questions in Matt’s Stock Island restaurant might have been the reason for Zane’s panic. But on the other hand, we’d just finished pledging our honesty to one another. “What happened was me,” I said, biting my lip.

  “I stopped over at the restaurant where he was working Thanksgiving morning. His shift didn’t end until seven, so he had the whole day to get worried and decide he wasn’t going to get out of this scheme unscathed without disposing of the stolen property. And you.” I turned to Steve Torrence. “When did the cops realize that Nathan was in trouble?”

  Torrence said, “Not as fast as we might have wanted, because he disappeared so quickly and completely. So it took us a little while to realize he was gone, not home taking a nap as he should have been. It’s not that big of an island, and we were doing a search of all the places they might have taken him. But the truth is, if you hadn’t gotten there when you did and noticed the smoke, we might have been too late.”

  Nathan reached for my hand again and kissed the knuckles. “I’d like to know how you tracked me down. Because in another half an hour, I’d have been toast.”

  I shuddered at the thought. It was not going to be easy to be a cop’s wife. I’d have to learn how to manage the anxiety of knowing any day I could lose him. And somehow I’d have to come to terms with the truth: it wasn’t my job to save him from the bad guys he chased. It was my job to be there for him after he saved people from those bad guys. I pushed those thoughts away.

  “As we said, Eric was the one who realized that Audrey might have been on a new antidepressant. But I kept wondering why Marcel wouldn’t have known this. His story about not knowing his wife was on the new drug just didn’t hang together. I know I’m barely, barely married”—I reached to stroke the back of Nathan’s head—“and that things can go south quickly in a relationship if you don’t tend it. So maybe it’s possible that you could live with someone day to day and not be aware of what medications they were taking, but it seemed unlikely.”

  “Being married takes work,” my mom said, glancing at my father. “Life gets stressful and hectic and you stop paying attention. And then trouble comes calling.”

  “So the antidepressant story didn’t hang together. What else?” Nathan asked. “I’m always amazed at how your mind works.”

  “Well.” I took a breath and a sip of champagne. “I admit to stalking you a little because I was so worried.” I chuckled when he glowered. “Soon after I noticed your car on the street next to the club, I saw Marcel come out of the Buoys’ Club. What would a recent widower be doing in a strip club? I know people have different reactions to grief, but this seemed extreme. Something else had to be going on.”

  “Surely you didn’t believe I was visiting that place for a bachelor’s last hurrah?” Nathan asked, a look of mock horror on his face.

  I squirmed and then smiled. “It crossed my mind, but only for the briefest moment.”

  I paused for a minute to sort out what else had alerted me to the smoke in that building. I thought about the cards Lorenzo had read for me earlier this week, and how he had warned me to pay attention to my instincts because they were almost always solid. And I knew the cards he’d read at the Thanksgiving table were telling me plainly that Nathan was in trouble. I explained all that to Nathan and the others. “I know you don’t necessarily believe in this stuff, but I do,” I said to Nathan, and then winked at Lorenzo. “He was reading your cards through what I chose.”

  “I’m sorry to have scared you,” Lorenzo piped up. “The cards are the cards. But it wasn’t only the reading that helped you find Nathan,” he added. “You’ve really developed your intuition since I’ve known you. You were tuning in to the vibrations around you, whether you knew exactly what they meant or not.”

  He ignored the rolling eyes of my new husband.

  Husband, yikes! That would take some getting used to. “By the way, what about that hardened criminal who got out of jail and was coming for you?” I asked Nathan. “Was he involved in this scheme?”

  “Which one?” he asked after a long pause. “I’ve put dozens away.” He grinned as if it was all a big joke. “Where did you hear about that, anyway?”

  “Odom,” Miss Gloria piped up. “My friend. He’s a well-informed resident of the Stock Island jail.”

  Nathan glowered.

  My mother clapped her hands and motioned for the band to swing into dance music. “You’ll have the rest of your lives to dissect all of this.”

  My father grabbed my hands to dance, then passed me off to Eric, who passed me off to Bill, and then Steve.

  All of my friends and relations continued to eat and dance and laugh and drink until close to ten, when Nathan’s energy began to flag in earnest. But the party had come together so quickly that we hadn’t had the chance to talk about where we’d spend the night.

  “We should get out of here and let Nathan get some rest,” said Sam. “Miss Gloria is going to stay with us.”

  “But only till Monday!” she said. “I definitely need to be here to watch over the new contractor. And the new husband, too.”

  “Do you want us to take Ziggy off your hands for the weekend as well?” my mother asked.

  “Definitely not,” I said, pointing to Nathan’s little dog, who was curled up on my lounge chair with the two resident cats. “He’s part of the family.”

  Recipes

  Chef Martha’s Sponger Key Lime Pie (courtesy of Martha Hubbard)

  ½ cup Ol’ Sour (see below)

  ½ cup key lime juice

  2 (14-ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk

  3 egg yolks

  1 teaspoon salt

  Cuban crackers

  Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Divide into small canning jars. Serve with crumbled Cuban crackers on top.

  Ol’ Sour

  1 quart key lime juice

  1½ tablespoon table salt

  Mix key lime juice and salt. Let sit at room temperature for two weeks, disturbing daily for first week.

  Smoked Fish Dip

  8 ounces smoked trout or other fish

  4 ounces cream cheese, softened

  8 ounces sour cream

  3 scallions, cleaned and minced

  Heaping ¼ teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning

  ¼ lemon

  In one bowl, flake the fish.

  In another bowl, combine the cream cheese, sour cream, scallions, seasoning, and lemon. Mix well.

  Fold in the fish.

  Serve with crackers or chips, or with celery sticks and cucumber slices, or stuffed into endive leaves. For another variation, leave out the scallions and Old Bay and replace with 1 tablespoon horseradish and 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill.

  Mojito Cookies

  These cookies are a lovely pale green and would be excellent as a spring dessert or as part of a Christmas cookie platter. You can make the icing or not, as you prefer. But Hayley’s tasters loved the frosting with its subtle rum flavoring!

  For the cookies:

  Zest of 1 lime (about 1½ teaspoons)

  1 bunch fresh mint, enough for one tablespoon chopped (or more to taste)

  ½ cup butter, at room temperature
/>   ½ cup white sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1 egg

  2 cups all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon baking powder (low-sodium works fine)

  Pinch salt

  For the rum lime glaze:

  ½ cup powdered sugar

  1–2 teaspoons fresh lime juice

  1 teaspoon light rum

  Zest the lime, reserving the fruit for the icing. Wash and dry the mint and chop it into small pieces in a food processor. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the vanilla, egg, lime zest, and mint and mix well. Stir the flour, baking powder, and salt together, and then add this to the butter/sugar and mix on low speed only until combined. On a sheet of parchment paper, shape the dough into a log, cover with the parchment, and refrigerate two hours or more.

  Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place a second sheet of parchment on a baking sheet. Slice chilled dough into ¼-inch slices and transfer to prepared sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until bottoms and edges are a light golden brown.

  Mix the powdered sugar with the lime juice and rum and beat until smooth. Ice the cookies once they are cool. (You can adjust the amounts of lime versus rum to please your palate. And add more sugar if it seems too runny.)

  Pecan Pie Bars

  The recipe is not very difficult and it makes a lot—so it’s great for a party. But be warned, it’s very, very sweet! So cut your bars small.

  3 cups flour

  ½ cup sugar

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  1 cup cold unsalted butter

  For the topping:

  4 eggs

  1½ cups light corn syrup

  1½ cups sugar (I decided to use ½ cup brown sugar and 1 cup white)

  3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

  1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  2½ cups pecans, lightly broken into pieces

  Put the flour, sugar, and salt in your food processor. Cut the cold butter into small chunks, and with the machine running, feed them into the dry ingredients. This should all begin to hold together a little like pie crust.