“It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Miss Gloria.
“Very enthusiastic,” said Nathan’s mother.
“Wait’ll you see the way the drag queens dress up for Christmas,” Miss Gloria told her. “And if you can stay up that late on New Year’s Eve, you won’t want to miss Sushi the drag queen dropping from the heavens in a giant sparkly red shoe.”
“Sounds quaint in a truly bizarre sort of way,” Nathan’s mother said.
The driver announced that we would be making one last visit for his personal favorite display, known for its comic relief, and then take a spin across Duval Street and finally return to the high school.
“Only in Key West,” the driver sang out as he navigated down a small one-way street near the cemetery. “Santa may be a little late this year,” he announced, pointing to a blow-up Santa Claus splayed out on the front porch of a small home. Santa had an empty bottle of booze clutched in his right hand. “I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus” thrumming in the background completed the tacky picture.
We drove slowly past the display. “It’s all good fun,” I said, “but my favorite decorations are the most classic—the local palm trees with trunks wrapped in white lights and fronds strung with green lights.
“How do they decorate in your neighborhood?” I asked my mother-in-law, who at this point seemed a little stunned by the breadth of our island’s holiday cheer.
“Fortunately, there are rules in our condominium complex,” she said. “White lights only, green wreaths, preferably fake so they don’t shed, and nothing too religious or flashy.” She grinned, and I had no clue whether she was teasing or dead serious. I was beginning to suspect that Nathan had suggested this train ride rather than his mother requesting it.
We finished the swing across Duval Street, and as predicted, the drag queens, masquerading as Santa’s elves, were in full form: dressed in very short red skirts and high heels and big hair topped with striped elf hats. The sidewalks were jammed with pre–New Year’s revelers. It would be a bit of a relief to get back to the houseboat.
When the train had returned us to the high school and we loaded back into Miss Gloria’s car, I asked Nathan’s mother, “How did you like it? The only thing you didn’t really get to experience was the boats dressed for the holiday on the Key West Bight. Maybe we can do that tomorrow. Snag a beer and some steamed shrimp for happy hour?”
I did a mental forehead thunk. Did she look like the kind of woman who’d want to snag a beer?
Before Mrs. Bransford could respond to that suggestion, Miss Gloria tapped me on the shoulder. “Would you mind terribly taking us down Olivia Street again? The house with the Santa drinking display. He drove too fast as we went by.”
“Of course not,” I said firing up the motor of the old Buick. Though it struck me as odd that she would select that home as the one set of decorations she wanted our guest to see again. And I was a little worried about my shrimp stew. But it wasn’t far out of the way, and for now, I wasn’t going to argue with any request from my passengers. No matter how peculiar.
“This is such a sweet neighborhood,” Miss Gloria explained. “It’s very close to the cemetery, so the neighbors aren’t rowdy.” She giggled. No matter how many times she told that joke, she always thought it was funny. “If Hayley and I didn’t live on Houseboat Row, we’d probably choose something here instead. Maybe a sweet little two-family or a conch house with a guest cottage in back where an old lady could live out her golden years?”
“If that’s what you want, you know Nathan and I will do it,” I said, glancing at her grinning face in the rearview mirror. Though I was pretty sure she’d leave the houseboat only under the direst circumstances.
I parked the car in a residential spot a block from the Santa house, as Miss Gloria said she wanted to get out in order to see the details of the display up close this time. We made our way along the narrow sidewalk to the house in question. My foot slipped a little, and I noticed I’d stepped on a necklace made of blue beads. We were a little bead-crazy in this town, especially around Fantasy Fest and the holiday parades. I reached down to pick the necklace up so no one else would slide on the glass beads and stuffed it into my pocket.
As Mrs. Bransford approached the porch ahead of me, the tinny music pouring out of a boom box on the porch got louder. “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus”—over and over and over. The neighbors must be ready to wring someone’s neck.
“There’s a lot more drinking on this island than is good for anybody,” Miss Gloria said. “Everyone makes jokes about it, and we have barhopping crawls where the object is to get stinking drunk, and too many establishments are open until four AM. I went on a ride-along with a police officer last year, and trust me, all the worst behavior happens after midnight. But it isn’t healthy, and we know it. Hayley and I are careful about how much we drink, especially with a police officer living in our home.”
I snickered.
She waved at the palmettos separating this property from its next-door neighbor. “While you admire the lights, I’m going to take a quick look around,” she said as she veered into the brush.
Nathan’s mother forged ahead of us, stopping only feet from the steps leading to the porch. She crouched down as though examining the display more clearly.
“This may seem strange to you,” my mother-in-law said, pausing to look over her shoulder, “but I’ve got a bad sense that something is very wrong on that porch. And I’ve learned to pay attention when that little voice speaks.”
I studied her profile with renewed interest. Finally something else we had in common aside from adoring Nathan: premonitions.
“I don’t think that’s a fake Santa,” she said in a voice tight with tension and fear. “I think it’s a body.”
Chapter Six
Remember, it is never the knife’s fault.
—Daniel Boulud
I moved a little closer and crouched next to her so I could see what she was seeing. The Santa wig on the figure had been pushed askew so that a few locks of blonde hair escaped. A woman, I thought. She had a bluish hue to her skin—the part that wasn’t covered by the pelt of fake white hair and moustache and beard. I crept up the steps. I knew enough not to move her, but I held my palm above her mouth and nose, and could detect no sign of breath. Next I put my fingers on her wrist. No pulse. And her skin felt cool to the touch. Then I felt for a pulse in her neck, as sometimes the heartbeat was stronger there and easier to detect than in the wrist. Nothing. As I pulled my hand back, I noticed a faint line of bruises around her throat. I sank back onto my haunches, hands over my eyes, trying to control a wash of nausea.
“From the looks of it, I’m afraid she’s dead.” I stumbled back down the porch stairs and texted Nathan with an urgent request to meet us on Olivia Street, then dialed 911 for good measure. The dispatcher took my information and asked me to stay on the line.
While we waited for the police to arrive, Mrs. Bransford paced up and down the short sidewalk to the porch and then back to the street. She did not speak, but she looked distressed. In the distance, I heard the shrill moan of sirens careening toward an emergency. Miss Gloria had crawled into the bushes surrounding the house next door. Then, from a distance, I saw her drop to her knees, and I feared she would be sick. It was hard to chance across the horror of a dead body at any age, but maybe especially hers—on the back side of eighty.
“Miss G, are you okay?” I called out.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice muffled by the foliage, waving a hand behind her back.
The two blocks around us filled with police cars, blue and red lights flashing. The tall officer with the shaved head who had given me a traffic citation emerged from the first vehicle. His eyebrows peaked when he recognized me. No telling whether Nathan had spoken to him about giving me a ticket or what he might have heard about me through the blue grapevine.
“We had a call about a possible death?” he asked brusquely.
“Right over here,” I said, g
esturing that he should follow me to the porch. “I couldn’t find a pulse, and then I noticed her neck … I’m Nathan Bransford’s wife, Hayley Snow, and this is his mother, Mrs. Bransford.” Which sounded ridiculous, but it was the only thing I had called her so far. “Miss Gloria is—” I spun around and saw her scramble on hands and knees through the greenery toward the crawlspace under the porch next door.
“Please stand back, all of you,” the officer said. “Don’t go any closer.” He strode up to the porch and crouched down to look at the Santa exactly as we had done. An ambulance hurtled up the block, stopping directly in front of the house, followed by Nathan’s SUV. The men tumbled out of the vehicles and made a beeline for us. Nathan came to me first, gaze lasering on my face even as he hugged me, then his mother. “Where’s Miss Gloria?” he asked.
I pointed to her hindquarters sticking out of the bushes.
He clapped a hand to his forehead, as if he couldn’t quite believe the scene. He sucked in a deep breath and muttered, “What in the name of god is going on here?”
I repeated the same few facts I’d told the first officer on the scene. Before I could explain anything more, the EMTs advanced up the sidewalk toward the officer guarding the perimeter of what appeared to be a crime scene now. “What’s the situation?” one of them called back to Nathan. He summarized the little he knew: that the three of us had been on the Christmas Conch Train Tour and had returned to see this display up close, only to discover what appeared to be a body.
“We couldn’t find a pulse, nor any sign of breathing,” I added. “And the skin on her wrist felt very cool. And then her neck appeared bruised …” I rubbed my fingers together, wishing I hadn’t touched her at all. “We didn’t try CPR. Maybe I should have.” My breath hitched; it would feel so awful to have had an opportunity to save someone’s life and failed to even try. Though my Spidey sense told me that she had been dead for a while.
Nathan circled his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. It wasn’t a new thing for me to feel hyper-responsible when something terrible happened. This was something he loved about me, but hated as well.
“Let it go, Hayley,” he said. “It’s our job now.”
I nodded, and wiped away a tear that had leaked from my eye.
“Go around to the back of the property, knock on the door, and make sure there isn’t anyone else at home,” he told two of the officers.
I wished I had thought of checking inside the home earlier, as I could only imagine how awful it would feel to watch this unfolding from inside. Or perhaps they’d been watching TV and hadn’t heard anything. Though the arrival of the cops had been noisy—but then so was the music on the porch. Or had the killer escaped inside before we arrived? How long had it been since this Christmas tableau had morphed into a murder scene?
“While they sort things out here, let’s go back to the beginning,” Nathan said, beckoning his mother and me off the sidewalk. “If you don’t mind waiting, Mother, I’ll talk to Hayley first?” She nodded, and we took a few steps away so he could question me privately. “What exactly led up to this? Are you all right? You’re shivering.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, knowing he needed to concentrate on what was happening here, not on his wife. “It’s just the shock, you know? We went on the train ride to see the lights as planned,” I said. “After a snack, of course.” I couldn’t resist leaning forward to whisper, “Though your mother doesn’t eat much, does she?” From the look on his face, I could see he felt I was distracted from transmitting the important information he needed. Which tended to happen when I was upset. Tell him the story, Hayley.
“So then Miss Gloria asked if we could drive back around. So we came over to look at this set of decorations again.” I gestured to his mother. “I’ll let her tell you what she noticed.”
He nodded curtly, and we moved closer to her so he could switch his attention to his mom. “Tell me what you saw, please, Mother.”
“I’m not sure I would have noticed if Miss Gloria hadn’t requested a second look, but once we got here, it was clear that this figure did not look like the blow-up dolls we’ve been seeing around town.” Her nostrils flared a little, which I guessed meant she didn’t care much for that style. “This Santa was lying very, very still. And kind of deflated. Maybe I noticed the blonde hair too? And maybe it was the way the hand was splayed open and draped off the step. It did not look like a stuffed figure, nor did it resemble the way a real live person would have been lying.”
I couldn’t help butting in. “And it doesn’t really make sense that it would be a living person anyway, because how would they know who was coming by and when? It’s not like the homes in New Town that get a ton of traffic and so they sit out on their lawns and drink cocktails and wave. This place is out of the way—I suspect none of the other Conch Train drivers made this detour.” Could our driver have been involved somehow?” That seemed like a random and silly idea. “Anyway, would any person in her right mind lie on the porch acting drunk all night, just in case? Probably not. Though I suppose anything’s possible in Key West.”
They both turned to look at me as though I was losing my marbles. And I was a little, to be honest. This wasn’t the first body I’d come across not long after a murder had been committed. And the pattern had quite naturally left me spooked. Maybe this time the body wouldn’t turn out to be a crime-related death; maybe it was a simple case of too much fun. Or someone falling and hitting her head, which would mean the bruises on her neck were incidental. Even though those possibilities would feel awful too, it wouldn’t be the same as someone’s life getting snuffed out in a violent way.
In the background, I overheard the tall cop report that no one else was at home, and then the EMTs’ estimation that the person on the porch was deceased.
Nathan sprang into action, directing the uniformed cops who’d first arrived on the scene. “We need to secure the perimeter. And take names and contact information of prospective witnesses.” Nathan jutted his chin at the small crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk. “How long have they been here? Addresses? Connection with this resident and so on. And call the medical examiner and our photographer on duty. Meanwhile, let’s get some photos with your phone,” he told the bald cop. He bustled around the home, barking orders at the other cops and pushing the onlookers who’d gathered back onto the sidewalk. Finally he returned to us.
“Maybe she had a heart attack, end of story?” I asked hopefully. Though why in the world would this person be lying on the porch in a Santa suit if she was feeling peaked?
“Maybe.” He beckoned me forward. “Hayley,” Nathan said, “if you can handle looking again, could you say whether you recognize this person?”
My stomach lurched and I swallowed, trying to lubricate my very dry mouth and throat. “It’s hard to tell; between the wig and the beard and the fake stomach, she looks like everyone and no one. Is it possible to move a little closer?”
Nathan nodded. “Be careful. No closer than the bottom step. Obviously we don’t want to move or touch anything before the coroner gets a look.” He squeezed my hand and then let it go, and I crept forward and stopped at the edge of the porch to study the woman’s face. Maybe she looked familiar, but she wasn’t someone I knew well enough to identify. I shook my head at Nathan and backed away. “I’m so sorry. I can’t say for sure.”
Nathan went over to talk to the neighbors gathered at the bottom of the sidewalk on the other side of the police tape. “Do any of you know who lives here?”
A gangly man in a red T-shirt answered. “I live across the street. Her name is Claudette Parker. She moved in back in October. She keeps odd hours, so we haven’t gotten the chance to know her.”
A woman piped up. “I think she owns the new bakery on Greene Street. Over by the bight? She makes a key lime pastry that’s to die for. Really, it blows the rest of the bakeries in town out of the water.”
I gulped. Even as we spoke, that same key lime napoleon from Au C
itron Vert was sitting in my refrigerator with the other slices of key lime pie. It wasn’t quite fair to compare puff pastry to a piece of pie, but since the owner of this new bakery refused to make a pie and yet had garnered an avalanche of reviews on the various foodie websites in town, I felt I couldn’t ignore it.
Now I knew where I’d seen her face: only yesterday I’d seen her slam a wet pie into David Sloan’s face when he dismissed her from his contest. If this person had been the author of that gorgeous flaky confection, she would never be making another. I was flooded with sadness. I glanced at Mrs. Bransford, noticing that the blood seemed to have drained from her face. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She shook off my concern, holding both hands up and taking a step away. “Fine.”
Miss Gloria approached the sidewalk where I stood with Nathan’s mother, watching Nathan interview the bystanders. She was carrying an orange tiger kitten with white paws, one of them half white, half orange like a frosted half-and-half cookie. Even though Miss Gloria crooned sweet kitty nothings to him, he seemed terrified, ready to bolt the instant she loosened her grip. He mouthed a silent meow.
“That’s T-Bone,” the chatty neighbor said. “I’m surprised you were able to lure him out of the shrubbery. He’s a little skittish with strangers.”
“Soft kitty, warm kitty …” sang Miss Gloria. He snuggled lower into her arms and I was pretty sure I heard him begin to purr, exactly like the kitten in the song.
“We’ve seen a lot more of him than we’ve seen of his owner lately,” the neighbor woman said. “I live next door. I’m not sure she was feeding him regularly. He was over on my porch most mornings. I admit I gave him some snacks. He was probably lonely, too—he’s so tiny. But I couldn’t take him in; my big guy would tear him to bits.”
She held her arms out for the kitten. “I volunteer for the Florida Keys SPCA, so I’ll call someone to pick him up. I can check on him tomorrow during my shift.”
Miss Gloria looked near tears, but we had about all the living things we could handle on our little houseboat. Adding a kitten would push us deep into the red zone of crazy pet people. She handed the tiger kitten over, and I circled my arm around her waist. “It’ll be easy to find that guy a good home—he’s wicked cute.”
The Key Lime Crime Page 4