—Ivan Orkin, Ramen
On the way out to the SPCA, I described Stock Island points of interest to Nathan’s mom—the botanical gardens, the golf course, the low spot where the old SPCA building stood, and the road leading to the overnight homeless shelter facility and the sheriff’s department.
“Homeless folks are a problem in this town,” Miss Gloria told her. “There are tons of them and they aren’t going away anytime soon. Lots of residents and the visiting tourists don’t want to face that ugly truth.” She paused, nibbling a fingernail. “I can’t get angry with these people, though. Wouldn’t you want to come to a place like this too if you had no home?”
Mrs. Bransford shrugged. “I suppose. I hadn’t given it much thought.”
“It causes extra complications for the police department, too,” I said. “They spend a lot of time answering calls from businesses about loitering, and taking drunken people to jail.”
After we passed the decrepit building that had housed the previous iteration of the SPCA, I explained that the entire operation had moved up the road to a brand-new facility with lots more space. “And when the next hurricane comes, they can shelter right in place instead of evacuating all the traumatized animals up to the mainland. We’d like to think there won’t be another storm like Irma, but with climate change and sea level rise, it seems inevitable.”
We pulled into the parking lot of the SPCA, Miss Gloria vibrating with excitement and worry. “What if someone else snatched him before we got here?”
“If he’s already taken, then maybe it wasn’t meant to be,” I said. “One thing for sure on this island, there’s always another cat who needs a home.”
Miss Gloria did not look convinced. She hurried ahead of us into the shelter’s office and rushed to the counter to explain how she’d fallen for the orange kitten the day previous. The man behind the desk stood up and called for a volunteer to usher us into the cat quarters. “We’ll see if he’s still available.”
“I’ll wait for you here,” said Nathan’s mother. “I’m not really a cat person.” She settled into the waiting area while Miss Gloria and I went back toward the cat rooms to look at the orange tiger kitten. When a volunteer came to meet us, wearing a roomy Florida Keys SPCA T-shirt, I wasn’t surprised to recognize Cheryl, the murdered woman’s next-door neighbor.
“Any news about what happened to Claudette?” she asked.
“Not that they’ve told us,” Miss Gloria said. “And you?”
“Not a word,” Cheryl said, and then introduced us to several cats in cages who were sick or so new that they were not able to mingle with the crowd.
“You can’t imagine what a relief it is to be here in the new facility,” she said. “Even the cats seem like they’re breathing better. And sleeping better, too. And they’ve been flying out of here. I bet we’ve had a record number of adoptions. Now there’s room enough for each little furry personality to shine.”
We walked past a gray cat in a cage whom she called Saucy. “She’s very sweet and wants a furever family badly, but she doesn’t do well with other cats.” She looked back at us, as if assessing our interest. “She’d make a perfect friend in a one-cat home.”
We shrugged and smirked at each other, starting to crack up a little. “We already have two. And a dog. And three more shelter animals live only ten feet away on the next boat. So I don’t think Saucy would thrive with us.”
“We’re especially interested in that orange tiger kitten you brought in last night,” said Miss Gloria.
She turned to look at us. “You and half the island, apparently. His name is T-Bone, and he’s got a lot of heat around him. That’s cat-shelter speak for ‘he’s hot.’ We can go visit him, but I’ll have to check and see how many applications are ahead of yours.”
Miss Gloria’s shoulders drooped, and I put my arm around her and squeezed. I couldn’t help thinking that it would be for the better if T-Bone had found a home elsewhere. We had an awful lot of chaos in our little quadrant of paradise already. And despite her early grieving over Nathan and me moving out, I’d seen enough construction glitches that I wouldn’t count on that happening anytime soon.
Cheryl brought us into the kitten room, where T-Bone was busy wrestling with a gray tiger she identified as Ramp. “I’ll leave you here to get acquainted while I go check on his status.”
“I don’t see how anyone comes in here without going home with a cat,” I said, as we both settled onto the linoleum floor. “It’s just too hard to see them all locked up.”
“They’re better off in here than out on the street most times,” said Miss Gloria. She extracted toys from the bulging pockets of her sweat pants and brought a few more out of her bag, then began trailing a stuffed pink shrimp on a stick in front of the kittens. They took turns pouncing and rabbit-kicking the little felt toy. After a few minutes of play, Miss Gloria was able to coax the orange tiger onto her lap, where he settled into a ball of purring fluff.
Cheryl came back into the room. “I’m sorry to say he already has an application on him,” she said. “And someone else in line in case that one falls through.”
Miss Gloria looked as though she might burst into tears. “Could you put me in line after that?” she asked. “The thing is, since I found him in the bushes last night after his owner was killed … Well, it sounds silly, but we bonded. I have a feeling we are meant for each other.”
“We could play with some of the other cats,” I suggested. “That little Ramp is super-cute too.”
But she shook her head. “I’m ready to go.” She put the tiger kitten down and got back to her feet. In the office, she filled out the paperwork in case the other prospective owners should fall through.
Mrs. Bransford was waiting, scrolling through email on her iPhone. She looked up. “All set?”
“No,” said Miss Gloria with a quivering lip. “Someone else got to him first.”
The man at the desk said, “I’m sorry about that. After word got out that we had a new kitten who’d belonged to the murdered woman, he became something of a Facebook sensation. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”
We returned to the car, and Miss Gloria insisted on riding in the back seat. I couldn’t think of a thing to say to cheer her up. She had had her heart set on that guy, end of story. I suspected it had something to do with death, perhaps a message from her unconscious about choosing life. Some of Miss Gloria’s acquaintances were making the decision not to get another pet because the animal might outlive them, and who would take care of it after they were gone? Not my friend. She always expected people would rise to an occasion of need. And besides, she didn’t believe her time on this earth was anywhere near its natural end. She would anticipate at least one cat’s lifetime ahead of her, if not two.
Or maybe she couldn’t help herself from helping the downtrodden and unloved; she’d been so welcoming to me when I was a stray. I glanced in the rearview mirror—she was fast asleep, her chin resting on her chest, a tiny bead of drool in the corner of her lips.
I glanced over at my mother-in-law and grinned. “She’s a treasure, isn’t she? I’ll drop you off at my mother’s place so you can freshen up and maybe even take a rest before dinner? You’ve been such a good sport.”
Mrs. Bransford grimaced. “While you were looking at cats, I had the opportunity to talk with the dead woman’s next-door neighbor who was coming on board for her shift. You know, the young woman who took the yellow kitten from Miss Gloria yesterday?”
“You mean Cheryl?”
She nodded.
I was so surprised that I nearly ran through the red light on Truman next to St. Mary’s. All I needed was another traffic citation with Nathan’s mother in the car. She must have waylaid Cheryl while Miss Gloria and I were playing with the kittens. I was beginning to seriously wonder why she was so interested in this case. And to be honest, I was completely astonished by her curiosity.
“I’d love to hear what you learned,” I said.
“I believe that’s right,” I said. “Seems to me the first I’d heard of her was when I read a small article in the Citizen back in September about how they were working on the shop with plans to open in November. Everyone knows there’s no point in opening anything in September—still hurricane season. It’s probably the emptiest month of the year on our island. And October is iffy too; you’ve got the ongoing threat of physical hurricanes, but also Fantasy Fest, a hurricane of a different sort.”
And that thought sent me off on a different tangent altogether, which was to be grateful Nathan’s mother wasn’t visiting during that festival when our streets were chockablock with naked painted people. Many of them who might be better off wearing clothing, though that was a value judgment I knew I shouldn’t make. Bodies of every shape and size were beautiful creations of the Universe—that’s what Miss Gloria would have said.
“So is it reasonable to assume she made an enemy that deadly within the span of two months? Doesn’t that seem unlikely?” Mrs. Bransford asked.
“I suppose,” I said. “What did the neighbor tell you?”
“She didn’t have a lot of time to chat,” said Nathan’s mother. “I asked her if she’d seen a lot of comings and goings from Claudette’s house. She invited us over for coffee tomorrow, and I accepted the offer. I had the sense she would tell us everything if we were willing to drink her coffee and maybe nibble on stale pastry. Assuming we can fit that in and you can lower your standards. Though maybe I read her wrong on what she’ll serve—my bad for assuming it won’t be delicious.”
I stared at her, my mouth agape, until the driver behind us leaned on his horn. “Of course, it’s your visit. We’re happy to do whatever you wish.”
I saw Miss Gloria shake herself awake in the back seat. “Where are we? What’s happening?”
“Dropping our guest off.” I smiled in the mirror as I drove by the Southard Street guard shack at the entrance to the Truman Annex and stopped in front of my mother’s house. “I think the plan is to meet at the restaurant at seven. Mom and Sam will bring you,” I told my mother-in-law.
I watched her walk up the steps to the porch and disappear into the house. Perfectly straight posture and not a hair out of place, exactly as she’d looked this morning. I had to wonder if I’d ever feel as though I really knew her. Or she me.
Chapter Twelve
It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it …
—M.F.K. Fisher, Consider the Oyster
Back on the houseboat, I spent the remainder of the afternoon desperately working on my articles for Key Zest, intent on getting most of the work done before meeting the gang at Oasis at seven. But it wasn’t that easy to pick apart so many good key lime pies. I couldn’t get away with saying there are no bad pies on the island, because of course there were restaurants that imported desserts from distributors on the mainland. In those cases, you were going to get what you paid for—it probably wouldn’t be fresh, and it certainly wouldn’t be homemade.
And people had different threshold tests related to which pies they loved most—meringue versus whipped cream, for example. Butter-and-flour versus graham cracker versus chocolate wafer crusts. But was a towering pile of meringue better in an existential way than a fleurette of freshly whipped cream? As I wrote, I was forced to return several times to the refrigerator for a follow-up taste of one pie or another.
And all the while that I sorted through my notes and my photos, the comment Nathan’s mother had made to me about the murder victim circled in my brain. You assume this happened because of something going on in your small food world. But she had a whole other life, both personal and whatever came before Key West. It might not pay to think that small.
I tried to concentrate on my work, but questions about the circumstances of the murder kept intruding. Did the killer have something against Christmas? Or Santa? Or had the murderer wanted the victim found in a certain way to send someone a message? Or had it been a spur-of-the-moment attack? Why, then, had she been dressed that way?
More questions rushed into my mind. How many Conch Trains had driven by that house on the night Mrs. Bransford noticed the dead woman? What time did it get dark? Early these days. So there had been time, at least a couple of hours, for the murder to occur before our train chugged by. I tried to remember exactly what our Conch Train driver had told us. That home on Olivia Street was his particular favorite. But it didn’t strike me as the kind of display most people would enjoy or go out of their way to see. Except for a quick laugh or an Instagram post. In fact, it fell on the tacky end of the decoration continuum. And I remembered feeling a little surprised that the city allowed the Conch Trains to drive through a quiet residential neighborhood. Did our conductor have a particular connection to that area? Or to the residents of that home? It might be worth a call. Better yet, a visit.
I thought about what the woman at the SPCA had said about the kitten called T-Bone. There’s a lot of heat around that cat.
This seemed to have been true for the dead woman as well. She’d blasted into town with a lot of heat and forced other chefs and restaurants to up their games. Her light and flaky key lime pastries did not live in the same universe as many desserts in town. Could it be that someone felt so annoyed or enraged that they felt they had to kill her? It seemed crazy, but crazy things happened. I began to reread the newspaper article that had come out about her earlier this fall.
Connie trudged up the dock from the parking lot, her baby on her back in a carrier. They both looked exhausted. She had started working again, managing the cleaning service she had launched years ago. She’d been kind enough to let me work for her back when my old beau Chad Lutz had kicked me out not long after I moved to Key West.
“Long day?” I asked. “You girls look pooped.”
She smiled and patted the baby’s hand. “We’ll be better when we get a little dinner into us.” She held up a fragrant package. “Since you’re busy this week and not turning out fabulous feasts and sending the spillover to needy neighbors, I turned to takeout at Fausto’s. How’s it going with your mother-in-law?”
“She’s not really what I expected. I’d say she’s very strong-willed and up for anything. And she has strong opinions about everything except food and doesn’t hold them back.” I told her about finding the body, and about ripping around town talking to pastry shop people, and then about the trip to the SPCA. “We’re packing a lot in, and that’s an understatement. And we’re not visiting the usual tourist destinations, that’s for sure.”
I realized Connie would be curious to meet her, and that it might be rude not to have a party to introduce her to our neighbors and friends. But the idea of organizing and cooking for a gathering felt a bit overwhelming. And I had the rest of Sloan’s key lime pie event to attend and write up. Besides that, the truth was, I had no idea how long she was staying. In fact, I had mentioned that issue in an exploratory way several times with no response. It would be really rude to keep on pushing. Especially since she wasn’t staying at our home. And especially since Nathan had barely visited with his own mother.
“I’d love to have you meet her, but we’re playing it by ear. It’s too bad she chose to come during what could be the busiest season in Nathan’s career.”
“Not to worry,” said Connie. “Let’s see what works out. You’ll see when you have a baby that there isn’t a lot of planning that goes on anyway.” She laughed. “Have a good nig
ht.”
I returned to reading, remembering that Claudette had gone to the same culinary institute my friend Jennifer Cornell had attended. Was it possible the two had overlapped? Like the pastry chef/owner of Old Town Bakery, Claudette had spent a few years training in France. I wondered now whether she had even changed her name to sound more French.
Miss Gloria wandered out onto the deck where I was sitting with the animals. She was wearing a pink sweat suit with Why the hell not? written on it in rhinestone-studded script. “Aren’t you chilly?” she asked. “Are you going to change for dinner?”
I glanced at the clock on my phone. I hadn’t realized how much time had passed. Our fairy lights were shimmering in the gloaming, and I imagined I could hear the happy sounds of supper being started in the boats nearest us—pans clashing on burners, soup spoons stirring, vegetables sizzling as they hit hot oil. My favorite time of day.
I saved my work and stood up, shaking Evinrude loose from the wrap I’d draped over my legs. “I do need to put on something warmer. On another subject,” I said to Miss Gloria, pausing at the door to our houseboat, “what was up with the Santa suit on the dead woman? Was she already wearing it when she was killed? From what our train driver said, it seemed as though that decoration was on the porch every night. Surely someone wasn’t lying there pretending to be a drunk Santa each of those nights. There had to be a blow-up doll or some kind of other figurine in the house that she used other nights. And when you think of it, from what little I know about Claudette, I wouldn’t have pegged her as a tacky-Christmas-display kind of person.”
“You think of things no one else would ever come up with,” said Miss Gloria with a snicker.
Mrs. Renhart, our next-door neighbor, hopped off her boat onto the dock carrying her elderly Schnauzer, Schnootie. We called out hello.
She settled the elderly dog on the decking, where he shook himself, almost falling over. “Did you notice that the lamp by our place is out again? It’s been winking on and off for days.” She pointed at the streetlight, which was dark. “I suppose I should call the office tomorrow. At least tonight I’ll be able to sleep without that blasted thing blinking through my blinds.”
The Key Lime Crime Page 8