“Wow.” I leaned back in my rocker, feeling as though I’d been socked in the jaw. If I hadn’t been so tired and so frightened by the break-in and worn out by pretending I wasn’t feeling any of that, I could have made his comment into a joke. Lightened things up. Saved the moment. But I was feeling all of that, and I lashed back before I could stop myself.
“So someone trashes our home, and now it’s my fault?”
Miss Gloria started. “I bet he didn’t mean it that way …”
“That’s not what I meant at all.” Nathan took a big gulp of air and let it out slowly. “When something happens to you and Miss Gloria, I have to consider the possibility that somebody’s coming after me, but choosing to get at me through you.”
He choked up a little and tapped on his chest with his fist. “You know how much I love you, right? Both of you. And so that thought makes me heartsick.” He sank onto a lounge chair, dropping his head in his hands. Then he looked up at me. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this. We’ve got the best minds in the department figuring out what happened. I’m probably overreacting and it was some crazy kids.”
But he didn’t believe that, I was sure. Nor did they have enough staff to focus on one break-in where nothing was taken. Right in the middle of the New Year’s insanity.
Finally the other cops cleared out, leaving a familiar stillness in the air. I collapsed into bed right after Miss Gloria, done in by the busy day and the stress of the night.
“I’ll be in soon,” Nathan said. “I’m going to take a shower and catch up on some email.”
He woke me a little later, jostling to make room between Evinrude and me. I snuggled up against him, glad for his warmth, preparing to drift off. But beside me, his body felt stiff as a board, every muscle knotted.
“You’re not going to be able to sleep, are you?” I asked softly, rubbing my hand over his chest.
“Probably not.”
“Can I help? Want to talk about it?”
He turned to face me, his lips only inches from mine. “Tell me everywhere you went today. Everyone you talked to. Everything you said.”
I sighed a big sigh, but I could see I owed him this. And if it solved the problem of our break-in, it would be well worth an hour of sleep. So I went through each of the pastry stops, detailing as much as I could remember of whom we’d spoken with and what questions we’d asked. And finally I described the trip to the SPCA to check on the orange kitten.
As I talked, I could see nothing that might be tied directly to the destruction on our houseboat.
“Do you know any of those people?” I asked. “Do any of the chefs have a criminal history?”
Nathan shook his head. “Not that I’m aware. I’ll have to get the names from you tomorrow and run them through our system—maybe I issued a citation or slapped someone in the Stock Island jail for a drug bust. You never know who’s going to react badly to what when the police are involved. And grudges can last a long time.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like your officer who scared me to death the other day and slammed me with a ticket. I won’t forget that anytime soon. Though I wouldn’t trash his house and scare his wife, no matter how upset I was.”
“Thank goodness for that,” he said, and kissed me on the nose.
He drifted off to sleep finally, and I tried to follow, but the names of the people we’d visited kept circling through my head. Nothing really made sense—we hadn’t figured a damn thing out about the murder. On the other hand, apparently we’d stirred up a lot of potential hornets’ nests.
Chapter Fifteen
My mother’s interest in food was strictly academic.
—Ruth Reichl, Save Me the Plums
When I woke the next morning, feeling a bit logy from the cream and sugar overload of yesterday’s pie tastings and sick about the break-in, Nathan had already left for work. And Miss Gloria was off on her morning walk with Ziggy. I zipped through my email and social media postings, and found that Nathan’s mother had already sent me a text message. She was up and ready for the day. Waiting for me to let her know when we’d be picking her up. Sigh. I could not figure her out. She didn’t seem wild about me, but on the other hand, she wanted to tag along on every stop I made.
My mother had texted too. Try not to freak out about your mother-in-law, she’d said. She knows we’re all in the middle of our busy lives, and either she will go along with you on your errands or maybe she will want to sit out on your deck and enjoy the peace and quirkiness of your neighborhood. It’s too darn boring for her to stay here in the Truman Annex.
If they only knew how un-peaceful our houseboat neighborhood truly was.
I took a quick shower, downed a cup of coffee, and drove down the island to my mother’s house. The traffic was even worse than yesterday—the closer we got to New Year’s Eve, the greater the number of partying guests who wedged themselves onto the island. After nearly flattening a family who had stopped in the middle of Southard Street on their bicycles, helmetless, to take photos of a panicked black hen and her six cheeping chicks, I felt I needed more coffee—hot and high-test this time.
I pulled off the street next to the vegetarian café and dashed across the short alley leading to the Cuban Coffee Queen. I lurched to a halt when I saw the length of the line, starting at the counter and snaking through the picnic tables out to the sidewalk. Most of the people in the line were studying the enormous menus posted outside the open-air seating section and above the counter. Probably first-time holiday visitors. Their turn to order would arrive and they would have a million questions and no idea what they wanted. What are plantains? And what flavor is mojo? What’s the difference between café con leche and café cortadito? This would take forever. But my barista friend Eric, who waited on me most days and loved to talk politics, both national and local, spotted me and waved me to the pickup counter on the side near the empanada case.
“I’ve got you covered,” he said.
“You’re a lifesaver,” I said, blowing him a kiss and dropping five dollars into their tip jar. Within minutes, he handed me a large café con leche. “Thanks a million. If I had to face my mother-in-law without espresso, there’s no telling what might happen. Good luck with your day.” I tipped my head at the tourists and grinned.
Back on the street, I tucked the coffee into my scooter’s cup holder and drove the short distance to my mother’s home. Mrs. Bransford was pacing on the back deck, a white mug of coffee in hand, coffee cake and a bowl of cut-up fruit waiting on the table.
“Good morning,” she said. “Your mother and Sam have gone to their industrial kitchen to do some prep work for an event tomorrow. But he insisted on making breakfast—they said you can’t resist this cake.” She gestured at the food, and the second place set beside her. We both sat.
I noticed she had a plate in front of her—she must have already eaten.
“They know me well.” I snickered. “This is my great-aunt Alvina’s famous recipe. One of my mother’s ancestors, of course. All the foodie stuff got passed down from that side of the family. We had to do some tweaking to bring it up to modern standards so today’s cooks could understand the directions. As written, it listed things like ‘Add milk until the dough runs off the spoon’ and ‘Bake in a hot oven.’ Who the heck knows what those really mean? But it’s basically flour, two kinds of sugar, a little cinnamon, a little baking powder, eggs, milk, and a ton of butter.” I stopped nattering and grinned.
She didn’t appear very interested, maybe already glazing over from too much food information. Eat, Hayley, I told myself. At least you won’t say something idiotic while you’re chewing.
Though I’d sworn off fats and sugar this morning, I cut a small piece and loaded the rest of my plate with healthy fruit. I hated for her to think I was a glutton. But after I’d finished the fruit, I was still hungry. She was quiet, watching me eat, and that made me more nervous. What in the world was she thinking? And the moist cake topp
ed with cinnamon-butter-sugar crumbles was irresistible. I cut myself a second piece, this one bigger, and proceeded to chow down.
“How did you sleep?” she finally asked.
I suspected I looked exactly as bleary-eyed as I felt. “Not that well. We had a little problem on the pier after you left us last night.” I described the mess made in the houseboat, how frightened we’d been (although I played this down), and Nathan’s distress. She didn’t say anything, but I could see her jaw tensing as I talked.
“Have they caught the perpetrator?”
I shook my head. “Bottom line, Nathan’s worried about the possibility of the break-in being connected to him. His old cases are always popping up in one way or another, or so he says.”
“Did he think this was related to the body we found the other night?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t say that. But he wants to keep us all safe, so he insisted I stay away from questioning anyone who could in any way be involved with that woman’s death. He was very clear about that. And I think he’s right to be worried.”
“I think he is, too,” she said, “but there are some things you don’t understand.” She uncrossed and recrossed her legs and took a sip of the coffee in front of her. “First of all, please call me Helen.”
I felt my face flood with heat, and I began to stammer. “Of course, I’m so sorry, I’m an idiot. I know we should have straightened that out when we first met. I’ve never had a mother-in-law and I didn’t know quite how to handle that.”
As my face reddened, I realized I was terrified of this woman. Terrified of not being found good enough for Nathan, and terrified of being frozen out of her family—because that would have an effect on him, wouldn’t it? What if Mrs. Bransford—Helen—never cared for me? My own mother had certainly warmed up to Nathan, though to be honest, perhaps she wouldn’t have chosen him as my soul mate. She didn’t like the police business any more than Nathan’s mother did. Too dangerous, too risky, too many terrible things that could happen while he was protecting our little island paradise.
“Please don’t worry about it. This all takes a little getting used to, doesn’t it?” She pointed to herself and then to me.
I nodded, relieved that we had moved that awkwardness out from the dark recesses and onto the table. Though I still didn’t have the nerve to ask how she felt about Nathan’s first wife. Or to bring up the fact that she hadn’t attended our wedding.
“One thing I’ve been thinking,” Helen said, “we shouldn’t get distracted by the Santa costume. One person did this, one person with either a lot of rage in his heart, or nothing in his heart at all.”
She rubbed her chin and pushed a piece of pineapple around her dish with her fork. I registered too late that the only thing on her plate aside from the one piece of fruit was the shell of a lone hard-boiled egg. There were no telltale crumbs anywhere. She hadn’t eaten any of the coffee cake. I had eaten enough for both of us.
“If we are to have a chance of solving this case,” she said, “we should split the possible suspects up. You and Miss Gloria take some and I’ll take the others.”
“Nathan would kill me. And with good reason. No disrespect,” I said, “but he specifically told me to butt out.” I sighed. “I don’t know if he shared this with you, but Miss Gloria is over eighty. She’s lived through two attacks in the past few years. If you could have seen her face last night when we realized someone had broken into the houseboat. Again. She was devastated. And terrified. She acts brave, but it’s so frightening to have someone push into your private space. And I couldn’t bear it if I thought I had done something to bring this hostility on.”
She said nothing, but got up and paced to the edge of the porch.
I glanced around at my mother’s deck, the large potted plants, containers bursting with rosemary and basil and mint, the inviting deck chairs with thick striped cushions. Through the foliage shading the house from the Truman Waterfront Park, I could see a sliver of a view of the harbor and the hulking gray metal USCGC Ingham, a former Coast Guard ship now a maritime museum. It was a warm day, a little breezy, so the palm trees rustled and sighed. A normal visitor would’ve happily settled here on a lounge chair with a novel. Apparently not Nathan’s mother.
“I don’t think you understand,” she said, spinning around to face me. “I know what it’s like to be married to the law. How badly things can go when a good guy puts bad guys away. Sometimes the good guy is punished for doing the right thing. And that isn’t fair to him or especially to his family.”
She twisted her hands in front of her. “My son’s first wife, Trudy, already suffered by being married to Nathan. I can feel”—she put her hand on her heart—“that you understand my Nathan, how dedicated he is to doing what’s right. It’s really hard to love someone in this profession.” Her eyes were glistening with a few tears. “But would you want it any other way?”
The truth was, I wouldn’t. But that didn’t mean I thought we should dash around town investigating. Besides, the day was completely packed. Mostly with interviewing people who might have been involved in the murder. Could we do a little of each? But Nathan had made me promise. That promise had to come first.
“The day is booked, and I hate the idea of splitting up. If you want to go along with me and Miss Gloria, we’d love to have you. But I don’t wish to try to investigate anything.”
She shook her head, ran her fingers over the perfect gray waves of her hair, and sat down again.
“I mentioned last night that Nathan’s father and grandfather were both in law enforcement,” she said. “So I know more about crimes and criminals than any normal person would want to. I did not want my son to go into this business.” She sat up straight and rested both hands on the table. “But he is driven to help the world in this way, and there was simply no diverting him from it. Believe me, I tried.”
“He’s stubborn,” I said, smiling. Boy was he ever.
She nodded. “Even though Nathan’s father no longer lives in my home, I still have access to the law enforcement databases he used.” Her eyebrows lifted. “There’s a good reason the computer experts advise you to change passwords often.”
My eyes widened. She was wily in a way I hadn’t expected.
“And so I follow Nathan’s cases. I am able to track who he puts away, how long their sentences are, and so on. And several of the people he was instrumental in catching and jailing have been released. Bad people. Angry people.”
I could feel the coffee cake settle leaden in my gut, freezing me with terror. This was my worst nightmare, loving and marrying Nathan, and then worrying about losing him to an old grudge or vendetta.
“Then we have to talk to him, convince him to take a vacation. Because of his injuries, we never did manage to get a honeymoon,” I said, feeling a tiny blossom of hope.
“What are the chances that he would listen to me, or even you, about leaving the island for a while until the danger passes?”
I didn’t even have to think about this. This was one of the busiest weeks on the Key West calendar, with tens of thousands of extra visitors jamming the streets and filling bars. He was in charge of a lot. And the break-in felt very personal to him, so he’d be worrying the case like a starving dog with a bone. And he certainly wouldn’t go off with me somewhere and leave Miss Gloria behind. Alone. And the idea of taking her along on a honeymoon made me giggle. Preposterous.
“Slim to none,” I said, and she gave me a glimmer of a smile. I stood up, pushed my chair in, and gathered up the remnants of our breakfast.
“We won’t do anything that might put us in danger, we will simply follow up on the conversations we had yesterday. And then if we learn something new, we will pass it along.” She followed me into the kitchen and watched me rinse the plates and stack them in the dishwasher.
“Do you have any theories? Someone specific you’re concerned about?” I asked, as I covered the coffee cake with one of my mother’s reusable food wraps. “May
be just let Nathan know—”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m afraid I’ve already worried you more than I should have.”
Had this been my own mother, I would have said, Really? It’s a little too late to be acting coy. But it wasn’t my mother, so I kept quiet.
“I think we should do something besides pinging haplessly around the island asking questions,” Mrs. Bransford said.
I must have looked dismayed, because she made a clucking noise with her tongue and waved her fingers.
“It’s not that I’m trying to be critical; it’s that you wouldn’t approach your own work this way.” She paused, looking at me. “How would you plan out the research for an article on key lime pie, for example?”
“Well, I’m always listening for recommendations, whether it’s restaurants in general or particular dishes or pastries. And when someone says they love something—or hate it, for that matter—I make a note of that. And then when I have enough notes, the theme for an article takes shape.”
She was still listening, so I kept talking.
“Sometimes the subjects I pitch to my bosses are merely coincidence or convenience. For example, the other piece I’m writing this week is about casual food. When we heard you were coming unexpectedly, I knew it was going to be hard to make reservations and also that my mother and Sam were extremely busy and so was Nathan, and so am I, for that matter. Since we couldn’t plan on cooking elaborate meals, checking out these places made perfect sense.”
She looked concerned, and I realized I had stumbled into yet one more idiot remark, this one making her feel unwelcome and burdensome. I ignored my hot face and staggered forward to finish my explanation.
“I also know that lots of families and groups visit our town who might not have the kind of budget for thirty- to fifty-dollar entrées. One of my important mantras in this job is to remember that not everyone has the money to eat out at an expensive restaurant. Or not very often, anyway. So when they go somewhere based on my reviews, I want them to find good food, reliably good food. If the dishes in a restaurant taste great, I report that in our magazine. And if the food isn’t very good, I tell that truth, too.”
The Key Lime Crime Page 10