“Excuse me, princesses incoming,” he said, winking as he pivoted away and began mixing drinks at warp speed.
We headed back toward the catering van. “Christopher mentioned that the cost of living has gotten so high that ordinary working people can be driven out by the prices,” Helen said. “Is it possible that someone became unreasonably enraged about that? Someone who saw Claudette as an example of the changes? Or who felt their job and their business were threatened by her success?”
“Yes, possible.” I couldn’t help adding my thoughts about the Key West high season. We were seeing the results of that right here at this wedding. “And some people tend to dread the influx of tourists and visitors—at least the ones who treat the island as though it was their personal playground—and yet we can’t survive without them. When the island is so crowded, as it will be through March, sometimes you have to fight for a restaurant reservation. Or even a seat at the movies. And it took forever for me to even drive here tonight.”
“So who’s been around forever and isn’t thriving? Might that be a good question?” Helen mused.
I thought she had a point. I had been talking all week about who owned Key West: who should own Key West versus who was going to own it, whether that was fair or not. I had been super-lucky when I came down here on the spur of the moment because I’d been able to live with Connie. And I was super-lucky after that, landing Miss Gloria as a roommate. Our living arrangement worked because we enjoyed each other’s company, and I felt like I could do almost as much for her as she did for me.
And then I was lucky a third time, meeting Nathan, the man I’d fallen for, who wanted to stay right here on the island and had the kind of job that could make that happen.
“Although I would think there must also be a specific personal connection to Claudette. And the specifics of the person are most important, like did they wear mala beads? And were they angry or disturbed enough to leave her in that terrible pretend Santa position? Let’s check in with Bee Thistle,” Helen said, and began weaving through guests on the brick pathway where I imagined the ceremony would take place. I hurried to catch up with her.
Bee was manning a second dessert station, attempting to prevent guests from stripping it bare of pie and key lime macaroons before the party had even officially started.
My mother-in-law steamed up to her. “Are you absolutely certain you did not visit Claudette Parker’s neighborhood the night of her murder?” she asked, before I could advise her to approach with caution.
Bee’s eyes got wide, and darted from Helen’s face to mine. She slid out from behind her table, ran toward the Whitehead entrance of the property, and disappeared onto the street.
“That went well,” Helen said. “She obviously saw or even did something. Maybe we should follow her.”
Fortunately, she was distracted from what I thought would be a terrible idea when my mother texted that they were ready to start serving, and could we please ferry the potatoes and salad out to the tables nearest the grill? Be careful, the potatoes are super hot, she’d added. We think there’s something wrong with that warming oven.
I sent another quick message to Nathan about Bee, and we headed to the back of the Hemingway Home, past the little cat cemetery and out the side gate to my mother’s van. I couldn’t keep the vision of the pie that had been thrown in our houseboat from flashing to mind. Even if Bee seemed an unlikely killer, she had to be involved somehow. Otherwise, why would she be so nervous? My stomach clenched with tension, but I tried to focus on getting the work done for the party.
“Maybe you should arrange the platters and I’ll start carrying them out,” Helen suggested once we were inside the van. “I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.”
I handed her the first bowls of salad, and she put them on the rolling cart that my mother had provided and went rattling off on the bumpy sidewalk in the direction of Sam’s grill. In the way back of the van, I opened the warming drawer. I’d never seen mashed potatoes boiling, but these were bubbling hard around the edges, where the hot butter had pooled. Suddenly the van’s overhead light flickered and then went out, leaving me in the pitch-dark. I pushed the drawer closed so I wouldn’t accidentally burn myself.
Dammit. This was not the time for equipment malfunction. Maybe a loose bulb needed tightening? I felt around for the fixture on the van’s ceiling. Before I knew what was happening, my hands had been yanked behind my back and a piece of tape slapped over my mouth so I couldn’t yell. A voice whispered harshly.
“If you fight, you’ll get hurt. And so will your family.” More tape was slapped around my wrists and my ankles, and then I was shoved into the small cabinet underneath the sink. Some minutes later, a second person was shoved in with me, and then the doors clanged shut. I heard the rough noise of the engine firing up and we lurched away from the curb.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I leaned over and opened a drawer to grab my French rolling pin. Using both hands, I whacked her over the head as hard as I could. She wobbled for a few seconds and then fell to the floor.
—Krista Davis, The Diva Sweetens the Pie
It was hot in the little cabinet and extremely uncomfortable, and I felt scared and shocked. The tape that had been slapped over my mouth also covered one nostril and I was having trouble breathing. A wash of fear rushed over me, so strong I could smell it. I was going to suffocate.
Nathan and I had talked months ago about what I should do if I was ever taken hostage. I’d tried to laugh his concerns off, but he was dead serious. And honestly, I’d seen enough crimes over the past few years to accept this as a distant possibility.
“The main thing is not to let the panic take over. You will feel panicked and terrified; that’s perfectly normal. Even professionals in law enforcement panic sometimes. Acknowledge the fear, then set the feelings aside and get to work. Your brain is your biggest asset. Breathe slowly and absorb all the details of what’s around you. Try to be logical and not let emotion take over. Notice everything, even if you can’t see. You’ll smell things, you’ll hear things.”
He’d cupped my face in his hands, and from the pain in his eyes, I knew this conversation had to be as hard for him as it was for me. “How many captors? How old? What do they sound like? What is their emotional condition?
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he’d finished.
I could only nod because I knew he needed me to.
Now the thought of Nathan and how much he loved me, and the possibility of never seeing him again, nearly brought me back to hysterics. I forced myself to breathe—count to five on the way in, hold for two, count to seven on the way out. I concentrated on feeling the warm whoosh of air in and out of the uncovered nostril, and began to feel a little calmer.
First question: who else was in the van?
I’d have known if it was my mother—she was on the petite side like me, and she always used a lotion from Alaska that left the sweet scent of lavender in her wake. And wouldn’t she have tried to tuck herself around me for comfort? It wasn’t Mom. But this person was too small to be a man, and I could feel curly hair tickling my neck. Maybe Helen?
Second question: who was driving the van? Pretty much everyone we’d suspected of Claudette’s murder had been at the party. Bee, Paul, David … That thought got my heart racing again. Breathe, Hayley. What else do you notice? My captor’s voice was not exactly deep but rusty sounding, and she or he’d been strong and fast. I’d had no time to react or try to protect myself or even see who’d taped me up. Those characteristics made it less likely to be Bee, although she’d gotten spooked when Helen asked her if she’d been on the scene of the murder. If it wasn’t her, that left the possibility of David Sloan or Paul Redford. Or any other man who’d been at the crazy party.
Third question: Nathan had also instructed me to try to visualize where I might be taken. I was pretty sure we were heading north, because all major roads eventually headed north on this island. North to oblivion
—that’s where we were going. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Nathan, who would be losing both of the important women in his life. He’d blame himself; I knew he would. Because the hideous person driving this vehicle was most likely his enemy, not ours. We were either collateral damage, or about to be knocked off for being too nosy. I tried not to think more sad thoughts, because then I’d start to cry and my nose would get all stuffed up, and it was hard enough to suck air in through the duct tape without that.
Somehow, while my mind was spinning in a hundred directions, Helen had worked off the tape over her mouth. “Hayley,” she whispered, “are you okay?”
How could a person with duct tape slapped over her mouth, riding in the back of a van, jammed into a cabinet that wasn’t really big enough for one woman let alone two, and headed to a pretty certain annihilation answer a question like that? But I eked out a muffled grunt to let her know I was still alive.
“I’m awfully sorry about this. It’s a bit my fault for coming down and pursuing this scumbag. But I was afraid not to. If you’d called and told me Nathan had been killed and I never did anything about it, I couldn’t live with myself.” She was quiet for a moment. “I have a confession. I didn’t come down because I was worried about Nathan. I was concerned about Claudette.” Her voice broke.
My mind was spinning with the possibilities, trying to absorb the idea that she had actually known Claudette prior to this visit. That she had lied to me all along. We bumped along in silence for a while, while I worked the tape with my lips and teeth. By the sounds of the traffic and the van’s tires clacking on pavement, I could tell that we had turned off the island and were headed north on Route 1 toward the mainland. About fifteen minutes later, I’d chewed a hole in the tape and I could whisper back.
“You knew Claudette was in danger?” I said in a low voice, feeling like I’d finally pulled the string of the lightbulb that had been hanging right in front of me all along. “And you said nothing? And then we found her murdered and you pretended to know nothing about it?”
“I’m sorry. It’s so complicated.”
I waited in silence, determined not to bail her out.
“I can see why you’d be annoyed, but I’ll try to explain. You know how Jai said Claudette was missing a sister who never came home? Claudette went wild with grief exactly as we did when our daughter Vera went missing.
“Did Nathan tell you about Vera?” Her voice was low and packed with sadness.
“He did, last night. He didn’t want to, but I kind of forced it out of him.”
After a long pause, she said, “I always suspected the same man took both of them. The similarities were too striking. There is a private Facebook group for victims of crimes who don’t feel justice has been done. I found it after Vera came home and the police were unable to solve the mystery of her kidnapping. Both Nathan and my ex-husband believed it was unhealthy to stay involved with those bitter people online. In fact, my ex forbade it. Which is exactly why he’s an ex.”
“Claudette was a member of the same group,” I said flatly.
“She was. We all had pseudonyms, but it was pretty easy to match crimes with people. For ten years, she’d been doing her own research, and she told the other members she was very close to breaking the case. And that caused me to be deeply worried for her safety. Imagine if you’d murdered a girl almost a decade ago and got away with it. And then found out someone hadn’t forgotten, that in fact she was doggedly on your tail?”
She was silent for a few moments, and I figured she was reliving the agony of losing her daughter. Or feeling a press of guilt about Claudette—she hadn’t come in time to help her. Or maybe most important at the moment, trying to sort out who was driving the van and how we were going to get out of this alive.
“I suspect you have found me to be a cold fish,” she finally said.
With the tape still over my most of mouth, and the fact that it was dark in this cabinet, I hoped I could get away with a grunt that neither confirmed nor denied.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to explain.”
I grunted again. If this was the end, I might as well know whatever she felt pressed to say.
“After Nathan married Trudy, for a while it was almost like having my daughter back. She was so bubbly and so girly and she called me all the time to chat, and I’d missed that so much. And then she suffered that awful home invasion and we all freaked out. It felt like a repetition of the absolute worst time of my life. Nathan went crazy—he felt that he should have been home to prevent this. And the guy who broke in was someone he’d arrested previously. He felt he was to blame and he wanted to hold Trudy closer so that nothing else would happen to her, and she felt suffocated. She pushed back. And I felt helpless to help them. Nathan’s not the kind of man to want marital tips from his mother—especially since I had divorced his father not long before. All I could do was watch the problems unspool.”
I hated hearing about the pain they’d suffered. “I’m so sorry about all that. Your family has suffered a lot of loss. What finally happened?”
“In self-protection, he started pulling away from her, which made her cling to him like Saran wrap. They couldn’t break the cycle. And finally he could see the relationship was over because with each round, they got angrier and further apart. There was too much damage.” She sighed. “And I understood their process completely because the same thing happened with me and Nathan’s father after Vera was taken. There comes a point where the relationship is in tatters and can’t be patched. There are gaping holes where trust and love used to be …” Her words trailed off.
I made a noise that I hoped sounded sympathetic. I was sorry that she and Nathan’s father had not been able to figure a way out of the darkness. Not so sorry about Nathan and Trudy.
“And then last fall Nathan made his announcement that he was marrying again. I hope you can see why it was hard for me. The truth was, I couldn’t get past all the pain. And I didn’t try hard enough, I’m sorry. It was so hard losing Trudy, almost as if Vera had gone missing again. And so I kept my distance from you.”
“I understand,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“Not really,” she said. “I’m truly sorry if I’ve made you feel like something’s wrong with you. Because there isn’t. You’re warm and lovely and so is your family. And my son is lucky to have you.”
At first I felt like crying. But my next thought was that we should not take this kidnapping lying down. We should fight to the bitter end or die trying. To use every awful warrior cliché.
I felt around with my bound hands to the inside corners and edges of the kitchen cabinet. As I’d hoped, one serrated metal edge had been left exposed. I began to saw at the duct tape, pulling away when I accidentally rubbed my skin on the sharp edge instead of the tape. It was painful and it was slow and the muscles in my arms began to throb with the effort, but eventually I felt the tape begin to give. I yanked hard and the tape ripped so that I was able to slide my left hand out. And then I worked the tape off the rest of my mouth and nose, feeling a great whoosh of relief.
“Stay still,” I whispered to Helen. “My hands are free. Now I’ll work on yours.”
Within minutes, she too was free of the tape binding her wrists. And we’d both managed to ease the tape off our ankles.
“We better make a damn good plan before we burst out of here,” she said, cracking the cabinet door open so we could breathe more easily. “He’s liable to be desperate enough to shoot us on the spot if he sees us loose.”
“He?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure it’s Bee.”
“No,” she said. “It’s a man. Sloan.”
Sloan? But why? Our questions would have to wait.
“What do you suggest?” I asked.
My only idea was opening the back door and flinging ourselves out onto the highway. At the speed we appeared to be going, this would be suicide. Especially since the traffic on the Overseas Highway was so busy this week. Even if we survived s
lamming into the road surface without killing ourselves, we’d risk getting run over by the person right behind.
“Nathan once said try to make a connection with a kidnapper so you become a human being in his eyes, not a faceless victim,” I said.
“But you already know this guy, right?” asked Helen. “That hasn’t seemed to help so far.” I thought about David Sloan and the interactions we’d had this week and what I’d observed during the course of the pie competition, beginning with the scene at the library. This summed it up. He wanted what he wanted, and he’d do what needed to be done to get that.
And then I thought about Claudette’s side of the equation. If she had figured out that he’d killed her sister, she’d have been enraged. She’d have been waiting for the right moment to take him down. The pie in the face suddenly made perfect sense. Not that she meant it as an even exchange for her sister’s murder, but perhaps as a shot across his bow.
Helen pushed the cabinet door open wider so we had enough light to see the van’s interior. The detritus of my mother’s wedding catering job lay all around—on the floor, the counters, and on the little gas stove. I could smell mayonnaise and stale bread and overripe melon and pineapple. Gallons of chicken salad and hundreds of petite croissants and croissant corsages and fruit salad had been scattered everywhere.
My mother must be distraught by now, since we hadn’t returned with more trays of mashed potatoes and bowls of salad. Maybe she’d already rushed outside the walls of the Hemingway Home, steaming with annoyance. Maybe she’d seen the van missing and immediately called the cops? Or would she still be working inside, imagining I’d gone on some poorly considered errand or gotten entranced by one of the cats and distracted from my assignment? In that case, she’d be sending me dozens of texts. And she’d be furious that I wasn’t answering. Before long, she would storm off the grounds, then find the van gone.
The Key Lime Crime Page 21