“I’m so sorry about all that; I just wasn’t thinking.” She poured the wine into three plastic glasses and passed them to us. In the background, Schnootie yelped and slammed her weight repeatedly against the screen door—a one-dog percussion section.
“It was our cats’ fault as much as anything,” said Miss Gloria, and thunked her glass against each of ours in a plastic toast. “They love a good fracas. Now tell us the story of these new kitties. Are you fostering?” She wiggled her fingers at the black cat who approached her cautiously and sniffed.
I scratched the big gray cat behind his ears. He closed his eyes for a moment as if to enjoy the rub, then darted under Mrs. Renhart’s chair. I took a sip of my wine and a bite of the cookie, neither of which fit into my calories-for-today plan. But our neighbor had never invited us over before, and she seemed desperate to keep us there for a bit. “Red velvet Oreo? Delicious,” I said as I knelt down on the deck and ran my hand over the big black cat’s back. “Who is this beauty?”
“That’s Dinkels,” said Mrs. Renhart, breaking into a huge smile. “She’s almost fifteen. Can you imagine sending a fifteen-year-old cat to the animal shelter? The workers said she seems to think she’s a dog.”
“She’s got gorgeous eyes,” I said. “And a powerful presence.”
“And beautiful fur,” said Miss Gloria dutifully. “And who is this other handsome fella?” She leaned down to peer at the gray cat.
“That’s Jack,” said Mrs. R. “They think he’s even older than Dinkels, but he’s sweet and dignified.” Her eyes teared up and she ran her fingers through one cat’s fur and then the other’s.
“I don’t know what came over me. I was sitting here yesterday, thinking about how happy I was to have Schnootie in my life, and how I should give back what she’s given me by adopting more animals. And the next thing I know, I’m running a home for elderly felines.” She hooted with laughter and took a slug of wine. “Mr. Renhart, as you can imagine, is not amused.”
We laughed along with her, probably howling a little louder than was polite.
“Cheers,” said Mrs. Renhart. “I hope you enjoy the snacks. Even though I’m not nearly the foodie that you are.”
I avoided glancing at Miss Gloria, afraid we’d burst into giggles and hurt her feelings. Drinking a gallon jug of sharp chardonnay while eating Oreos? Definitely not the foodie way, though hungry as I was, it wasn’t a bad combination.
“What was your day like?” she asked me. “Your job sounds so glamorous.”
“Well,” I said, “seems like it’s been very busy though I can’t say what I accomplished.” I scratched my head and took another tiny sip of wine. “I had lunch at Louie’s Backyard with my friend Danielle and her mother and aunt. That was fun—not really business. Though I’m sure I’ll use it for deep background someday. Then I went to the police press conference about the murder. Or death, I suppose is the right thing to call it until they tell us something else for sure. They are asking folks to come forward with any information about the bike ride. And they’re starting to get very worried about the weather.”
“Oh, they are not the only ones,” said Mrs. Renhart. “Mr. R is threatening to have our boat towed away tomorrow, or the next day for sure. He thinks if he can get it positioned in Miami or Fort Myers, we’ll have a better chance of riding out the storm.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Miss Gloria. “First of all, the weather people are wrong about half the time. And what if you move it right into the path of the storm?”
“I know, but once he’s got something in his head, there’s no deflecting him.” Mrs. Renhart sighed and patted her lap. Both of the new furry, elderly cats jumped up and began to butt her arms.
“That is so darling,” said Miss Gloria. “You have a knack for picking out pets.” She glanced out on the horizon where a mountain range of clouds had settled in, tinged pink and gold by the sun. “Gordon and I finally decided the best thing to do when a storm threatens is tie her up good, hunker down with friends until it passes, and hope we get lucky.” A sweet smile ghosted over her lips. “We always did, right up until the day he died. We always got lucky, I mean.”
I reached for her hand and squeezed and we sat quietly for a moment, flooded with sadness about the loss of her husband. No matter how old and sick he’d been and how many great years they’d shared and how much time had passed, she missed him fiercely.
“What did the cops say about that woman’s death in the zombie parade?” asked Mrs. Renhart.
“They don’t seem to know much. Or as usual, they aren’t saying much other than if anyone saw something fishy that she was eating or drinking or doing, they should come forward.”
Miss Gloria asked: “What do you know about her?”
“Nothing,” I admitted. “Except for what Danielle told me about how she conducted herself during the competition. And obviously that’s one-sided.”
“That poor Caryn Druckman was the one who died, right?” asked Mrs. Renhart. “I’m on her Instagram feed and I liked her page on Facebook too. She posts lots and lots of pictures of herself in fancy clothes at parties all around town. I don’t know what they wear in Long Island in the winter, but in my opinion she packed the wrong outfits for Key West. Who wears sequins at the beach?”
I looked at her with new respect. Why had I assumed she didn’t know what social media was?
“Supposing I go get my iPad. I can show you,” she said. She handed off a cat to each of us and hurried into the cabin. While she was away, I poured the rest of my marginal chardonnay over the side of the boat. Not compelling enough to waste the calories and the brain cells on. Though I should have done the same with the cookie. But who could resist a red velvet Oreo? The gray cat, Jack, purred as I rubbed his head and then began to knead my thigh with his claws. Miss Gloria was having the same effect on Dinkels.
Within minutes, Mrs. Renhart returned with her iPad and swiped through several pages. “Here’s her Instagram feed,” she said. “You and she had one thing in common, anyway: an obsession with food.” She grinned and showed us the screen, filled with squares of fuzzy food pictures. Most looked like restaurant meals, rather than home cooked.
“May I see?” I asked and reached for the device. Caryn Druckman had posted more than four hundred photographs. I recognized the cooked grouper sushi rolls and banana chicken from Seven Fish, steak and chocolate lava cake from Michaels, more fish from Pisces, and the beautiful island backdrop of Latitudes, the only restaurant on secluded Sunset Key just off Mallory Square pier where my mother and Sam were headed tonight.
“It’s almost like she was an aspiring food critic,” Miss Gloria exclaimed.
“Or she just loved to eat,” I said. But then I began to look more closely at what she’d written about the photographs. She used all the major foodie hashtags. And she noticed and commented on details about how the places were set, and how hot the food was served, and the unusual ingredients in sauces and the side dishes—things that an ordinary diner might not pick up. She was demanding about restaurant food in the way professional chef Edel Waugh was, over at Bistro on the Bight. And her writing wasn’t half bad. She could easily have performed my job.
“I wonder where she got her money?” Mrs. Renhart asked. “It’s probably not fair to assume that she didn’t work for it, but … I saw her in church a good bit and never heard a whit about a job.”
And besides, the sheer volume of the photos she’d posted on Instagram suggested that most of her energy was caught up in food and the social scene of Key West’s wealthiest galaxy.
A text buzzed in on my phone and I pulled it out of my pocket. I was surprised to see a message from Danielle’s aunt Marion.
I thought of a few other things, call when you can? And she left her phone number.
“We should be toddling along anyway,” said Miss Gloria to Mrs. Renhart. “Before I get light-headed and fall over the gunwale. Thank you so much for the cocktails, and congratulations on the new
cats.”
13
Everything tastes the same if you cook it long enough.
—Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots
Our two cats were waiting inside the screen door; they sniffed suspiciously at the strange odors we were bearing from Mrs. Renhart’s felines. Evinrude made a noise like a dog growling, a gurgling way back in his throat. “We’re going to have to keep an eye on these two,” I said to Miss Gloria. “I’m afraid they could hurt those old guys.”
I went into the galley to forage in the refrigerator, and came out with a bowl of leftover shrimp, a jar of capers, a couple of sticks of celery, two scallions, and mayonnaise. “Shrimp salad and biscuits with sliced tomatoes?” I asked Miss Gloria.
“Sounds like a miracle to me,” she answered. “We’ve got a couple of ripe ones on the back deck.” She perched on the banquette and watched me begin to assemble the salad. “Here we’ve lived next to Mrs. Renhart for two years and hardly said boo to her. There’s more to her than I might have imagined.”
“Unfortunately, her husband is like an invisible shield, repelling visitors,” I said with a chuckle, picturing us slamming into a wall of Lexan as we tried to climb aboard their craft. Not that I’d honestly tried that hard—and shame on me for that weakness.
Once I’d finished shelling and cleaning the shrimp, I began to dice the celery. Miss Gloria went out to her minigarden on the back deck, returning with a few sprigs of fresh dill, along with two big tomatoes and some basil.
While I mixed the salad and sliced tomatoes, Miss Gloria popped two of our favorite frozen leek biscuits into the microwave and then the toaster oven. My theory on baking: Make more than you imagine you can eat—you will never regret it when you find an unexpected treat preserved in your freezer.
When the food was ready, we settled onto the sofa in front of the TV, our plates on fold-up tables. While we watched the news, I told her about my mother’s wedding anxieties, Danielle’s no-show at the Key Zest meeting, and finding the video of Caryn Druckman falling off her bike.
She wiped her mouth with a napkin and set her fork on her plate. “Can I see it?” she asked.
I found the right frame, handed her the phone, and clicked on the play arrow. We both watched the disaster unspool in herky-jerky time, right up to the point where I’d realized something was wrong, quit filming, and lurched off my bike to help her.
“I didn’t see anyone approaching with a syringe or any other weapon,” Miss Gloria said. “You didn’t hear gunshots or anything like that just before she fell?”
“The cops asked that,” I said, shaking my head. “If someone got to her, I think it had to be earlier.”
I punched through the previous photos, pausing again at the one containing the woman with the zebra face painting. Was her shape or dress familiar? The zombie costume made that impossible to tell. In the background, I noticed for the second time the Beach Eats truck, which had never crossed my radar and might fit in well with my takeout article. I zoomed in to see who was working the kitchen. A slender man in a chef’s toque with a blond ponytail and a neat beard was loading some kind of food onto little plates.
A text flashed onto my screen. Thanks for being there today and always. Love Mom.
“Hot date tonight?” Miss Gloria asked.
“Not me,” I said, and placed the phone on the TV tray, feeling a tiny bit blue. “Nathan’s just too busy this week. So I’m thinking of buzzing over to Duval Street to see what’s happening downtown.” I explained how Jennifer Montgomery had told me about the face painter who had done the work on both Caryn Druckman and possibly the zebra-faced zombie I spotted near the Beach Eats food truck. “And I’m hoping to catch Victoria at the Aqua before her performance tonight,” I said. “The Aquanettes had a lot of stage time during the coronation festivities. And I have a feeling Victoria might have seen something important—she’s super perceptive about stuff going on around her.”
“You need that at a drag bar,” said Miss Gloria with an impish grin.
As we ate, savoring the crunch of the shrimp and celery with the hint of vinegary capers against the sunny taste of Miss Gloria’s tomatoes, we surfed over to the Weather Channel on TV to watch the latest update. The tropical depression that forecasters had worried about for the last several days was still hanging heavy east of Cuba. The longer it stalled, the more organized its internal rotation grew, said the hurricane specialist. Which spelled more concern for Florida, especially our fragile Keys, tossed across the ocean like a string of antique pearls. Even so, the projections for the path of the storm were all over the place. He demonstrated this with a screen of different-colored lines that looked like the crayon doodles of a three-year-old.
Miss Gloria’s oldest son called as we finished clearing the supper dishes.
“Are you thinking of evacuating?” I heard him ask her in a booming voice.
I tiptoed away to get ready to go out. She could handle that question without me—living on a houseboat in her eighties, she practically had a graduate degree in managing offspring anxiety.
*
I parked my scooter near the intersection of Duval and Truman, thinking I would walk a few blocks west to the Aqua bar, chat with Victoria, look for Christy the face painter, and then scoot home. Rather than cooling off, the temperature seemed to have risen ten degrees since the sun went down, and the sidewalks were thick with folks who were ready to party. Some dressed for success, and some definitely not. The biggest party happened next Saturday, the day of the parade, but lots of people start the partying early and keep the machine fed all week.
Not even a block along my route, two men began yelling at each other, and a circle of party people gathered around to watch the show. Early for Duval Street, but I supposed all bets were off this week. One of the men was dressed like a local, jean shorts to the knees and a faded Paradise Pub T-shirt. The other man appeared to have almost nothing on other than body paint and a G-string in the shape of a fuzzy tropical bird.
“Maybe you didn’t get the memo about Fantasy Fest,” the local man said to the other. I had the feeling he would have grabbed him by the collar if there had been a collar to grab.
“Leave me alone, man,” said the visitor, pushing the other man away.
“Fantasy Fest is a costume event. Did you see anywhere that you were invited to come naked and show us every butt-ugly bit of you? Who do you think wants to look at that?” He pointed at the parrot and spat on the sidewalk.
The bird man threw a big plastic cup of beer in the first man’s face. The man with clothes lunged at him and they began to wrestle, tumbling from the sidewalk, off the curb and into the street. Other bystanders crowded closer, hooting and cheering. I heard the whoop whoop of a police siren and slithered through a small space in the crowd to get as far away as I could. What if that stuffed bird got dislodged in the struggle—ugh! So not my scene. I would come back in the light of day to talk with Jennifer’s face-painting friend, when the craziest people would be sleeping the night off in their rented hotel rooms.
Minutes later, puffing for air, I bolted toward the Aqua bar. As I stood in the doorway, catching my breath, I saw Victoria sitting down for a break at the far side of the room. I headed over and took the seat across from her.
“People seem unusually crabby out there tonight,” I said, hitching my thumb over my shoulder toward the street.
“It’s so darn hot,” she said, shrugging her elegant but wide shoulders. She adjusted her tube top and patted her forehead with a white hanky. “And besides, it’s a mood. Key West is like all us other divas.” She grinned. “Moody. I’ve seen her like this before. It will pass. Have you noticed the rants on Facebook? Everyone in Key West who’s lived here more than five years is yearning for the old days when people really cared about service and food and kindness.” She made air quotes with her fingers as she said those last words.
“I hope murder isn’t part of that mood. Buy you a drink?” She nodded and I walked ove
r to the U-shaped bar and ordered two bottles of beer.
“Is this a social visit only?” she asked as I set the drinks on the table.
“You know me too well.” I laughed. “Tell me what it was like at the coronation party,” I said. “I mean from the insider perspective. From where I sat in the audience, it went as smooth as silk, no troubles at all. I’m trying to understand whether there was some reason related to the voting or the contest that Caryn Druckman might have been murdered. The police aren’t coming right out and saying that’s what happened, but I think all signs are pointing in that direction.”
Victoria took a dainty sip of her beer and closed her eyes to think. “Druckman was definitely a diva in the worst sense,” she said. “She had us rearranging dance numbers like crazy. She had opinions about the blocking of the transitions, the key the songs were sung in, even the words.”
“But did you see her arguing with anyone? Was anyone frustrated with her?”
Now Victoria burst out laughing. “The dead diva, god rest her soul, was a genuine pain in the patootie. Everyone was frustrated with her, everyone.” She sat back in the chair, blinked her eyelashes—enviously longer than mine—and rubbed her chin. “But was there anyone in particular?”
I nodded, waiting.
“Your friend Danielle was nervous—she obviously hadn’t performed a lot onstage, the way Druckman and the male candidates had. Wasn’t that John-Bryan a stunner? He had the moves, baby. If only I was single.” She sighed and sipped the beer. “But I digress. Your friend Danielle had two ladies with her—they looked a lot alike—who were buzzing around and pushing back.”
“That would have been her mother and her aunt. Twins. So what happened? What do you mean by pushing back?”
“So Druckman pulled Danielle aside and told her she’d better stay at the back of the stage unless she was actually singing a number, because she danced like she had two left feet.”
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