“You’re not serious.” Her face paled and her lips trembled.
I sighed. “Not really, that isn’t what I believe, but work with me here. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that other people could think you killed her. That’s why it’s so important to figure out why Druckman hated you, if she did.”
“Her feelings made no sense to me. I never did a thing to her, other than win.” Now her expression grew stony.
“When did you first meet her?” I asked.
“There was an organizational meeting in early August. Anyone interested in running was supposed to attend to hear about how the contest would be conducted. And last year’s king and queen came to give an idea of what to expect and jazz up the night, I suppose.” She loosened her hair from the topknot and shook it out with her fingers.
“Did you have any contact with her then?”
“Not really,” Danielle said. “Though we all introduced ourselves—where we came from, our jobs, and so on. She took up more airtime than anyone else, I remember that. My mother kept nudging me and my aunt and making little jokes.”
“So your mom and your aunt were there from the beginning?”
Danielle nodded. “As I said, they talked me into the whole mess. I think Mom knew I’d never have gone if she didn’t drag me there personally.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking I was learning nothing new. But remembering how Lieutenant Torrence described an interrogation: First of all, most people don’t remember the details during the initial telling. And second, whether guilty or not, they hold things back. The sort of things that don’t look good, or feel embarrassing, or are traumatic. So an investigator asks the same questions more than once. “Tell me again what she was like at the Coronation Ball. I don’t think we’ll get anywhere unless we go over things minute by minute.”
Danielle groaned. “It was bad enough to live through it the first time.”
I smiled in sympathy but barreled forward. “So when you attended the coronation party, did you come all dressed up?”
“You might remember that we had several costume changes. They wanted to have us dance with the Aquanettes. And your friend Randy—”
“Victoria,” I corrected her automatically. “You don’t call her Randy when she’s in drag.”
“Okay, so Victoria was as nice as she could be. And so was JB, who’s an amazing dancer. I wasn’t catching on to the steps right away because I was so nervous. We practiced a little bit last week, but the more anxious I got, the less I remembered.” Tears welled up in her eyes and sluiced down her cheeks. “And then that horrible woman started to yell at me and correct me and suggest I drop out before I ruined the night with my clumsiness. Did she think it was all that lovely to see her great swells of flesh jiggling around?”
We both started to laugh and she clapped her hands over her mouth. “I know I could go to hell for saying rude things about a dead woman, but she brought out the worst in me.”
“What else do you remember?” I asked. “Who did she spend time with that evening?”
Danielle closed her eyes, trying to bring back more details. I noticed the heavy purple circles under her eyes that made it look as though she hadn’t slept in days.
“She had a little collection of snowbird ladies with her—her gang of social media maniacs. I bet they put up a thousand photos on Instagram just in those few hours. But I also got the sense she was working on a business deal.”
“With whom?”
She held her head between her hands. “It may have been during the dress rehearsal. I don’t know, she was talking on the phone a lot and texting someone.” She shrugged.
“Maybe it was real estate? Maybe she was about to buy some property or she’d just bought it? You should ask Cory at Preferred Properties. She knows all the players in Key West—she could probably tell you.” She plucked at her pajama top and smoothed her hair.
“I’ll ask you what I asked Seymour. Did Miss Druckman seem sick or out of sorts at the zombie parade pre-party? Did she have the same gang of friends with her?”
“Out of sorts, always,” Danielle said. “We were mostly together as a team, doing the meet-and-greet business. Jenna Stauffer, the local TV anchor, interviewed us. And a couple of radio stations did too. She wasn’t particularly generous with her remarks or happy to be there, but I can’t say she looked sick.”
“Keep thinking,” I said. “Any little detail you remember could help. Seymour said she was quite tipsy. I guess working at the Green Parrot but not drinking himself, he could recognize a drunk when he sees one.”
Danielle nodded, but then squinted. “He drinks though; I’m pretty sure of that. He carried a little silver flask and I could swear he was sipping from it.” She sighed. “I guess I’d better get myself together and go into the office. Are you working today?”
I swallowed hard and grimaced. “I’m not sure I have a job at this point. I kind of told Palamina off.”
“Oh, Hayley.” She covered her mouth with her hand again, and I noticed her slender nails, usually perfectly French manicured, had been bitten down to the flesh. “What in the world did you say?”
I whistled out a breath. “Pretty much told her we’d all quit if she kept this up. And that would be a shame because both Key West visitors and locals want to hear our opinions, not those of imported writers.”
She jumped up and began to clap. A one-woman standing ovation. “Good for you! Someone needs to stick up for us little people.”
I stood up and took a bow. “It felt good at the time. Now I wonder if I worked myself out of a job. And maybe you too. Speaking of getting out, Eric and Bill are leaving the island tomorrow. Are you and your family planning to go?”
“We’re Conchs,” Danielle said. “We stay put until we’re blown away.”
23
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Sam and my mother picked us up in the Tarpon Pier parking lot after we realized that carrying food trays on the back of the scooter would’ve been tricky. Especially wearing tutus. In honor of the tutu party that we weren’t attending, Miss Gloria had pulled on my hot pink sparkly tutu over her white capri sweats, and I wore the black number sprinkled with silver moons and bats over my jean shorts. We brought last year’s purple tutu for my mother, and a camo-colored tutu borrowed from Ray to lend Sam—a manly man’s version, alternating layers of green and brown tulle. Connie had laughed when she handed it over, and said that the only way Ray would get caught dead in this item of clothing was if she could come up with a camouflage theme.
We whisked through the back streets to reach Eric and Bill’s little conch house in Bahama Village, but it was impossible to avoid swells of partying people as we crossed Duval Street. Most of them carried big drink cups or cans of beer and wore tutus and other unusual costumes, slightly less revealing than those I’d seen in the Fantasy Zone.
We parked in front of our friends’ house, and walked around the right side through the set of double gates that kept their Yorkshire terriers from escaping to the street. As is so often the case with Key West homes, the front of the house looked fairly ordinary, but the back opened up to a glorious garden. In the past, we’d eaten meals on the back deck overlooking our friends’ tropical oasis. But tonight was too muggy, too close, unbearably humid. The dogs rushed through the doorway as Bill opened the door, greeting us with furious yipping as they circled around our ankles sniffing the scent of cats.
“The tutus are priceless,” said Bill. “Eric, you have to see this—obviously, we haven’t dressed correctly for the occasion.” He ushered us into their family room, adjoining the kitchen. “Ignore the big mess. We’re packing away some paintings and valuables to bring with us, in case the storm is super destructive. But it’s hard to conceive of never seeing this place again.” He looked so bummed.
“That isn’t going to happen,” Miss Gloria said, reaching up on tippy-toes to kis
s his cheek. “They’ve only issued a hurricane watch, not a warning. And the storm is too disorganized to plot a path, really.”
I exchanged a big hug with him and another with Eric, and deposited our dinner contributions on the long island that separated the kitchen from the sitting area. In addition to our platter of ripe tomatoes, mozzarella, and fresh basil, I’d stir-fried some green beans with garlic, ginger, and sesame seeds, and glazed them with a dash of sugar and a splash of soy sauce. Eric was slicing half of a beef tenderloin, which he fanned out on a pretty flowered plate with a dish of sour cream sauce in the center.
“I hope you don’t mind peppery,” he said to Sam. “There’s a boatload of horseradish in the sauce.”
“I like spicy food and spicy women,” Sam answered, circling his arm around my mother’s waist and tweaking her purple tulle. “If you haven’t found a wedding dress yet, you look awfully cute in this.” He kissed the top of her head and grinned.
“She’s in deep trouble if she hasn’t found a dress by now,” I said. “Dress shops are severely limited on this island.”
“Maybe some romantic body paint for two?” Sam asked.
Everyone laughed, and I tried not to imagine that scene in much detail.
“We’re sad about missing the wedding,” Eric said. “Some of the latest weather reports seem to think the storm might be moving back out to sea, so we’re second-guessing ourselves, whether we should even go.”
“We’re pretty much committed to leaving though,” said Bill. “We’ve got a reservation in Delray Beach at the Colony Hotel. We’ve been waiting for a chance to visit—it’s a beautiful old hotel in a cute town, and they love dogs. Then we’ll be able to stock up on mysteries at Murder on the Beach bookstore. And besides, after tonight there’ll be nothing left in our larder. And I suspect that between Fantasy Fest and the hurricane threat, the shelves at Fausto’s supermarkets have pretty much been wiped out.”
“Things did look a bit thin when I stopped in this afternoon,” I said.
Eric said, “And I’ve canceled a week’s worth of therapy patients—and Bill’s rescheduled all his tour guide shifts at the Truman Little White House, so we might as well make use of the vacation time.” He added a bowl of potato salad and a big green salad to the bounty on the counter, and then we loaded up our plates and took seats in the family room. Bill turned up the volume on the flat-screen TV mounted against the wall.
“I don’t know when there’s ever been a more difficult storm to nail down,” said the weatherman of the hour to the viewers. “We brought in our hurricane expert, oceanographer Dr. Jeff Chanton, to fill us in on the latest. What’s the latest on Hurricane Margaret?”
“Our storm tracking planes have picked up some lateral movement, meaning it’s moving slowly to the northeast, heading into the Atlantic Ocean and away from the coast of Florida,” said the expert, who was dressed in a flannel shirt, wire-rimmed glasses, and a short ponytail. “Four factors help us understand when to expect a strengthening storm. Number one is high water temperature, which we have in spades right now.” A large chart featuring Florida, Cuba, and the water surrounding them appeared on the screen behind him. He pointed to the red icon of the rotating storm. “The second factor contributing to strength would be warm moist air, which is obviously also present.”
“You said there were four factors?” asked the weatherman.
“Yes, I’ll skip ahead to the fourth, which is whether the storm is headed toward a landmass or out to the open water. Hitting land diffuses a storm, though at some cost to any buildings and cities and such along its path. Crossing over water allows it to get stronger. It’s a wash currently on Margaret, because we’re not entirely sure where she’s headed. Here are some of the projected paths.”
The display behind the expert showed multiple colored lines that wandered in conflicting directions—even messier than the map we’d seen the night before.
“The third factor is vertical wind shear. High wind shear allows the warm moist air to dissipate, while low shear increases the strength.
“Good news for all our worried residents: We’ve measured an increase in vertical winds over the past twenty-four hours. That said, folks along the Keys and the Eastern Seaboard should keep a close eye on our weather trackers and make preparations in case Margaret changes course. As we’ve been saying all week, this is not a storm to take lightly.”
“I don’t know what to make of that,” said Sam as Bill clicked the volume down.
“Nobody knows what to make of that,” Miss Gloria said. “The best you can do is prepare like these guys are doing and follow your gut.” Her eyes twinkled. “Mine says stay. And also, that this dinner is delicious!”
Eric got up to refill our wineglasses. “Have you heard anything new on the zombie murderer?” He looked at me as though I would have the inside scoop.
“Nobody’s told me anything,” I said, “but what else is new?” I explained how I had visited both Seymour and Danielle to try to flesh out who the murdered woman really was, and from there, make an educated guess about who might have wished her ill. “I hate to say this, but I don’t think you can rule out Danielle’s family.”
“You mean the twins?” my mother asked as she set her plate on the coffee table. “I can’t believe they would be involved in a murder. Certainly her mother would realize that if she committed this kind of crime, her daughter would be suspected.” Mom shook her head. “I would never risk your well-being by doing something so dumb.”
“What if she believed she was protecting Danielle from something worse?” I asked. “Or maybe it was her aunt, thinking she was doing the right thing.”
“And twins are funny,” Sam said. “I dated a twin once.” He grinned at my mother, whose eyes widened in what I thought was mock astonishment. “This was well before your time. And her charms paled in comparison to yours. She was a distant planet compared to your sun.”
Miss Gloria snickered. “You go, boyfriend.”
“But anyway,” Sam continued, “my point is that she would’ve done anything for her sister. When it came right down to her or me, she chose her sister.”
I realized that even though I knew Sam reasonably well and he was marrying my mother, there was a lot I didn’t know about him. Things I would probably never know. People were like that, full of psychological wrinkles and shadowy corners—even the ones you’d known forever harbored secrets.
“But what’s the motive here?” my mother asked. “Since when do you cause bodily harm because you want to win a contest?”
“Think 1994 figure skating debacle with Tonya Harding versus Nancy Kerrigan,” said Miss Gloria. She glanced down at the small piece of fillet on her plate and then back up to Eric. “And only last year, one of the leading contestants was murdered with poisoned steak at the Crufts Dog Show.”
“How many glasses of wine has she had?” Bill asked Eric as he tousled my roommate’s hair.
“It’s striking to me,” Eric said, “that no one seems to know much about Caryn Druckman as a person, a human being. Who is mourning her versus who might be rubbing their hands with glee, in secret anyway. Have you heard anything about a funeral or memorial?” he asked.
Miss Gloria looked at me and shrugged. “Mrs. Renhart would be the one with all that dope.”
I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and texted our neighbor with the question about services and arrangements. Almost as quickly, I got a return beep telling me the text was “undelivered.”
“They’re probably out of cell phone range,” I said, and explained how their boat had been towed off the day before.
“What’s happening with your detective?” my mother asked. “Has he told you anything?”
I figured she had been popping to ask this, and probably Sam had told her to leave it alone. And so had Eric. And she’d kept it to herself as long as she could, until it finally burst through her filter from mind to mouth. In public, where I couldn’t dodge it entirely as she had to k
now I’d prefer.
“Nothing. Nothing happening at all,” I said.
“I’m sure they’re all crazy busy this week—cops, firefighters, EMTs,” said Eric kindly. “Even crazier than usual.”
I nodded my thanks to him for putting a positive spin on Bransford’s absence, even though he didn’t know the story about his ex being in town. That was the mark of a good friend—don’t jump to trash the boyfriend because as with any storm, the wind can change direction at any moment.
“There was one other random thing I learned earlier,” I said. “Or I should say noticed, rather than learned. When I visited Seymour, Danielle’s king, he told me that he doesn’t drink. And so he didn’t have any alcohol at the zombie bike ride. But Danielle told me that he does drink, that he carried a flask with him and she saw him drinking from it. Maybe this has nothing to do with the murder, but I found it odd.”
“It could be something as simple as him falling off the wagon,” Eric said, getting up to move some of our empty plates to the kitchen island. “If he’s an alcoholic who’s been attending meetings and all, and then he slips and takes a drink in the excitement and stress of the moment, he might very well not want to claim that slip.”
“Poor guy,” said Mom. “He had no idea what he was getting into when he signed on to become royalty. And if he was carrying some kind of poisoned liquid in that flask with which he planned to kill Druckman, he’d hardly be drinking it himself.”
“Is there anyone else you haven’t spoken with who was there and might have some insight?”
I mulled it over. “The only other person is Kitty Palmer. She’s one of the tennis coaches at Bayview.”
Bayview is a public park not far from the police station and Houseboat Row. Natives and snowbirds alike make heavy use both of the tennis courts, and of the pros who teach there.
“She ran against Danielle and Druckman, though my sense is that she wasn’t that involved. Maybe I’ll run down there tomorrow and have a chat.” I clattered the plates into the sink and began to rinse them off. “And John-Bryan Hopkins, the fellow who ran against Seymour for king. He’s a Twitter genius. I sent him a message but he’s probably too busy to write me back.”
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