An Appetite for Murder

by Lucy Burdette

  They transferred her from the dock to the gurney and bumped her away to the ambulance.

  “I’ll need your names and contact information,” said Officer Torrence.

  “Joshua Renhart.”

  “Hayley Snow,” I added, thinking how odd it was that I’d never heard Mr. Renhart’s first name.

  Torrence turned to the young man with the crew cut—Officer Batten—and muttered in a low voice that I barely caught: “Faulkner murder. POI.” To me he said: “Do you have a key to her place?”

  I shook my head. “She’s almost always home. There was never a reason. As I said, we’re acquaintances. New friends. I haven’t lived here very long.”

  After the policemen had finished pelting Mr. Renhart and me with more questions we couldn’t answer about Miss Gloria, they left to look over her houseboat. I continued the last yards down the dock to Connie’s place, feeling worried and sad.

  Our boat was just as dark as Miss Gloria’s had been. I remembered that Connie and Ray had dinner plans this evening and wouldn’t be home until late. It wasn’t until I stepped onto the deck that I could see well enough to realize that something was wrong here, too. Connie’s houseplants had been kicked over and the door to the boat was swinging open.

  I froze for a moment. Should I go in? What if the intruder was still on board? But Evinrude was in there somewhere. Terrified. And my computer and all of Connie’s things. Sprinting the length of the wooden walkway toward the road, I waved madly at the cruiser, which was still idling in the parking lot. Panting, I rapped on the passenger-side window and motioned for the cop to lower his window.

  “Someone broke into my houseboat!”

  The two officers scrambled out of the car, juggling flashlights and guns, and followed me up the finger. Officer Torrence barked into his radio as we jogged.

  “Stand back, Miss Snow,” said Officer Batten once we reached Connie’s boat. “You stay on the dock.” Then he yelled “Police!” into the open door. “Come out with your hands up.”

  Nothing happened. Pointing their guns into the boat, they exchanged glances, and charged in.

  I waited, pacing, nearly sick with worry. The lights went on in my bedroom, and then upstairs in Connie’s room, and the two men emerged from her doorway onto the top deck. They shone flashlights in every corner and went back inside.

  Officer Torrence pushed open the front door. “No one’s in here now,” he told me. “But we’re going to look around a little more, so you stay put.”

  “Did you find a gray cat?” I asked the cop. “Gray stripes all over except for one white paw.”

  “Not so far,” he said. “Let us finish and then you can have a look.”

  A second police car screeched into the parking lot and two more cops thudded up the walkway.

  “Need some help here?” one of them asked. “Dispatcher said you’d called for backup.”

  “We’ve got it,” said Officer Torrence. “Looks like attempted burglary, pure and simple.” He rubbed his chin and grimaced. “Though you could start checking in with the other residents—see if anyone saw anything. The old lady who lives in the yellow boat was just taken to the hospital. Possible assault.”

  The two new cops headed toward the Renharts’ boat. I sat on the edge of the dock, my feet dangling above the water, feeling helpless and distraught. The thought that I’d been pushing away sprang into my mind: Miss Gloria hadn’t fallen at all. She’d been attacked by the same person who’d ransacked our boat. Too antsy to sit, I got up again and jumped back onto the deck of the houseboat. Maybe I could rescue some of Connie’s plants. Somehow, like the other troubles that had accumulated over the last few days, this too was beginning to feel like my fault.

  The biggest houseplant, a Norfolk Island pine that Connie had decked out in tiny white lights and fish-shaped ornaments made of glass, appeared to be a goner. Its blue ceramic pot was shattered, the trunk had been snapped off at the base, and bits of broken glass were scattered across the deck. The lights still sparkled on the decapitated tree. I managed to stuff the pineapple tree that Connie had been nurturing for two years back into its container and righted three of her orchids, which would probably not survive the shock of having their roots exposed to the night air.

  Then I noticed something bobbing in the water beside the boat—Evinrude? I would just die. Grabbing the large net that we used for picking up trash, I fished for the object. It dove underwater and surfaced a foot to the right. With a sigh of relief, I pulled out Connie’s oversized spider plant. Another total loss, but at least it wasn’t the cat.

  Officer Torrence appeared at the front door and frowned when he saw that I was straightening up. “Don’t touch anything else,” he warned. With gloved hands, he fiddled with the door’s latch. “This appears to be broken.”

  “It’s been like that since I moved in a couple weeks ago,” I said. “We leave it unlocked,” I added sheepishly. “Everyone looks out for everyone down here.”

  “Obviously, not everyone,” he said, eying the mess of plants and pot shards on our deck and then jerking his thumb in the direction of Miss Gloria’s boat. “You need to get this fixed. Key West may look like a small, friendly town, but plenty of troublemakers wash in with the tides.”

  “Any sign of the cat?” I asked.

  “No.” He turned and went back in. My eyes filled with tears. I’d never forgive myself if Evinrude was gone. Yet one more argument I’d had with my mother: She didn’t think it was fair to drag a pet on my ill-considered adventure. But I didn’t think I could live through that much change without him.

  Torrence came back to the door and invited me in. “Take a look around and see if anything’s missing,” he said.

  I ran directly to my bedroom and crouched down on all fours to look under the bed. “Kitty, kitty,” I called in my most reassuring falsetto. No cat. I returned to the galley, grabbed the half-eaten package of Whisker Lickin’s from the counter, and shook it. Like me, Evinrude always turned out with enthusiasm for a snack between meals.

  “Kitty, kitty.” But he still didn’t show.

  Then the wreckage inside the boat came into focus. Our cupboards were flung open, drawers were hanging askew, and stuff was tossed out everywhere.

  “Oh my God,” I said, turning slowly to take it all in. “Who did this? What did they want?”

  “It has the feel of someone looking for drugs,” said the younger cop, eyes narrow and lips pinched. “And like maybe your little neighbor got in their way.”

  “They won’t find any here,” I said, my panic swelling. And guilt along with it, though I kept reminding myself I hadn’t done anything wrong. “Except for a prescription for antibiotics that I didn’t quite finish. I know that’s incorrect—you’re supposed to take all the pills, but I felt so much better and they were upsetting my stomach so I quit. And my mother gave me a few sleeping pills from her stash when I moved down here. Just in case things got rough in the transition.” I could tell from the stunned looks on the policemen’s faces that I was babbling nervous nonsense.

  Officer Torrence shook his head. “Marijuana? Speed? Coke? Anything like that?”

  “Of course not!” I said.

  “You can speak for your roommate too?” Torrence pointed up the spiral staircase to Connie’s room.

  “Speak for me about what?” Connie asked, as she came onto the boat. “What in the world happened to my plants—” She gasped and blanched as she took in the mess and the cops. “Oh my God, what happened?”

  “This is Connie Arp,” I told them. “She lives here too. She’s the owner.” I grabbed a broom and dustpan and began to sweep up the broken glass in front of the sink. Anything to avoid looking at the tears that had started down her cheeks.

  “Your home was ransacked. We were telling Miss Snow,” said Torrence, “that the break-in looks drug-related. You say there weren’t any drugs here, so any idea what they were after?”

  Connie sank into one of the kitchen chairs and pinched
the bridge of her nose with two fingers. “I can’t believe this. On top of everything else this week . . .”

  “Miss Gloria was attacked too,” I hurried to tell her, hoping to head off hashing through my latest visit to the police station. I told her how I’d mistaken her limp body for a sack of trash. “And Evinrude is gone.” I leaned on the counter and started to cry, feeling nauseated and weak.

  “Is anything else missing? Money? Jewelry?” asked Officer Torrence. “Take a look while we’re still here.”

  Connie started upstairs to her bedroom and I pulled myself together and went into mine. First I rustled through my small stash of jewelry in the closet. Mom’s gold chain, my grandmother’s pearls, and the sapphire earrings were still there. Then I turned to the desk. In my worry about the cat, I had not noticed that the surface that had held my laptop was now bare.

  17

  “You can let it go in the privacy of your office, you can weep in the walk-in, but at the bench, you must pick up your knife and finish boning out those chickens.”

  — Gabrielle Hamilton

  I rushed back into the kitchen. “My laptop’s gone!”

  Connie came back down the spiral stairs and reported nothing missing from her room.

  The police took down the information I gave them about my missing computer. “You need to get that lock fixed,” said Torrence again, pointing at the front door. “And get some locks on the windows too. You can’t be too careful. Call us if you have any other problems. We’ll be in touch if the computer shows up. It’s possible that it will be pawned.” The way he said it, he didn’t hold out much hope that I’d see it again.

  “What the heck?” said Connie, once they’d tromped down the dock.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll help you clean everything up.”

  We spent the next two hours straightening up the boat. The worst of the destruction was confined to the downstairs. Connie’s room had definitely been searched, but mine was trashed.

  Every fifteen minutes, I took a break and walked from one end of the dock to the other, calling for Evinrude. I even took a few trips out through the parking lot to Palm Avenue, looking for flattened masses on the pavement. He could never make it across this busy street alive. Not that he’d want to run away, but in his fear, he might blindly bolt. Searching for me. And home, of course. And lately, home was hard to find. A flicker of despair iced my heart.

  “No luck?” Connie asked when I returned.

  I sighed and sank into the wicker loveseat beside her. “No,” I said, tapping my fist on the seat’s arm. “I’m going to try checking on Miss Gloria again.”

  I dialed the number for information at the hospital and asked to be transferred to her room. On one of my trips searching for the cat, I’d stopped at the dockmaster’s office and located Miss Gloria’s last name on the list of mailboxes. Peterson. A name that common would make it hard to search for her relatives, if she had any. I had no idea how long she’d even lived in Key West or where she’d come from before settling on the island.

  “We have no information on a Gloria Peterson,” the clerk replied.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “I know the EMTs were bringing her to your hospital. I saw them load her into the ambulance myself.”

  “She may still be in the emergency room,” said the clerk. “Processing patients takes time. Or if it was a very serious injury, they might have airlifted her to the Miami trauma hospital.”

  I reported that news to Connie. “I wonder if we should check on Sparky?” Miss Gloria’s sleek black cat.

  “Would she want us breaking in?” Connie asked.

  “We won’t—we’ll go in if her door’s open. She’d definitely want someone to take care of him. Who else would think of it—Mr. Renhart?” I smiled, trying to picture him worrying about a neighbor’s pet. Although he’d come through stronger than I might have expected in the case of Miss Gloria.

  Connie rustled through the junk in one of the kitchen drawers until she came up with a flashlight. “Did the cops look at her boat? I wonder if it was tossed too? Should we take a weapon?”

  “They said they were going to check it out,” I said, then added: “You have a weapon?”

  Connie laughed. “I have steak knives and my father’s antique putter.”

  “Stand back or we’ll sink the putt!” I said.

  We left our boat and started down the dock. A heavy cover of clouds had rolled in, obscuring the moon. And a chilly breeze had picked up, whistling from the west. The water of the Bight slapped against our row of houseboats. At home in New Jersey, I would have predicted snow.

  “It’s spooky out here,” I whispered, and then pointed. “This is where I found her.”

  “A little old lady is attacked in broad daylight. Why?” Connie asked. “You think the guys who trashed our boat also clocked Miss Gloria?”

  “The timing works, but again, why?” I asked as I hopped onto the bow of Miss Gloria’s boat. “What were they looking for? Did she see something happening?”

  I tried the door: unlocked. Inside, a squeaky mewing greeted us. Sparky materialized out of the dark and began to wind himself around my legs. I bent down to scratch behind his ears and stroked his spine to the base of his tail. “Poor kitty, I bet you’re hungry.” I flicked on the galley light, found his food in a plastic container in the cabinet under the sink, and filled his bowl. But he stayed close to me, mewing piteously and ignoring his dinner.

  “He’s lonely, isn’t he?” Connie asked. “He knows something’s wrong. Let’s bring him home until we figure out what’s going on with Miss Gloria.”

  If we figure it out, I thought but didn’t say, as I scooped up the cat and tucked him under my sweater. We retraced our steps up the finger, now slick with rain. Once back in our boat, I retreated to my room, settled the purring black animal onto the bed, and used Connie’s computer to check my e-mail. First in the queue was a note of congratulations from Wally Beile at Key Zest, addressed to me and a woman named Sally.

  Dear Hayley and Sally,

  Congratulations! You’ve made it through our final cut for the food critic position at the magazine. The competition has been amazing. To that end, we invite you two to write and submit one final review. The file will be due in my in-box by five p.m. tomorrow. It goes without saying that this should be your finest work!

  After an initial burst of euphoria, a slow knot of terror began gathering in my midsection. How could I possibly manage this with everything else in my life falling apart?

  A second e-mail was from Eric, asking how the conversation had gone with Deena. I texted him back: NEIGHBOR ASSAULTED, HOUSEBOAT TRASHED, EVINRUDE MISSING.

  He phoned me immediately. “I’m coming over.”

  I didn’t argue—I wanted him there.

  “Eric’s coming over,” I called out to Connie in the living room once I’d hung up.

  “Ray is too. And he’s bringing a pizza.” She came to my bedroom door and grinned. “Can we whip something up for dessert?”

  “Of course.” I closed up her laptop and crossed the living room to the galley. Molasses cookies. I could bake them in my sleep. I turned the oven on to 350 degrees. Then, grabbing a stick and a half of butter from the freezer, I nuked it until soft and began to beat it with sugar, molasses, and an egg.

  “Ray thinks our break-in could be related to Kristen’s murder,” Connie said, as she collapsed in the goose-necked rocker by the window. “Because what’s the common denominator?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s me, right?” I added the dry ingredients to the wet, dropped spoonfuls of the batter onto a cookie sheet, and slid the pan into the oven. “I bet you’re sorry you ever invited me to live here.”

  “It’s not your fault, Hayley,” she said, not sounding entirely convinced.

  By the time the cookies were out of the oven, both Ray and Eric had arrived.

  “It’s raining like hell,” Ray said, shaking himself off like a wet dog. “Suppos
ed to be a lousy day tomorrow too.”

  I could only think of Evinrude, huddled out in the cold and wet under someone’s car or on their boat deck or . . . ​Feeling myself growing panicky, I forced my mind back to my friends.

  “Did the police say anything about Kristen’s murder while they were here?” Ray asked after devouring his third slice of pizza.

  “Nothing was said, but I know the guy I’ve seen twice this week recognized me,” I said. “I heard him mutter to his partner that I was a person of interest in the Faulkner case. Other than that, they didn’t discuss it—certainly not with me.”

  “But if you’re a real suspect,” Eric said, dunking a molasses cookie into a glass of milk, “they aren’t going to tell you anything. Did you figure out what’s missing here?”

  “As far as we can tell,” Connie said, “even though they left a big mess, only Hayley’s computer was taken.”

  “And that was no prize,” I added. “A five-year old Mac that was on its last legs.”

  “So maybe they were looking for content rather than hardware,” Ray said. “What were you working on?”

  I finished chewing and swallowing the cookie I was eating, because it would have been rude to spit it out. But it went down like a mouthful of sawdust. “A list of everything I know about Kristen and the murder. Just like you and I talked about doing.” I stared at Eric. “But how would someone know I was making the list? And why would they care?”

  “They would care if they were on it—or if you were getting too close,” Eric said. “And if they figured you would turn your notes over to the police.” He reached across the table to squeeze my hand. “We’ll figure this thing out.”

  Connie fetched a legal pad and a pen with the Paradise Cleaning logo on it and we re-created the list of notes that I’d been drafting earlier in the day. They included: Henri Stentzel, Chad’s relationships before me, the proposed restaurant on Easter Island, the key lime pie itself, and possible alibis for me the day of the murder. Including Miss Gloria.