An Appetite for Murder

by Lucy Burdette

  “Making crap up since 1958.” Ray liked to joke that was the conch train’s motto. Nothing, of course, was mentioned about Kristen, who was surely the most recent cemetery resident.

  On impulse, I stashed my scooter on the sidewalk outside the metal fence and walked through the main gate. I guessed that Kristen’s remains would have been interred on the east side of the cemetery nearest Olivia Street, where the ashes of the newer residents were secured in a hulking brown granite tomb.

  I skirted a sad little child-sized crypt bordered in white and blue tile, unable to bear reading the inscription. Then I noticed a figure in a pink and yellow shirt depositing a bouquet of pink roses by the edge of the large, stone crypt: Meredith, the woman I’d seen weeping at the funeral. I seemed to have a knack for intruding on her private moments.

  But it was too late to pull back and pretend I was heading in a different direction. She held her hand up in greeting, the sleeve of her flowered blouse fluttering to her elbow. Her hair was pulled back into a French braid and she wore a blue sweater tied around her neck. She looked tired, dark half-moons below her eyes.

  “I guess if you have to end up in a cemetery, this would be the one to choose,” I said, and immediately wished I could snatch the words back. “I’m sorry. It’s hard to know what to say. You were obviously close to her.”

  “And you were obviously not.”

  She was not pulling punches. “We weren’t great friends, no,” I admitted. “Did Kristen have any enemies that you knew of?”

  “You mean besides you?”

  Her eyes bugged and I didn’t get the idea that she was joking.

  “I didn’t kill her, no matter what you’ve heard,” I said in a breezy voice, as though there was no doubt. “Punishing the woman who stole my boyfriend is definitely not worth a lifetime in jail. And the whole infidelity incident was as much his fault as hers. They say it takes two and they’re right. As it turns out, I’m better off without Chad anyway.”

  Meredith snorted out a bitter laugh. “Men are most times more trouble than they’re worth. And he was definitely no exception.” She forced a smile. “As Kristen’s sister’s eulogy showed. But to your question, Kristen’s family has enemies,” she added. “They’ve lived on the island for ages and they own a ton of property. They’re always trying to take development further than a lot of residents here prefer. Besides Easter Island, they’re pushing the plans for the waterfront at the Truman Annex. I’m sure you’ve read all about it in the paper. A lot of folks don’t think we need a huge stadium or yet one more fancy marina.”

  Meredith flashed a smile, then went back to rubbing her arms, staring at the name carved in granite. Faulkner.

  “How did you meet her?” I asked.

  “Kristen hired me at her place in Miami when I was just starting out,” she said, adding a heavy sigh. “I had a rather useless certificate in baking and pastry from a school in Oregon and absolutely no practical experience. She was super-supportive.” She fixed her blue eyes on my face. “Whatever you’ve heard about her, she wasn’t a bad person.”

  I rubbed my chin thoughtfully and said nothing.

  “She had promised me the pastry chef position in the new restaurant,” she explained through a fresh onslaught of tears. “That’s why I moved down here. We’d already met with Robert to talk about menus. One of the specials was going to be pistachio baklava. Neither of us likes walnuts—too heavy and oily.” She smacked her lips as though masticating a mouthful of spoiled nuts. “She encouraged experiments. Moving away from the recipes on the page was what she said separated great chefs from merely good ones.”

  Meredith and I had more in common than I would have thought—big ambitions that appeared to have been thwarted. “Maybe it’ll happen without her,” I offered. “The restaurant, I mean. Is Chef Robert still in town?”

  “I don’t know for how long,” she said. “Or even how to get in touch with him. I don’t have his phone number. Besides, I doubt that Robert could get a restaurant off the ground without her. He isn’t that disciplined. And as you could probably tell from the eulogy at the funeral, Kristen’s sister is not interested in taking over.” She peered a little closer. “My goodness, what happened to your face?”

  “A car accident,” I said, palpating the butterfly bandage and the bruise that had bloomed around it. “I’m really fine, but the car, not so much. The worst thing is, I’d borrowed it from a friend.”

  “That’s awful. Did another driver hit you?”

  “I think I must have fallen asleep at the wheel,” I said, reluctant to go into details with this woman I barely knew. “Me versus the palmettos. The palmettos ran away with it.” I crooked a smile.

  “Back to Robert,” I added. “Is there any reason you can think of that he might have killed her? Like maybe he was distraught about her hooking up with Chad?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know Robert well enough to know what he might be capable of.” She tugged her sweater close around her neck.

  Something about that gesture reminded me of Allison, my chemist stepmother, and I thought of one more question. “You’re an experienced pastry chef. Any ideas about what could have been put in that pie to kill Kristen so quickly?”

  “It sounds creepy, but I can’t stop thinking about that,” she said, her voice wobbling. “The filling for key lime pie is so delicate—made correctly, the entire dessert is delicate actually. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have figured out right away that something tasted off. My mind keeps sticking on that—if only she’d noticed a little sooner and spat out the whole nasty business.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and tried to smile again. “But pies have never really been my thing. I’m mad about cakes. And flaky pastries.”

  “Like the new baklava.”

  She bobbed her head, looking sad.

  I stuck my hand out and shook hers, my gaze drifting to the pink roses. “Anyway, sorry to disturb you. And awfully sorry about your friend.”

  I gestured toward the grave and suppressed the automatic “have a nice day” that tried to slither out.

  24

  “Cooks are dashing, improvisational, wayward, intuitive; bakers are measured, careful, rational, precise.”

  —Diana Abu-Jaber

  I drove back to houseboat row and spent a half hour cleaning up the kitchen and playing with Sparky. Connie had left a note pinned to the refrigerator saying she’d gone fishing and would probably have dinner with her fishing buddies.

  When I moved to this town, I started out with two good friends and a lover. Chad was gone, of course, and good riddance. But I had also worn down my friendships with both Eric and Connie. And why not? I was responsible for the destruction of his car and her business and home. Either I had to straighten out this snowballing mess, or move on.

  First I called Doug Rodriguez’s cell phone in Miami. I wanted to hear more about Chef Robert. And it wouldn’t hurt to get his read on Meredith, while I was at it.

  “Hello?” he answered, sounding sleepy and annoyed.

  I explained how I’d just run into Meredith in the cemetery, and that my conversation with her had raised more questions about Robert. “You mentioned how intense his relationship was with Kristen. Supposing she dumped him . . .”

  Which she definitely had: She’d moved on to Chad. And what if her ambition about the new restaurant died with the change in relationship? I swallowed hard. “Supposing she dumped him and told him he was now out of a job, too. After he’d quit his position at Hola and had broken things off with Henri and moved down here. Would he be angry enough to kill her?”

  “Losing her, he would be losing everything,” Doug admitted. “How he would react to that, I couldn’t say. He threw a few pots and pans in his day, but that’s the only violence I actually saw him commit.”

  “And what about Meredith? Did she have anything against Kristen, as far as you know?”

  “Ridiculous. Meredith would never have hurt Kristen,” he snapped. “She was utt
erly grateful for the chance to work in a good kitchen. She adored Kristen. Is there anything else?”

  “Just that your dinner was fabulous and thank you again.”

  I hung up and slumped across the love seat, Sparky warm on my chest. “None of this makes any sense,” I told the cat. “Why would someone be trying to kill me? Unless they think I know too much. If I know too much, I don’t know that I know it. Do you know what I mean?” The cat stretched out one paw, nails extending and then retracting, and purred.

  I finally decided Eric was right: I should call Detective Bransford and tell him every last thing. Let him figure out whether any of my ideas would bear on the case. I found the business card he’d given me on my first visit to the station and dialed his cell. He picked right up.

  “Oh, Miss Snow. I understand you had another eventful night. I was planning to check in with you today—if you’re willing to talk without your attorney, that is.”

  My hackles rose the instant he made the lawyer comment. And couldn’t he at least have asked how I was? But I had no choice but to ignore his sarcasm. “I was wondering if anyone had turned in my purse—it went missing in the accident last night.”

  “It’s right here on my desk,” he said. “I could bring it over.”

  I felt that possibility like a blow to the solar plexus. The neighbors had seen quite enough of me interacting with the police over the past week. “I’d rather swing by and pick it up.”

  I retreated to the bathroom to wash my face and examine the ravages of the night in the mirror. Nothing was going to help the deep shadows under my eyes or the oozing bandage on my cheek. I zipped on a layer of mascara and some lip gloss and shut off the light.

  Minutes later, I called the detective from the intercom phone outside the main door of the police station. “I’ll come down and meet you,” he said in a voice that would melt butter, and then buzzed me into the hallway.

  I heard footsteps slapping on the tile floor and then he turned the corner, hair still damp, wearing black jeans and a crisp striped Oxford shirt. Undeniably cute, as Miss Gloria had pointed out. He motioned me to follow him and I tried not to notice the way he filled out those jeans. We filed up the stairs to his office. Inside, he sat at his desk chair and leaned back. I spotted my purse on the bookcase behind him.

  “Are you feeling all right?” he asked, teeth flashing white against his tan. “That was quite an acrobatic spill you took in your friend’s car.”

  His solicitousness felt good. If odd. Reminding myself that he wasn’t on my side right now, I lowered gingerly onto the chair beside his desk. After the adrenaline of telling Eric the bad news had subsided, everything had started to hurt. “I’m okay; a little rattled, as you might imagine. Do you have any leads about the car that was following me?”

  “Good question,” he said, snapping his seat forward and tapping a pen on the calendar blotter in front of him. “We had a team combing the site all morning. I have to be honest, there wasn’t any compelling evidence regarding a chase.”

  I straightened, my fists balled. “What more do you need than my freaking car upside down in the bushes?”

  Another impish smile. “Oh, it was clear enough that you’d lost control on the bridge—your tracks were all over the place and you left half of your friend’s car paint on the Jersey barrier. Of course, lots of folks stop in that area to fish and so on. So there were multiple sets of tire tracks in the sand alongside the road.” He paused and squinted his eyes a little. “You didn’t happen to catch a license number? Make and model of the car? Even a few numbers or letters could help us narrow things down.”

  Okay, big misread, he didn’t care about how I was feeling—he wanted the case solved and off his desk. “You don’t believe it happened the way I told you.” I stood up and would have stalked out if my purse had been in reach. But I couldn’t leave without my phone and wallet.

  “Easy does it, Miss Snow,” he said. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.”

  “What about the shooting?” I demanded.

  “I believe you thought someone was shooting at you,” he said with a graceful shrug. “Fear does funny things to the brain. It’s dark; it’s raining; maybe someone is following too closely. You’re blinded by the lights in the rearview mirror. You panic. Your car loses traction. You yank the steering wheel a little too hard and spin out of control—you flip over. Bushes are crushed; branches crackle; your senses go on highest alert.” He picked up the pen again and made a check mark on the blotter.

  “But unfortunately—or maybe it’s fortunately—my guys weren’t able to find any evidence of gunshots at last night’s scene. No bullets, no casings, no nicks in the concrete.” He dropped the pen and cocked his head, which Miss Gloria might have found endearing. But I was too angry.

  “On another matter, we did canvass the neighbors at your boyfriend’s building again yesterday. Several folks mentioned the screaming match you had with Mr. Lutz only a couple weeks ago. Something about you standing on one side of the gate, while he and Ms. Faulkner were relaxing at the pool? Is this sounding familiar?”

  My face flushed completely scarlet; the cut on my cheek throbbed with the rush of blood. That screaming match had been a low, low moment. I’d gone back over to Chad’s condominium to ask him to return my missing items the same day I’d found him with Kristen. He didn’t answer his door buzzer, so I’d walked around back to the water side of the building. And lost it when I saw him lounging by the pool. I shouldn’t be surprised that one of my former neighbors had reported it to the cops, but it was totally humiliating. I’d hoped that day would stay buried in the annals of mistakes made in the name of love gone sour.

  “I would like to leave now. I would appreciate it if you would return my purse.”

  He held my gaze for another moment, then got up, retrieved the bag, and handed it over. I stormed from the office.

  Outside, I slid back on my scooter and waited until my hands stopped shaking to start it up. Obviously the detective was worried about me, but his concern had to do with the fact that he thought he was dealing with a fruitcake. A fruitcake who might possibly have lost control and committed murder. I motored over to the pier and stumped back down the finger to our houseboat.

  Now I felt at serious loose ends. I paced from the bedroom out to the galley and back. For the first time, the small living space on the boat felt claustrophobic. The only thing that would really cheer me up was a call from Wally at Key Zest, announcing that I’d been hired for the food critic position. And what were the chances of that on a Sunday morning? Or even better, a call from my lawyer saying they’d found someone who could clearly substantiate my whereabouts the morning of the murder. But considering his brush-off the night before, I could grow old and senile waiting for Kane to come through. This reminded me that I’d forgotten to ask Ray about the lawyer, as Eric suggested several days earlier.

  I punched his number into my phone. “Ray, it’s Hayley.” I told him that I was trying to decide what to do about Kane. The connection was crackly—I could hardly hear him.

  “Oh gawd, Richard Kane. Is that who you hired? Connie never mentioned the name. My brother had him a couple years back. First of all, he coached him about how to lie in court. And then he took his money and did nothing. Bart spent six months in the pokey because of him. Dump him fast—that’s my advice. Gotta go. Connie’s landed something friggin’ enormous and she can’t reel it in. We’ll see you later.”

  “You guys want to get some dinner tonight?” I asked.

  “We’re celebrating our anniversary,” said Ray. “Another time, okay?”

  Now I felt anxious and antsy. Not to mention like a major third wheel. I’d suspected that Kane was a dud all along, but still . . . ​a little part of me had hoped he’d really be on my side. In only the most honorable way. I went down to the dock to buy the Sunday paper, but paged through most of it in a half hour. My eye caught on an advertisement for the Key West Garden Club’s sale at Martel
lo Towers, an old brick fort on the ocean side of the island with astonishing tropical foliage and solicitous docents. It would be the perfect place to find a few replacements for some of the plants that had been trashed on Connie’s deck the other night—a perfect going-away and thank-you gift.

  Because even if she tried to forgive me for everything that had happened, I was convinced that she needed more space for her and Ray: Time for me to move on.

  25

  “It is illegal to give someone food in which has been found a dead mouse or weasel.”

  —Ancient Irish Law

  In spite of the gray skies, the plant sale was bustling with both customers and volunteers. I wandered inside the brick walls of the old fort, browsing for specimens that Connie might like. Every plant vibrated with good health in this climate—I took photos to e-mail to my mother: bromeliads, orchids, and mother-in-law tongues, and a golf cart bursting with flowers in pots. She would enjoy seeing tropical-sized versions of the houseplants she tended back home.

  The smell of grilling sausages and coffee drew me into the interior courtyard where two men in green aprons were cooking bratwurst on giant Weber grills. I’d been craving a sausage since I’d smelled Mr. Renhart’s dinner the other night. Though it was only eleven, fatigue from the early morning and last night’s fright had settled into my bones, leaving me ravenous. I ordered two sausages, one loaded with sauerkraut, onions, relish, and mustard, the other with mustard and chili. God help the food critic in me, I couldn’t choose only one—I had to sample both. Settling onto a concrete bench with the wursts and a large coffee, I bit into the first sandwich, my teeth snapping through the crispy skin to the juice inside. Simply heaven.

  As I stuffed in the final delicious bite, the sun broke through the clouds, warming my face. I sat a few more minutes, savoring my full belly, perfectly content—as long as I didn’t think about anything. I concentrated on the clack and rattle of the palms along the water, trying to keep my mind from spinning into action. My cell phone rang—Dad.