What did any of that have to do with the man who was killed?
Not one of them had mentioned anything that directly associated them with Gabriel. Maybe I was asking the wrong question. Maybe the better question should be phrased: Who else knew Gabriel, and what was their history together? Who had the kind of intense connection that could have led to murder? Because it seemed true, at least in our little patch of paradise, that murder was rarely incidental. Unless the incident involved drug dealers or other inherently violent and ruthless criminals, the victims and the killers knew each other in some intimate or compelling way. Or in this case, unless Gabriel had witnessed someone stealing the priceless gold medal.
The problem was, I didn’t know much about the man, other than that his family adored him and he was a good worker. Like most people, Gabriel had probably spent a lot of his time at work. Maybe his boss would be willing to talk.
While waiting through the second red light in the cycle, I looked up the address for Gabriel’s former employer, Fogarty Builders. They were located on Stock Island, past the golf course off a little street on the right, where many small businesses found land they could afford to rent or buy. Stopping in person was likely to yield better results than calling on the phone. When my turn came at the light, I roared over the Palm Avenue bridge, past the bobbing houseboats, and out toward Stock Island. I took a right off Fifth Street to Fifth Avenue and parked in the lot behind a group of unassuming industrial buildings.
A tall, dark-haired man with sleeves of tattoos on his arms was talking on the phone at the desk inside the door. He held up a finger and smiled, then disappeared through the inside door, still talking.
The room was decorated with photographs of projects I assumed this company had worked on—lots of bright tropical colors, tropical wood, porch swings—along with quotes from happy customers. On the man’s desk was a photo of a beautiful, slender, curly-haired woman in a lacy wedding dress, her arms also covered with tattoos. She was toasting something on a stick over a campfire.
Finished with his call, the man returned and noticed me studying the photograph.
“My wife,” he said, grinning. “Her one requirement for our wedding was toasted s’mores rather than a cake.”
“Now that is thinking out of the bridal box,” I said, grinning back.
“Chris Fogarty.” He stuck his hand out and I shook it. “What can I help you with?”
“I’m not likely to be a client, unless I come into a windfall. I live on Houseboat Row.” I introduced myself and explained that Gabriel’s family had asked me to explore the circumstances around his death. “I realized that I didn’t know much about him. And then I thought, who would? His boss. So that brings me to you.”
His forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “You’re an investigator working for the family?”
Here we went again. Tell the truth, Hayley. “Actually, I’m a food critic. I was working the event where the murder occurred, and I became friendly with a couple of Gabriel’s relatives. So, odd as it might seem, I hoped you would be willing to talk to me a little bit about what he was like as a person.”
“What happens with the information I give you?”
“Very reasonable question,” I said. “Anything that sheds light on the murder goes directly to the Key West police. I promise.” I said this in my most earnest voice. I meant it, too.
“Okay. Let me think,” Chris said. “He was quiet. Even though he worked with us for years and years, I wouldn’t say that I knew him particularly well. He was that quiet. The kind of guy who doesn’t make a splash, but he leaves a hole. You know? He was an incredibly talented carpenter and it’s going to be hell to replace him.”
“What kind of work did he do?” I asked.
“We are known for the level of finish on our projects,” he explained. “And he was often involved with that final phase of the work. He made exquisite gingerbread trim and sometimes even pieces that went inside the homes.”
“Anything I could recognize him by?”
He thought this over. “In his own work, he might use different species of wood in the same piece. Or, say, big slabs of wood for a bar top, with unfinished edges, the bark still on it. He was also a shipwright.”
“Explain, please?” I asked.
“A carpenter who worked on ships. Which you can understand takes a particular kind of person. A ship is only as seaworthy as its carpenters—worthless if it’s full of leaks.”
“Sounds like a wonderful employee. Were you aware of any conflicts that he might have been involved with? Did you notice difficulties with other staff?”
Chris fell silent, running a hand across his chin. “Like I said, he was quiet. Never had any fights with people here. Though maybe I got the sense that he was not a happy man. Pleased when he did good work and got complimented for it, but underneath, he was not happy. The happiest I ever saw him was when he was working on the Harry Truman poker table restoration.”
“He must have been quite talented,” I said. I was feeling hopeless about gleaning anything useful from this visit, but since I was here, I might as well pursue this to the finish.
“The original table was given to Truman by three guys who worked in the U.S. Naval Station cabinet shop. It’s made of mahogany. You’ve visited, right?”
I nodded. “Of course, many times.”
“Then you probably noticed the ashtrays, which were made out of discarded mortar casings. Remarkable piece of work, truly. Gabriel was involved in taking it apart, replacing it with a replica, and then working on the repairs. He was skilled enough to do all of that. We framed the photo of the finished table—you can see it over there.” He pointed to a photograph mounted on the wall behind his desk.
I got up and walked over to look. The photo had been taken inside the Little White House after the table was returned to its rightful place. Gabriel and Chris were standing on either side of it, beaming. Bob Wolz hovered in the background.
One highlight for a man with a lot of tragedy in his life. But all of this was getting me nowhere fast. I returned to my seat. “Did he talk about his family? Did he ever have a girlfriend that you know of?”
“No women that I’m aware of. He was devoted to his family, of course, as are all the Cuban-American men I know. Since his father had been lost at sea when he was a boy, he saw himself as the man of the family. Or that’s the sense I got. He was very proud of his mother’s cooking and we were fortunate enough to enjoy several of her flans.”
“Makes my mouth water just to think of that dish,” I said as I stood up. “I appreciate your time.” I handed him one of my business cards. “Let me know if you think of anything more?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
That’s another advantage of conspicuously avoiding serious cuisine: If anybody points out an imperfection, you can say, “Look, it’s just dinner.”
—Pete Wells, “We’ll Always Have Paris,” The New York Times, March 29, 2017
By the time I finished talking with Chris and had wended my way through the fierce traffic running from Stock Island into Key West, it was almost four o’clock. And I had not written one more word of my three assignments. As I dashed up the finger to our houseboat, a text came in from Miss Gloria.
I WILL BE FINISHING UP WITH THE CEMETERY TOUR AT 6 PM. ANY CHANCE YOU COULD PICK ME UP? ARE WE EATING IN TONIGHT?
I honestly didn’t have time either to run around town or to make dinner, but there was no way I would respond in a negative. How many years did I have left with my dear friend? You never knew when anyone’s life might end, but I wasn’t going to lose precious moments with her. Or my mother. Or my other favorite people. Gabriel’s death had reminded me how fragile life was. I texted back.
OF COURSE. AND HOW ABOUT A HOMEMADE CUBAN MIX?
The sandwich shouldn’t take long to put together and it would help me punch up the last article, the review of places where we’d tried a mix. And then I could finish up with some philosophical musings about this
signature Key West delight. I pulled a small container of leftover pork roast from the freezer that my mother had packed up for us after the party Friday night. Then I checked the fridge. We had the yellow mustard and a jar of the Pickle Baron’s dill pickles. And I could run by Fausto’s for the ham and cheese and Cuban bread on my way home from the cemetery.
I went out on the deck, where both Sparky and Evinrude were doing their sleepy iguana imitations on my lounge chair in the brightest patch of afternoon sun. “Move over, you big lugs,” I said, and shuffled them to the side. Sparky stretched and purred. Evinrude didn’t even open his eyes. I plugged in the fairy lights that we had wound through the big houseplants we kept on the porch, flipped my laptop open, and began to write.
Tampa, Florida, claims to be the home of the Cuban mix sandwich, but Key Westers know the truth: it was served to cigar factory workers in Havana and Santiago de Cuba in the 1800s and from there imported to this island. These days, you might find the sandwich offered at diners and restaurants across the state—and even the country—that are reaching for a Caribbean flair. And those appearances might cause you to believe there’s not much to this sandwich. But buyer beware!
I spent the next three hundred words describing the perfectly melted cheese and toasted bread found at Cole’s Peace, versus the outlier lettuce layered into the product at the Courthouse Deli and the strictly traditional nature of the 5 Brothers offering. I loved these sandwiches as much as anyone, but some days this job felt positively inane. Did Pete Wells ever feel this way? That he had not another word to say about food? I thought he must. He didn’t make the mistake of taking his work too seriously. And besides, someone, somewhere would be grateful for my sandwich guidance.
The alarm on my phone beeped, signaling that it was five forty-five, time to swing over to the cemetery and pick up Miss G. I hopped onto my scooter and zipped down Truman Avenue and across on Frances Street to the back entrance.
Inside the wrought-iron gates, I saw the tiny form of my roommate a stone’s throw up the main drag. She had a small group of tourists gathered around her, leaning in to catch her words. Once I’d caught her attention, she flashed ten fingers, signaling that she needed about ten minutes to wrap things up. Since I was so close, I made my way to the Catholic cemetery. I didn’t remember there being a strictly Cuban section the way there were Catholic and Jewish enclaves. But I figured that since the funeral had been held at St. Mary’s, Gabriel’s grave might be located among the Catholic markers.
Some folks find the idea of a cemetery morbid or terrifying, but I found it mostly peaceful. The company was good (quiet but thoughtful), the history amazing, and the architecture and stories behind the stones fascinating. I’d even grown to appreciate the enormous, prehistoric iguanas that often sunned themselves on the warm cement or marble crypts. There was only one section that I avoided, the area that was home to the gravesite where I’d once found a new body stuffed into an old crypt. That had turned into one of the more horrifying moments of my life so far, and even getting near it gave me the creeps.
The monuments in the Catholic part of the cemetery were adorned with praying hands, crosses, angels, and many faces of Jesus. I wandered through the gravestones, silently sending my respects to the people ensconced under the stones and in the vaults. In the far corner near the street, I spotted evidence of a recent burial—disturbed earth and a pile of sweet, decaying flowers, along with several stuffed animals. Next to this grave was an older stone, with the name Ernesto Gabriel Gonzalez engraved on it, along with an etching of waves, a sailboat, and a cross with beams of light emanating from it. The epitaph was in Spanish, but I thought it translated roughly to “Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy,” the title of a hymn my grandmother used to sing about sailors lost at sea.
Obviously, I’d found Gabriel’s father. Which meant most likely Gabriel himself had been buried here too.
“Ready to go?”
I clapped a hand to my chest. “You startled me!” Miss Gloria had come up behind me and I’d been too wrapped up in my thoughts to hear her.
“Sorry,” she said, taking my hand. “Let’s roll. I’m hungry enough to eat a whale, blubber included.”
We made a quick stop for supplies at Fausto’s on White Street, then buzzed home to the houseboat marina. As we strolled up the finger to our boat, saying hello to all the neighbors as we walked, I thought again what a miracle it was to have landed in this space. Even the worst eyesore on our walkway, a boat that had been abandoned and filled with trash, had been removed. A well-cared-for two-story houseboat had taken its place, owned by a nice couple with a cat. They adored living on our row, and were terribly proud of the children’s book that had been written and published about their new home half a decade earlier.
Once we got home, Miss Gloria fed the cats while I layered the sandwiches together. Pickles, yellow mustard, Swiss cheese, ham, and pork—the ingredients were simple but the end product more than its parts. While we waited for them to grill, I called my mother and put her on speakerphone.
“Checking in to see if everything got cleaned up okay and whether you’ve heard any feedback from the weekend?”
“You wouldn’t even know there’d been an event at the Little White House, which is kind of miraculous considering all that went on.” Her voice started out sounding chipper, but at this point, it broke. “As for feedback, I haven’t had any. I can’t say the phone has been ringing off the hook with bookings of repeat business either.”
She had absolutely counted her chickens before they hatched on this topic—making lists of the invitees for each of the Cuban conference parties who might hold social events this winter, and committing those lists to memory so she and Sam would remember to chat them up.
“These things take time,” I said. “I don’t think anyone rushes home from a party to call the caterer.” I made goo-goo eyes at my roommate, signaling for help.
“We are about to have a Cuban mix using your roast pork,” said Miss Gloria. “We can hardly wait. I had a long shift at the cemetery this afternoon, and I bet I walked five miles.”
“Good for you,” said my mom in a distracted way, which was not like her. “Any news about the murder on your end?”
I gave her a thumbnail sketch of where I’d been and what I’d heard, which didn’t amount to a hill of beans in the end. “No one’s got an obvious motive to kill Gabriel, from what I’ve seen. There’s something we don’t know.”
My mother heaved a big sigh. “And hopefully the police will do their job. How did your visit to the station go? We never got the chance to catch up with all the hubbub yesterday.”
I summarized my interview with Torrence, telling her about the sequins and his questions about what I might have seen but not mentioning either our discussion about Nathan or the fact that he’d asked me to be the police department’s eyes and ears at last night’s dinner.
“My chat went pretty much the same way, except…” Miss Gloria paused, her eyes darting back and forth, left and then right, so she appeared a little shifty—as shifty as a sweet old lady in her eighties can look. “I didn’t want to tell you this, because I was afraid you’d feel left out, Hayley, but…”
Another pause. “But what?”
“He asked me to take notes, mental or otherwise, about what I observed, and then pass them along to the undercover cop.”
“Good gravy,” I said, a little embarrassed that I’d felt so important. “He asked me to do the same thing! I sent my notes off to him this morning. I think this means they basically have no clue who murdered that poor man.”
The timer on our grill went off, and we said good-bye to my mother and sat down outside to eat our sandwiches. The boat rocked as though the bight was being jostled gently by a giant-sized mother. And we could hear the hum of voices on the neighbors’ televisions and the ever-present tinkle of Mrs. Renhart’s wind chimes. We’d been so lucky not to have thoughtless people move into the neighborhood. We’d not had to suffer through
late-night beer pong or drunken fights or even garbage thrown in the recycling bin. And that bit of gratitude brought up a wash of dread. I glanced at the boat next door, but there’d been no new activity as far as I could tell.
“Mom’s awfully disappointed,” I said to my roommate through bites of crusty bread, crisp pickles, and oozing cheese.
“But Sam is so good for her,” said Miss Gloria. “He’ll have her thinking philosophically in no time. It’s good to have a husband who complements your fiery nature, like he does hers.” She winked at me. “I had that, too, and I wish it for you as well.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They were like chunks of pineapple and honeydew in a fruit salad—tart and plump but there merely for the collective purpose of volume.
—Rakesh Satyal, No One Can Pronounce My Name
A text message chirped from my phone on the bedside table, waking me from a deep sleep. Very little light seeped through the slats of my Venetian blinds: it was still pitch-dark except for the flickering streetlights on the dock reflecting off the water. I groped for the phone and squinted at the screen. Irena.
CALL ME, she’d written, followed by six exclamation points. And no apologies for jolting me awake at five in the morning. So I dialed her number.
“Maria is missing and my aunt is hysterical. Can you come over right away?”
“What do you mean missing?” I rubbed my eyes, trying to shake the groggy feeling of a head stuffed full of cotton batting.
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