Death on the Menu

by Lucy Burdette

  “Aunt Carmen says Maria got a call late last night, and she heard her leave the house. She heard her scooter engine start up. And she never came home. She waited until now to call me and she’s completely undone.”

  My stomach clenching into a knot, I grasped at the only straw I could think of. “Probably a boyfriend, no? Maybe she went out to meet him and fell asleep and—”

  “This wouldn’t happen.” Irena’s voice was definite.

  Was she protecting Maria’s reputation or was she right? She had told me only yesterday that Maria was afraid.

  “Can you stop by? Please?”

  I thought about what I had planned for the day and how far I was behind. Not to mention the fact that it was five in the morning and I was utterly exhausted from the week we’d had.

  “She won’t talk to the police, if that’s what you’re thinking should happen. I already suggested that. She knows it’s too early to file a missing person report.” Irena hesitated. “And besides, they haven’t found Gabriel’s killer. What if they think she did it? Or was in cahoots with someone who did it, and now she’s running away to protect herself?”

  “She killed her own brother? That seems unlikely.” Ridiculous was more like it.

  She cut me off. “Probably they just don’t care. Not enough, anyway. And if they don’t care about a dead man, why would they care about a woman gone out in the middle of the night? In Key West?”

  She had a point there. Lots of people stay out until crazy hours on this island, but it’s usually visitors overdoing vacation revelry rather than residents. I threw the covers off and swung my legs out of my bunk. “I’ll come. Give me fifteen minutes to get dressed and make a cup of coffee.”

  “I’ll have one here waiting for you.”

  “You’re an angel,” I said.

  Both cats had stretched their way out of their early hour stupor, so I fed them and left a note for Miss Gloria, whose gentle sleep noises wafted out from her bedroom. Then I sputtered over to the small concrete block home where Maria lived with her mother, and formerly her brother as well.

  Their house was located in the part of Key West called New Town, found at the waist of the island, pinched in by the Garrison Bight on one side and salt marshes bordering A1A and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. Much of this land was constructed from landfill, and it lies lower than the neighborhoods in Old Town. It had been hit hard by the back surge of hurricane Wilma, though fortunately the storm surge was smaller during Irma. Most tourists don’t get to this part of the island, unless they take the Christmas trolley to view the amazing show of lights residents put on every December.

  In the glow of their porch light, the yard looked as though it hadn’t been mowed since last week—probably Gabriel’s job. There was a small plaster shrine that held a prayerful Mother Mary in the front yard near the stoop. Irena was waiting for me at the door.

  “I’m so sorry to wake you this early, but she’s absolutely distraught. I just didn’t know who else to call.” She took hold of my left forearm and led me into the dim and cool living room. An air-conditioner labored in the corner window, and Maria’s mother, Carmen, was huddled on the couch. I’d only seen her once before, at the funeral, wearing a lace veil that covered most of her face. Now, even through her mask of grief and worry and age, I could see that she must have been a stunning woman.

  I crossed the room quickly and crouched down in front of her. “I’m Hayley Snow,” I said. “We met very briefly at the church. And I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  She shuddered, tears trickling down her softly wrinkled cheeks.

  “Let me get you some coffee,” said Irena, retreating to the kitchen.

  “Your niece tells me that your daughter didn’t come back last night. Was this unusual? Was she seeing someone? Maybe she met someone for a drink and tried to call you?”

  She nodded yes, this was unusual. Then shook her head twice for no, she wasn’t seeing anyone. And no, she wouldn’t have met someone for a drink. I heard the noise of grinding from the direction of the kitchen and then smelled fresh coffee beans releasing their heavenly scent, followed by the sweet sound of steaming milk. Irena returned to the living room with a large mug of perfect coffee and I sipped it gratefully.

  “Irena said there was a phone call last night. Tell me everything you remember about that, even something that might seem unimportant.”

  Irena translated my words into Spanish and her aunt answered back, unleashing a torrent of words I hadn’t a chance of understanding.

  “She says Maria was a good girl,” Irena said. “They were both devoted children. They refused to have families of their own because they insisted on taking care of me. Now what will I do? Everything is lost.”

  The woman began to wail, and Irena hurried over to sit on the couch next to her, where she gathered her up and began to rock her like a baby. Maybe it sounded to her, as it did to me, that she believed her daughter wasn’t coming back anytime soon. If ever. Irena murmured to her, smoothing the hair away from her face.

  “Did Maria say anything aloud when she was on this phone call?” I asked.

  Carmen trembled and snuffled and finally whispered an answer.

  “She thinks Maria said something about a pier.”

  Carmen nodded vigorously, her face tear-stained and limp with grief and a dim flicker of hope.

  “El muelle de pesca.”

  “A fishing pier,” Irena repeated, and she looked at me expectantly, too.

  “Did she say this in English or Spanish?”

  “English,” said Irena, after checking with her aunt.

  We lived on an island. Piers were everywhere. Piers were us. And who was to say her daughter hadn’t said another similar word, like beer or dear? Or fear? “Has she been acting like she was afraid of something or someone?” I asked. “I mean, before Gabriel?”

  Irena shook her head. “Never, not until Gabriel was murdered. Since then, of course, we’ve all been frightened. Maybe she most of all. All week she seemed so nervous and I told her it would be all right. But it’s not, and it will never be, will it?”

  This brought a fresh onslaught of tears from Carmen. “And she was obsessed with the gold medal.”

  The gold medal again. What did this have to do with anything? Did she think her brother had stolen it? Or was she going to meet someone who had taken it about retrieving it and returning it to the Cuban delegation? Or could she have been handing it over? There didn’t seem much chance that she’d taken it—she’d been very busy in the kitchen all night like the rest of us. But what if Gabriel had really taken it? Maybe she’d even seen him with it, either that day or later, here at home.

  My head was spinning.

  “I am lost,” I said.

  “I am, too,” Irena admitted.

  “May I look at their rooms? Both of their rooms?” Both women nodded their assent.

  Irena led me down a short hallway and showed me her cousins’ bedrooms. Maria’s was plain but pretty, with a pair of white terry bed slippers sitting by the bed and gauzy white curtains at the window. Her white eyelet coverlet had been thrown back, and a well-worn teddy bear had toppled to the floor at the end of the bed. Other than that, there was nothing out of place. Nothing in disarray. I shrugged, not even sure what else to look for. It appeared as though she had left in a hurry but planned to come back to bed. I thought she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t leave a bed unmade for long, or her nightgown thrown carelessly on a chair.

  “Gabriel’s room is just across the hall,” said Irena, leading me out. Carmen shuffled along behind us, snuffling.

  Gabriel’s room was simple as well: a wood-framed twin bed covered with a faded blue denim quilt, a crucifix hanging over his bed on the wall. But after a few minutes of taking in the room, I could see that while the furniture was simple wood, it wasn’t cheaply made. I suspected these pieces had been built from recycled Dade County pine, a hardwood highly prized for building conch homes in Key West. A wooden d
resser had hand-carved knobs and beveled edges, the seams interlocking, not glued or nailed. Some of the raw edges actually still had the bark of the tree on them. Just as Gabriel’s boss had described.

  “He built all this,” Irena said after watching me absorb it. Her aunt nodded proudly.

  I opened the top dresser drawer and glanced through, which didn’t take long—this was where he had stored notes about ongoing construction projects. There were also some drawings of his own work, including a diagram of the restoration of the Little White House poker table. The drawers underneath held neatly folded underwear, rolled socks, pressed pajamas, and several pairs of blue jeans. I felt through all the clothing; there was certainly no gold medal here.

  On the nightstand, Gabriel had left a short stack of books, including some of Hemingway’s novels, books about Cuba written in Spanish, and a Bible. In the bottom drawer of the nightstand I found a metal box with a key protruding from the lock. I glanced up at Carmen and Irena, and they nodded that I should open it if I wanted. Inside was a collection of articles about Cubans who had immigrated to the United States on chugs. Some of the clippings had yellowed with age, but many had more recent dates. The Key West Citizen often carried stories about the boat people who’d successfully landed in the United States. And since we were the closest land to Cuba, Key West had often been their target.

  “He had something of a fixation on these refugees,” Irena said. “Every time he heard of a chug landing, he would go to meet them, bringing drinks and snacks before the immigration people took them into custody. He made phone calls for them to relatives in the continental U.S. He used to argue with his mother about this.” She put an arm around her aunt and squeezed her shoulders. “She would tell him it’s time to bury the past. And he would say, it’s already buried you. Ya te ha enterrado.”

  The whole thing made me sick with sadness, as if their collective pain had infused the house, ready to flood anyone who visited. I looked away and continued to page through the articles in the box. At the bottom of that stack, I found a photocopied clipping about the award of the 1954 Nobel prize to Hemingway for The Old Man and the Sea.

  “Was your cousin a writer?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Irena’s forehead wrinkled as she repeated my question to Carmen, who also shook her head.

  “Why was this clipping important to him?”

  Neither of them had a clue.

  “You say the police have been here twice, asking. Do you think it’s possible that Gabriel did take the medal?” I hated to push this, but I felt I had to know.

  “I can tell you this, he’d never stolen anything in his life. Not even a piece of candy as a boy. And now we only know that he is dead and she is missing.” Irena’s eyes shone with tears.

  “I understand that. I believe it. But what if he thought he had a good reason, the right reason? And what if someone saw him and confronted him later at the party? And that got him killed? Maybe Maria found it here in the house and was meeting someone who would return it to the rightful owner, where it belonged?”

  Irena just shrugged, but her jaw was set like iron. “I thought the convent owned it. We have no idea who would have been the rightful owner. But he wouldn’t steal something, we know that.”

  The women stared at me, their anger and desperation and grief all plain on their faces. I was beginning to feel desperate too.

  “Did he have any other conflicts with anyone that you’re aware of? Like at work?”

  “They adored him at work. He was a finish carpenter for Fogarty Builders. He could handle jobs that were too intricate or delicate for anyone else on the island.”

  Again, this confirmed what I’d heard yesterday. I was retreading old ground and getting nowhere.

  Carmen said something in Spanish.

  “She says her husband was a talented carpenter too, so Gabriel came by it naturally,” Irena translated.

  I looked at her sad face and back to the sadder-still face of Carmen. “Okay. We can spend a little time looking for her, but I think you should call the police if she doesn’t turn up quickly. This feels like a needle in a haystack, you know? Just two of us whistling in the dark. And if she was as afraid as you say she was, we shouldn’t waste time. The police have the manpower to really mount a meaningful search.”

  Carmen clutched my hand and pressed it to her forehead, weeping and talking to her niece in fast Spanish again. All I understood was thank you and coffee.

  “My aunt says to tell you please come back when this is over. She would like to make you her specialty café con leche and a flan.” She patted her aunt’s hand and smiled. “See, I come by my talents naturally, too. Back in Cuba, they called her the Cuban Coffee Queen. There was even a poem written about her.”

  “Not the one on the menu at the Cuban Coffee Queen shop?” I asked them in amazement.

  “That’s the one,” Irena said, and they both grinned. “And don’t ask how it happened to get there, because she won’t tell. Not even me.” Then she leaned over to stage-whisper, “I think the owner of the Coffee Queen had a crush on her back in Cuba.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Food may just be fuel for some people, but for many marginalized communities, it represents community, connections, a way of expressing your culture in public without care or concern for how it might be received by those who do not share it.

  —Mikki Kendall, “Hot Sauce in Her Bag,” Eater.com

  We decided to split up the work: Irena would zip over to the boardwalks across town by the harbor known as the Key West Bight; I would check out the White Street pier on my way to the piers along Mallory Square and the Margaritaville Westin. These seemed like unlikely places to meet for something shadowy—too many windows overlooking the water, too many people potentially watching—but I’d take a quick spin around and then check the big concrete pier that ran parallel to the Navy’s Outer Mole, their private quay across the small Key West harbor. We would text each other if either of us found something related to Maria—either her turquoise scooter with the ¡VIVA CUBA! stickers on it or Maria herself.

  The only other obvious fishing piers I could think of were those running on both sides of Palm Avenue, close to Houseboat Row. If we hadn’t located her in any of the other places, I could check that on my way home. Irena agreed that that would be as far as we would take it. Then either she had to call the police or simply settle in to wait for her cousin to return.

  I started with the White Street pier, officially named the Edward B. Knight Pier, known for its poignant AIDS memorial and popular with locals as a good place to watch the sunrise with a dog. Even though it was well before the official sunrise, light was beginning to dawn, revealing a few early birds on the benches along the pier. I puttered slowly all the way to the end but saw no sign of Maria.

  I continued across White Street to Eaton on my way to Mallory Square. At this time of the morning, downtown was not yet clogged with tourists and workers. I rode right through the parking lot off the square and drove over to the water, looking for a blue scooter or a small woman with raven hair. I managed to startle a few homeless men who were tucked in behind some palmetto bushes, and they stepped out, blinking and cursing. Homeless people are discouraged heavily from spending the night on public or private property, but not every person without a home chooses to hike out to the shelter on Stock Island to bunk down in a Quonset Hut with several hundred other folks. For the cops, it’s a delicate balancing act: tourists and residents versus the folks who need a place to rest overnight.

  “Good morning,” I called. “I wonder if you’ve seen a woman with dark hair on a turquoise blue scooter this morning?” They just glared back.

  No dice. A ghostly wave of seagulls and skimmers swerved across the water and landed on the pier. The sight of this square at this time of day couldn’t have been a starker contrast to the bustling crowds that gathered during the evening sunset celebration. I paused for a minute to listen—for what? I wasn’t sure.
If I hadn’t been searching for a woman in trouble, this scenery would have felt peaceful, not spooky.

  It wasn’t legal to ride a scooter or a car or even a bicycle on Mallory Square or the piers along the Margaritaville resort, but I wanted to cover as much territory as quickly as I could. And be ready to bolt if I needed to. Within minutes, I reached the water closest to the Truman Little White House, near my ex’s condominium complex. I peered over the edge of the dock to check on the boats bobbing along this stretch—mostly Danger snorkel tour boats, a few small yachts, and two rental fishing crafts. No sign of a woman in distress. Remembering that my access to the other side of the Navy Mole was blocked by a cut in the concrete and that the gates to the Truman Annex would be locked this early, I circled back alongside the Custom House Museum to Whitehead Street and over the access to the new city park via Southard Street.

  I paused by the new park and the controversial amphitheater and squinted at the walkway across this small harbor. Maria should not have had access to the Outer Mole, the pier belonging to the Navy. Occasionally, cruise ships docked there, but the passengers were not allowed to disburse on their own. Rather, they were ferried back to Key West by trolleys or conch trains.

  I tried not to think of the body that I’d seen in the water at the other end of town during that frightening time leading up to my friend Connie’s wedding when my brother had disappeared. We’d found a runaway girl, floating, her hair drifting out like a mermaid or a Gorgon, but not breathing.

  The sky had lightened enough that I could see the details of the Coast Guard’s Ingham, a hulking gray battleship, retired now except for tours and occasional cocktail parties. I checked the bike and scooter racks near the eco-discovery center but found only a couple of old bikes lacking critical parts, such as one of the tires. Sometimes even a good lock took you only so far in this town.

  But my heart sank as I spotted a scooter parked at the end of the road leading to the battleship that looked much like what Irena had described as Maria’s. I considered hopping off my own scooter and starting along the pedestrian dock toward the Westin cut. The posted sign said motorized vehicles were forbidden here, too. On the other hand, if I found Maria in trouble—or if a killer was still lurking—I wanted to be able to move quickly.