Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (20 page)

Reba Reston, the manager, was working on the computer in the back office behind the reception area when I came in. She looked up, peering over a pair of sparkly silver reading glasses.

“I’m Hayley Snow. My mother and I were here yesterday? With Yoshe.”

“I remember,” she said, pushing the chair away from the desk and getting to her feet. “Absolutely devastating. In every way.” She twisted her hands together, looking as though she might cry.

I nodded sympathetically—she must certainly be spooked about the death. And worried about the possibility that it would smear her business’s reputation.
Particularly if Yoshe had been murdered. Though a suicidal plunge from one of her best suites would be no public relations picnic either. “I’m looking for my mother. A friend said she was headed this way around eleven?”

She swept off her glasses and came out to the counter. “She did stop in. Such a lovely lady. We had a cup of tea and talked all about your career—she’s so proud of you! Then she told me about her home in New Jersey and her new boyfriend.”

I suppressed a groan. Would I be forced to endure hearing about my mother’s love life all over town? “Was there something in particular she seemed to be looking for? I know she was upset about Yoshe’s death.”

Reba nodded slowly. “She was certain that I knew more about Miss King than what I told the police. She wanted to review everything that I’d noticed about her yesterday. She said she’d read a hundred times over how this works in mysteries. The smart police ask you to go over your day from stem to stern because you just don’t know what’s going to turn out to be important.” She tapped her glasses on her front teeth. “And you know what? She was absolutely right.”

“About what?” I asked, ready to shake her until her fillings rattled. Two people were dead and my mother was missing, and she was yammering like a cheap music box. I smiled with encouragement.

“She asked me if Miss King seemed anxious or afraid about anything.”

“And you said…”

“Not at first. She came down for breakfast yesterday just like normal.” She pointed across the room to the table where Yoshe must have been sitting on the day she died. “And she had a cup of tea while she worked. She travels with her own tea and a strainer. Even though I have a very good selection. But this is something special—from her childhood in China. Lapsang souchong. She said it has a strong, smoky flavor and most people don’t care for it.” She pressed her hands against her cheeks. “Listen to me, talking about her as if she’s still here.”

I bobbed my head with encouragement, trying to be sympathetic, but wondering if she’d ever get to the point.

“So, as I told your mother, she nibbled on one of our croissants from the bakery down on Eaton Street. We’ve switched over to them lately and I’ve gotten a ton of compliments.”

“So she seemed normal at breakfast. Tea and pastry. But then…”

“But then she got a phone call on the house phone. One of the girls who helps me with breakfast and cleaning the rooms answered it and called her over. I did quiz my girl about this, but all she remembers is that the voice was female.” She paused and slid her glasses back on. “Do you think it’s okay for me to be telling this to anyone who asks?”

“Not just anyone. Naturally you should tell the cops if you remember any details you didn’t tell them yesterday. But you see, my mother is missing.” I tapped two fingers on the counter. “And I’m wondering if she
might be following up on something that the two of you discussed.”

The manager squirmed, suddenly making herself very busy with straightening the sightseeing literature on the rack.

“There’s something else?” I asked, holding the fear out of my voice, trying to keep my tone pleasant and nonchalant so I didn’t spook her into silence.

“I did let her look through Miss King’s belongings.” She pointed to an upholstered suitcase and a brown snakeskin briefcase stashed under a table in the back office. “It’s the high season,” she explained. “Miss King was scheduled to check out this afternoon anyway, and I really couldn’t afford to leave her belongings all over the bedroom. We have another guest coming in today. So once the police were finished and gave me the go-ahead, I packed everything up. Her niece is arriving midafternoon to retrieve her bags. I wished I could have offered her a free room, but we have a full house. And she said she didn’t want to stay in the establishment where her aunt died, so not to worry.”

I steered her back to my initial question. “Mom looked at this stuff and then took off? Did she find something in particular?”

The manager shrugged. “I wasn’t watching very carefully. Maybe she said she was looking for her passport? But that doesn’t seem right. Miss King may have looked Oriental, but she’s as American as you or me. So maybe it was a diary or a date-minder.” She nibbled on her thumbnail. “I did mention to your mother about the tea and how Miss King said her grandfather used to smoke
this kind of tea on his farm in the Hunan Province of China. And your mother said that was odd, as she recalled the tea originating in the Wuyi Mountains.”

“That’s my mother,” I said. “She knows a lot about food. Do you mind if I take a quick look at Yoshe’s belongings?”

“I’m not really authorized—”

“The horse is already out of the barn door. Don’t you think?” I asked her. “Look, Mom’s disappeared and I’m worried. I’m sure you don’t want another death associated with your bed-and-breakfast.”

The woman paled and stepped aside so I could go into the office. I quickly shuffled through the clothing in the suitcase, feeling a little ill as the citrusy scent I’d noticed Yoshe wearing on Friday wafted from the fabrics. At the bottom, I found a copy of Jonah’s memoir,
You Must Try the Skate
. I riffled through it, taking note of the pages that Yoshe—or someone—had dog-eared. Underneath Jonah’s book there was a manuscript labeled with dozens of small yellow sticky notes and marked up with a red pen.

“Your mother was very interested in that, now that I think of it,” said Reba, hovering close behind me as I picked the papers up. “I think it was a version of Ms. King’s new cookbook.”

Of course my mother was interested in this—she’d lamented several times the possibility that it wouldn’t be published posthumously. I skimmed a sample of the comments from the copy editor—
recipe needs to be double-checked, tastes different than your description—is
this person related to your ancestors? Cannot find
— I couldn’t make out the rest of the words, but in general, it looked like a load of revisions would have been required to meet the publisher’s standards. The last page in the stack was an editorial letter.

Not up to your usual standards … question the authenticity of a number of the recipes … four weeks to make substantial revisions or contract will be canceled
.

Serious, horrifying notes for an author. Maybe even enough to have made her feel suicidal. “You said Ms. King took a phone call. Could it have been from someone at her publisher?”

“I simply don’t know. But your mother asked the same question,” said Reba. The phone rang at the front desk and she hurried off to answer it.

Without thinking too much about the ethical dilemma, I folded the editorial letter in quarters and slid it into my pocket.

I left the bed-and-breakfast, tapping down little niggles of worry that sprouted up faster than I could squash them down. I sat on my scooter for a few minutes, my face lifted to the midday sun, trying to decide what should come next. What was my mother’s theory about Yoshe? And how was she pursuing it? And most disturbing of all, why hadn’t she called me? What I really wanted to do was go to the police station, burst into the detective’s office, and beg him to put his best men out looking for my mother. Of all people, wouldn’t he know what it felt like to almost lose someone you should be taking care of?

On the other hand, it was really too early to worry. I’d feel totally ridiculous when Mom turned up, having spent the afternoon admiring and photographing the descendents of Hemingway’s cats. Or lowering her blood pressure with a spin through the Butterfly Conservatory. Which would explain why her cell phone was silent. Though a dead battery would explain that as well.

And besides, Bransford had made a dinner date with Olivia Nethercut. Which made the possibility of blathering in front of him very unappealing.

I zoomed back to the oldest house in Key West and combed through the tables of conference folks who were now chowing down on conch chowder and salad. No sign of Mom anywhere. Though the soup looked incredible, a briny, milky broth studded with potatoes, celery, onions, and bits of orange conch. At the table farthest from the buffet line, Fritz Ewing, the culinary poet, recited doggerel in between bites to a group of star-starved women.

“This is a pseudohaiku called ‘Conch Chowder,’” he said to the ladies. “Golden conch,”—slurp—“shoe leather texture”—slurp—“trophy wife after humble clam.”

His tablemates snorted with laughter; the blonde next to him patted his shoulder with congratulations. I recognized two of them as the women Mom had befriended the first night at the opening reception. Crouching down between them, feeling like a children’s cartoon character, I asked, “Have you seen my mother?” Neither had. I asked them to have her call me in case she made a late appearance.

I left the grounds, walked west on Duval, and turned up the block to Whitehead toward the Audubon House, thinking I could distract myself by reviewing the facts of the first murder. Surely the cops would have thought of this, but might someone from one of the neighboring properties have witnessed an altercation involving Jonah and the killer? Considering the noise level of the party that night, it was unlikely that any nearby residents could have retired early. And it had been a lovely evening with a spectacular full moon—a perfect evening for sitting out on the porch, any porch, and thanking the universe for winter in Key West.

I hadn’t noticed before that a tiny clapboard house with a full porch and a miniature front yard outlined with conch shells was tucked in between the Audubon House and the much larger time-share condominium on the other side. Two dirty white cats slept on faded striped cushions on the porch swing in the shade of an enormous banyan tree. I hesitated for a minute, wondering if the weathered “Private Property” sign stabbed into the lawn really meant no visitors ever. The larger of the cats lifted his head, blinked green eyes, and mouthed a silent
meow
. Taking that as a sign of welcome, I unlatched the gate and approached the front porch. “Hello!” I called from the bottom of the stairs. “Anybody home?”

After several minutes, a man creaked down the center hallway to the door, leaning on an aluminum walker with tennis balls on its legs. He peered through the screen, white-tufted eyebrows lifted, a wary look on his craggy face.

“So sorry to bother you,” I said, one foot on the bottom stair, smiling like a stewardess delivering peanuts to coach passengers. Which is to say, I gave him the best I had under the circumstances. But he looked like the kind of guy who would doubt that a food writer had any business nosing around in the aftermath of a murder. A reasonable conclusion.

“I’m attending the writing conference,” I told him, and rattled off my name and credentials. “You’ve probably read the news that we had a death this weekend. And I’m sure the police have already asked, but I wondered if you might have heard anything unusual Thursday night? Say around nine o’clock or a little later?” I pointed to the tangle of overgrown shrubbery that separated his lawn from the far end of the manicured Audubon House grounds. “There’s a tiny pool right over there behind your bushes. And that’s where the dead man ended up.”

The man lifted one shaky hand to rub his chin and then pinch together his cracked lips. At least he wasn’t chasing me out. Yet. He pushed open the door and struggled onto the porch with his walker. “I did hear the sirens,” he said. “Right close yonder.” He pointed to the roof of the Audubon House, barely visible through the greenery.

“Anyone arguing?” I asked. “Maybe just before the sirens?”

He leaned into his walker and took another step. “Sometimes with the TV running, I don’t hear so good. My daughter’s always telling me I’d do better with hearing aids, but I heard too many horror stories
about the damn things. Those companies are just out to cheat the old folks. So I turn up the volume and put on the TV captions and I get along just fine.”

I kept the encouraging smile plastered on my face, but my heart was sinking. An elderly, hard-of-hearing man with a hearing-aid conspiracy theory and his TV cranked to max wouldn’t make much of a witness, no matter how sweet he turned out to be.

“Maybe you were watching TV between nine and ten—maybe
America Has Talent
?” I suggested, trying to get him thinking about Thursday night. “Or
Dancing with the Stars
?” I had no idea—the few programs I watched were cooking shows, showcasing the only talent I really cared about.

“I think I saw a crime show this week,” he said. “There was a murder and some cops on the take.” He snickered. “Not too original, hey?”

“They do all start to run together,” I agreed. “Did you go outside at all that night? Maybe during commercials? The evening I’m talking about, the moon was full. The paper made a big fuss about how high the tides would be and all.”

He lifted his walker an inch off the wooden floor and banged it down. The fat white cat thumped to the floor and sauntered over to wind between his legs. “That’s right! I came out to look because that columnist I like in the
Citizen
said you wouldn’t see anything like it but once in a lifetime.” He looked wistful. “I don’t have all that much time left.”