Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (6 page)

Minutes later, she arrived in my room, wearing her pink sweatshirt with the Florida Keys outlined in rhinestones. Both of the cats, her black Sparky and my striped Evinrude, trotted in her wake.

“One coffee, heavy on milk and light on sugar, comin’ right up,” Miss Gloria sang out. Evinrude hopped onto the bed, butted my hand with his head, and began to purr. Miss Gloria settled the steaming cup on my bedside table. “How was the conference?”

“Anybody up?” called a voice from the dock before I could tell her the story.

“I’ll let her in,” said Miss Gloria, bustling out to the living room to greet our neighbor Connie.

“Could have been better,” I muttered, pulling myself to a seated position and reaching under the bed for my laptop. Sipping the coffee, I turned on the computer and flipped to my e-mail. At the top of the queue was a message from Dustin Fredericks to all the attendees of the food writing seminar. The subject line read
Urgent communication from the director!
I opened it up.

“I write to inform you that Jonah Barrows slipped and fell last night and accidentally drowned. We deeply regret his passing but know he would want the conference to continue as planned. We have made the decision to dedicate the weekend to Jonah and his legacy. So in addition to the events already in place, we are planning a final session on Sunday honoring his life and his work.”

The confirmation of his death went down like a mouthful of sour milk. Though I shouldn’t really be surprised, considering what Jonah had looked like—limp and sodden and pastry white—as we extricated him from the pool.

Miss Gloria and Connie came into my room carrying their own cups of coffee. Their smiles faded when they saw my face.

“The keynote speaker died last night. But I can’t really talk about it,” I said, holding up a hand. “I can’t afford to get upset. Too much work to do.”

“Died of what?” Connie asked. She ran her fingers through her short hair, still damp from the shower, until it stood up like a hedgehog’s.

“Drowned.” I grimaced, flashing on the peculiar texture
of his skin and his fishy lips and eyes. “I found him. I swear I’ll fill you in about everything tonight.”

I slid out from under my comforter, hugged Connie, kissed Miss Gloria on the top of her head where the pink skin showed through her thinning white hair, and hurried into the shower. While soaping and rinsing, I worked to push last night’s events out of mind and instead focus on the opening paragraph of my piece on Jonah’s lecture. He’d made a lot of interesting points and I hated to think they’d be lost in the brouhaha over his death. And if I lost my focus, my job would be next.

I worked a teaspoon of hair product through my curls and dressed in jeans, a peach-colored swing top, and my mother’s sandals, which rubbed painfully on yesterday’s blisters. I applied a couple of Band-Aids to the backs of my heels and tucked some extras into my pockets. While packing the conference program, Jonah’s book, and two notebooks into my backpack, I found the chunk of the strawberry-rhubarb coffee cake Eric had given me yesterday. I packed this on top so it wouldn’t get more crushed, then hopped on my scooter and drove down Southard to the office.

Early last fall, Wally had rented a small attic space for the magazine above Preferred Properties Real Estate. Two enormous palm trees outside the only window blocked most of the light, but our receptionist, Danielle, decorated so it felt like a cozy tropical haven instead of a cave.

Both Wally and Danielle were at their desks by the time I arrived. And both were wearing their
Key Zest
company yellow shirts.

“Good Lord, Hayley. Jonah Barrows died last night?” asked Danielle before I’d even struggled out of my helmet and sweater. “Is that coffee cake?” She pointed at the plastic-wrapped package I pulled out of my pack.

“I’ll share,” I said, and cut it into three equal sections. I nibbled on mine—the strawberries made it moist and sweet; the rhubarb lent it tang.

“How did this happen?” asked Wally, reaching for his piece. “The e-mail said it was an accidental drowning, but there’s no water near the Audubon House. Did you get the real story?”

“Every time I walk along the dock by the old harbor, I imagine how easy it would be for someone to push me over.” Danielle shivered. “I can’t swim a lick—I’d be a goner. Like that poor woman who was shoved into the path of a subway train in New York City.”

“Down, girl. Your neuroses are showing,” said Wally. “We’re in Key West. Let Hayley tell us.”

So I explained everything—Jonah’s provocative lecture, the squirming panelists, my discovery of the body in the dipping pool, the missing statue. “How am I supposed to write about foodie trends with all that happening?” I asked in a wobbly voice. Because it was hitting me that Jonah might well have died exactly during the moments that I was trying to save him.

“You take the day off,” Wally said. “I’ll come up with something. I can use your press pass. It’s going to be super important to get a piece written up on Jonah and his life work. What he meant to people … his major contributions … and of course any hints about
personal issues that might be behind the death. We’re the hometown news—
Key Zest
can’t be late to the party.” He popped the last chunk of the coffee cake into his mouth and gave me a thumbs-up. “I can try to explain to Ava that you had a personal emergency.”

And she’d take that as exactly the kind of evidence she was trolling for to fire me. I’d worked too hard to land this job to fold up like a paper napkin. “Absolutely not. I’m up for it. I’m going over to talk to folks now.” I gathered my things and started for the door.

“Don’t forget your restaurant review,” Wally called after me. “We still need that.”

I turned back to look at him—he was smiling. A month on the job and he already had my number. Ambitious even if it killed me. “Got it covered,” I said with a smart salute.

I left my scooter in the office parking lot and walked the few blocks down Southard to Duval. Early morning was actually a good time to see the city—street-cleaning crews had swept away the detritus of the parties from the previous night—the Mardi Gras beads, the broken beer bottles, the pizza crusts—along with its accompanying odors. The streets were peopled by roosters and joggers and a few of the homeless folks who’d spent the night in places not conducive to sleeping in, but none of the evening crowds of revelers were up this early.

I crossed the street to avoid the powerful smell of a deep-fat fryer from a fast food grill serving greasy breakfasts and headed east on Duval Street to the San Carlos Institute. I spotted Dustin on the sidewalk
outside the building, talking with a cluster of the conference organizers and Officer Torrence—fully recognizable because of the mustache and the wide shoulders in spite of his street clothes. I ducked my head and scuttled by, not wishing to rehash my discovery of Jonah’s body. Or get sucked into more questions on the unfortunate death. Besides, I had a lot to do before Mom arrived and distracted me from my
Key Zest
business.

Having my mother here with me cemented the connection I felt between food and love. Between food and taking care of someone you loved. Or might want to love. Between food and guilt. I appreciated her enthusiasm and confidence in me, but I wasn’t convinced she understood how important this weekend was for my career. She’d understand if I explained that I was in danger of getting fired if I didn’t produce something brilliant, but she’d also worry. And hover, motherly rotors a-whapping.

I climbed the white marble steps circling to the second floor above the lobby. In the large room across from the stairway, a sumptuous continental breakfast had been laid out for the conference speakers and attendees—pastries, fruit, an egg casserole with onions and sausage, three kinds of juice, and coffee. I imagined that anyone providing food for this seminar would be hypervigilant about its quality. Who’d want a roomful of restaurant critics and food writers wrinkling their collective noses at your offerings? Or worse still, suffering a wave of food poisoning?

I loaded a plate with a little of everything and looked
around for someone to chat with. A group huddled in the far corner of the room included three of the conference speakers and several others. Their body language was not welcoming, but if I let that stop me I’d gather nothing but uninformed suppositions from the home cooks and fringe writers attending the conference. I pictured Ava Faulker poised to can me, and then wedged into the space between a well-known Asian cookbook author and Sigrid Gustafson, the author of three novels centering on Scandinavian food, whom I’d seen in the bathroom at the reception the night before.

I surfed into the first silence. “Good morning,” I said brightly. “I’m Hayley Snow with
Key Zest
magazine, headquartered right here in town. We’re so happy to have you visiting.”

There was the smallest pause and then they continued to talk as if I hadn’t appeared—about the pitiful state of advances in book contracts and whether e-books were truly the way of the future.

“Surely not for cookbooks,” said Yoshe King, a small dark-haired woman in a sequined tunic and black leggings. “Who wants to look at a recipe on an iPhone?”

The novelist scowled. “Haven’t you heard of Epicurious, darling? And the apps that are being developed are nothing short of miraculous.”

I ate a little of my breakfast, waiting for another break in the conversation, and telling myself not to take the cold shoulders personally.

“I adored your most recent cookbook,” I said to Yoshe when I got the opportunity. “It read like a novel.
Sheer pleasure! I tried the Asian noodle salad with sticky ginger tofu cubes—I swear it’s the only time my guy hasn’t refused tofu outright.”

In fact, I didn’t have a guy and if I did, I wouldn’t force tofu on him, but she wouldn’t know that. “We’re running features on conference panelists in our magazine for the rest of January and I’d love to do one on you and your work. Believe it or not, most of our articles are starting to get picked up by the Associated Press.”

Finally she beamed, slid a business card out of her pocket, and handed it over. “Thanks. It would be my pleasure.”

I turned to the rotund woman next to her, Sigrid the novelist. “Your latest novel,” I said, “was like eating a great meal. I savored every word.”

She simpered. “Why, thank you.”

Though I had admired her novel for its meticulous wordsmithing, it read more like the prickly Scandinavian top chef Jonah had scorned in his opening remarks than the romance-laden comfort food I preferred when I wasn’t working. My ability to manufacture bologna seemed to be expanding with each minute on the job.

On the other hand, yes, I was feeding them lines, but at the same time, I wasn’t. Every overwrought word was true. Because underneath the writers’ posturing and jostling for position, in each of their books, I recognized their true love for food. This was my tribe. If they’d only let me join them.

“I was so sad when I came to the end,” I added to Sigrid. “Any chance I could talk with you later about your creative process and how you manage to make
food such a vibrant character in your fiction?” This woman perked up too, her multiple chins wobbling as she thanked me. She took her colleague’s card from my hand and jotted her cell phone number on the back.

“Perhaps I could take you to lunch?” I asked. Both of the women nodded.

The conversation veered to Jonah and his unfortunate demise. “Someone said a local writer had to dive into the swimming pool and pull him out,” Sigrid reported breathlessly.

“I was the one who found Jonah,” I said in a quiet voice. “It was really more a decorative pool than anything. I only got wet up to my knees. He got unlucky drowning in water that shallow.”

Yoshe nibbled on her lower lip. “Is it possible that he had a heart attack or an embolism, fell into the pool, and was in too much distress to save himself?”

“Anything’s possible,” I said, thinking Bransford would kill me if I started to blab about the missing broken bird statue or the blow to Jonah’s forehead.

“He looked—so pale he was almost blue.” I sighed. “Other than that, I don’t know what really happened.”

“Awful,” said Sigrid. “I’m not saying this has anything to do with it, but Jonah was chugging those little cans of caffeinated drinks all evening. While we were waiting to go on with him backstage, I’m certain he had two of them.”

“He could just as well have been drinking alcohol,” said the man who’d been standing by silently. I thought I recognized his face from the conference program—he called himself a culinary poet.

“Have you glanced through
You Must Try the Skate
?” he asked. “That book is positively riddled with allusions to impulse control. And who chose that ridiculous book title?” he added. “He practically had to have been drinking to go on about bringing up the curtains on the rest of us, the way he did last night. All of us have skeletons we’d rather not rattle—he simply chose to dump his on the unsuspecting public. If I had known this was an invitation to a public encounter group, I would have declined.”

Note to self: Interview this fellow alone later. I dug in my pocket for a business card, but found I’d given out the last one. Then before I spotted her and could head her off, my mother bounced into the middle of the group.

“Oh, Hayley, here you are! I’ve been looking for you—” She stopped and stared at the women next to me, her mouth dropping open. “Yoshe King! Hayley, you never mentioned you knew her. Oh, Miss King, I have your book right here. I’ve been preparing your recipes since Hayley here was a little girl. You should see the pages—absolutely paper-thin and covered with stains from your sauces. In fact, I bought a brand-new copy at the bookstore downstairs.” She rustled through her enormous straw bag and pulled out a cookbook the size of a dictionary. “Would it be too much of an imposition to ask you to sign it?”

She handed the book over and then pinned me in a hug. “It’s so much fun to be attending this conference with my daughter. Do any of you have children? What a treasure to have been able to hand down my passion for
food to Hayley. You’ll be hearing about her—mark my words. Soon she’ll be up on the stage with you, rather than in the audience.” She took her signed book back and thanked Yoshe.