Fatal Reservations (17 page)

Then I gathered my things together, stuffed them in my backpack, and tapped on Miss Gloria’s bedroom door, where we’d agreed that Lorenzo would hide out for the day.

“I’m going to Azur with Eric,” I told him. “And then Miss Gloria and I will noodle around town a little bit. You should probably be thinking about how you plan to word your confession. Because I think that’s where we’re headed. To the police station.” I frowned. “And be thinking about exactly why you hid the goggles, and why you cleaned the bloody fork. Because that’s sure what I’d like to know.”

14

After all, life-changing work experiences come and go. But homemade meatballs and red sauce are forever.

—Ann Mah,
Mastering the
Art of French Eating

By the time I reached the tiny parking lot at Azur, I was beginning to dread the lunch with Eric. I was pretty sure the food would be good, and Eric’s company is always welcome, but it would be painful holding so much back from him.

He was waiting inside by a big potted palm, the waiters bustling around him, preparing for the lunchtime rush. After we’d bussed cheeks, the host led us to a table on the porch. As with many places in Key West, the restaurant made the most of a small space on a busy street, ending up with a spot that looked cozy and tropical. Before the host could slip away, I ordered a basket of eggplant chips with fleur de sel and rosemary honey, along with Mediterranean mussels and tater tots bravas with salsa diablo. We refused his offer of bread: We couldn’t afford the empty calories, no matter how fresh it was.

“You seem tense,” Eric said right away with his head cocked, looking puzzled.

“You’re onto me,” I said, trying to force a smile. “As
usual I’m worried about my job. And where things are headed with Wally. It must get old listening to the same old, same old stories.” I tried to keep my voice light and solid like a wall that his curiosity could bounce off. Luckily, he was professional enough to get the message and to respect my privacy.

“Have you heard anything from Lorenzo?”

“Not a word,” I said, crossing my fingers under the table. Childish, but I hated lying to my dear friend.

“And your mom?” Eric asked.

“Going crazy.” I grinned. “Her baseline anxiety is pretty high, as you know. She’s taking awfully good care of Sam, but I think she can’t wait to get back down here.”

The waiter delivered our pre-meal nibbles, followed soon by the main dishes I’d ordered. Eric sampled the gnocchi bathed in short ribs sauce and pronounced them amazing. “It’s kind of cool that they cook winter dishes even when it’s eighty degrees here.”

“This would really go over big in New Jersey, wouldn’t it?” I asked. “I think they’re getting another ice storm tonight, or so my mother said.” I paused for a minute to jot some notes about the food in my iPhone. “Have you ever had one of the Mallory Square street performers in your therapy practice?”

He looked up, surprised. “Where’d that come from?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Lorenzo. And that got me to thinking about the other folks who appear for Sunset every night and what their lives are like. And what their psychology is like. Even the homeless guys are a little easier for me to wrap my head around than those performers.”

“I haven’t ever treated one,” said Eric. “I would
guess there’s a fair amount of alcohol and drug abuse. Those performers have to get themselves ramped up every night. And this is not like a Broadway show or big-name concert where they’re being paid regardless of how they perform. These guys rely on the hat being passed.”

“And there’s nothing much to bind them together as a group,” I said, “so it doesn’t surprise me that they’ve had trouble negotiating a new contract with the city. It’s more like a bunch of individuals fighting to make their way than a real functioning community.”

“You’re thinking about Frontgate’s murder again.”

I nodded. “It can’t be Lorenzo. He’s too kind, too gentle.” I felt a spurt of sadness. Because who knew what lurked underneath that kindhearted exterior? “I am so hoping it doesn’t turn out to be him.”

After we’d tasted all the dishes I ordered, we asked the waiter to wrap up the leftovers for Eric to take home to Bill and the dogs. “You didn’t have much of an appetite,” the waiter said as he cleared the nearly full plates.

“The eyes-bigger-than-stomach problem,” I said. “But the food was wonderful.”

The truth was I didn’t have an appetite. Which had something to do with the blue moon pancakes sitting heavy in my gut, and something to do with the oversized secret hiding out in Miss Gloria’s bedroom.

“What are you up to the rest of the day?” Eric asked. “I hope you’re not having to eat dinner out, too.”

“Probably not. Haven’t thought that far ahead. I’m going to buzz over to the cemetery. Miss Gloria is being trained as a tour guide and she wants me to be one of her guinea pigs. I went the other day and she’s having
so much fun with it.” Somebody else wouldn’t have noticed the change in my voice.

“It must be hard, though, with her being in her eighties,” Eric said. “Hard not to think about mortality.”

I nodded, throat constricted, wiping my face with a white linen napkin to cover the tears that had filled my eyes. “I realize that any of us could go at any moment, but some are closer to the last curtain call than others.”

Eric patted my hand. “We’re due to shake off the blues and schedule a martini night at Virgilio’s. Or a beer at the Green Parrot,” Eric said. “I’ll check the list of bands coming this weekend and text you what looks good.”

We strolled out into the blanket of warmth radiating from the sidewalk and I headed south and east on my scooter toward the cemetery. Miss Gloria doesn’t carry a cell phone regularly, and she wasn’t standing outside the sexton’s house as we’d agreed earlier. So I parked and went in. Jane Newhagen, her boss, was poring over handwritten records that had been spread across a long table. She looked up with a big smile.

“Your roommate is out memorizing gravestones and the stories that go with them. She’s amazing. Most people her age would be content to sit in a rocking chair in front of the television, but she’s the most enthusiastic new guide we have.”

“She’s amazing, all right,” I said. “Can you point me in her direction?”

“Better yet, I’ll show you the way,” said Jane. She got up from the table, straightened a few stacks of records, and followed me out into the bright sun, locking the door behind her. “The sexton is giving a talk to the new class of Key West Ambassadors,” she said, noticing me
watch her lock up. “Most people wouldn’t do any damage in here, but there’s always the one who might wander by and decide my vintage paperwork would make a good souvenir.” Her eyebrows raised, she shrugged. “We’re all a little on edge with the cemetery burglar business.”

“What’s the latest on that?” I asked.

“There hasn’t been anything new in the last few days,” she said. “The police have been working with the homeowners association—folks who live around the cemetery. And they’re sending out regular e-mails to keep people informed.”

“More like keep them from freaking out?” I asked, and we both laughed. “I’d be happy to hear any family stories you don’t mind telling me as we walk,” I said. “Until Miss Gloria came to work here, I never really thought of how much is buried in the cemetery.” I snickered. “I mean I know there are bodies.”

“But there’s history,” she said. “So much wonderful history.” She waved at a worn stone that was listing to the left. “This is Sofronia Bradley Hall. Her claim to fame is that her husband was a game warden who was murdered because he was trying to protect endangered birds from poachers. They were killing birds to grab feathers for women’s hats.”

“That’s awful,” I said. “Not being married to a hero, like Sofronia, I’m going to have to do something important to get included in your history.”

She chuckled and pointed at another set of stones, which looked familiar.

“Oh my gosh, that’s the murder-suicide grave. Miss Gloria told me about them the other day. I think it’s horrible that they’re buried together.”

Jane shrugged. “Probably that was arranged in
happier times. The story goes that they were fighting, probably drinking, and he shot her and then finished himself off by drinking carbolic acid.”

“So he punished himself,” I said. As we continued to walk, the diminutive shape of Miss Gloria emerged. She was standing in front of the wedding cake monument, where six layers of crumbling concrete were settled on a brick base. On the short end of the cake, a white marble marker was etched with the initials WWR and MMR.

Miss Gloria said, “If I do well enough in the stock market the next few years, I’m going to make a donation to renovate this grave site. It’s so gorgeous—it’s criminal to let it fall apart like this.”

“Donations gladly accepted,” said Jane, swishing her ankle-length skirt.

I left the two of them chatting about what the grave site might look like if it was updated, and wandered two plots over to the Gates family plot. On the far side, behind a black iron fence, I spotted another family plot by the name of Mastin. I called over to Jane. “Is this is the same family as the fellow who just opened the floating restaurant?”

“Yep, that’s the one,” she said. “They’ve been around this island forever, too.”

“How do you score a plot in this cemetery?” asked Miss Gloria.

“Not that you’re going to need one anytime soon,” I scolded her.

“Of course not,” she said. “Of course not. But planning ahead saves your family a lot of trouble when the time finally comes.”

“Unless you’re willing to join the others in the condos,” Jane said, pointing across the cemetery to a group
of cement crypts near Olivia Street, “getting buried here is not that easy. Obviously there isn’t any free land around for expansion. But sometimes a family will sell their property because they’ve moved away from Key West. Or maybe their ancestors thought everyone would want to be buried here, but they’re planning something else. That’s how I got my plot.”

“We’d love to see it,” said Miss Gloria.

“Sure,” Jane said, and beckoned us to follow down the main path.

I smiled automatically, but I didn’t really want a tour. The whole cemetery thing was creeping me out. Even when I tried to think of it as fascinating history, the present realities of age and inevitability crept into my mind.

So I stayed behind to study the names in the Gates family compound, thinking that somewhere in here must be a hint about Bart Frontgate’s life, and from there, his death. As I leaned against the metal fence that separated this plot from the one next to it, a sudden flash of movement drew my attention. A scaly three-foot creature with spikes running down its back and a third eye disappeared into a sinkhole under a flat crypt. I screamed. The two ladies came running. “What’s wrong?” asked Miss Gloria, her chest heaving and voice aquiver.

“I swear a giant lizard slithered under that crypt.” I
pointed to a hole under the slab where he’d disappeared.

“It’s the darn iguanas,” Jane said. “They wouldn’t harm you; they’re mostly herbivorous. You probably scared him more than he scared you.”

“I doubt that.” I felt my heart beating so hard I could almost see my shirt move. “They don’t smell so good, either.”

Jane grinned and shrugged. “They like it here because it’s quiet and they can lie in the sun on the gravestones and soak up the heat.”

“And then they keep house under the graves?” I asked, taking a few steps away from the gaping hole under the crypt cover. “That’s kind of gross.”

“Hayley’s not a cemetery person,” said Miss Gloria, cracking a grin. “I’m going to get her out of here. But I’ll see you tomorrow.” She linked her hand through my arm as we marched down the path. “I’m not leaving until we’ve at least looked at the outside of that girl’s house. Maybe she’s home and she can answer all our questions.”

15

Mispronunciation—the “k” in “knish” is not silent—could trigger the same response as a cold knish: disappointment, revulsion and a jabbing sense of missed opportunity. Or perhaps worse. An icy knish can at least be reheated.

—Laura Silver,
Knish: In Search
of the Jewish Soul Food

Miss Gloria and I mounted the scooter and drove two blocks to Cheryl Lynn’s address. The house looked quiet and abandoned. The trash can and recycling box were empty, tipped over in the driveway, and the small yard’s grass was longer than that of the houses around it.

“We should probably tap on the door before we go blasting in,” said Miss Gloria.

“Of course we should,” I said, though I hadn’t exactly thought of that. We left the scooter on the street and scuttled up to the door.

Miss Gloria knocked lightly. We listened: no footsteps, no radio or TV, no scrabbling of a dog’s feet on the wood floors. Hard to say whether we were being watched by any of the neighbors. The homes on either side looked slightly run-down, not the kind of
neighborhood where houses had been renovated and resold to wealthy outsiders by profit-hungry contractors. Not yet, anyway.

“Let’s go around the back,” said Miss Gloria. “That’s how Lorenzo got in. He said it wasn’t locked. But I wonder if he locked it behind him.”

“I thought we were just looking.” I planted my hands on my hips.

“We are.” She pushed her way past a pale gray palmetto and some overgrown philodendron, her feet crunching on the oystershell pathway. I followed. A wind chime made of broken glass bottlenecks spun and jingled as we went by. There was a pocket pool in the backyard, with only a green scum of water at the bottom, overrun by weeds.

“Whatever she’s up to, she hasn’t been doing much yard work,” said Miss Gloria. “That’s one big advantage of life on a houseboat. No lawn maintenance is expected.”

“Yeah, but you’d be out there trimming if you did have a yard. You’d never let things go like this. Your little back porch looks a thousand times better than this yard.”