Fatal Reservations (24 page)

He nodded. “Exactly. There was a screaming fight about two weeks ago in the sculpture garden.” He pointed down the alley past the Waterfront Playhouse. “She had the loudest, craziest voice and she went on and on. Almost like a two-year-old’s tantrum.”

“She was mad about another girl?” I prodded.

“A girl and maybe some stuff he was supposed to sell and give her half.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It
was so ugly and the noise was bothering Snorkel, so I went out the other way.”

Eric handed him a business card. “Call us if you think of anything else?”

We started to leave, but I turned back. “One more question,” I asked, “about Bart Frontgate’s forks. Were they like regular barbecue forks? Like something you’d buy from Kmart or Home Depot in the household goods department?”

“Oh no,” said Rick. “He had them specially designed. I don’t know where he got the metal part, but he had the handles hand milled. They had to be just the right weight for the juggling act. So he didn’t end up miscalculating his tosses and stabbing himself. Or any of the spectators.” He laughed and slid his phone from a back pocket. “Here, I have a photo.” He showed us a picture of Bart, tall, swarthy, and very much alive, holding a fork in both hands and grinning proudly. As Rick had said, the handle was a thing of beauty, heavy wood inlaid with what looked like ivory. “I think he had them made at a gallery up on White Street. Harrison. The artist makes spear guns in his regular business.”

We said good-bye and walked the two blocks to the farewell party for Bart Frontgate. Neither Eric nor I had ever visited the Smokin’ Tuna Saloon, a large outside/inside bar off an alley that was sandwiched between Greene and Caroline streets and not far from Mallory Square.

“Never in the world would we have found this place if we didn’t have the address. In fact,” I said to Eric, “I’ve never attended calling hours at a bar. I hope it’s less grim than standing in line at the funeral home.”

I remembered standing for hours next to my mother
to greet my grandmother’s mourners. I could still picture fresh tears on the cheeks of her elderly friends, and on my mother’s friends’ faces, and shimmering in the eyes of a few friends of mine. By the end of the night we’d been completely cried out, both numb and exhausted. I wasn’t convinced that getting drunk on top of all that sadness would be an improvement.

“I don’t think Key West does a lot with funeral homes,” Eric said. “Strange that they scheduled this event right during the Sunset Celebration. Though I suppose that’s going to keep the undesirable attendees away. The people who didn’t really know him but might come to do some grisly people watching. Or score free drinks.”

As we walked down the alley to the bar, the odors of garbage and fermented alcohol assaulted us. Once inside the entrance gate, we each snagged a glass of white wine from a passing waitress and moved to the back wall to look over the crowd. I spotted a man who was a dead ringer for Bart, only some thirty years older. “That has to be his father,” I said. “I’m going over to give him my condolences.”

When the couple who had been talking to the elder Mr. Gates moved away, I stepped in with my hand outstretched. “I’m Hayley Snow,” I said. “I didn’t know your son well”—not at all but I wouldn’t tell him that—“but I enjoyed his act at the pier many, many times. I am so very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” he said, and squeezed my hand between his, staggering a little as he did. “Shank you.” The man was absolutely smashed.

I fell quiet for a moment, mentally scrambling for what to say. A minister’s words from a funeral that I’d attended a while ago in the Episcopalian church on
Duval Street flooded my mind and I spit them out. “It’s so wrong when a young person goes like this. Well, I mean murder is always wrong. But I mean a young person’s death—it’s not fair. Your son had so much potential. So many years to enjoy life and make his mark.” I stopped blathering to give him a chance to respond.

Mr. Gates looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face. “Make his mark?” he asked, his voice growing louder. “Would he ever have managed that?”

A woman in a black dress, with droopy eyes and very red lips, came over and took his arm. “Thish is Hayley Mills,” he told her. “Thish is Bart’s mother, my wife.”

“Snow,” I said, with an automatic smile. “I’m so very sorry.”

“Other people before Bart made terrible mistakes and bounced back,” she told him. “Who would’ve thought Senator Kennedy could go from Chappaquiddick to the Senate? And President Clinton, he fell into a ridiculous scandal and came out more popular than ever.”

Mr. Gates squared his shoulders, as though she might have convinced him of this truth.

“No telling what Bart might have done, had he been given the chance,” I said wagging my head sadly. The woman nodded with me.

Mr. Gates picked up the glass of beer that he’d set on the bar when he greeted me. The bartender had filled it
to the brim while we talked. “The hard truth was, Bart never could own up to his mistakes. How in the world was he supposed to move beyond them?”

The woman’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s cruel. He would have gotten around to that,” she said. “The way those others did.”

I was trying to figure out how to ask what Bart’s mistake had been, when the woman grabbed her husband’s arm, murmuring her thanks, and pulled him away to greet some other mourners.

“How did that go?” Eric asked when I returned to his position against the wall.

I made a face and held my hand up, fingers an inch apart. “Bart’s mother seems to be under the impression that their son was just this close to leaving a legacy like President Clinton or Senator Kennedy. His father’s not so sure.”

*   *   *

By the time we got back to Houseboat Row, starving and worn as thin as a strand of angel hair pasta, I could smell the garlicky-tomato scent of my spaghetti sauce wafting all the way up the finger. Miss Gloria met us on the deck and announced that she’d been fielding texts from her mah jong friends ever since we’d left. News had spread like full-moon floodwaters through Key West that another death had occurred, this one in the cemetery. The residents who lived in that section of Old Town were frantic, and the police department had received hundreds of anxious calls.

“There’s a special meeting called for seven thirty tomorrow night at the Old City Hall,” she said. “Everyone will be there. The city commissioners will be in attendance along with the police chief and other officers. Of course they want to reassure the citizens,” added Miss Gloria. “But I don’t see how that’s going to
happen unless they’ve got the real murderer behind bars. My friends are hysterical—and they are sturdy old ladies.”

“I guess we’ll have to attend that meeting,” I said with a sigh. “But where’s Lorenzo? How’s he holding up? Is he resting?”

“They picked him up about half an hour after you left,” said Miss Gloria, her gaze not meeting mine. “I didn’t see the point of calling you, because his lawyer was here and said he had to go. There wasn’t a darned thing you could have done. Apparently the evidence against him is mounting.”

22

The long-cherished deposit of ancient schmutz—a spongy mess that you can use day after day and even decade after decade, and whose exigencies you, as a baker, basically can’t escape—is called, no kidding, “the mother.”

—
Adam Gopnik, “Bread and Women,”
The New Yorker

In the morning, I felt logy from the pile of spaghetti I’d inhaled the night before and discouraged about Lorenzo being taken back to jail. I lay in bed for fifteen minutes trying to piece together what might have happened between Cheryl Lynn and Bart, and how Lorenzo could have been involved. I’d Googled the song that Cheryl Lynn had tattooed on her shoulder—snatches of the melody kept running through my mind. It was a hard-driving rock song about early death, blank stares, yearning for something you can’t have, shame, emptiness, and regrets. Definitely not something a happy person would want to ink onto her body. But I’d already gotten the idea from talking to Snorkel’s dad and Lorenzo, too, that Cheryl Lynn had been a troubled person.

I finally forced myself out of bed, took a quick
shower, and left the houseboat to head toward
Key Zest
. As I fastened my helmet on, my phone rang. It was a Key West number but not one that I recognized. Even though it seemed an unlikely possibility, I couldn’t help feeling a surge of hope: Lorenzo had been sprung and needed a ride home.

I pulled the helmet back off and pressed
accept
. “Hello?” I said eagerly.

“Hayley Snow? This is Olivia.”

“Olivia?” My hopefulness sagged like a pricked popover. I didn’t know an Olivia and I wasn’t in the mood for fending off telemarketers.

“Olivia Mastin,” she said. “Edwin’s wife. From the floating restaurant? I wonder if you would have time for coffee sometime this afternoon.”

“I’ve got an awfully busy day lined up.”

“Please,” she begged. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t crucial. I know you don’t owe me a thing. But—”

She started to sniffle and my curiosity spiked, along with a little bit of sympathy. Besides, more caffeine and sugar could only help the way I felt this morning.

“I’m on my way to work, but I could meet you right now for fifteen minutes—”

“That’s great,” she said, cutting me off before I even finished. “Somewhere downtown?”

“Let’s say the Glazed Donut in ten minutes.”

I left my scooter parked in the lot behind
Key Zest
and walked the few blocks over to Eaton Street. The Glazed Donut shop sits directly next to the Tropic Cinema, although their clientele doesn’t much overlap. Doughnuts in the morning, movies in the evening. I took a seat at the back of the shop after purchasing the doughnut that sang loudest to me, the blood orange bull’s-eye doughnut, and a cup of strong Cuban coffee.
I bit into the pastry, savoring the tang of the marmalade and an unexpected pocket of orange-scented cream.

Mrs. Mastin hurried in just minutes later, grabbed a coffee, and came over to join me. “Hayley, I really appreciate you meeting with me. I know it was sudden, but I didn’t know what else to do.” She took a sip of coffee and a moment to regroup, then removed her sunglasses and put them on the table. “Poor Edwin has had such a shock with Cheryl Lynn.” Her eyes were glassy with tears that she tried to hold back. And I noticed that they looked puffy and red, as if she’d done a lot of crying.

“I’m very sorry. She was close to your family?”

“Like another daughter,” she said. “I understand you were one of the people who found her.”

“Yes.” I answered with a definiteness that did not invite further questions. The last thing I wanted to do was describe my version of what it had been like to find Cheryl Lynn’s remains in the crypt. I didn’t want to etch that visual deeper into my brain, nor would she want to hear it.

“Well, anyway,” she said, her gaze searching my face, “that’s not why I called you. I wanted to talk about your review of For Goodness’ Sake. I wonder if you might consider visiting for another meal at our place? On the house, of course.”

“I—”

“I’m just afraid that any review less than a rave would put Edwin under.” She smoothed a silver curl into her blue headband and waited, a hopeful expression on her face.

I nibbled at the sugar-crusted outer edges of my doughnut, wondering exactly how to phrase the bad news.

“We know the locally sourced seaweed was reaching,” she said, adding a forced snicker. “We can do so much better if we stick to the island basics.”

“The thing is,” I said, wiping my fingers on a napkin, “the review is essentially written. I have to turn it in this morning at the staff meeting. We have a new strict boss who wants everything early. And in fact, this one is already late.”

She burst into ragged sobs and I felt my resistance ebbing.

“I can ask,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, “but I’m almost sure the answer will be no.”

She grabbed my hand and wrung it. “Thank you so much. Thank you.”

I stood up, crumpled the napkin, and stuffed it into the coffee cup. “Who is Cheryl’s family? Do they live on the island?”

Mrs. Mastin shook her head. “I believe her parents have been deceased for a long time, poor thing. She’s been floating around Key West forever, a lost soul.”

“Will there be a service?”

Mrs. Mastin shrugged. “I really have no idea. If you check her profile on Facebook, you might find something there.”

Which I found bizarre. If she and her husband had been so close to Cheryl Lynn, why in the world wouldn’t she know this? I glanced at my watch. “I’m late to my meeting. I’m sorry about your troubles.” I left the doughnut store and trotted back over to the
Key Zest
office. As I vaulted up the stairs, I could hear Wally and Palamina bantering in their shared office. Was it my imagination, or did he seem happier since he dumped me?

I tapped on Wally’s door and stepped inside.

Palamina glanced at her wrist, decorated with an oversized Minnie Mouse watch. Then she managed a smile. “Now we can officially start the meeting. We’ve been talking about a new weekly feature. A locals’-eye view of something on the island.”

Wally cut in. “We realize that lots of local publications write about Key West food and music and events. Of course we’ll continue with that, but we want to step our content up.”

Palamina said, “And not just the content. We want the writing to be stunning, too.”

First she wanted Buzzfeedable. Now she wanted stunning?

“Then we’re thinking of doing a weekly podcast using Google Hangouts that we’ll connect with our Facebook page. So readers can match up the personalities with the stories.”

My immediate reaction was to wonder how long it would take to lose the ten pounds I’d packed on over the holidays and never managed to shake.

“Danielle had the idea of writing about tropical gardening,” Palamina said, her voice approving.

“And don’t forget beauty,” said Danielle. “In other words, I’ll sample the various spas around the island to check out facials and massages.” She grinned and patted her cheek.