Murder With Ganache: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (11 page)

Shoulders slumping, I started on the other calls to cancel the flowers and the rental china, all of which had been my mother’s idea anyway. Connie would have been happy with paper plates and a nosegay of daisies. Finally, I called the justice of the peace, who was sympathetic but unwilling to keep the date on hold. He had two other couples on his waiting list and he had to be fair with them.

And finally, I dialed the event planner at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. This was the call that killed me, because Connie and Ray and I had walked the beach months ago to pick out the perfect spot: R2, the one Key West locals called “the point.” It had a perfect view of the sunset, and cruise ships and sailboats passing by in the channel. And a waiting list a mile long of anxious brides who wanted their married lives to begin right there. When I reached the event planner, she offered perfunctory sympathy and then excused herself to begin dialing the names on the waiting list to fill Connie’s slot. I hung up and dropped my head to my hands.

“What’s left?” Miss Gloria asked, hovering anxiously at the door to our boat.

“Pretty much just the dress,” I moaned. “Maybe we can sell it off on eBay. Surely there are brides on a budget who would be willing to accept a dash of bad wedding history in exchange for an excellent price.”

She nodded. “There’s no hurry on that though, right?”

But I felt mournful thinking of how perfectly the gown skimmed Connie’s figure and how thrilled she’d been when she’d first tried it on. How could this week possibly get worse?

Better to enjoy a sliver of the finest French cheese, than to devour an entire frozen cheesecake that tastes like the cardboard wrapping it came in.

—Peg Cochran,
Allergic to Death

As soon as I’d gathered myself together, I left the dock, hopped on my scooter, and headed over to Truman Street to talk with Jai Somers at Project Lighthouse, the teen drop-in center. Inside, Jai, a don’t-mess-with-me redhead in a sleeveless leopard-patterned top and jeans, called out a greeting from her seat on an overstuffed green couch. “What brings you here?”

“I was hoping you’d be able to chat,” I said, glancing around at the busy, messy room.

“Can you hang out ten minutes?” she asked. “I’m finishing up a conversation with a newcomer.” She patted the shoulder of the teen perched next to her. “Have a seat and some coffee if you like.” She waved me to an oval table that looked like it had been scrounged from a tag sale at a real estate office.

I crossed the room to the small kitchen and poured myself a cup of strong, bitter brew, and then took a seat opposite a girl who had disassembled her Rollerblades and spread the pieces out on a newspaper. I studied the room’s cheerful chaos—school textbooks crammed on shelves next to paperback mysteries, a drum set, jumbled boxes of first aid supplies, art equipment, paper towels, and toilet paper. In a dark cubby off the bigger room, two kids sorted piles of used clothing and towels. In the farthest corner near the window, a small Norfolk Island pine was still dressed for Christmas in red bows and small glass balls.

Snatches of Jai’s conversation with the newcomer drifted over from the green couch. “I’m going to review some of the house rules here and tell you a little about the town, okay? It will sound like a lot at once, but the guidelines help everyone get along.”

The new girl blinked and drew her thin, bare legs up onto the couch. I wondered if she’d run away from trouble with her parents at home. And if so, why would these rules seem palatable? I tried to picture Rory in this space, feeling so cut off from his world at home in New Jersey that he’d seek comfort or company at a homeless-teen center.

“We can’t operate as a storage unit,” Jai was saying. “If you leave stuff around, it’s up for grabs. No sleeping here—if you nod off, I have to wake you. You need to clean up after yourself. If you are cooking something, don’t take your eyes off the stove. We’ve had two fires, and I have no interest in another. Got it?”

The girl nodded, eyes wide. She looked dirty and disheveled, but definitely not emaciated. And the blond streaks growing out in her hair looked professional, not done with a home coloring kit or a bottle of peroxide. I wondered again where she had come from and how she had reached this place.

“No drugs or alcohol. Period,” Jai continued. “If we think you’re under the influence, we’ll ask you to leave. No horseplay, no fighting. If you’re having trouble with someone, let me know.

“The only legal place to sleep overnight in Key West—besides hotels and all that if you have the dough—is KOTS out on Stock Island.” The girl on the couch was beginning to look glazed. Jai patted her knee. “We can talk more about that. It’s important to remember, no open alcohol containers in town. You’ll look around and see all those tourists carrying beers and drinks, and you’ll think it’s legal. But it’s not.”

A heavyset dark-skinned girl piped up from her seat at the computer. “Legal for rich folks,” she said, an army of piercings bristling around her nose and mouth as she spoke. “The cops enforce the laws selectively.”

Jai shrugged. “I just tell you the facts so you know what you’re dealing with. There are more homeless people here per square inch than most places in the country, and yet there is a high standard of living, which makes it hard to get off the streets. And the town wants to encourage tourists—you can understand that scary street people aren’t a selling point for a tropical vacation getaway.” She smiled. “For your own benefit, stay off the cops’ radar. Don’t hang around in the same place every day. Be cooperative and polite. Your best bet is to have some goals.”

As she continued to talk with the girl about jobs and college, I watched the young woman at my table put her skates back together.

“Do you mind if I show you a picture?” I asked. “My stepbrother got into a little bit of trouble last night and we’re trying to figure out what happened.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed, but then she shrugged and wiped her hands on an old towel. The young woman at the computer stopped what she was doing too and rolled her desk chair over to our table. I pulled up the Facebook photo on my iPhone screen. “This is him,” I said. “Rory.”

The two girls peered at the phone and then back at me. “Who did you say you are?” asked the computer girl.

I paused, wondering how much to say. If I told them he’d been attacked or involved in a theft, would they be less likely to tell what they knew? “I’m his stepsister. He flew down with our folks yesterday for my best friend’s wedding. But last night, he went out for a walk on Duval Street and well, he ended up in the hospital this morning. He’s only fifteen. So we’re worried. Obviously. If we could figure out who these kids are that he met, maybe they would know what happened.” I tried to sound pleasant and concerned, not hysterical or judgmental.

“I don’t know those kids,” the bigger girl said, though the set of her lips suggested that might not be so. The Rollerblade girl nodded in agreement.

I got the feeling we were all fibbing.

“What would you say is the worst kind of trouble a kid could get into in Key West?” I asked.

“That’s easy,” said the big girl. “Drugs.”

“Human trafficking,” Jai added from across the room. She got up from the couch and came over to look, the keys on the ring clipped to her belt jangling as she walked.

She peered at my phone. One girl in the photo wore pink short shorts, hitched up by a chain link belt with a miniature skull dangling from the end. She’d slung her arms around Rory’s neck, her filthy feet rested on his thigh, and her breasts pressed against his chest, which may have partially accounted for his loopy grin.

“That’s Mariah,” Jai said, pointing at the sylphlike girl with blond dreadlocks. “See the heart on her shoulder? She’s the girl I texted you about yesterday, whom we hadn’t seen in a couple of days. I wonder where in the world he ran into her. I hope she’s okay.”

She took the phone from me and studied the screen again. “The girl with the pink hair is Daisy—she’s Mariah’s bestie.” She frowned. “She told me yesterday that she hadn’t seen Mariah. What’s up with that?”

I sighed, tucked my phone into my backpack, and got up to leave.

“Is your stepbrother all right?” Jai asked as she escorted me to the door.

I lowered my voice. “He’s in a coma in the ICU. We found him out by Wisteria Island after he took off on a stolen Jet Ski last night.” I wondered how much more to say, deciding to leave the rest of the details until we knew more ourselves.

“I’ll let you know the minute I hear anything,” she said.

Outside, the midday sun had finally burned through the clouds and the sidewalk shimmered in the heat. I perched on the seat of my scooter and dialed my father’s cell phone. He answered on the fifth ring, sounding breathless and annoyed.

“Nothing new,” he said before I could ask. “No better. No worse.”

“Shall I come over and take a shift?” I asked.

“She won’t leave him,” Dad said. “Why don’t you take care of your work and swing by tonight?”

“I could bring lunch. Aren’t you starving?” I would be. My mother and I both react to crises with a powerful urge to eat. Or cook. Or both. On the other hand, if food had been Dad’s primary motivator, he would have stayed married to Mom. Mom produced miracles from her kitchen. With Allison, honestly, it was a miracle if she cooked an edible meal. “If there’s anything at all I can do to help, I want to do it.”

“She won’t eat anything. Between getting seasick and worrying about Rory, she has no appetite. I found some doughnuts in the family lounge and scarfed a couple down.” He laughed, a sound so devoid of humor, it frightened me. “We’ll be okay until later. Thanks.” He hung up.

I hated to imagine the pastries that would have been left in the hospital waiting room—heavy, dry, and tasteless. Nothing that would make it into my article alongside the designer glazed doughnuts we’d had this morning—that was for sure. Feeling worried and discouraged, I shifted my scooter off its kickstand and started down Truman toward Whitehead.

I couldn’t do anything for my family right now. And Connie’s decision was also out of my hands. The only thing I could control was my job: I might as well take a run at the Hemingway cats. I called my friend Donna and told her I was heading over.

I can promise you that if someone close to me had been murdered, I would not be producing cupcakes for a banquet the following day.

—Krista Davis,
The Diva Frosts a Cupcake

It’s almost impossible to enter the grounds inside the wall surrounding Hemingway’s house without feeling your blood pressure drop a few points. The house is gorgeous—a two-story white structure with tall arched windows flanked by lemon-colored shutters and porches that wrap all the way around both floors. And the landscape is green and tropical, a haven for the fifty plus glossy, polydactyl felines that make their home here. I’d started visiting once a week back in the fall when my relationship with Chad was tanking. And I’d made friends with one of the cat caretakers, Donna Vanderveen, who introduced me to many of the kitties. My favorite vacillated between Rudy Valentino, an orange tiger, and Duke Ellington, a gray striper who spent his afternoons stretched along a railing near the entrance so visitors could admire him. Evinrude hated it when I came home smelling of Hemingway cats, and turned up his nose and whiskers at my feeble explanations.

In the garden to the left of the house, event staff buzzed around setting up for a wedding. I sat on a bench off to the side and watched them wind greenery and white roses through the latticework arch that stood in the center of the space. I felt a rush of sadness for Connie. And Ray, too, who seemed unable to breach the chasm between them. How had they gone from delirious anticipation to dejection in the space of twelve hours? It was almost like Connie had flipped an internal switch.

After a few more minutes of watching the workers, I texted Donna to let her know I’d arrived for the interview. She appeared soon after and plunked down on the bench next to me, a rangy, tanned woman in shorts and an orange tank top, her long brown hair pulled into a loose ponytail.

“Sorry to be late,” she said. “All the young cats have to be put away when there’s a wedding or event. It gets a little too crazy for them.”

On the way over, I had scrambled to think of a news angle that would please Wally. And Ava. Though to be honest, Ava would never be pleased with me, only satisfied enough that she couldn’t find a reason to pressure Wally into firing me.

“Have there been any interesting effects of the lawsuit to bring the cats under the protection of the Department of Agriculture?” I tried.

“Not really,” she said. “They came out to investigate and found a passel of fat, happy cats, living a life most cats could only dream of.”

I sighed and rolled the cricks out of my neck. “Any funny stories about individual cats this week?” It was a silly question, nothing a decent journalist would ask. But the worries about my family and Connie were gathering in my mind and sinking to my stomach, and I felt as though I had very few brain cells flickering.

Lucky for me, Donna grinned and began to chat about how the cats were named.

“The staff votes for names when the kittens are only a few weeks old—each one is named after a celebrity. It’s way too early to know what kind of cats they’ll turn out to be, but it’s amazing how the names end up fitting their personalities.”

I jotted notes into a little black notebook. “Can you give me an example?”

“Take Howard Hughes,” she said. “He’s a recluse, like his namesake. Spends almost all his time in the cellar. We don’t always have a cat named Hemingway, but right now we do—he’s a big guy with gigantic paws who loves to brawl. The female cats don’t like him much because he plays so rough.”

A brown tiger cat with white paws like boxing gloves jumped up onto the bench and then sprawled across my lap. “This is Captain Tony,” Donna said. “He loves the ladies.”

I stroked the purring cat and watched the workers roll two large planters filled with ferns up to either side of the wedding arch and maneuver them into place. A third man began to set up rows of chairs dressed in white skirts with big white bows tied in back.

I sighed. “It’s going to be so lovely. And the day is shaping up so much better than it started out. This morning we were absolutely freezing.” I shivered, thinking of the horror of that boat ride, and how shocked and afraid we were, finding Rory injured.

“How are the plans coming for your friend’s wedding?” Donna asked.

“Don’t ask. Disaster has struck.” And then, because her face looked so kind and concerned, I spilled the whole hideous story. Or part of it anyway. It didn’t feel right to air every detail of Connie and Ray’s dirty laundry.

“First of all Connie and Ray seem to have had a fight about Connie’s dad.” I pushed some hair out of my eyes. “Even worse, my stepbrother took off with some street kids last night and got in way, way over his head. I never should have talked my stepmother into letting him go off alone. Because truthfully, I don’t know him well enough anymore to have predicted whether he would find trouble.”

“But his mother would have known, right?” Donna said.

“Not really,” I said. “His pain-in-the-butt father has had physical custody ever since I’ve known them.”

“Unusual,” Donna said. “Seems like most judges don’t like to separate kids from their moms. Even if they’re crazy.”

“Allison’s not crazy. Maybe everyday garden-variety neurotic. But who isn’t? Welcome to my world.” I laughed, raising my hand. “Growing up, I never thought that much about why Rory didn’t live with Allison. When my father married her, Rory was only two. It was fine with me, to be honest. I liked being an only child and the idea of adding a full-time toddler into the mix made me nuts.”

“But now you feel guilty about letting him go last night,” she said.

I nodded, thinking it was a toss-up about who would be feeling more responsible, Allison or me. Then I pulled out my iPhone and showed Donna the Facebook photo. “This is the girl who supposedly helped him steal the Jet Ski.” I pointed to Mariah. “But why? To get money for drugs? Or just a lark?” I frowned. The dreadful possibilities were endless. “I don’t think Rory’s involved with drugs.” But what did I really know? Not much.

My phone rang and Jai’s name came up on the screen. I accepted the call. “That was fast. Heard something already?”

“You’d better be sitting down,” she said grimly. “You remember Mariah, the girl on the bench with Rory? They found her in the mangroves near Cow Key Channel. Floating facedown. One of my kids just texted me the most horrifying picture.”

“Floating?” My voice came out croaky and strained. “Horrifying?”

“She may have drowned,” Jai said. “I’m on my way over now. Where are you? Do you want me to pick you up?”

“I’m at the Hemingway House. I’ll meet you there,” I said.

“Head out toward Smathers Beach—she’s on the right, past the East Martello tower and the airport,” she said. “Our kid said the cops aren’t there yet. None of them wanted to call it in. They always think they can handle something better by themselves. I just dialed nine-one-one, so I’m certain the lights will be flashing soon.”

I hung up and squeezed my head between my hands. “Bad news about the girl Rory was hanging out with last night,” I said to Donna. “I’ll come back later this week to finish up, okay?”

“Of course.” She hugged me and I slapped my notes together and shoved them into my backpack. Then I took off toward the exit, nearly plowing over a few gawking tourists taking pictures of a preening polydactyl cat.

On my scooter, I buckled the strap of my helmet under my chin and roared east on Whitehead toward the Atlantic Ocean, trying not to think about the floating girl and what this might mean for Rory. Could it be that she was unconscious, not really dead? I whipped around a sightseeing trolley that was blocking the curve at the Southernmost Point and buzzed past the Casa Marina Resort, where my mother was probably napping. Finally I reached Atlantic Boulevard, with its wide sidewalk, long stretch of beach, and array of food carts and water sports to tempt the spring breakers and weekend warriors. This early in the day, Smathers Beach was clear of trash and practically empty of people.

A couple hundred yards past the airport and catty-corner from the Key Ambassador hotel, I spotted bicycles sprawled on the sidewalk. Fifty feet or so into the waist-deep water, a few kids clustered around something floating along the roots of the mangroves. I parked my scooter and trotted toward the edge of the channel, where several joggers and homeless men had gathered.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice tight with worry.

“We don’t know. I’ve called the cops,” said a man in blue spandex, holding up his phone as proof.

A stiff breeze was blowing from the north, kicking up small waves in the deep green channel and carrying the sound of the kids’ weeping across the water to the highway. Without giving myself a chance to think too hard, I sat on the cement wall, shucked off my sneakers, and dropped into the drink, gasping at the shock of the cold. In the distance, police sirens shrieked.

Fording across the channel to the kids, I noticed the pink shorts first. Then, the girl’s fuzzy dreadlocks, which fanned out around her face like the snakes of Medusa. And then her green eyes, staring sightlessly into the sun. A motorboat churned by on the other side of our mangrove island and the body bobbed in the waves of its wake, tinting the water pink with blood. One of the girl’s dreads caught in the mangrove roots, making it look like she was nodding her head. And also moving the chain that was wrapped around her neck.

“Is she breathing?” I asked, feeling my own life breath catch in my throat.

The small knot of teenagers clutched one another and wailed. The girl’s body bobbed loose from the mangroves and started to wash away with the fast-moving current. I splashed after her, caught one clammy hand, and towed her toward land. On the shore, Jai screeched her scooter up onto the sidewalk, plunged into the water, and waded toward us.

“Let’s get her to land,” I said, and, more for the benefit of the mourning teens than from any hope for the girl: “Let’s get her some help.”

Jai took one of her arms and I took the other—my body sensing the chill of her flesh, my mind refusing to absorb it—and we guided her in. As we reached the concrete wall, two cruisers screeched to a stop, their lights flashing. An ambulance roared in from the other direction. A police officer burst out of his car and trotted over. With the help of the officer from the second cruiser, the girl’s body was dragged out of the water, onto the sidewalk.

I watched the EMTs work on her, but they seemed to lack the surge of energy and urgency I’d seen when they recovered Rory from the sailboat. Focusing on small things to keep from getting sick to my stomach, I noticed the scraped skin on the back of Mariah’s calves and two nail tips broken off on her right hand. And I remembered how her green eyes had shone in the picture on the Courthouse Deli bench as she looked up at my brother. How flat they looked now.

Meanwhile, a young woman in black pants, a black jacket, and a turquoise shirt emerged from an unmarked car and conferred with the two cops who were marking out a wide perimeter around the scene. She had a camera in her hand and a gun at her waist. She approached the girl on the sidewalk, spoke softly with Jai and the EMTs, and then began snapping photos. Another car pulled in behind hers. Detective Bransford got out of the vehicle, his eyes shielded by gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses. He had to have seen me, but he stood several yards away and did not acknowledge my presence.

Finally Mariah was loaded into the back of an ambulance, which drove off with lights flashing but no siren blaring. I was quite certain she was dead.

Jai collected the teens into a comforting huddle, rubbing backs, handing out tissues, and murmuring soothing words. “The police will need to speak with each of us,” she said. “So we can find out what happened to Mariah.”

“Can we go be with her in the hospital?” asked one girl. “She’ll feel so scared if she wakes up alone.”

Tears stung my eyes. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and whirled around, startled. Detective Bransford.

Since his face looked almost sympathetic, I asked: “Do we know how this happened?”

“Not yet. Not until the medical examiner gets a look.”

“But did you notice the scrapes on her legs? Do you think she drowned, or was she strangled?”

He scratched his head and adjusted his sunglasses. “The medical examiner will answer that. Doesn’t look like a straight drowning to my eyes.”

Which was how it looked to me, too. My mind leaped to the worst possible scenarios, because who drowns on a perfectly flat sea in shallow water? Unless maybe she’d been drugged to the gills. Unless the boy she’d run off with had gotten stoned or drunk and attacked her and wrapped her chain belt around her neck. And left her for dead.

“This is bad news for my stepbrother, isn’t it?”

He stared at me. “Not such good news for her either,” he said, gesturing at the place where the girl had lain. “If you know anything more than what you’re saying, it’s important that you tell us.”