An Appetite for Murder

“I can’t wait for the next entry in this charming series.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author

Diane Mott Davidson

“For a true taste of paradise, don’t miss
An Appetite for Murder
. Lucy Burdette’s first Key West Food Critic Mystery combines a lush, tropical setting, a mysterious murder, and plenty of quirky characters. The victim may not be coming back for seconds, but readers certainly will!”

—Julie Hyzy, national bestselling author of the White House Chef mysteries and Manor House mysteries

As the last of the coffee burbled and sputtered into the pot, I hurried out onto the dock to retrieve Connie’s copy of the
Key West Citizen
. I smoothed the paper on the café table in the kitchen and sat down for breakfast. Evinrude splayed out on the chair next to me, grooming his gray stripes into their morning order. I took a sip of coffee and almost spit it out when I saw Kristen’s head shot looming from the box on the front page reserved for the crime report.

Kristen Faulkner, a longtime native of Key West, who had plans to open a restaurant on Easter Island and recently launched
Key Zest
magazine, was discovered dead in the apartment of a friend yesterday morning. Police have questioned several persons of interest in the suspected murder.

My heart sank with a desperate clunk—­suddenly the murder felt real, and my so-­called involvement, very scary. Feeling queasy, I stopped reading and flipped over to the living section pages. My byline blared: “Key West Confidential: Key Lime Pie to Die For” by Hayley Snow. Could the timing of such a headline have been any worse?

AN APPETITE
FOR MURDER

Lucy Burdette

OBSIDIAN

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First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, January 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © Roberta Isleib, 2012

All rights reserved

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I offer my humble thanks to all the writers and readers who read drafts and drafts of this book and helped me polish every word: Christine Falcone, Angelo Pompano, Cindy Warm, Susan Cerulean, Hallie Ephron, Susan Hubbard, Mike Wiecek, Mary Buckham, and John Brady.

I’m grateful for the help of Martha Hubbard, chef at Louie’s Backyard in Key West, Florida, who talked to me about real life in a kitchen, and for Steve Torrence and Bob Bean from the Key West Police Department for information about police procedure, and for Jonathan Shapiro for details about arrests from the defending lawyer’s point of view. Any mistakes, misinterpretations, and exaggerations are entirely mine! And thanks to Lyn McHugh for listening to all my stories and making suggestions on cleaning. And to all my Guppy pals for ideas about tarot and book titles. Hank Phillippi Ryan deserves the credit for
Key Zest
.

The food writing conference at the Key West Literary Seminar came at just the right time—­thanks to the universe and the organizers for that!

Thanks again to Paige Wheeler and the good folks at Folio Literary Agency for championing this book—­and me. And to my editor, Sandy Harding, and the team at NAL for their excellent advice and enthusiastic support.

I thank my pals at Jungle Red Writers, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America for their inspiration and friendship. And I’m so grateful for the booksellers and readers who make writing a joy. To my new friends in Key West—­thanks for sharing paradise! Please know that all people and places in this book are either figments of my imagination or used fictitiously.

As always, nothing would happen without the love and support of my family, especially John.

“Because the goodness of the ingredients—­the fine chocolate, the freshest lemons—­seemed like a cover over something larger and darker, and the taste of what was underneath was beginning to push up from the bite.”

—Aimee Bender

Contents

“A hot dog or a truffle. Good is good.”

—­James Beard

Lots of people think they’d love to eat for a living. Me? I’d kill for it.

Which makes total sense, coming from my family. FTD told my mother to say it with flowers, but she said it with food. Lost a pet? Your job? Your mind? Life always felt better with a serving of Mom’s braised short ribs or red velvet cake in your belly. In my family, we ate when happy or sad, but especially, we ate when we were worried.

The brand-­new
Key Zest
magazine in Key West, Florida, announced a month ago that they were hiring a food critic for their style section. Since my idea of heaven was eating at restaurants and talking about food, I’d do whatever it took to land the job.
Whatever
. Three review samples and a paragraph on my proposed style as their new food critic were due on Monday. Seven days and
counting. So far I had produced nothing. The big goose egg. Call me Hayley Catherine “Procrastination” Snow.

To be fair to me, some of the blockage could be traced to the fact that Kristen Faulkner—­my ex’s new girlfriend and the woman whose cream sauce I’d most like to curdle—­happened to be the co-­owner of
Key Zest
. What if she judged the restaurants I chose impossibly lowbrow? What if she deleted my application packet the minute it hit her inbox? Or, worst of all, what if I landed the job and had to rub shoulders with her ice-­queen highness every day?

My psychologist friend Eric had suggested ever so sweetly that it was time to quit thinking and start eating. Hence, I was hurrying along Olivia Street to meet him for dinner at one of my favorite restaurants on the island, Seven Fish. Of course, I’d left my roommate’s houseboat late because I couldn’t decide what to wear. I winnowed it down to two outfits and asked Evinrude, my gray tiger cat, to choose. Black jeans and a form-­fitting white T-­shirt with my shin-­high, butt-­kicking, red cowgirl boots? Or the cute flowered sundress with a cabled hoodie? From his perch on the desk, the cat twitched his tail and said nothing. But I bet Kristen would never go for “cute.” I shimmied into the jeans, scrunched a teaspoon of hair product into my still-­damp auburn curls, and set out at a fast clip.

Eric also pointed out not too long ago that I didn’t seem to have the knack for figuring in the time it would take to get somewhere when I made plans. Did I think I would get airlifted from one place to another instead of walking or driving my scooter? I pointed out that if he
wanted any friends left, he might want to save his psychoanalysis for his paying customers. But I doubted either of us was going to change.

Tonight was the kind of night that made people pine for Key West if they’d ever spent time here and left, and celebrate the good decision making that brought them if they’d stayed. The small, side-­by-­side conch-­style homes I passed along Olivia Street weren’t fancy, but a fringe of palm trees and pink bougainvillea wound with twinkling white lights made them look like fairy tale material. Add in weather just cool enough for a sweater, the gentle burbling of hidden fountains, and a couple of roosters pecking in the dust alongside the road, and it definitely felt like paradise. My slice of paradise. Light-­years from a gray and dreary New Jersey November.

I broke into a trot as I approached the cemetery on the right, its listing, weathered stones protected by the iron bars of the surrounding fence. Despite the fascinating history of the tombs, which I’d heard as I rattled by on a conch tour train when I arrived three months ago, the place spooked me out. Town officials did their best to keep folks out of the cemetery at night, but still, our local paper, the
Key West Citizen
, reported regular incidents such as headstones being tipped over and encampments of homeless teenagers. Each fluttering shadow made my heart jump.