An Appetite for Murder (4 page)

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said in his best calming shrink voice. “Don’t blow a gasket.”

“I hope you don’t say things like that to your paying customers,” I said, laughing through my sniffles of relief. “See you there.” I dashed inside to slap on a little mascara and tell Evinrude where I was going, then trotted back down the dock to the parking lot. I hopped on my scooter, a secondhand silver KYMCO that allegedly gets ninety-­eight miles to the gallon, and putt-­putted out onto the road.

I motored up Truman (also known as the most southern and final leg of Route One) to Whitehead and two blocks right to the Parrot. “No sniveling since 1890” the sign outside read. Apropos for me today, for sure.

This bar, with its white frame, green trim, and wooden shutters pinned open, may have been named one of the top twenty-­four bars in the United States by
Playboy
, but it still didn’t look like much. The bar owners had gone for the kind of simple, homey decor that improved with spilled beer.

After ordering a couple of Sunset Ales, I grabbed a basket of popcorn—­the only food available at the
Parrot—and headed to the Whitehead Street side of the room. I secured us space on the wide shelf by an open window, where we’d have a chance to hear each other without shouting over the music and the happy hour crowd. The mandolin player was flat-­picking a cheerful duet of Rocky Top with the guy on banjo, which wasn’t quite enough to keep the detective’s last words from ping-­ponging in my brain: Don’t leave the island.

I checked out the room for familiar faces—­not that I knew everybody after less than three months in residence, but the town was small enough that I had settled in quickly. And I’d gotten pretty good at figuring out who belonged and who didn’t. A couple of women in batik dresses were clogging in front of the band. Definitely out-­of-­towners. On my right, four loud, sunburned men in even louder shirts argued about politics. Based on their volume alone, I suspected they’d been here most of the afternoon. Tourists. I sipped on my beer and tried to review the mess I was in.

There were two Key Wests—­the enclave of million-­dollar plus homes for the utterly wealthy who sweep in for Christmas and clear out by Easter, and the hardscrabble everyman’s island where people held down two jobs—­or three—­to pay for their housing, which might turn out to be a closet-­sized rented room on a houseboat. I had plummeted from one Key West to the other in the space of a week. Despite my protests, the police chief and the detective had pegged it: Kristen Faulkner was pretty much responsible. But would they really consider that a motive for murder?

Feeling utterly anxious, I finished my beer faster than I should have and started on Eric’s. I’d been too upset to ask about the details of how Kristen died, or whether there were other suspects. Not that the cops would have told me anything anyway. But wouldn’t they have looked at Chad first rather than me? After all, he was the boyfriend. How did they even know to bring me to the station? I wished I hadn’t been quite so honest about how much I disliked her.

I waved down a harried waitress to order another beer, and Eric arrived a few minutes later. The tightness in my head and chest released a little just at the sight of him. He hugged me and eyed the empty bottle on the ledge and the one half-­empty in my hand.

“She’s got you covered,” I said, pointing to the waitress who approached with a frosted Sunset Ale on her tray. “I sure am glad to see you.”

He took the fresh beer and clinked my bottle with his. “Now spill.”

So I told him how I was working on my food critic assignment when the two cops came to the boat with the news about Kristen and then herded me to the station. “They wanted to know where I was this morning, but I don’t have any way of proving I was alone on the boat.”

“What actually happened to her?” Eric asked. “How did she die?”

“They said she was murdered,” I said. “Maybe she really died of natural causes and they were trying to get a reaction out of me.” I knew as I said them that those words were pure wishful thinking and sheer nonsense.

“Tell me everything you can remember,” he said.

My stomach clenched tighter and tighter as I relived the details of the interview.

Eric pursed his lips into a worried frown. “They really told you not to leave the island?”

I nodded, blinking fast so I wouldn’t cry. “And the more they asked about my relationship with Kristen and Chad, the more scared I got. So I called Deena to see if she thought I needed a lawyer, and unfortunately Chad answered. He was awful. Beastly.” My sinuses swelled with a backup of misery. “I’ll never get my things back.”

“Lutz the Putz,” said Eric, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you called that jerk’s office.” He frowned and pushed his glasses up his nose. “And please don’t tell me you’re thinking about how to get back with him now that he doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“Only for a minute—­and not really. Especially not after he told me he didn’t want to hear from me, ever.”

“You can be sure a few weeks away and a tragedy will have done nothing to improve his character,” said Eric. “In psychological terms, you’re suffering from a repetition compulsion.”

I raised my eyebrows and took a sip of beer.

“In other words, you have the unconscious urge to repeat a destructive pattern from your past. Unfortunately, you’re destined to live it over and over again until you understand it.”

“What pattern? I don’t see it.”

“That’s because it’s unconscious.” We both laughed a little hysterically because sometimes the truth sounds a
little funnier out loud than it really is. He leaned forward and tapped my knee.

“Obviously, I’m speaking as your friend, not your therapist,” he said and glared at me until I nodded my agreement. “But why would you want a man who behaves just as coldly and critically as your father?”

I had to admit he was right. And creepier still, Chad even looked like my father: wide at the shoulders and narrow at the waist with a long, flattish face and sandy blond hair. I shrugged and let my chin sag toward my neck. “I don’t. I shouldn’t. I swear I’ll think about it. But meanwhile . . .”

“But meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt you one bit to see a shrink.”

“Who needs a shrink when I’ve got you for a pal and tarot at sunset?”

Eric sighed heavily as if my nuttiness were a great burden and squeezed his temples between his palms. “I’ll ask around about a lawyer,” he said. “You go about your regular business and try not to act guilty or get into trouble.”

“Moi?”
I laughed. “Ears open, mouth shut,” I added, pointing to the respective body parts. “And thanks for coming out tonight.” I set my beer on the window ledge and hugged him again.

“How’re the reviews coming?” he asked.

I clutched my hands to my chest. “This sounds just awful to say, but what if they don’t fill the job because of what happened to Kristen?”

“You don’t have any control over that,” he said.

“Right. You’re right.” I nodded briskly. “I’ve just
about got Seven Fish nailed. Maybe I’ll run by Bad Boy Burrito on my way home and make some notes for the second one. Right after I have my cards read.”

I needed a reading, badly.

And besides, I wanted to ask why Lorenzo, my favorite tarot guru, hadn’t seen one bit of this coming.

“What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others.”

—­Lucretius

After leaving the bar, I drove my scooter the length of Whitehead Street toward Mallory Square to see if Lorenzo was working. Every night at sunset, except in the very worst weather, street performers marked off sections of the pier and set up shop to entertain tourists and part them from a few of their dollars. Along with the zaniness of Duval Street, the spectacle of the sun setting over Mallory Square tended to stick in the minds of visitors more than anything about Key West.

Lorenzo has been working the square for almost twenty years, wearing a star-­studded turban, a deep blue cloak with a matching blue stone glued to his forehead, and a mustache waxed into loops. Sounded hokey, but even I felt more confident having my cards read by a guy who took the time to look and act professional.

I parked my scooter outside the Westin Hotel and trudged up the sidewalk past the four-­times-­larger-­than-­life Seward Johnson sculptures of dancing women that had been erected behind the Custom House Museum. As usual, a couple of giddy tourists were having their photos snapped as they lay under those enormous naked prancing ladies.

Farther up toward the water, Dominique the cat man was finishing his act by circling his audience and bellowing while a tortoiseshell feline clung to his chest. It was 5:39—­the sun had already slipped below the horizon and the dusk was gathering. I hurried around the back of the aquarium to the main square. Aside from Dominique’s perennially popular flying house cats show, the juggling fire-­eater had gathered the biggest crowd. And Lorenzo was there without any customers, shuffling his cards and looking pensive. Probably wondering what kind of dinner was in his future.

I slid into the chair across from him and handed over a crumpled twenty-­dollar bill. Some people go to therapy every week; I get my cards read. A tarot reader saved my mother’s sanity when I was a kid—­ psychiatry, not so much. So consulting the cards felt natural. Mom has long since moved on to doing her own readings, but for me, Lorenzo’s insights were like training wheels still welded to my psyche.

“Back again,” Lorenzo said, smiling under that goofy mustache. “Another crisis?”

He has proven to be very big on that old saw “crisis equals opportunity,” even in the short time I’ve known him. Like Eric, he has to be an optimist, taking money
from his clients and then giving life direction, night after balmy night.

“The universe seems a little crazy right now,” I said. “I’d like to get your opinion.”

He had me sterilize my hands with a witch hazel spritzer and cut his deck of oversized, colorful cards, sticky with age and use. Then he laid out the first row, placing a metal lizard on top so they wouldn’t blow away: the Chariot, reversed, the Five of Pentacles, and the Eight of Swords.

“Hmmm,” he said, his brow creasing into the biggest worry lines I’d ever seen him wear. “You may be pulled in many directions . . . ​self-­sabotage . . . ​a feeling of neediness? Seems like you’re feeling a little out of control?”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said, leaning in closer to the cards. Mom has been encouraging me to study the ways of tarot myself instead of relying on Lorenzo. But at least this way, I controlled how often I visited him and how reliant I got on his card-­reading expertise. And I didn’t run the risk of incessantly revising my own fortune. Knees jiggling, I fished a tube of natural lip balm out of my pocket and slathered it on.

He slapped down another row of cards and peered across the table at me. “You know, of course, that death doesn’t necessarily mean
death
.”

“But that’s the thing—­there’s been a murder. And it looks like I’m one of their best suspects.” I started to hyperventilate. Telling Lorenzo made the whole thing seem even more real. And terrifying.

Lorenzo produced a pack of tissues from one of his voluminous sleeves and handed a few over.

“You’re seeing something worse and you don’t want to tell me,” I suggested, trying to interpret the concern on his face.

“Good and bad are relative. Remember the cards are just guideposts,” he said as I dabbed my nose. “It’s how you handle what the universe throws your way that determines how your life turns out.”

The lady waiting her turn to see Lorenzo rolled her eyes, jangled a couple inches’ worth of gold bracelets on one thin wrist, and sighed noisily. I stood up. “I’ll probably be back tomorrow,” I told him, glaring at the woman as she slid into my spot.

“In the meantime, be careful,” he said, adding a quick wink before turning his prim smile to the bracelet lady. “And keep your focus.”

I took the shortcut out of Mallory Square, retrieved my scooter, and dropped it off its kickstand. What
was
my focus? My pal Eric would have liked that question a lot, and there wasn’t much of Lorenzo’s advice that he agreed with. My number one focus had to be my food critic pieces. Even I realized it would be tacky to call the desk at
Key Zest
and ask them if the boss’s death would have any effect on the hiring. I felt guilty just having that thought. But I could continue to work on my writing so I’d be prepared by the deadline, in case the position remained open.

Number two: the murder. The cops hadn’t confirmed that I was a suspect. On the other hand, Eric was clearly worried—­and he didn’t have my inherited tendency to jump to hysterical conclusions. Lorenzo had seemed bothered too. And what bothered Lorenzo bothered me.

Would it hurt to swing by Chad’s apartment and see if there were any lights on? Or if any of the neighbors would talk to me about what happened? Besides my possible status as a suspect, the question of how Kristen died kept surfacing in the back of my mind. I pictured myself standing outside the courtyard gate and begging through the bars to be let in and get my questions answered. Forget it. I fired up the scooter and lurched into the postsunset celebration traffic toward Bad Boy Burrito.

Bad Boy was located in a storefront on Simonton Street, a couple blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. If you weren’t looking carefully for it, you’d drive right by. But if I landed that
Key Zest
job, this was exactly the kind of place I hoped to cover on my beat. I’d want to let my readers know about the little restaurants and shops in town, not just the fancy places that only wealthy folks could afford. How could you not have a soft spot in your heart for an establishment that recommended jalapeño peppers on everything because of their high vitamin C content?

Bad Boy held two workers (at peak hours), a counter in the window with stools facing the street, one weathered wooden bench inside for waiting, and one bench outside on the sidewalk if you couldn’t make it home without diving into your booty. I studied the blackboard menu, frozen between a Kobe beef burrito with the works and fresh fish tacos served in homemade corn tortillas with shredded cabbage, pico de gallo, verde sauce, and sour cream.