An Appetite for Murder (6 page)

“Connie didn’t know where you were,” she said accusingly. “She said you’d promised to make dinner and then you didn’t show up.”

“I’m cooking right this minute,” I assured her, holding the phone over the frying pan so she could hear the comforting sound of vegetables sautéing themselves to satisfying limpness. “I’m making a cross between shrimp and grits and jambalaya.”

“Sounds delicious,” said Mom. “Tomatoes or no tomatoes? And how’s it going with your writing?”

“No tomatoes,” I said. “It’s more of a creamy cheese sauce.” Then I told her about my article getting published and how well I was doing on the critic assignment and finally eased her off the call to return to my cooking. Of all things, she understood the demands of a new recipe.

When it came to food, all roads led back to my mom, of course. I suspected my mother was secretly relieved to turn up pregnant her senior year in college—­like her idol Hayley Mills, she showed a lot of career promise but
flamed out early. My unexpected conception gave her a good excuse for settling down in suburbia rather than opting to attend law school or medical school as she’d told my father she planned. Instead of figuring out what she wanted to do with her life, she became a housewife and sank most of her talents and energy into raising me and cooking. She was the queen of local ingredients and fusion cuisine long before those trends ever got popular. She’d spend all day in the kitchen and then wait breathlessly for my dad and me to come to the table and make our pronouncements.

“The tarragon tries too hard,” my father might say.

“Can we have hot dogs tomorrow?” That would be me.

In the end, the tarragon business wasn’t a bad metaphor for the dynamic of my parents’ marriage, before it went belly-up. My mother was the tarragon in the relationship and Dad was the snooty critic.

Once I got past the hot dog phase, I learned to love food. My dream was to go to the culinary institute in Paris, become a famous chef, and then write cookbooks. But my dad was writing the tuition checks: I was to attend college for an education, not a trade. And so I earned my degree in food science, the closest undergrad major to cooking I could find. With the unemployment rate at an all-­time high after graduation, I took a job clerking in a local bookstore and wrote food feature proposals for the local paper, none of them published. Twenty-­five years old and still drifting, as my father pointed out often.

Then, almost four months ago, I met Chad Lutz. After a whirlwind weekend of dating and another couple
weeks of highly charged text messages and phone calls, I followed him to Key West, where he had a partnership in a small law firm—­and I’ve been floundering like my mother ever since.

To be honest, I didn’t think most people looked any further than what
they
thought they wanted from a relationship when they fell for a new lover. Shouldn’t the Hayley Mills obsession have tipped my dad off? A grown woman who connected most strongly with a ditzy Disney actress from the sixties was going to be a little “different.” As far as Chad and I went, there were lots of warning signals, if I’d only chosen to see them.

Connie clattered in the front door, with Ray bounding right behind her like a well-­trained whippet. She was small and sturdy with the shortest haircut I’d ever seen on a girl, while he was tall and gangly and wore his hair in a ponytail.
The long and the short of it
. She heard that all the time. We’d bonded instantly in our freshman year at Rutgers, but then her mother died and she’d dropped out to move to Key West and start a business.

“Smells divine in here.”

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I said. “Wait until you hear about my day.”

I loaded three plates with cheesy grits and layered the shrimp, sausage, and vegetables on top. We poured glasses of white wine and carried our plates upstairs to the deck, which had an amazing view just off Connie’s bedroom. More anxious than hungry, I took a minute to sip my wine and breathe in the cool fall air. The full-­timers in Key West waited for this weather all year long.

Stars were spackled across the sky and I could hear the strains of country music from a houseboat a few slips away. The spooky termite-­ridden boat in the next row that was covered with a red tarp labeled “Poison!” receded into the shadows. And darkness hid the cruiser two doors down that was so full of trash that passersby could no longer see in the windows. Along with Miss Gloria, many of the residents had threaded their rooflines with little white lights in anticipation of the holidays. From this perspective, it really did look like paradise.

Connie and Ray dug into their dinners, and she looked up after her first bite. “This is fantastic! Fabulous! You should open a restaurant.”

“No way,” I said. “I’d rather just eat the food. And write about it.”

She laughed. “Before I forget,” she added, “are you still on for cleaning a few apartments tomorrow? Angie called in sick.”

“Count me in.”

“Where have you been all day?” she asked.

I loaded my fork up and then put it back down on my plate. “The cops came by and invited me to the station for a chat,” I said in a hushed voice, not wishing to alert the rest of the neighbors about my business, just in case they hadn’t already seen the whole thing unfold. I poked a shrimp farther into my mound of grits. “Kristen Faulkner seems to have gotten herself murdered.”

Connie swallowed what she was chewing and sat up straight. “Kristen was
murdered
? What could you possibly have to say about that? And why would they even think to ask?”

“I’m not certain, but I have a bad feeling that Chad suggested they call on me.” I described the short, painful conversation I’d had with my ex.

“He’s a dick,” said Ray. “Who do they think you are, Lorena Bobbitt?”

Connie giggled. “You’re mixing your metaphors, buddy. Lorena didn’t murder her ex’s new girlfriend; she cut off his you-­know-­what and threw it into a field.”

“Ouch,” said Ray, shifting his plate to cover his lap. “What exactly happened to this girl Kristen?”

“The cops mostly asked me questions,” I said, “but Henri at Bad Boy Burritos told me it was something she ate.”

“Henri Stentzel? Didn’t Kristen have something to do with Henri’s restaurant in Miami folding?” asked Ray.

“Wow!” I hadn’t heard that—­and Henri certainly hadn’t mentioned it—­but it might explain the funny expression I’d seen on her face as she finished up my order. I didn’t like to think anything bad of Henri—­she struck me as a moral and dedicated businesswoman who insisted on the freshest ingredients, made a mean sandwich, and knew when to bail out of a rat race. But what if she hadn’t
chosen
to leave her fancy restaurant and set up a funky burrito shop in Key West? What if she’d been forced out?

Connie was looking worried. “I hope you’re not going to butt your nose into this,” she said. “Let the police handle it. I’m sure they were just gathering information when they called you in.”

“The homeless guys said if they were just collecting information, they would have interviewed me right here.”

“I can phone my friend Matthew,” Ray broke in. “He’s the Web publisher for
Key Zest
. I’m sure he’s got more information than you do.”

I nodded eagerly. “Thanks.”

He whipped out his cell phone and soon was deep in conversation. We only heard his side of it—­“Incredible!” “You’re kidding.” “They think that?” He hung up, wiped his forehead with his napkin, and grimaced in my direction.

“They found her in Chad’s apartment. Actually, Chad himself called it in.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “What if he killed her? And then panicked and pretended someone else did it? Like me?”

“There’s more,” said Ray. “She ate a poisoned pie. Key lime.”

“It’s easy to get the feeling that you know the language just because when you order a beer they don’t bring you oysters.”

—­Paul Child

I stayed awake most of the night worrying. Would the cops read the
Key West
Citizen
today? And if so, would one of them make it all the way through to the Living section? And if he did, would he make the connection between Kristen’s poisoning and my newly touted expertise in key lime pies?

Though honestly, the lovemaking noises didn’t help my sleeping either. First my housemates had a lively session; then the Renharts one boat over joined in—­as if our boat’s rocking and sloshing reminded them of the possibility of their own pleasure. I finally fell asleep around two and woke from the dead at six, exhausted,
when Ray and Connie left the houseboat to drive to Miami for supplies.

A few weeks ago, when I snapped up the offer to move in with Connie, I didn’t realize I’d be seeing quite so much of Ray. He has a position as a visiting resident artist at the Studios of Key West, though it seemed to me that he spent more time hanging out with Connie than practicing art. Not that I was complaining, but, just maybe, I harbored a smallish bunch of sour grapes. Ray and Connie had been together for eight months and still acted like they were madly in love. Chad and I flamed out in less than eight
weeks
. And Ray was nice to Connie in a way Chad never was to me—­wildly supportive of everything she did. He even chipped in to help with her cleaning service when she was down a worker.

Whereas Chad had dumped me unceremoniously—­packed up my things and put them out on the sidewalk in front of his apartment building where any passing stranger could have picked them over. And I was still missing some crucial stuff. Like my best chef’s paring knife and the set of serrated steak knives I’d splurged on with my graduation money. And my cookbooks. But much worse than any of those was the box of my grandmother’s handwritten recipe cards. My mother had passed them on to me a couple years ago, crying all the way through her ceremonious bestowal of the secret recipes. She hadn’t wanted me to bring them to Key West, but I didn’t have time to make copies. She would
die
if she knew they were missing.

I was pretty sure it was normal to feel angry and sad about the Chad business, but I scolded myself for feeling
envious of Connie. I truly didn’t wish her my kind of trouble—­I only wished I could find happily ever after too. Eric’s lecture in the Green Parrot about unconscious repetition of old patterns had me more concerned than I wanted to let on—­even to myself.

I forced myself out of bed and into the kitchen. Connie had left a note on the counter with the addresses of the clients who expected their homes cleaned today, either by her or Angie. She asked me to choose three and leave the others for Lydia, who would work the second shift. I filled Evinrude’s bowl with kibbles, popped a sticky bun into the toaster oven, and started a pot of coffee, grinding a cinnamon stick along with the beans for good measure.

Then I crossed the room to Connie’s desk and leafed through the binder filled with laminated pages containing her clients’ instructions. She prided herself on doing her job the way her customers wanted it done, varying the cleaning supplies, the frequency, and the approach according to their requests and peculiarities. I jotted down a few notes for the Hinand (clean and scrub the cat litter pan) and Kennedy households (sweep the lanai so the pool filter doesn’t get clogged with debris from the golden rain tree; use second sink in the pantry for mopping floors, NOT the sink in the kitchen).

I couldn’t help noticing that Chad Lutz’s apartment was also on the schedule for today, though Connie would never have asked me to take it. She’d landed him as a client after I moved out and I very much doubted he would have hired her if he’d remembered our connection. The instructions he’d given her were longer and
more detailed than most of her other customers; actually, I could have recited his cleaning quirks by rote. I knew enough to use expensive organic cleaners on every­thing but the toilets, which were to be double-­scrubbed and then swished with Clorox. The list con­tinued:

There should be no dust anywhere, including the tops of picture frames.

No smudges or fingerprints left on mirrors or doorframes.

No dust bunnies under beds or spiderwebs in ceiling corners.

Don’t dust around objects; pick them up and clean under and around them; then return them to their original positions.

Hospital corners on sheets are preferred when making beds.

Aside from all that, Chad would probably have left a note in the kitchen for Connie, directing her to focus on the half bathroom that had contained my cat’s litter box, even though Evinrude had vacated the premises weeks earlier.

Chad had regretted moving Evinrude and me into his place almost as soon as he’d extended the invitation. After our first week of cohabitation, he clipped out an article on kitchen cleanliness that had run in the
New York Times
and left it for me to read. A government food
inspector had been interviewed and then come to the writer’s home to rate her kitchen’s hygiene. The inspector maintained that she would
never
eat in a home that had a cat in residence. Just imagining the cat’s blithe transition from litter box to kitchen counter was enough to horrify her—­and Chad as well. Good sex kept his cat contamination phobia in check for a couple more weeks; then the complaints began, marching from subtle to sledgehammer by the time I moved out.

And this got me wondering whether he’d been more welcoming to Kristen than he had to me. Had he really moved her in so quickly? And had she, for example, been given more closet space than the two feet I’d been allowed in his guest room? Would her papers and computer be spread across his second desk or would she have been required to load all her work into a briefcase stored under the guest bed, the way I had? Really, didn’t it all boil down to why he’d found her more lovable than me?

Never mind. What could be more pitiful than comparing my love life to that of a dead woman? But the longer I looked at the list, the more upset I got about my missing stuff. He’d been downright mean to keep things that meant nothing to him and everything to me.

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 out 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 just inside the front page reserved for the crime report.