An Appetite for Murder (7 page)

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 exquisitely real, and my so-­called involvement, very scary. Feeling queasy, I stopped reading and flipped over to the living section pages and found my blaring byline: “Key West Confidential: Key Lime Pie to Die For” by Hayley Snow. Could the timing of such a headline have been any worse? I forced my thoughts away from key lime pie as murder weapon and skimmed the first paragraph to see how much the editor had cut.

Key lime pie may have been declared the official state pie by the Florida legislature, but there is no official state recipe for the confection. Nowhere is that more evident than in the restaurants of Key West. This reporter set off on a quest to taste her way across the island’s pies, and then report on the sublime to the ridiculous.

Then I’d gone on to discuss the pie as it was prepared in restaurants across town—­the graham cracker crusts,
the regular pie crusts, the lack of crust altogether. The pale yellow, the garish green, the use of key limes versus standard citrus, the unconventional addition of basil, the mile-­high meringue topping, the whipped cream . . . ​If I hadn’t been already eating breakfast, I would have made myself hungry. Even though I’d sworn when I finished researching and writing the piece that I’d never eat key lime pie again.

I washed up the breakfast dishes and then moved to my mini bedroom to sort through my clean laundry, which I hadn’t yet put away in the built-­in drawers. What was the point when I would almost surely be heading back to my mom’s spare bedroom in New Jersey soon enough?

At the bottom of the pile, I found the shirt Connie asked all her workers to wear. Over the front pocket “Paradise Cleaning” looped in green script. “We clean so you don’t have to” was written across the back of the shirt next to her logo, a figure in a hammock suspended between two cute little palm trees. I pulled it on, along with khaki cutoffs and red high-­top sneakers, and kissed the cat.

“I won’t be gone long,” I assured him. He blinked his green eyes and curled up by my pillow. (Another horrifying realization for Chad: a cat sleeping near his precious face.)

I filled a square plastic carton with the supplies I’d need for the Hinand and Kennedy apartments. At the last second, I added extra rubber gloves and Chad’s special cleaning liquids. If I finished the other two places quickly, I’d storm through Chad’s apartment like a green
tornado. This was my one and only chance to get my stuff without depending on him to cooperate. Connie would absolutely kill me if she knew I was thinking of bulling my way into his apartment. But I would clean, and clean to his exacting standards, while I was there. At least I’d be reducing her workload while snooping for the things that rightfully belonged to me. I hauled the carton down the dock to my scooter, bungee-­corded it onto the backrest, and putt-­putted across town.

With none of the owners home to distract me with chatting or snacks, I finished my first two assignments in record time. I loaded the cleaning stuff back into the crate and strode out to my scooter to tie it on. Did I have the nerve to do this? Yes. Was it a good idea? Maybe not. Starting up the bike, I headed over to Chad’s. I paused across from the drive leading into the condo complex to pull on a Paradise Cleaning ball cap and my biggest sunglasses. If Leona—­the nosy neighbor on the second floor who came out of her apartment almost every time the elevator dinged—­recognized me, she’d be on the phone to Chad’s office before I got the key turned in the lock.

I knew you shouldn’t choose a boyfriend according to where he lived, but trust me when I say it was almost worth Chad’s steady stream of low-­level undercutting at the end of our relationship to live in his apartment—­even for just two months. The condo complex sat at the very southern tip of the island, overlooking the harbor. His place sprawled over the upper-­right-­hand corner of a three-­story whitewashed building that formerly served as the administration building for the U.S. Navy. He’d
had the whole thing gutted and renovated before I ever laid eyes on it.

It wasn’t just the view I lusted after—­a head-­on one-­hundred-­and-­eighty-­degree expanse of water with an occasional cruise ship for relief from all that Caribbean blue—or the Corinthian columns marching down his entrance hallway, or the soundproofed bedroom with its king bed dressed in earth-­toned Egyptian linens, or the bathtub big enough for two with pulsing jets that hit just the right point on your lower back. Best of all was the most amazing futuristic kitchen I’d ever baked a cake in: three ovens, a six-­burner stove, speckled granite counters, and every piece of cooking equipment I could have ever thought about using and some that never crossed my mind. Not that a pat of butter had ever hit a frying pan while Chad lived alone. He ate to live. And he didn’t even like dessert. But I was in cook’s heaven during my short stay.

I buzzed myself into the building, lugged the cleaning supplies to the elevator in the front hall, and whisked up to the third floor without encountering any neighbors. My heart pit-­patting, I dug the ring of keys out of my back pocket, found Chad’s, and eased the door open, listening. I heard nothing but the hum of his Thermador refrigerator, and outside the double-­paned windows, the coarse buzz of a weed whacker from the front lawn. I stepped inside and closed the door softly behind me. My hands trembled as I crept down his hallway. I hadn’t let myself wonder exactly where Kristen had died. Or whether remnants of the disaster might still be lingering.

I stopped and stared. The apartment was every bit as gorgeous as I remembered it. Chad’s decorator had filled the place with shades of green once he’d convinced her he wasn’t interested in the kitschy local style consisting of bright colors, lizards, palm trees, and roosters. (Though really, what was wrong with all that—­he did live in Key West.)

Someone had swabbed down the counters of my dream kitchen inexpertly—­they were still streaked with patches of greasy, black silt. Chad must have flipped out when he saw the police department’s work. Not that solving Kristen’s murder wasn’t much more important than any mess they’d left behind, but he loved his empire. Although none of that would have been on his mind if he’d been the one to kill her. But he couldn’t have. Could he? I rubbed the crop of goose bumps that had popped up on the length of my arms.

Setting the bucket on the floor near the double sinks, I poked my head into the living room, wondering again where the police had found her.

I desperately wanted to bolt, feeling one part voyeur, one part victim, and four parts creeped out of my gourd. But this would be the only chance to retrieve my stuff, because I surely wasn’t coming back for a second look. So I returned to the kitchen and snapped on my rubber gloves. If Chad should return home—­and he absolutely shouldn’t; it was his day for back-­to-­back meetings—­I could explain my innocence by pointing out the sparkling tile and spotless floors. After filling both of the stainless sinks in the kitchen with scalding water and
Green Clean-­up, I began to wipe the black gunk off the counters.

Too antsy to contain my curiosity, I dropped the sponge and opened the refrigerator. It was almost empty except for three cartons of Greek yogurt (no fat) and a bottle of white wine. I realized I was holding my breath. What had I thought I’d find? An unfinished pie and utensils with poison clinging to them? Clues revealing Kristen’s enemies? I needed to find my stuff, clean, and then get the heck out.

I tiptoed to the guest bedroom at the back of the apartment where I’d stored my things when I was there. There was nothing in the closet except for one of my steak knives, which lay on the floor beside a flattened stack of cardboard boxes. Brand new, super-­sharp, and he had the nerve to use it like scissors. I picked it up and slid it into my back pocket.

My heartbeat quickened when I thought I heard a banging noise outside the front door. I froze and waited. Was it the maintenance man emptying the trash in the hallway closet? When I heard the elevator ding and the sounds fade away, I quickly searched all of the drawers and shelves, but found nothing else that belonged to me.

I went back through the kitchen and into the living room, past the two seating areas on the left, and into the master bedroom. The bedcovers had been pulled loosely over the pillows on Chad’s side, and one pair of men’s underwear lay just under the bed. I started to make the bed, but felt a little sick as the faint smell of a woman’s flowery perfume wafted up from the pillow. Certainly
not mine. Inside the master bathroom, I opened the closet doors—­Chad’s clothing was arranged by color and season. While I lived there, none of my stuff had been allowed to disrupt the order of his closet or even the bathroom counters. Of course I found no knife, no recipe cards, no more cutlery, no nothing. I felt frustrated and foolish.

Back in the living room, one shaft of light streamed through the front window, broken into jagged shadows by the coconut palm just outside. The sun lit up the tidy piles of paper on Chad’s expansive and modern desk, burnishing the tiger maple to a soft bronze glow. This was the only place in the apartment he allowed clutter—­and not much of it at that. Grabbing the feather duster from my crate, I brought it back to the desk and began to work, straightening the stack of papers, tucking a Cross pen into the top drawer, and lightly brushing the striations of the maple surface.

As I dusted, I riffled through the paperwork, which was filled with the kind of incomprehensible mumbo-­jumbo that a divorce lawyer lives on. My heart hammered when I came across some handwritten notes about an upcoming settlement. Chad had strong handwriting, manly and brisk but with a hint of softness—­just the characteristics I fell hard for on first meeting him in the bookstore. These notes hinted at a difficult divorce (as if any were easy)—­he had pressed so hard writing the words “inform M’s lawyer no settlement will be accepted that includes any part of the client’s home, furniture, vehicles, or Irish setter dog” that the same words were indented on the paper underneath. During my
brief tenure in this apartment, I’d gotten a little window into how ruthless Chad could be in negotiation. I was probably—­no, certainly—­better off out of the relationship. Thank God I didn’t marry him and later suffer through a scalding and dispiriting divorce.

I heard a noise in the hallway and instinctively reached for the knife in my back pocket. As if a serrated steak knife would offer the least bit of protection.

The door to the apartment swung open.

“Drop your weapon and freeze where you are! Put your hands in the air!” called a fierce voice.

I let the feather duster clatter onto the desk, followed by the knife, and raised my hands above my head.

“When I made food, I made a tribe.”

—­Kim Severson

Officer Torrence crouched in a scary combat stance with his gun trained on me, looking even more substantial than he had yesterday at the station. Behind him was a stocky female cop, and just yards behind them hovered Chad. Leona, possibly the nosiest neighbor on the island, peered around his shoulder.

“Step into the center of the room with your hands on your head,” said Torrence.

I shuffled forward, tears on my cheeks, knees wobbling. “I can explain everything. I work for Paradise Cleaning,” I squeaked, and plunged my hand into my pocket to retrieve and show him Connie’s ring of keys.

“Hands on your head!” barked the cop again.

I slapped my hand back to my skull. Chad winced in the background as my keys clanked onto his Italian limestone floor.

“She’s lying,” said Chad. “She’s my ex-­girlfriend. She could own the last bottle of Clorox on earth and I wouldn’t have invited her to clean my toilets.”

I could feel an unattractive line of mucus trailing down my upper lip. Even scared to death, I was bursting with a powerful and inappropriate urge to cackle—­I was losing it. “The last bottle of Clorox on earth?” I lapsed into helpless giggles, crossing my legs so I wouldn’t pee on the floor.

Torrence lowered his gun and blinked in sudden recognition. “Miss Mills? We’re going to take you directly to the station to straighten this all out.”

“It’s Snow,” I said. “Hayley Snow. But don’t worry—­a lot of people make that mistake.” People over fifty who even remembered who Hayley Mills was, I thought but didn’t say. I was in enough trouble without insinuating he was over the hill. “Can I bring my things with me? Connie will kill me if I lose her equipment.” Connie was going to kill me anyway—­and I couldn’t blame her.

After a brief discussion with the cops, Chad declined to waste his time coming to the station. But he insisted that he wanted the book thrown at me. As we shuffled out into the hallway, he disappeared with a bang into his apartment. Leona pushed into the elevator for the ride to the ground floor, her big ears (which poked unattractively through her thin blond hair) soaking it all in. I said nothing, knowing every detail would be reported faithfully to the mah-jongg group that met by the pool tomorrow morning.

We adjourned to the police station, my cleaning supplies in the trunk, the police in the front seat of the
cruiser and me in back again, secured behind the metal mesh. But this trip was no pseudofriendly invitation, like yesterday’s had started out.

Connie was already pacing in the vestibule of the KWPD when I arrived with my double-­barreled escort. Her face had turned a shade of red bordering on maroon and her eyes were a steely blue, not soft turquoise like they looked when she was happy. She was F-­U-­R-­I-­O-­U-­S, furious. With me.

Detective Bransford came around the corner and into the waiting area. “Thanks for coming down,” he told Connie. “We’ll be with you shortly.”

The rest of us trooped upstairs to the room I’d visited the day before, where I was waved to the seat facing the wall clock on the near side of the table. Officer Torrence thumped the carton of supplies onto the floor and took the chair next to me. Bransford leaned against the wall, his tortoiseshell reading glasses perched on his nose and the sleeves of a white-­and-­blue pin-­striped button-­down shirt rolled up to the elbows. Underneath my anxiety and fright, and as ridiculous as it might have been, I couldn’t help feeling a little quivery. Those feelings evaporated once I noticed the newspaper sticking out of his back pocket. I was too far away to read the type, but there was definitely a photo of a pie—­the exact photo used to illustrate my article.