Death With All the Trimmings: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (18 page)

She turned back to the stove and stirred furiously, splashing bright red sauce over most of the stove. “I mean, what kind of a crazy person with mush for brains would look into the eyes of love and ignore it?”

—
Suzanne Palmieri,
The Witch of
Little Italy

I located Jennifer Cornell’s place off Roosevelt Boulevard, in the VFW building. The only glimpse I’d gotten into her kitchen previously was in an advertisement I’d seen in the free
Menus
magazine, featuring Jennifer herself in a white chef’s toque and jacket, stuffed into an enormous stainless-steel stockpot. And grinning like a madwoman. She was not one to shy away from interesting publicity.

Inside, the air smelled like toasted coconut and fried seafood. Plus fresh garlic and basil and tomatoes and grilled onions. And maybe even ginger. A cornucopia of wonderful flavors. My mother, swathed in a white apron, stood before an eight-burner gas range, fishing
shrimp out of boiling oil and placing them on paper towels to drain.

“It smells wonderful in here,” I said. “What’s on the docket tonight?”

“It’s a wedding at the Oldest House on Duval Street,” Mom said. “The bride is a woman after my own heart—after choosing her man, she’s focused her heart and pocketbook on the menu.” Then she looked away, making me think of Sam’s proposal and the naked look of hopefulness on his face as my mother had opened the ring box. Mom clapped her hands. All business.

“Will you taste this sauce, honey?” she asked, clip-clopping across the kitchen in her green clogs to grab two bowls of dipping sauce. “Jennifer usually serves the coconut shrimp with mango chutney, but I was thinking something less sweet and more spicy might be a fabulous contrast.”

She handed me a small plate containing a piping-hot shrimp coated in a crispy coconut crust. I dipped the shrimp in both sauces while she chattered about the plans for this reception and another luncheon tomorrow and a cocktail party after that. “These people down here in the high tourist season are on a treadmill of fun,” she added.

“How about you? Are you having a good time?”

“I am having a ball,” she said. “Everything I imagined and more.”

But her voice sounded brittle and the smile on her face was not quite convincing.

I was about to push her harder about Sam when Jennifer Cornell bustled into the kitchen.

“I was just about to ask Hayley about Edel Waugh’s new restaurant,” Mom said, though we hadn’t been talking about that at all.

“She’s planning to open tonight, finally,” I said.

“She’s opening in spite of her husband’s death?” Jennifer’s forehead crinkled with concern. “I’m surprised that the cops are letting that happen. And, besides, how can she possibly cook under these circumstances? Sometimes I worry that if I have a sad day or I’m distracted, my feelings leach into my food. Those are times when I try to step away and let my assistants do the lion’s share of the cooking. Those days, I stick with paying bills and working on advertising. Jobs that won’t be affected by sorrow or a lousy biorhythm.”

“Wow,” I said, “you’re exactly right. Though I hadn’t thought of it in those words. But I’m sure she feels she can’t bail out—she thinks the food critic for the
New York Times
is coming for dinner tonight.”

“Huge opportunity. Huge risk.” Mom turned back to the task of frying shrimp. Working on the middle island, Jennifer began to cut an enormous bag of tiny limes into halves.

“Dessert?” I asked.

She nodded. “Key lime pie. The bride wanted the whole meal to be tropical. To me that’s fun.”

“Back to Edel for a moment,” Mom said. “I know we can’t really get into her head, but why do you think she’s pushing so hard? She’s so ferocious about her food and her place. Why?”

“I’ve wondered, too,” I said, and turned to Jennifer. “Some of it must have to do with going out on her own as a woman in this business. In the articles I’ve read, her husband, Juan Carlos, was usually credited for the magical combinations of ingredients and recipes. Edel was mentioned after him, the business tour de force, the sharp-edged negotiator, but also the woman behind the man and his cooking.”

“I bet you that stuck in her craw like a chicken bone,” Mom said, patting her neck with a paper towel.

“It’s harder for a woman chef,” Jennifer said. She tapped a fist on her chest. “I’m a little different. I don’t take myself too seriously. If she wants to compete with the top restaurants—I don’t mean just in Key West—she must be serious.” She pointed to the newspaper articles pinned up over her desk: Jennifer in the stockpot. Jennifer in a mermaid’s costume, including a big tail and a bikini top, posed with a dashing pirate. “I don’t mind fooling around with things like this. I intend to have a successful catering business, not garner a James Beard award.”

“Maybe that’s why she can’t serve her spaghetti Bolognese,” I said. “It’s too much like something an earth mother would cook, without enough manly pizzazz.”

Jennifer began to crack eggs deftly, dropping the yolks into one bowl and separating the whites into another. “The bride says her new mother-in-law is allergic to anything citrus,” she said. “So we’ll have to make something chocolate, too. I was thinking of your Scarlett O’Hara cupcakes,” she added, looking at Mom. “Unless that’s too much to accomplish this afternoon?”

Mom shook her head and grinned. “There’s nothing I’d rather do than spend the day here cooking. And I love the idea of those pink iced cupcakes at a wedding. They’re so romantic. Did any raspberries come in the shipment this morning? If not, I imagine we could do something very similar with strawberries.”

“I’ll take a look.” Jennifer headed off to the enormous refrigerators at the far end of her kitchen.

“Don’t you and Sam have any plans?” I asked, once she’d disappeared, keeping my voice light and innocent.

“Sam’s a grown man,” Mom said. “He can take care
of himself.” She fell silent and went back to plunging the shrimp into hot oil, which sizzled and popped.

“Listen, Mom,” I said finally, “I seem to remember you telling Connie last spring that even though she had to make her own decision about marrying Ray, as far as we could see, they were a wonderful couple. I say the same about you and Sam.”

She did not answer.

I forged forward despite my mother’s frostiness. “It seems like something about his proposal has got you spooked. Did he take you by surprise? Did you not like the ring?” I snickered to let her know I was joking about the jewelry. My mother had never in her life put money or diamonds ahead of her connection with someone, and I doubted she would do that now. But in her current condition, I couldn’t be sure.

“I’m just getting started making a life for myself,” Mom finally said, turning the shrimp in the hot oil with a pair of chopsticks. “I’ve never truly been successful on my own.” She waved off the protests that she must have assumed were bubbling to my mouth. “Yes, I was a good wife and a super mother. You turned out to be everything I could have dreamed of in a daughter.” She flashed a tremulous smile. “But I never supported myself. I never had a career.” She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Hayley, your career has gone farther than mine ever did and I’m more than twenty years older than you are.”

“But, Mom—”

“Sam would take care of me. He
wants
to take care of me. But I don’t have the nerve to let go of what I’m trying to do and trust the future with him. Trust that his care would last forever. Trust that depending on him would feel okay to me.”

“But, Mom, surely he wouldn’t ask you to give up
catering. He seems to love the fact that you’re launching something new.”

She tightened her shoulders and turned to face me, her eyes intense. “I don’t have the nerves for it, Hayley.”

I would have tried to argue if I could have thought of a strong rebuttal, but then her face froze in horror as she stared at my arm. I glanced down. Blood had seeped from my wound through the dressing and from there through my long-sleeved shirt.

My mouth working faster than my mind, I said, “It’s not as bad as it looks. The bullet barely creased the flesh.”

Pie solves most things.

—Barbara Ross,
Clammed Up

It took more than fifteen minutes to tell the details of the story of last night’s incident to my mother’s satisfaction: the lighted boat parade, the shooting, and the visit to the emergency room. Mom’s gasps and outraged quasi-expletives slowed down the narrative.

“But why didn’t you tell me?” she asked three or four times during my story. “We didn’t see Ray’s boat go by, but, my gosh, we never imagined you were in trouble. I wish you had called. I wish I’d been on the boat with you in the first place—”

“Mom,” I said, turning off the burner under her frying pan and then taking both of her arms in my hands and pressing her onto a stool near the counter. “This is why I didn’t tell you. Because I knew you’d get hysterical.”

Mom turned to Jennifer, who was watching our exchange in awe and dismay. “Am I hysterical, Jennifer?”

“A smidge,” Jennifer replied, holding her thumb and forefinger an inch away from each other.

“Maybe we should get started on the cupcakes while we’re discussing this?” I suggested. “I’ll work on the frosting.”

“But you’re bleeding,” Mom said.

“It’s just oozing. I’ll show you later when I change the bandage. Seriously, it’s only a flesh wound. They found nothing wrong with my bones—no nicks, no scrapes, nothing. There were no symptoms of any vessel damage. It’s just ordinary, everyday bleeding.”

“It’s a gunshot wound,” Mom said, her voice tight with worry. “There’s nothing ordinary about it.”

Jennifer called up the cupcake recipe on her laptop, and Mom began to stomp around, measuring the flour and the baking powder and sugar and cocoa powder. All the while, she interrogated me about what the police had said last night, what they learned about the shooting, and what kind of protection they were affording her daughter. Her only daughter. I wondered if Jennifer was worried about all this angst leaching into her bridal cupcakes.

“Of course they’re canvassing all the boats that were in the parade,” I said. “Plus they will send patrols around to talk to the owners of the bars and as many customers as they can get hold of. Bottom line? There really is no reason for someone to be shooting at me, which speaks to it being a random hit.” I tried to sound measured and unconcerned and utterly confident that the cops would solve the question of who’d shot at me and why.

Mom’s eyes widened, as if this was the first time she had considered a motive. “There might very well be a reason,” she said. “What about Edel’s situation and the fire? There is something very scary going on with that. For heaven’s sake, her husband was murdered right on her property.”

“We don’t know that,” I said sternly. “There are a million other ways it could have happened.”

“How widely was it known that you were attending the boat parade?” Jennifer asked.

“It wasn’t a secret,” I said, then tried to reconstruct conversations I’d had about the event. The town locals had been talking about it for weeks—and I had, too. “I remember the day that I first showed up at Edel’s restaurant, the kitchen staff was talking about the Christmas activities on the island. And I mentioned how much fun the boat parade was and that I would be riding in Ray’s boat. He’d just invited me earlier that morning, and I was very excited.”

“Who?” my mother asked. “To whom did you say that?”

“Pretty much everyone in the back of the house was there.” I sighed. “Plus, certainly my friends at
Key Zest
know. And Miss Gloria. And that means everyone at Tarpon Pier heard about it, too. There’s just no way to narrow it down.”

My mother wrung her hands, her eyes a little tearful. “I am so, so sorry I ever said anything to her about what a good detective you are. This is all my fault, I know it—I’ve put you in danger.”

“What are you talking about?”

Mom pressed the
GO
button on Jennifer’s monstrous KitchenAid mixer. I turned the machine back off, feeling stunned and confused. “You’d better explain.”

She dabbed at a splatter of batter on the counter. “Edel mentioned she was having some trouble in her kitchen. And I said how perceptive you were and how you’d helped solve some other cases.”

“When did you have this conversation? Why were you even talking to her?”

My mother put a hand to her cheek. “Because we
invested in her new place. Or Sam did, anyway. You know how I’ve always loved her food. And I was so excited to hear about the bistro, and then Sam had the idea of backing her.”

“So that’s why she keeps calling me,” I said, hardly knowing what to feel about this new information. Like the kaleidoscope I’d had as a child, the knob had been turned and all the events of the past few days looked different.

“It doesn’t really change anything,” Mom said. “She respects you for you. I’m just sorry I dragged you into a dangerous situation.” She turned the mixer back on.

While the oversized beaters mixed the batter, Mom began to drop cupcake liners into a row of pans on the counter. When the liners were all in place, she turned off the mixer and parked her hands on her hips. “I think we should call Lorenzo and see if he has time to give you a tarot card reading. I can’t get away right now, but I’ll tell him you want to meet him for coffee or lunch.”

I could have argued but what was the point? Besides, talking with Lorenzo almost always calmed me down. I rely on him when the going gets tough. Mom loves him, too. For me, absorbing his measured words works like yoga or tai chi or meditation—or even psychotherapy—does for other folks.

Mom got off her phone after a short conversation. “He’s going to meet you at the Coffee Plantation on Caroline Street in half an hour. I promised him the snack of his choice.” She kissed my cheek. “Go ahead, honey—it’s my treat.” She pressed a crumpled twenty-dollar bill into my palm. “I’ve got to stay here and finish the cupcakes. And for the love of Pete, be careful!” She pushed me toward the door. “And call me right away to tell me what he said.”

I motored across the island to the coffee shop on Caroline, a little white clapboard house with green shutters. Lorenzo hadn’t arrived yet, so I dropped my backpack at a table on the porch and went in to order. Inside, brightly colored walls were hung with cheerful local and Cuban paintings. Books from local artists were displayed around the room. I approached the counter and asked for a latte. The almond cake dusted with powdered sugar sang to me, so I ordered a slice of that, too.

“A friend will be joining me shortly—I’m treating,” I told the clerk.

Back outside, I sat at the table overlooking the street, determined not to process my mother’s confession until I’d fortified myself with caffeine and sugar. Despite the fame rendered to it by a popular Jimmy Buffet tune, Caroline Street, with its busy traffic and the construction of a new hotel a block away, did not afford the quietest respite on the island. But it was a great spot to watch the world go by.

Did it really matter, I wondered, that Sam and my mother were backing Edel’s restaurant? I was glad for her that she had them in her corner. But I felt silly, thinking she’d called me for help because of my reputation both as a food critic and a puzzle solver when, in fact, the whole thing had been set up by my mother.

Ten minutes later, Lorenzo took the seat beside me, carrying a cup of tea and a slice of pie. His dark hair curled like mine in the humidity, and he wore Harry Potter–style round glasses and red clogs. I felt instantly calmer in his presence.

“I was hoping you weren’t on a diet,” I said, pointing at his plate.

“The cards say, ‘Never pass up key lime pie,’” he told me as he swallowed the first creamy bite and rolled his eyes with ecstasy.

We chatted for a few minutes about the politics of the street performers at Mallory Square and their difficult negotiations with the city about a new lease. I wasn’t the only person struggling with a crazy workplace.

“I got worried this week when we cruised through Sunset at Mallory Square with Mom’s guests and you weren’t there. There was another tarot card reader where you usually sit,” I said, lifting my eyebrows. “Is she your new competition?”

“It all depends,” he said. “Do you want a performance? Or a reading?” He placed his deck of cards on the little table between us.

“A reading. Definitely. No drama.” I began to shuffle the cards. “I’ve got enough of that in my own life.”

He smiled warmly and dealt out three cards. A look of alarm crossed his face, erased as quickly as it had appeared. “Hmm.” He leaned across the table to take my hand. “We’ll get to these cards. But I sense danger for someone close to you. Possibly a woman. Someone needs to keep her channels open—she may not be able to see things clearly. Does this sound right?”

“Not exactly, but I’ll think about it.” Besides me getting shot at, Edel, of course, sprang to mind. Had someone been targeting her personally when the fire was set? None of the other women in my life were in any physical danger. Emotional danger, though, that was always a possibility.

“Stay open to your senses, okay?” he said.

I nodded, feeling the light-as-air almond cake churn in my stomach as I glanced down again at my cards. The Tower for the past, the Eight of Swords for the present, and the Page of Wands for the future. Upside down.

“Let’s take the present first, the Eight of Swords. You’ve drawn this before, remember?”

Too well. I disliked the message then and I didn’t like it any better now.

“It’s hard work to change,” he said, “when you feel trapped by a situation. But no one can rescue you from said situation, whether it’s real or whether it’s something in your head.”

Who in the world used the phrase “said situation” in normal conversation? I knew I was getting scared and cranky when I started critiquing his way of speaking. But I tried to set aside the negative internal chatter and really listen.

“If you are feeling powerless, it may be time to question your assumptions. Get ready to open yourself to change. To new possibilities. Remove the block and the energy can flow.”

He tapped my third card with two fingers—the card that had been dealt out upside down. The drawing was of a handsome golden man carrying a large staff or walking stick that sprouted leaves at its tip. Buff, I would have said, if it had been a live man instead of a drawing. The figure gazed off into the distant mountains on the card. “Page of Wands,” Lorenzo said.

“He’s cute, isn’t he?” I quirked a smile, trying not to show how on edge I was feeling.

“I see a lot of craziness, maybe at work. But maybe at home?” He cocked his head and studied me. “You’ll suffer if you don’t articulate your thoughts—if you try to protect other peoples’ feelings at the expense of your own.” He placed his hand over mine, squeezed gently, and then shifted his attention to the first card in my sequence.

The Tower. Too many times I had drawn the Tower and I disliked the news that it trumpeted every time. “Any chance you could remove this from the deck next time I come?”

He shook his head. “There’s change ahead. Upheaval. You may feel trapped by feelings and emotions that no longer serve your current purpose,” he said. “You may feel that you’re out of control, but this will help you evaluate the ways you feel trapped. Don’t let yourself remain in the position of refusing to see the truth.”

There were so many ways I was feeling stuck and out of control—my job, my love life, just to mention two. Lorenzo paused, still studying the cards. But it seemed as though they had given him all they had to say. And I needed to do some serious thinking, alone.

“How are you aside from the Mallory Square business?” I asked Lorenzo.

“I’m good,” he said. “I’m busy. I’m feeling calm and centered.”

“I’m glad someone is,” I said.

“Just remember, there are two worlds—a world of love and a world of fear. You choose where you want to live, okay?”

We chatted a bit about holiday plans while I finished my coffee and the half slice of cake that I had planned to take home to Miss Gloria. She wouldn’t miss it if I didn’t mention it. Sometimes hearing about the future demanded more sugar.

We gathered our trash and stood up. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, thinking he’d held back on something terrible during my short reading. I suppose I needed to know. “Why?”

He pointed to my shirtsleeve. “Is that blood?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Just a scratch. Nothing to worry about.”

I grinned and hugged him good-bye and hurried off. Once balanced on my scooter, I called my mother.

“Everything looks fine to him,” I said. “No problems, nothing out of the ordinary. Change is coming, of course. See the truth; don’t stay stuck.”

“Change?” Mom asked.

I added quickly: “I drew the Tower in my past position.”

Mom groaned. “The Tower again?”

“I’m not worried about it,” I said. “Neither is Lorenzo. Listen, I wish you’d told me about Sam investing in Edel’s place. I would have handled that just fine. Just as Sam can handle your career if you two get married. Each of us is stronger than we think we are.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe.”

“Anyway, I’m exhausted. I’m going home to the boat to take a short nap before I have to leave for Edel’s place tonight. Try not to worry, because I’ll be fine. I’ll take no chances. You’ve got plenty to manage on your side. Be nice to Sam, whatever you tell him.”

“Of course,” she said, her voice a little distant. “I’ll talk to you later or tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow will be fine.”

Loud noises banged, coming from behind the fence surrounding the construction site in back of the Coffee Plantation. I glanced over, noticing how the rooftops of the new hotel could have offered an excellent staging platform for the shooter as he studied the harbor, looking for his target.