Topped Chef A Key West Food Critic Mystery (10 page)

“The pleasure was all mine.” Lorenzo put his cards away, and then stood and hugged Miss Gloria. I followed him out to the deck and walked with him to the end of the dock. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked me right in the eyes. “You may need to let go,” he said. Then he mounted his scooter and drove away.

Let go of what, exactly? I watched him disappear over the hill toward Old Town, then trudged back to the boat. Several slips up the finger, I saw my former roommate from college, Connie, who lived a few boats up the dock. She’d taken me in after the debacle with Chad last fall, but my subsequent move down to Miss Gloria’s place had taken the pressure off our friendship. Her place was simply too small for two women, one boyfriend who visited frequently and would soon be a husband, and one spoiled cat. I hurried down the dock to ask my mother’s questions about the fast-approaching wedding.

Connie looked like she’d just gotten out of the shower, her short hair sticking up randomly like a well-used patch of catnip. My mother had been lobbying for her to grow it out for her wedding to better display a
handmade headpiece and veil or even a ring of flowers—something “girly.” But right now it was in that awkward in-between stage.

“Here comes the bride!” I warbled. “I have strict instructions from Mom to pin you down about some details.” Connie made a face, as though she’d eaten something sour.

“What’s the matter?”

She pressed her fists to her cheeks and blew out an exasperated puff of air. “Does Ray seem like a normal guy to you?”

I nodded. “Sure. Normal for an artist, creative normal.” I smiled but she didn’t. “I think you’ve made an excellent choice—he’ll be a great husband. He adores you.”

“He’s gotten it into his head that if we’re getting married on the beach, it should be a pirate wedding.”

“A pirate wedding?”

“The wedding party would be dressed in costume and we’d ask the guests to come dressed as deckhands. And then say our vows in pirate-ese.”

I would have burst out laughing if she hadn’t looked so near to tears.

“Would you mind going by this shop sometime in the next few days and snapping some pictures of the costumes? I’m up to my neck in cleaning jobs—and they don’t have evening hours. I’m thinking if he could only see how silly we’d look, he’d drop this.” She handed me a flyer with colorful pictures of full-breasted wenches in white lace corsets and their pirate grooms wearing feathered hats and eye patches. “They refer to getting married as
swallowing the anchor
. If that’s how
he really feels about it…” Tears shimmered the length of her eyelashes like crystals of sugar.

“Of course,” I said, giving her a quick squeeze. “That’s what maids of honor are for—heading off disaster in whatever form it takes.”

8

The salt, the sweet, the brine, the crunch. It was a culinary car crash of depravity.

—Elissa Altman,
Poor Man’s Feast

All afternoon, I thought about Lorenzo’s words:
Let go of feelings to which you are attached
.
Are you waiting for someone else to rescue you?
Walk your talk.

I finally drummed up the nerve to call Nate. Considering how our date failed to materialize, shouldn’t he have called me first? But since he hadn’t, Lorenzo’s reading had convinced me that I had to take the lead, to be more direct. Whether we ended up in a relationship or whether we didn’t, I shouldn’t allow him to intimidate me. I punched his number into my phone. He answered on the first ring. I instantly considered hanging up. Foolish idea since everyone in the universe now has caller ID. Especially the cops.

“Oh hi. It’s Hayley. I was wondering how you’re doing? Did you get any sleep at all last night?”

Silence, but then he cleared his throat. “It was a long night.”

That was all he could give me?

“Long night for me, too,” I said. “Though your half of the lava cake helped cushion the pain.”

He chuckled but fell silent again.

“I was hoping you might have more information about the murder. And hoping that you’d be willing to share.” My voice sounded a little wobbly but I soldiered on. “I know you must think this is none of my business, but Rizzoli was a judge in the contest I’m involved with—as you know perfectly well. Since your guys were crawling all over the set this afternoon. Don’t you at least think I deserve to know if that puts the rest of us in danger?”

“Nice to talk to you, too,” he said, finally laughing. “And I am sorry about the dinner. In fact, I ended up eating a peanut butter sandwich last night, all the while thinking about that steak. And you. And the chocolate lava cake, though I suspect I wouldn’t have gotten much more than a taste.” He laughed again, a deep, charming laugh that loosened the knots of tension in my belly.

“You’re saying I’m a glutton?”

“I’ve seen you eat—can we leave it at that? And I was planning to call you, but we’ve been flat-out crazy busy here.”

“With Sam Rizzoli’s hanging?” I asked. “Have you arrested anyone?”

I heard him sigh and close his door. “Right now we’re narrowing suspects down, particularly considering the political opponents of the commissioner. Really,
that’s all I can say. But if we thought you were in any danger, I’d be the first to let you know. You have to trust me a little.”

“You have to give me something to go on,” I said back, keeping my tone light as a feather so he might imagine I was joking. Though I wasn’t. Trust could not be a one-way street.

“Yes. It was Sam Rizzoli,” he finally said. “And it was murder.”

*   *   *

After I’d helped Miss Gloria clean up from lunch, I got dressed for the first event of this weekend’s Key West Food and Wine Festival, the Mallory Square Stroll. This would be a quick and dirty way to develop material for my restaurant review column. Maybe I’d even be able to persuade Wally to swap out this story for my online review of Just Off Duval, considering that its owner had been murdered. Of course, plenty of people would have already seen it, but it seemed tacky to pile on to the man’s already significant misfortunes.

I’d decided to skip the opening “Barefoot on the Beach” cocktail party and go directly to the first stop on the stroll: the Conch Shack on Duval Street. Right away that struck me as a good move as I watched a crowd of boisterous people tumble off a trolley car and hip-check bewildered tourists out of their way to reach the shack. I’d have to eat and drink quickly to catch up with these folks. A Food and Wine Festival volunteer handed out sheets of paper listing the restaurants we’d be visiting and the munchies and wine those establishments would serve.

The Conch Shack was an open-air restaurant with no
seating other than a single row of stools lined up outside the open windows. Menus had been painted on the bright blue and yellow walls, declaring “Home of the Best Ever Conch Fritters” and “Cheap Beer!” Inside the small kitchen, two men in straw hats and shorts manned the deep fryer. The heavy smell of seafood hitting hot oil hung in the alley alongside the shack. I fought through the rowdy crowd that had descended from the trolley, snagged a glass of Chardonnay, and then slid a small plastic cup off a passing waiter’s tray. A fist-sized conch fritter drizzled with a pale green sauce filled the cup.

I moved away from the crowd and nibbled the fritter—hot and tender, not at all fishy, chewy, or heavy as I might have predicted. And the green sauce tasted like a rémoulade, with the faintest flavor of lime. I jotted a few notes, dumped my trash, and loosed myself into the stream of revelers headed toward our second stop. This was a crowd on a mission.

The next stop was Hot Tin Roof restaurant, two blocks away and tucked a stone’s throw from Duval Street. We passed through an outdoor eating area on the porch upstairs and went into the bar overlooking the water. Bartenders poured red wine as servers passed shrimp skewers
al ajillo
, which seemed to translate to “load on the garlic.”

I inhaled every spicy bite, set my empty plate and wineglass on the counter, and trotted downstairs toward Wall Street. Our next destination, El Meson de Pepe, a Cuban restaurant right off Mallory Square, had outdoor seating that ran the length of the alley leading from Mallory Square to Duval Street. Lively music,
pitchers of margaritas, and inexpensive food catered to hungry tourists in their post-sunset celebration daze. I claimed my plantain cup filled with Cuban roast pork and had another glass of pinot noir thrust upon me, which I promptly poured into a potted palm. Any more alcohol and I’d have no business on my scooter. The pork was tasty, though also deep fried and rich.

By now I would have killed for a carrot stick, though what chef would choose salad or veggies as a showcase for his talents? I trailed the crowd to another upstairs venue, the Roof Top Café. With vaulted ceilings and twinkling lights, this restaurant appeared spacious and welcoming. I accepted another glass of white wine and ate half of a shrimp and crab cake; delicious, though drenched in butter. I could feel my cholesterol count shooting up as the evening progressed.

Feeling fat-saturated and close to exhausted, I marched off to our final and most exotic tour stop, dessert on a yacht. I checked my stroll cheat sheet to get the details: The Barefoot Yacht, docked at the Westin Key West Resort and Marina Pier, promised key lime–infused phyllo tartlets drizzled with a dark chocolate sauce. My mouth began to water.

I got in line to board the yacht, which looked to be about twice the height and length of Miss Gloria’s houseboat. It was tethered a stone’s throw from the Custom House Museum, at the slip near to the pier where the cruise ships docked. Why would anyone want to dock a boat here, even for a night or two? I would be embarrassed to sit out on the deck while tourists streamed by, ogling my indulgences and wondering why I deserved what most folks couldn’t even dream
of. When we reached the gangplank, bouncers in green golf shirts instructed us to remove our shoes. As the woman in front of me argued that her rubber flip-flops would not leave marks on the deck, I shucked off my sandals and was helped aboard. A young man in a pressed blue shirt passed out flutes of champagne as we entered the living area.

While waiting for the dessert to materialize, I explored the yacht for a few minutes, first checking out the upper deck—spacious enough for a dozen sunbathers—and then peeking into the berths on the lower level, which looked like actual hotel rooms. Definitely roomier and much more extravagant than Miss Gloria’s tub, but not nearly so homey. There was still no sign of the key lime tartlets so I wandered down a passageway toward the bow.

A heavyset woman wearing thick makeup bustled out of the kitchen and blocked my way. “No admittance here, ma’am,” she said. “This is a working galley.”

I apologized and backpedaled quickly, but not before catching a glimpse of a man in chefs’ whites squirting chocolate syrup from a plastic bottle onto a tray of desserts. He had thick eyebrows, a mustache, and a ponytail down his back. It took me a minute to connect the dots. This pastry chef was Buddy Higgs, one of the contestants from the
Topped Chef
contest. Buddy Higgs? Plastic chocolate? For a man enamored of molecular gastronomy, that struck me as sloppy and lazy. Astonishing. I returned to the living room and watched a few minutes of basketball on the flat-screen TV that covered most of one wall.

Finally, the woman I’d seen in the galley emerged from the hall with a platter of pastries and passed them around. I took one bite of the dessert, which should have puckered my mouth with the tart flavor of key limes. Instead the custard’s sweetness made my fillings ache. Smothered in the saccharine corn syrup chocolate, the concoction was barely edible. I covered the rest with a paper napkin and slipped it into the trash. Then I abandoned my plastic flute of champagne on a shelf near the oversized television, and started for the exit. Enough was enough. I didn’t even want to think about the conflict of interest involved in panning a dessert made by one of the contestants from the
Topped Chef
contest. If only I hadn’t nosed into the galley, I scolded myself. Really, it was too late to worry.

Out on the deck, the same two beefy men grasped my elbows and lifted me off the boat and onto the gangplank. They weren’t taking any chances with tipsy guests ending up in the harbor. I thanked them and began to poke through the pile of shoes left on the dock, looking for my sandals.

“Hayley, is that you?” a familiar voice asked. Toby Davidson, her voice sounding more reedy and anxious than this morning. I slid my feet into my shoes and turned to greet her.

“Did you enjoy the tasting?” she asked as I buckled my sandals.

“It was fun,” I said. “Not something I’d want to do every night. There wasn’t a vegetable to be seen, though I got acquainted with lots of butter and the excellent proceeds of a deep-fat fryer. And all that reminded me of our contestant Randy Thompson.” I
snickered. “He’s cute, isn’t he? Though I don’t imagine we’re supposed to be comparing notes off the set.” I wondered whether to mention seeing Buddy Higgs in the yacht’s galley. Probably best left unsaid.

Toby gave a weak smile while her gaze probed the surrounding darkness. “Do you have a minute?”

Though I was tired and my stomach had started to churn a little, she looked so worried that I nodded.

She motioned to me to follow her a little distance away from the yacht to a bench near a large cement trash barrel. The sounds of diners partying on the yacht caromed across the bight and strings of fairy lights outlining the handrails and portholes made it look more magical than it had felt onboard. On the far pier where the cruise ships docked, a row of lamps cast squiggles of light on the water, like the wavy lines on a Hostess cupcake.

“I don’t know who else to talk with about this.” A wisp of brown hair blew across Toby’s forehead. She unclasped a barrette and recaptured the flyaway, then leaned forward to whisper. “I’ve been thinking. After the police talked with us earlier about Sam Rizzoli?”

The
rat-tat-tat
of firecrackers in the distance rattled through the air and Toby startled.