A Deadly Slice of Lime: A Key West Culinary Cozy - Book 6 (4 page)

Marilyn
and Kelcie were crushing walnuts to blend in with the graham cracker crumbs
that were used for the Key Lime tart crusts, when Tiara came in the back door
of the commercial kitchen, looking stressed.

“You’re
early this morning,” her mother remarked, glancing up at the Felix the Cat
clock that hung next to the kitchen door.

“I
didn’t get to teach my Yoga on the Beach class this morning because the police
had that whole section blocked off with crime scene tape,” she sighed.

“Wow,
I wonder what happened,” Kelcie said, spooning some butter into a glass dish to
melt.

“No
idea,” Tiara shook her head. “I’m just really bummed out because, when I don’t
start my day with that kind of focus and relaxation, things don’t usually go as
well,” she shrugged.

“Well,
we’ll just concentrate on doing everything we can to make it a great day,”
Marilyn chimed in optimistically. “I do wonder what’s going on though.”

“Yeah,
me too. Guess we’ll find out when we watch the news later,” her daughter
replied. “Since I’m here early, I’m going to start working on the marketing
plan that we’ll implement for the expansion. We’re getting closer and closer.”

“Unless
of course I have to pay out four million dollars to a lying old woman,” her
mother made a face. She hadn’t told Tiara yet about the bee incident, or about
having been caught spying by Bernard Cortland. She clearly had to figure out
another plan of attack.

“Well,
I’m going to proceed on the assumption that she’s not going to be able to
swindle you out of that money,” Tiara tossed over her shoulder as she headed
for the front counter computer.

**

Marilyn
had sold out of almost everything. She, Tiara and Kelcie had been hopping, with
cruise ship customers, tourists and locals all day, and by the time the sign on
the door had been turned over to Closed, there was very little stock to box up
for the homeless shelter and children’s home. Tiara finished counting up the
receipts and register cash, announcing that they’d had their single biggest day
of sales to date, receiving excited applause from Kelcie and her mother.

“Okay
ladies, that means we celebrate tonight – if you two don’t have any other
plans, that is,” she offered with a broad grin.

Before
either of the young women could answer, Tiara’s father, Daniel, came bursting
in through the front door.

“Mar,
I know we’ve had our differences, but I really need your help this time,” he
said, rushing over to her, eyes wide.

Kelcie
politely excused herself, not wanting to stay anywhere near the potentially
incredibly awkward family situation. Marilyn and Tiara were so fixated upon the
man who had come charging into the store that they barely heard her say
goodbye.

“Daniel,
I thought that I had made it perfectly clear…” Marilyn began, her teeth
clenched.

“Dad,
what’s wrong?” her daughter interrupted, seeing her dad’s uncharacteristic
pallor. Her mother gave the two of them a scorching glare, but held her tongue
and waited for his answer.

“My
friend, Brad, went missing last night. I just assumed that he’d gone out for a
few drinks after I went to bed and found…someone that he was…interested in,”
Daniel explained awkwardly. Tiara rolled her eyes, imagining the awkward
attempts that Brad had made, and her father continued.

“Anyway,
he apparently never came back to his room at the hotel, and wasn’t answering
his cell phone. I woke up to the sound of the police pounding at my door just
before the sun came up, and they asked me all sorts of questions about Brad,
and why we were traveling together, how long I’d known him, stuff like that,”
Daniel ran his hand through his thick golden-going-grey hair, clearly upset.

“So,
I answered all of their questions as best I could – I was still half asleep and
had a throbbing headache – then they asked me to get dressed and come with
them.”

“Hungover?”
Marilyn asked snidely.

“Irrelevant,
Mom. Please,” Tiara gave her a warning look, and she crossed her arms,
listening to her ex’s story, but choosing to remain hostile. “Where did they
want you to go after you got dressed?” she asked, frowning.

“They
put me in the back of a patrol car and took me to the beach, where there was an
area roped off with crime scene tape,” he replied. Tiara’s eyes widened and she
exchanged a worried look with her mother.

“I
asked them why we were there, and they told me that they had reason to believe
that I might be able to identify a body that had been pulled out of the water.
I felt sick to my stomach and hoped that whatever had happened didn’t involve
Brad,” he paled and swallowed hard, taking a minute before continuing.

“Was
it Brad? Was it his body that had been in the water?” Tiara asked softly, her
eyes filled with compassion. Brad may have been awkward and a bit strange, but
he and Daniel were quite obviously very good friends.

The
muscles in his jaw flexed as Daniel worked to maintain his composure, and too
overcome to speak, he merely nodded, looking down at the floor.

“Oh,
Dad, I’m so sorry,” she said, moving in to give him an awkward hug. They hadn’t
been close for quite some time, but her heart went out to her father in his
grief.

Marilyn
stood back, observing. While, as a human being, she felt sad about the man
named Brad who’d suffered an untimely demise, she couldn’t quite bring herself
to feel anything but a vague uneasiness toward the man who had emotionally
manipulated her for almost the entirety of their marriage. She knew his
potential for cruelty on an emotional level, but didn’t know whether she
thought that he was capable of terminal foul play. One thing that she did know
for certain, was that she didn’t want her beloved daughter anywhere near him
until she found out.

“Do
the police have any idea as to how he…died?” she asked quietly, as Tiara
disengaged from his embrace and went to grab them all a bracing cup of Costa
Rican coffee.

“That’s
the strange part,” Daniel shook his head. “They pulled his body from the ocean,
but he didn’t drown…his throat had been slashed.”

Marilyn
glanced away from her ex-husband, not wanting him to recognize the fear that
flared in her eyes at his statement. She knew for a fact that he carried a
razor-sharp hunting knife wherever he went, not because he was a hunter, but
because it was the only item he’d kept when his father passed away several
years ago, when Tiara was a baby. She knew that Daniel could be very protective
toward people that he either cared about or felt that he owned, and she
couldn’t help but wonder if Brad’s sad attempt to flirt with her daughter had
been a fatal mistake.

“That’s
awful,” she murmured, glad that Tiara came back at that moment with three cups
of coffee.

“The
worst part is that there was this one detective…Cortland, I think his name was,
that kept looking at me like he thought that I was the one who offed Brad,”
Daniel choked off the last part of his sentence, seemingly overcome with
emotion.

“Here,
Dad, come sit,” Tiara led him to the nearest bistro table and exchanged another
troubled glance with her mother.

“I
can’t believe this is happening,” he shook his head as he sank into the gaily
painted lemon and lime chair.

“I’m
sure the police will figure out who the real killer is soon enough,” she
soothed, looking at her mother for back-up.

“Sweetie,
I have to run the leftovers out to the shelter and the children’s home. You two
take as much time here as you need, and just lock up when you leave, okay?”
Marilyn asked, not waiting before escaping to the kitchen. Tiara told her
father that she’d be right back and followed her.

“Are
you seriously going to bail on me right now?” she whispered, cornering her
mother in the back office.

Marilyn
stared hard at her daughter. “Just what is it exactly that you’d like me to do
here, Tiara?” she demanded. “Am I supposed to dote on him and keep him company?
Because if that’s what you’re expecting, I’m going to have to profoundly
disappoint you.”

“Can
you at least put in a good word for him with Detective Cortland? He likes you,
your endorsement could help them start looking in the right direction instead
of suspecting Dad of killing his own friend,” she whispered, looking over her
shoulder as though she expected to see Daniel standing in the hall behind her.

Her
mother said nothing, trying to make her expression as neutral as possible.
Tiara’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re
not going to intervene because you want him to go down for this,” she accused.
“You’re still so scarred by your divorce that you’d allow an innocent man to go
to jail. That’s utterly despicable, Mother. I expected more from you,” the
young woman hissed.

“Don’t
you dare accuse me of such things, young lady. You have no idea what you’re
talking about and I will not tolerate that kind of disrespect. I knew your
father a long time ago, and no, the man that I knew, as nasty as he could
sometimes be, I would not suspect of having the capacity to do something like
this. I have no idea who your father is now, Tiara. He could be running a drug
smuggling ring for all I know. The police know what they’re doing, and if he’s
innocent, they’ll be able to figure that out soon enough. I’m going to do the
smart thing and just stay out of everyone’s way. What you do is your business,
but I’d prefer that you not get involved in this mess,” Marilyn shot back,
tears in her eyes.

“You
weren’t so confident of the police’s ability to solve the crime when I was a
suspect, remember that? You don’t want to get involved? Fine. If you don’t have
the heart for it, I do. Someone has to stand up for what’s right, and if you
don’t have the guts, I guess it’ll have to be me,” Tiara replied, her eyes
frozen chips of ice.

“Tiara,
honey…” Marilyn called after her as she headed back to the front.

“Go
drop off the food, Mom. Run away. The adults will figure out what to do,” her
daughter retorted bitterly, not bothering to turn around.

Marilyn
leaned her head back against her back patio lounger and closed her eyes, wine
glass in hand. When she heard a telltale rustle in the trees between her house
and the cottage that Tim Eckels was renting, she knew that she’d soon be
hearing from the strange man, and sighed. She was definitely not in the mood
for cryptic pronouncements and bitter judgments because she hadn’t hired him at
the shop.

A
shadow fell across her lounger, and she opened her eyes to see Tim standing
beside her, pushing his thick glasses up his nose with an index finger.

“They
were here again,” he said, gazing down at her as though she were a bug under a
microscope.

“Who
was here again, Tim?” she asked out of habit, knowing full well that she might
be about to hear a story about the meter reader, the paperboy, or the
landscapers that kept her yard neat and tidy.

“The
two men that brought her home,” he proclaimed somberly, still peering down at
her. Marilyn swung her feet over the side of the lounger closest to him and sat
up. Almost every time that Tim talked about “she” or “her,” he was referring to
Tiara, who apparently fascinated him, much to her mother’s consternation.

“When?
When were they here?” she asked, urgently. Suddenly he had her full attention.

“Yesterday
afternoon. They yelled a lot,” he blinked several times and pushed his glasses
up again.

Marilyn’s
heart sped up and her stomach churned with the potential implications of that
statement. “Could you hear what they were yelling about, Tim?” she asked.

He
shook his head exactly once. “No, but the one who had given her a ride before,
pushed the other one,” he smiled eerily.

“Did
they fight?”

“I
don’t know,” he blinked at her, his eyes huge behind his lenses.

“You
don’t know?” she repeated, frustrated at his lack of elaboration. Tim had been
a mortician prior to moving to Florida, and she had a feeling that the paunchy,
fussy little man dealt much better with the dead than the living.

“I
was looking for my cat,” he said, with a shrug and turned to go. He always
seemed to be looking for his cat, a creature that Marilyn had never actually
seen in all the months that he’d lived there.

“Did
you find him?” she asked, giving up, but trying to keep the conversation going,
just in case he remembered something else.

“Who?”
Tim cocked his head at a strange angle.

“The
cat,” now it was Marilyn’s turn to blink.

“Oh.
No,” he said and disappeared through the trees.

She
sat and stared into the trees absently for a time, sipping her wine and
thinking. The fact that Daniel and Brad had an altercation in front of her
house, when neither of them was supposed to be there, raised some alarms for
Marilyn. The thought that Tiara was with someone who had potentially killed
another human being, filled her with dread, but she couldn’t figure out how to
get her daughter away from Daniel. She jumped, splashing a bit of wine into her
lap, when she heard her name called out from behind her chair.

“Hi,”
Bernard raised a hand in greeting. “Sorry to startle you,” he said, seeing her
trying to blot her pant legs with a cocktail napkin that she’d had on the side
table next to her chair. “The side gate was open, so….”

“No
need to apologize, I was just…preoccupied,” she said, staring into her wine
glass like a crystal ball. “Wine?” she asked.

“Uh…no,
thanks. I’m on duty,” he replied. “Do you need to go take care of that?” he
motioned to the splotches of wine on her pants.

“No,”
she shook her head. “I’ll just wash them in cold and they’ll be like new.” Her
replies were wooden, and she felt a strange sort of numbness that made it
difficult to think.

“May
I?” the detective asked, indicating an empty patio chair across from her.

“Of
course. Please,” she felt terrible for being so distant, but her world had been
rocked in some major ways today.

“Thanks.
I stopped by the shop before I came out here, so I’m assuming that you know why
I’m here…” he began, after taking a seat.

“My
guess would be that you’re investigating the murder of my ex’s traveling
companion, Brad. Is that about right?” she asked, sipping her wine.

“Yeah,
exactly that,” Bernard pulled out a notebook and a pen. “Anything you can tell
me that might be relevant?”

Marilyn
told him about the conversation that she’d just had with Tim, and about
Daniel’s hunting knife. He nodded, took notes, and asked for clarification on a
couple of items.

“Do
you know why your ex-husband chose to come to Key West?” he asked.

“Tiara
said that he was just vacationing, but I suspect that he wanted to reconnect
with her. Hopefully it was that, and not anything nefarious,” she murmured
sadly.

“Had
he ever come to visit his daughter before now?” Bernard asked gently. “I don’t
mean to pry, but it could be relevant,” he explained.

Marilyn
shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. “No, he never bothered. When we
moved to Florida, it seemed like it was mostly “out of sight, out of mind” with
Daniel, and honestly, I was okay with that. He didn’t have a very positive impact
on our lives before we left,” she remarked.

“I
see,” the detective nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, well, if you think of anything
else that might be helpful, you know how to get in touch with me,” he said,
standing to go.

“Speed
dial,” she nodded with a faint, wry smile. “Thanks for dropping by,” she added.

“All
in a day’s work,” was his casual reply. “Take care, Marilyn.”

She
raised her glass in farewell and went back to staring into space.