An Appetite for Murder (27 page)

The clerk nodded. “Pastries are her specialty.”

I clapped my hands. “My boss is looking for someone who can bake amazing pastries—­she mentioned pies, éclairs, and maybe baklava. She’s throwing a big party weekend after next. She’d pay really well because of the short notice. But she’s going to hire someone today and Meredith’s voice mail doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Wow, that sounds perfect for Meredith,” said the clerk. “Bummer that you can’t reach her.”

“Do you happen to know where she lives? Maybe I could swing by her house and tell her in person.”

The clerk studied me for a moment, eyes narrowed and lips pressed together. Then she pulled a piece of scrap paper from the drawer beside the cash register and scribbled an address on it. “She shares a house on Grinnell Street. I’m sure she’d want to hear about your catering gig. She likes working at the bakery and all, but
it’s not a dream job, you know? Half the time she’s slapping sandwiches together or working the cash register. And the hours are wicked early.”

I thanked her profusely and she handed over the knife, packed in its plastic sheath, which I stashed in the long pocket of my cargo shorts. Did I have the nerve to go to her house? Did I have any business getting more involved? But if not me, who else would even care?

I felt frightened and frozen. Then I thought of Lorenzo, my tarot reader, who was probably setting up for the usual crush of Sunset tourists. Even if he didn’t have an answer, talking things through over the cards should help me decide what to do.

I drove down Eaton Street and scored a parking spot right in front of the Waterfront Playhouse. Sprinting past the sculpture garden and the man dressed as a soldier but sprayed from head to toe with gold paint, I found Lorenzo preparing to open shop near the water. His cloak was draped over the back of his chair and he was spreading a blue cloth over the card table.

“Lorenzo! I’m in kind of a hurry. Do you have time for a three-­card reading?” My mother started every morning by reading her own cards while her coffee was brewing. I’d rather have it done by an expert. Why would I believe my own magic?

“Absolutely. And this one’s on me.” He grinned and retrieved his deck from a canvas bag under the table. I waited nervously while he straightened the corners of his tablecloth and donned his cape. To my left, the Cat Man unloaded carriers of hungry felines. To my right,
the fire-eater and his assistant laid out thick ropes on the concrete to define his space. Finally Lorenzo handed me the deck.

“Is your name really Lorenzo?” I asked while shuffling the cards.

Even under the thick layer of pancake makeup, I could see him blush all the way up to his black turban.

“I was Marvin until I moved down here from Georgia,” he admitted. “Marvie to my mother. But who’s going to believe a tarot card reader called Marvin?”

“Point taken.” I handed him the deck.

“Think about the question you bring to the table today,” he said, eyes closed and fingers to his temples.

Was Chad safe? Who ran me off the road? Will I get the job? Will I ever have another boyfriend?
The questions tumbled through my brain, but there was only so much three cards could tell me. I focused on Chad and nodded at Marvin. Lorenzo.

He dealt out the cards—­the three of swords, the moon, and then the eight of swords. My stomach seized. The only card I hated more than the tower was the first one he’d laid on the table: three swords piercing a heart, with rain falling in the background.

“I see there has been deep sorrow,” Lorenzo said quietly, staring at me, his hand on the first card. “A divorce. Maybe an affair? A great fear of rejection and loneliness.”

He focused back on the table. “The moon. Hmm. Things are not as they seem. Are you fooling yourself? Denial brings chaos.”

“Fooling myself how?” I asked.

“You’re the only one who can answer that.” He shrugged and pointed to the third card.

“You have been floundering,” he said, tapping the card. “Feeling vulnerable. And trapped.” He looked up from the table and into my eyes again. “No one can save you from yourself, Hayley. You must take action, not wait to be rescued.”

I whooshed out a breath. “Thanks. I think.” I smiled weakly, got up from Lorenzo’s table, and left the pier, head spinning. Since meeting Chad, nothing had turned out to be what it seemed. Of course I had to depend on myself, but what exactly did that mean?

I wove back through the crowds gathering for the sunset celebration, slid onto my scooter, and tried calling the detective again. Still no answer. I decided to run by Meredith’s rental house and take a look. If something seemed awry—­like suppose she had Chad tied to a tree in the backyard with three swords piercing his chest—­then I could drive down to the police station and round up a couple of officers. I snickered at my own joke, revved up the engine, and veered into the traffic to cross town.

“A hungry man can’t see right or wrong. He just sees food.”

—­Pearl S. Buck

I parked my scooter two blocks from the cemetery and approached Meredith’s house on foot. If she was home and Chad was in trouble, I’d be making a dangerous mistake to let her catch me snooping. An enormous banyan tree with multiple curved roots reaching skyward obscured the front of the white conch house. It must be wicked dark inside, especially with dusk falling. I waited a few minutes by the neighbor’s fence, breathing more heavily than the short walk would explain, trying to figure out a reasonable plan.

I crept down the side of Meredith’s house that was shaded by the big tree. Edging up to the building, I peered through the first window. I could barely make out the shapes of the living room furniture: a denim futon, a large-­screen TV, and several pillows scattered on
the beige tile floor. This had the feel of a student crash pad, or, more likely for Key West, the home of several minimum-­wage workers forced to share quarters.

I inched farther down the alley between the fence and the house. The next window was covered by an off-­white shade, the bottom grimy with fingerprints, one rip patched with duct tape. The bathroom?

I heard a scratching noise behind me and whirled around to face it. In a great explosion of flapping wings, a rooster sprang from the bushes crowing at the top of his poultry lungs. I clutched my hand to my chest, my heart lunging, and crouched down to wait and see if I’d been exposed by the rooster’s racket. But nothing happened.

I crept a little farther along the side of the house and peered into a window with jalousie blinds. The flap nearest the bottom was slanted open. Inside, Chad was seated on a battered wooden chair, his hands tied behind his back, his mouth taped with the same silver tape I’d seen on the shade, and his feet bound to the bottom chair rung. The tape lapped over one nostril and it looked like he was having trouble breathing. His body language vibrated with outrage and fear.

Then a hand clapped over my mouth and I felt something poke me in the small of the back. I shrieked through the grabbing fingers.

“One more syllable and I shoot,” a woman’s voice hissed, poking me again with what I now realized had to be the barrel of a gun. “Hands on your head.”

Meredith. Rigid with fear, I raised my hands and planted them, as instructed.

“Move.” She gave me a rough shove and I wobbled around the back of the house, finally getting a glimpse of her as we turned the corner. Wearing a pink flowered sweater and white pedal pushers, she looked like a Palm Beach housewife, not a kidnapper. We filed through the back door into a small vestibule crammed with shoes, fishing equipment, and bags of empty beer bottles and cans. She slammed the door shut and locked it behind us and then grabbed a handful of bungee cords from a hook on the wall and pointed to a room on the right with the gun. As I stumbled in, Chad’s eyes bugged wide and he rocked in his chair, making muffled noises that sounded like mmmrffff, mmmrff, and mmrrrff.

“I think he wants to know what you’re doing here,” said Meredith with a dry laugh. She pushed me toward another chair. “Sit. Hands behind you.”

I sat. She dropped the gun on the faded quilt that covered the metal daybed and wound one cord around my wrists and another around my ankles. Then she backed away and retrieved the gun from the bed, her hands shaking visibly. She was as frightened as I was. How had she managed to capture Chad? He rumbled again underneath his tape.

“Just for kicks, let’s see what your boyfriend has to say.” She strode across the room, grabbed a loose corner of the tape on Chad’s face, and ripped it off.

He howled from the pain, both his upper and lower lips now bleeding. He tapped them together gingerly, feeling for damage, and then frowned at me.

“What in the name of God are you doing here?” he finally asked.

Any sympathy I had been feeling drained away. “Deena was worried because you didn’t show up for court. Or your new customers.”

“Big bad lawyer was going to fleece some more wom-
­en?” asked Meredith in a voice that would have soured milk.

“You should have hired a more competent attorney,” Chad told her.

“There was no need to include the dog in the settlement,” she spat.

“I work for my clients, not their exes,” said Chad. “My job is to protect their interests in the biggest possible settlement. My job is to win.”

Meredith looked angry enough to blow into a million pieces, but instead began to weep.

I turned to glare at Chad. “Could you possibly shut up?”

I closed my eyes for a moment to steady my breathing, and then glanced around the room to assess my options. Which looked, quite honestly, lousy. Meredith’s hand was still shaking. Even before Chad’s needling, she had begun to take on a shell-­shocked glaze, like she was assessing the situation too—­and coming up empty. A poisoning was one thing—­death at a distance. Two face-­to-­face shootings were something else altogether. Could we use her distress to our advantage?

“Meredith,” I said softly. “I realize you didn’t mean to poison Kristen. She was your friend, your ally.”

She nodded, so I kept talking.

“But that means you delivered the pie to Chad. Did you hate him that much?”

Chad started to protest, but I shushed him quiet.

Meredith blinked furiously and jabbed the gun at him. “Not only did he clean me out, but then he lured Kristen away from Robert. He totally screwed up the plans for the new restaurant.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would it matter whether she slept around and with whom?” That crack was aimed at Chad.

“You think Robert would continue to work for Kristen if she was sleeping with this cretin? All of us needed to pull together for the project to get off the ground. Superstud here ruined everything.”

She was gasping for breath now—­waving the gun in loopy figure eights. Even Chad looked terrified. Superstud. I needed to calm her down if we had any chance of escaping alive.

“Listen, Meredith,” I said in a soothing voice. “The courts will understand that poisoning Kristen was an error, that you only intended to make Chad good and sick. But if you shoot two of us in utterly cold blood, you’ll spend your life in prison. If you’re lucky.”

The blood drained suddenly from Meredith’s face and she clutched at her stomach and ran from the room.

“She’s had the trots all afternoon,” Chad hissed. “Do something!”

“You are such a horse’s arse.” If I could have managed getting out of the house alone, I would have happily left him there. “Maybe later you can explain to me how one small woman managed to incapacitate a bruiser like you using only duct tape,” I needled.

He muttered a string of curses.

I tried to stretch the cords binding my ankles and wrists.
She had wrapped the hands tightly, but there was give around my legs. I managed to scrape my sneakers off and wiggle one foot out of the cord and then the other. I leaped up and hurried over to the back of Chad’s chair.

“There’s a knife in my pocket,” I whispered, squatting down and leaning one hip against his hand so he could work his fingers into the opening. Once he’d wiggled it out, and worked open the plastic shield, I held my wrists away from my back so he could saw at the cord. “Try not to cut me.”

For several minutes, he fumbled the knife against the cord. “Go!” he said finally.

I snapped the fraying bungee, ripped my hands free, and grabbed the knife from Chad. “I had to buy this to replace the one you refused to return. You owe me fifty bucks.”

“Hayley, please! Can you save the recriminations until later?”

I heard the toilet flush down the hall and then the scuffling noises of Meredith’s shoes on the tile. I bolted across the room and ducked behind the door. As Meredith turned the corner into the room, I sprang out, brandishing the knife, and screaming like a modern-­day banshee.

Chad howled along with me. I knocked Meredith to her knees; the gun skittered across the tile. She butted her head into my shoulder and the knife arced through the air and clattered into a far corner. I struggled to grip her wrists, but she flattened me to the floor, her strong hands circling my neck, slippery with sweat. Hardly able to
breathe, I flailed my arms and twisted my hips trying to knock her off. Then Chad launched himself across the room, chair attached. He knocked into Meredith’s body and smashed her away. I rolled over, groaning and clutching my bruised windpipe.

“For God’s sake, Hayley! Get the gun!”

I scrambled to my feet, found the gun, and trained it on her. She sank down to the floor. Then I eased the iPhone out of my pocket and hit redial on Detective Bransford’s number.

“This is Hayley Snow. I’m on Grinnell Street, holding a gun on Meredith the pastry chef. I would appreciate it if you could get here as soon as possible and take over. I would hate to have to shoot her.”

Two beeps announced another call coming in.
KEY ZEST
the screen read.

I steadied the gun on Meredith. “You make one move while I take this call and I swear I will shoot out both of your knees.”

“The scent of baking will untie knots of misunderstanding.”

—­Barbara O’Neal