Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (2 page)

“Thanks for the heads-up. Gotta go pick up Mom.” I saluted again, but my limbs felt boneless and my smile wouldn’t work. I’d e-mailed the main speaker at least four times to request a meeting, with less than stellar results.

I sucked in a big breath and ran downstairs to catch the waiting cab, determined to push Wally’s warning out of my brain before it reduced me to gelatin. My mother’s parental radar would pick up on the tiniest nick in my facade, and her worries would start seeping into my mind like water into cement sidewalk cracks. And then she’d spend the weekend working on me to move back home. Not going to happen.

Since I didn’t own a car, I’d considered picking Mom up on my scooter. But her terror of motorcycles dissuaded me, and besides, she didn’t travel light. I’d seen a lot bulkier loads carried on a scooter in this town than two women with an oversized suitcase—like the guy who passed me on White Street with two golden retrievers strapped to the back of his bike and one draped
across his lap. But I could still picture my bungee cords snapping and the suitcase bursting, spreading Mom’s private essentials through the city streets for the homeless to pick over. Instead I slid into the backseat of a bright pink station wagon that smelled a little funky, even for a taxi. Then I noticed the oversized green parrot riding shotgun in the front, the
Key West Citizen
spread out to contain his droppings.

“Where ya headed?” the bird squawked.

“To the airport,” I said after a few seconds of stunned silence.

“Got visitors coming?” asked the cabbie as he gunned his engine, swerving around a golf cart full of whooping kids. The parrot lost his footing and tumbled, cursing, into the passenger seat.

“My mother,” I said, watching the bird edge sideways across the newspaper on the seat and climb back onto his perch. He pecked at a few feathers that had been dislodged in the fall, then swiveled his neck around to glare at me.

The cabbie’s eyes, brimming with sympathy, met mine in the rearview mirror. “Mom came to visit the first year I moved down,” he said. “Once she saw my apartment door off its hinges, leaning against the wall in the hallway next to all the empty beer bottles, she turned around and went back home.”

The taxi sped up Atlantic Boulevard, the road that hugs the outer edge of the island, lined with swaying palms and the bluest ocean on the whole East Coast. As we drove along parallel to the bike path, we passed the usual parade of outdoor enthusiasts—two well-tanned
Rollerbladers in bikinis, a man being pulled on his bike by a large black dog, sunbathers crowding the ice cream and hot dog trucks parked alongside the road.

Like most things in the city, the Key West Airport is easy to maneuver. The taxi driver let me out and pointed to the small parking lot where he and his parrot would be waiting. I went inside and parked myself near the baggage claim, flipping through the displays of tourism pamphlets racked against the back wall. Minutes later, the puddle jumper from Miami skidded to a halt and the passengers poured out and filed across the tarmac, their boots and wool jackets contrasting with the short sleeves and flip-flops of the people waiting. Mom burst through the sliding glass doors, wearing enormous sunglasses and dragging a pink plaid bag.

“Hayley Elizabeth!” she squealed, flinging her arms around me. “I can’t believe I’m here! It was so stunning flying over the islands.”

“I know, I know,” I said, hugging her back.

“My girl.” She held me at arm’s length to get a good look. “You gorgeous thing.” She smiled until the skin crinkled around her eyes, and patted my curls—the same auburn as hers only messier—and then stashed her glasses in her purse. “Which way to the ladies’? Will you keep track of this while I run in?” She passed the carry-on to me. “The big bag looks just like this one. A matching set—like you and me.”

She grinned and click-clacked across the room in her smart silver sandals and wrinkle-free pantsuit. Light-years from my palm tree shirt and red sneakers, which I knew she’d noticed.

Once we’d wrestled her enormous bag off the luggage carousel, we rolled it out to the cab, where I introduced her to the driver and his pet bird. He hoisted the bags into the trunk and we set off.

“Excuse me, cabbie,” Mom said, once the car was in motion. “I just arrived from New Jersey. Would you mind turning off the air-conditioning and opening the windows?” Once he complied, she leaned out and snapped a succession of photos. “Hayley, can you smell that salt air? Did you tell me how pretty it was here?”

I grinned back at her. “I think I did, Mom.”

“So, what’s our plan tonight?”

“You have just enough time to say hello to Eric and Bill, unpack your stuff, and get showered and changed. I’m going to nip over to the conference a little early to get my bearings and stake out good seats.”

My old friend Eric and his partner, Bill, had graciously offered to put up my mother for the weekend in their guest room. She never would have let me spring for a motel, but on the other hand, I shared a tiny houseboat with a lovely older woman. Shoehorn my mother into that small space and I would have been diving overboard within twenty-four hours. Maybe twelve, with the extra pressure I was feeling. The taxi pulled up in front of Eric and Bill’s house, a cerulean blue one-story with green wicker chairs on the wide front porch and a secret garden in the backyard.

Bill, Eric’s partner of seven years—a tall, thin man dressed in black jeans and a white turtleneck—waved at us from a hammock strung across the far end of the porch. Their schedules hadn’t allowed for them to sign
up for the whole food writing seminar, but they were excited about attending the opening party. And visiting with Mom. Eric had grown up in the same New Jersey town as I had, only seven years ahead and on the shabbier fringe of our neighborhood.

The front door burst open, releasing a yapping ball of gray-and-brown fur—Toby. Eric followed him out, cleaning his tortoiseshell glasses on his white oxford shirt. Mom leaped out of the taxi and dashed up the walk.

“When’s the last time I saw you?” Mom asked, squeezing Eric’s cheeks between her palms and pulling his head down so she could plant a kiss on his forehead. “Your mother wanted me to remind you to call her this week.”

He shook his head and rolled his eyes, draping his arm around her shoulders.

“Mothers,” he said to me as I came up the walk with the luggage. “They can never get enough.”

“And don’t forget that,” Mom said with a laugh. “We spend the rest of our lives trying to gather you back in once you kids leave the womb.” We all chuckled, but I knew a good fifty percent of her wasn’t kidding.

“You remember Bill,” Eric said. Bill hugged my mother too and then reached for her suitcase.

“Are you wearing this to the conference?” Mom asked, fingering my yellow shirt and then looking down at my red sneakers as we climbed the stairs to the porch.

“She has no faith in me at all,” I said to the men, and
then over my shoulder to Mom in the most pleasant voice I could manage: “These are my work clothes. I’m changing too.” I held up my backpack as evidence.

“We’re so glad you felt comfortable staying with us,” said Eric. “I’ll show you your room and you can get freshened up. If you’re hungry, we made a batch of Bill’s special strawberry-rhubarb coffee cake.”

“That sounds heavenly,” said Mom. “I’ve never tried it with strawberries.”

“I’ll take her back to the room,” I said, and rolled the monster suitcase down the hall to the guest room.

“He doesn’t look well,” said my mother in a stage whisper once we got to the bedroom.

“Who doesn’t look well?”

“Eric,” she said. “He looks tired. Did you notice the lines around his eyes?”

“I think he’s fine,” I told her, and started out of her room. “We’re all getting a little older and it can’t help showing on our faces, right? One of the guys will walk you down to Duval Street when you’re ready.” I retreated to the bathroom, changed quickly, and yelled good-bye to my mother.

“Good luck.” Eric came out of the kitchen and tucked a small package into my pack. “I wrapped you up a piece of cake, in case of emergency.”

I leaned in to kiss his cheek, looking for signs of the strain my mother thought she’d noticed. A little peaked, maybe the end of a long week. “Thanks for everything.”

A block down from the white stucco San Carlos Institute Building with its fancy Spanish railings, the usual
suspects geared up for a night of Duval Street decadence. A gaggle of teenagers in skimpy clothes a little too cool for the night taunted one another in front of the adjoining empty storefront, looking like they’d started drinking well before happy hour. Two fried-to-a-crisp couples giggled at the gross quotations featuring personal body parts on the T-shirts in the shop next door to that. And the homeless man with his poorly tuned guitar and singing pit bull draped in Mardi Gras beads had set up on a blue blanket on his regular corner, ready to serenade the passersby. A handwritten sign explained that tourists could have their pictures taken with the dog—for five bucks.

Everything is for sale in Key West—for the right price.

I trudged the last hundred feet to the institute, one half of me thrilled about being here and the other half terrified. Three white arches funneled a bejeweled crowd buzzing with excitement into an enormous anteroom tiled in dizzying black and white. A bookstore had been set up in the alcove off to the left, loaded with stacks of books written by the weekend’s presenters. Both of the cash registers
ching
ed merrily.

Just past the marble statue of José Martí at the entrance to the auditorium, I flashed my press ID badge to a seminar volunteer and hurried down the right aisle to grab two places as close to the front as I could manage. Sinking into an upholstered seat, I studied the stage, draped in red velvet like a faded drag queen at the Aqua Nightclub. I would kill to be up there: one of the foodie experts expounding on how to write about the latest trends.
But right now I felt more like I belonged on that ratty street corner blanket with the howling dog.

I flipped through the program and found the write-up about the keynote speaker, Jonah Barrows. Could he possibly look as good in person as he had in the
New York Times
style magazine photo shoot last fall? For a guy who’d survived a stint as a restaurant critic for the snooty
Guide Bouchée
and then moved on to take first Los Angeles and then New York City by storm—a tsunami of foodie controversy—he looked thin, young, and unscathed. On the printed page anyway.

Spotting my mother at the entrance to the auditorium, I waved her down the aisle. She slid into the seat beside me and reached over to pinch closed the V-neckline of my white shirt and then smooth the drape of the pink polka-dotted sweater I’d layered over it. Eyes narrowing, her gaze slid down my khaki stretch pants to the Libby Edelman jeweled sandals she had mailed ahead of time as a thank-you gift for the weekend. I’d never tell her, but I already had blisters on the backs of my heels from the short walk over from Bill and Eric’s home.

“Aren’t they pretty?” she asked, and then tried to tuck some curls behind my ear.

I grinned and shook my head. She was always dressed for success—in this case a brown suede jacket, narrow tweed trousers, and her own auburn curls gathered into a gold barrette—and ever-hopeful that I’d pick up her sense of style in more than the kitchen. She whipped out a camera from her handbag and snapped three blinding photos of me in succession.

She was about to tap another patron’s shoulder to ask that she take a picture of the two of us when the heavyset director of the seminar bustled onto the stage, faced the audience, and threw his arms open.

“I’m Dustin Fredericks! Welcome to the greatest literary house party of the year!”

The crowd roared with enthusiasm, including a loud and embarrassing hip-hip-hooray from my mother. Once the noise died down, Dustin went on to thank the program committee, the volunteers, and the many others who’d worked so hard on organizing the conference.

“The mayor regrets she can’t be here tonight to award the seminar the honorary five-parrot seal of approval.” More polite clapping. And then he began to read a proclamation from the honorary mayor of Key West, Mayor Gonzo Mays, chock-full of “whereases” and “heretofores.”

“Is he ever going to introduce Jonah?” asked the lady in front of us whose silver pompadour partly obscured my view of the podium. “I’m absolutely starving. We should have eaten before we came.”

“It’ll be worth the wait,” said her companion. “When you’re trying to impress four hundred foodies and food writers, you can’t serve anything that isn’t fabulous.” She kissed the tips of her fingers and blew that imaginary kiss toward the stage. “I just know they’ll have shrimp, piles and piles of Key West pinks…”

My mother leaned forward, one hand on the velvet seat back in front of her, the other gently gripping the first woman’s shoulder. “Shhhhh,” she said.

I sank lower into my upholstered seat. But it wasn’t just those ladies rustling and whispering—the audience was whirring with anticipation, as if they couldn’t wait for the real show to start, as if they expected pyrotechnics and hoped to blow past Dustin’s preliminaries to get there. Would Mom try to shush them all?

“I know you didn’t come all the way to Key West to listen to me,” Dustin was saying from the stage. “So I am thrilled to introduce our keynote speaker, a man who truly needs no introduction.”

“But you’ll give one anyway,” I muttered.

My mother took my hand and pulled it onto her lap. “Oh, sweetie. Let him have his moment.”

She was right—as usual. But still I rolled my eyes and squeezed her fingers back a little harder than I meant to.

“Jonah Barrows has had four major culinary careers in the time most of us have only managed one. His mother once reported that he had a highly sensitive palate right out of the womb—he would only suckle organic goat’s milk.”

The audience tittered. How completely embarrassing, the kind of thing a mother might say. Mine, in fact, was chuckling loudly. “Remember when you’d only eat strained carrots and your skin turned yellow from too much carotene?”