Murder With Ganache: A Key West Food Critic Mystery (8 page)

My father patted her hand and all but rolled his eyes. None of us except his mother would have described the kid as sweet. Or soft. Not at this age.

Bransford took down the pertinent phone numbers and had Allison e-mail him a recent picture of Rory from the snapshot gallery on her phone. Then he shook hands around again. When my turn came, I looked him in the eye and thanked him for helping my family. “He is a decent kid,” I said. “I can’t imagine he’s done anything awful.”

The detective looked back at me for a moment. “I hope not.”

Officer Ryan ushered us to the police station lobby. He patted Allison’s arm. “I bet we find him soon. You take care.”

She snuffled her thanks.

He turned to my mother and Sam. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “I’ll be in touch,” he added, and smiled at me.

We staggered out into the chilly morning, my family looking flattened. The skies had lightened a little, but it promised to be a gray day to go with our gray mood. In addition to my worry about Rory and concern for Allison, I was worried about the wedding chores that weren’t getting accomplished and the articles for
Key Zest
that weren’t getting written.

We needed caffeine and sugar. Pronto. At the same time, I could do research for an article.

I punched Connie’s number into my phone. “I’m going to bring everyone over to Miss Gloria’s for breakfast. Swing by a little later and we’ll make a wedding to-do list, okay?”

“Miss Gloria said you never made it home last night,” Connie said. “Is there something I should know?”

“Nothing happy. Rory’s missing,” I said. “And the cops suspect he stole a Jet Ski last night. We’ll see you shortly, okay?”

Then I called Danielle at the office. “Would there be any way you could order a dozen assorted doughnuts from Glazed Donuts and some pastries from the Old Town Bakery and have them delivered to my houseboat? I’m going to enlist my family to help with the breakfast article. I’m so far behind. And we’ve had a little blip with the wedding.” I’d explain the bigger problem to her when I got to the office. “And coffee, lots of coffee.”

“Cuban Coffee Queen?” she asked.

“Yes, please. Six large café con leches, one sugar each. You’re a doll. I’ll be in later, okay?” I hung up, already feeling a little better at the prospect of all those carbs.

•   •   •

Miss Gloria had set up her card table out on the front deck of the boat and she flitted around arranging paper napkins and spoons and her family china, sprinkled with pink roses and rimmed in gold. She hugged everyone in sight and then took Allison and my father on a tour of our boat. “My husband loved the water so much,” I heard her tell them. “He wanted to live as close to it as he could get without actually getting wet.”

“We’re going to need some protein to get through this day,” my mother said, watching them go. “How many eggs do you have?”

I joined her in the galley kitchen and pulled eggs, cheddar cheese, scallions, and a big red pepper from the refrigerator. We diced the vegetables quickly and she scraped them into a pool of butter that was melting in my cast-iron frying pan.

“Why is it that cooking always makes things feel a little less hopeless?” she mused as the vegetables softened.

“At least we’re doing
something
,” I said, as my mother whipped the eggs with a splash of water and stirred them into the pan. “We feel like we’re taking care of people when there’s really nothing to be done.” I grinned. “That’s what you taught me anyway.”

The food arrived as Miss Gloria returned from the back deck, Allison still exclaiming over her beautiful jungle of tropical flowers and herbs and tomato plants. I arranged the doughnuts and the sticky buns on two platters. Then a familiar figure approached the houseboat from the parking lot. My boss, Wally, in blue jeans and the trademark
Key Zest
yellow shirt, loaded down with café con leches in paper cups imprinted with the Cuban Coffee Queen logo.

“Come on aboard. New part-time delivery job?” I asked. “Are things going that badly at the magazine?”

“Danielle said you had a crisis.” He chuckled and set the coffees on the table. “I figured I’d just pick the stuff up and run it over. Make sure everything was okay.”

After he’d said hello to everyone and declined multiple offers to join us for breakfast, I walked him back to his scooter, explaining the situation with Rory. “I may not make it in today, but I’ll e-mail this article either way. And I’ll try to start on the cat piece too.”

“Take your time,” he said. “If you can’t manage, we’ll put something together.” He placed his hand on my shoulder, squeezed gently, and smiled. “Family first.”

By the time I got back to the boat, my mother was delivering the bowl of steaming eggs to the table. She patted her own rear end and winked at Allison.

“Is he cute or what? Didn’t I tell you he’s got the cutest butt?”

“Knock it off, Janet,” said my father. “That’s her boss.”

She made a face and began to scoop eggs onto the plates for her and Sam. “How about that nice Officer Ryan then?” Mom asked. “He seemed kind. And he’s simply darling.”

“Janet,” my father rumbled, “leave it alone.”

“Hayley doesn’t object to me making suggestions about her love life. Do you, Hayley? If you hadn’t noticed, our daughter has a tendency to choose men who aren’t nice to her. I can’t imagine
why
that might be.”

“Time to get to work,” I said, passing around the thick, sweet coffees. “If you don’t mind, I need some opinions on the pastries. I’m so far behind—this is probably my one chance to taste this stuff for my article. I know I can count on you guys.” I grinned at all of them, trying to appear more cheerful than I felt.

“Oh, this will be fun!” my mom exclaimed as she bit into a doughnut, then chewed and swallowed. “Are you ready?” She waited until I picked up my pen. “I don’t even like doughnuts, but this is amazing. The dough is so light, not cakey or stale. And I love the glaze—sweet but not cloying. Mmmm, I’d put this up against Dunkin’ or Krispy Kreme any day.”

I jotted down a few notes on what she’d said and chugged a third of my coffee, feeling the caffeine sweep through my system and surge toward my tired brain.

“What do you think about the candied bacon?” I asked, pushing a plate filled with specialty doughnuts across the table. She cut off a corner and nibbled.

“Divine,” she said. “Inspired. Although on the other hand, perhaps the bacon gilds the lily.”

“But this sticky bun is better than anything I’ve ever eaten,” said Sam. “It’s got the most amazing caramel crust.” He passed the other half to my father, who nodded his thanks and began to eat. Possibly the first time I’d seen them actually interact.

I noticed that Allison wasn’t tasting anything. “Are you okay?”

“That detective seemed so sure Rory did something bad,” Allison said, placing a hand on her stomach which gurgled loudly enough for the rest of us to hear. “Those questions about whether he used drugs or stole things . . .”

“He had to ask. Don’t take it personally. That’s just him doing his job,” I said. “I pretty much always feel guilty around him.” I forced a little laugh. “He may look small town, but he’s damn good at what he does. They will find Rory, and he’ll be fine. I’m sure of it.” I dished a scoop of eggs onto her plate, added a few pastry samples, and pressed a fork into her hand. “You need strength in the meanwhile.”

The chatter about the food continued, and I listened with one ear, taking notes and zipping through my iPhone inbox. Then I buzzed over to my Facebook account, looking for messages. Nothing there I couldn’t deal with later.

Then I glanced over at Allison. “Does Rory have an Instagram or a Twitter account?” I asked. “I wonder if he might have left a trail of virtual crumbs last night.”

“I don’t know about those, but he does use Facebook,” Allison said. “We argued about whether he’d accept me as a friend.” She grinned, but then the smile faded away. “At first, he said he wouldn’t post anything if he thought I’d be looking at it. But we’ve reached a little détente: As long as I look and listen and don’t comment, he kind of forgets I’m there.”

I logged into Allison’s account and surfed over to Rory’s page. Front and center was a photo, date-stamped last night. Rory sat entangled with two girls on the Courthouse Deli bench across from the Green Parrot Bar. He had a goofy grin on his face and looked as though he’d been enjoying the Duval Street party. If he hadn’t known anyone in Key West before he came, he’d made friends fast. And one of the girls was dressed exactly as the creepy Jet Ski owner had described her.

My phone rang.

Connie.

“Ray was able to borrow his buddy’s boat for the morning,” she said. “Meet us over at the marina on Stock Island, and he’ll take us around Key West. I know the Coast Guard will be looking, but Ray knows the mangroves and the reefs like nobody’s business.”

She’d always loved setting the table: the fork was the mom, the knife the dad, the spoon the child. The plate was the family’s world—the mother and father partnering up on the tough parts, the child dipping into the sweetness of dessert at the end
.

—Jennie Shortridge,
Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe

At Miss Gloria’s insistence, we left the breakfast dishes to her, and the rest of us darted out to the parking lot. Mom let Sam drive so the three of us women could cram in the backseat, me in the middle on the hump. The subcompact felt like close quarters with my mother, father, and stepfather, even if we were united by the crisis.

I brought Rory’s Facebook photo up again on my iPhone and tried to explain to Allison and my mother why a bench in front of a deli would have a Facebook page. “It’s a novelty,” I said. “One person set the page up, and now the bench has thousands of friends. People take pictures of themselves on the bench when they’re visiting, drinking Cuban coffee in the morning or beer at night. The bench herself posts about the weather and the bands playing at the bar across the street. It’s just a crazy, fun Key West thing.”

“But what was Rory doing there and who are these people?” Allison asked, peering at the screen. Her eyes were wild with worry and confusion.

“We’re going to figure all that out,” I said, patting her leg. “We’ll find him.”

I directed Sam to turn right out of the parking lot and follow the back streets across the island to avoid the North Roosevelt Boulevard construction. Finally we hit the road that looped along the Atlantic Ocean, and he took a right over the bridge that dumped us onto Stock Island.

Stock Island is scorched black coffee to Key West’s café con leche, housing a lot of people who work in Key West but can’t afford the price of a rental there. A ragged line of homeless folk had begun their daily trek along the outer edge of the golf course, heading over the same bridge we’d just crossed, and from there into town.

“Who are all those bums?” asked my father, craning around to watch them as we skimmed by.

“The homeless shelter is located out this way,” I said. “But we don’t call them bums anymore, Dad—it’s not politically correct. Anyway, they have to vacate the premises by seven a.m.”

“To do what?” he asked, a look of incredulity on his face.

“Some of them go down to Mallory Square to work the panhandling zones,” piped up my mother. “Or over to Higgs Beach, where they hang out on those gazebos we saw yesterday near Connie’s party. It’s a free country. You can’t tell them not to come to paradise.”

“People should pull their own weight,” he said to her.

I shot her a warning glance. Now was not the time to get into a discussion about social justice with my father.

“Some of them are Hayley’s friends,” Mom added with a big smile. “Tony was a big help to her in January when she almost drowned.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable with her need to show him how well she knew me and my world. And honestly, a little uneasy about his reaction. He probably didn’t have the opportunity to meet many homeless people in the gilded New York City suburb of Summit, New Jersey.

“Turn here,” I told Sam, pointing to a marina on the right hand of the road. Not a marina in the sense of a country club—it was more a hodgepodge collection of Jet Skis, paddleboards, kayaks, and beat-up motorboats. Connie and Ray were already standing on the dock, bundled like Eskimos against a colder-than-expected Key West March morning. My father flung the back door open and helped Allison from the car. I scrambled out after her.

“Sorry about the weather,” Connie said as we trooped down the dock. “It’s not what we hoped for.”

“None of this is what we hoped for,” my father muttered. We stopped in front of a battered powerboat minus all frills except a center console with a steering wheel attached.

“I was expecting something a little bigger,” my mother whispered. She’s like me—a cat rather than a fish when it comes to water.

Sam put an arm around my mother’s shoulder and drew her forward. “What’s the plan, Captain?” he asked Ray.

“No plan, really,” said Ray. “The Coast Guard will already be out looking. But with all of us watching as we cruise around, there’s a good chance we might spot something they overlook.”

“But where do we even start?” Allison asked, clutching her arms to her chest and looking as though she might cry again.

“We can’t know where they were headed. Or why,” I said. “But Ray knows this water—he’s lived here all his adult life. He’ll take us around through the mangroves and out toward the live-aboard sailboats. Any place where kids might hide out, right, Ray?”

He nodded and helped the ladies to board. When we were settled—Mom and Sam and me in the bow, and my father and Allison perched on the tiny bench in front of the console—he passed around faded orange life jackets.

“I’m going to point us out toward the Atlantic side first,” Ray said. “Y’all let me know if you see something. You said he was wearing a white shirt, right?”

Allison nodded, looking hopeless. And I had to admit that looking for a white shirt in the vast area surrounding the island did feel a little daunting.

Ray started up the engine and steered the boat out of the little channel into the big channel that fed into the ocean. A thick layer of gray clouds hung down like a quilt of cotton batting, blending into the steely water and obscuring the horizon. The choppy waves spanked the hull. Contrasting with her orange life vest, Allison’s color changed from merely pale to gray like the clouds. She gripped my father’s hand and pinched her lips together.

“You okay?” my dad asked quietly.

“Yes,” she said. “No.” She shot up from her seat, bolted to the side of the boat, and heaved her breakfast into the water. Connie rustled through the little compartment under the console and produced a roll of paper towels. She handed these to Allison along with a bottle of water. Ray throttled back the engine and shouted over the noise of the waves and wind.

“I’m happy to run you back over to the marina.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, looking more miserable than I’d ever seen her. Except maybe earlier this morning in the police station.

“It’s her son,” said my mother. “She needs to be right here with us.”

Allison flashed her a grateful smile, and Ray accelerated again. My mother pointed to my father and indicated that they should trade places. She took the seat next to Allison and circled her arm around my stepmother’s shoulders, murmuring something that I couldn’t hear over the motor’s roar. I looked away to give them some privacy, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. Nothing could draw mothers together like a child in danger.

We roared past Fort Zachary Taylor State Park and its gorgeous beach, practically empty this gray morning, and then into the channel that funneled cruise ships, sailboats, and yachts into the Hilton marina. One cruise ship was already docked at Mallory Square and another at the Navy’s Outer Mole. In the distance, I saw columns of tourists like ants, marching off the gangplank to the pier and loading onto the Conch Tour Train to be ferried into Old Town.

Ray headed away from the harbor out into the sea, pointing toward lumps of green in the distance. “I’m going to circle around these mangrove islands. You all keep your eyes open and let me know if you see anything.”

He slowed the boat down, explaining that we were in a section of shallow water called the flats. The shadow of a small hammerhead shark with its distinctive Neanderthal-ish head flitted beneath us. Stripes of sea grass alternated with bare sand where unskilled and unlucky motorists had dragged their engines.

Connie and I stood up, taking turns peering through the binoculars that she had brought from home. In a small cove off the mangrove islands, we spotted one of the Danger party boats, and then several kayaks full of shivering day-trippers. Ray veered over to speak with their captain.

My father lurched to a stand. “We’re looking for a missing boy,” he shouted, his words echoing loudly after Ray idled the engine. “Light hair, fifteen years old, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. He’s been missing since last night,” he added in a voice tight with anxiety.

But none of the boaters had seen him. Allison began to weep, her shoulders shaking in my mother’s arms.

Ray maneuvered the boat out of the flats and we surged past Sunset Key with its perfect pastel houses, home to those with lots of money and a desire for a little separation from the funkiness and accessibility of Key West.

“That island is the ultimate gated community,” Ray explained.

“They say Oprah rented the whole island for her friends and family when she turned fifty,” I added, thinking a little chitchat might help calm my family. “Apparently she had a Conch Tour Train brought over so none of the guests would have to walk a step. There’s a fabulous restaurant on the island that I haven’t reviewed yet. We should all go.”

No one answered. We chugged past a pure white sand beach, pocked with lounge chairs dressed in teal upholstery and shaded by thatch-roofed palapas. The mangroves shimmered in the distance behind us, the only sign of life a paraglider floating above the motorboat that towed it. I’d seen too many dead bodies lately not to imagine it was yet one more hanging from the parachute. I shook that image out of my mind and trained the binoculars on Wisteria Island. Bare sticks of tree trunks protruded from the island, a stark contrast to the tropical foliage on Sunset Key.

Ray slowed the boat again and steered toward a forest of masts on the lee side of the island.

“What is this?” my father asked.

“The city mooring field,” Ray said. “Cheapest rent in town.”

As we drew closer, I saw that the boats farthest out were abandoned, listing and rusted on their moorings. Others were inhabited, decorated with a strange hodgepodge of clotheslines, coolers, and just plain junk. A black cat lounged on the deck of a flatboat that was lashed to two others, creating a floating condo.

“What in the world do they do about kitty litter?” my mother asked with a laugh.

No one but me joined her. Allison still looked gray, the cords in her neck protruding with the tension of focusing on the horizon. And, even though no one mentioned it, the great, intimidating expanse of water.

Connie pulled the binoculars away from her eyes and pointed to a rusty blue sailboat about a hundred yards to starboard. “There’s something on the deck of that one. Probably more trash but worth a look.”

The color drained from Allison’s face as we sputtered closer. First it looked like a pile of rags, but then the shape of a person emerged. A person dressed in blue jeans and a white shirt.

Allison keened like an injured animal—an awful wailing noise that came from deep down in her chest. She fell into my mother’s arms, boneless. Just as quickly she bolted to her feet, and begged Ray to pull closer to the rusting sailboat.

“Wait until we tie the boat off,” said Connie, sliding an arm around her waist and stroking her hair. “Let’s not think the worst until we have a chance to check him out.”

“Oh please god, let him be alive. Oh please god,” Allison whispered.