Death on the Menu Read online

  Death on the Menu

  A KEY WEST FOOD CRITIC MYSTERY

  Lucy Burdette

  For immigrants everywhere, who dare to leave what they know and love in search of a better life

  Acknowledgments

  While I was finishing this book, my beloved Florida Keys sat right in the crosshairs of Hurricane Irma. Honestly, I wondered if I’d ever feel like writing again if the storm wiped out the island and the community of people I’ve grown to know and love. This experience made me feel all the more grateful about my time on this magical spray of keys … and reminded me of something my friend Mark Hedden wrote several years ago: “The thing about Key West is that it is ultimately a fragile place. Low and small and flat and just sitting there, unprotected, in the middle of all that ocean. One big hurricane, a foot or two of sea level rise, and we could be wiped off the map. Every day you live here, there’s a sense that you’re getting away with something.”

  As always, so many people helped me as I wrote this book. Thanks to Ranier and the folks at the Florida Keys Tree Institute, who gave us a wonderful window into the people and history of Cuba; Richard from Gourmet Nibbles and Baskets for the fabulous idea about the Pilar flower arrangement; John Hernandez and Margaret Clark for checking my Spanish; Edgardo for the Spanish lessons; and Steve Torrence for helping to correct my fictional police procedure—I am so lucky to be able to text him at a moment’s notice! Fact-checking aside, he is a dear friend and an island treasure. Thanks to Ron Augustine for helping me with Lorenzo’s insights; Leigh Pujado for cracking the whip so I stay strong, and making me laugh while I work; Chris Fogarty for providing building details and his wife, Renee, for the s’mores; Bud and Darlene for the mango honey, which was absolutely the best I’ve ever tasted; Marius Venter for the loan of the Cuban Coffee Queen poem; Stephanie Jones and Tersi Bendiburg for epigraph suggestions; Rusty Hodgdon for a tour of the Hemingway Home and for leading the Key West Writers Guild—to my knowledge, he has never written any copycat Hemingway stories; Jane Newhagen for help with the cemetery; Nancy Klingener for her work at NPR in Key West; and Dana and Joe Sebek for their friendship and support—they are lovely people and true Parrot Heads. Analise Smith from Key West Food Tours is also a real person—and her tours are a wonderful way to get a taste of the island. Thanks to her for insider Key West history, tastes of delicious food and rum, and for persuading her Aunt Estela to loan me the flan recipe. Thanks to my amazing friends at Jungle Red Writers, who are always there to brainstorm an idea, to celebrate, or to commiserate: Hallie Ephron, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Rhys Bowen, Deborah Crombie, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Jenn McKinlay, Ingrid Thoft. Love you guys!

  Thank you to my fabulous agent, Paige Wheeler, who brought this series to Crooked Lane Books and persuaded them to continue it. And more thanks to the folks at Crooked Lane, including Matt Martz, Jenny Chen, Ashley Di Dio, and Sarah Poppe, who shepherded the book to life. Special thanks also to their excellent independent editor, Jen Donovan, and the best cover artists ever, the team of Griesbach and Martucci.

  The real Bill Averyt took me on multiple tours of the Little White House, drew a map of the home’s layout, and generated plot ideas—I’m so grateful for his friendship! The real Bob Wolz is the keeper of the Truman Little White House, which is not in financial trouble and in no danger of being usurped by a developer, shady or otherwise. Bob is devoted to this old house and its history and takes exquisite care of it. You must put this on your Key West bucket list—go for a tour. Maybe you’ll get lucky and score Bill as your guide.

  While I use some names of real people who live in Key West, please remember that the characters are fictional, so the real people should not be held responsible for their actions or thoughts on these pages. I have the greatest admiration and respect for our city commissioners, employees, and police department. Their love for our town is evident always, but was especially clear in the days and weeks after Hurricane Irma blew through. They would never behave like the people in this book!

  I am endlessly grateful to Ang Pompano and Chris Falcone, who read every word carefully—often more than once. Chris was also the creator of the faux-Hemingway title “A Farewell to Harm.” And I’m so lucky to have John, the best life partner ever. And to my readers, my deepest gratitude and affection. Thank you for sharing my love of this magical island and believing in my characters.

  Lucy Burdette

  December 2017

  One day in Cuba,

  I met a lady

  Who made the best coffee

  And Cuban toast.

  She told me fantastic stories

  And showed me how to make

  A real café con leche.

  I will never forget

  The Cuban Coffee Queen.

  —From the menu of the Cuban Coffee Queen, Key West, Florida

  Chapter One

  This frozen daiquiri, so well beaten as it is, looks like the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots.

  —Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream

  Some days you can take the temperature of our island’s anxiety by reading the column in the Key West Citizen called “Citizens Voice.” Those phoned-in snippets of opinion can veer into the red zone on any number of topics—leaf blowers, the homeless, traffic, how the city handled the latest hurricane, a new amphitheater at the waterfront.

  But the comments and rants and worries about this weekend’s Havana/Key West conference sounded even more hysterical than usual. For one, none of us seemed to understand its true purpose. Were we celebrating our shared connections with Ernest Hemingway, who’d lived in both cities? Were we discussing environmental issues? Making music together? Or was there some unspoken political agenda about which most of us residents were being kept ignorant? Even my police officer pal, Steve Torrence, and my detective boyfriend, Nathan Bransford, didn’t seem clear on the agenda. Or, more likely, they weren’t able or willing to share it with me.

  Rumors had circulated that both Raúl Castro and Jimmy Buffett were scheduled for brief appearances at the Harry S. Truman Little White House, where the conference would be headquartered. This would gum up traffic on the island and leave us open to all manner of visiting nut jobs.

  I believed the Jimmy Buffett scuttlebutt because Parrot Heads, Buffett’s super-fans, had been pouring into town over the past few days dressed in Hawaiian shirts and parrot hats. Since it wasn’t the season for their annual convention, I suspected they’d gotten some insider information about Jimmy’s schedule.

  But Castro in Key West? That seemed downright preposterous. On the other hand, it would definitely up the ante for the weekend, as protestors who felt the United States should have no contacts with a repressive Communist country clashed with people who believed this kind of event would help the Cuban people find a voice in the free world. The comments in the paper had been coming fast and furious and ugly, reminding me of a full pot of potatoes boiling too hard. If someone didn’t turn down the heat, there’d be a huge mess on the stove.

  Why did this matter to me—Hayley Snow, food critic for the style magazine Key Zest—aside from the sheer entertainment provided by the wacky comments in the Citizen? Because my mother had somehow wormed her way into landing the catering gig for the three-day event—a huge coup for her fledgling business—and had asked for my help. The fact that she had been chosen to cater the weekend of joint Key West and Havana discussions and events was beyond miraculous. Since so many weddings and other special events occurred during our island’s high season, many experienced and accomplished chefs vied for plum catering gigs. We were neither experienced nor accomplished, not in the way the bigger local chefs were. Nor were we Cuban. But hopefully my mother had deflected any possible
complaints about that by hiring two women of Cuban descent who happened to be amazing cooks.

  In the days leading up to the event, Miss Gloria, my octogenarian roommate, and I had been pressed into service as Mom’s trusty sous-chefs. We were already flattened by the first day of food prep. After enjoying a glass of wine on the deck of our houseboat, we planned for an early night.

  The evening felt wintry by Key West standards—temperatures in the sixties and a wind blowing from the south that caused our boat to rock with a steady motion. We had fleece blankets wrapped around us, purring cats on our laps—my tiger-striped Evinrude and her black Sparky—and a plate of nibbles stashed on the little table between our chaise lounges. We’d already scarfed down the jalapeño poppers. The pink shrimp still sat on the plate in a red pool of spicy cocktail sauce. It was hard to work up an appetite for the little buggers when we’d been shucking skins and digging out those disgusting veins all afternoon—and still stank of the sea even after our showers.

  The sun had set half an hour ago, brushing a tinge of rose on the bank of clouds that hung over our houseboat neighborhood. I could hear the clink of silverware on plates and the soft drone of the nightly PBS news from a boat up the dock—probably Miss Gloria’s best friend, Mrs. Dubisson. My friend Connie’s baby babbled “ma, ma, ma, ma” a little farther down. And on the boat next door, Mrs. Renhart murmured terms of endearment to her three elderly animals, one Schnauzer and two felines.

  Miss Gloria and I shared a grin. We had heaven right here on earth, and we knew it.

  “I hope we like the new neighbors,” she said for the umpteenth time. She ran her hands through her white hair so it stood up in elfin peaks and pointed an arthritis-crooked finger at the FOR SALE sign on the houseboat to the other side of us.

  “We’ve got to hope for the best,” I said, squeezing her birdlike hand and trying not to think about the group of college kids who’d taken a tour of the place over the weekend, beers in hand and voices thundering.

  “This place is too cool,” one of them had boomed.

  “It’s lit!” answered another.

  “I think that means they love it,” Miss Gloria had said, her face drooping all sad and worried.

  My boyfriend, Nathan, thinks Houseboat Row resembles a trailer park, only floating. “Why do you want to live somewhere where everyone knows your business?” he keeps asking.

  “We love that,” I’ve told him more than once. “They’re our friends. Miss Gloria has known some of these people for over twenty years.”

  I have to assume he’s thinking about our future life together, though we’ve touched on that only in what other folks might think are the vaguest terms. Last fall, we witnessed my mother and her Sam taking wedding vows during a hurricane when we all believed we were goners. Nathan and I came out of that close call pretty sure we would end up together. Though we haven’t gotten specific, he knows—I think—how much I love weddings, but am anxious about marriage. And I know, with him having been married before and then divorced, that he’s even more uneasy about both.

  But he doesn’t seem to grasp that Miss Gloria couldn’t stay here if I moved out, that I’m the bulwark of friendship that stands between her and a move to assisted living in the frozen north. Her sons wouldn’t be able to stomach her living alone. Honestly, I’d give up marrying Nathan before I’d abandon my friend.

  As I got up to pour one more slosh of wine in our glasses, a text message buzzed in.

  Miss Gloria glanced at my cell’s screen. “It’s Prince Charming,” she said with an impish snicker. I snatched up the phone.

  PARKING LOT IN FIVE?

  The usual terseness of Nathan Bransford. I can never tell until I see him whether he wants to give me a good-night kiss (be still my beating heart) or give me one of his professional warnings, using my full name for emphasis: Hayley Snow, stay out of trouble. Or, Hayley Snow, let me know if you see anything fishy going on. Or, Hayley Snow, for god’s sake, don’t try to handle anything yourself. Besides being my boyfriend these days, he’s also a detective with the Key West Police Department. And he takes his work very, very seriously. To be fair, I have had a tendency to act before thinking things through. Smallish things, like dashing into a restaurant where a crazy person was holding a gun on people I knew and loved. But what was I supposed to do, leave them there to be mowed down?

  I shrugged off the fleece blanket, clutched my sweater around my shoulders, and hopped from our boat to the dock. Miss Gloria’s wind chimes tinkled in response. I trotted down the finger to the parking lot, eager to catch a glimpse of Nathan’s broad-shouldered form waiting for me. His police vehicle idled by the laundry room, and he was pacing outside. I ran toward him and folded myself into his waiting hug, followed by a kiss that set me tingling from head to toe.

  Then I took a step away so that the spotlight by the laundry lit his face. Over the two years I’d known him, I’d never seen him appear more worried. His eyes were a murky hazel, like the shallow water off Smathers Beach on a cloudy day just before a storm hits. His dimples were pressed flat from the tension in his jaw. He hadn’t come only for a good-night kiss.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  I tucked my fingers into fists so my hands wouldn’t shake. He’d looked something like this the day he’d had to call the parents of a visiting college coed, dead from an overdose during spring break. Sometimes Key West visitors have more fun than their brains or bodies can handle. And the police are always on the front lines to clean up the mess. Plus, my detective is not so good at what my psychologist friend, Eric Altman, would call “processing his feelings.” He pushes them down so hard they sometimes leak out in unpredictable ways.

  “Hayley Snow,” he said, with more of his usual abruptness, “I’d like you and your mother to step aside from the catering responsibilities during the Cuban/American conference.”

  My mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. “But we’ve talked about this a hundred times. We’re going to be so careful—”

  But he cut me off. “There are going to be protests. It could get violent and ugly.”

  “We knew that going in. Everyone says there’s going to be tons of security. You said that yourself.”

  He crossed his beefy forearms over his abdomen and glowered.

  But I barreled on. “I read an article yesterday about protecting concerts and other kinds of events. Your guys are supposed to be over there already, looking for people who don’t seem to belong, taking pictures of things a tourist wouldn’t be interested in, stuff like that. And I’m sure they are. We’ll help too. We’ll notice things and report them—”

  He interrupted again. “It’s impossible to protect every soft target on this island. You and your people are exactly that. You have no idea…”

  “And you don’t know what you’re asking,” I said, feeling my face heating up to a red that probably matched the glints in my hair. “We’ve bought thousands of dollars’ worth of perishable ingredients, and we’re deep into the prep work. You can’t turn hundreds of shelled Key West pink shrimp back over to the boat captain—even if you have already cleaned out those hideous veins.” I chuckled, but he didn’t crack a smile.

  “I want you to be safe,” he said, reaching for my upper arms and gently squeezing with the big square hands I loved so much. “We’ve gotten wind of a possible negative event during the weekend.”

  I took a little gulp of air. Everyone in the country had been on edge lately—it was hard not to think of what might be coming next. Or who. “What does that mean, ‘a possible negative event’? Can you give me a hint?”

  He let go. “You know I can’t tell you the details.”

  So unsatisfying. It was impossible to tell whether he’d really heard something concrete or whether he was merely continuing the argument we’d been having since my mother got the contract. He believed that the risks of working the conference outweighed the benefits of staying out of it and, therefore, staying safe. I didn�
�t agree.

  Studying the contours of his face, I determined it was most likely more of the same. “But we’ve hired extra help—skilled people who turned down other work and are depending on this income. And besides that, this gig is hugely important for Mom’s career. She’s been slip-sliding down a chute of Key West culinary ignominy.” I was going for a laugh with that description, even though it was also painfully true. But I didn’t get even a chuckle.

  “I’m failing to see how any of that matters compared to the possibility of being blown to smithereens.”

  His face was red now, too. And I was getting enveloped in the familiar creeping stubbornness that he brought out in me the same way an impending trip to the vet affected my cat Evinrude.

  “Is that what your source said, that the place will be blown to smithereens? How reliable is this information? Good gravy, there will be loads of security, and they know what they’re doing, right? In my mind, the Little White House is probably the safest place to be on the island. No one wants a disaster with all the VIPs visiting.”

  “So you’re saying no. Again.” His voice had dropped lower, almost to a growl. “You’re saying you won’t do this for me, a move that could very well save your life, and your mother’s? And Miss Gloria’s?”

  A low blow, because he knew darn well that I adored both my mother and my roommate and would do absolutely anything to save them. I sucked in a big breath, trying to slow my heartbeat enough so my reply would sound thoughtful, not defensive. “Of course, we appreciate the notice. And I promise we will be on the lookout for fishy activity and report it immediately to the proper authorities—”

  He turned on his heel and stomped back to his car, his shoulders rigid.

  Such an infuriating man.

  It isn’t that easy being involved with a pigheaded law enforcement type, especially if you’re a hot-blooded redhead who hates backing down almost more than he does. Sometimes my bull-headed nature clashes with his in an ugly way. Though, on the other hand, all that fire makes for sparks in a good way, too.