Death on the Menu Read online

  I swore to myself that I wouldn’t do anything impulsive or dumb this weekend. I’d call him instantly if I noticed any trouble. Though I didn’t expect it. After all, I’d had my cards read two days earlier by Lorenzo, my tarot-card-reading buddy. And he hadn’t said a word about danger.

  Chapter Two

  Her knives were so sharp they severed the flesh of an onion or a chicken as softly and cleanly as a wish.

  —Michelle Wildgen, Bread and Butter

  As the first streaks of light seeped through the slats of my blinds the next morning, Evinrude began pacing back and forth across my chest, patting my cheek with each pass and rumbling his loudest purr. “I’m coming, you little dickens,” I said as I rolled out of bed.

  In our little galley kitchen where both Evinrude and Sparky waited, the coffee maker was hissing and spitting at the end of its preprogrammed run cycle. I topped off the cat bowl with kibble and refreshed their water, wishing desperately I had time to sit with a cup of coffee on the deck, watching the marina wake up. Instead, I filled a travel mug adorned with the Cuban Coffee Queen logo from my favorite coffee shop on the island and drove my scooter to the industrial kitchen on North Roosevelt Boulevard, where my mother does food prep for her big events. Mom and her new husband, Sam, had begun to wrestle the vats of food and containers of equipment into the back of her van, and they both looked plum-faced and flustered.

  “Thank god you’re here, Hayley,” she said. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten.”

  I kissed her on the cheek, rolled my eyes at Sam, and took the handle of the heaviest cooler from her.

  “Bill Averyt texted me this morning—he says get there early. The protesters are already starting to gather, and passing through security took longer than he expected,” she said.

  Bill was Eric’s husband, a regular tour guide at the Little White House, and one of the planners for this weekend’s events. And unflappable. If he was anxious, we should be too.

  By the time we’d loaded the remaining stuff into their vehicle, I was drenched in sweat. I hopped back on my scooter and followed Mom and Sam in the van, south on U.S. 1 toward the White House. The Truman Little White House sits on a grassy lawn within a gated community of homes and condos at the tip of the island called the Truman Annex, formerly owned by the U.S. Navy. On normal days, the gates leading into the Truman Annex are left open at the Southard Street entrance and the guard’s booth inside the gates sits empty. This was obviously not a normal day—the gates were closed tight as the Stock Island jail and two men with monstrous guns stood guard. Even considering Nathan’s warning last night, and the fact that we’d been required to submit our personal information months in advance to be vetted for working the weekend, I hadn’t expected a lockdown. I also hadn’t expected a cluster of silent women wearing white and carrying placards to be frowning at us from the sidewalk.

  We stopped in front of the gates, and one of the armed men approached the driver’s side of my mother’s van. Sam rolled down the window.

  “State your business,” the man said.

  Sam explained about the catering.

  “I need to see your identification.”

  Sam handed over their licenses and added that I was part of their entourage. The guard collected my license, too. After he’d slipped through an opening in the metal gates and disappeared into the booth, a second man dressed in camouflage fatigues with a major-league gun draped across his chest came over to the van. He was accompanied by a German shepherd who looked all business, with alert ears and a still tail. Sam hopped out and opened the back doors so the animal could sniff our equipment and supplies. The dog circled around me, his eyes dark and his bearing severe. I resisted the temptation to cluck my tongue and hold my hand out so he could enjoy the many scents of Houseboat Row, as I would have with any other animal. The team finished their work as the first man returned from the gatehouse with our licenses and two parking stickers. The gates swung slowly open.

  The watching women in white glared some more and held up posters with old photos on them. The one nearest to us read, simply, CUBA SERA LIBRE. Cuba will be free. Before the brouhaha in the papers leading up to this weekend, I’d had a vague understanding that some Cuban-Americans were unhappy with the idea of opening up relations between the two countries. They’d lost property and the shape of their former lives when they or their relatives had fled the country. But why were these women so angry? And who were the faces on the posters? The intersection of that moment you think you have a handle on something with the moment you realize you have no freaking idea can be chilling.

  As we drove from Emma Street to the Little White House, I counted at least twenty black SUVs and five Key West police cars, including our friend Lieutenant Steve Torrence’s vehicle. He was deep in conversation with a man dressed in all black and didn’t respond to my mother’s enthusiastic wave. Though I was certain he’d seen her. He’d married her and Sam (in a closet, during a hurricane) and was one of my favorite friends. So I waved, and got the same response—nothing. Yet one more sign that this weekend would not be normal.

  At the Little White House, the red, white, and blue semicircular buntings hanging below the second-floor louvered shutters flapped gently in the breeze. Lighting specialists were stringing enormous white globes between the gumbo limbo trees, and a banner welcoming the Cuban guests hung by the front entrance.

  ¡LA BIENVENIDA A LOS DISTINGUIDOS INVITADOS!

  Welcome, distinguished guests!

  Sam circled around to the front of the building, facing the Harbor Place condominiums. He stopped the van near the row of flags that commemorated Colin Powell’s peace talks with the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and I parked behind them.

  Although Harry Truman himself had used this property as a working getaway from the stresses of Washington, DC, while he was president, these days it served as a tourist attraction and a popular venue for weddings and parties. Most often, the parties took place out on the lawn and caterers brought their own rolling kitchens and grills in trucks and vans. But this time, considering the density and importance of the Cuban/American conference, my mother and company had been given permission to use not only the lawn but the small kitchen inside the Little White House as well.

  On an ordinary winter day, with several cruise ships docked in the harbor, a steady stream of tourists filed in and out of the Little White House to gawk at the historically correct furnishings and hear about Mr. Truman’s tenure. Bill had told me that tours were canceled for the weekend so that special displays could be set up and guests could be treated to private showings of the house and its treasures.

  “And for reasons of security,” he had added.

  A little ominously, I thought, realizing again that this weekend was a much bigger deal than I’d imagined. I’d been so busy proving my point to Nathan about how I could handle myself that the rarity of the event hadn’t sunk in. I hoped my mother wasn’t starting to feel the uneasiness mount as I was. One anxious Snow woman per event was enough. Two could start a blizzard.

  As I lugged a huge cooler of shrimp toward the little kitchen at the back of the house, I spotted Bill talking with a small group at the spot where the tours usually began. Wearing his official navy-blue polo shirt but long pants instead of his normal khaki shorts, he had about ten people gathered around him on the white benches just off the living room. The men wore Cuban guayaberas, untucked dress shirts with narrow pleats and big pockets; the two women wore dresses and high heels. The taller of the two turned to look at me—she had beautiful black curly hair and tan skin, and she broke into a dazzling smile. I couldn’t help grinning back. Bill gestured to the jalousied booth where a Secret Service person would have been posted during Truman’s visits, the final line of defense between the public and the president. I paused to take a breath and eavesdrop on what he was telling them.

  “In those days,” he said, “this house was on Navy property, so visitors would have already been through seve
ral layers of vetting. As you have.” He waved at the metal gates in the distance that led out toward Mallory Square. These too were always open for the public during the daytime, but not today. He tipped his chin at me in greeting and ushered his guests inside.

  Irena, one of my mother’s assistants for the weekend, emerged from the back door and saw me struggling up the sidewalk with the load of seafood. “Let me help with that,” she said. She grabbed one of the cooler’s handles and we carried it into the kitchen.

  “Gracias,” I said, wiping my forehead with my sleeve. “Es pesado.” Meaning, “It’s heavy.”

  Months ago, after my mother had gotten word that she’d been awarded the contract for this weekend, I’d started taking Spanish lessons from an adorable Puerto Rican–American man at the Key West library. Not that I had become fluent, by any means; I wouldn’t have been able to conduct a political negotiation in Spanish, for example, or a police investigation for that matter—a fact I was tempted to file away and share with Nathan later. He would be greatly relieved. Not. But I had managed to learn a few phrases and words that I thought might come in handy when the Cuban visitors arrived. I was definitely stronger at understanding the language than making myself understood.

  “When are you going to share your aunt’s flan recipe?” I asked Irena, knowing the answer before she said it. Because I’d craved that magical, creamy custard drenched in caramel every day since the time I’d first tasted it, and begged her for the recipe at least a dozen times.

  “Un tesoro de la familia,” she said with a wide grin. “It’s a family treasure. My cousin would kill me.” She pointed to the plump woman with a twist of dark hair pinned to her head and dressed in a spotless white apron who waited by the sink. “And her mother would kill her.” She took my elbow and steered me closer to her cousin.

  “You remember, my cousin, Maria?”

  “Hola,” I said, shaking hands with her. “Mucho gusto.” I vaguely remembered her from a party my mother had helped cater during the Key West Literary Seminar.

  Irena herself was unforgettable—willowy with a glossy fat braid the color of black cherries. Besides being drop-dead gorgeous, she was famous for making the best café con leche on the whole island. She wouldn’t share this recipe either, but she would share the product. On the counter sat the Breville coffee machine that she would use to make espresso after dinner and café con leche in the morning. Maria was the architect of today’s flan. My mother had been thrilled to score them both. She was always willing to pay a little extra to get these cheerful and industrious workers when they were available. And I imagined they, in turn, must be excited to be part of a historic weekend involving the homeland of their Cuban ancestors.

  Mom and Sam appeared at the back door. “What’s first, Señora Janet?” Irena asked.

  “We four will get started in the kitchen while Sam and Gabriel unload the boxes and start setting up tables.” She nodded to a swarthy man with a blocky shape who looked so much like Maria that he had to be her older brother, a carpenter who’d been pressed into service this weekend. He gave her a smile and a bow and shook Sam’s hand, and then they began to unpack the food my mother had rolled to the kitchen in a red wagon. She explained the flow of the night’s event.

  “They decided to launch the weekend tonight with two themes they hope will be noncontroversial: Ernest Hemingway and Diana Nyad,” she said. “Both managed to bridge the divide between the countries.”

  “A funny couple,” Sam said with a big smile, hoisting a box of supplies onto the counter next to the espresso maker. “And since Hemingway’s been dead for decades, it would be even funnier if you managed to get both of them to show up.”

  Mom grabbed a spatula that was lying on the counter and swatted his behind. “Be serious!” she said. “The touchier discussions on trade and possibly even immigration will come tomorrow, so the organizers thought Hemingway and his double legacy in Havana and Key West would get things off to a friendly start. Irena and I have planned a menu including Mr. Hemingway’s favorite cocktails, followed by an appetizer of avocados stuffed with Key West pink shrimp salad, ropa vieja with white rice and black beans for the main course, and ta da, Maria’s mother’s famous flan with mango sherbet on the side for dessert.” She opened the refrigerator, where the shelves were filled with trays of shimmering custard.

  She hugged Maria, then straightened her apron and continued. “Hayley and Miss Gloria and I cooked and prepared the shrimp yesterday. Today we make the shrimp salad. And cut up the veggies and the beef so Irena and Maria can start the stew. We need to get on that pronto as it likes a long simmer. After that, the appetizers.”

  “What about Diana Nyad?” I asked. “What’s her role tonight?”

  “She’ll be speaking briefly.” She was grinning like a monkey now—Diana was her role model for persistence and dreaming big. Though they’d never met, Mom credited Diana for giving her the nerve to start her own business. Another thing my detective hadn’t understood when he’d asked us to bow out of this gig—my mother was absolutely glowing. This weekend was the culmination of a year’s hard work, scrapping for little jobs and completing them with more flair than they might have called for. If she flopped, no one else was going to give her a big break. No one. This weekend meant everything to her.

  Bill poked his head into the kitchen from the door leading to the old living room. “I couldn’t help overhearing, and that menu sounds sensational,” he said. “You’ve got my mouth watering even though I had an enormous breakfast. If I hang around and wash dishes later, can I nab a taste?”

  Mom grinned again. “Of course. We’ll save you a whole plate. No dishwashing necessary.”

  “How did your bigwigs like the tour?” I asked.

  He heaved an enormous sigh. “The Havana mayor and Commissioner Turner Markham got into a small shouting match about the U.S. ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy.”

  “What was the argument?” I asked. “That law was ended ages ago.” The policy, discontinued during the Obama era, had allowed Cuban people who managed to get one foot on U.S. soil to stay in the country. Cubans were allotted special immigrant status if they made it to the United States without getting intercepted by the Coast Guard, bypassing the wait that migrants from other countries had to abide by. The Cuban government had seen this both as a slap in their face and an invitation to their citizens to attempt the dangerous crossing over the Straits of Florida in makeshift boats.

  “That doesn’t mean the outrage is over,” Bill said. “Historical scars can be more painful than recent trauma.” He shrugged and straightened his gold metal glasses. “Anyway, then I showed them the display cases for the Hemingway treasures borrowed from his homes here in town and outside Havana. That led to arguments over whether the items would be safe if they were mingled, and who knows what else. They overwhelmed my high school Spanish. I was afraid things would disintegrate further into who was really at fault with the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

  “Maybe you need to borrow one of our ladies to help translate,” Mom said.

  Bill nodded his thanks. “Luckily, I was able to direct them to Truman’s card table and get them arguing over poker hands instead. Then I explained how President Truman liked to start his day with a shot of bourbon, so there was no reason we shouldn’t have an early tasting before we break for lunch.” He picked up four fifths of golden liquid from those lined up on the counter, one Havana Club from Cuba and the other three from local Key West distilleries. “Rum instead of bourbon as a nod to more connections between us.”

  “Clever man,” I said, hoping the Cuban visitors wouldn’t take offense at the heavier weighting of local offerings. We were in Key West after all, but it sounded as if everyone was starting the conference poised to be offended.

  “Once they’re properly lubricated, I’ll take them upstairs to see the bedrooms, hope they get sleepy by the power of suggestion, and then suggest we all adjourn for a siesta,” Bill added as he started b
ack to the living room. “I have a feeling it’s going to be a long weekend.”

  He froze as heated voices reverberated from the other room. “I hope I’m not too late,” he muttered, pushing through the swinging door with the rum bottles in hand.

  My mother and I exchanged worried glances. Sam put a hand on her shoulder, smiled, and patted her. “Everybody’s jumpy. Let them sort it out,” he said. “We need to focus on the food.”

  He and Mom had been married less than three months and he still wore the mantle of an adoring newlywed. Or, more likely, as lovely as he was, he’d always feel protective of her. He insisted that a hurricane marriage was enough adventure for a lifetime. Why did Sam’s protectiveness feel endearing, whereas Nathan’s warnings to me emphatically did not? I was sure my psychologist friend Eric would steer me to look inside for answers. And I should, and I would, but not right now. I wasn’t ready to explore that question in any more detail, even in the privacy of my own head. What if I discovered the whole relationship was a disaster and I’d lose this man I’d grown to love? What if I had to start over? What if I had some kind of warped internal radar that steered me right into the path of relationships doomed to fail? Aren’t some things better left unknown?

  Focus, Hayley, I told myself sternly.

  “I’m just going to nip in and see if Bill needs help,” I said as I pushed through the door leading from the storage area next to the kitchen out to the living room. I hated to see Bill enter the fray alone. And I was plain curious, too, I had to admit.

  Chapter Three

  Ms. Puig believes those emotions can even affect the food. “A dish that has been cooked under tension and in a bad mood will certainly taste different,” she said.

  —Raphael Minder, “Stressed by Success, a Top Restaurant Turns to Therapy,” The New York Times, February 28, 2017