Fatal Reservations : A Key West Food Critic Mystery (9780698192003) Page 3

  “Thank you,” said the mayor. “Are there any other remarks?” He took a few questions about the size of the boat (one hundred feet) and the number of customers it could seat (forty) and allowed several other attendees to comment in support of Mastin’s new project. “Thank you for all that. The commissioners will take this input into account and revisit the matter at our next meeting.”

  “Damn it,” Edel muttered. “I should have known they wouldn’t do anything about this.” She collected her papers, grabbed her sweater from the seat back, and swept out of the room.

  As she went out, a man with a very tan face wearing a pith helmet woven from palm fronds staggered in. He stumbled across the area in front of the commissioners, mumbling loudly, and then scribbled his name on the docket and collapsed into a front-row seat. I’d seen him regularly on Duval Street accosting visitors and badgering them into buying his hats. But right now the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.

  Too many times this past year, we’d heard in the news that citizens and professionals had not paid enough attention to the warning signs of people who seemed a little off—who later turned out to be violent. And people died as a result. I’d seen no metal detector at the entrance to the door. Other than the officer who had escorted Edel away from the microphone, I hadn’t noticed a police presence in the room. I glanced around and felt relieved to spot my friend Lieutenant Torrence standing against the back wall, his eyes narrowed and focused on the man in the palm-frond hat.

  The mayor piped up. “The next item on the agenda will be a discussion of the lease renewal on Mallory Square for the Artistic Performance Preservation Society. The first speaker will be Commissioner Greenleigh. To be followed by Lorenzo.”

  The only female commissioner on the dais pulled her microphone closer to her lips. “I’ve been attempting to work with the steering committee of the APPS for the past few months.” She wiped her hand over her eyes and looked at the clock. It felt as if we’d spent hours here already and there was plenty more to come. “‘Steering committee’ in this case is a term that should be used loosely. In all my years in government and business, it’s hard to say where I might have witnessed a more dysfunctional group. You will already know that for many years the APPS has received the lease for the performance space at Mallory Square, and then they’ve taken care of assigning performers to individual places in the square. But it’s my impression that the city may have to rescind the lease and begin running the Sunset Celebration events itself.”

  A noisy rustling burst out in the audience and the man with the palm-frond hat staggered up toward the podium, shouting. “You people have been looking for any excuse to take over. Damn it, this is none of your business! The trouble with the Artistic Damn Preservation Society is right here in this room.” He spun around to point a shaky finger at a tall man several rows behind me: my friend, the tarot card reader. Lorenzo.

  The mayor rose to his feet. “You need to return to your seat or you’ll be removed from the premises.”

  But instead of sitting, the palm-hat man darted down the center aisle, heading for Lorenzo. He flung himself across two startled women and circled his hands around my friend’s neck. Lieutenant Torrence and a uniformed cop roared up the aisle from the back of the room, yanked him off Lorenzo, whipped his hands behind his back, and cuffed them. He fought and cursed as they ushered him out of the room and down the stairs. Outside, I heard the whoop of several sirens.

  The mayor’s face was now beaded with sweat, his wire-rimmed glasses askew, and his wide forehead lined with concern. He removed his glasses and wiped them on his white shirt. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked Lorenzo.

  “I think so.” Pulling a crisp handkerchief from his pants pocket, Lorenzo patted his face and neck, now mottled red, and smoothed his hair.

  “If you’re able to speak, sir, it’s your turn at the microphone,” said the mayor, and sank back into his leather chair.

  Lorenzo nodded, adjusted his collar, and came forward. By dress alone, he stood out from most everyone in attendance: long-sleeved white dress shirt, high-waisted black pants, black tie, tortoiseshell glasses—even his wavy hair had been smoothed into a neat ponytail. All very proper and distinguished. But his face shone in the spotlight and large damp circles spread from his underarms to the body of his shirt. He looked very hot. And rattled.

  “I should make clear that I am speaking for myself tonight, as a concerned artist at the Sunset Celebration, not in an official context.” He ran his finger around his collar and straightened his tie. “Next to the ocean itself, the Sunset Celebration is the biggest tourist attraction on our island. Everybody in the world has heard of it, and that’s a major reason why they come to Key West.” Lorenzo touched his forehead again with the hankie. “I hate to say it, but I must agree with Commissioner Greenleigh. Our present steering board seems unable to solve—”

  “The city government cannot be allowed to take control—they will ruin this just the way they’ve ruined everything else,” a man called out from the audience.

  Lorenzo waited with a pained expression on his face while one of the cops went to quiet the disgruntled spectator. “As I was saying, I’m not convinced that our internal organization can handle itself well enough to make certain that the Sunset Celebration remains the city’s crown jewel. That’s all. Thank you.” He nodded at each of the leaders and returned to his seat.

  After some discussion among the commissioners, they decided that several of them should attend the Artistic Performance Preservation Society’s meeting in two days to see if some informal assistance could be rendered. If this proved impossible, more drastic actions would be considered.

  The mayor, who appeared tired and haggard, glanced at the big clock on the wall. “It’s late. I’d like to have a quick discussion on this final item, which concerns the ongoing robberies in homes around the cemetery. We pride ourselves on the safety record of our island,” he said, “and now we’ve had what—six? seven? ten? burglaries in what is touted as one of the safest residential areas in the city.”

  “More like twenty!” called a woman from the audience.

  The mayor ignored her. “The so-called cemetery burglar is making a laughingstock of our police department.” I was more than a little surprised that he’d be publicly critical of the KWPD. He must have been feeling a lot of pressure. He looked around the hall. “I don’t see our police chief in attendance. Lieutenant Torrence, perhaps you could come to the podium and speak to these issues?”

  The crowd rustled and muttered as Torrence muscled his way to the front of the room, managing to look official and friendly at the same time. For fifteen minutes, he answered questions from the city officials and the audience, assuring everyone in the calmest of voices that the police were very vigilant and close to arresting the burglar. “In fact, due to our vigilance, there have been no new burglary episodes in the past week. In spite of the millions of visitors we welcome each year, our city remains one of the safest places to live in the United States.”

  A white-haired woman in the front row waved her hand frantically and the mayor allowed her question. “What about the body pulled from the water today near Palm Avenue? That does not make us feel the least bit safe.”

  Another man yelled out, “Is it true that the victim was Bart Frontgate?” The crowd buzzed.

  Torrence’s face reddened and he ran a finger around his collar, replicating the motion Lorenzo had made while on the hot seat. “I can assure you, ma’am,” he repeated, “that the police are very close to an arrest. I’m not able to say anything further due to the sensitive nature of the investigation.”

  *

  Miss Gloria, who tended to be an early bird rather than a night owl, was still up when I got home to our boat.

  “I found a couple of your double-chocolate brownies in the freezer,” she explained. “I’m so jazzed up from the caffeine, I may not sleep until Friday. Tell me about the meeting.”

  I had just begu
n to describe the antics of the various town folk when my phone rang. Lorenzo. I accepted the call.

  “Hayley, I need your help,” he whispered before even his customary polite greeting. “The police think I murdered Bart Frontgate.”

  3

  Julia Child, goddess of fat, is beaming somewhere. Butter is back.

  —Mark Bittman, “Butter Is Back,”

  The New York Times

  The next morning I forced myself to postpone reading the paper until after I’d walked the two miles prescribed by my daily exercise program. Then I skimmed my e-mail and scanned the newspaper headlines online while I waited for the second pot of coffee to percolate.

  Both the Key West Citizen and the Konk Life e-blasts were buzzing with reports of the city commission meeting the evening before. I was not the only one who had found the tension uncomfortable. The police chief had refused to comment on his own absence or on the attack on Lorenzo to the Citizen’s most dogged ace reporter, but he assured her that he had full confidence in the lieutenants reporting to him, including Torrence. They were in the process of organizing a community meeting to discuss the state of the cemetery burglar investigation. And they were vigorously pursuing leads on the latest tragic death on the island. I got the feeling that under the headlines there lay a serious crisis of confidence in our law enforcement.

  A photo of the crime scene—the deceased covered in a blue tarp—took up most of the space below the fold in Miss Gloria’s paper copy of the Citizen. A quote from the mayor expressed sorrow at the loss of a member of the Key West family. At the bottom of the article a passage read:

  The murdered man, Bartholomew Frontgate, was recently involved in the controversy over the lease renewal at Mallory Square for the Artistic Performance Preservation Society. He has been a staple at the nightly Sunset Celebration for almost fifteen years, performing his trademark juggling act with oversized kitchen utensils studded with flaming chunks of meat. Mr. Frontgate had recently drawn the ire of the SPCA when he announced his plan to add kittens to his act, which he planned to juggle along with the forks. Responding to pressure from the local police and a tirade of comments in the Citizens’ Voice, he backed away from the animal component, while assuring the public that he had no intention of setting the animals on fire.

  Miss Gloria came out of the bathroom, toweling her white curls dry. “You were up and at ’em early today. Are you off somewhere important?” she asked.

  “I’m having brunch with Eric and Lorenzo in a little bit,” I said, “for the lunch roundup. I invited Lorenzo to join us because he’s a total basket case.” I tapped the paper spread out on the counter.

  Miss Gloria had heard my end of the conversation last night, so I wouldn’t be breaking any confidences by telling her what was happening—that Lorenzo believed he was a lead suspect in Frontgate’s murder. “I think Eric will be able to calm him down and help him sort out his options. And even maybe figure out why he’s been fingered. I can’t imagine Lorenzo would hurt a fly, never mind kill someone. He’s a Buddhist and truly the most gentle soul I’ve ever met.”

  “He’s a darling man,” she said, her eyes narrowing. She draped the towel over the back of a kitchen chair and picked up Sparky, her purring cat. “Probably someone else set him up to take the fall for this, right? You should call that nice Steve Torrence and tell him the cops are on the wrong track.”

  I nodded reluctantly. I doubted that Lieutenant Torrence or any other member of the Key West Police Department would welcome my theories. Or, despite her recent status as local hero, Miss Gloria’s.

  “Would you mind dropping me off at the cemetery on your way downtown? My boss, Jane, is holding a special class for us guides on symbolism in the monuments.”

  “With all the time you’re spending there, I hope she’s paying you well,” I said with a laugh. And then I wondered why Miss Gloria wasn’t taking her car, although it seemed better not to even ask. Why take the risk of planting the idea back in her head?

  Once we were both dressed and groomed, I zipped Miss G over to the graveyard and then continued to the restaurant, located in the Bahama Village section of town, which formerly housed mainly people of Bahamian descent. Firefly Restaurant, serving home-style Southern food, is just a block down Petronia Street from two other Key West tourist eatery favorites, Blue Heaven and La Creperie. New places like Firefly, part of the creeping gentrification of the island, are good for foodies, but not so good for average working people looking for affordable meals and livable rents.

  I arrived before Lorenzo and Eric and managed to snag a seat upstairs on the porch overlooking Petronia Street. Sitting with one eye on the street and the other on the door so I could watch for my friends, I perused the appetizers on the menu. My eye caught on pimento cheese with spiced saltine crackers and a plate of fried green tomatoes—was it too early in the day for pimento cheese? My mouth watered at the prospect, which I interpreted as a definitive no. The waitress filled a mason jar with unsweetened iced tea, and I sat back to watch the slow parade of people and chickens below me and jot a few notes about the setting.

  A few minutes later, a tall man with tousled blond hair, plummy cheeks, and wire-rimmed glasses appeared in the doorway. Eric. I waved and he came over to join me. We exchanged hugs and he sat across from me.

  “How are the doggies? How’s Bill?” Bill is Eric’s husband, and also co-parent to their two beloved Yorkies.

  “All good. How was the city commission meeting?”

  “Awful,” I said. “Long and tense. And then this thing with Lorenzo.” I’d told him the bare bones of the story when I’d called to set this meeting up.

  Lorenzo fluttered in, still wearing the same black pants, white shirt, and black clogs he’d had on the night before—minus the tie. He looked as though he’d slept in his clothes or, more likely, hadn’t slept at all. His wavy hair was uncombed and he was missing an earring. He was usually so fastidious that this downturn in appearance alarmed me. He took the seat next to me.

  “Just ice water. With lemon,” he told the waitress when she asked him about a beverage. “If I have one more jot of caffeine, I may blast off,” he said to me.

  I introduced him to Eric. “I feel like you two should know each other already.”

  “By reputation, certainly,” said Eric. “Hayley speaks very highly of you.”

  “Thank you,” said Lorenzo in a soft, earnest voice. “She’s a dear friend. And a good person. And if you’re a friend of hers, that’s all I need to know.”

  “Tell us what’s happening,” I said. “I’m so worried about you.”

  Lorenzo lowered his voice so we could barely hear him. “You saw the charade at the city commission meeting. And that idiot Louis trying to choke me.” One hand fluttered to his neck. “Maybe half an hour after I got home, two cops knocked on my door. They had questions about my whereabouts for the past twenty-four hours and my relationship with the dead man.”

  The waitress returned with water for Lorenzo, coffee for Eric, and the appetizers I’d ordered for the table. I reeled off a list of dishes that we would also share. “Anything else you’re craving?” I asked them.

  “I don’t have much of an appetite,” Lorenzo admitted.

  “You’ve pretty much ordered everything on the menu already,” Eric added with a laugh.

  “One thing I have to ask,” I said to Lorenzo once the waitress had bustled off with our order. I tried to think about how to word the question so he wouldn’t take offense. “Did you have any kind of premonition that Louis attacking you last night was going to happen?”

  He looked so distressed that I wished I hadn’t said anything, hadn’t appeared to question his special vision. “I’m not trying to be fresh or rude,” I said. “I’m really serious. Did you have any sense something bad might happen with the Artistic Preservation group? Or Louis himself?”

  Lorenzo mopped his forehead with a limp white hankie. “Of course things have been terribly stressful at Mallory Square
for the last—let’s say, even the past year or so. I felt every bit of that anxiety.” He patted his chest.

  Which didn’t really answer my question, but I hated to press him harder. Let him tell the story in his own time. I spread a spoonful of pimento cheese on a saltine cracker for each of us and waited. Eric and I began to eat. The cheese and pimentos were a lovely combination of creamy and tangy, and the crackers crispy and salty. I could eat an entire order of this and nothing else and feel perfectly happy. Lorenzo’s fingers trembled as he picked up his cracker. He set the treat back down on the small plate and peered over the railing to the street below.

  “How does the organization work down at Mallory Square?” Eric asked as he loaded a second cracker with cheese. “It always looks like barely controlled chaos.” He waved his cracker at me. “By the way, I never imagined I liked pimento cheese, but this is amazing.”

  “It’s too complicated and convoluted to tell you everything,” Lorenzo said. “Basically, we elect a board of directors to set up the performer guidelines and negotiate the contract with the city. The organization leases the space from the city,” he explained. “Across the years, the biggest conflict has been over seniority. If you’ve visited Mallory Square at Sunset you might have noticed that some of the positions are worth a lot more money than others.”