Death In Four Courses Part 17

"But worst of all, I made a terrible novice therapist mistake. I persuaded one of my patients to tell his parents he was gay. As a budding psychologist, I should have realized it wasn't my job to persuade any patient to do anything-just help him understand himself and come to his own conclusions. This young man's parents reacted horribly to his news. They not only refused to believe it, but they refused to let him come home if he insisted on talking about it any further."

Eric took off his gla.s.ses again and polished the lenses on a napkin. Then he looked around the table. "He didn't show up for our next session. I found out later that he'd killed himself-jumped to his death from his dorm room. I've never forgiven myself for that."

"Oh, honey," said Eric's mother, squeezing his arm. "You always did take things so hard." My mother refilled the winegla.s.ses, tousling Eric's hair as she pa.s.sed behind him.

"But how is that related to this weekend?" I asked. "Why did Jonah still care?"

"Jonah wanted me to talk about that incident now-publicly. He wanted me to testify against his parents in their lawsuit and demonstrate to the world how damaging secrets and lies could be. But that would have necessitated dredging up the story about my former patient."

"The old clipping you found in Eric's belongings," I said to his mom. "But it didn't mention a suicide."

"No," said Eric, fitting his gla.s.ses back on. "The papers referred to it as 'an unexplained death.' I couldn't bear the thought of making the suicide public. Bringing up all that old pain for this young man's parents. So I spoke with Jonah at the party that first night and begged him to let that story die. But he absolutely refused."

Eric's face reddened and he pulled his hand away from his mother. "I was furious. I gave him a little shove. He stumbled, hit his head on the metal bird in the pool, and actually broke the thing off. There he lay, soaking wet, water lilies stuck to his head, and algae running down his cheeks-and still sputtering about how he insisted I tell the truth. I picked up the d.a.m.n broken bird, picturing how satisfying it would feel to hit him. Hard. He was an impossible, obstinate man."

He whistled air through his clenched teeth. "Obviously I didn't hit him. But I didn't help him out of the pool either. I dropped the bird and left him floundering." He smoothed a wisp of hair off his forehead and pushed his gla.s.ses up the bridge of his nose. "At first, I thought I had killed him by not going for help-I'd let him drown. I thought I deserved to be in jail." He looked at his mother, and then at Bill. "And I couldn't talk about it without dragging that family through the muck again. And then all of you kept raising possibilities of other folks who might have killed him. So I kept quiet, hoping that the real killer would be exposed before I had to go to jail. I'm very sorry for all the worry I put you through."

"So, what really happened to Jonah?" Miss Gloria asked.

"Our lawyer said Olivia came along after Eric left," Bill said. "And Jonah called out to her to help him get out of the pool. She refused. She'd also gotten an e-mail, saying that he was going forward with her franchise idea, but taking Yoshe as his partner. He could no longer trust Olivia because of the financial irregularities he'd discovered in her charitable foundation. And he planned to address them publicly. She was furious about being cut out of the franchise when she felt it was her idea. And furious about his threats. They had a nasty exchange and she grabbed the broken bird and clocked him."

"Didn't she say she only threw it at him?" Eric asked.

"Whether she actually swung the bird or threw it, either way Jonah collapsed back into the pool and she ran to the women's bathroom," Bill said, nodding at me. "Which is when you saw her."

"No wonder she was too upset to be gracious," I said, feeling stupid. "She was an obvious suspect, but I idolized her so much I didn't see it."

"It wasn't your job to figure this out," Eric said.

"Yeah, but we were concerned about you," I said.

He nodded. "I appreciate that. I do."

"Then Olivia got worried about whether Jonah was really hurt and she would be in serious trouble for letting him drown," Bill said. "So she returned to the pool after Hayley had dragged him out and run for help. But Olivia could see it was too late to save him, so she grabbed the bird with the sleeve of her sweater and dropped it over the fence. She hadn't thought one bit of this through-she obviously couldn't carry the thing out of the party without drawing attention to herself. And who knows? Maybe she intended to come back for it later. The bird had Eric's prints on it, along with those of the old man who found it, as the cops discovered."

"But why did all this come up now?" I asked again. "Why was it so important for Jonah to expose everyone else's secrets?"

"I think it had to do with the memoir," Eric said. "As I mentioned, his father is suing the publisher for libel, saying that Jonah lied about everything, starting with his childhood and right on up to the present. Jonah's reaction was the flailing we saw-digging out everyone's secrets. And some of them should have been exposed-the way Olivia was siphoning off money from the foundation, for example. He became more obsessed with honesty. And at first it might feel good to confess, but that can have terrible consequences for the people who have to hear the so-called honest truth."

The timer chirped from the kitchen. My mother popped up from her chair. "Enough of that for now. Let's eat supper."

Connie and I helped her mash the potatoes and then bring out the platters of meat loaf and the b.u.t.tery potatoes and a bowl of roasted carrots. When all the plates were filled, our talk turned to Yoshe.

"I'm guessing she figured out what Jonah had planned to reveal about Olivia. After Jonah died, she told Olivia she couldn't in good conscience keep silent. Olivia went over to talk with her Sat.u.r.day morning with lethal results," Mom said sadly.

"Oh my gosh," I said. "I bet it was Olivia who had lunch with Yoshe's old agent and then threatened to tell the publisher about Yoshe's exaggerations-not Jonah. Why would he, if he was going into business with her? But by then, Yoshe had already decided to tell the truth-about herself and about Olivia."

"Which would have made Olivia crazy mad," said Eric. "Crazy enough to throw her over the balcony."

We sat in sorrowful silence for a few minutes.

"Yoshe made some mistakes too," said Mom, "but I admired so much about her."

As we finished eating dinner, the scent of warming chocolate wafted out onto the deck.

"I smell something amazing," said Eric.

"I made another one of those fudge pies," said my mother, grinning. "Since you guys weren't able to really enjoy the last one." Then her mouth made a little O of surprise. "Detective Bransford! You snuck up on us. Come down and join the party."

I swiveled my head around and saw him waiting on the dock. My heart began to beat faster.

"We'll set another place-there's plenty of food left," said Mom. She pushed her chair away from the table and started to get up.

"I only have a minute," said the detective. "I'm on duty. But I was hoping to talk to Hayley."

Mom gave me a little nudge. I glared at her but got up anyway and followed him down the finger almost to the parking lot, where his cruiser waited, motor running, door open.

"Must not be a lot of crime around here," I cracked.

"I came by to make sure you're okay," he said, ignoring my lame joke.

"We're fine," I said, tipping my chin up. "Though it would be nice if you didn't give me the mushroom treatment every time there's a b.u.mp in the road."

"The mushroom treatment?" he asked, unable to suppress a grin.

"Keeping me in the dark," I said without smiling back.

He scratched his head and grimaced. "Civilians have no business following criminals. It's too dangerous." He sighed. "You got a little taste of that yourself today with your mother."

Time to lay it all out on the table, now or never. "I know you had an incident with your ex-wife and I'm sorry about that. But I can take care of myself."

"Figures you'd have sniffed that out." He cleared his throat and frowned. "I didn't handle that incident well. She could have been killed. I was scared and the more scared I got, the more out of control I felt. So I paid an off-duty patrolman to follow her whenever she went out alone-and I tried my best to keep her in the house. That didn't go over too well," he said, slumping against his cruiser. "She asked for a divorce. Said she felt smothered."

"Mmmm, tough," I said. "I can see both sides."

"Maybe you don't see that I'm starting to feel that way again. About you. I can't stand the idea of you getting hurt. Olivia Nethercut noticed."

"Oh," I said, completely speechless for a minute. I looked at my watch. "I guess your date with Olivia was canceled? She was really looking forward to that. She kept telling me that you were coming on to her."

"There was no date," Bransford said. "That's baloney. Maybe she thought if she made it look like I was interested in her, it would keep you from reaching out to me." Then he reached out, took both of my hands, and pulled me in close to him, close enough so I could hear his heart thumping and feel the heat of his skin. And we kissed.

"Played like a chump," I said with a sigh, pushing him away before my knees got so weak, I buckled to the pavement. In front of a gaggle of my relatives and friends, who were certain to be watching. "It worked."

"So, how about dinner at Michael's next week?" he asked, grinning again so all his dimples showed. "No offense intended, but could we make it just the two of us?"

25.

We were writing about food as family history, and love, and hope, and sometimes a little splash of guilt.

-Hayley Snow I considered not wearing the yellow shirt with the palm trees on it for the meeting with Wally and Ava Faulkner-it made me feel like a lightweight. Instead I tried on a pencil skirt with the starched white shirt my mother had insisted on giving me, along with a pair of low black heels. Ava would certainly be decked out in a stylish business suit, and at least this outfit would be in the same ballpark. But at the last minute, I changed back into my sneakers and the yellow shirt. These were my team's colors. And more than anything, I wanted to avoid being cut.

I left for work fifteen minutes early, but by the time I arrived in the office, I could see Ava's silhouette through Wally's miniblinds, ensconced in the chair closest to him. Danielle flashed me a worried thumbs-up as I hurried past her desk and settled into a gray metal folding chair that left me sitting a couple of inches lower than Ava. Score one for the visiting enemy.

"Morning, all," I said cheerfully, refusing to sound as intimidated as I felt.

Wally nodded, but Ava barely grunted as she picked up the sheaf of papers in front of her. On top Wally had placed my restaurant review of Santiago's Bodega. Ava skimmed it without comment. Next she paged through the piece I'd written in memory of Yoshe King, including quotes from the last public meal she'd enjoyed-the lunch with my mother, Sigrid, and me. And the comments from Mary Chen, Yoshe's niece. And how there had been a groundswell of preorders for Yoshe's cookbook and how her publishers agreed that Mary could rewrite the preface and some of Yoshe's commentary so it reflected the truth about the origins of the recipes.

"Did we get this bit about the family background fact-checked?" Ava asked Wally, not even looking at me.

"I was sitting in the chair next to her when she told me," I said. "It was an exclusive interview-no one else has it. But I'd be happy to provide Ms. Chen's e-mail and phone number if you feel you need to talk with her yourself."

She flipped that page over and started on the article I'd sent Wally late last night about Jonah Barrows and honesty. I'd summed up by saying how important it was to remember that while food did mean life and death in its most elemental form, most often we in the food writing industry were talking about food as the pleasure of connections. When we wrote about simmering a stew or a sauce for hours or days, we were really talking about how much we owed to the folks who came before us and the importance of cherishing their memory. And how much we yearned to give to the people in our present who'd be gathered around our table. We were writing about food as family history, and love, and hope, and sometimes a little splash of guilt.

Finally Ava shuffled through the stack of receipts.

She slapped the papers onto Wally's desk. "That's a lot about food in this next issue. Does your staff have any plans to write something about the theater in Key West? I understand the Waterfront has an excellent season lined up, and I'd like our publication to surf the crest of that wave."

Wally turned to me and winked. "Great job. You can be excused. Go out and get something delicious to eat. It's on me."

Recipes.

Ravishing Rhubarb Cake with Streusel Topping.

114 cup brown sugar.

12 cup b.u.t.ter, softened.

1 egg 1 tsp. baking soda 2 cups sifted flour 1 cup milk or b.u.t.termilk.

1 tsp. vanilla 2 cups rhubarb, chopped 1 cup strawberries, chopped.

For the topping: 14 cup b.u.t.ter.

13 cup brown sugar 3 tbsp. flour.

4 tbsp. rolled oats Cream the b.u.t.ter and sugar, and add the egg. Sift together flour and baking soda and add this to the creamed mixture with the milk and vanilla. Fold in the rhubarb and strawberries. Pour into greased 9-by-11-inch pan. Blend topping ingredients until pea-sized with a pastry blender and sprinkle on top of the cake. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes.

Hot Fudge Pie.

1 stick b.u.t.ter 3 squares unsweetened chocolate 114 cups sugar 4 tbsp. flour dash of salt 3 eggs, beaten 1 tsp. vanilla Melt the b.u.t.ter and the unsweetened chocolate together. (You may use the microwave-just be sure to cover the bowl, as it will splatter. I use the old-fashioned pan-on-a-stove method.) To the melted b.u.t.ter and chocolate, add the sugar, flour, and salt. Mix thoroughly. Then add eggs and vanilla. Pour the batter into a greased 9-inch pie plate and bake at 350 degrees F for 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve warm with ice cream.

(Author's note: My friend Linda Juliani gave me this recipe and I've made it many times. It's perfectly fast and easy and yet has all the advantages of a homemade dessert. You can bake it while you eat dinner and then eat it hot out of the oven. With ice cream.) MK's Screw the Roux Stew (Courtesy of Mary Kay Hyde) 1 large onion, chopped 23 garlic cloves, minced 1 large green pepper, chopped 2 stalks celery, chopped 12 cup flour 1112 tbsp. Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning 28-oz. box organic chicken broth 28-oz. can chopped tomatoes, with juice or crushed tomatoes shredded meat from 1 rotisserie chicken or baked chicken 1014 oz. smoked chicken or turkey sausage, sliced 12 oz. frozen chopped okra 34 lb. Key West pink shrimp if desired rice, cooked Saute the vegetables in olive oil until soft. In a separate frying pan, toast the dry flour over medium-low heat until browned. Stir this almost constantly so it doesn't burn. When it is nicely brown, add the Creole seasoning. Mix well and add this mixture to the sauteed vegetables in a large pot. Stir in the broth, tomatoes, chicken, sausage, and okra. Bring to boiling and reduce to a simmer. The longer it simmers, the better. Add shrimp just before serving and cook a few minutes until pink. Serve the stew over rice.

Stepmom's Meat Loaf.

112 lbs. ground beef (or beef and pork, organic preferred).

12 sleeve Ritz crackers, ground to crumbs 1 large onion, finely chopped 1 green pepper, finely chopped 3 large carrots, peeled and chopped fine in food processor 1 egg.

12 jar Bone Suckin' barbecue sauce, more for glaze 2 tbsp. Lipton's onion soup mix Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix meat well with all the other ingredients, reserving some sauce for topping. Shape the mixture into a loaf in a 9-by-13-inch gla.s.s baking pan. Bake for 1 to 112 hours, until meat is no longer pink. Drain grease halfway through baking; douse loaf with BBQ sauce and return to oven.

Serve meat loaf with mashed potatoes or oven-roasted potatoes and carrots and a green vegetable or salad.

Nikki Bonanni's Grandmother's Potato Gnocchi.

45 potatoes.

4 or more cups of flour.

3 to 4 eggs, depending on size.

1 tsp. salt.

Boil potatoes with skins. Cool. Peel. Put through ricer.

Make well with the four cups of flour. Break eggs into the middle of the well one at a time, beat, and mix them into the flour. Add salt.

Add riced potatoes a little at a time. Knead the ball of dough until not sticky, adding flour as necessary. Cut the dough into 6 pieces and roll these into long logs 12 inch in diameter. Cut into 1-inch pieces.

To make gnocchi, push down on each piece with two fingers, then roll them into hollow logs. Drop them into a large pot of boiling, salted water without crowding. They are done when they rise to the surface-about three minutes. Do not overcook. Serve hot with b.u.t.ter and grated parmesan or with the sauce of your choice.

(At Louie's Backyard, they were served with oxtail stew.).

Read on for a sneak peek at the next Key West Food Critic Mystery.

Coming in May 2013 from Obsidian.

Evinrude woke me from a sound sleep, first with his rumbling purr and then with a gentle but persistent tapping of paw to cheek. I blinked my eyes open-the bedside clock read six fifteen. I hissed softly at his gray striped face. "I love you dearly, but you're a monster," I told him as I rolled out of bed. "Spoiled rotten cat flesh."

Tail hoisted high, he trotted out of the room ahead of me, meowing loudly. Miss Gloria's lithe black cat, Sparky, intercepted him before he reached the food bowls lined up in the corner of the tiny galley of our houseboat. He sprang onto Evinrude's back and wrestled him to the floor. While they boxed and nipped at each other, I poured a ration of kibble into each bowl, refreshed their water, and then staggered onto the deck to check out the morning.

The plum-colored night sky was shifting to pink to make room for the day, which looked as though it might turn out "glorious and whimsical," as the Key West Citizen had promised. A quartet of wind chimes tinkled lightly from the boats down the finger. Had there been a stiff wind or the first spitting drops of a cold rain, I'd have gone directly back to bed. But on a morning like this, there was no excuse to avoid the dreaded exercise I'd prescribed for myself.

Twice in the past ten days, I'd lured myself out of bed to go jogging before work, with the promise of a thick, sweet cafe con leche from the Cuban Coffee Queen as a reward on the way home. In addition to adding heft to my resume, my position as food critic for Key Zest had added a bit to my waistline over the past months; I was anxious to reverse the trend. And besides that, the Key West Food and Wine Festival loomed this week-it promised a series of tasting sessions that could ruin the most stalwart dieter. Which I was definitely not.