Part 12 (2/2)

I heaved a great sigh and slumped in the wicker chair beside his desk. According to Danielle, he'd refused a tropical upholstered chair like the ones in the reception area because he didn't want visitors lingering. But I needed to talk to someone. And he'd asked....

”I'm worried about everything,” I said.

”Such as ...?” he said.

So I filled him in about the latest on the two deaths and what I'd learned about the folks at the conference and why they might have wished either Jonah or Yoshe dead. I skipped lightly over Eric's arrest, a.s.suring Wally the police were way off the mark on that one. I only left out the part about the detective making a dinner date with Olivia-way too humiliating to discuss with my boss. And also Dustin's stinging remarks about me stalking Jonah. Ditto on the humiliation factor. I wrapped up with the troubling fact that my mother was not answering my calls and had not appeared at lunch as planned.

”My mom's like me: she doesn't miss meals,” I added with a shaky smile.

”You need to get organized,” Wally said.

He pulled a new yellow legal pad from his drawer and began to sketch out a chart, with the names of the two dead writers across the top of the page and the people with connections to them down the left margin: Yoshe, Sigrid, Dustin, Fritz, Olivia, and finally Eric. ”The two deaths may be related or may not, correct? For example, it could have been Yoshe who killed Jonah and someone else who did her in.”

”Possible,” I said. ”But hard to imagine. She was so tiny. Hard to picture her swinging that bird statue with enough oomph to knock him out.”

He jotted physically small in the box where Jonah's name intersected with hers.

”And Yoshe's death could have been a suicide or an accident, but not Jonah's. On the other hand, if they were both murders, neither seems meticulously planned,” Wally said. ”Especially the first one. You couldn't a.s.sume you wouldn't be seen whacking Jonah-there were hundreds of people at the party, no?”

”Yes. But if it was an accident, or the person didn't mean to hit him-or at least not that hard-why not let someone know? Get help and limit the damage? Maybe even save the man's life.” I flashed back to my feeble attempts at CPR and how dreadful it felt to have failed.

”People do this all the time-act in some utterly stupid way and then panic and try to hide it.” Wally lined the pad up with the edge of his desk and tapped his pen on Jonah's name. ”On television, it's all about love, money, or revenge. With politicians, it's power.”

I nodded, trying to ma.s.sage away the headache that had begun to brood behind my forehead. ”So if I could figure out what each of them came to the weekend hoping would happen,” I said, ”maybe I'd have an answer.” I closed my eyes and ran my mind over what I thought I knew. ”To begin with, every one of them appeared to need a career boost.” I described Yoshe's troubles with her new ma.n.u.script: the deep shame she would feel if it failed-or if the editor refused to publish it at all. And Sigrid's tanking book sales and bad reviews-she'd flat-out told me her career rested on this new novel. And Dustin's waning performance as the director of the seminar. Where would he find refuge on this little island if his dream crashed? And Fritz's dreadful meat-themed poetry: In spite of his audience at lunch, it had to be going nowhere fast. No one had specifically pointed to him as a suspect, but good Lord, poetry about protein? Deadly.

Wally wrote summarizing notes in each square on his grid.

And Eric? His practice seemed to be in fine shape, and his relations.h.i.+p with Bill humming along ... but who knew? He simply wasn't talking. ”I can't think of anything for Eric,” I said. ”I thought his life was going just fine.”

”How about Olivia?” he asked.

”The only thing Olivia needs is a man,” I answered grimly. ”And it looks like she's on the way to snagging one.” I drummed my fingers on the notepad. ”Though why she'd be interested in a small-town Key West cop is beyond me.” Wally scribbled single and desperate in her section, which made me smile until I realized the same words could be applied to me.

”A couple of folks mentioned a Key West restaurant franchise that several of these writers hoped to invest in.” I explained about the proposed fast food restaurant that the founders had hoped would spread paradise from Pasadena to Providence.

”I hate that idea,” said Wally. ”Either you're in Key West eating something wonderful or you're not. It's like eating Italian or Chinese in the airport. No one believes that's real ethnic food-just something you have to tolerate if you forgot to bring your own sandwich. Why would a perfectly wonderful chef or writer want to tag onto a project like that?”

”You sound like Jonah,” I said. ”Only less crazy.” I grinned. ”I think the only plausible answer is money.”

Wally added dollar signs to the notes he'd made in Yoshe's, Jonah's, and Dustin's columns. ”So, why do you think Jonah was killed?” Wally asked. ”Some vague threat about honesty doesn't seem like enough of a reason.”

I thought back to the first night, the food writers arranged onstage behind him like a Greek chorus. And the palpable discomfort that radiated from the writers when he turned to them with his warning: ”Caveat emptor-my policy of utter transparency will be in full effect.”

”I got the feeling he planned to be quite specific. He hated the path today's food writers are taking and he believed he could change it by exposing their truths this weekend. He was going to go even further than he had in the memoir. He told us that on opening night.”

”Someone felt so threatened by what he might say that they killed him?”

”Something like that.” I squirmed, thinking about the editorial letter I'd stolen from Yoshe's briefcase. I wanted to show him, but it felt wrong. It was wrong-he might very well fire me for lousy ethics.

Instead, I described my conversation with the elderly man next door to the Audubon House-how he thought he might have seen a man with gla.s.ses running from the direction of the party, past his little house and on toward Duval. And then another idea clicked in. ”What if the killer was captured on the Duval Street webcam?” I sighed, my enthusiasm ebbing away as quickly as it had rushed in. ”We'll never know. The police could access the archives, but they certainly aren't going to show them to me.”

”You don't need the cops for that,” he said. ”You need access to the right Web site. Or a friend with that access.” He raised his eyebrows and grinned, then typed in a Web address on his computer. A photo of the sidewalk outside Sloppy Joe's came up on the screen, along with a bar for choosing the time interval you wished to view. ”When would this person have been running?”

”Say it was nineish when I found Jonah? Maybe as late as quarter to ten. Let's start fifteen minutes before that.”

For the next ten minutes, we squinted at the antics of tourists and street performers pa.s.sing down Duval Street, but recognized no one. In the background, the noise from the bar roared in a fuzzy way, with occasional blasts from car horns and m.u.f.flerless motorcycles pa.s.sing by. Then came a familiar figure. More tall than short. With gla.s.ses. Walking quickly, almost at a trot, looking horribly worried.

I felt sick to my stomach, really sick. Like the night I ate an entire order of bad oysters and spent the next eight hours hugging the toilet. And the twenty-four hours after that lying in bed like a wet rag.

Eric. I shrugged carelessly, hoping that nothing showed on my face.

”Oh well, I can look at this later, make sure none of our suspects pa.s.sed by. But even if they had, it doesn't mean anything, really.” I sprang up from Wally's folding wicker chair. ”Right now I better get back to work. My boss is a bear and I owe him a big article,” I said.

18.

Usually the food that meets your hunger sends you into a calmed and expansive state of deep satisfaction, but I instead sat in that cafe and became quite heavy and defeated.

-Gabrielle Hamilton I closed my office door, even though doing so shut out the only natural light and usually left me quivering with claustrophobia. I woke my computer and typed in the Duval Street webcam address again. I watched Eric trot down the street several more times, reentering the time and date stamp, trying to decipher the look of panic on his face. And the way he kept looking over his shoulder. He did not look like a man who'd come down with a sudden migraine. Had he seen something he shouldn't have that scared him badly? Or had he done something awful? But if that was the case what possible reason could my friend have had for killing Jonah?

My iPhone buzzed. Private caller came up on the screen-usually the sign of a badgering telemarketer, or worse. But I couldn't take the chance of missing news about my mother. ”h.e.l.lo?”

”Hayley Snow?” The words quaked and s.h.i.+mmered. ”You told me to call you if I thought of something else.”

”Who is this?” I barked. Then I recognized the raspy voice of the old man who lived next door to the Audubon House. ”Yes, thanks so much for calling.”

”I did think of something I forgot to mention. The cats and I had breakfast early the other morning, just like always. I shouldn't give them milk-my daughter says it's bad for their digestion, but they look forward to it.”

”A tiny splash won't hurt them,” I said, trying to be patient while his story unfolded. ”My Evinrude loves milk almost more than he loves me.”

The old man laughed. ”Evinrude, that's a name you don't hear often.”

”He purrs like a well-oiled engine,” I said. ”Always has, since he was a kitten. But anyway, you were saying you forgot to tell me...”

”After breakfast, Boris and I were walking the perimeter of the property and I saw him stop to rub his jowls on something in the bushes. You know how they like the way that feels, the way we like our neck and shoulders rubbed?”

I could picture the big white cat stalking around the yard behind the old man with his walker, stopping to scratch his cheeks on a tree limb or an old paint can or ... I hoped it didn't turn out to be something gross. ”Uh-huh. So, what did Boris find?”

”It was a big metal statue of a bird. Only the legs were broken off. Couldn't figure out how in the heck it got on my property, half-buried in the weeds. But I guess people throw all kinds of trash around in this town. So I picked it up and dragged it back to my porch. And that's where the police officer found it.”

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