Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery by Lucy Burdette Page A

the next morning, I dressed quickly and scribbled a note for Mom, telling her to hire a cab and meet me at the conference at nine. Then I grabbed my backpack and headed out on my scooter in search of Cuban coffee. It felt strange to be riding in the morning darkness, a little lonely, a little spooky—and chilly. It had rained half the night, and then the front cleared out, leaving colder air and wind. I wished I’d worn an extra layer.
    I was feeling bone-dog tired too. Miss Gloria’s couch was as lumpy as I’d expected and my housemates hadsnored through the night in stereo. And I was edgy—Bill had texted me around midnight, thanking me for being understanding and respecting their privacy. And for the chocolate pie, which he rated five out of five stars. But he didn’t mention Eric, nor had there been any word from him.
    On top of that, I had gotten a worrisome text message from Bransford:
Thx for dinner. Sorry can’t say more about your friend. Encourage him to hire a lawyer.
    The idea that Eric could really have been involved with Jonah’s death was eating me alive. Why else would Bransford think Eric needed legal representation? Only slightly less worrisome was the probability that my mother had tipped the police off to Eric’s possible association with Jonah. I hadn’t wanted to make her feel worse than she already did by jumping on that bandwagon, but she
had
fed that information directly to the detective.
    I sputtered across White Street and down Southard to Five Brothers and parked my scooter on the sidewalk. The small, idiosyncratically stocked grocery and sandwich shop was already busy with early risers: construction workers, retirees, cops, and the homeless. The smell of powerful coffee and grilling bacon and egg sandwiches on Cuban bread lured me to the back corner, where I ordered one of each, thinking I could save half of the sandwich for Danielle. I moved aside to wait for my order and nearly tripped over Officer Torrence.
    “Good morning,” I said. “You’ve got the early shift.”
    “Crime never sleeps,” Torrence said, baring his teeth and straightening the badge clipped to his shirt.
    We’d spent so much time together the night Jonah Barrows died. Had he warmed up to me the slightest bit by the end? Would he tell me anything more than Bransford could about the case? Probably better to ask in general terms.
    “Any progress on solving Jonah Barrows’s murder?”
    “We’re following leads,” he said. “I suspect there will be an arrest soon.”
    “That’s it?”
    He laughed, wiping a skim of steamed milk off his mustache. “You don’t quit, do you?” He bit into his sandwich and chewed, and then tucked the remainder into its foil wrapping. “You should try one of these—delicious.”
    I just stared.
    “I’m sure you want to know about your friend. Mr. Altman is a ‘person of interest,’ as they say on TV. I believe that’s as much as I’m authorized to divulge. But it’s hard to dispute physical evidence.” He shrugged, gathered up the remains of his coffee and sandwich, and started out of the shop. “Have a nice day!”
    My food and coffee arrived shortly after he left. I packed it into the crate on the back of my scooter, determined not to ruin the morning by fuming over the Key West Police Department. If they were about to arrest someone, and Eric was a person of interest, was he about to get arrested? And what physical evidence could he possibly be talking about?
    If I could keep my focus, I’d have a couple of hours at the office before the conference started to rough out a tribute to Jonah, begin the piece about the conferenceluminaries, and think about my review of Santiago’s Bodega. Then I could concentrate on asking questions about who—besides Eric—might have had it in for Jonah. I hiked up to the second floor and retreated to my office, really a cubbyhole the size of a small walk-in closet, and booted up my computer. I unwrapped the sandwich and began to