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

eat, the melted cheese oozing over the crispy bacon and egg, the fresh roll toasted a nice light brown. After wolfing down half the sandwich and licking the bacon grease off my fingers, I started to work. But the thoughts I was grasping for were floating just out of reach. I had words and sentences and even a couple of paragraphs. But nothing anyone would consider insightful. Or even publishable. Nothing that would snatch my precarious job from the slavering jaws of Ava Faulkner. So I ate the second half of the Cuban sandwich, the part I’d planned to save for Danielle, and buried the wrappings in my trash can.
    Around seven thirty I heard her whistling in the reception area, then the whoosh of water as she filled Mr. Coffee, followed by his answering burble.
    “Do I smell bacon?” she called.
    “Must be from downstairs,” I answered, feeling guilty and piggish.
    Wally came into the office minutes later and stuck his head into my cubby.
    “You’re up and at ’em early. Love to see that in my new hires.” He grinned.
    I got up and stretched and followed him into the reception area, where Danielle passed us mugs ofcoffee. “You look like you’ve hardly slept.” She batted her eyelashes suggestively. “How was your date?”
    I blew on my coffee and shook my head. “I’ve had better. He’s a bit of a bully.”
    “He is a cop,” said Danielle. “Occupational hazard.”
    “And having my mother along didn’t help,” I said, pleating my lower lip between my thumb and forefinger and wondering how much to say about Eric. I liked my coworkers a lot, but did I know them well enough to share everything? I spilled part of it, rat-a-tat-tat, leaving out the disturbing story about Eric getting ferried down to the KWPD and how he’d retreated to his bedroom and refused to come out. I skipped right over to how I’d run into Officer Torrence this morning and how he said an arrest was imminent, based on some sort of physical evidence. Again, I didn’t mention Eric.
    “I need to find out more about Dustin Fredericks. Yoshe King said that he’d had a short romance with Jonah. Everyone I took to lunch seemed to have the idea that it had ended badly, at least from Dustin’s perspective. After lunch, he got called out of the conference so the cops could ask him about the missing bird statue.”
    “How did you hear about that?” Danielle asked.
    “Back up just a minute,” Wally sputtered. “How many people did you take to lunch?”
    “Only two,” I said. “Plus my mother. And of course I’ll pay for her meal.”
    Wally glowered. “I need the receipts for anything you’ve spent this week.”
    Danielle ignored him. “Definitely talk with CoryHeld. She’s a Realtor right downstairs,” she said. “She was on the advisory board for the Key West Loves Literature Seminar, but she quit last year.” She lowered her voice as if she might be heard through the floorboards. “I think Dustin finally drove her batty.”
    Wally cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Hayley. I have two words for you. Ava. Faulkner.”
    I blanched, feeling the breakfast sandwich churn in my stomach.
    “Your beat is food, not murder,” he continued. “If you could keep that in mind, I’d appreciate it. I need a draft of your article about the legacy of Jonah Barrows by tomorrow morning. And make it a clean copy—you’re not leaving me much time to edit. I’m sure the cops can get along without your assistance. And those receipts—pronto.”
    “Righto,” I said as Wally retreated to his office. But I was too worried to concentrate and the bacon, egg, and cheese continued to somersault in my gut. I grabbed my purse and a notebook and trotted downstairs to the Preferred Properties Real Estate office. The receptionist directed me down the hall to Cory Held, a small, pleasant-looking woman with dark auburn hair, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and vibrant red lipstick. She was eating