Murder With Ganache: A Key West Food Critic Mystery by Lucy Burdette Page A

to the parking lot. Mom let Sam drive so the three of us women could cram in the backseat, me in the middle on the hump. The subcompact felt like close quarters with my mother, father, and stepfather, even if we were united by the crisis.
    I brought Rory’s Facebook photo up again on my iPhone and tried to explain to Allison and my mother why a bench in front of a deli would have a Facebook page. “It’s a novelty,” I said. “One person set the page up, and now the bench has thousands of friends. People take pictures of themselves on the bench when they’re visiting, drinking Cuban coffee in the morning or beer at night. The bench herself posts about the weather and the bands playing at the bar across the street. It’s just a crazy, fun Key West thing.”
    “But what was Rory doing there and who are these people?” Allison asked, peering at the screen. Her eyes were wild with worry and confusion.
    “We’re going to figure all that out,” I said, patting her leg. “We’ll find him.”
    I directed Sam to turn right out of the parking lot and follow the back streets across the island to avoid the North Roosevelt Boulevard construction. Finally we hit the road that looped along the Atlantic Ocean, and he took a right over the bridge that dumped us onto Stock Island.
    Stock Island is scorched black coffee to Key West’s café con leche, housing a lot of people who work in Key West but can’t afford the price of a rental there. A ragged line of homeless folk had begun their daily trek along the outer edge of the golf course, heading over the same bridge we’d just crossed, and from there into town.
    “Who are all those bums?” asked my father, craning around to watch them as we skimmed by.
    “The homeless shelter is located out this way,” I said. “But we don’t call them bums anymore, Dad—it’s not politically correct. Anyway, they have to vacate the premises by seven a.m.”
    “To do what?” he asked, a look of incredulity on his face.
    “Some of them go down to Mallory Square to work the panhandling zones,” piped up my mother. “Or over to Higgs Beach, where they hang out on those gazebos we saw yesterday near Connie’s party. It’s a free country. You can’t tell them not to come to paradise.”
    “People should pull their own weight,” he said to her.
    I shot her a warning glance. Now was not the time to get into a discussion about social justice with my father.
    “Some of them are Hayley’s friends,” Mom added with a big smile. “Tony was a big help to her in January when she almost drowned.”
    I shrugged, uncomfortable with her need to show him how well she knew me and my world. And honestly, a little uneasy about his reaction. He probably didn’t have the opportunity to meet many homeless people in the gilded New York City suburb of Summit, New Jersey.
    “Turn here,” I told Sam, pointing to a marina on the right hand of the road. Not a marina in the sense of a country club—it was more a hodgepodge collection of Jet Skis, paddleboards, kayaks, and beat-up motorboats. Connie and Ray were already standing on the dock, bundled like Eskimos against a colder-than-expected Key West March morning. My father flung the back door open and helped Allison from the car. I scrambled out after her.
    “Sorry about the weather,” Connie said as we trooped down the dock. “It’s not what we hoped for.”
    “None of this is what we hoped for,” my father muttered. We stopped in front of a battered powerboat minus all frills except a center console with a steering wheel attached.
    “I was expecting something a little bigger,” my mother whispered. She’s like me—a cat rather than a fish when it comes to water.
    Sam put an arm around my mother’s shoulder and drew her forward. “What’s the plan, Captain?” he asked Ray.
    “No plan, really,” said Ray. “The Coast Guard will already be out looking. But with all of us watching as we cruise around, there’s a good chance we might