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

darling? And the apps that are being developed are nothing short of miraculous.”
    I ate a little of my breakfast, waiting for another break in the conversation, and telling myself not to take the cold shoulders personally.
    “I adored your most recent cookbook,” I said to Yoshe when I got the opportunity. “It read like a novel.Sheer pleasure! I tried the Asian noodle salad with sticky ginger tofu cubes—I swear it’s the only time my guy hasn’t refused tofu outright.”
    In fact, I didn’t have a guy and if I did, I wouldn’t force tofu on him, but she wouldn’t know that. “We’re running features on conference panelists in our magazine for the rest of January and I’d love to do one on you and your work. Believe it or not, most of our articles are starting to get picked up by the Associated Press.”
    Finally she beamed, slid a business card out of her pocket, and handed it over. “Thanks. It would be my pleasure.”
    I turned to the rotund woman next to her, Sigrid the novelist. “Your latest novel,” I said, “was like eating a great meal. I savored every word.”
    She simpered. “Why, thank you.”
    Though I had admired her novel for its meticulous wordsmithing, it read more like the prickly Scandinavian top chef Jonah had scorned in his opening remarks than the romance-laden comfort food I preferred when I wasn’t working. My ability to manufacture bologna seemed to be expanding with each minute on the job.
    On the other hand, yes, I was feeding them lines, but at the same time, I wasn’t. Every overwrought word was true. Because underneath the writers’ posturing and jostling for position, in each of their books, I recognized their true love for food. This was my tribe. If they’d only let me join them.
    “I was so sad when I came to the end,” I added to Sigrid. “Any chance I could talk with you later about your creative process and how you manage to makefood such a vibrant character in your fiction?” This woman perked up too, her multiple chins wobbling as she thanked me. She took her colleague’s card from my hand and jotted her cell phone number on the back.
    “Perhaps I could take you to lunch?” I asked. Both of the women nodded.
    The conversation veered to Jonah and his unfortunate demise. “Someone said a local writer had to dive into the swimming pool and pull him out,” Sigrid reported breathlessly.
    “I was the one who found Jonah,” I said in a quiet voice. “It was really more a decorative pool than anything. I only got wet up to my knees. He got unlucky drowning in water that shallow.”
    Yoshe nibbled on her lower lip. “Is it possible that he had a heart attack or an embolism, fell into the pool, and was in too much distress to save himself?”
    “Anything’s possible,” I said, thinking Bransford would kill me if I started to blab about the missing broken bird statue or the blow to Jonah’s forehead.
    “He looked—so pale he was almost blue.” I sighed. “Other than that, I don’t know what really happened.”
    “Awful,” said Sigrid. “I’m not saying this has anything to do with it, but Jonah was chugging those little cans of caffeinated drinks all evening. While we were waiting to go on with him backstage, I’m certain he had two of them.”
    “He could just as well have been drinking alcohol,” said the man who’d been standing by silently. I thought I recognized his face from the conference program—he called himself a culinary poet.
    “Have you glanced through
You Must Try the Skate
?” he asked. “That book is positively riddled with allusions to impulse control. And who chose that ridiculous book title?” he added. “He practically had to have been drinking to go on about bringing up the curtains on the rest of us, the way he did last night. All of us have skeletons we’d rather not rattle—he simply chose to dump his on the unsuspecting public. If I had known this was an invitation to a public encounter group, I would have