Kate wore a fluorescent yellow tank top over bicycle shorts, her long, light brown hair was pulled up in a sleek ponytail.
“Elizabeth Holt, do you think you could pile any more food on your plate?” Kate was a quasi-vegetarian, occasionally eating fish and poultry, never red meat.
Liz was on her second course. Her first course had consisted of mini crab cakes with a mustard remoulade and creamy seafood chowder. She pushed her twice-baked Brie-and-chive potato up against a large slab of medium-rare prime rib smothered in Pierre’s famous horseradish sauce. “Now I have room.” She tucked a rogue strand of strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear and took a bite of the potato. “Oh boy, did I miss Pierre’s cooking when I lived in New York.”
“You’re as good of a chef as Pierre,” Kate said. “Isn’t she, Uncle Fenton?”
Liz’s father wasn’t Kate’s real uncle, but the ties were just as strong.
“Yes, she is, Katie.” He looked at an open file on the table. Liz couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t immersed in one of his cases. Even though her father was a retired Brevard County public defender, he was still an active member of the bar association and took on small cases for the locals in the Melbourne Beach area.
Liz wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I love cooking, but there’s nothing better than someone cooking for you, especially if that someone is Pierre. I have to admit, with all the top restaurants in Manhattan and their molecular cooking hocus-pocus, using foams and freeze-dried techniques, not one came close to providing a meal that could match this.” She took another bite of prime rib, noticing Kate staring at her fork. Liz waved it in front of her. “Sure you don’t want a teensy bite?”
Kate looked around to see if anyone was watching, opened her mouth, and said, “Hurry!” She swallowed the bite in ecstasy, her eyes glazing over.
Did Kate think the vegetarian police would arrest her? Liz knew her friend’s Kryptonite—Kate never turned down a dare. Liz’s Kryptonite was the scar on her cheek. Kate had driven her to Vero Beach for the last procedure. Now that the healing on the outside had begun, she needed to focus on trying to heal the inside. Liz got up from the table, headed to the sideboard, and snatched a couple ramekins of crème brûlée.
When Liz got back to the table, Kate whispered, “What the heck is Regina Harrington-Worth doing here?”
“I have no clue. I’ll have to ask Aunt Amelia.” Liz turned to her father. “Dad, do you know?”
He said, “Apparently, they couldn’t find an open hotel that would take pets. You know your great-aunt—you need refuge for a four-legged pet or even a two-legged bird, the Indialantic by the Sea Hotel and Emporium will accommodate you.”
Kate laughed. “Boy, did you say a mouthful, Uncle Fenton. I think she’d even take in a no-legged snake—possibly drawing the line if it was poisonous.” Kate reached over and grabbed one of Liz’s brûlées.
“Hey, hands off. Get your own.”
“Try and stop me. Too much sugar for you. You have to learn balance.” Kate finished the brûlée in three spoonfuls.
Aunt Amelia was on the other side of the dining room, her arms gesturing wildly in their theatrical splendor as she talked to the hotel’s housekeeper, Iris Kimball, or “Battle-axe Iris,” as Barnacle Bob called her. Iris was the lucky one assigned to feeding him and cleaning his cage. BB was a creature of habit, bordering on obsessive-compulsive. He didn’t like his routine upset. “Two p.m. Polly wants his freakin’ cracker. Dammit!”
Liz glanced over at Brittany Poole, proprietress of the women’s boutique Sirens by the Sea. Knowing Liz and Brittany’s murky history, she was surprised her great-aunt would rent out a space in the emporium to Brittany. In the center of Brittany’s plate were three spears of asparagus, which explained her waif-like appearance. Sitting at the table with Brittany were Edward Goren and his son, Nick. Edward rented Gold Coast by the Sea and was well-known in the area as a deep-sea treasure hunter. Per Aunt Amelia, he’d sold his business to another salvager based out of Miami. Edward’s son, Nick, assisted him in appraising gold and coins and had recently started dating Brittany. Liz wished him good luck on that one.
Francie Jenkins and Minna Presley, who leased the emporium shop Home Arts by the Sea, sat at the table closest to the arched French doors that opened to a view of the ocean. Both women were in their forties and recently divorced. Like Liz and Kate, they’d been friends since childhood and lived together in a small cottage a mile south of the hotel.
“Pops” Stone, the elderly proprietor of Deli-cacies by the Sea, sat at a table near the open doors to the hotel’s inner courtyard, the crowning glory of the Indialantic’s early twentieth-century Spanish Revival architecture. When Pops’s wife died a year ago, he’d sold his thriving deli in Melbourne and rented one of the emporium spaces. At Pops’s table was someone Liz had never seen before. Almost on cue, the guy turned toward her, his gaze stalling for a moment on Liz’s face. Was he looking at her scar? Doubtful, but something about him irritated her. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. Liz turned her head toward Kate and whispered, “Don’t look now, but who’s
