“Holy mother!” said Tony.
I crouched down and crawled into the tiny space behind him. Inside, the hut smelled like unwashed clothes, sweat, urine, and the coppery scent of fresh blood. Tony kneeled beside what appeared to be a pile of rags. Only bloody. As I looked more closely, I recognized Turtle’s battered face. And shreds of the black cape he’d been wearing that first morning at the harbor.
“Oh my god, is he alive?”
Tony brushed a strand of red hair off Turtle’s face, and then took his hand and felt for a pulse. “No idea. You better get help.”
My heart sank and I backpedaled, whipping out my cell phone to call 911 for an ambulance. And then I called Torrence.
“We found him. Turtle,” I said, feeling a surge of anger and then hopelessness. “Someone beat the crap out of him. And he crawled off to die like a wounded dog.”
21
Plumes of white, pink, and purple blossoms offset the one hundred shades of green our little city is known for this time of year: lime, celery, and avocado, butter lettuce and kale, Granny Smith apple and broccoli and sage.
—Jennie Shortridge, Eating Heaven
By the time I got home it was close to six. I felt jittery and sick to my stomach about Turtle, and definitely blue. He’d only looked worse the longer I stayed—barely breathing and sticky with old blood. At least I knew he was alive because he produced a groan like pain itself when the EMTs arrived and loaded him, almost tenderly, onto a gurney.
Torrence had arrived on the scene with another cop shortly before the EMTs. Even he had a horrified expression when he emerged from the bushes—and I imagined he’d seen the worst of the worst. After Turtle was packed up and carried off, Torrence poked around looking for evidence to explain the beating. I told him everything I could think of—about the fight I’d broken up between Derek and Turtle a couple days ago, and Elsa’s report about another argument early this morning.
Then I motored on home, feeling washed out and impotent. I couldn’t do anything for Turtle—either he’d make it or he wouldn’t. Even though it sounded a little shallow and silly, the only thing I could think of that might drive those hideous images out of my head was cooking.
Ever since the wedding challenge the other day, I’d been thinking about Connie’s wedding cake. If I was going to bake for her wedding, I wanted to make something that would reflect her best qualities, the things Ray had seen shining in her. A cake that was solid, yet light. Sweet but not treacle-y, with just the right dash of tart. If I could tweak those lime cupcakes into a version that would be lighter and less sweet, they could be the answer.
I paged through several cookbooks, looking for a recipe that might come close to the lime cupcakes that Chef Stentzel had made. Without green food coloring. And with half the frosting. And a third less sugar. But nothing popped out. I booted up my computer and did a search. Mystery Lovers Kitchen, a Web site created by a gang of culinary mystery writers, provided the closest approximation—at least a place to start.
While one stick of butter softened in Miss Gloria’s microwave, I set another stick and some cream cheese for frosting out on the counter. Then I pulled out the other ingredients—flour, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, baking powder, baking soda, limes. As I clattered from the pantry to the fridge and back to the small counter, both cats appeared from wherever they’d been napping, crowding underfoot in case something delicious should drop.
Miss Gloria arrived home as I finished folding the wet ingredients into the dry. She watched me pipe the cupcake liners half full of lovely pale green batter.
“How was your day?” I asked as I slid the cupcakes into the oven.
She described several of the bridge hands she’d played with her friends over the afternoon, including a grand slam that was bid and made. “Pretty good for a foursome of old biddies,” she said with a cackle. “And Annie Dubisson did real well with the snacks—nothing like you’d make, of course. But at least none of us went hungry.” She sat on the banquette along the kitchen wall and wiped her glasses. “What did you do today?”
Turtle’s face flashed through my mind but I wasn’t ready to talk about him—the memory was too vivid and raw. And Miss Gloria was tender—it would only upset her. So I told her about the interviews with the chefs and judges. And how I’d virtually stalked Buddy Higgs until he admitted he’d had a fling with Sam Rizzoli’s wife.
I gathered the dirty dishes, dropped them into the sink filled with soapy water, and began to wash. “The thing is, she insisted this morning that she didn’t even know him.”