Read Online Death in Four Courses: A Key West Food Critic Mystery by Lucy Burdette - Free Book Online

ladies.”
    “That’s easy,” said Yoshe, the Asian cookbook author, jumping in before the other two women could speak. “Good cooking has a point of view.”
    “A point of view,” said Fritz, tugging on one pink earlobe and grimacing. “Meaning the pot stickers talk back?” The audience tittered. “I’m going to get back to you on that. Anyone else?”
    “A writer’s personality is revealed by her connection to food,” said Olivia. “Some people are feeders and some are withholders.”
    I wrote that down and underlined the words twice. Feeders. Withholders. I knew which I wanted to be. Mom reached over to squeeze my hand.
    “I see why you admire her,” she whispered. “And isn’t her outfit gorgeous?”
    “I use food as a vehicle for my characters’ turning points,” said Sigrid. “In
Dark Sweden
, for example…” She paused, resting her pointer finger on her chin and looking out at the audience. “Dare I mention something that might be a spoiler in the denouement? I imagine you are more interested in food than mystery—am I right?” She nodded, hearing murmurs of agreement. “So, as I was saying, in
Dark Sweden
, the murderer reveals himself over a platter of raw oysters. Only the detective doesn’t realize it until much later because he’s so distracted by the distasteful act of swallowing something slick and slimy. He’s picturing how difficult it is to get inside the shell, and then how disgusting this creature is. In fact, he’s wondering who in the worldever thought of eating an oyster, rather than paying attention to the conversation. At the moment he realizes how he’d missed this opportunity to clinch his case, he also understands that his finicky palate will continue to interfere with his job unless he opens himself up. Sort of like a reluctant mollusk,” she added.
    The audience tittered.
    “That’s at least three sentences,” said Fritz. “Maybe four? Or five? But we’ll allow it because you made us laugh. So basically all of you people are saying in one way or another that writers pretend to write about food but it’s really about something else?”
    “It’s not a pretense,” said Olivia as she waggled a forefinger. “We write about food because not only is it necessary to our human condition, but we love and appreciate it dearly. The underlying messages betray themselves whether we intend to reveal them or whether we’d prefer that they remain concealed. And it’s not only food writers, by the way. It’s all writing. All good writing.”
    Fifteen minutes later, I could imagine how sharply Jonah would be missed this weekend. Like Fritz, he’d have preened a bit like a bantam rooster. But I thought he would have pushed these writers harder to bare the embarrassing truths in their histories. He’d have insisted that Yoshe describe her point of view and then challenged her consistency over the range of her cookbooks. He’d have egged on each of them to say whether she was a feeder or a withholder, perhaps implying that Sigrid, whether or not she cooked for others, certainly knew how to feed herself. He would havecoaxed out the underlying competitiveness of these women and watched them nip tiny bites from one another’s flesh like birds tasting ripe tomatoes. It would not have been boring, as this first half hour threatened to be after those titillating introductions.
    My mind pinged to this question: Was it possible that Jonah’s killer was on the stage? What kind of person would have the nerve to kill a prominent food critic, writer, and chef, and then sit before four hundred people and pontificate about recipes or the way food was woven into her fiction like a character? I couldn’t imagine doing this myself—wouldn’t a killer’s hands and eyes and words betray him or her? But I didn’t know any of these people well enough to rule them out.
    Although tempted to return to the lobby to see if I could catch one of the women fresh off their panel for an