by Cleo Coyle
Crap.
“I need backup, boss! You know what those people are like in the afternoons. Most of them haven’t had their caffeine fix since lunch. They’re animals!”
“Calm down, Esther. I’ll be down there in thirty. Just hold the fort alone for now.”
With a sigh, I snapped closed the phone. Joy hadn’t shown up yet, Napoleon Dornier and that black glossy envelope had disappeared, and one purse-lipped waiter, holding an armload of folded linen, was now giving me that look of strained politeness that clearly said: Excusez-moi, Madame. But would you mind getting the hell out of my way!
“Okay, okay, I’m going,” I mumbled. Then, yanking my little wheeled case of French presses behind me, I headed for the door.
THE rest of the afternoon and evening went by in a blur. It was Friday, an electric night for the Village, and the crowds of coffee drinkers and pastry eaters just kept on ringing the little bell above our front door.
After the office and hospital workers left, the pre- and postdinner crowds flooded us: couples on dates, NYU students hanging out, older acquaintances having long talks, cold, tired tourists hoping to warm up and wake up with a hot beverage. And though Saturday and even Sunday evenings were the biggest of the week for the bridge and tunnel crowd, Friday had its fair share of business from the residents of New Jersey and the other four of New York’s five boroughs.
Esther and I worked well as a team. The faster the crowds came in, the faster we turned them over with espressos, lattes, cappuccinos, muffins, cookies, cannoli, tarts, and, bizarrely, even a few icy coffee frappes—a chilling choice on a frosty November night, but who was I to judge a paying customer’s coffee craving?
By ten o’clock, the pace at the bar finally slowed, although dozens of customers were still lounging on the shop’s first and second floors, mostly clustered around the warmth of the fireplaces. By eleven fifteen, we were getting ready to start cleaning and closing.
“Do you want me to shoo the rest of the customers out?” Esther asked, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
I shook my head, wiping my own hands on my jeans—I’d changed back into work clothes after leaving Solange. “I’ll do it myself. You did a great job today, Esther. If you’ve finished restocking, you can hit the road.”
“Thanks, boss.” Esther yawned. “I’ve got to sack out fast and recuperate before BB takes me out tomorrow. I’d hate to be wrecked for our big date.”
“You’re still interested in that rapper?” I asked, too weary to mask my skeptical tone.
“Am I still interested?” Esther gawked at me through her black-framed glasses as if I’d just asked her if the Earth was flat. “I’ll have you know that boy rocks my world. And unless a dirty bomb goes off somewhere in the tristate area mañana, he’ll be rocking it at exactly this time twenty-four hours from now.”
I sighed. Esther was about the only person I knew who’d even consider bringing a nuclear fallout reference into her anticipation for a Saturday night date.
“Then I’m happy for you, Esther,” I told her sincerely. “Have a good night.”
“Ciao, boss!”
BY midnight, my Goth girl barista was long gone, and I had shooed the last of the customers out, too. I was about to twist the key on the front dead bolt when I noticed a familiar figure in a long, cinnamon-colored overcoat negotiating the traffic across Hudson Street.
The lanky, broad-shouldered detective strode right up to the Blend’s entrance and stood there, looking down at me through the beveled glass. I cracked open the heavy door.
“Hi, Mike.”
“Hi, Clare.”
“Can I come in?”
“Yes…of course…”
I stepped back and let Mike Quinn step through. A bone-chilling blast of damp air swept in with him off the river just a few blocks away. I shuddered, remembering that humidified cave of Keitel’s that had led to the misunderstanding with my daughter.
I still hadn’t heard from Joy. And I’d checked in with Matt so often, he’d told me to cool it already because his cell’s battery was about to die, and he still had a long night ahead squiring Mr. and Mrs. Kona Coffee, Jr., around.
While the Waipuna kids were with a sitter at the hotel, Matt had taken their young parents to a Broadway show and a late dinner. Now they were on their way to the first in a long list of nightspots that they’d read about on the Internet and wanted to visit.
“Did you get my voice mail message?” Mike asked. His tone was flat, his face impassive. The man had all the life of an ice sculpture.
“Your message?” I repeated weakly. “You mean the ominous one that said you wanted to have ‘a talk’ with me?”
Mike nodded. “I stopped by twice earlier, but Tucker told me you were uptown on business.”
“Yeah. That was your idea, if you recall. I pitched Solange on serving coffee from the Village Blend.”
“Oh, right…How did that go?”
“They want the contract, but it was still a catastrophe…”
I had so much to tell Mike: Joy’s close friend being murdered, Joy being looked at as a suspect, my infiltration of her workplace in search of the boy’s killer, the disastrous misunderstanding when my daughter found me in the arms of her married lover. Oh, where to begin?
“So…do you want your usual latte?” I asked, turning from the door. I began walking toward the espresso bar, but Mike didn’t follow.
“I can’t stay long, Clare,” he said sharply.
I turned back around. His face was still a stark plane. And his eyes, which were always so alive when they gazed at me, were now still, blue stones. There was no sentiment in them, no playfulness, no affection, hardly a bit of life.
“You don’t have time for coffee?” I said weakly. “Not even one cup?”
“It’s Friday, and the clubs are crowded,” he said. “We’ve doubled the number of undercover officers tonight.”
“Oh, right…the May-September gang. Still no bites?”
“Nothing yet. And they struck twice last night; a man and a woman were victimized after leaving two different clubs. We missed them both.”
I could see that failure had been hard for him. Really hard. It was there in his tense jawline, his weary posture. “Well, hang in there,” I said gamely. “The biggest clubbing days are tonight, tomorrow, and even Sunday. I bet you’ll nail them before the end of the weekend.”
“Yeah…” Mike said, but he failed to buck up. Then his dead expression became downright grim. “Listen, Clare, I don’t have much time, and I didn’t want to do this over the phone.”
Oh, God. “The talk.” Oh, God…
“I’m sorry, Clare. I really am…”
I stepped back, closed my eyes. He’s really going to do this. He’s going to break us up. I could feel tears already welling up in my eyes and throat, choking me.
“Just say it, Mike.”
“Okay.” He took a breath. “I want you to kick Allegro out of your apartment.”
I opened my eyes. “What?”
“I want you to take away his key, throw out his pants and his shirts and his shoes. I want you to evict him from your living space.”
“I can’t do that, Mike. My ex-husband has a legal right to live there. His mother owns the duplex, the entire building, and she had us sign papers—”
“Then you need to leave, because I can’t go on like this. I want a relationship with you, Clare. I do. And I know you want more from me. Believe me, I’m willing to give it. But I need to know the woman I’m falling for isn’t going to make a fool of me.”
“Mike, I don’t know why you think—”
“Hear me out, Clare!”
His sharp tone floored me. Mike rarely raised his voice. And when he did, it was a holy terror—the kind of intensity that came from years of cowing defiant criminals and taking command at crime scenes.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Talk.”
“I’m not a kid anymore, some Dudley Do-Right in a uniform that I was
at twenty-six when I met my wife. I won’t just stumble along in a relationship again, letting things happen to me, hoping things just work themselves out. I’ve been through too much craziness already in my marriage. So you take the time you need to think about what you want—”
“Stop, Mike. Please!”
Quinn did. And I was stunned to see the look of pure dread come over his face. I’d never seen him scared before. My God, he thinks I’m going to choose my ex-husband.
“Mike, I don’t have to think about it,” I said quickly. “I know what I want. I want you. I want us to give this relationship a chance. If I didn’t, I never would have said yes to a first date, let alone a second, third, fourth—what are we up to now?”
“We’ve been out nine times, Clare. Believe me, I’ve kept count. Nine agonizingly arousing necking sessions followed by a number of extremely long, lonely hours alone in bed.”
“Well, you won’t have to be alone much longer. And neither will I.”
“Are you sure, Clare? You’re really prepared to move out of that beautiful, convenient duplex upstairs?” He jerked his thumb towards the ceiling.
“Moving out isn’t the problem,” I said with a sigh. “It’s where do I move in? Rents are crazy steep in the West Village. Maybe I should try Alphabet City, too. It isn’t too far. How did you get your place? I never asked you about it, but it seemed like you found it pretty fast.”
“The landlord held an opening for me in the building.”
“He what? He held an opening? In Manhattan? Were you blackmailing the guy?”
Mike’s grim expression finally loosened a little. His chilly gaze began to warm. “The landlord’s a retired detective. I was his partner for a few years there. He inherited the building, and he’s been renting to divorced cops ever since.”
“Only divorced cops?”
“The rookies are usually still living at home. The married guys get houses in the boroughs. It’s the older guys whose marriages break up that need the camaraderie. We even get together once a week to hang out, shoot the breeze.”
“So you belong to a divorced men’s group?”
“We don’t think of it that way.”
“Of course you do. That’s why you never mentioned it until now.” I stifled a laugh.
Mike rolled his eyes, checked his watch. “I’ve got to get going…”
“Okay, but…can we make a date to meet? At your place? I promise I’ll move out of the duplex the first chance I get. Is that good enough for you?”
Mike smiled for the first time since he walked in my door. “Yeah,” he said, leaning in. “It’s good enough.”
His hand caressed my hair, and he pulled me close, brushed my lips with his. But the light kiss wasn’t enough for either of us, and we locked pretty tightly for a few minutes.
“How about we get together Monday afternoon?” Mike suggested softly when we finally parted. “If you can take off, I can arrange a little picnic on the floor of my one-bedroom.”
I smiled. “Let me guess; it’s a picnic because you still don’t have actual furniture yet.”
“You’re right, Cosi. I admit it. See that? And you didn’t even have to beat it out of me.” Mike’s eyes were laughing now; his voice was warm. I’d finally melted him down to the human race.
“I told you before, Lieutenant, many times. You should let me help you detect some furniture. I promise I’ll go easy on your credit cards.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll give in soon. In the meantime, you’ll be happy to know I do have a nice big bed in the bedroom. Is that good enough for now?”
“That’s more than good enough, mister. That’s I’ll be there with bells on.”
“Really…just bells, huh?” Mike’s eyebrow arched. “Kinky.”
I swatted him. He laughed. And then we heard a bell for real; the front door was opening again.
“Hello, hello!” Matt’s mother waltzed in, bundled in a floor-length fur.
“Madame?” I checked my watch. “It’s almost twelve thirty. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you in person, Clare. It’s rather important.”
Mike smiled down at me. “I have to get going.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll call you.”
I nodded. “Be safe.”
Mike winked at me, gave a polite nod to Madame, and then he was gone.
“I remember that young man,” Madame said as she waved me over to a café table. “He’s that nice detective who fixed your traffic violation last month.”
“You mean the BOLO that resulted from the police chase that ensued after you told me to run that red light in Brooklyn?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Mike’s handy that way.” We both sat down. “So what’s up? Do you want some coffee?”
“No, dear.”
I threw up my hands. “I can’t give it away tonight.”
“It’s just that I don’t have much time. My young man is picking me up here in”—she checked her watch—“fifteen minutes.”
“Your young man?”
“He’s only just turned sixty-six, quite a difference in our ages, but I couldn’t resist his charms.”
“Is this the man who was ‘eye-flirting’ with you last night at Solange?”
“The same. We’re going to a nightclub downtown. I haven’t done anything like that in years. And I’m quite looking forward to it!”
“Well, I’d love to hear more about him, but I don’t want you to keep him waiting. So what’s up? Why are you here so late?”
“It’s Joy.”
My breath caught. “You’ve heard from her?”
“I just left her, Clare. We spent the evening together. Now she’s on her way uptown.”
“Uptown? Why?”
“She’s going back to Solange, of course.”
FIFTEEN
INSIDE of six minutes, I’d gotten the entire story out of Madame and was waving down a taxi on Hudson. Then I was off, my driver heading uptown, transporting me back to Tommy Keitel’s hellacious house of haute cuisine.
Madame stayed behind to lock up the Blend, and I was indebted to her for that. But I was even more grateful to her for telling me the one thing I’d been waiting all night to hear:
“Joy wasn’t upset with you, Clare, not in the least.”
According to Madame, when Joy had bolted away from that cheese cave and out of the cellar, she hadn’t been running from me. She’d been running from Tommy Keitel…
“She was mortified by Keitel’s behavior,” Madame had told me. “Seeing his hands on you in that small room, she knew instantly that he was making a pass. It was a tremendous blow to her ego. But she didn’t blame you. She blamed him.”
Apparently, after Joy’s long, tearful walk, she’d returned to her job. But as soon as she started working at her prep table, Tommy Keitel delivered the final cut.
“He loudly told her in the open kitchen that he’d made a decision. He no longer wanted to see her romantically. They were through. Not only that, as of Monday, she was to report to Robbie Gray at his restaurant downtown, where she’d serve out the remainder of her internship year.”
Listening to Madame’s tale, my whole body went rigid. I’d already known what Tommy had planned for Joy, but hearing the blow-by-blow made me sick to my stomach.
“Our girl was humiliated, of course,” Madame went on. “The entire kitchen brigade heard Tommy toss Joy away like a piece of substandard produce. Rather than break down in front of her colleagues, she fled the restaurant and took a cab to my apartment to cry it all out.”
My shoulders sagged upon hearing that. “Why didn’t she come to me?”
“Because, Clare, down deep Joy knew you were right all along about Tommy. Now she’s humiliated. But most of all, she’s ashamed. She didn’t want you to see her crying over Tommy. That’s what she told me. She simply wants you to be proud of her again—”
“But I am proud of her! She made a mistake. But for so many reasons, I’m
still so very proud of Joy. She should know that.”
“She knows you love her, Clare. That much I can promise you. She only came to me because she knew I wouldn’t ask questions. I’d just let her cry it out. And my goodness, she did. She cried herself to sleep on my sofa. When she woke up, she told me the whole story.
“I invited her to stay the night, but she said no. She washed her face, brushed her hair, and announced she was going back to Solange to retrieve her knives and personal items. I thought it was rather late to do that, but she was quite determined. And she assured me that someone would be there…”
OF course, someone would be there—Tommy Keitel himself—which was why I was speeding toward his restaurant now. Joy wasn’t going back there to pick up her knives and personal items. I was certain she was really going there to see Tommy one more time, either to tell him off or make a last desperate attempt to win him back.
But if Joy was going up there looking for closure, explanations, or any kind of comfort, she was about to be severely disappointed because Keitel’s singular goal tonight was to leave her emotionally bloodied. I couldn’t let her go through that alone, but there was an even more vital reason I was speeding north. Solange was a minefield, and I didn’t want Joy anywhere near its ticking bombs, especially at this hour.
Tommy Keitel and Anton Wright were feuding about something. Who knew if that would lead to violence? And even though Brigitte Rouille had been fired, it didn’t preclude her returning to the scene to vent some rage. Then there was that glossy black envelope that made Tommy crazy. What was inside that thing? Was someone blackmailing the man? Would there be deadly repercussions if he failed to comply?
And what about Tommy’s creepy Russian friend Nick? The mysterious man in black from Brighton Beach had arrived at the restaurant late the previous night. If he really was a mobster, then any number of shady things could be going on in Solange’s kitchen after hours.
