A Killer Cup of Joe

by Jennifer Templeman

  “Two, actually,” he answered, willing to let her change the subject. Holding up his index finger, he said, “UPS was delivering a package for you this morning, and I knew you’d already left for the day, so I signed for it and have it in my apartment.”

  “Thanks, I’ll come by and pick it up.” They’d watched out for each other like that in the past, so there was nothing suspicious about him being neighborly.

  Then he added a second finger in the air and stated, “And I talked to Joe this morning. He said you didn’t stop by his shop for coffee.” After pointing out her failure to wait in line at his cousin’s coffee shop, he raised an eyebrow, questioning why. “His schedule is set now that he’s done traveling to deal with a vendor in California. I told you he was there every Monday morning and he wants to meet you.”

  What was this? The Federal Bureau of Matchmakers? “I stopped by, but the line was long. A new girl was struggling to make the drinks, so I couldn’t wait to get up to the counter.”

  Again, he raised his hands, as though surrendering, and backed up to her doorway. “I’m just saying, he’s seen you in there before. I’ve told him about you, yet he’s still interested in getting to know you himself. You could do worse,” he added, sounding so much like her mother.

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Ellie conceded, trying to end the conversation.

  “Besides, he owns the shop and learned to be a barista in Italy. I’m pretty sure he could feed that addiction of yours better than Dunkin’ could,” Phillips pointed out. “He works late on Mondays, too. You might enjoy a pick-me-up after work.”

  With that piece of unsolicited advice, Phillips disappeared, leaving her to wonder exactly why her private life mattered to him.

  Chapter Two

  “All I’m saying is there will come a time when you’ll wish you’d listened to me,” Janice, Ellie’s mother, harped when she declined the invitation to come home and have dinner with her mom at the country club, where Janice was a life-long member. “There will be several young gentlemen there who would be interested in meeting you and could probably learn to accept the fact that you work in law enforcement.”

  “Mom, I work for the FBI. They shouldn’t learn to accept it. They should be slightly impressed.” She’d tried every other angle to get her mother to accept her job, so she didn’t think there was anything to lose by pointing out the obvious. There were a large number of men who didn’t like the idea of a woman strapping on a Glock to drive to work every day in one of the most secure buildings in the country. Unfortunately, a few of them worked in the same office Ellie did. At her age, she was entirely too set in her ways to consider changing just because she might be a little intimidating to someone her mother wanted her to meet.

  After another twenty minutes of suggesting ways Ellie could salvage her life if she would simply get married, the obligatory phone call for the week finished. Fortunately, the good timing worked in her favor, and the second she turned off the phone, it was the right time to prepare the sauce for her dinner, deglazing the pan with white wine. It seemed appropriate to wash the sour taste out of her mouth that appeared every Thursday evening, and she took a few long sips straight from the bottle before pouring a cup in the pan and waiting for most of it to cook off.

  Three fast knocks followed by two much slower ones told her Phillips was at the door. She checked the peephole out of habit more than curiosity before taking the chain off and undoing the deadbolt. Phillips took that as an invitation and opened the door himself, just as he usually did.

  There was no denying the fact that Phillips was a good-looking man. His dark hair and olive skin tone perfectly set off his muscular build. At two inches over six feet, he stood four inches above Ellie. And the T-shirt that was stretched over his chest spoke as much of the time he dedicated in the gym as it did to his genetic lottery. She hated that she found herself looking him over every time he was nearby, but managed to make herself feel slightly better by rationalizing that she had a keen eye for detail and Phillips had plenty of details for her eyes to catalogue. Plus, she hoped she wasn’t fooling herself by saying she’d never been overly obvious. Knowing him as well as she did, Ellie suspected he’d point it out if her cataloging ever got carried away.

  “It smells good in here, Ellie,” he said, holding a large box in his left arm. In all likelihood, it would have taken both of her arms and a bit of colorful language to carry it, but he effortlessly moved it around balanced in the crook of his elbow and forearm.

  “It’s chicken pomodoro,” she replied to his initial comment, remembering she’d walked away just when she needed to throw in the broth, lemon juice, and herbs.

  He followed her into the kitchen, exhibiting that rare ability to seem at home no matter where he was.

  “You’ve got more than one piece of chicken on the plate.” He pointed to the flattened chicken breasts she had previously fried and was now attempting to keep warm while the linguini boiled and the sauce continued cooking.

  “Very astute,” she replied, without taking the bait he was throwing out for an invitation to stay for dinner.

  “You’re a small woman. Surely you aren’t going to eat all of that,” he pushed once more, no longer hiding the smile on his face.

  “Of course not,” she defended her eating habits. “I just never got the hang of cooking in tiny portions, so I planned on eating the leftovers tomorrow.”

  “There’s a baseball game on tonight,” he commented, throwing out his final card—and didn’t even wait for Ellie to respond before reaching over and pulling out a second plate.

  “Grab yourself a glass, too, since you appear to be staying for dinner.” She attempted to sound stern and pretended to tend the sauce so he couldn’t see the trace of a smile that came over her face.

  When he poured some Chardonnay for himself from the bottle she’d been directly sampling, she almost stopped him. But he dug his own grave when he tugged her ponytail and said, “Honestly, Ellie, your place is spotless, you’re a damn good cook, and you’ve got a solid job. Why is it that you’re single?”

  “Perhaps it’s because of the company I keep. All the decent guys are scared off,” she bit back, hoping he’d let it go.

  They sat side by side on the floor, leaning against the couch with the coffee table serving as a dining room table so that they could argue over the game on the television. Ellie’s dad had been a life-long Red Sox fan, and she'd inherited not only his ability to read when someone was lying, but his memory for sports statistics, especially concerning this one particular team. Despite what she might say aloud, the fact that Phillips was also a closet member of Red Sox Nation only served to elevate her opinion of him.

  After arguing about the lack of performance from the guys in red for two hours, they’d finished the chicken, pasta, and salad, so he stood up to call it a night. He knew her day started an hour before his, so he politely excused himself.

  Just before he walked into the hall between the two doors, he turned back and said, “I didn’t mean to stick my nose in where it didn’t belong this morning when you were talking to Peters. But I’ve watched him climb in the eyes of the bigwigs on the west coast since he started sending stuff to you. There’s a fine line between using every tool in your belt to solve a case and having someone else do the work you should be doing. Watch yourself, okay?”

  That was a long speech from Phillips, considering it was personal. He could joke for hours, but if you needed him to say one thing with true emotional content, he’d clam up. While it was tempting to give him a hard time, she decided to let it go.

  “I’ll keep it in mind, but I think it’s okay,” she replied. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged, like he knew exactly what she was going to say but felt like he'd had to at least try. There was an awkward second before Phillips grinned. “Maybe I just want to be sure he never hears that you can cook. If he found out you could put a meal like we just ate on the table, he might request a transfer, and I’d have to pu
t up with his blond head all the time.”

  “You’re welcome,” she responded, much more comfortable with the teasing side of Phillips. It was the part of him she had more experience with, so she knew how to handle it.

  “How it is that you can fix a meal like that and still can’t brew a cup of coffee I’ll never understand,” he added, making her wish she’d managed to do more than just drink out of the wine bottle first.

  Without a response, she shut and locked her door. It was already later than she usually stayed up, so she quickly cleaned up the kitchen and got ready for bed. As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered what her mother would think of her having conversations about music with a guy from California in the morning and then eating a simple meal for two in the den with another man that same evening. It was probably best Janice didn’t know, or she’d try to figure out which would be more impressive to introduce to her friends at the club and start looking at china patterns, in the hope of planning her daughter's wedding. Ellie made a mental note to call Anne to see if she could get a sitter sometime soon so that they could go out. She needed a night of freedom from work, an interfering parent, and neighbors who thought they knew best.

  The next morning began as it always did, a run around the lake in the park near her apartment that ended with a confirmation of the seventeen steps up to her floor—including the two that no other building seemed to share. She took a moment to envy people who could live full lives without ever noticing an errant fact like that. They didn’t know what it was like to be forced to dwell on it for long periods of time and could probably be more productive than she could because their mind didn’t jump down rabbit holes and refuse to come back for long moments.

  Luck was on her side, because there were no cars in the drive-thru of Mocha Joe’s, giving Ellie the chance to get a large coffee with half a sugar and a full cream. It was such a simple order, and this shop was the only place where she was reasonably assured to get what she wanted instead of a bleached-out hot drink loaded in sugar. Honestly, if the other coffee places weren’t going to bother filling her order the way she placed it, what was the point in asking her how she wanted her morning brew?

  Through the drive-thru window, she caught a glimpse of Phillips’s cousin Joe, the owner and namesake of the shop. Fortunately, he didn’t see her, so she was able to slip away undetected and not lose any time to the idle chitchat she seemed to struggle with. The fact that Joe hadn’t held back in telling Phillips about his interest in Ellie only compounded her confusion. What type of successful businessman would gush to an FBI agent about a quiet woman who seemed to wear variations of the same thing every day? Until she had that mystery solved, she wasn’t interested in pursuing what Phillips described as something that might be, at its worst, a fun night out, and at its best, a whole weekend of memories. Ellie had seen Phillips ridding himself of his “weekend memories” on Monday morning, and she didn’t think that scene was for her.

  The walkthrough at the office proved that it had been another quiet evening down in the basement, so she set about working through the files her boss had left for review. By lunchtime, she’d finished all of them, which had her feeling as though this would be an easy day. She should have known better than to assume anything about her day would be so simple.

  Not hungry enough to brave waiting in the cafeteria line during the noon rush, she decided to tackle her e-mail instead. This gave her the chance to see that she had two notes from Agent Peters, so she replied to everyone else, saving his notes. Although she knew it was silly, holding what she hoped was the best for last, she still couldn’t pass up the opportunity to trudge through the dreaded work correspondence with the special treat she’d saved for the end. Despite the fact that she told everyone she was opposed to anything other than professional relationships at work, she found herself smiling because there was more than one message from him. One was probably directly related to the case file she’d begun reviewing yesterday, but the second was likely to be personal in nature.

  The first message was short, which surprised her, as she’d thought it would be filled with case details.

  Ellie, I apologize if I sounded short during our phone conversation yesterday. It’s fair to say that Phillips and I have a bit of a history, and I never figured you’d allowed someone like him to hang out in your office. In my surprise, I may have been rude, and I wanted to be sure you understood it was in no way directed to you. Thanks for all your help. ~Bobby

  Ellie quickly typed back a response.

  Dear Agent Peters, while I certainly understand how Phillips can bring out the worst in a person, you have nothing to apologize for. I was unaware of you behaving in a manner I would have described as rude, so don’t worry. Any chance you would expound on the history between you two? ~Ellie

  Getting that out of the way, she clicked on the second note and found a list of hobbies and after-work activities that each of the victims participated in. She scanned the list quickly and didn’t see any direct matches, which was a disappointment. There were a couple of items she didn’t recognize, so she couldn’t be sure if they were related or not. Both of them had regular activities at the gym, but they were members at different facilities. It was frustrating to have a gut feeling that the answer was right in front of her, but she just couldn’t see it. The sooner they found something to tie the women together, the quicker they could begin to develop a theory for what drew the killer to them and hopefully keep him from striking out again.

  In addition to the lists of activities, Agent Peters had included blown-up photos of the necklaces on each of the women. They were too blurry to allow her to fully examine them, but they were similar enough in color and shape. Plus there appeared to be some kind of unusual and intricate design on each of them. This felt like something that should be pursued, so she quickly replied.

  This could be nothing, but I think it would be well worth your time to figure out where the necklaces were made, and if possible, get real photos of the actual pendants instead of blowups from the crime scene shots. It looks like they’re the same, but the detail is too fuzzy for me to examine any closer. Because the design appears to be unusual, if they came from the same place, you might finally have your link between the two women.

  Feeling as though she’d accomplished something, she reluctantly went to lunch. She was only ten pages into a book, when one of the women she’d seen a few times upstairs sat down across from her and began talking. Ellie’s first reaction was to ignore the stranger in the hope she would take a hint and disappear, but then she thought back to how she’d been taught to behave and knew her conscience wouldn’t allow her to completely ignore the lunch intruder for long.

  The way the stranger continually spun a strand of hair so bleached, it almost appeared yellow, around her finger was distracting. Even though she missed this woman’s opening couple of sentences, she was able to easily pick up the meaning when the woman said, “So, how well do you know Agent Phillips?”

  “Not very,” she answered honestly. Knowing what foods a person enjoyed eating, how they took their coffee, or how they enjoyed screaming at bad calls by an umpire weren’t the same thing as truly knowing a person.

  “But you live in the same apartment complex, right?” Whoever this was didn’t appear to be daunted by a lack of enthusiasm for the conversation.

  “We live across the hall from each other.” Ellie decided if she tried a little harder to engage in the conversation, she might be able to make this whole episode end sooner.

  “Can you tell me if he’s been out lately?” The young woman seemed so full of hope that Ellie would be able to give her the answer she most wanted that a reply seemed to come out before any other response could be considered.

  “Last night, he had dinner with someone, but they were just old friends. Other than that, he tends to only date on the weekends, and I don’t remember a weekend when he hasn’t been out with at least one person.” They say the truth will set you free, so perhaps
a healthy amount of truth would help to remove whatever fantasy this woman had been entertaining about a future with Agent Phillips.

  “Who was the old friend?”

  There was a difference between being persistent to get to the bottom of a mystery and being rude. The woman had crossed the line with her last question. Ellie might be an introvert who spent most of her time alone, poring over documents, but that wasn’t because she had no wit or skills in arguing. The poor woman had given Ellie just the opening she needed to shut this train wreck of a conversation down.

  “It was me.”

  “Oh, good. If it was you, then he’s definitely not seeing anyone.” She looked so relieved that Phillips and Ellie had eaten together that Ellie wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or attempt to pump the woman in front of her for information on what she’d thought had happened last night.

  Her mind settled on the first option, “I’m sorry... Is there a reason you’re interrupting my lunch to insult me?”

  The reaction of laughter to her direct comment wasn’t exactly what Ellie had hoped for. “One of the girls overheard him talking at the water cooler upstairs that he’d had an amazing dinner last night with one of the world’s most interesting people. Of course, that got us all interested in who he’d been with to see if he was dating someone officially now or if he was just blowing smoke to end a conversation. Now that I know it was you, I can let everyone know he’s still definitely on the market.”

  Ellie decided to sum up her logic. “Right...because there’s no way I’m interesting enough to be who he was referring to, and since you know he definitely ate with me, then he was obviously just blowing smoke?”

  “You work in the basement,” the woman reminded Ellie, as though she’d forgotten how she'd gotten to the first floor for lunch.

  Ellie had sucked at yoga, but one of the things she remembered from her failed attempts at performing impossible poses was the instructor reminding them to breathe in and out. She couldn’t get the hang of it then, and obviously, she failed at it now, as she quickly grabbed her lunch and stood to leave. The second she did, though, something struck her. There was an itch in the back of her brain that said the tramp that interrupted her break deserved to be put in her place; unfortunately, there was no time to waste, because her brain had jumped back into a file.