A Brew to a Kill

by Cleo Coyle

  I have to do something…

  Rushing toward the front gate, I noticed Matt near our refreshment tables, sipping coffee. He hadn’t noticed the altercation, and I didn’t have time to explain.

  “The fireworks have started, Matt. Unlock the warehouse. I’ll meet you there.”

  Matt didn’t ask questions. He tossed the cup and took off. I was through the gate five seconds later. By the time I reached Dr. Fischer, Helen Bailey-Burke had climbed into a black sedan and slammed the door.

  Mortified, the doctor stood there as Helen drove away. With the people gawking, she seemed unsure what to do or where to go. I took the woman’s shaking arm.

  “Come with me, Dr. Fischer. I’ll take you somewhere private.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  WE were in Matt’s warehouse now, the loading dock area, a windowless concrete space with a high ceiling and harsh fluorescent lights. But at least it was cool after the heat of the afternoon, and I soon felt chilly in my thin V-neck tee.

  “This is a terrible way to meet, but I’m Clare Cosi from the Village Blend. I sent my business partner to find Dominic for you. I’m sure they’ll be here shortly.”

  “Thank you so much,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Gwen Fischer, and I’m sorry I caused a scene at your party.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it was. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

  Gwen pulled out a compact to check the damage. Her green eyes clouded when she noticed the red handprint on her cheek had inflamed the freckles across her nose. She shook her head.

  “Helen caused an equally pleasant scene when we met at Gracie Mansion, but at least she didn’t slug me in front of the mayor. But then…” She threw me a self-deprecating look. “I hear His Honor loves a good catfight.”

  We both laughed, and soon Dr. Fischer was chatting amicably as she repaired her makeup.

  “So you ran into Helen at the mayor’s office?” I pressed.

  “The mayor’s birthday party,” Gwen replied. “It was so humiliating. She accosted me right after the Dancing Mayors act.”

  “Dancing Mayors?”

  “A dozen Rockettes wearing rubber masks of His Honor and kicking it to ‘New York, New York,’” Gwen shook her head. “Come to think of it, that dance number may have been more embarrassing than my run in with Mrs. Bailey-Burke.”

  “What’s Helen’s problem with you?” I asked plainly.

  “Her problem is with my late ex-husband, not me.” Gwen combed her scarlet pageboy. “Frankly, I think the woman is unhinged. That’s why I shouldn’t have provoked her. Now I feel terrible.”

  “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

  “It was shameful. Helen’s daughter died a few years back after Harry performed surgery on her. I’m not in practice with him. I never was—or wanted to be. My plastic surgery work is research oriented, up at Columbia. So I told Helen: if she wanted someone to blame for her daughter’s death, she should look in the mirror. I told her if I were a parent, I never would have coerced my child into having three cosmetic procedures that she never wanted in the first place.”

  The door opened, and Matt ushered City Councilman Dominic Chin into our warehouse. Chin’s face was strained, tense, and he didn’t relax until he saw that Dr. Fischer was okay. Their embrace was long and lingering, and Matt and I gave them their space. I needed a moment with Matt, anyway.

  “Where did you go with Tanya?”

  Matt raised an eyebrow. “Jealous?”

  “Curious.”

  “I brought Tanya here, actually.”

  “You two didn’t—”

  Matt shook his head. “Tanya thought there’d be an encore here. I played it that way, long enough to keep her away from Helen Bailey-Burke. I wanted Esther to have a fair shot at her presentation.”

  I hated to tell Matt that it didn’t matter, but I supposed he’d figured that out by now. “So how did you finally lose the woman?”

  “When the time was right I reminded Tanya that my wife was an influential magazine editor who could ruin Tanya’s career with a single exposé, which she would do if she found out we’d been intimate. Then I showed Tanya to the door.”

  “Bravo.”

  “People like Tanya enjoy threatening. They’re not always prepared to be threatened right back—but then I learned to deal with people like her from the best.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Of course.”

  “Excuse me, Ms. Cosi? I wanted to thank you.”

  Dominic Chin’s hand found mine. “Gwen told me what you did, and we both appreciate it. And thanks to you and Matt for letting us stay here until the press drifts away. And by the way, your coffee is phenomenal.”

  Councilman Chin’s summer sports coat had been flung over one shoulder, the sleeves on his white shirt rolled up. Dominic was half-Chinese, half-Italian—a product of the proximity of Little Italy and Chinatown. His district loved him. He had a foot in both worlds and an appetite for both as well, having famously grown up on one grandmother’s biscotti and another one’s moon cakes.

  A spot of bright orange on the man’s shirt caught my eye—another Two Wheels Good button. Warrior Barbie sure gets around.

  “This coffee warehouse is pretty phenomenal, too.” He sniffed the air. “I don’t smell coffee, though.”

  “Green beans have an earthy, grassy smell,” I told him. “Beans don’t smell like the coffee you drink until we roast them, and we don’t do that here.”

  I pointed to the button pinned to the councilman’s shirt. “Two Wheels Good, right? Do you know John Fairway?”

  “Sure, I work with John on occasion. He’s been pushing me to create bike lanes in my district, but the streets are so narrow we’d have to shut half of them down completely to comply with his wishes.”

  “I got the impression that is exactly his wish. To stop all motor vehicle traffic.”

  Chin shrugged. “He says some pretty extreme things.”

  “What about Fairway’s tactics?”

  I told Chin about how Fairway’s group withheld information from the police, the curious way they collected their data, and the group members’ extreme reaction when they felt their rights as bicyclists had been violated—all of which I could verify from my experiences that morning.

  The councilman’s expression went stony. “John is critical of the police. But he’s right to be disturbed about the slipshod way hit-and-runs are often investigated. The truth is, it’s just too easy for a careless driver to kill someone and get away with it.”

  I told Chin about Lilly Beth, and I mentioned how effectively Buckman and his team gathered clues.

  “Maybe the police are changing their ways, but there are still too many hit-and-runs,” Chin replied. “Just the week before last, Gwen’s ex was killed by a hit-and-run driver on his Sunday morning bike run. There were no witnesses and no arrests. Maybe it would have been better if Fairway’s people had been there. The driver might have been caught.”

  “Dom,” Gwen Fischer called from the door. “I think the coast is clear.”

  Chin nodded. “Yeah, I think we’d better go. We’ve worn out our welcome.”

  “Not at all,” I protested.

  Dr. Fischer approached me. “Aren’t you guys part of Deputy Mayor Levin’s food-truck wedding reception next Friday? They listed the trucks on a little card in their invitation. It was adorable, so different and fun.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “Great. We can talk more then.”

  Dr. Fischer gave me a quick hug. Dominic Chin thanked me again. Then Matt opened the door and the earnest city councilman and his bright fiancée melted into the crowd.

  “Did you hear that?” I called to Matt. “Two weeks ago, Dr. Fischer’s ex-husband was the victim of a hit-and-run, just like Lilly.”

  Matt nodded. “It’s a big city, isn’t it? There must be accidents like that all the time.”

  “That’s exactly what John F
airway would say. And isn’t it interesting that both of those accidents happened to people in the sphere of political power? People who’d be noticed by City Hall?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY minutes later, the party was winding down. The crowd in the parking lot had thinned to maybe one hundred guests. Even Kaylie had moved to a more lucrative location.

  Most of us were circling the Muffin Muse, where Josh and Dante had replaced the rope with a curtain to hide their masterpiece until its unveiling.

  “I’m so happy Otto bought us a bottle of Laurent-Perrier Grand Siècle!” Madame announced.

  Matt perked up. “Champagne? We’re going to celebrate?”

  “To christen our new baby, my dear boy. Our ship must be launched with style.”

  “At one hundred bucks a bottle, that’s pricey style,” Matt griped.

  I nudged my ex. “I didn’t hear you complain about cost when you thought we were drinking it.”

  Madame insisted on getting so close to the action we were nose to nose with the curtain when it dropped moments later.

  The reveal was greeted by cheers and whoops. Finally laughter and applause erupted as the audience absorbed the image and got the joke.

  Dante’s work was beautiful, stunningly detailed, impressive in size and scope, even witty and playfully imaginative. But when I saw it, I almost threw up. Madame’s reaction mirrored my own, and I heard Matt’s groan.

  Dante, Josh, and Nadine had created a spoof on Andrew Wyeth’s realist masterpiece Christina’s World. The original depicted a young woman lying at the base of a low hill, legs curled. Propped up by her arms, she seemed to be gazing across the hill’s tawny grass at a distant farmhouse.

  This spoof was rendered in the same style as Wyeth’s, but Dante had replaced the grassy hill with coffee beans. In place of the farm, he’d painted our Village Blend with a muffin and demitasse of steaming espresso floating above it. The human figure wore denims and a T-shirt instead of a farm dress, her dark hair bundled in a neat, modern ponytail.

  I looked away. A too-similar image had been burned into my mind the night before—Lilly Beth, legs crushed, struggling to rise.

  Madame gripped my arm. “Does Dante know anything about the original painting?”

  As a student of art history, I understood Madame’s question, though I couldn’t answer it. Certainly, Dante had seen Wyeth’s original, which was on permanent display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. But did he know that the model for the painting—a woman named Christina Olson—only seemed to be lounging in the field while gazing at the farmhouse? In reality, Christina was crawling toward her home. The real Christina was a victim of polio, paralyzed from the waist down—just as Lilly Beth was likely to be, according to her doctors.

  I lowered my gaze and rubbed my forehead. Oh, god, this is awful. I’ll never be able to look at this painting without thinking of the night Lilly was hit. Can things get any worse?

  The sharp crack of the first gunshot reverberated off the surrounding buildings. Someone screamed as a muffin balloon burst over our gate.

  By the time the second shot exploded, most people were ducking, and more than a few seasoned urbanites were already hugging the ground. I remained standing—because the noises didn’t make sense. The sound of the shots came from one direction, the actual bullets from another.

  Why? What in heaven’s name is going on?

  I listened for a third shot, but when it came, I was in no position to judge from which direction. My ex realized I was still standing and dragged me to the ground, covering me with his body.

  Madame was already on the ground beside me, and our eyes met. I didn’t see fright reflected there, or even alarm. Only anger and determination. I clenched my jaw and I took my strength from her example.

  A loud, commanding voice followed a long silence—Officer Gifford, ordering everyone to stay put and demanding to know if anyone had been harmed. Then, weapon drawn, the Highway Patrolman guarded the gate as police sirens announced the approach of reinforcements.

  THIRTY

  MIRACULOUSLY, no one had been hurt and no real damage done—except perhaps to the Blend’s image, though it was too soon to know for sure.

  Police from the Red Hook precinct took over the investigation. After I had a very long talk with Sergeant Fidel Ortiz, during which I mentioned both Kaylie and Detective Buckman, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  “I’m clocking overtime now, Ms. Cosi,” Officer Gifford said. “My boss told me to take you somewhere, anywhere but here.”

  “My employer and I are taking her car to Beth Israel Hospital. We have someone we’d like to visit.”

  Gifford nodded. “You’ll have a motorcycle escort.”

  While Madame and I waited for Otto’s driver to bring the car, I stifled a yawn. It had been a long, hard, dangerous day, and I could not wait to see it end.

  WHEN we arrived at the hospital, we found Lilly Beth’s condition unchanged. She was still unconscious, her family sitting vigil. For a little over an hour, Madame and I visited with Lilly’s mother, son, and a small gaggle of relatives before heading home. I was glad to get there—and surprised by what I found.

  With every step up the Blend’s service staircase, a new aroma enveloped me. Sweet garlic. Earthy cumin. The tangy brightness of simmering tomatoes. And under it all, a savory scent of sizzling pork, ambrosia to almost anyone with Italian blood.

  Clearly someone was cooking inside my apartment.

  With a killer supposedly stalking me and shots fired, I should have been alarmed. But I doubted an assassin would prepare me a last meal. And, anyway, the identity of the kitchen bandit was no mystery. My sense memory exposed the culprit almost instantly.

  Carnitas—Spanish for “little meats”—were a Matteo Allegro specialty from the early years of our marriage. Braised, tender, and succulent, the pork chunks had been a budget-friendly buddy to this struggling young mother.

  Insanely easy to prepare, one pot yielded the basics for a week’s worth of mouthwatering meals. Inside a corn tortilla with chopped onion, fresh salsa, and aromatic cilantro, they made a delicious little taco. Fried up with Matt’s special black beans and a scoop of rice, they became a burrito filling.

  Our daughter’s all-time favorite way to eat them was in my special Taco Cups, one of my most popular In the Kitchen with Clare recipes. (Essentially tasty little mini-quiches with quartered flour tortillas as crusts and fillings of leftover taco meat.)

  But that wasn’t all.

  For a culinary trip down memory lane, one bite of carnitas with fresh spinach and banana peppers on a crusty Italian roll would take me back to one of the best street foods in Rome, a porchetta sandwich, with the juicy, warm pork cut fresh for you at a market stall. It was one of the first meals Matt and I ever shared together.

  In those early years, we wouldn’t even let the carnitas pot stickings (what my beloved chef daughter called “au fond”) go to waste. After deglazing with red wine, I’d add a can of San Marzano tomatoes (sweet, plump imports from the volcanic slopes of Italy), oregano, and scalded onions. Thirty quick minutes later, I had an unctuously rich pasta gravy that tasted like my nonna’s six-hour Sunday dinner sauce.

  What I was smelling now—not just the batch of carnitas but also that supernaturally satisfying pasta sauce—made me wonder how long Matt planned on staying around.

  I unlocked the front door and found him in my cozy, exposed-brick kitchen, sampling the deglazing wine from a long-stemmed crystal goblet.

  “Matt, what are you doing? Who’s going to eat all of this food?”

  “You are. You’re not leaving this building until Big Foot is back—and neither am I.”

  Matt’s tone was grim and so was his expression, completely out of character for my devil-may-care-but-I-sure-as-hell-don’t ex-husband.

  “Did the police call?” That has to be it. “They found out something about the shooting? The shooter? Please tell me they have someone in custody—or are at least
tracking a good lead.”

  “It’s not that. It’s something else. Something that involves me. But you have to let me explain it…”

  I flashed on a very young Joy in that moment. Whenever I caught her in the act of being naughty, that’s when she most resembled Matt. Guilt wasn’t exhibited by our darling daughter as much as petulance at being caught. Her father was wearing that look now.

  “Matt, what have you done?”

  He ignored the question, asked me to sit, then put down a bowl and mounded it with spaghetti dressed in that succulent red sauce.