by Клео Коул
I began making careful notes on the levels in each canister. Which ones needed replenishing? Which ones weren’t moving? This data would be fed into the computer where I’d created a program to track customer favorites.
“Ms. Cosi, will you be finished soon?”
I let out a reactive yelp of surprise. Papas had crept up on me. There was no other way to describe it. One second I was alone, the next he was there, right next to me.
Others had joked about this phenomenon. Colleen O’Brien likened him to the ghost of Squire Malone, a legendary Irish haunter from her home county. Graydon Faas, a fan of Anime, maintained that the manager’s ability to spring upon an employee the moment he made a mistake must mean he’s housing a secret teleportation device in that office of his that he seldom let anyone enter. I could believe it.
“I’m almost through,” I told Papas. “We’re really low on the Mocha Java. Probably because it’s a dark roast, so I’m pairing it with the chocolate soufflé and the flourless chocolate-kahlua cake, and chocolate’s the most reliably popular dessert flavor. I have more MJ in the basement, but not enough to get us through Sunday brunch. I guess I’ll call the Blend and have Tucker send some through our delivery service.”
Thinking out loud was something I did when nervous and Papas was a guy who made me very nervous. He stared at me for a long silent moment. This was an annoying habit of his: you spoke, he stared, answering in his own good time.
“Very well then, call your people,” he replied at last. Then he checked his watch. “I must run an errand. I will be gone for an hour, no more.”
“That’s fine. When the wait staff starts arriving, I’ll put them to work dressing the dining room tables. By the way, have you heard from Prin about her family emergency? Do you think there’s a chance she’ll be back before Monday?”
The man’s frown deepened. “No.”
Poor girl, I thought, assuming the worst. “Is there a death in her family? Is that the emergency? Maybe I should give her a call and ask if—”
Papas cut me off. “That won’t be necessary. Prin won’t be back.”
I blinked. “Really? What happened?”
Jacques Papas looked away. “David Mintzer happened. He personally fired the young woman a few days ago. Gave her the boot without even a letter of recommendation. Left me short of help, I can tell you. And in the middle of the season.”
“But two days ago you yourself told the staff she’d left on a family emergency. We assumed she’d be back.”
Papas shook his head. “That was a lie that David made me pass along to everyone because he didn’t want anyone else in his employ to know he’d fired her. David loves to be loved, you know. But at times he can be an indiscriminate bastard.”
It was now my turn to fall silent and stare. “Do you know the reason for Prin’s dismissal?” I finally asked.
The manager shook his head. “No. David doesn’t like to be questioned, Ms. Cosi—surely you’ve seen that side of him.”
With that, I couldn’t argue.
“I have worked for two decades in restaurant management,” Papas continued. “And I do find that the stick gets much better results than the carrot. But I would never have fired Prin. Not when we’re so shorthanded.”
I nodded, not quite sure what to say.
“I’d appreciate your remaining discreet with this information,” Papas pointedly added. “The only reason I’m telling you is to stop you from wasting time pursuing Ms. Lopez. Now you know there’s no reason to call the girl.” Papas glanced at his Rolex. “I have to go.”
After the manager departed, I took a deep breath and made use of the espresso machine in front of me. What I badly needed at the moment was a shot (excuse the pun).
Last night, I found out that Treat Mazzelli was secretly bedding every girl on the Cuppa J wait staff—Prin Lopez being one of the first to get shagged and dumped. Now I find out she’s been dumped a second time in the middle of the busy Hamptons season by David Mintzer himself.
If that wasn’t enough to make a girl a little angry, I didn’t know what would be. But how angry? As I sent whole beans of our espresso blend through the grinder, then tamped, clamped, and extracted the essence of the beans into a shot glass, I considered this question.
I’d found Prin to be a consummate professional on the job. But Suzi Tuttle maintained the girl had one hell of a temper off it. I remember an animated story Suzi had told in the break room about how Prin “went totally postal” at a Hamptons nightclub. A pretty hostess from a Southampton restaurant dissed Prin in some way at the crowded bar. The fight escalated from verbal to physical, with Prin pulling handfuls of the girl’s hair out. The bouncer had to be called in to stop it and ejected them both.
It was very hard for me to believe that Prin herself would have gone “totally postal” by stalking and shooting Treat Mazzelli—whether she’d been trying to get revenge on Treat himself, or David, or both of them. It was equally hard to believe she may have persuaded some gangbanger friend from her South Bronx neighborhood to do it.
But Prin’s firing was unexpected, and I wanted to talk to her. I downed the espresso, absorbing the rich, warm, nutty essence of the darkly roasted Arabica beans in one fortifying hit. Then I dried my hands and went back to the break room. An employee schedule was posted on the wall next to the door. Next to Prin’s name was a cell phone number. I dialed it and got a voicemail message.
“Prin? It’s Clare Cosi, from Cuppa J. Would you please call me? It’s a matter of extreme importance.” I left the number of my own cell phone and hung up, wondering if Prin would even bother to return my call.
While I was in the kitchen, I decided to get started restocking the milk, cream, and half-and-half at the coffee bar. I checked the standing refrigerator near the dessert prep area and saw three gallons of milk, two of cream, and no half-and-half. I headed for the walk-in stainless steel refrigerator. I opened the thick, insulated door and stepped into the chilly steel box, which was nearly as large as a bedroom in my Manhattan duplex above the Village Blend.
A single bare bulb illuminated the interior, which smelled like a butcher shop—a not-unpleasant mixture of cheese and preserved meat. Shanks of dry-aged beef hung from hooks in the ceiling above, wheels and squares of imported and domestic cheeses. Boxes of green leafy vegetables, all of it produced locally, were stacked in the corner next to bags of onions, shallots, and several types of potatoes. Bundles of garlic hung from hooks on the wall, near slabs of bacon, aged prosciutto, and chorizo.
Several stacks of plastic containers stood in the corner—all of them empty. Clearly, David’s July Fourth party had drastically leached the restaurant’s supplies. Unless we got a hefty delivery of dairy products in here, pronto, our impressive array of latte drinks would be off the evening’s menu.
Rather than wait for Papas to return, I headed for his office. The manager’s inner sanctuary was untidy, but the vendor list was where I remembered seeing it a week ago, when Papas last called me in for a micromanagement session.
I found the number for Cream of the Lakes Dairy and used Jacques Papas’s phone to make the call.
“Dairy. This is the dispatcher,” a male voice said gruffly.
“Hi. I’m calling from Cuppa J in East Hampton, on—”
“Sure, sure. I know the place,” the dispatcher said, suddenly friendly.
“I was wondering if you’d made our dairy delivery for today?”
“Let me check…Ah, here it is. My guy was there at nine. Mr. Papas ordered three gallons of milk, two gallons of cream, and sixteen dozen eggs.”
Great. “Look, apparently there’s been a mistake. We’ve got no inventory here on dairy for the weekend and we need a lot more. At least twenty more gallons of milk, ten of half-and-half, and ten of cream.”
“No problem, Ma’am. We’ll get it out there in an hour.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Not a problem. You want me to bill this on the fifty-ten plan, too, r
ight?”
“Excuse me?”
“The extra ten percent. We take fifty percent up front for deliveries, and we get the other fifty percent—plus ten—at the end of the season.”
“I, uh…suppose that’s…okay,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.
“Great. Just ask Jacques about it if you have any questions,” he added, clearly sensing my confusion. “He’s the one who worked it out.”
I hung up, even more confused.
Why, I wondered, would David Mintzer sign off on such a terrible arrangement? He had more than enough capital to pay for all of his deliveries on time. Even if he’d wanted to delay payment via a credit plan, there were certainly better interest rates out there than ten percent.
The more I thought about it, the fishier the deal sounded. David would not have signed off on such a deal, but the man at the dairy didn’t mention David. “Ask Jacques,” he’d said.
Clearly Papas was up to something—but what? Embezzlement?
I checked my watch. Papas had been gone only thirty-five minutes, so I figured I had time to do a little sniffing. I began searching through the mess on his desk, hoping to find the blue book he constantly carried. I fumbled through a week of piled up newspapers without success. Next I decided to go through the drawers in the man’s desk.
The first one I opened contained personal items—toothbrush and toothpaste, several bottles of very expensive cologne, a hairbrush, and so many men’s hair care and styling products I expected to find a tiny Vidal Sassoon in there with a pair of scissors. The second drawer contained stationery, envelopes, pens and pencils, and a stapler. The third drawer was locked.
Before I could look any further, however, Papas’s angry voice shattered the silence.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Oh, hi, Jacques, I, uh—”
“Who gave you permission to come in here?”
“I had to call the dairy. We were out of half-and-half, and far too low on milk and cream.”
Jacques Papas’s nostrils flared as he stared at me, obviously seething.
“Since you weren’t here, and we needed the supplies, I found the dairy’s number and placed the order myself,” I continued. “The dispatcher was very nice. The truck will be here within the hour.”
My words seemed to calm the man. He nodded. “You should have told me you needed supplies before I stepped out. I would have placed the order.”
“I didn’t know until I checked the walk-in. And I didn’t want to trouble you.”
Jacques nodded again. “Fine. I shall be here to meet the delivery man.”
“Great,” I said. Then I slipped by the man and out of his office.
Eight
After being jolted into near-drowning by a Suffolk County Police bullhorn and uncovering a possible extortion scheme by a workplace colleague, I didn’t think anything else could surprise me today, but that evening something managed to do just that—or rather someone.
Madame glided into Cuppa J in an elegant chartreuse sundress, on the arm of an elderly man I’d never seen before. His gray beard and tweedy blazer gave him the air of a professor, but his short, white ponytail, French beret, distressed jeans, and trendy rectangular glasses made him look more like a patriarch of West Village pop artists.
“Clare, you look so stressed,” Madame told me as I walked up to her cafe table. “Perhaps you should call it a night.”
Madame’s suggestion was kind but impractical. From five o’clock onward, the restaurant had been packed. It was now ten in the evening and most of the customers were here for coffee service and dessert. That may have slowed things down for Victor and Carlos in the kitchen, but not for me in the dining room. Because we were understaffed, I was pulling double duty, managing as well as waiting tables.
“We’re far too busy for me to ditch early,” I told my ex-mother-in-law with a patient smile. “Besides, I’m not at all tired.”
From her seat on one of the first floor’s green velvet couches, Madame raised a silver eyebrow. “I didn’t say tired, my dear. I said stressed.”
Sitting cozily beside Madame, the bohemian-looking senior stroked his neatly-trimmed beard and remarked, “I think perhaps your daughter-in-law has been spending too much time on the ‘fashionable’ side of the highway.”
I might have taken more offense at the man’s familiarity, if his bright blue eyes hadn’t been sparkling attractively with humor as he said it.
“And you are?” I asked.
Madame’s date stood up, clicked his heels, and extended his hand. “Edward Myers Wilson.”
I placed my hand in his. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Clare—”
“Allegro,” the man replied. “I know. Blanche has told me much about you already and your…shall we say very interesting Hamptons summer.”
I bristled at both points. Firstly, my surname was no longer Allegro. I had gone back to Cosi after the divorce. Madame knew this, of course. She just didn’t like it and, obviously, had misinformed Mr. Wilson.
“Clare, I can’t believe your giving up your married name,” she’d said to me years ago when I’d first told her. “Your daughter’s last name is Allegro. That’s never going to change. Why don’t you consider keeping it?”
“Because,” I’d answered, “your son is never going to change.”
Ever since, Madame would occasionally “forget” that I took back Cosi, an act of total passive-aggressiveness as far as I was concerned. But then, what else could I expect from Joy’s grandmother? Like my own daughter, Matt’s mother could be as stubborn as she was effervescent; as reckless as she was adventurous; as contentious as she was understanding. Also, like Joy, Madame wanted to see Matt and me get back together. In the past she’d even tried crazy schemes to achieve this goal. My greatest fear was that, one day, she might actually accomplish it.
For the moment, I silently shrugged off the Allegro surname error. I’d never seen this Wilson character before and I didn’t expect to see him again, so who cared if he got my name wrong? What I couldn’t let go, however, was Madame’s apparently telling this perfect stranger about the shooting at David’s party.
Hoping I was mistaken about his pointed implication, I went fishing. “Yes,” I replied to Mr. Wilson. “Working here has been very interesting.”
“I’m sure it has,” he said, easing back into his green velvet seat next to Madame. “But not as interesting as trying to track down a murderer, eh?”
I sent a three-alarm glare my former mother-in-law’s way. She responded with a wave of her hand.
“Don’t worry so much, Clare,” she chirped. “Edward’s here to help.”
“Help?” I whispered, glancing around me to make sure no one in the crowded dining room was listening. “How can a perfect stranger help?”
Edward Wilson appeared amused at that. He turned to Madame. “Blanche, I think perhaps you’re right. Clare does appear rather stressed this evening.”
Madame laughed.
With two fingers, I massaged the bridge of my nose, feeling the edges of a headache beginning. It was bad enough that my daughter and I weren’t talking at the moment. Now I had to put up with Ma and Pa Enigmatic.
“Edward’s not a perfect stranger,” Madame informed me.
“Although some of my colleagues have accused me of being perfectly strange,” he quipped.
“Only when the moon is full,” Madame retorted.
“And I’m out of single-malt Scotch. Either that or every last tube of 538.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Madame said. “You are obsessed with Prussian blue, aren’t you?”
“Not the color, love. The sky. Matching its palette out here has been a lifelong obsession.” He put his arm around Madame’s shoulders. “One of them anyway.”
I raised both eyebrows at the old guy’s smooth move, wondering whether or not Mr. Wilson knew (or cared) about Madame’s ongoing relationship back in the city with Dr. Gary MacTavish.
“So you
two are old friends?” I prodded, expecting them to amplify the subject.
“Well, we are friends,” said Edward, stroking Madame’s bare shoulder. “And we are old. Aren’t we, Blanche?”
“Speak for yourself.”
I couldn’t believe both Joy and her grandmother seemed set on testing my nerves this evening.
My daughter had done it earlier, when she’d shown up late to work, in the company of Graydon Faas. I’d jumped down her throat the minute she’d walked in the kitchen door. We’d had a furious fight about where she’d been all day and what she’d been doing, but she refused to answer any of my questions, or apologize for ignoring my many worried cell phone messages.
All night, I couldn’t help noticing how Joy and Graydon kept lightly brushing against each other, exchanging subtle touches. With alarm, I realized just how little I knew about this surfer-waiter “dude.” Graydon was a good worker and a quick study with the barista techniques. But I could have described Treat Mazzelli the same way, and he’d ended up being a systematic womanizer. (I couldn’t very well blame him for the bullet in his brain since I didn’t even believe it was meant for him. Nevertheless, where my daughter’s happiness was concerned, I considered womanizing bad enough, thank you very much!)
At the moment, I couldn’t discuss my thousand-and-one worries with Joy, but, considering the way Treat had ended up, I felt I had a right to butt in and grill her about her relationship with Graydon. When we finally had some privacy, I intended to do just that. I also intended to quiz Joy’s grandmother. Here she was, flirting shamelessly with a man about whom I knew even less than Mr. Faas.
“Why don’t I take your orders?” I suggested, glancing over my shoulder to make sure my other customers weren’t getting antsy. “We can chat again when I bring your food.”
“Very good,” said Edward with a smile.
“We’re just having dessert and coffee tonight,” Madame said. She pulled a delicate pair of vermilion reading glasses out of her clutch, balanced them on the end of her nose and looked over my pairings menu.
