Espresso Shot cm-7

by Клео Коул

  “Go on.”

  “He’s like no other man I’ve ever known...” The woman’s brassy voice had become a whisper, and her gaze drifted back to the clouds, the park, her dreamy view. “When he takes me in his arms at night, I feel vulnerable again, innocent and sweet and beautiful. When he kisses me, he makes all the bad days... all the bad years... disappear...”

  I never, not in a million years, expected an answer like that from the grand bitch of fashion. It was exactly how Mike Quinn made me feel; and in that moment I realized, beneath all of her Machiavellian scheming and bridezilla-on-steroids demands, Breanne Summour really did love her groom.

  “Thank you for being honest with me,” I said.

  Breanne nodded, then her gaze fell on the piece of paper on her desk, the one with her sister’s contact information.

  “She misses you,” I said. “And she still admires and loves you.”

  “She said that?”

  “She didn’t have to. The way she talked about you—it was clear as sunlight through plate glass.”

  Breanne sighed. “I know what you must be thinking, Clare, but seeing my sister again, making contact... I don’t know if I can do it.” She shook her head. “When you travel so far from who you were, it’s like living in a new world. You can’t go back again. I decided that long ago. My family would never understand my life, my choices.”

  “Maybe... or maybe you just never gave them a chance to understand.”

  Breanne picked up the piece of paper. “Maybe. I’ll think about it...”

  I nodded and turned, heading for the door. Before throwing the lock and departing, however, I turned back to say one last thing.

  “Breanne, I really will keep your past a secret, but only on one condition. You have to tell Matt the whole truth about your life before you take your vows.”

  “I can’t do that,” she whispered. “He’ll never want me then ...”

  “If that’s how little you think of Matteo Allegro, then you really should call the wedding off.”

  Thirty-Four

  “Okay, guys, what’s the verdict?”

  “Pretty amazing, Clare,” Gardner said, paper cup in hand.

  Dante nodded. “Good job on the roast!”

  “Superb,” Tucker said.

  “Thanks.” Three down one to go. “What do you think, Esther?”

  Esther Best pushed up her black rectangular glasses and peered at me with her big, brown, hypercritical eyes. “I think I can’t get my mind around where these beans have been.”

  It was eight o’clock in the evening. Matt, Joy, and Madame were all at the wedding rehearsal dinner. Here at the Blend, I’d just finished roasting the final batch of green beans for tomorrow’s reception. My top baristas and I were now sampling the freshly roasted Kopi Luwak.

  Mike elbowed me. “What does she mean by that? Where have the coffee beans been?”

  “You can ask me directly, you know?” Esther told Mike flatly. “I won’t bite your head off. I generally don’t bite people’s heads off unless the moon is full.”

  Mike raised a sandy eyebrow. “Okay, Esther. What do you mean by that?”

  I stifled a smile as she explained that kopi was the Indonesian word for “coffee,” and luwak referred to the small catlike animal from which the coffee beans were collected.

  “I don’t understand,” Mike said, taking another hearty quaff from his paper cup. He looked down at me. “Coffee beans come from trees, don’t they?”

  I bit my lip, met Esther’s eyes.

  “He has no idea, does he?” Esther asked.

  I shook my head, and she looked about ready to lose it. Then she did, literally doubling over with laughter.

  “What?” Now Mike’s blue gaze was spearing me.

  “The luwak is a feral, forest animal,” I explained. “It eats coffee cherries and voids them whole. The Indonesian farmers collect them, process them, and sell them as the most expensive coffee on earth: Kopi Luwak.”

  Mike stared into the ten-dollar cup he’d previously been enjoying and blanched. But there was nothing wrong with the coffee! Kopi Luwak had the cup characteristics of a really good Sumatran, heavy and earthy with hints of caramel and chocolate, as well as a superlative smoothness and a unique, lingering mustiness.

  His eyes met mine again. “You’re telling me this coffee came out of a cat’s—”

  “The digestive tract changes the chemical composition of the bean,” I said. “See, a coffee bean’s proteins contribute to its bitterness. The luwak’s digestive process breaks down some of the proteins, making the coffee extremely smooth.”

  “Kopi Luwak is its official name,” Esther said, “but some people refer to it as something else.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Mike muttered.

  “Cat-poop coffee!” Esther cried then cracked up again.

  Now Dante, Gardner, and Tucker were laughing, too.

  Mike put down his cup.

  Oh, God. I should have warned him.

  “You look a little green, Detective,” Dante said. “What’s wrong?”

  He glanced back at me. “Too much information.”

  I bit my cheek. “Didn’t you once tell me that you can never give a detective too much information?”

  “Yeah, but in this one case, I would have made an exception.”

  “Its okay, Mike.” I patted his shoulder. “I’ll get your usual.”

  As I prepared an extra special make-it-up-to-him latte, the bell over our door jangled. A few minutes later, Mike was introducing me to the customer who’d walked in. He was a cerebral-looking, middle-aged man with a receding blond hairline, fair complexion, and a bit of a paunch under a tweedy blazer.

  “This is Dr. Mel Billings, Clare. He’s a pathologist who works with the OD Squad.”

  I greeted the man, made him a cappuccino, and joined both men at a café table. Mike turned to me. “Dr. Billings is the man who performed the autopsy on Monica Purcell.”

  “Oh?”

  Billings nodded, took off the half-glasses he wore on a black cord around his neck. “Mike asked me to drop by and speak with you. He thought maybe you’d have some ideas for us.”

  “Okay, I’ll do my best.”

  “The victim I examined didn’t die of an overdose of conventional medication. She was poisoned—and not by anything usual. An exotic batrachotoxin was used to kill her. It’s perplexed us all.”

  “Me included,” Mike said. “I thought maybe you’d have a theory, Clare.”

  “Me? On what? What exactly is batrachotoxin?”

  “It’s a poison extracted from the skin of toxic frogs,” Billings said. “Very rare. In Colombia, natives use it against predators. An expert I spoke to in Colombia tells me that many rural farmers dose thorny trees around their land with the batrachotoxin to scare away marauding bands of FARC.”

  “FARC,” I repeated. “That definitely rings a bell. Matt’s mentioned FARC to me, usually with an expletive attached. As far as I know, they’re a revolutionary group that stands opposed to Colombia’s current government. They terrorize farmers and land owners.”

  “You should also know that the items in Ms. Purcell’s stomach were barely digested,” Billings said. “There was some kind of bread or muffin product made primarily of soy protein and a pulpy beverage made of wheatgrass.”

  “I’m thinking Monica Purcell saw Winslow that morning,” Mike said. “The robbery went bad the night before. I’m thinking he poisoned her breakfast.”

  “Her breakfast... soy and wheatgrass...”

  My mind went back to the morning that Monica was poisoned. I’d been sitting in the reception area when the intern came out in a panic, telling us about finding Monica’s body. But shortly before that, Breanne’s breakfast was taken from the front desk to the company’s break room.

  “Mike, the food items you’re describing in her stomach are exactly the breakfast I turned down the day Monica was found dead: a soy-protein muffin and a wheatgrass shake. The reception
ist couldn’t give those items away, so she had them moved to the company’s break room. She said the breakfast was a regular daily delivery to Trend ’s offices.”

  “A delivery for Monica?” Billings asked.

  “No.” I met Mike’s eyes. “That breakfast was meant for Breanne Summour. She didn’t come to the office that day.”

  “You witnessed the delivery?” Mike asked, leaning forward. “In the reception area?”

  “I didn’t see who delivered the food. But I witnessed it taken to the break room. And I can’t believe it was Winslow who poisoned it, either. He had access to so many conventional drugs. Why would he use something so obscure?”

  “The connection to Colombia is clear,” Dr. Billings noted.

  “Which means we’d need to find a man from Colombia with a motive for murder,” Mike said. “Clare, what do you think? You’ve been working this case all week. Does anyone come to mind?”

  Oh, my God. “Javier.”

  “Who?”

  “Javier Lozado. I met him at Madame’s luncheon. He’s a very dashing Colombian man, operates several coffee plantations down there. He also had a terrible past experience with Matt over a woman he loved named Louisa. Matt slept with the woman behind his back. They came to blows over it.”

  “Is Javier’s grudge strong enough to commit murder?”

  “He’s a proud Latin American man.” I closed my eyes.

  “And he told me he used to be a commando in the Colombian army! He’d know how to stalk someone, how to shoot a gun and hit a target. My God, it was Matt’s past all along and not Breanne’s that was the key to the danger. Why didn’t I see it?”

  I leaned forward in my chair, laid out the facts. “The night Hazel Boggs was murdered, Javier wasn’t at the bachelor party, which means he could have been staking out the Village Blend, waiting for Breanne to appear. When he saw the look-alike with Matt, he could have shot her for revenge—by mistake.”

  Mike nodded. “Go on.”

  “Javier would have discovered the next day that Breanne was still alive. So he changed tactics and used the poison. When that didn’t work, he got more brazen and simply attacked her in the restaurant’s bathroom. He certainly had the opportunity for the bathroom attack. He was at Madame’s tapas luncheon, but he left before Breanne went into the bathroom! We all thought he ran after Matt, but he could have doubled back to attack Breanne. Koa Waipuna said they all split up to find Matt, and he didn’t see Javier again for almost an hour!”

  Mike nodded again, pulled out his notebook. “We need more on this man. Write down his name for me, Clare. I want his description and anything else that can ID him. Do you know where he’s staying?”

  “No, but I can find out.”

  I rang Matt to warn him about Javier. Matt had trouble believing it, but not after I told him about the poison.

  “Is Javier there now?” I asked. “At the rehearsal dinner?”

  “No,” Matt said. “He’s not a member of the wedding party. I haven’t seen much of the man all week. I don’t even know where he’s staying!”

  “Take it easy, okay? Mike Quinn’s on the phone with his precinct now. He’s going to have a BOLO issued. We’ll find him.”

  We spoke a few more minutes, and then I had to ask. “Matt, did Breanne have a talk with you? Did she tell you about her past?”

  After a pause, Matt lowered his voice. “She told me everything, Clare. Where she was born, how she grew up, her real name, everything.”

  “The wedding’s still on, isn’t it?”

  “Of course! I don’t give a crap about her past. It’s nobody’s business but her own. All that matters to me now is our future.”

  I couldn’t stop the smile. For the first time in a long while, I was actually proud of my ex-husband. “Now that’s the Matt I married.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it. I just hope you’ll both be very happy.”

  A minute later, Mike finished his own call. “If we can’t pick up Javier before tomorrow’s wedding, we’re going to the wedding in plain clothes.”

  “It’s a big crowd, Mike. How many cops are coming?”

  “Soles and Bass, some of the guys in my building. The detectives on the Machu Picchu attack.”

  I shook my head. It was hard to believe, but Breanne’s white wedding was about to become an NYPD stakeout.

  Thirty-Five

  “Everything looks perfect, Clare! Just perfect!”

  Janelle Babcock folded her arms and stepped back from our coffee and dessert station. Her delicate confections were arranged on serving trees, surrounded by hand-blown Venetian glass, each jewel-toned piece filled with samples of my rare, roasted coffee beans.

  “Perfect isn’t my favorite word,” I said. “But it does look spectacular.”

  Esther Best strolled up to us, her wild dark hair tied neatly back, her blue Village Blend apron covering a plain white blouse and black slacks. “Nice bling,” she said, pointing to Nunzio’s fountain at the center of the display.

  “Priceless bling,” I said. “Go ahead and take a closer look.”

  The tabletop fountain consisted of three golden catch basins. Around the rim of each bowl, finely detailed reliefs depicted scenes from the stories of history’s most famous lovers. The entire sculpture was capped by the stylized nudes of a man and woman. Prosecco champagne—kissed with the sweetness of peach nectar—poured out of the apple in the woman’s hand and flowed like golden rain from one bowl to the next, through hundreds of holes in each basin’s bottom.

  “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Esther said. “Adam and Eve at the top, and I can see the snake, too, with real ruby eyes. Nice. And what’s on the middle tier?”

  “That’s Antony and Cleopatra,” I said. “You can follow the story in pictures around the bowl. See the poison asp biting the queen of the Nile? The snake has real emeralds for eyes.”

  “The base is Romeo and Juliet,” Janelle noted.

  Esther studied the entire piece for a moment then scratched her head. “Ah, kids? Weren’t these lovers sort of screwed by the end of their stories? I mean, I don’t see any happily-ever-after here.”

  I froze for a second then glanced at Janelle. We’d been working with photos and dimensions and metric volumes. We’d never considered the sculpture’s overall meaning.

  “I think she’s right,” Janelle said, stifling a laugh.

  I folded my arms and sighed, recalling my evening with Nunzio. The man was sexy as hell, but he’d displayed all the sentiment of a soccer ball. “You know what? I think the artist knew exactly what he was doing, and the joke’s on us.”

  I checked my watch. At this very moment, beneath a rose bower on the Met’s Roof Garden, Matt and Breanne were exchanging vows, surrounded by a half-dozen NYPD detectives, including Mike Quinn, Sully, Soles and Bass, and Rocky Friar. I felt confident they would snatch Javier Lozado the moment he showed his mustachioed face.

  Everything was good to go on our end of the European Sculpture Court. The espresso machines at the Blend’s station were up and running, the Clovers were in place, the cups and glass mugs ready, and my baristas were eager to begin serving the moment the guests arrived.

  “Tell me again about the first toast?” Janelle asked.

  “As soon as the bride and groom come down from the roof, we’re going to become the center of attention. The newlyweds will walk right over to us and toast each other with shots of espresso.”

  I showed Janelle the heavy, sterling silver tray Madame was going to use to serve the couple the first cups of their married life.

  Janelle shook her head. “I still don’t get it. Why toast with coffee when there’s all this great champagne around?”

  “The guests will be drinking champagne, but not the wedding party. Toasting with coffee is a family tradition started by Matt’s great-grandfather. It’s based on an old Turkish custom. The bridegroom made a promise to always provide coffee for his wife. If he failed to deliver, it was
grounds for divorce.”

  “Coffee is grounds for divorce?” Janelle groaned. “There’s a joke in there somewhere.”

  Another man with a camera approached our coffee and dessert display, which the Trend photographer had already snapped dozens of times.

  “Clare, look at the man’s ID. That photographer’s from the New York Times!” Janelle whispered. “Come on, let’s talk our way into his pictures.”

  “You go, girl.” I smiled. “It’s your night.”

  I checked my watch again. Once the tidal wave hit, I wouldn’t have a moment’s peace for at least four solid hours. With my servers chatting around the coffee station, and Janelle speaking with the Times photographer, I decided to circle the vast sculpture court before the crowd came at us.

  Across the expanse of white marble, a string quartet had begun tuning up. Their perfect prolonged notes rose hauntingly in the airy space, but the blush of the setting sun, suffusing everything with burnished light, was what made the vast room absolutely magical. The glowing rays streamed through the glass panels of the pitched roof, giving the fifteen-foot stone sculptures the patina of antique brass. More light streamed from the west through the transparent wall that faced Central Park. Below the endless blue of a cloudless sky, newly budding trees swayed in the mild spring breeze.

  I paused inside the Sculpture Court to watch a photographer rearrange his subject under the marble likeness of Perseus. More pixielike models in designer gowns posed amid the statuary, the artfully arranged raw bar and hors d’oeuvres, and the mountain of tastefully wrapped wedding gifts piled like pirate booty.

  The photographers were hustling now, trying to finish before the 350 guests descended from witnessing the wedding ceremony. As I moved to the far end of the quiet atrium to study a fifteenth-century Venetian sculpture of Adam, a tall man in a tuxedo approached me. He was clean-shaven with spiky hair and a rugged, handsome face. I didn’t realize who the man was until he stopped right in front of me.