by Cleo Coyle
“I’m glad you’re back, Tuck,” Carol Lynn said.
“You need the coffee that bad?”
“Yes, actually, and a few of those cookies!” She laughed. “But there’s another reason. Now I can congratulate you both!”
Tuck and I exchanged confused glances.
Carol Lynn blinked. “You guys don’t know, do you?”
“Don’t know about what?”
“The excitement about your coffeehouse. I stopped by here last evening to talk to you, Clare, but I couldn’t find you in the large crowd, so I left early. Then this morning I saw the coverage. Now the whole country’s heard of the Shot Down Lounge!”
Seventy-four
“WHAT?!” Tuck and I cried together.
“There’s a huge article on The Tablet with tons of pics from last night and videos of your poetry slam,” Carol Lynn said. “It’s all about how you repurposed your upstairs lounge as a second chance for people disappointed over dating app matchups. The Village Blend is now a trending topic all over social media. On Chatter, Shot Down Lounge even has its own hashtag!”
Tuck pulled out his smartphone and went to The Tablet, where we discovered that the Washington Post reporter wasn’t the only journalist at Sydney’s shindig. And unlike Cinder’s CEO, who thought the evening was a total disaster, the writer from The Tablet was amused and impressed.
The article appeared under the headline:
Hookups with a Human Face
After Dating Disasters,
Shot Down Lounge Provides Caffeine and Comfort
The piece opened with a summary of the storied, bohemian history of the Village Blend. Then the author launched into a vivid description of last night’s event—gushing about the concept of a Shot Down Lounge, and raving about Esther’s poetry slam.
There was praise for the camaraderie of the crowd, and then the author decried the fact that other dating venues didn’t provide more “compassion with their cappuccinos, or community with their cocktails,” concluding that “Cinder and the Village Blend have restored sanity and soul to the swipe-to-meet twenty-first century.”
“Your coffeehouse is completely famous,” Carol Lynn said. “And for the right reason, this time “
“This calls for a toast!” Tuck declared. “I’ll grab more espressos—”
But my assistant manager found his way was blocked by two sturdy police officers in uniform, who stood on either side of Detectives Soles and Bass. The Fish Squad wasn’t smiling, and this wasn’t a social call.
“Carol Lynn Kendall,” Sue Ellen announced. “You are under arrest for the murder of Robert Crenshaw—”
“No!” Tucker shouted.
“You have the right to remain silent, and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—”
“This is some kind of mistake,” Carol Lynn cried. “I didn’t kill anybody! I don’t know anyone named Crenshaw!”
Quickly and efficiently, the officers lifted Carol Lynn out of her chair and cuffed her hands behind her back. Only then did she begin to struggle.
“No! This is wrong!” she yelled, squirming in their steel grip.
Customers inside my busy coffeehouse parted to allow the police to pass.
“No . . . Please . . .” Carol Lynn sobbed. Tuck followed his friend to the exit, begging the police to treat her gently.
Before Lori could follow her partner out the door, I grabbed her arm.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why do you think Carol Lynn is guilty of murder?”
Lori broke free. “The case against Ms. Kendall is airtight. So solid we don’t even need a confession—”
“How can that be?”
Lori shook her head. “You saw the video. We used street cameras to track the killer’s movements after the murder. We watched her walk to the apartment at the corner of Barrow and Bedford, which is also Ms. Kendall’s address. On top of that, the fingerprints on the coffee cup left by the killer match the ones previously taken from Ms. Kendall during her prior arrest for assaulting and threatening the victim in front of witnesses. One of whom, I might add, was you.”
“I know what it looks like, but I told you already that cup is wrong. We stopped serving coffee in those blue cups many hours before the shooting—”
“That’s not all we have,” Lori said. “The Crime Scene Unit found the murder weapon and the clothes the killer wore in a Dumpster behind Ms. Kendall’s apartment house. The handgun was cleaned of prints, but the clothes tested positive for gunshot residue.”
“But—”
“I understand your concern, but there’s no reasonable doubt. We’ve got everything on camera, from the murder to her return home. We have an eyewitness, too. The building superintendent stated that he saw Ms. Kendall tossing a bundle of clothes and a gun into the Dumpster at approximately two fifteen AM.”
The air went out of me. “I’m surprised you don’t have footage of Carol Lynn at the Dumpster.”
“We would have had that, too, but the camera in the alley behind the apartment building happens to be out of order.”
Lori tried to spin it positive. “Cheer up, Clare. Ms. Kendall needs help. Now she’ll get it. This is the best outcome, considering what went down. We’re playing down the fact that she planned the whole thing, because the DA could make a strong case for premeditation, which ups the ante all around—”
Tears of futility formed behind my fast-blinking lashes. Bad enough I lured a man, however despicable, to his execution. Now a sweet young woman was arrested, because of something that happened at my coffeehouse.
Lori squeezed my shoulder in sympathy.
“Her lawyer’s smart. I’m sure he’ll find a compassionate judge. But Carol Lynn Kendall is guilty, and she will be punished for the murder of Robert Crenshaw.”
Seventy-five
“I know Carol Lynn didn’t kill that man. I’m certain of it.” Tucker spoke while gazing morosely through our French doors at the darkening streets.
It was Sunday evening, and though the gloom of night had descended over the city, our coffeehouse glowed like a lightship beacon. Filled to capacity with human souls, our shop’s rejuvenated business continued to overflow onto the sidewalks.
At this hour, Vicki and Dante were working the counter, while Nancy bused tables and Esther MC’d karaoke and comedic trivia games in our Shot Down Lounge.
Now on our evening break, Tuck and I pondered Carol Lynn’s plight, and what to do about it.
“Where did she get a gun?” he asked. “It’s not like you can have an Amazon drone drop one at your doorstep. And, last I checked, there is no ‘Guns and Ammo’ aisle at Whole Foods.”
He set his empty demitasse aside. “She’s innocent, and we’ve got to prove it.”
I understood Tucker’s feelings, but the evidence against his friend seemed overwhelmingly conclusive—
“Maybe a little too conclusive,” I said, thinking aloud. “It’s possible the person who cooked up this scheme put a little too much icing on the cake.”
Tuck blinked. “Icing? Cake? Are you thinking about your wedding plans again?”
“No. I’m thinking about that coffee cup with Carol Lynn’s fingerprints on it. It’s been bothering me since I saw it on the DOT video. It feels like one clue too many—one that doesn’t fit. You see, despite what the police think they know, I know my business . . .”
I reminded Tuck that Carol Lynn said she came to our coffeehouse during last night’s big event. “She told us that she stopped in to apologize, but couldn’t find me in that paid mob, and she left early.”
“So?”
“So if Carol Lynn bought a coffee early in the evening, then she got our standard blue cup with our logo. What if someone grabbed her cup after she disposed of it, fully intending to frame her for murder later that night?”
Tuck’s face brightened for the first time since his friend’s arrest. Then almost immediately, he frowned. “Who could hate Richard Crest enough to dress up like an innocent woman, kill him, and then frame that same woman? I mean, seriously? How much can a girl hate a guy?”
I let that question lie, to focus on another.
“The victim’s name isn’t Crest,” I pointed out. “It’s Robert Crenshaw, and he may have a history that can give us a few leads. I say we look him up right now.”
I brought my laptop to the table and did a quick Internet search. There were a dozen Robert Crenshaws on Facebook and Twitter, and a “Top 25 Robert Crenshaw Profiles on LinkedIn.” But when I narrowed the search from All to News, I struck gold.
The man lying dead at the city morgue turned out to be the infamous founder of Hookster, the discredited and defunct dating app shut down by a class action suit.
I skimmed the Wall Street Journal article Matt had mentioned, and then hit a Wired piece that told the whole ugly story of the rise and fall of Hookster.
“Remind me,” Tuck said. “What is Hookster?”
“It’s a hookup app, dreamed up by Crenshaw when he was in college. He created it with the help of a frat house pal named Tommy Finkle. Both were named in the subsequent class action lawsuit . . .”
I then recounted for Tuck the smarmy saga of Hookster’s history, which billed itself as the swipe-to-meet app with the “hottest” and “horniest” women. Only they weren’t real women. The programming buried profiles of real girls, while promoting matches with fantasy profiles of girls who didn’t exist.
When a man “matched” with one of these “hotties,” only three messages were allowed before the app required payment for further communication. Payment was needed because Hookster was really the equivalent of a 1-900 phone sex line posing as a legit dating app.
Crenshaw and his buddy could have gotten away with their scam, too—except that Robert Crenshaw hooked up professionally and romantically with a young marketing genius named Cindy Webber. It was Webber who took Hookster to new heights, and made the company millions of dollars.
Things went smoothly until Webber and Crenshaw had a falling-out.
Cindy Webber was forced to resign. But she didn’t go quietly. In a webzine interview that went viral, Webber publicly blew the whistle on Hookster’s internal culture of sexually harassing female employees. She also revealed that the app’s creators intended to mislead their customers through false claims, which led to the lawsuit that closed the app down.
During a criminal discovery phase, Cindy was given immunity for her testimony. But the fine print in Hookster’s terms of service, which laid out its “paid entertainment” model, absolved them from criminal conviction. Generous payoffs took care of the sexual harassment charges. But the class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of duped customers, finished their business.
After digesting that history, I wasn’t surprised Robert Crenshaw—the renegade web designer who Wired magazine gushed over as “Captain Hookster Sailing on Success”—turned into a chameleon using false IDs like Richard Crest and Harry Krinkle.
Meanwhile, Cindy Webber, with her new married name, became Sydney Webber-Rhodes, founder and CEO of Cinder, which she promoted with a passionate vow to make real happy endings come true for couples, especially women. Women she now lamented were so badly objectified in the Hookster app.
“It’s possible that Sydney could be the killer,” I said. “Or one of her loyal Tinkerbells. I don’t have any proof, but it sure looks like Crenshaw had a motive to sabotage Cinder, the shiny new business started by the woman who destroyed his. And if Haley helped him, and Sydney found out, well . . .”
“You think Sydney murdered Haley, too?”
“It’s possible. From what I overheard in our alley, she knew Haley had put a backdoor in the Cinder programming. Maybe she suspected it for a while and contacted Haley to wring the truth out of her.”
Tuck nodded. “Then Sydney smacked Haley upside her head and killed her.” He paused. “I don’t know. For a genius marketing mind, murder in a public park doesn’t seem like a very good plan.”
“No, it doesn’t. And that’s why I believe Haley’s death wasn’t planned. I think Haley met her killer at Habitat Garden and an argument went too far. If it was Sydney who exploded and struck Haley when she realized how deeply she’d been betrayed, she probably called her watchdog Cody to help her get rid of the body.”
I recalled Cody’s dead-eyed stare at the Equator gym.
“Yes, Cody seems just the type to have ‘fixed’ her boss’s problem by dumping Haley in the Hudson River—after cleaning out her pockets and valuables to make it look like a mugging gone bad.”
“That could be it,” Tuck agreed. “It sure looks like Sydney had motive—”
I closed the laptop. “There’s a walking, talking hole in my theory, however.”
“What’s that?”
“More like who’s that. The superintendent at Carol Lynn’s apartment house told the police he saw her disposing of clothes and a gun in the Dumpster behind their building.”
“He could be mistaken,” Tuck said.
“Or maybe the police coached that statement out of him, in which case this witness could be as phony as the planted coffee cup appears to be.”
“What do we do now?” Tuck asked. “Should we talk to the Fish Squad?”
“Eventually. But first, let’s pay a visit to that building superintendent, and find out what he really saw.”
Seventy-six
TEN minutes later, Tucker and I had finished a brisk walk from the Village Blend to the six-story redbrick apartment building Carol Lynn Kendall called home.
I intended to walk up to the front entrance and ring the building superintendent—until I spotted an all-too-familiar wine-colored SUV. The vehicle was parked in front of the canopied entrance to Carol Lynn’s building. The driver’s side door was open, the interior lights on.
“Back! Quick!” I hissed, dragging Tuck until we were around the corner again.
“Clare? What’s going on?”
“That’s the SUV that tried to run me down. Do me a favor. Peek around the corner and tell me if you see a man with a curly red beard.”
Crouching low, Tuck peeked. “Oh, God, he’s there. And a big, strapping lumberjack he is, too. Hey, wait a minute, I’ve seen that guy before. He’s—uh-oh. He’s with someone you know.”
“Sydney?”
Tuck shook his head. “You better look yourself . . .”
I moved forward and peered around the corner. Red Beard was on the sidewalk, having an animated discussion with a woman out of my line of vision.
“Give me back my key,” the man said gruffly. “You don’t need it anymore, right?”
The woman stepped out from behind the SUV—and the shock of recognition made my knees weak.
Millennial Marilyn Monroe, my ex-husband’s new love toy (and boss), twisted a key ring in her manicured fingers, then handed a single key to Red Beard. He turned it in his hand and pocketed it in his work shirt.
Marilyn Hahn ran a hand through her sleek platinum curls. “Do you have something for me now?” she asked coyly.
“Oh, suddenly you’re interested in the perks of my new career?”
She put her hands on her hips. “You always were a jerk, Doug, even in high school.”
“Maybe I’m a jerk, but I never ever abused you. Treated you like trash the morning after—and then forced myself on you like that total piece of—”
“Stop it, Doug.” Marilyn shifted uncomfortably. “Come on. Do you have it or not?”
“I got it, I got it,” Red Beard replied. “And it’s the best. If you want some, get in the SUV.”
He stepped aside and she climbed in. He followed her into the vehicle and shut the door. The windows were tinted, so when the interior lig
hts went dim, I couldn’t see what was happening inside.
“What do you think they’re doing?” Tuck asked.
After four minutes—I timed them—the doors opened and Marilyn climbed out.
“Sure I can’t give you a lift?” he asked.
“My car’s coming now,” she replied.
As Tuck and I watched, Marilyn climbed into an Uber car. Then Red Beard started his SUV. He was about to drive off when an elderly woman came out of the building and waved. He gave her a nod and drove away—at a reasonable speed, this time.
“Wait here, Tuck,” I said as I half walked, half ran until I caught up with the older woman.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Who was that man who just drove away?”
She smiled. “That’s Douglas. He’s the janitor of my building. He’s a wonderful handyman, too. He fixed my refrigerator, and it’s not even covered by the maintenance fee.”
“Good for Doug,” I said before bidding her a good night.
I stood in the middle of the sidewalk, the word janitor bouncing around my head like an Equator gym volleyball.
Why is the word janitor vexing me?
The answer came from the past. Greenwich Village’s past to be exact, circa 1967.
On the night I found Haley’s body floating in the Hudson, Mike had told me how the police had solved the Groovy Murders, a brutal double homicide that had ended the Summer of Love movement.
The key to cracking the case had been the janitor of the building where those murders had taken place. As it turned out, the man had far more knowledge of the crime than he originally told the police.
Red Beard is a janitor, too, and Marilyn handed him a key. But a key to what?
Impatient, Tuck left his hiding place and caught up with me. “Shall we ring the building super now?”
“We just missed him.”
He blinked. “You mean that lumberjack is the super?” Tucker shook his head. “Small world.”
