On What Grounds

by Cleo Coyle

  “What are you talking about? Pierre’s penthouse alone is worth—”

  “Stop right there because you’ve nailed it. The penthouse, the villa, the stocks, the holdings, all of the money, all of it was Pierre’s, and all of it is now controlled by his children.”

  “No. It can’t be. Madame was his wife for two decades—”

  “She was his second wife. Pierre’s late first wife was the one who had inherited the importing business from her father. Pierre married into most of his fortune, and it was her will that stipulated nothing could be left to any future wife. Everything he owned was left to their children.”

  I sat down, stared a moment. The kettle’s whistle brought me back (water for the Melitta method should be heated just to boiling). I got up and poured the steaming water over the freshly ground coffee beans, piled inside the gold filter like brown earth on a miner’s treasure.

  The trick with a Melitta is to pour slowly and stir, allowing the water to seep smoothly through the layers of grinds and into the carafe without channeling up. And of course, one must use a cone-shaped filter. Flat-bottom filters of any sort should be outlawed in my opinion, as they require more beans per fluid ounce of water to get the same strength of brew. Flat bottoms dissipate. Cones concentrate, saving beans and consequently costs, something I could see this family was going to have to remain vigilant about.

  I never expected Madame to pay my way. But I did make an assumption—that she might leave Joy a healthy inheritance, enough so I’d never have to worry about my daughter’s financial future for the rest of my life. In one short conversation with my ex-husband, I could see that assumption had been a terrible mistake.

  “So, if she’s broke,” I said softly, “why doesn’t she sell the coffeehouse?”

  “You know why,” said Matt.

  And I did. Madame’s bills were clearly being paid by whatever final arrangement Pierre had made with his children. Other than that, her main concern seemed to be her legacy at the Blend—and being able to leave something of worth to Matt and to Joy, and apparently, to me.

  “So how is Anabelle doing, do you think?” asked Matt softly, changing the subject. He walked in and sat down, inhaled the aroma of the coffee slowly brewing on the table.

  “I called St. Vincent’s, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me. Her roommate, Esther Best, went with her to the hospital, but Anabelle was unconscious and she didn’t look good.”

  Matt exhaled. “Do you want me to go over?”

  “No. I’d like to do that myself if you don’t mind looking after the Blend. Tucker is our afternoon barista. I’m hoping we’ll be able to open again by then.”

  “Why can’t you open now?”

  “The Crime Scene people. Lieutenant Quinn’s waiting downstairs for them. If they ever get here, they’re supposed to look for physical evidence first. That’s why I’m making this coffee. It’s for them—and for Lieutenant Quinn. He’s used to the cheap stuff, and I’d like to convert him.”

  “Clare, tell me something about Anabelle’s fall. What makes you think it was a crime?”

  “My gut. The way I found her. Things don’t add up. And by the way, what do you know about Anabelle that you wouldn’t tell Quinn? I know you well enough to know when you’re holding something back.”

  Matt shifted uneasily. “I knew there was something wrong between Anabelle and her boyfriend.”

  “How?”

  “She said so. She told me she was trying to figure out some major issues.”

  “What sort of issues? Think back. Try to remember exactly.”

  “It was about six weeks ago, when I was last in New York. I was having an espresso downstairs and she sat down at my table and said she and her boyfriend were having some problems and she wanted to know about men.”

  “What about men?”

  “Things like…what makes them want to get married.”

  “She asked you for advice about marriage?” I did my best not to burst out laughing. “What did you tell her?”

  “What do you think, Clare? I told her I wasn’t the best person to ask about that stuff. I barely know what makes me tick. But she pressed, said she heard I was a confirmed bachelor, and asked if I’d ever consider getting married, and I told her I had been married. So she asked what made me commit, and I told her.”

  “Joy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what did she say?”

  “Then she said, ‘Thanks, that helps a lot,’ and that was it.”

  “That’s a pretty big deal, Matt.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “It sounds like she was trying to figure out whether to get pregnant to get her boyfriend to marry her, that’s why.”

  “So what if she was. That’s none of the detective’s business.”

  “It is if her boyfriend is the one who pushed her down our stairs.”

  “You see, that’s why I didn’t say anything to those cuff-crazed cops. One remark in a passing conversation and they’d have me incriminating some poor innocent kid.”

  “But, Matt, what if he isn’t so innocent? Have you ever met him?”

  “No.”

  “Neither have I, but I really wish you’d said something to the lieutenant. Clearly Quinn thought you were holding something back. Officer Langley did, too.”

  “Let them! I don’t like either one of them.”

  “So I noticed. Why not? Other than the handcuff thing. Remember, I thought you were an intruder, and they were trying to protect me at the time.”

  “They’re probably dirty cops.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “You think so? Mark my words they’ll never mention that vial of white powder again. Quinn or Langley will probably pass it around at some cop bar tonight. That or they’ll barter it on the street to some skell junkie for information to make themselves look good at the precinct. Only the joke will be on them because you can’t get a cocaine high from sniffing caffeine.”

  “Matt, you’ve been spending too much time in banana republics. Those guys are good cops. Lieutenant Quinn especially—”

  “Quinn I especially don’t like.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “For one thing, I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

  “And how is that?”

  “Like he’s interested.”

  “Really?…He does?”

  Matt stared at me. “My God, Clare, you’re interested, too.”

  “Of course not!” I said, “Don’t be stupid. He’s married.”

  “So?”

  “What do you mean so! Do you honestly think I’d get involved with someone who’s married? Well, I’m not you, Matt. Get that straight. And you know what? My interest in any man is not your business. Not anymore. You think you can just waltz in here and—and—”

  I ran out of gas. It had been a long morning. I turned away, walked to the window, and crossed my arms. The rain that had been threatening all morning had finally begun to fall.

  Matt didn’t move for a few moments, then he finally let out a disgusted grunt and headed for the stairs. “Guess it’s time for me to finish getting dressed, before I get any more of a chill.”

  Five seconds later I heard a sharp thump, and I knew on the way up the steps, he’d sent his fist into a wall.

  TEN

  I N 1849, four Sisters of Charity founded St. Vincent’s as a thirty-bed hospital for the poor in a small brick house on Thirteenth Street

  .

  Today St. Vincent’s has 758 beds, and the only trauma center below Fourteenth Street

  in Manhattan. It’s also a teaching hospital—something I have firsthand experience with because its medical residents are outstanding customers.

  I figured at least one of the red-eyed young residents who regularly stumbled into the Blend for double-tall lattes, triple espressos, and grande Italian roasts during their periodic thirty-hour on-call shifts would be able to tell me about Anabelle’s condition. So
, as soon as the Crime Scene Unit left the shop and Tucker arrived to help Matteo open the coffee bar again, I grabbed an umbrella and trudged up Seventh Avenue South

  , through the pouring rain.

  When I neared the hospital’s entrance, I paused at one of the building’s walls. Cold rain streaked the dark gray stone, trickling like tears down its smooth blank face. Just a few years ago, this gray wall wasn’t so blank.

  I could still see the hundreds of photos—the faces, the names, the desperate messages scrawled beneath: “Have you seen…?” “Please, please call…” “Looking for my…wife, husband, son, daughter, brother, sister, lover, friend…”

  On the morning of September 11, 2001, I had been in New Jersey, watching the breaking news on television like most of the country, but I still remember how hard it was to contemplate the details: the cut throats of stewardesses, the terror of passengers as commercial jets were turned into guided missiles, the horrible deaths of the Trade Center workers—people from all nations, all beliefs, all income levels, people who’d simply arrived early to get the job done—office workers, restaurant staffs, banking executives, security guards, and maintenance men.

  Many of those killed had lived in this Village neighborhood. They had woken that morning unsuspecting, unaware it would be the last morning of their lives, the last opportunity to feel a new day’s sunshine, smell and sip a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

  People forget as years go by, but this city will never forget. The terror, the tragedy, or the courage…

  The firemen running up as others ran out. The businessman who wouldn’t leave his friend stranded alone in a wheelchair. Two figures in a window, high above the street, a man and a woman with locked hands, jumping together, like so many others before and after them who decided a falling fate was better than burning up alive amid the toxic cloud of melting office furniture and hundreds of gallons of jet fuel.

  When the reality hit that morning and most of the city felt paralyzed, Madame Dreyfus Allegro Dubois descended from her Fifth Avenue penthouse, just a few blocks from this spot, and marched straight to the Blend, instructing the staff to brew coffee nonstop around the clock—and deliver a fresh thermos every two hours to every nurses’ station at St. Vincent’s. The Village hospital had treated over 1,400 patients, including some of the most severe trauma cases.

  “At such times, you do what you can do,” Madame had said to me. “And we can do coffee, so that’s what we will do.”

  And we did. Joy and I dropped everything to help. In the weeks that followed, we even helped Madame transport urns down the West Side Highway, to Ground Zero, the smoldering site of the collapsed World Trade Center, where firemen, iron workers, and hundreds of volunteers toiled tirelessly for months to recover remains and clear away the tons of smoking, twisted wreckage near the tip of Manhattan island.

  Nothing would end the heartbreak of that fall and winter, certainly nothing as trivial as a cup of coffee. Yet every time Joy, or Madame, or I placed a hot paper cup into the hands of an exhausted volunteer, I understood why Madame wanted to take urn after urn down there.

  What cheered and warmed these weary people for a few minutes wasn’t the liquid extraction of a handful of beans, but the idea that someone had made it for them. Someone had cared. Someone had loved—an essential reminder for anyone who must daily face the gray, twisted evidence of someone else’s hate.

  “The coffee almanac said it best,” Madame liked to remind us at the end of those long days. And then she’d quote words written at the beginning of the last century:

  “Coffee makes a sad man cheerful, a languorous man active, a cold man warm, a warm man glowing. It awakens mental powers thought to be dead, and when left in a sick room, it fills the room with a fragrance…. The very smell of coffee terrorizes death.”

  To Madame, a cup of morning coffee was more than a pick-me-up, it was fortification against whatever the world was about to throw at you, be it the best or the worst.

  Which brings me back to my fears for Anabelle. After my silent moment at St. Vincent’s rain-streaked wall, I entered the hospital and found its elevator bank.

  The ascent took the usual four months with orderlies, nurses, and visitors entering and exiting on their appointed floors. During one of these brief stops, the elevator doors opened and I caught a glimpse of a familiar face down one of the hospital corridors—

  Madame was sitting in a wheelchair and chatting with a gray-templed white-coated doctor. Before I could step out, the doors closed again.

  “Excuse me, what floor was that?” I asked the tall Filipino orderly, who was standing beside me with an empty wheelchair.

  “Cancer treatment,” he said.

  My stomach dropped.

  Cancer treatment. My god.

  Madame had indeed seemed more tired lately. And the contracts she’d tricked me and Matt into signing. My god, I thought again, it all made sense now: She was ill. That’s why she wanted the legacy of the Blend in our hands. That’s why she’d had the nerve to give us both permission to live in the duplex—she wanted to see us get back together before she…before she…

  My god.

  My mind was still processing this awful revelation when the elevator door opened on the floor for the intensive care unit. While I was still reeling from this news about Madame, I knew Anabelle was in even more serious trouble, so, like a triage nurse, I did my best to put my worries about Madame on hold and refocus my attention on Anabelle.

  Venturing into the ICU waiting area, I noticed a young woman with a mass of frizzy dark hair and baggy clothes standing at a large observation window, staring at a ward full of beds. It was Anabelle’s roommate, Esther Best (shortened from Bestovasky by her grandfather, she’d told me when we first met).

  Anabelle’s bed wasn’t far from the observation window. She appeared to still be unconscious, plugged into an array of daunting-looking medical machines. A nurse sat near the foot of the bed, watching the monitors. Next to the bed, a slender blond woman stood, her back to us.

  Through her trendy black-rimmed rectangular glasses, Esther glanced over at me. Like the mother I was, I found myself thinking how lovely the girl’s features were, how beautiful her skin, and yet they were hidden by that too-long mass of frizzy, unconditioned hair and those clunky black glasses.

  The truth was, I actually had a soft spot for Esther Best because I’d been just like her in my teen years (albeit a might less hostile). Eventually I grew out of it. I lost weight, made an effort with my appearance, dealt with my anger, and accepted the things I could not change, as the saying goes.

  The biggest issue for Esther, as it had been with me, was her attitude. The giant chip on her shoulder usually fell on anyone within earshot, especially members of the opposite sex, whom she puzzled about on a fairly regular basis. From what I overheard in her conversations with poor Tucker, she was “totally perplexed” as to why the few boys who asked her out were so “hostile” after only an hour or two with her.

  I greeted Esther. She nodded, and then she glanced back to the window, offering one of her characteristic observations—

  “I thought she was supposed to be graceful.”

  Gee, how charitable, I thought with a sigh. “Anabelle is graceful, Esther. She’s a dancer.”

  “I know she’s a dancer. Everyone does. My god, it’s the first thing that comes out of her mouth in case you haven’t noticed—especially with men—‘I’m a dancer!’ But geez, Clare, I don’t call slipping down a flight of stairs and ending up here graceful. I’d call it stupendously klutzy.”

  You know that old saying, If you’ve got nothing nice to say—then slide over here and sit next to me. Well, Esther was definitely comfortable on both sides of that couch.

  “Who’s to say she slipped?” I asked Esther.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, she may have been pushed,” I said, watching Esther closely for a reaction. “I think somebody pushed her.”

&nb
sp; Esther’s eyes narrowed. “Like who?”

  Okay, so the truth is the New York Police Department’s Crime Scene Unit hadn’t uncovered a darned thing to support my “pushing” theory. The only “physical evidence” they found was that JFK luggage tag from the back alley, which to my chagrin, Quinn handed over for the Crime Scene folks to file (even after Matteo identified it as coming from his luggage) along with Anabelle’s jacket and purse.

  For a grand total of about thirty minutes, they’d inspected the overflowing garbage can above the staircase, as well as every other potentially clue-filled surface. They found the smudged fingerprints of over a dozen people. Clearly, there was no way to get any leads from prints—unless someone who worked at the Blend had figured their prints would prove nothing.

  I cleared my throat and raised an eyebrow to Esther, trying to look shrewd. “I don’t know who pushed Anabelle. But I’m going to find out.”

  Esther rolled her eyes.

  “By the way,” I said, “where were you last night?”

  “At the Words on Eighth poetry reading, why?”

  “Then where to?”

  “Sheridan Square Diner with some friends. Then back to the apartment. Alone.”

  “And when was the last time you saw Anabelle?”

  “What are you? Working for the NYPD now? Those cops already asked me that stuff.”

  “Just answer me.”

  “I last saw her before I left for the poetry reading. She said she was going to the Blend for an eight-to-midnight shift.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Anything else you can remember? Did she mention seeing anyone?”

  “Like I told the cops. No, nyet, nada, zippo!”

  I sighed, out of questions already, and made a mental note to speak to Lieutenant Quinn about interrogating suspects. Maybe he could give me some pointers.

  I looked through the ICU observation window at Anabelle again. The blond woman moved around the bed to talk to the nurse, and I got the first good look at her face.

  She was distraught, that was clear. And the lines, creases, and shadows confirmed she was a lot older than her youthfully slender body appeared, probably late forties. The hair that fell just past her shoulders was blond but the roots were dark, and she’d pulled it into a tasteful ponytail. The skin was too tan for a New York autumn and her clothes—tight black designer slacks and a white silk blouse—appeared tailored to fit her perfectly.