Latte Trouble cm-3

by Клео Коул

  It was during one of her visits to the Blend that the formerly “defunct” designer seized on the simple but brilliant idea that would resurrect her fashion career.

  “What a color!” Lottie had exclaimed that Friday as she sat beside one of our regular customers. “That looks absolutely delicious. What are you drinking, darling?”

  Rena Garcia, a petite Latina with shoulder-length dark curls, full, cocoa-painted lips and laughing dark eyes, tipped her cup in Lottie’s direction. “It’s a caramel-chocolate latte. I felt the need for some comfort today—and the Blend’s the only coffeehouse around here that makes these.”

  The latte in question was a Village Blend specialty. Because of the extra prep time involved in making the homemade syrup, I placed it on our menu only Fridays through Sundays. The drink had been popular to begin with, but it was lately improved by Tucker Burton’s addition of whipped cream with a chocolate-covered coffee bean placed atop it. Since Tucker’s tinkering, the drink had become even more popular. Everyone who tried it loved it and came back for more.

  “I’ll have one of those myself,” Lottie declared.

  It was a happy coincidence that Rena had been there at all. The savvy, outspoken marketing professional, who was barely out of her twenties, had been fired the day before from her high-powered job at the nearby Satay and Satay Advertising Agency. She was only in the neighborhood to “clean out her desk and say good-bye to everyone,” which included the staff at the Blend.

  “Stay awhile and let’s enjoy our lattes,” Lottie insisted after hearing this.

  When I set a fresh caramel-chocolate latte in front of her, Lottie seemed transfixed by the hot liquid, the threads of our own homemade chocolate-infused caramel syrup crisscrossing the whipped cream, the single chocolate-covered coffee bean sitting atop the cloud.

  “Now that is delightful,” said Lottie.

  Rena regarded her. “But you haven’t even tried it yet.”

  Lottie twirled her finger above the drink. “The white of the whipped cream is the perfect foil for that beautiful caramel-chocolate color of the syrup and the rich brown of the bean.”

  “Excuse me?” said Rena.

  “It’s a sophisticated color, too,” continued Lottie. “Not like those bubble-gum pinks I’ve seen far too much of. These colors are classic, not trendy. Subtle, mature, reassuring…colors that dispel the chill of the autumn day. What was the word you used—”

  Rena laughed. “Comfort. It’s a comfort drink.”

  Overhearing them from behind the counter, I jumped in. “Like comfort food, right? Chocolate chip cookies or apple pie or mashed potatoes and meatloaf.”

  Lottie nodded, tapping her chin with her finger, even more intrigued. “And all of those foods are part of the same palette—creams, tans, browns. Look, Rena. See how, as you drink it, the caramel-chocolate swirls in the latte froth…see how it would highlight the weave in your sweater.”

  “It would look good on me as a brooch, then,” said Rena, half-jokingly. “Better that than spilled on my sweater. Actually, I haven’t found any jewelry that doesn’t look tacky on me. Everything’s either blah or trying too hard to be faux antique or like some thrift shop rhinestone retro ‘find’ when it obviously isn’t.”

  Lottie’s brow was still wrinkled in thought, then she nodded. “You’re right, Rena. It would look good as a brooch…in fact, it would look fabulous!” Lottie instantly grabbed a dozen napkins and borrowed a pen from me. As she began to sketch, a man stepped up to the coffee bar from a nearby table to join their conversation.

  Tad Benedict, a thirty-something, self-employed investment banker, was working some personal stock trades on his laptop computer when he’d overheard the women. It was soon fairly clear that Tad was more interested in Rena Garcia than the unique hue of her beverage, but all three were cordial to each other.

  “You said you’d been fired?” Tad asked Rena. “But why would they get rid of someone like you? Don’t they need good people over at S and S anymore?”

  Rena tossed her dark curls and laughed. “My boss got rid of me because I’m smarter than her,” she replied. “I came up with ideas she took, and when I started making noise about a promotion, a raise, or some sort of recognition, she trumped up complaints about my performance. That uptight vampire bitch of a manager only has a job because she’s bled young assistants dry one after another then tossed them aside when she felt threatened.”

  “I’m really sorry,” said Tad, “but you know that’s a very old story in this town…and probably a lot of other ones too, so don’t feel bad.”

  Rena sighed and shook her head. “Wish I could say I don’t but I do.”

  “You’re better off. Look, you’ve just met me, haven’t you? And I know some guys on Wall Street who might be looking for someone like you.”

  Her full lips smiled and she met his gaze. “Like you, maybe?”

  As the afternoon wore on, the trio talked while they consumed gallons of coffee and a dozen fresh-baked pastries. As the shadows began to lengthen, Rena looked up in surprise, then glanced at her watch. “I should go,” she announced. “I still have to clean out my office and I don’t want some security guard hovering over me while I do it, which is exactly what will happen if I try to enter the building after five o’clock.”

  “Forget about that and take a look at this instead,” said Lottie. She held out the napkin. On it, she’d drawn a brooch. Text and arrows indicated the colors she’d chosen—colors that mimicked the hue of the Blend’s caramel-chocolate latte.

  “It’s large, but not garish,” Lottie explained. “The branches here would be made of white gold, the central filigree coffee-brown enamel. With sculpting I could recreate a froth effect using something like a milky white chalcedony—”

  “A what?” asked Tad.

  “It’s a type of quartz,” explained Lottie. “And here, you see, at the center would sit a semiprecious stone like onyx or even a precious one like opal—something that’s dark and nutty, like a coffee bean. I could even work with organic material, say, use actual roasted coffee beans and experiment with lacquering and setting techniques to create complementary pieces.”

  “May I see it?” I asked from behind the coffee bar.

  Lottie was only too pleased to share her sketch.

  “I’d buy this in a heartbeat,” I told her. “I can’t believe nobody’s done this before. When Joy was a little girl, Matt came back from Guatemala with a coffee-bean necklace for her. Down there, they’ve been making coffee-bean necklaces and bracelets from varnished roasted beans for years.”

  “Interesting,” said Lottie. “So it’s a natural for any culture that embraces coffee.”

  “Makes sense.” I handed Lottie back the sketch. “Which means you’ve got a worldwide market…and since specialty coffeehouses have been on the rise in America, I’d say this culture has never been more ripe for it.”

  Rena Garcia tapped her chin in thought. She reached for the sketch and studied it. “You know, one of the accounts my boss managed was the Vardus line. Their stuff was cheap derivative crap compared to this, but it was my ideas for the campaign that boosted sales twenty-two percent in the first fiscal year. I could market something like this easily.”

  Tad nodded. “Can’t say I know much about jewelry making, but this seems like a lucrative idea to me. Lottie, why in the world did you ever quit the fashion business in the first place?”

  Lottie’s gaze broke from Tad’s. Her expression darkened. “There’s a lot of heartbreak that comes with success,” she said shortly. Then she forced that nervous, high-pitched laugh I’d heard her use the first day I’d met her. “I mean, look at Rena here. She boosted account sales and was fired anyway.”

  At the time, I thought nothing of Lottie’s response. But looking back now, it seemed she’d deliberately turned the conversation back to Rena to avoid revealing what had happened in her past. I realized that I’d never heard her talk about her early years or the abrupt end to her car
eer back then. Even when asked, she’d only want to talk about the present or the future.

  That afternoon, Lottie had continued to sketch out an entire collection of possible variations on her “coffeehouse palette” theme—earrings, necklaces, bracelets, scarves, handbags. In the end, Rena never did make it to Satay and Satay to clean out her office. Instead, she helped Lottie Harmon map out a marketing strategy and come up with a catchy name for the line: Lottie Harmon’s Java Jewelry. And before that chance meeting had ended, Tad Benedict had agreed to put up a sizeable chunk of his own money to purchase raw materials and fund the crafting of prototypes based on Lottie’s designs.

  Four months later—just in time for New York’s February Fashion Week—the Lottie Harmon brand name was re-born with an entire line of coffee-bean necklaces of black and brown gemstones, latte brooches, caramel-loop bracelets and rings, coffee-klatch clutches, cocoa-brown scarves dotted with “coffee-bean” beads, and dozens of other pieces.

  The additional backing for Lottie’s launch came from the legendary clothing designer Fen, who had worked with Lottie through the seventies and early eighties and agreed to showcase her creations on his own models. The Lottie Harmon accessory line had been the buzz of that buying season with fall orders coming in from top retail: Harrods, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Printemps. The phenomenal sales transformed the moribund Lottie Harmon name into a multimillion dollar cash cow.

  Fast forward seven months to the current Fashion Week festivities. Lottie, Tad, and Rena were all now very successful and very rich. Tad became a close friend and confidante to both women, and Lottie Harmon began to treat Rena Garcia like the daughter she never had—buying the younger woman expensive gifts, and even an apartment in the East Village.

  For the current rollout, designer Fen had once again agreed to use Lottie’s jewelry designs. He would unveil his spring clothing line under the Bryant Park tents at the end of the week—which would mean a big boost for Lottie’s newest creations. Already, fashion buyers and top editors were writing about what Lottie might be “brewing up.” Everyone seemed to love the woman. She was one of the least catty and most generous people I’d met in my limited contact with the fashion world….

  So why, I asked myself, would anyone want to poison Lottie’s latte?

  Seven

  Four A.M.

  I dragged myself upstairs and was greeted by Java, a little female cat with fur the color of a medium roast arabica bean and more attitude than a pop diva.

  Mrrrroooow!

  She hadn’t been given her usual late night snack, and she was not amused. “Sorry, girl,” I murmured, bending to lift her into my arms. I carried her to the kitchen, scratching under her chin in a cheap a plea for forgiveness. The slow beginnings of a purr told me she was at least willing to extend an olive branch.

  For the past five hours, I’d been toiling to restore some semblance of normalcy to the coffee bar, which was due to open in less than three hours for morning business. The Crime Scene Unit had been a hurricane, blowing through with no regard to private property. Esther and Moira had stayed overtime to help, and I’d called in Maxwell, another NYU student and part-time barista, to give us another pair of hands—but at one o’clock, I’d sent them all home and finished the rest myself.

  Together, we’d cleaned the floor and counter and hauled the marble-topped café tables back upstairs from storage. By myself, I’d restocked the cupboards and under-counter fridge, and set up the reserve espresso machine—since the Crime Scene Unit had taken the one used during the party. And the entire time, I’d been thinking about Tucker and dreading what he might be going through. I knew he’d need a good criminal lawyer and fast, so the first thing I did, before any of the cleanup, was phone the Blend’s attorney, Larry Jacobson.

  After an unfortunate accident in the store a year ago, Matt and I convinced Madame it was important to have legal counsel on retainer for any future civil entanglements, anything that could lead to our being sued to within a penny of our existence. But when I called I didn’t get Jacobson. I got his answering service, so I left a lengthy message. Then I called the Sixth Precinct for some kind of update on Tucker’s situation (which—big surprise—got me nowhere). I even tried my friend Mike Quinn’s cell, but it was obviously turned off, and I didn’t leave a message. The man had enough stress dealing with his divorce, and I certainly didn’t want to force him into any favors with a frantic, recorded plea. If I didn’t have some concrete answers from the police by morning I’d resort to trying Detective Quinn again.

  As I stepped into the kitchen, I flipped on the lights, lowered Java to the floor, and popped a can of Fancy Feast. As I watched her eat, I turned on the small clock-radio on the counter. The radio was tuned to 1010 AM—the “All news all the time” station. The murder at the Village Blend was the fifth story, dovetailing behind a piece about the opening of Fashion Week festivities. The news item itself was mercifully short—who, what, where, and when, then the announcer moved on to the next story about a water main break in Chinatown. Ricky Flatt’s name was mentioned, but not the suspect’s. The Blend was referred to as “a popular Greenwich Village institution”—which would have been flattering under any other circumstances.

  I flipped off the radio.

  Although I was tired, I was too shaken up to go to bed. I didn’t have an appetite either. As bizarre as it sounded after the events of the night—particularly the use of cyanide as a secret ingredient—what I was dying for was a cup o’ joe. It wasn’t completely off the wall considering religious clerics in Yemen had used coffee in their extended prayer vigils for at least five hundred years, and I knew that’s what this night was going to feel like, given my worries over Tucker. In fact, I decided a French pressed pot of some newly arrived Mocha Yemen Mattari would be perfect. I fired up a gas burner under a kettle of filtered water, pulled down the tightly sealed canister from my kitchen shelf and began to scoop the dark, oily beans into my electric grinder.

  Mattari was hard to obtain year-round (it’s best obtained in North America in fall and winter) but it was a rich cup, full of body, incredibly aromatic, and I’d roasted this batch dark, which meant there would be slightly less caffeine. (Customers are often under the mistaken impression that darker roasts, such as French and Italian, have more caffeine than lighter roasts. Not so. The darker the bean, the less caffeine. Which is why Breakfast Blends are usually light to medium “city roasts”.)

  I was just pouring the boiling water over the ground coffee in my smallest French press when I heard the front door open, the rattle of keys, then heavy footsteps in the hallway. The kitchen door swung wide and Matteo stood there, frozen in his tracks, staring at me in surprise. He was still clad in the black Armani, which, with his tall stature and impressive physique, made him an imposing figure. Kind of like Darth Vader—only less trustworthy.

  “You’re up early,” he said, checking his watch.

  “Late,” I replied. “Notice the clothing? It’s what I was wearing last night.”

  Not that you had eyes for anyone but that woman from Trend magazine, I thought—but was too chicken to say. After all, the man was no longer my husband, and what he did in his spare time was so not my business. The fact that I found myself caring at all was what irritated me more than anything.

  Using a wooden spoon, I stirred the grounds with a little more force than necessary and replaced the lid of the French press. (I found that stirring the water and freshly ground coffee nicely kick-starts the brewing process.)

  “How are you fixed for staff?” Matt moved to the small kitchen table, removed his suit jacket, and draped it over a cane-back chair.

  “It’s Esther’s regular day and she agreed to come early to help me open.”

  Matt almost laughed as he sat down. “Good luck with that.”

  Esther had slept through her alarm so often, I’d finally restricted the girl to afternoon and evening shifts only. But she seemed willing, and I was definitely desperate. “It’ll take me a day o
r more to juggle the schedules. I was relying on Tucker for so much, but at least his friend Moira agreed to cover for him.” I sat down opposite my ex-husband and stared.

  He knew the look. “What?”

  “I could have used your help last night. The investigators from the Crime Scene Unit didn’t leave the shop until after eleven. The place was totally wrecked.”

  “Sorry, Clare, but I thought Tucker needed my help more.”

  “Tucker?” I sat back. “You…you were helping Tucker?”

  My shocked tone seemed to offend him. “Of course I was helping Tucker,” he said. “Where the hell did you think I was?”

  Sleeping with Breanne Summour, what else? I thought, but what I said was—

  “How did you even know where to find him? I called the precinct, but no one would answer my questions or return my calls. Around one, a desk sergeant finally informed me that Tucker was ‘being processed’—exactly the same vague crap I got from Detective Hutawa.”

  Matt sighed and rubbed his neck. “Tucker spent the night on suicide watch inside Rikers Island jail—”

  “Suicide watch!”

  I think the blood must have drained from my face because Matt’s expression went from simply tired to suddenly alarmed. “Clare, it’s okay. He’s okay. It’s just a ploy.”

  “A ploy? What do you mean ‘a ploy’? What are you talking about?”

  “Suicide watch means he’ll be isolated from the general hardened prison population and presumably safe from…interference.”

  It took a few seconds for this notion to sink in—that a “suicide watch” could, in any way, be a good thing. But it finally registered, and a perplexing question came with it: “Matt, how in the world did you even know about suicide watch? Or arrange to get Tucker that status?”

  “I didn’t,” he replied with a stifled yawn. “It was Doyle Egan.”

  The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Who is—”