by Клео Коул
“He what? He held an opening? In Manhattan? Were you blackmailing the guy?”
Mike’s grim expression finally loosened a little. His chilly gaze began to warm. “The landlord’s a retired detective. I was his partner for a few years there. He inherited the building, and he’s been renting to divorced cops ever since.”
“Only divorced cops?”
“The rookies are usually still living at home. The married guys get houses in the boroughs. It’s the older guys whose marriages break up that need the camaraderie. We even get together once a week to hang out, shoot the breeze.”
“So you belong to a divorced men’s group?”
“We don’t think of it that way.”
“Of course you do. That’s why you never mentioned it until now.” I stifled a laugh.
Mike rolled his eyes, checked his watch. “I’ve got to get going…”
“Okay, but…can we make a date to meet? At your place? I promise I’ll move out of the duplex the first chance I get. Is that good enough for you?”
Mike smiled for the first time since he walked in my door. “Yeah,” he said, leaning in. “It’s good enough.”
His hand caressed my hair, and he pulled me close, brushed my lips with his. But the light kiss wasn’t enough for either of us, and we locked pretty tightly for a few minutes.
“How about we get together Monday afternoon?” Mike suggested softly when we finally parted. “If you can take off, I can arrange a little picnic on the floor of my one-bedroom.”
I smiled. “Let me guess; it’s a picnic because you still don’t have actual furniture yet.”
“You’re right, Cosi. I admit it. See that? And you didn’t even have to beat it out of me.” Mike’s eyes were laughing now; his voice was warm. I’d finally melted him down to the human race.
“I told you before, Lieutenant, many times. You should let me help you detect some furniture. I promise I’ll go easy on your credit cards.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll give in soon. In the meantime, you’ll be happy to know I do have a nice big bed in the bedroom. Is that good enough for now?”
“That’s more than good enough, mister. That’s I’ll be there with bells on.”
“Really…just bells, huh?” Mike’s eyebrow arched. “Kinky.”
I swatted him. He laughed. And then we heard a bell for real; the front door was opening again.
“Hello, hello!” Matt’s mother waltzed in, bundled in a floor-length fur.
“Madame?” I checked my watch. “It’s almost twelve thirty. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you in person, Clare. It’s rather important.”
Mike smiled down at me. “I have to get going.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll call you.”
I nodded. “Be safe.”
Mike winked at me, gave a polite nod to Madame, and then he was gone.
“I remember that young man,” Madame said as she waved me over to a café table. “He’s that nice detective who fixed your traffic violation last month.”
“You mean the BOLO that resulted from the police chase that ensued after you told me to run that red light in Brooklyn?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Mike’s handy that way.” We both sat down. “So what’s up? Do you want some coffee?”
“No, dear.”
I threw up my hands. “I can’t give it away tonight.”
“It’s just that I don’t have much time. My young man is picking me up here in”—she checked her watch—“fifteen minutes.”
“Your young man?”
“He’s only just turned sixty-six, quite a difference in our ages, but I couldn’t resist his charms.”
“Is this the man who was ‘eye-flirting’ with you last night at Solange?”
“The same. We’re going to a nightclub downtown. I haven’t done anything like that in years. And I’m quite looking forward to it!”
“Well, I’d love to hear more about him, but I don’t want you to keep him waiting. So what’s up? Why are you here so late?”
“It’s Joy.”
My breath caught. “You’ve heard from her?”
“I just left her, Clare. We spent the evening together. Now she’s on her way uptown.”
“Uptown? Why?”
“She’s going back to Solange, of course.”
Fifteen
Inside of six minutes, I’d gotten the entire story out of Madame and was waving down a taxi on Hudson. Then I was off, my driver heading uptown, transporting me back to Tommy Keitel’s hellacious house of haute cuisine.
Madame stayed behind to lock up the Blend, and I was indebted to her for that. But I was even more grateful to her for telling me the one thing I’d been waiting all night to hear:
“Joy wasn’t upset with you, Clare, not in the least.”
According to Madame, when Joy had bolted away from that cheese cave and out of the cellar, she hadn’t been running from me. She’d been running from Tommy Keitel…
“She was mortified by Keitel’s behavior,” Madame had told me. “Seeing his hands on you in that small room, she knew instantly that he was making a pass. It was a tremendous blow to her ego. But she didn’t blame you. She blamed him.”
Apparently, after Joy’s long, tearful walk, she’d returned to her job. But as soon as she started working at her prep table, Tommy Keitel delivered the final cut.
“He loudly told her in the open kitchen that he’d made a decision. He no longer wanted to see her romantically. They were through. Not only that, as of Monday, she was to report to Robbie Gray at his restaurant downtown, where she’d serve out the remainder of her internship year.”
Listening to Madame’s tale, my whole body went rigid. I’d already known what Tommy had planned for Joy, but hearing the blow-by-blow made me sick to my stomach.
“Our girl was humiliated, of course,” Madame went on. “The entire kitchen brigade heard Tommy toss Joy away like a piece of substandard produce. Rather than break down in front of her colleagues, she fled the restaurant and took a cab to my apartment to cry it all out.”
My shoulders sagged upon hearing that. “Why didn’t she come to me?”
“Because, Clare, down deep Joy knew you were right all along about Tommy. Now she’s humiliated. But most of all, she’s ashamed. She didn’t want you to see her crying over Tommy. That’s what she told me. She simply wants you to be proud of her again—”
“But I am proud of her! She made a mistake. But for so many reasons, I’m still so very proud of Joy. She should know that.”
“She knows you love her, Clare. That much I can promise you. She only came to me because she knew I wouldn’t ask questions. I’d just let her cry it out. And my goodness, she did. She cried herself to sleep on my sofa. When she woke up, she told me the whole story.
“I invited her to stay the night, but she said no. She washed her face, brushed her hair, and announced she was going back to Solange to retrieve her knives and personal items. I thought it was rather late to do that, but she was quite determined. And she assured me that someone would be there…”
Of course, someone would be there—Tommy Keitel himself—which was why I was speeding toward his restaurant now. Joy wasn’t going back there to pick up her knives and personal items. I was certain she was really going there to see Tommy one more time, either to tell him off or make a last desperate attempt to win him back.
But if Joy was going up there looking for closure, explanations, or any kind of comfort, she was about to be severely disappointed because Keitel’s singular goal tonight was to leave her emotionally bloodied. I couldn’t let her go through that alone, but there was an even more vital reason I was speeding north. Solange was a minefield, and I didn’t want Joy anywhere near its ticking bombs, especially at this hour.
Tommy Keitel and Anton Wright were feuding about something. Who knew if that would lead to violence? And even though Brigitte Rouille had been fired, it didn’t preclude her returning
to the scene to vent some rage. Then there was that glossy black envelope that made Tommy crazy. What was inside that thing? Was someone blackmailing the man? Would there be deadly repercussions if he failed to comply?
And what about Tommy’s creepy Russian friend Nick? The mysterious man in black from Brighton Beach had arrived at the restaurant late the previous night. If he really was a mobster, then any number of shady things could be going on in Solange’s kitchen after hours.
As my taxi sped uptown, I continued to fret, hoping the least I would find when I entered the premises was some petty scene—like my daughter in tears, begging her inappropriate lover to take her back; or Tommy Keitel desperately dodging Joy’s own personal choice of flying cutlery.
I can handle the situation either way, I told myself. I’ll just pull my daughter into my arms, and we’ll both wave good-bye to Chef Tommy Keitel for good.
Thankfully, traffic was light, and within fifteen minutes we were rolling up to the curb beside Solange’s signature burgundy awning. I paid the cabbie and approached the glass door. Beyond the window, the reception area was dimly lit, the only illumination a menu set on a glowing brass pedestal. My gloved fingers closed around the front door’s long handle. I pushed, and the door opened.
A little surprised that it was still unlocked, I stepped into the restaurant. With a quiet swish, the door swung closed behind me. I unbuttoned my coat.
“Hello?” I called into the darkness of the empty dining room.
The large, shadowy space carried a slight funereal scent of decaying lilies. With the crystal and copper chandeliers extinguished, the sunny walls now looked a sick, pasty yellow. The tablecloths, once the color of crème fraîche, now looked like gray ghosts. The gargoyles weren’t so whimsical anymore. From their high perches, their carved faces had turned grotesque, like cackling spies from the underworld. Their wooden eyes wouldn’t stop following me as I stepped around the gathering of shrouded tables.
My low boots were halfway across the room when a shrill scream froze me in place. The cry had come from the kitchen, and I instantly took off for the double doors. As I pushed from murky dimness into bright fluorescence, I heard a young woman’s voice wail.
“Oh, no! Noooo! God, no…”
The sound of sobbing came next, and I blinked against the glare, hurrying forward around the high service counter.
“Joy!”
“Mom, stay back!” my daughter cried, rushing to my side.
There was moist heat in the room, the scent of simmering stock. Why is someone cooking at this hour?
As Joy gripped my arm, I finally spied a figure in the center of the kitchen. The man was sitting on a metal stool, his body slumped all the way over a cutting board covered with purple cubes of freshly cut beets, coated now with his own blood. The victim had been stabbed in the same manner as Vincent Buccelli. Someone had plunged a chef’s knife deep into the shoulder at the base of his throat.
I gently removed my daughter’s clinging grip, stepped closer. I knew who the man was before I saw his face. I recognized the salt-and-pepper hair, the thickly muscled forearms under rolled-up sleeves.
The corpse was Tommy Keitel.
I swallowed and took another step forward, just to make sure.
When I saw the wide, sightless blue eyes, I knew he was gone. And I recognized something else. The murder weapon had a black handle and the familiar Shun symbol on the blade. This was a ten-inch Shun Elite chef’s knife, I realized with a jolt. It retailed for hundreds of dollars and was forged from powdered steel, allowing for an exceedingly sharp and durable edge.
It’s crazy the kinds of things that pop into your mind at a time like this. But these facts were stored in my memory because I’d purchased this very knife the previous December.
The evidence was undeniable. Tommy Keitel had been murdered with my child’s own personal chef’s knife, the one I’d given her last Christmas Day.
“Mom, come away,” Joy insisted, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“In a second,” I replied.
A knife kit was open on another prep table next to Tommy’s corpse. The knives were stored in a fiery red canvas bag with a luggage ID tag and plastic cat charm dangling from the zipper. All the knives were in their sheaths except one.
I faced Joy, who had her back against the swinging double doors.
“Your knife kit is here, Joy,” I said, trying to remain steady. “Were you packing up when this happened?”
I couldn’t believe it, but I was actually asking my daughter if she had just killed her lover.
Joy shook her head, used the long sleeve of her pink jersey to swipe at the unceasing flow from her eyes. “I just got here five minutes ago…” she said between gasping sobs. “The doors were unlocked…so I knew Tommy was…probably back here…in the kitchen…I came back here and found him…like that…”
“Call 911,” I said.
Joy took a step toward the phone on the wall.
“No!” I cried. “Don’t touch that phone! Don’t touch anything! Use your cell.”
“I can’t. Lieutenant Salinas took it last night.”
“That’s right. Okay…” I put my arm around my daughter.
“Come with me, honey. I have my cell. We’ll call the police from the dining room.”
Then, with a final glance at the late Tommy Keitel, I led Joy out of his kitchen.
Within minutes of my 911 call, two uniformed officers arrived. One man waited with us—although I suspected he was really guarding us. The second man went into the kitchen, and almost immediately came out again. These two were followed by more men in uniforms, and a pair of plainclothes detectives who sat us down at a table.
Someone turned on the lights, and the dining room was bathed in a golden glow. The walls were sunny yellow again, the room warm and welcoming. But the laughing gargoyles hadn’t changed for me. From their balcony seats, they appeared to be grinning at the officious activities of police personnel as if Chef Keitel’s grim, brutal murder had been staged entirely for their amusement.
I closed my eyes, said a prayer for Tommy’s soul. Yet the prickly feeling of dread was still chilling my skin. Beneath the buzz of conversations, I could almost hear a quiet, demonic cackling. Something terrible was still to come. Even the gargoyles knew it.
I took a breath, blocked these dark thoughts, and tried to avoid looking up.
In a burst of sound and movement, new arrivals entered the premises, a horde of men and women in overalls, clutching rolls of yellow crime-scene tape. The forensics team streamed in through the dining room and into the kitchen.
A short time after that, the two detectives on the case introduced themselves. Eugene Lippert and Ray Tatum were part of the Nineteenth Precinct’s detective squad. Lippert was probably fifty, his beige suit slightly rumpled. He had thick ankles and wore Hush Puppies on his large feet.
His partner, Tatum, was a decade younger, African American, and much more stylishly dressed in black slacks, a black turtleneck, and a tailored gray jacket. Lippert was the senior man, but he was the quiet, reserved one. Tatum was the one who radiated outgoing authority, shooting reminders or instructions to the uniformed officers and asking questions of the forensics people.
The two men worked well together. When they got around to us, they were both very cordial. They were also very professional, gently separating Joy and me before I even realized what was happening. I was speaking to Lippert, looked up, and Detective Tatum was already guiding my daughter to a table on the other side of the dining room.
“Where are you taking Joy—”
“Relax, Ms. Cosi. It’s Clare, right?” Lippert asked.
“Yes,” I nodded, my gaze fixed on my daughter.
“My partner just wants to ask the young lady a few questions in private,” Lippert explained. He sat down across from me, his florid face and rust-colored comb-over blocking my view of the other table.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, too,” Lippert
continued. His voice was warm, and through his sagging hazel eyes, he regarded me with a sympathetic expression. “We really need to find the person who committed this crime, and you might be able to help us do that.”
His tone was urgent and earnest and kind, a pleasant change from Lieutenant Salinas’s approach the previous night, which veered from downright suspicious to mildly hostile. I was relieved that Detective Lippert was treating me like a witness, not like a criminal—or an accomplice.
“I’m sorry to have to do this, Ms. Cosi. I know you’ve had a bad experience tonight.” Lippert tilted his head slightly. “But if you can answer my questions, it would be a really big help. It’s best if we talk now, while the memories are fresh, and we can get as accurate a timetable as possible. It would probably be the most important thing you could do for us to help us catch the killer…But if you’d rather not, if it’s too trying to talk about right now…I certainly understand.”
Lippert paused expectantly, a notebook in one hand, a pen in the other.
“Of course we can talk,” I said. “I want to help you find the killer. Tommy Keitel was no saint, but he certainly didn’t deserve to die like this.”
The detective smiled. “Good. Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me everything you think is relevant, starting with why you and your daughter were here after hours in the first place.”
I explained to Lippert about my daughter’s leaving the restaurant earlier in the evening and then coming back for her knives. I explained to Lippert that Joy had only returned to the restaurant to pick up her stuff, and that I came here to meet her.
When Lippert asked me what my daughter’s relationship was with the deceased, however, I clammed up.
“She works for him,” I said. That’s all you need to know right now. You need to find Keitel’s killer, not focus on Joy.
“Joy worked for the victim. I see,” Lippert said. “And is that all they were to each other? Just employer and employee?”
“She was an intern here for the last three months.” I kept my answer short and only slightly evasive. “Her culinary school can confirm that.”
