Mocha and Murder

by Christy Murphy

"He's staying with us," Mom said.

  "But you'll be getting a place of your own soon," the officer said. "I think there might be an opening in my apartment building."

  Hope jumped into my heart. Visions of getting a bathroom to myself sometime soon popped into my brain as well.

  "I'll have to save for a deposit and a few other things first," Dar-dar said.

  Mom nodded.

  The officer looked disappointed.

  "Well," Dar-dar said, wrapping up the conversation, "we have to get to work now. Cafe business."

  "Okay then," Officer Keller said, and I got the vibe that he was slightly offended about being wrapped up.

  I turned to Detective Cooper and said, "It was nice seeing you again. I haven't seen much of you." The last part of the sentence seemed like more of an accusation than a pleasant bit of conversation that I had intended it to be.

  "I guess we've both been pretty busy," he said. Mom, Dar-dar, and Wenling had already started to go back down the sidewalk. So I rushed after them.

  "Good day, ladies," Officer Keller said.

  "Good day," Dar-dar said with a wave. He had no problem being considered one of us ladies.

  "So it looks like you'll be staying with us for a few more months," Mom said.

  "If you two don't mind," Dar-dar said.

  "I don't," Mom said and all eyes turned to me.

  "Of course not," I said, my mind hoping that with his new job, it would be easier sharing a bathroom with Dar.

  4

  Surprises and Spaghetti

  My eyes popped open at the sound of a car door closing just outside our house. I glanced over to the digital alarm clock on my nightstand and squinted to see the time without my glasses—four a.m. I sat up, and then I heard our front door open.

  I tiptoed over the door in my bedroom, and quietly opened it. The hall light wasn't on, but I spotted Dar-dar's tall outline head into his room. He was carrying his designer high heels to avoid making noise. I wondered where he'd gone, but I was so tired, I just went back to bed.

  I woke up to the smell of Mom's coffee and got out of bed. On the way to the kitchen, I checked Dar-dar's room. Empty.

  "Did you hear Dar-dar come in late last night?" I asked when I got into the kitchen.

  Mom nodded. "He's a grown man. He can do what he wants."

  Before I could say anything else, we were interrupted by Mom's cellphone ringing.

  Mom went to check it. Wenling was so loud I could almost hear her from where I was sitting.

  "Kid, turn the TV on to channel 72," Mom said to me. Mom and I both rushed to the living room. I turned the TV on, just in time to see the last couple of seconds of Mom's commercial.

  "I gotta go," TV Mom said as she drove a WaveRunner onto the beach in the advertisement for Ensurity—the adult undergarment active seniors can count on. Mom looked really cute in the commercial, and the ad made the adult diaper situation funny.

  Then the last line of the commercial came on when Mom was sitting down in the kitchen. The daughter asks if she has to go, but TV Mom says "I can stay" and sits down for a cup of coffee. It reminded me so much of our kitchen I got a little choked up.

  "Great job, Mom!" I said, wishing I'd gotten to see the whole thing.

  "Cable buyout," Mom said, noticing the channel. National commercials that aired on network television paid each time it aired. When they aired on cable, Mom would only get a fixed amount for a certain period of time.

  Mom talked to Wenling a little longer, and then said we should go into the Lucky Dragon early. Jennifer, Wenling's daughter, had said that Mom's commercial had been playing a lot on the Crime Channel last night. That station was one of the premium channels that we don't get in our cable package, but the Lucky Dragon had it.

  We rushed to get dressed and headed over to the restaurant.

  Jennifer, Wenling, Mom, me, and Chef Li, who almost never left the kitchen unless it was to smoke in the back, crowded around the little portable television watching Mom's commercial. It was funny to watch Mom in different situations. At a party, at the beach, on a golf course. Each time she'd say "I gotta go," and then rush off in a golf cart, on a kid's Razor scooter, or the WaveRunner. Then the last line came, "I can stay." Everyone clapped and laughed.

  Chef Li headed back to kitchen and said, "I gotta go." Mom, Jennifer, and Wenling laughed, but I was stunned. That was the first time I'd ever heard the man speak, and it was in English!

  "Great job, Mrs. Murphy," Jennifer said, and went back to the kitchen. The three of us remained in our booth. Wenling turned down the sound on the little TV.

  "I didn't know you could ride one of those wave things," Wenling said.

  "That's not me. It was a short Mexican man named Manny," Mom said.

  "That commercial made me want a cup of coffee," Wenling said.

  "It's supposed to make you want to buy diapers," Mom joked. "But I'll make us some coffee."

  "No," Wenling said. "Let's get one of those mochas that we get at the coffeehouse."

  "Are they open?" I asked.

  "Soft open. No ads or anything," Wenling said.

  "Sounds good," Mom said. "I haven't seen Dar-dar in a while, he's been working so hard."

  I remember him coming in in the middle of the night, and I wanted to talk to Mom about it, but now wasn't the time.

  We headed down Main Street again. It was nice and cool, and the leaves on the trees hadn't yet turned brown. We don't have much of an autumn in Southern California. Just green and brown. Very little in between.

  Mom waved to Todd Fletcher, the owner/editor of Fletcher Weekly, and Solomon, the town's part-time photographer, student, and Uber driver. The two of them were taking photos of the town's bus that looked like a trolley.

  I figured they were doing another story about its new route. The idea was that the bus was going to go by the college to bring more people to Main Street. And hopefully they would enjoy things like the bookstore, the diner, and of course the Mocha Muse.

  Everybody was really excited about the coffee shop. Even though Dar-dar had crazy outfits, and a lot of people didn't know what to make of him, the people of Fletcher Canyon really rally around our own.

  And if there's one thing the people here love is somebody who's good at their work. We're old-fashioned like that here.

  Even though the coffeehouse was only a few blocks down the street, it took us a good fifteen minutes to walk there. Mom and Wenling liked to talk to the other people in Fletcher Canyon. It was interesting, because now that we were heading over to the coffeehouse more, we talked to more people outside of the Lucky Dragon.

  It seemed like even with the soft opening, the coffeehouse was making everyone in Fletcher Canyon walk the streets just a little bit more. It was kind of nice. I figured I'd pick up a book at the bookstore after we got our coffee.

  We neared the coffeehouse, and I saw someone familiar staring into the window. It looked like the police officer from the other day, but as we neared, he waved to us, and then quickly headed in another direction. We went inside, and were surprised by the line. "This place is busy," Wenling said.

  Wenling was always a little suspicious of other businesses on Main Street. The Lucky Dragon and the Fletcher Diner were the two main hotspots as far as socializing went. So far Wenling had taken it okay that there was going to be a new player in town. Right about now I wondered if she was a little bit jealous.

  Dar-dar was training a new employee on how to make coffee. I thought I'd seen her earlier in the week, but this was the first time I saw her actually working. Then I spotted Detective Cooper standing at the counter waiting for his order.

  "Mom, get me one of those mochas while I talk to DC," I said. She smiled and nodded yes. I dashed over to the counter, excited to see him, when Jenna, Dar's trainee, smiled at DC.

  "I think I'm getting the hang of it," she said to him.

  "You sure are," he said. By the way they were talking, it looked like they'd spoken a few times before. M
aybe it was how close he was standing to the cappuccino machine, but they seemed to know each other.

  I debated going back to Mom and Wenling in line, but then Jenna spotted me. "Can I help you, ma'am?"

  Her use of the word "ma'am" felt more like a jab than being polite. There could only be about a ten-year age difference. Was I looking particularly old?

  "No, I was just coming here to say hi to my friend DC," I said.

  DC turned to me. "Hey, Christy. How's your mom?"

  His tone was friendly, but formal. Immediately asking about my mom made the conversation seem less intimate. "She's right over there," I said, pointing to Mom and Wenling in line talking to a portly man behind them.

  DC waved to Mom and Wenling at the back of the line. Mom had started chatting with a man who looked familiar. Mom knew everyone in Fletcher Canyon.

  "You must be Jo's daughter," Jenna said, drawing my attention back to the awkward conversation I'd joined. "I should've recognized you guys from the paper. Dar-dar talks about you guys a lot. He just loves you and his Aunt Jo."

  "We're like cousins, but we're not actually cousins," I corrected.

  Jenna nodded, but I could tell she didn't really care what I was saying. I got the feeling that I'd just invaded their flirty conversation.

  So. Awkward.

  Dar-dar let out a squeal and rushed from behind the counter toward Mom and Wenling. His squeal distracted me from my current embarrassment. It took a moment for it to register that he wasn't rushing to Mom and Wenling, but the large, balding man that Mom had been talking to.

  "Burt, you came!" Dar-dar said. "And I've seen you met my aunties, Jo and Wenling."

  "Looks like everything worked out. Your aunt says you're the manager," the man said.

  "I'm so glad you're here," Dar beamed, but then a few more customers joined the line. "I gotta get back behind the counter. Will you stay?"

  "Thought I'd get a cup of coffee to go with my lunch. Is it okay if I eat here?"

  "Sure!" Dar said and dashed back to help the people in line.

  I overheard Mom ask Burt about his lunch and before long they were talking about spaghetti recipes.

  The line dissipated, and Dar-dar and Jenna made coffees for Mom, Wenling, Burt, and me.

  I hadn't realized that I'd just been standing at the counter not saying anything for a while until DC spoke up.

  "Well, I ought to get going," DC said.

  "Okay," I said, not knowing what else to say. The detective took his coffee and headed out.

  Just before he reached the door, Jenna called out to him, "You're going to come to the party, right?"

  DC paused and turned around. My gut burned with jealousy. "Well…" he started.

  "You promised," she teased.

  He avoided eye contact with me and said, "I'll try."

  "You'll come!" she giggled. Then she handed me my large mocha with whipped cream and said, "He's kind of got a Clooney thing going on, doesn't he?"

  "I always thought he looked like a mix between Henry Rollins and a young Ed Harris," I said.

  "Who are they?" she asked.

  I aged twenty years. "Just some actors." She nodded.

  "Come join us, kid," Mom said as she waved me over to the table.

  Burt was opening his plastic container of spaghetti. Dar-dar finished up with the last customer in line and rushed over to our table.

  "You say it's a spaghetti diet?" Mom asked.

  "Already lost forty pounds. Even quit smoking cigarettes and cigars," Burt said.

  "His wife Madonna makes the best spaghetti," Dar-dar added. He was beaming that his boss came to see him. "Let me heat it up for you."

  Dar-dar grabbed the container and dashed to the back of the store.

  "I've never heard of a spaghetti diet," I said.

  Burt laughed. "It's more that I allow myself my favorite meal as a 'cheat' meal, and then eat healthy the rest of the time. Although, studies show that tomato sauce is very good for you. High in lycopene."

  "I saw that on Dr. Oz," Wenling said.

  Dar-dar returned and set a plate in front of Burt. He'd rinsed out the plastic container. "That way it won't go bad in the fridge at the motel."

  Burt laughed. "You know me too well."

  "That looks good. Even fresh mushrooms," Mom said. Mom always liked to know how things were made."

  "My wife, Madonna, makes the sauce from scratch," Burt said.

  "Is she watching the hotel? She hates doing that," Dar-dar asked.

  "The motel is closed as of today."

  "Already?" Dar asked.

  "Another stupid raid," Burt said. "We barely have any guests, and they raid us. That one officer from before, he even looked into the fridge. Thought he was going to steal my spaghetti."

  Dar looked down at the table. "Sorry to hear about that, Burt."

  "It's not your fault. The cops just hate the place and me," Burt said with a laugh. "Listen, everyone is mad at me for one reason or another. Madonna, Lisa, her son, you. I'm going to make it right if it's the last thing I do."

  "You can make it right in two weeks," Dar-dar said.

  Burt gave Dar-dar a questioning look.

  "We're having a grand opening party here at the coffeehouse. Free mochas, the newspaper will be here, free dessert. Everyone's going to dress up as their favorite character from a book. And you're invited. Bring Madonna and Lisa and her son. We'll make it like an employee party from the motel within the party here."

  "You guys all have to come too," Dar-dar said to Mom, Wenling, and me.

  "We'll be there," Mom said.

  "I'll help you with your costume," Dar said to the hesitant Burt.

  "Okay," he said.

  "Perfect!" Dar said. "Everyone's going to be there."

  And two people in particular that I knew would be at the party, Jenna and DC Cooper. My heart ached.

  By the night of the grand opening party we'd fallen into a routine. Dar-dar woke up early and rode his bike to the coffeehouse. Then when it got really dark, he would meet us at the Lucky Dragon, and we'd put his bike in the back of the van and bring them home.

  Some nights, it would be so late that he'd just ride the bike home. Mom didn't like that, though. The mountain roads can be pretty windy and dark. We only really have lights on some of the residential streets and the old-fashioned, antique-style streetlamps downtown.

  Dar-dar had decided the grand opening would be a costume party. He'd brought his costume to work, which at least gave me the bathroom to myself.

  I wasn't enthused about getting ready for the party. But at the very least,I had the bathroom to myself. I found the trench coat, and I figured I'd be able to just put that over my clothes for the beginning part of the party and then shed my "costume" as the evening wore on.

  Mom decided to go as Sherlock, because she already bought the hat and pipe for the photo shoot for Fletcher Weekly. "Plus people expect it," she said. Mom had adapted to her newfound celebrity status as both Fletcher Canyon's amateur sleuth extraordinaire and commercial actress.

  Thanks to small-town nepotism, we scored regular work baking treats for the Mocha Muse. Tonight, everyone in costume got a free mocha and half off the mocha brownies. We'd made a few extra batches in the afternoon and stored them in the airtight containers we shelved in the van just in case Dar-dar needed them. From what I could tell from the scuttlebutt around town, everybody was excited about the party. Except me.

  A part of me hoped that Detective Cooper wouldn't be there, and a part of me hoped that he would.

  Maybe he was just having a bad day last week or something? A part of me felt ridiculous that I'd just been divorced, but I was already looking to date someone new. Although, I'd felt really alone in the last few years of our marriage. It wasn't until later, when I found out about the cheating.

  "Ready, kid?" Mom said grabbing her pipe.

  I did one last check in the bathroom mirror on my makeup and said I was, even when I wasn't.

 
Of course, you know what happened when we got there.

  Great turnout.

  Hiking talk.

  Embarrassment.

  Dead body.

  5

  Pork and the Po-po

  I turned the corner onto Main Street bound for the Lucky Dragon and was surprised to find most of the meters on our block were filled. "It's not even ten thirty yet," I said to Mom as I turned down the small side street that led to the alley behind the Lucky Dragon.

  I parked our catering van in the small lot off the alley behind the Lucky Dragon restaurant. The smell of soy sauce and ginger greeted us as we entered the kitchen. Chef Li nodded at us as he prepared the day's specials.

  Wenling rushed into the kitchen from the door off the main dining room. "Good, you're here," she said and took a huge swig out of a very large to-go cup from the Mocha Muse.

  "Do we have a last-minute luncheon?" I asked.

  "Everybody is here about the murder!" Wenling said with a kind of glee that shouldn't be used when saying the word "murder."

  "He drowned in the gutter or had a heart attack or something," I said.

  "But so many people wanted him dead," Wenling said.

  "That's true," Mom said. "He said at lunch that his wife and everyone was mad at him."

  "I didn't see any signs of murder when I found the body," I said closing my eyes and picturing the scene.

  "No!" Wenling said. "Don't do your weird memory stuff back here. You'll waste it!" Wenling grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me into the main dining room. My "weird memory thing" is a little brain glitch I have that makes me remember details of anything I find traumatic. Until I started solving mysteries with Mom.

  "They're here!" she announced.

  "We're here," Mom said.

  I shot Mom a questioning look. The restaurant wasn't due to open for fifteen minutes and was empty most days until after eleven thirty.

  "Is that one of the mochas from Mocha Muse?" I asked Wenling.

  "Yup! Yup!" she said as she took another gulp. "You want to get one?"

  "Maybe a little later," Mom said.