Latte Trouble

by Cleo Coyle

  “Wait a second,” I interrupted. “Let me get this straight. Fen stole his own designs?”

  Tad nodded grimly. “The man Fen had sent to Rena made the exchange in some hotel room on Eighth Avenue. A private surveillance firm taped the whole thing. Then, about three weeks ago—around the time Rena and I became engaged—Fen approached Rena and told her the truth. He threatened to go to the police and expose the crime to Lottie. I think Rena was more concerned about what Lottie would think than any jail time she was facing. The two women had become close.”

  “What were Fen’s demands?” I asked. “All blackmailers have demands…”.

  “Rena’s shares in Lottie Harmon…and mine. After Fall Fashion Week is over and Lottie is finished with her major presentation, he wants us to trump up a reason to want out of the business, and tell Lottie that we’re selling him all of our shares. Fen wants to buy our shares and control Lottie’s business.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Matt, who’d been pretty quiet up to now. “Why try to sell the Lottie Harmon shares at the seminar after Fen threatened you and demanded you sell the stock to him?”

  “Rena and I don’t want to hurt Lottie,” explained Tad. “And we don’t want any trouble from Fen. We’re hoping if we divest fast, before the end of the week, Fen will have no hold on us. The shares he wanted will be dispersed among other investors, and Lottie will be safe—she’ll be able to retain the largest percentage of stock—and control of her business.” Tad met my stare. “Like I said before, Ms. Cosi. I was just trying to protect Lottie. I—”

  The conversation had become so intense that we didn’t notice we were no longer alone until a shadow fell across the table. I looked up, stunned to see Detective Mike Quinn standing there, his sandy, windblown hair longer than usual. He had a five-o’clock shadow despite the fact that it was not even noon yet, and his face appeared gaunt, but his shoulders were as broad as ever. Only after his piercing blue eyes met mine did I notice Quinn was flanked by two policemen in uniform, neither of whom I recognized.

  Quinn nodded silently in Matt’s direction, then faced me. The ice in his eyes momentarily warned. “Good to see you, Clare.”

  “Hello Mike,” I said softly.

  Matt glared, but Quinn didn’t seem to notice. His gaze smoothly shifted from me to Tad, turning glacial again as it focused on the paunchy man squirming in the overstuffed chair.

  “Are you Tad Benedict?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes, I’m Benedict.” Tad eyed him suspiciously. “What do you want?”

  “I’m Detective Michael Quinn.” He flashed his badge. “I need to speak to you in private, Mr. Benedict.”

  “No,” Tad shot back, defiant and worried at the same time. “We’ll talk right here. What’s this all about, anyway?”

  “Do you know a Rena Garcia who resides at the Continental Arms Apartments?”

  “Yeah. Sure. She’s my fiancée.”

  I saw the uniformed cops exchange glances, and with a sick jolt of dread I sensed what was coming next.

  “When was the last time you saw Ms. Garcia?” asked Quinn.

  “Yesterday afternoon before my financial seminar…why?” Tad rose to his feet. “Listen, what’s going on here. Where’s Rena? Do I need to call my lawyer?”

  Mike Quinn put his hand on Tad’s arm, squeezed it solicitously as he met the man’s gaze squarely. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Benedict—”

  Tad froze. “Rena…has something happened to Rena?”

  “I’m sorry to inform you that Ms. Garcia was found dead in her apartment early this morning.”

  “No, no!” Tad cried. “It’s a mistake!”

  Quinn shook his head, reached into his natty trenchcoat, pulled out a Polaroid photograph, and showed it to Tad. I could just make out the face of a woman, raven-dark hair splayed like a crown around her head, her flesh cartoon pink against a blue background that could have been either a carpet or a bedspread.

  Tad choked, sagged. Quinn and a blue suit grabbed his arms to keep him from sinking to the floor. “What happened?” Tad groaned, his face pale.

  “That’s what we’re trying to establish, Mr. Benedict,” said Quinn. “To do that, we need a statement from you.”

  Tad’s lower lip trembled, his eyes misted.

  “You are not a suspect, and you may have a lawyer present at any time,” Quinn continued. “Can you accompany us to the precinct right now?”

  Tad grunted an unintelligible reply. Quinn nodded, then passed him to the other officers.

  “Take him down to the car,” Quinn told the uniforms, who led Tad to the stairs.

  I expected Quinn to follow them; instead, he turned to face me. I stood and walked over to him. I could see he wanted to say something on a personal level, but the situation was obviously awkward, especially with Matt’s eyes boring into my back.

  “There was a homicide here the other night,” Quinn began. It was not a question.

  I nodded. “Someone was poisoned…cyanide, they said.”

  Quinn’s eyes held mine. “We believe Rena Garcia was poisoned, too.”

  I found myself ringing my hands. “Look, Mike…something’s going on…I’m pretty sure—”

  “Not now.”

  My temper flared. “When then?”

  “Later.”

  “But I’ve got to tell you—”

  Quinn raised his hand to stop me. “Listen, Clare. I trust your judgement, and I want to hear what you have to say. But I have to take care of this situation first. I’ll come back later, okay? We can speak in private?”

  This time it was a question. His chin went up, indicating Matt behind me. I didn’t turn need to turn. I knew my ex-husband’s eyes were on us.

  “I’ll be here until closing,” I said quietly.

  Quinn nodded, then headed for the stairs. Matt moved to my side, curled his arm around my waist. Quinn looked back just then, saw the intimate gesture. He frowned and looked away.

  “The cop’s not staying?” Matt said a little too loudly. “Didn’t Rosario’s deliver any donuts this morning?”

  “Give it a rest, Matt,” I said and slipped out of his grasp.

  THE rest of the work day was long and busy. The younger customers never stopped coming. Even the usual lulls between rush hours were nonexistent. I’d told Esther Matt’s theory about the appeal of our so-called poisoned coffee and she began calling our patrons “Fugu thrill-seekers.”

  At four o’clock Esther headed for home, and Moira agreed to stay on. She’d worked until nine the evening before, and agreed to work the extra hours again tonight. I told her how much I appreciated her help. “Don’t mention it,” she replied. “I want to help Tucker any way I can.”

  When Gardner Evans arrived with some new jazz CDs from his collection, Moira finally departed. Not until ten did Detective Quinn return. He strode through the front door and approached me at the coffee bar.

  “Have a seat,” I told him as I foamed up a couple of lattes (his favorite). Quinn took a quiet corner table by a window and I joined him there. He sipped the drink, his blue gaze steady over the rim of the glass mug, never straying from my face.

  “I meant what I said this morning, Clare,” Quinn began. “It is good to see you again.”

  Oh god. A caffeinelike jolt that had nothing to do with the shot of espresso in my latte was rocking my metabolism. I counseled myself to keep my mind off Quinn’s incredible blue eyes and on the business at hand.

  “What happened to Rena Garcia?” I asked.

  Quinn sighed and finally broke his stare, looking down into the frothy cloud in his tall glass mug. “That’s a police matter—” he tried to tell me, but I was ready for him.

  “Don’t you clam up on me now, Mike Quinn.”

  My tone wasn’t teasing and it wasn’t warm. I’d waited for hours for him to get around to talking to me again, and I swore to myself that he wasn’t leaving this coffeehouse until I knew as much as he did.

  Mike, who
could obviously see I meant business, rubbed his stubbled chin, then took another sip of his latte, a long one. Foam clung to his top lip and he wiped it away with the easy brush of two fingers. He leaned close, lowered his already low voice.

  “This morning the supervisor in Ms. Garcia’s apartment building received some complaints about loud music coming from the apartment. He knocked, and when he didn’t get a reply he used his pass key to enter the premises. That’s when he found the victim. The Medical Examiner estimates she’d been dead for ten to twelve hours.”

  “You said she was poisoned.”

  Quinn nodded. “Cyanide was used. Forensics examined the dregs of a coffee Ms. Garcia consumed, found traces of poison…” The detective paused, locked eyes with me. “It was a Village Blend take-out cup, Clare. That’s why I asked you about the poisoning that took place here the other night.”

  I told Mike about that night. About Detectives Starkey and Hutawa, and Tucker’s arrest. He listened quietly to my theory that Lottie had been the original target, and I told him what Tad had admitted to me earlier today—about Fen and the blackmail threat.

  “Benedict never mentioned blackmail to me,” said Quinn, clearly annoyed.

  “He’s trying to protect himself,” I concluded. “One way or the other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the truth gets out about his involvement with something as shady as Rena’s theft of Fen’s designs and Fen’s subsequent blackmail, it could ruin Tad’s investment business. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t tell you about the blackmail because he killed Rena himself—”

  “No,” said Quinn quickly. “Benedict’s not a suspect. He has a rock-solid alibi from seven o’clock last evening until almost four this morning.”

  “What?”

  “First he and his staff were conducting some kind of investment seminar on a boat called the…” Quinn pulled a worn leather-bound rectangular notebook from the breast pocket of his trenchcoat. “Fortune.”

  I nodded, recalling Tad’s seminars had been scheduled for both Wednesday and Thursday nights.

  “After that,” Quinn continued, glancing at his notes, “he and his staff traveled together to their investment firm’s office and spent most of the night working with Tokyo counterparts on Nikkei stock sales.”

  “So when did Rena drink the poison?”

  “Between nine and eleven o’clock in the evening. And the body wasn’t moved. She drank that poison in her apartment.”

  I thought that over. Could Tad have handed Rena a poisoned cup of coffee before he’d boarded the Fortune? It made no sense on the face of it. Who would carry around a cup of coffee for hours without drinking it?

  I tried to make the pieces fit another way. “Could Tad have hired someone to poison her?” I pondered out loud.

  Quinn shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “First, my gut. I’ve seen enough trumped-up versions of shock and grief to judge when it’s genuine, and Benedict’s reaction to his fiancee’s death was as real as I’ve seen. Second, my background work today showed that Tad Benedict put down substantial nonrefundable deposits on a Hawaiian wedding and honeymoon package, and a realtor was handling the sale of his one bedroom and the purchase of a two bedroom in the same building. The realtor said Benedict was getting married next month and wanted more space.”

  “And you don’t think he could have set all that up to make himself look innocent?” I pressed.

  Quinn shook his head. “If Tad Benedict had wanted to kill Rena Garcia for financial gain, he would have married her first before killing her. Then he would have inherited her shares of Lottie Harmon after her death.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then what if he was simply trying to dump Rena because Fen was blackmailing her? What if he wanted to be free of the entanglement?”

  “Why not just cut and run? Why not just break off the engagement, go to Lottie and tell her everything, and let Rena take the fall? No…there’s no logical motive for Benedict killing his fiancee. With Rena dead, life gets very complicated. As it happens, Rena has no will. Her shares will be going to her closest living relative, not Tad and not Lottie.”

  I sighed, agreeing—for the moment—that Tad didn’t look very good as a suspect in Rena’s murder.

  “But it’s good you told me about the blackmail, Clare. This gives me an in.”

  “An in? With whom?”

  “Starkey and Hut aren’t exactly forthcoming, and I don’t want to horn in on their investigation of the Blend poisoning. But this Rena Garcia murder, it’s a separate case that may be connected so they can’t complain.”

  “Demetrios called them bad cop, worse cop,” I said. “Are Starkey and Hut really that terrible?”

  “They’re not bad cops. They just have bad attitudes.”

  “Well, I think you should go after the designer Fen. Have a talk with him.”

  Quinn’s lips twitched and one eyebrow arched. “Thanks for the advice, Detective Cosi. He’s the first on my list.”

  I shrugged. “Just making sure you’re dotting your Is and crossing your Ts, Detective.”

  We sipped in silence for a moment, then I carefully broached another subject. “I tried to reach you a few days ago…Demetrios told me you were out on leave.”

  Quinn frowned. “Personal matter…”

  I was going to let it drop, but Quinn obviously felt he had to explain. “My wife took the kids on a little vacation—without telling me. Wait, that’s not entirely accurate. She left a note.”

  “Jesus, Mike, what happened?”

  “We had a fight one night. Next thing I know, I come home from a double-shift and she’s gone—took the kids and hopped a plane to Orlando for a week. I come home to a note, you know? Needless to say, I panicked. One of her old boyfriends works at the Disney World resort, and I thought she’d decided to snatch the kids and leave me.”

  For many months now, Mike had been confiding in me about his bad marriage. He’d gone back and forth many times on the issue of divorce. Finally, for the sake of his young kids, he’d decided to try marriage counseling.

  “I thought you said the counseling was helping?”

  “I thought it was. But she was obviously acting out….” He sighed in disgust. “When I got down there, it was passive aggressive central. She acted like it was some carefree family vacation that we’d planned for months. For the sake of the kids, I went along.” He shook his head. “She pulled the kids out of school, terrorized me, ran up our credit cards on first-class tickets…I left cases hanging, victims’ families…I could have strangled her.”

  “I’m sorry, Mike.”

  “I’ve consulted two lawyers. The estimates for a contested divorce and custody battle…” He shook his head. “You can’t imagine.”

  “Believe me, I can,” I assured him. “Although I was lucky. Matt never contested my getting Joy.”

  “That wouldn’t happen with me.”

  “The rewards of full-time parenting outweigh the expenses.”

  “Maybe so. But those attorneys still need to put their fat fees on a low-carb diet.”

  “Well, look on the bright side. Lots of lawyers patronize this place. Ultimately, you’d be helping my bottom line.”

  I smiled. Quinn’s grim demeanor cracked, and he laughed out loud. I laughed too, and squeezed his hand. I was about to pull it back, but he held on, caressed my fingers gently with the rough pad of his thumb. I met his eyes. What I saw there made my limbs weak.

  Across the room, a throat loudly cleared. I looked up. Matteo was standing there, glaring at us. Quinn noticed. He released my hand, finished his coffee, and rose.

  “I’ve got to go,” he told me. “But I’ll check back with you after I talk with this Fen character.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I whispered.

  Then Quinn touched my arm. “Don’t worry, Clare. With a second murder using the same modus operandi, I predict Tucker will be out of jail in no
time….”

  I closed my eyes, praying he was right. “Thanks, Mike.”

  Quinn gave me one last small smile. Then he was gone.

  As I bussed the table, Matt approached. “What did the flatfoot want? Did he tell you he threw Tad in jail?”

  I ignored the jibe, carried the cups to the coffee bar. Matt followed me behind the bar and pinned me to the counter. He tried to hug me, kiss me. But his gestures weren’t simple affection as much as raw possessiveness. Once again, I regretted the other night.

  “Want to have dinner after we close up?” Matt asked. “There’s a new late-night Thai place on East Seventh.”

  “Matt, I…” My voice trailed off when I noticed a scarlet smudge on my ex-husband’s collar. Lipstick, in a garish hue I would never wear.

  Matt followed my eyes, found the smudge.

  “Jesus, Matt,” I snapped, “we just slept together two nights ago—”

  “Take it easy, Clare, this lipstick is Joy’s—”

  “Joy was never here.”

  “No, I ran into her on the street, an hour or so ago.”

  I crossed my arms. “And I suppose you had that little talk? About Joy’s questionable friends and their drug use?”

  Matteo looked away. “I didn’t have time. She said she was running late…”. He could see the doubt in my eyes. “Clare, honestly, I can explain—”

  “Forget it.”

  “Come on, it’s almost closing time. Give me a break.”

  “I was stupid to have ever thought you’d change,” I shot back. But I didn’t really think myself stupid. I’d been smart—smart enough to have protected my heart from Matt. Smart enough to have already guessed this would happen.

  “Clare!” he called as I strode away. But I just kept walking.

  NINETEEN

  THE next day was Saturday. I opened the shop, greeting the baker’s Yankee-jacketed delivery boy and my first customers of the morning in a near-robotic state. I couldn’t stop thinking of Tucker. I had run out of leads. Even worse, my own decidedly less than brilliant theory about Tad and the late Rena Garcia being the guilty parties now lay on the ash heap of history. I could not have been more wrong about the ill-fated couple, who were not suspects, but victims.