Decaffeinated Corpse

by Cleo Coyle

  In the course of his barista chatting, I’d overheard him talk about a pipe dream of purchasing his own Soho loft— a pretty common wish for young painters who come to the big bad city expecting a sun-washed studio. The reality check, of course, was more than obvious with one glance at the Times real estate section. Those legendary spaces were priced for investment banker types, not aspiring artists working part-time at coffeehouses.

  “Dante, calling in sick every now and then isn’t going to get you fired,” I assured him. “But I’m glad you’re here. Apron up.”

  “Excellent.”

  He clapped his hands and came around the counter. Stepping into the pantry area, he removed the backward Red Sox baseball cap from his shaved head and peeled off his long flannel shirt, revealing more than a few tattoos on his ropey arms. I actually liked his pieces of skin art. My favorites were the demitasse on the top of his left wrist and a Picasso-esque Statue of Liberty on his right forearm.

  The day I’d met him, I’d asked what was up with the body art, and he admitted, with a great deal of pride, that he’d designed every tattoo he displayed. As a painter, he said he wasn’t about to let anyone else stain the canvas of his own skin.

  A new crowd of customers flowed into the store, and I put Dante on the espresso machine. “Take a few practice runs.”

  “Don’t need to, Ms. Cosi,” he said, tying on the Village Blend apron.

  “Humor me, Dante. Take them.”

  To me, espresso-making was an art. Like a perfectionist painter, a superior barista was one who exhibited an expert hand and palate. From day to day, adjustments needed to be made. Even the weather was a factor. High humidity meant the espressos could run slower, and the beans would have to be ground somewhat coarser. Lower humidity meant the espressos could run faster, so a finer grind was required.

  I didn’t want one single inferior demitasse served under my watch, which was why I insisted Dante make some test shots. As I supervised, he ran through the process.

  Initially, I’d been wary of Dante. When he’d approached me three weeks earlier, asking after employment, the guy’s tattoos made me wonder just how fringe he was. I’d already lost two part-timers in two months, and I didn’t want to spend time training someone who would start bugging out on shifts. But then he began talking, and I could see he was articulate, intelligent, and (this capped it) he’d already been trained. In his teen years, he’d worked at a coffeehouse in Providence, so he was an old hand at making Italian coffee drinks, not to mention handling thirsty urbanites with caffeine deficits.

  During his first week, he was a little rusty at applying even pressure at the tamping stage. At least thirty pounds of pressure is needed when tamping down the freshly ground coffee beans into the portafilter—and if the cake of grounds is uneven when steaming water is forced through it, you’re in for some nasty business. Water takes the path of least resistance, so the lower side of an uneven cake would end up over-extracted (too much water passing through), the higher side under-extracted (not enough water), and the result is a vile little schizoid cup I’d be embarrassed to serve to a paying customer.

  Today there were no such problems. I sampled both of Dante’s shots. The first was the tiniest bit over-extracted, but the second was perfect—from the viscosity to the roasty, caramelly flavor of the crema (that beautiful, nut brown liquid that separates from the ebony espresso like the head of a freshly tapped Guinness).

  We worked in tandem after that. I greeted customers, manned the register, watched the levels on the Breakfast Blend urns. Dante pulled espressos and kept the stainless steel pitchers of milk steamed and frothed. Then we switched positions.

  “I’m glad you came by, Dante.”

  “No problem.”

  “I still need two, even three more part-timers for coverage.I ended up closing last night, and I’m still dragging this morning.”

  “Why did you close? Wasn’t Tucker scheduled for that?”

  “Yes, but . . .” I stopped my running mouth. After letting my guard down with Matt, I wasn’t about to start spewing last evening’s details to my newest barista. “A friend of mine dropped by and our chatting ran late, so I just let Tucker go early.”

  “A friend? You mean that cop, don’t you?”

  “Detective Quinn. Yes.”

  Dante nodded. “Well, I guess you’re right then. It’s a good thing I came by . . .”

  When Tucker arrived at seven fifty, the real morning crush began. We were soon swamped, with a line out the door until ten thirty. As the crowd finally thinned, I left the two of them alone with a vague excuse about needing to complete some paperwork. Then I headed upstairs with a basket of freshly baked muffins.

  FEDERICO Gostwick hadn’t been up long when I entered the duplex. He’d just showered, and I called upstairs, inviting him down for breakfast. His clothes were still at his hotel, so he threw on Matt’s long terrycloth bathrobe and slippers. Then he shuffled into the kitchen, dropped down at the table, and sampled a warm cappuccino muffin— made for the Blend by a local bakery from one of my old “In the Kitchen with Clare” column recipes.

  “Mmmm . . .” Ric murmured as he chewed and swallowed. “What nut am I tasting here? Wait. I can tell you . . .” He took another bite, closed his eyes. “Hazelnut?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Quite delightful, Clare . . . very rich texture.”

  “Sour cream. That’s the secret.”

  As I brewed Ric’s un-coffee, I continued with the general chit-chat, asking after his injury (it ached, but he would live), his night’s sleep (very restful, thank you), and his trip here from Brazil (the JFK customs processing was detestable). Then I poured him a cup of his “why bother?” and started bothering—with the real questions.

  “Did Matt happen to mention that I’ve had some pretty good luck investigating”—how do I put it? I thought— “suspicious things?”

  Ric smiled, rather indulgently it seemed to me as I took a seat across from him at the small kitchen table.

  “He told me I could trust you,” Ric said.

  “You can. I want to see you safe, you know?”

  “Me, too, love, believe me.”

  “Then tell me why all the secrecy? Why won’t you go to the police about last night? What is it you aren’t telling me?”

  Ric sipped his decaf, stared into the dark liquid. “This breakthrough of mine . . . it’s very new.”

  “I know.” Hence the term “breakthrough.”

  “There are a lot of people who may want my new coffee plant to grow for themselves.”

  “That goes without saying, but they can’t get it, right?”

  “Yes, the farm and nursery are in a remote location, but more important, my family and I have kept the research very private.”

  “Then last night, someone assaulted you. Think, Ric . . . do you have any enemies? Anyone who might want to see you hurt . . . or even killed?”

  Ric laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You Americans watch too many crime shows. I’ve been counting them up on my hotel room’s telly: true crime, fake crime, funny crime, scary crime . . . supernatural,mathematical, and neurotic. Twenty-four hours a day on U.S. TV, you can see someone getting killed twenty-four different ways.”

  “You’re saying I’m a paranoid American?”

  “I know you mean well, love. But nobody is trying to kill me. I know what the mugger wanted.”

  “What?”

  “The cutting. I’m sure of it. So is Matt.”

  “Cutting?” I blinked. “What cutting?”

  “It’s the reason Matt and I don’t want the police involved. We did something . . . how shall I put it? Not quite legal . . .”

  Oh, lord. Mike was right. “What? What did you two do?”

  “We smuggled a cutting of my hybrid arabica into the country.”

  “You what?”

  “It was quite cleverly done, actually. A few weeks ago, I shipped it to Matt o
vernight, hidden inside a specially lined statue of Saint Joseph, which Matt broke open.”

  “He broke a religious statue?” I frowned. “That’s bad luck.”

  Ric laughed. “Little Clare . . . you’re as adorable as I remember.”

  “I thought you said I’ve changed, that I’m more ‘head-strong’ than you remember?” I made little air quotes around the word to remind him.

  Ric shrugged. “You’re that, too.” He sipped his decaf. “And you still make heavenly coffee.”

  And you’re still as smooth a charmer as ever.

  The man was as attractive as ever, too. The rugged shadow of his beard framed a dazzling smile, dark chest hairs peeked out between the lapels of Matt’s white terrycloth bathrobe, and the man’s big, brown long-lashed eyes looked just as sleepy and bedroomy as I remembered.

  But ten years was a long chunk of time. It had been enough to change things about me. I wondered what it had changed about Ric.

  When I’d first met him, he’d been a laid back foreign exchange student. Although he’d been interested in his studies, he’d never appeared especially committed. I still remember him sauntering into the Blend for wake-up espressos at eleven o’clock, having missed an early lecture because of partying too late the evening before.

  As far as I knew, the Gostwicks’ highly profitable coffee farm had let Ric live the life of a carioca, a Brazilian term for a guy who preferred to spend his days hanging out at the beach, looking good, eating, drinking, and making love to whatever female admirers happened by. (I’d learned the word from Matt, who probably qualified as one since Rio’s Ipanema Beach—i.e. “Carioca Central”—was pretty much his South of the Equator headquarters.)

  I wondered what had changed Ric Gostwick. Obviously, something had pushed him into hunkering down and focusing on the coffee business so intensely he’d achieved a botanical breakthrough that others had been diligently striving and failing to accomplish for years. I also wanted to know why he was in such a hurry to get the cutting into the country.

  “You really shouldn’t have broken the law,” I told him. “I don’t understand why—”

  “Getting a live plant into this country is full of government red tape, that’s why,” Ric countered. “Any plant parts intended for growing require a phytosanitary certification in advance from your United States Department of Agriculture.”

  “There’s a reason for that.”

  “Yes, I know. Worries about the spread of pests and disease. But I can assure you the cutting is pristine.”

  “If you’re caught, the fines are astronomical. I can’t believe you took the risk!”

  “It would have been a bigger risk to do it openly. They might have turned down the application, or worse, its inspection process could have gotten it stolen.”

  I might have argued that his worries were pure paranoia, but it would have been a tough sell. Historically, the only reasons coffee had become a global cash crop were because of theft and smuggling.

  Ethiopians might have been the first to discover the plant growing wild in their country, but Arabs were the ones who first exported it. For years they held the monopoly on its cultivation. Foreigners were forbidden from visiting coffee farms, and the beans would be sent to other parts of the world only after their germinating potential was destroyed through heating or boiling.

  Around 1600, a Muslim pilgrim from India smuggled the first germinating seeds from Mecca to southern India. Soon after, Dutch spies smuggled coffee plants to Holland from Mocha. (Mocha being the principal port of Yemen’s capital Sana’a, hence the naming of Arabian Mocha Sanani, coffee beans world-renowned for their powerfully pungent flavor, with notes of wine, exotic spices, and cocoa.)

  After the Dutch got hold of the plant, they began cultivating coffee in their colonies: Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Sumatra, Bali, Timor, Dutch Guiana (now Suriname), and eventually Java.

  But the larceny didn’t end there. A coffee plant was shipped from Java to Holland for its Botanical Garden, and a number of visiting dignitaries were given cuttings as gifts. The mayor of Amsterdam made the mistake of giving Louis XIV of France the gift of a coffee cutting from this Java tree.

  In Paris, King Louis put the coffee cutting under guard inside his famous Jardin des Plantes, Europe’s first greenhouse, where it was cultivated into seedlings. A French naval captain, eager to sever France’s dependence on the high-priced coffees of Dutch-controlled East India, stole a seedling and sailed it to Martinique, where its offspring allowed France to grow its own coffee.

  And my former mother-in-law’s favorite legend was the one in which a coffee cutting was smuggled to Brazil in a bouquet of flowers. The flowers were given to a dashing Brazilian diplomat by the smitten wife of French Guiana’s governor. If the story is true, Brazil’s billion-dollar coffee trade apparently sprang from an extramarital love affair and that single smuggled cutting bearing fertile cherries.

  Given coffee’s volatile past, I knew it wasn’t a stretch for Ric to be concerned about the theft of his cutting, so I held my tongue.

  “Matt and I agreed we couldn’t take any chances,” Ric said, “not until it’s been properly patented.”

  “Patented.” I blinked in confusion. “You can patent a plant? I didn’t think you could do that.”

  Ric nodded. “It’s possible, according to Ellie.”

  “Ellie?” It had been well over ten years, but I quickly recognized the name, especially when it was linked to Federico Gostwick. “Ellie Shaw?”

  Ric sipped his decaf and nodded. “It’s Lassiter now. She agreed to help me.”

  “Help you . . . how?”

  “I never finished my BS in botany. Ellie did. She even went on to get a masters from Cornell with a focus on public garden management. In horticultural circles, she’s known and respected, and she’s familiar with the process of applying for a plant patent. One of her old professors is on the PVPO advisory board. So she agreed to help me secure it.”

  “PVPO?”

  “Plant Variety Protection Office. It’s part of your Department of Agriculture.”

  “But why not just apply in Brazil? Don’t you have patent lawyers there?”

  “Of course, but there are . . .” Ric shrugged— “complicating issues. Matt and I both agreed that the U.S. patent would solve our problems.”

  “Problems? I don’t follow you. What problems?”

  “Really, Clare, you shouldn’t worry about this. Matt and I have made our deal. Next week we’ll announce it, along with my breakthrough, and then we can all just sit back and get rich, eh? You don’t have to—”

  A tinkling melody interrupted Ric’s equivocating. The tune sounded vaguely familiar. “What’s that?”

  “My cell . . .” Ric pulled it out of the robe pocket. “I downloaded a Sting ringtone.” He grinned. “Can you guess the song?”

  The melody wasn’t on my mind, the so-called “problems” of Ric’s patent issues were.

  “It’s ‘Roxanne,’ ” he announced as he hit a button and put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  Confused as to whether Ric was referring to the Sting tune “Roxanne” or the name of the person phoning, I sipped my own cup of decaf as he took the call.

  “No, darling,” Ric cooed into the phone after a minute of listening. “I had a breakfast meeting outside the hotel, a very early one.”

  He tossed me a little shrug, which I assumed was supposed to persuade me to overlook the fact that he’d just lied to the person on the other end of the line.

  “Why don’t you just contact me on my cell from now on. . . .” He listened some more and checked his wristwatch. “Of course . . . me, too . . . yes, darling . . . that sounds lovely, but you’d better make it later than that, all right? I’ve got an important meeting . . .”

  Ric finished his call, and I asked who had called him.

  “Oh, just a friend in the city.”

  “A female friend?”

  “Yes.”

  The phone ran
g once more. It was Sting’s “Roxanne,” all right.

  “Hello?”

  Another vague call ensued with yet another “darling.” “Me, too,” Ric purred. “And I’m looking forward to it, darling . . . but I’ll have to get back to you on where . . . yes, soon . . . just be patient . . . me, too.”

  Ric hung up, and I raised an eyebrow with (as Matt used to tell me) nunlike judgment.

  “Let me guess, another female friend in the city?”

  “Why, Clare . . .” Ric’s eyes widened in mock surprise, “you didn’t tell me you were psychic.”

  “Funny. You’re too funny, Federico.”

  “What can I tell you? It’s a hazard having this much charisma.”

  “Not to mention humility.”

  Ric laughed. “I do love women.”

  “You and my ex-husband . . . hence the ex.”

  “Men who love women this much, they shouldn’t marry.”

  “You’re telling me.” I was kidding, but Ric looked suddenly serious.

  “This is something of an insight then?” he asked earnestly.

  “Uhm . . . actually, I was joking. Don’t you know why Matt married me?”

  “Because he adored you, of course. Why else?”

  “I was pregnant with Joy. I thought you knew?”

  “No, Clare.” Ric shook his head. “Matteo never said anything like that, not once, not ever.”

  Honest to God, I was stunned to hear it. For those last years of our marriage, I’d assumed Matt had told every friend and colleague that I was the ball-and-chain around his neck, that he’d been pressured down the aisle because of my expecting Joy.

  Ric was one of Matt’s oldest friends. If he hadn’t told Ric the truth, then he hadn’t told anybody.

  “So Matt was less of a cad than I thought,” I whispered. Not much less, but enough to surprise me.

  “What do you mean?” Ric asked.

  Might as well set the record straight. “Matteo’s mother pressured him into proposing. I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently she made him understand that she didn’t want her only grandchild to be illegitimate.”