On What Grounds (Coffeehouse Mysteries, No. 1) (A Coffeehouse Mystery) (5 page)

Madame did seem a bit frail today. Quite a change from when she’d first trained me to run the Blend. The woman’s stamina a decade ago had little to do with the caffeine in her pots. Pride had driven her, a sense of wanting the Blend to live up to the thousand stories about its own history, its colorful customers, its high standards, and its commitment to serving the community.

After her first husband had died, Madame had run the Blend by herself for years, right up to the day before her wedding to Pierre, one of the city’s foremost importers of French perfume, wine, and coffee. Right up to the day before her life had suddenly changed into a whirlwind of travels and uptown dinner parties, of entertaining Pierre’s clients, adopting and raising Pierre’s teenage children, and running a European villa every August.

The coffeehouse had moved, like the days of her youth, onto a back burner. But it never moved off the stove. Even though Pierre’s fortune was immense, Madame had refused to sell the Village Blend. For all these years, she had hung on, as if it were a thread to something so vital, so precious, that she’d fight to her last breath before letting it go.

“I need you, Clare,” Madame said at last, her tone dropping to an octave I rarely heard.

She’s choosing me,
I realized in that moment.
I’m the one she wants to carry it on.

I suddenly wondered what the Dubois children would think about this decision of their stepmother’s. I’d met most of them over the years. And none seemed to understand the importance of the Blend—not to the community as an institution nor to their stepmother as a symbol of her convictions.

Of course, their attitudes weren’t surprising to me. Raised in wealth, educated in elite schools, constantly surrounded by art and culture, the Dubois children believed themselves above the difficult daily toil of managing a small business. They were all grown now, of course. Some resided in Europe, others on the West Coast and New York, all in the upper reaches of society, and consequently out of touch with the way most of the world lived.

Matteo Allegro had next to nothing in common with them. I could say that for my ex. But he was apparently not Madame’s choice for guardianship of her beloved coffeehouse, either.

While Matt worked
around
coffee, his passion came not from serving the beans but from traveling the world in pursuit of them (among other things—usually women). The man was a hard worker, but he couldn’t hack a marriage commitment, let alone the stationary lifestyle that running a daily business would require. And his own mother apparently knew it, too—just as she knew that
business
was never the point.

The Blend wasn’t about buying and selling. It was about tradition. About legacy. About love. And that, more than anything, was why I agreed to sign her contract.

“I’ll do it, Madame,” I promised, finally meeting the woman’s gaze.

“Thank you, my dear. Thank you.”

M
AKING
Greek coffee was a simple, straightforward process, really—

Three ounces of water and one very heaping teaspoon of dark roast coffee per serving. (I used half Italian roast, and half Maracaibo—a lovely Venezualan coffee, named for the country’s major port; rich in flavor, with delicate wine overtones.)

Water and finely ground beans both go into the
ibrik
together. The water is then brought to a boil over medium heat.

The
ibrik
has no lid. It’s tall and tapered toward the top to keep the mixture from boiling over and has a lip to allow the coffee to be poured without grounds following.

The two police officers watched me work. As I reached for the sugar, I noticed the squeaky-clean state of the area behind the counter. If Anabelle had fallen down the staircase the evening before, I realized, then she must have fallen
after
she’d already cleaned and restocked the service area. The espresso machine was gleaming, and the cupboards were filled with cups, napkins, and wooden stirrers.

So why is there such a mess in the pantry, above the stairs? Why was the garbage can hauled over there and coffee grounds spilled so negligently?

I kept the mixture swirling over the heat, and the scent of strong coffee began to rise from the
ibrik
and fill the shop.

The custom for serving Greek or Turkish coffee at unhappy occasions, such as funerals (or assistant managers being carted away in ambulances), was to leave out the sugar. But I refused, adding one heaping teaspoon per cup with a kind of conjuring hope that it was
not
a tragic occasion and Anabelle would be all right.

“Pardon me, but are you open?”

A handsome thirtyish man with salon-styled floppy hair and a cashmere crew-neck poked his head into the open front door.

“No,” said Officer Langley. “The place is closed.”

“Check back later in the day,” said the other cop.

“But I
only
want a double espresso to go,” said the man, his finely creased khakis stepping quickly inside. “How much trouble is
that
?”

“Come back later,” said Demetrios.

“I’ll just wait at a table—” said the man, snapping open his
Times
and heading for a chair.

I wasn’t surprised by this customer’s behavior. There was a certain part of the Manhattan population that just didn’t hear the word
no.
Not as if it applied to
them,
anyway. Rules existed, sure—for everyone else.

“I’m speaking English, right?” Demetrios tossed to Langley.

The man didn’t get more than two steps from a chair. Demetrios stiff-armed him all the way out to the curb, then returned to the shop, closing and locking the door behind him.

The moment the ebony mixture in the
ibrik
began to boil, I poured half the contents into three tall, thin glasses, shaped cylindrically to keep any stray grounds far away from the lips. I returned the remaining bit of coffee to the heat, stirring to create a foam that I spooned onto each glass. Silver holders with filagreed loops for handles served as ornate cradles for the hot glasses, which I placed on a tray and carried to one of the Blend’s marble-topped tables.

Demetrios looked at me with astonishment.

“You even got the face on there,” he said, taking a seat.

I nodded, sitting next to him. “Yes, but I cheated and used a spoon. I’m not feeling steady enough to pour it right from the pot.”

“
What
face?” asked Langley, taking the third chair.

“The foam,” I said. (On a better day I could actually drop that last bit of foamy coffee right from the
ibrik
without transferring anything but the finest trace of grounds.)

“Yeah,” said Demetrios, “they call it ‘the face’ because you lose face if you serve the coffee without it.” He sipped and sighed. Then he said something in Greek.

I gave him a feeble smile. “What does that mean?”

“What? You make Greek coffee this good and you’re not Greek?”

I shook my head.

Demetrios laughed. “I said, ‘It’s like my mama used to make.’”

“Holy Mother, not mine,” said Langley after taking a sip. “Wow, that’s strong.”

“But good?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Langley, sipping again. “But it needs Irish whiskey and lots of straight cream.”

“Drink it like a man, Langley. It’ll put hair on your chest,” said Demetrios, then he winked at me.

Usually, I hate winkers—winkers and trigger-finger clickers. But it wasn’t
that
kind of a wink, you know? Not a bad used-car salesman sort of “I’m joking—don’t ya get it” sort of wink. It was more of a “Buck up, kid, we’re here for you” kind of wink, which made me feel a little less like I needed to throw up, but not much.

“That’s what they told us Greek kids,” Demetrios continued. “And believe me, Langley
needs
some chest hair.”

“Get Plato here,” said Langley. “He forgets that Greek kids don’t get hair just on their chest. They get it everywhere else, too. Especially places you definitely don’t want hair.”

A loud knock sounded from the front door. A tall man stood beyond the pane. He wore brown pants, a white shirt, and a red and gold striped tie in a loose knot. A beige, worn trenchcoat in need of a good cleaning hung off his broad shoulders. His dark blond hair was cut pragmatically short, and his fortyish face sported shadowy stubble along the jaw and dark smudges under his eyes.

I liked him on sight and, for a moment, felt badly about the place being closed. Unlike the previous customer, if any man looked in true need of a double espresso, it was this haggard, exhausted guy. But we were closed for a good reason, so I shook my head and gestured with a wave of my hand that he should shoo.

“Oh, shit.” The curse came from Langley, who suddenly shot up, raced to the door, unlocked it, and held it open as if this morose-looking trenchcoated man were the Prince of Wales.

“Am I open now?” I asked Demetrios with hope. My mind began to race. One phone call and I could have Tucker (my afternoon barista) take over the store and then I could run over to St. Vincent’s and sit with Anabelle.

“No. You’re still closed,” said Demetrios. “Langley’s letting in Lieutenant Quinn. From the Sixth’s detective squad.”

“A detective? What does he detect?”

“Homicides.”

Suddenly I wasn’t feeling so well again.

“O
KAY
, lady, what’s your name?”

Lieutenant Quinn had a voice like boiled coffee. Wrung out and bitter.

I stared, trying to make sense of a homicide detective showing up in my coffeehouse, when I noticed the beige stain on the lapel of his trenchcoat. Probably Robusta bean crap from one of those Sixth Avenue bodegas.
Milk, no sugar
was my guess.

Why in heaven’s name did these cops drink swill when just a few blocks away for a single buck more they could drink silk? Wasn’t a single buck worth a rich, warm, satisfying experience?

“Lady?” prompted the detective. “Are you with me?”

I squinted up at him. Hadn’t I answered him already? I wasn’t sure for a moment. My brain still seemed to be processing the idea of a
homicide
detective showing up after Anabelle’s accident.

Accident…
I found myself considering…
or homicide?

Had someone actually broken into Madame’s coffeehouse under my management and assaulted Anabelle? With this thought, I must have looked ill or gone pale or something because the detective turned, his square-jawed profile addressing Officer Langley. “Does she need medical attention or not?”

The words sounded almost accusatory. Langley’s response was a shrug.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked the detective. “Articulate your response, Officer.”

Demetrios, who’d jumped to his feet the moment the detective had come on the scene, now broke in. “We were just—”

“Was I speaking to you, Demetrios?” the detective asked.

Demetrios’s jaw clenched and his body stiffened. He seemed to be struggling with a retort, but clearly thought better of it and instead looked away.

The detective turned his gaze back on Langley, folded his arms, and waited.

Langley shrugged again. “I don’t think she needs medical attention, okay, Lieutenant? She’s not in clinical shock. She’s functioning. Demetrios and I just thought she needed to putter around so she could calm herself down.”

“‘Putter around’?” repeated the detective. “‘Putter around’ a potential crime scene?”

“Yes, that’s right,” I said, speaking up at last—it was either that or let them continue talking about me in the third person, which I found beyond condescending. “Officer Langley is correct, that is exactly what I was doing.”

Lieutenant Quinn eyeballed me. I eyeballed him right back.

He now stood directly in front of my seated form—although “standing” didn’t exactly describe what he was doing. It was more like
looming.
Or at the very least,
towering.
He was at least six-three and looked down at me with midnight blue eyes that were bloodshot but still sharp enough to cut the breath from my lungs.

Slowly, his dark blond brows rose.

“Well, Mrs.—”

“Ms.”

A barely perceptible sigh came next, and then: “What
is
your last name, anyway?” he asked. “Officers Langley and Demetrios here somehow failed to get it.”

“It’s Cosi—Clare Cosi.” I stood, hands on hips, slightly indignant, trying to regain a bit of my lost control. I was in charge of the place, after all.

But the gesture didn’t help matters much. Even with the comfortable, low-heeled boots I’d pulled on this morning before my favorite pair of straight-legged blue jeans, I barely made five feet three—a good twelve inches below the detective, which he seemed to take note of with mild amusement.

“Spell it, please.” Lieutenant Quinn brought out his notebook and began to scribble, asking me the same general information I’d already given to Langley and Demetrios—except my last name, of course, which was really just a simple oversight in my opinion.

“Okay, Ms. Cosi,” said the detective. “Now show me where you found the body.”

“Girl,” I said.

“What?” Quinn mumbled. He was looking around the room, taking more notes.

“She’s not a ‘body,’” I said. “She’s a girl. She’s alive. And breathing.”

“Just a figure of speech,” Quinn tossed back.

“Anabelle Hart is
not
a figure of speech. She’s a pretty young woman.
Alive and breathing.
Not a
body
—so frankly, I don’t see
why
you need to be here. Nobody is
dead
!”

The detective’s pen stilled on his rectangular notebook. He looked at me. Then he glanced at Langley and Demetrios. I couldn’t see their faces, but I knew my own face was hot. It was probably flushed bright red by now, and I could feel my lungs laboring with each breath.

“New York City Homicide detectives don’t just investigate shootings, stabbings, and stranglings,” Quinn said, so calmly and slowly I got the feeling he thought I was about one step from Bellevue’s psych ward. “We also investigate any suspicious death or accident that appears will result in death. No need to get emotional, Ms. Cosi.”

There is nothing that makes me
more
emotional than a man telling me
not
to get emotional. My ex did that, too. As I recall, he’d said it the very day I had to tell him our marriage was over. If only everything else would have been over that day, too, including and especially the emotion. But it hadn’t. It took well over a year before I stopped wearing his ring.

I suddenly noticed the gold band on the detective’s left hand. Automatically, I glanced at the pockets of his trenchcoat. Sure enough one held that telltale sign—tiny smudges of chocolate, made by little searching fingers.
Daddy, what did you bring me?

Matteo had played that same game with Joy when she’d been very young. Coming back from whatever continent he’d been exploring that month, he always had something special for her, some trinket, exotic toy, or candy. As she grew older, childish gifts gave way to audiotapes of foreign pop bands or interesting native recipes; and as she grew into a young woman and began to understand just how long Daddy was sometimes gone—without so much as a hotel postcard—the gifts became downright lavish: hand-tooled leather backpacks and jackets, filigreed rings, and necklaces of pearl, platinum, jade, and ivory.

I resented the gifts at first, saw them as cheap, pacifying bribes from a man too busy to be a father. But then I realized how much they meant to Joy. And how much her father meant. And I said nothing after that.

“We have amazing miniature pastries in the afternoon,” I told the detective. “Tiny chocolate éclairs and mini canollis. Children love them.”

Lieutenant Quinn’s brow furrowed. Now he really was looking at me as if I’d gone over the edge.

“Your right pocket,” I said, quickly realizing the pastry comment probably sounded like the looniest nonsequitur on record.

“My
what
?”

“Right pocket. Of your trenchcoat.”

Langley, Demetrios, and Quinn all turned their gazes to Quinn’s trenchcoat pocket.

“It’s got chocolate smudges,” I pointed out. “Part of a little hand print. You have a small child at home, don’t you? A little one who checks Daddy’s pocket for a treat when he comes home?”

Langley smiled. Demetrios let out an amused grunt. And the detective’s face reddened slightly. He sent a warning look to the two young officers, then turned his sharp blue eyes back on me.

“Ms. Cosi, I’m asking the questions here—”

“If you have a child, then you must understand how I feel about Anabelle. I didn’t know her long, but she’s my employee, and only one year older than my daughter—”

“Which is?”

“Twenty.” It was Langley who answered this time, consulting his own notebook. “The victim was—uh, sorry”—he glanced guiltily at me—“
is
twenty. Dance student. We interviewed the girl’s roommate before she went to the hospital.”

Quinn squinted at me. “So
you
have a nineteen-year-old daughter?”

I nodded, and he gave me a skeptical once-over. The entire assessment probably took a few seconds at the most. To me, however, it felt as though time had stopped for a day or so.

He started at the tips of my black boots, ran quickly up my straight-legged blue jeans, slowing on the curve of my hip like a sports car on a sharp turn. The scrutiny continued up my black turtleneck sweater. He lingered much longer than necessary on my C-cups, which, I admit, have been a generous advantage for a woman with a petite frame, but under the circumstances I wasn’t at all comfortable with any attention given to that particular determination. Finally, his gaze took in my heart-shaped face and shoulder-length, Italian-roast brown hair.

His cobalt eyes narrowed on my green ones. “And you’re
how
old?”

“Thirty-nine.” God, it pained me to say that out loud.

The detective glanced away, flipping back a few pages in his notebook. “You don’t look it,” he said softly as he jotted it down.

“Thank you,” I said, just as softly.

Then the detective turned to Langley and Demetrios. “Okay, show me.”

The two officers led the detective across the coffeehouse’s rectangular-shaped main floor. There were fifteen coral-colored marble-topped tables here, many of them circa 1919, stretching along a row of white French doors, which drenched the room in sunlight and, in warmer months, were thrown open for sidewalk seating. As we walked, the detective seemed to be surveying these floor-to-ceiling doors, I assumed, for any sign of forced entry. There was none.

At the back end of the main room was an exposed brick wall with a fireplace and a circular staircase of wrought iron that led to the second-floor seating area, which was also used for private parties. The circular staircase was just for customers. The staff used the service staircase, which was where we were headed.

The officers and detective moved along the short hallway to the back door, which was located on the landing just above the flight of service stairs that led to the basement. I watched the detective make silent observations and jot down notes. He frowned at the mess of black, slippery grounds overflowing from the heavy stainless steel waste can.

“That shouldn’t be there,” I said. “The can, I mean.”

“Where did it come from?” asked the detective.

“We keep three cans in the work area, behind the marble counter—one under the sink, one under the coffee urns, and one next to the dishwasher. This one was under the sink, the closest to this back area.”

“I see.”

“It makes no sense, though,” I said. “Anabelle knows better than to drag this heavy can over here. Our policy is to remove the plastic lining and take it to the Dumpster.”

“And where is the Dumpster?”

“Out this back door, down four concrete steps and to the right. It’s a private alley. We’ve used the same garbage pickup company for the last twenty years.”

“Paserelli and Sons?”

“Yes.”

The detective nodded as he examined the back door, hands behind his back. It was heavy steel with no window. “They’ve got the contract for most of Hudson. This the way you found the door?”

“Yes,” I told him. “Bolted but unchained.”

“You normally keep it chained?”

“Yes, especially at night.”

“And Anabelle Hart was your closer last night?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“And what time do you close?”

“On weeknights like last evening, at midnight. On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, it depends on the customers.”

“Because those are date nights?” the detective asked.

“Yes, we get lots of restaurant and nightclub overflow. You know, a couple hits it off and needs a place to continue to get to know each other after the dinner or the clubbing.”

“Very romantic,” said Langley absently.

Demetrios laughed. “Geez, Langley, I didn’t know you were such a Romeo.”

“That’s right, Plato. You do the thinking. I’ll do the romancing.”

“In my day,” remarked the detective walking carefully down the steps, “we didn’t hit coffeehouses after getting steamy on the dance floor, we just hit the sheets.”

“Your day was before AIDS,” I called down to him.

“Just barely,” he shouted back, examining the area at the bottom of the stairs where Anabelle had been found. “You have any other doors in the basement?”

“Only one. The sidewalk trap door. But we only use it for bulk deliveries. It should be bolted.”

“It’s secure,” the detective called up. “Okay. Nothing down here.” The detective came back up the stairs. “What’s that big machine down there?”

“A coffee roaster. We roast our own beans here.”

Quinn nodded. “Smells good.”

“That’s the idea,” I told him. “The pleasure of fine coffee drinking is more than fifty percent aroma.”

“Un-hunh.”

Quinn stared at me with the blank blink of the unconverted. Typical of a Robusta-bean caffeine swiller, but I wasn’t discouraged. I’d convert him yet.

Quinn continued up the back staircase.

The second floor of the Blend was also rectangular in shape with a bank of windows running the length of one side. As on the first floor, the back wall had exposed brick and a fireplace. At the far end of the room, a door led to my small manager’s office. The wooden floor was buffered with a number of area rugs. Like the first floor, there were marble-topped tables, but most of the second floor was replete with overstuffed furniture.

The intentionally mismatched mix of French flea market sofas, loveseats, armchairs, and reading lamps was arranged in the cozy conversational nooks. It looked like a bohemian living room—and for practical purposes, it was. With so many Village residents jammed into tiny studio or one-bedroom apartments, the Blend’s second floor became an extension of their own living spaces. It also served as a private meeting space for various neighborhood groups.

“Nice place you’ve got here, Ms. Cosi,” said the detective as he inspected the closed and locked windows.

We’d already checked my small manager’s office and nothing had been disturbed. Not the wall safe nor the sealed glass case to the side of it, which displayed the priceless book of secret Blend recipes that had been handed down through the Allegro family for over one hundred years.