Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse (A Cape Bay Cafe Mystery Book 1) (4 page)

One of the paramedics stuck his head in. “Hey, uh, Mike, we’re about wrapped up out here. Does he want to—”

Mike nodded, understanding what he was being asked. He turned to look at Matty. “Matt, would you like to see the body before they take it away?”

I saw Matty’s face go pale. He sat frozen for several seconds.

“There’s nothing—no visible—” Mike stumbled over his words.

“Yes,” Matty croaked, standing. “I’d like to see him.”

The paramedic pushed the door farther open and stepped back outside. Mike went out first, then Matty, then me. The stretcher was on the front walk, a body bag containing Mr. Cardosi’s ample form strapped on top of it. I almost bumped into Matty when he hesitated on the front step. The paramedics were standing at a respectful distance, and Mike stepped onto the grass so Matty would have room to walk by. Several of the busybodies who populated the neighborhood were gathered in front of Mrs. Howard’s house across the street, gawking.

“You can do it, Matty,” I whispered.

He glanced over his shoulder at me, nodded, and gave me the slightest of smiles. He stepped down the two front stairs and strode down the sidewalk to the stretcher. He stopped about a yard away, took a deep breath, and walked the remaining steps forward. I stayed at the bottom of the steps, not wanting to crowd Matty. He looked at his father’s face, the only part of him not zipped up in the body bag, for a few minutes then stepped back and nodded to the paramedics. They walked forward, zipped the bag up the rest of the way, and wheeled Mr. Cardosi to the ambulance. They slid the stretcher into the ambulance, closed the doors, got in, and drove away as we all watched in silence.

Mike shuffled his feet as Matty stood perfectly still on the sidewalk. Mike glanced at me then at Matty.

I walked forward and put my hand on Matty’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

B
efore we could even turn
around to go into the house, the neighborhood busybody contingent flocked across the street, past Mike on his way to his car, and surrounded Matty and me.

“Matteo, what happened?” “Was your dad sick, Matty?” “Francesca, dear, how did you find him? You were just walking home?” “What a fortunate coincidence, you finding him! He could have been out there God knows how long if you hadn’t happened along!” “What an unfortunate coincidence, what with your mother just passing!” “If you need any help going through his things, Matteo, I’d be happy to help. You know, I’ve lived just down the street there since your parents first moved in, back before you were even born.”

The women’s voice overlapped and merged as they went on and on in their chattering and so-called condolences that all too frequently sounded more like thinly veiled insults and criticisms.

“Such a tragedy, losing both your parents. And you so young yet!” “You’re all alone in the world now! Neither of your parents will be there to see you get married when you finally find the right girl!” “Oh, your children won’t have any grandparents!”

At that point, I grabbed Matty’s arm and pulled him through the crowd toward the front door of Mr. Cardosi’s house.

“Didn’t Mike want us to look through the house?” I asked loudly.

“I can help you!” one of the women called.

“No, no, we have it!” We were almost at the door.

“I know where everything belongs! I spent quite a bit of time with Gino!”

Matty and I whirled around. Matty had specifically said that his dad didn’t really socialize, so I wanted to see who was claiming to be his close friend. It was Mrs. Collins, a widow who lived across the street and two houses down, directly across the street from my house. She was rather well known for her, well, let’s just call them “exaggerations.” I narrowed my eyes at her, telegraphing a “back off” message. She stopped in her tracks at the edge of the group of women. Without taking my eyes off her, I pushed Matty toward the front door. I backed through it after him then slammed it and locked it for good measure.

“Thanks for that,” Matty said as I stalked to the back door to lock that too.

Satisfied that we would have no surprise or accidental visitors, I walked back to Matty. “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

I glanced around and noticed the living room curtains were open. I didn’t put it past a single one of those women to walk through the flower beds and stare in, so I pulled the curtains closed, glaring through the window at the lingering crowd before I did. I walked through the first floor and closed the rest of the curtains before circling back to Matty, who was still lurking in the entryway.

“That should keep them at least from being full-on Peeping Toms,” I said.

Matty nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets as he looked around. “He’s really gone, huh?”

The aggression I had felt toward the meddling neighbors vanished, and I was filled again with sympathy for Matty. I rubbed his upper arm with my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

He was quiet, staring at his shoes, then he looked at me. “So you found him?”

I swallowed hard and stepped back, shoving my hands deep in my pockets. “Yeah,” I said as I nodded.

“Did he look—? How did he—?”

“I thought he was asleep,” I said softly, understanding what Matty was asking.

“And you didn’t see any—”

“No.”

Matty nodded and looked at the ceiling with a sigh. “Thank you.”

“For what?” I scoffed. I’d found his father’s dead body and called the police. That was nothing special. In fact, I wouldn’t have blamed Matty if he’d been angry with me.

“Finding him, calling the police, saving me from the biddy brigade out there,” he listed.

“I didn’t do anything special.”

“Who knows how long he would have been back there if you hadn’t walked by?”

I shrugged. “I’m sure it wouldn’t have been long.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Matty said. “Any time is too long.”

I nodded sympathetically. My mother had collapsed in public and been whisked straight to the hospital. I couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to know that your loved one had been lying somewhere, dead, for an extended period of time.

Matty took another deep breath. “Should we look around? See if there’s anything missing or out of place that Mike didn’t notice?”

“We?” I asked, surprised. We’d been close growing up, but I had barely seen Matty since high school. Even though I’d been thrust back into his life, I didn’t expect him to want to share such a personal moment with me.

He shrugged. “I don’t really want to be alone. And you’ve just been through the same thing. You’re not going to be all nosey and stuff, asking me a bunch of intrusive questions about how I
feel
about everything.”

Well, that was true. The first days after I’d been home, several of my mother’s “friends” had come by, including some of the women from Mrs. D’Angelo’s Ladies Auxiliary. They supposedly wanted to express their condolences, but they’d seemed more interested in poking around the house, making snide comments and asking not-so-subtly about what had gone wrong with my fiancé. The people who came by and just wanted to express their condolences and sit quietly with me, drinking a cup of coffee while I stared into space, were few and far between, but they were much more what I needed as I struggled to process everything.

“Okay then,” I said. “Where do you want to start?”

“Living room?” Matty suggested.

That seemed like as good a place as any, so we walked back to the room where we’d sat and waited for Mike what seemed like ages ago, even though it had only been an hour. We worked our way through the house, one room at a time. Matty looked around in each, surveying the contents. He told me stories about the objects in each room—souvenirs they’d picked up on vacation, the lamp he’d broken when he threw a baseball through the open window while playing catch with his dad, knickknacks that his grandparents had brought over from the old country, trinkets that had belonged to his mother. I already knew a lot of the stories from growing up with Matty, but I let him share them anyway. I knew how much he needed to talk about his dad without any pressure from me.

We finished without finding anything that looked unusual and returned to the living room.

“You want a cup of coffee?” Matty asked. “I know it’s getting late, but I think my dad keeps some decaf. Although I feel a little inadequate making it for the coffee queen here.”

I laughed a little. “Whatever you have will be fine.” Yeah, I’d been around coffee my entire life and could tell a good cup from a bad cup by the look and the smell, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have manners. Besides, decaf or no, I knew I wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night.

“All right,” Matty said as we headed toward the kitchen. He reached to open the coffeepot to put in the filter and grounds but stopped suddenly.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I didn’t notice before—the coffeepot’s half full. It looks like Dad was only on his first cup.” He pulled out the coffeepot and held it up for me to see.

Sure enough, it was only partially empty. Matty paused, staring at the coffeepot. The visual evidence of his dad’s interrupted morning must have brought his grief back to the forefront. Not that I could blame him. He looked at it for a few more seconds then poured the coffee down the sink. He rinsed out the pot and started a fresh batch.

We sat in silence at the kitchen table, each of us lost in our thoughts of our own parent’s recent passing. With a lot of people, that kind of silence might have been awkward, but with Matty, it felt completely comfortable. When the coffee was ready, Matty poured us each a cup and brought them back to the table.

“Sorry, no fancy designs,” he said with a sad smile.

“It tastes just as good without them,” I said before taking a sip. It did not taste good. Clearly Mr. Cardosi hadn’t spent any more on his coffee than he’d absolutely had to. It was so bad, I actually wondered if there might be something wrong with the coffeemaker. I set my cup on the table. I’d had a lot of bad coffee in my life, and swallowed some of them down just to be polite, but I wasn’t sure I could manage it with this one.

Matty put his cup down at the same time as I did. We sat for a moment, each staring at our cups.

“We can just throw it out if you want,” he said.

I couldn’t stop the laugh from bursting through my lips. Clearly Matty thought the coffee was just as bad as I did. “That might be a good idea,” I said.

Matty took my mug and his cup over to the sink. He poured them both out then grabbed the pot from the coffeemaker and poured that coffee down the drain as well. He rinsed them all out and left them in the sink. “Sorry about that.”

“I don’t think anything you did caused that,” I replied, the bitter taste lingering in my mouth.

He smiled slightly as he stared out the kitchen window. After a few minutes, he took a deep breath, exhaled sharply, and turned to look at me. “I guess it’s time to go home then.”

“I guess so. Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything you need?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not now.”

“Okay then,” I said, getting up. I walked over to him and gave him a quick hug. “If you think of anything, let me know. You know where to find me.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Seriously, Matty, I know I didn’t want to ask anybody for anything those first few days, but I needed the help. There’s a lot to take care of. Just ask.”

He smiled sadly. “You know, you’re the only person who still calls me Matty.”

“You’re the only person who still calls me Franny.”

“What do people call you now, Franny?” he asked.

“Fran, Francesca.” I shrugged. “Mostly Francesca in New York, mostly Fran here. Just depends on who’s doing the calling.”

“I see,” he said.

“Everyone calls you Matt now, huh?”

“Yup… but you can still call me Matty if you want.”

I smiled. “We’ll see. We’re not five years old anymore. But you’re welcome to keep calling me Franny.”

“Will do,
Franny
,” he replied.

I chuckled softly. “I guess I’d better get going then.”

“All right. I’ll see you.”

“See you.”

Matty walked me to the door. I headed off to my house and my bed, which I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep in because of thoughts of my mother and Mr. Cardosi.

I
tried
to help Matty as much as I could over the next few days. He took some time off work to deal with his dad’s estate and funeral arrangements, and I cut back on my hours at the café. I still went in every day, just not for the full fourteen hours it was open. Since I’d just been through everything Matty was dealing with, I was able to suggest some things (go ahead and file for the life insurance so you can use the money for the funeral), warn him about others (the funeral home will charge you for those “refreshments” they so casually offer), and help him with the rest (how about the café provides the refreshments—my coffee will be better than the funeral home’s any day).

It helped that Matty and I had been friends for most of our lives. I was able to pick out meaningful pictures of Mr. Cardosi to display at the funeral home, particularly ones with Matty and the late Mrs. Cardosi or ones from special times they’d shared. I helped Matty go through some of his dad’s things, even pulling out some mementos of Matty’s mom that he’d never known existed.

As much as I wanted to help my friend in his time of need, part of the reason I felt so strongly that I needed to help Matty was because I’d been the one who found his dad’s body. Sure, he had repeatedly expressed his gratitude to me for finding his dad and all, but that didn’t make me feel much better about it. I felt somehow responsible for what had happened, so I wanted to do as much as I could to help out. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t enjoy spending so much time with Matty again though.

It took several days for the autopsy to be completed, and we obviously couldn’t have the funeral until after it was done, so Mr. Cardosi wasn’t buried until a week and a half after he’d died. I was glad for Matty when the medical examiner’s office finally released the body. I knew it was wearing on Matty for things to take that long. I saw it in his eyes and the way he carried himself. He didn’t magically stop being sad after the funeral, but at least he was finally able to get back to his normal routine and not spend all day, every day, thinking about his dad’s death.

After we both went back to our jobs, we didn’t see each other as much. In fact, I’d only seen him once since the funeral, when he showed up in the café one day shortly after the lunch rush ended. We didn’t offer a lot of food, just some pastries and sandwiches, but that didn’t stop the tourists from flocking in to get something to take back to the beach.

Sammy, Becky, and I were all working. Becky was in the back washing coffee cups, Sammy was wiping down the counters, and I was making some fresh mozzarella-tomato-basil sandwiches to go in the refrigerator case. I heard the door jingle open but didn’t look up from what I was doing, since Sammy was closer to the register.

Until I heard her whisper, “It’s Matt!”

I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, it was Matty. I was surprised to see him because, even though he lived in Cape Bay, he actually worked a couple of towns over. If we saw him at the café, it was usually first thing in the morning or just before close. I was surprised by how happy I was to see him. I’d enjoyed spending time with him, but I didn’t realize how much I’d missed him until he walked in.

“Hello!” Sammy said in a singsong tone. “What can I get for you today?”

“I got it,” I said, wiping my hands on my apron. “Can you finish up the sandwiches?”

“Sure thing,” she replied, moving over to my station. “Nice to see you, Matt!”

Sammy’s cheerfulness and friendliness were part of what made her such a great employee. We had customers who I swore came in just because they liked to talk to her. We also had customers who I thought came in just because Sammy wasn’t bad to look at. She had a round cherub face to go with her blond angel hair and soft curves that I’d heard made men think about cuddling up with her on cold winter nights. But she, of course, had been seeing the same guy for almost ten years. He lived with his mother and said he couldn’t possibly get married and leave her because it would break her heart. Why he wasn’t as concerned about Sammy’s heart, I didn’t know. In any case, the men who came in to flirt with her didn’t seem to bother Sammy.

I smiled at Matty. “Caffè mocha?” I confirmed, already starting the drink.

“Yeah,” he answered simply.

I looked at him as I pulled the espresso. Something didn’t seem right, and it wasn’t that he was reaching for his wallet. “Put that away, Matty. It’s on me.”

He didn’t argue, just shrugged and shoved his wallet back in his pocket. Something was definitely bothering him.

“Go ahead, sit down,” I said. “I’ll bring it over in just a minute.”

Matty nodded and walked over to sit at a corner table. I made a second drink, that one for myself, while I worked on creating a sunrise in the foam of Matty’s drink. It had been one of my favorite patterns in the weeks after my mother passed away. It reminded me that no matter how bad any given day was, there was always another day coming, and life went on. I finished it just in time to pour the milk on my own drink. Since it was just for me, I wasn’t going to bother creating something terribly intricate, but sometimes I seemed physically incapable of not putting
some
kind of design in a latte. I poured in a quick rosetta.

I pulled off my apron and picked up the two cups and saucers to take over to Matty’s table. “I’m going to take a quick break,” I told Sammy as I walked past her.

“Sounds good!” she chirped.

I heard the smile in her voice. Since Mr. Cardosi’s funeral, I’d actually cut back on my hours, and Sammy was happy about it. She’d been genuinely concerned about me working so much—that cheerfulness and friendliness wasn’t just an act. As much as I hated to admit it, I was happier too now that I was working closer to forty hours each week instead of one hundred.

I set the cups on Matty’s table, careful to make sure his was positioned properly. “Mind if I join you?”

“No, actually, that’s why I’m here,” he replied.

“We haven’t seen each other much since the funeral.”

“Yeah, I know, I’ve been catching up at work. They didn’t mind me being gone for two weeks, but that doesn’t mean the paperwork didn’t pile up my desk.” Matty worked as a project manager at a telecom engineering company. He’d told me the engineers who worked under him could manage pretty well without him, but he still had to sign off on everything they did. If something on the project went wrong, he was the one who would get fired, not them.

“I can imagine.” I knew how bad it used to get when I’d take just a couple of days off at my job in New York. I couldn’t imagine how long it would take to get caught up after being out for two whole weeks.

Matty looked at the design in his coffee. “Sunrise?”

“Yup,” I responded. “New beginnings, new life. It’s always darkest before the sunrise—”

“It’s always darkest before the dawn,” Matty corrected.

“Same thing.” I took a sip of my coffee. It was much better than that bitter brew we’d had the night Mr. Cardosi had died. Not that I was patting myself on the back—just about anything would have been better than that foul concoction.

“I almost hate to drink it,” Matty said. “I don’t want to mess it up.”

“But the coffee’s the best part!” I retorted. “It’s the whole point! The cappuccino art is just there to enhance the experience. We eat—and drink—with our eyes first, you know.”

My grandfather’s motto had been: “Make your food delicious, and make it beautiful.” He would never tolerate me serving a sloppy mess of food or drink to a customer, and he’d insisted I make it again and again until I got it right.

“You’re the designer,” Matty said as he raised the cup to his lips. His eyes rolled back a little as he tasted it. “God, this is amazing! You seriously make the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Amaro family secret.” I smiled, taking another sip. We really did make some amazing coffee. Well, I guess
I
made amazing coffee, since I was the only Amaro left. “Here, have a cupcake.”

I gave him one of the chocolate cupcakes from behind the counter. We didn’t exclusively sell Italian drinks and desserts. After all, customers were crazy about cupcakes, and I made sure we stocked at least four flavors a day.

“This is heaven,” Matty said. “I always get the chocolate when I come here. How did you know?”

“You can’t go wrong with chocolate.” I had one myself. They were dark chocolate, with the most delicious peanut butter filling that our bakers made to perfection.

We enjoyed our coffee and cupcakes for a few more minutes before Matty pulled out a file folder. He drummed his fingers on it. “I guess I should tell you why I’m here.”

“I thought it was for the pleasant company and the delicious coffee,” I joked.

“I wish that’s what it was. Mike called me this morning and asked me to come down to the police station. The medical examiner finished up the report on my dad’s autopsy, and Mike wanted to give me the results.” He was silent for what seemed like a very long time.

“And?” I asked, deciding that it was up to me to break the silence.

Matty pushed the folder toward me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“That’s the autopsy report.”

“You want me to read it?” I whispered.

He opened his mouth then closed it again and just nodded. From the look on his face, I wasn’t sure he could have spoken if he’d wanted to.

My stomach clenched as I opened the folder. A picture of Mr. Cardosi was on the top, stapled to a report bearing the words “Autopsy Report: Office of the Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” across the top. I looked at Matty. His face was drawn. I resisted the urge to reach across the table and take the hand he rested there.

I looked back down and read the report. There was a lot of medical jargon and terminology I didn’t really understand. It went through the physical examination and findings in detail, including specific information about Mr. Cardosi’s health prior to his passing. I kept reading, absorbing what I could. No tumors, no significant narrowing of the arteries, no brain abnormalities, no blood clots, some mild arthritis. It appeared that for an older man, Mr. Cardosi had been in excellent health. Then I saw what must have caused that look on Matty’s face.

Significant presence of potassium cyanide in blood, tissues, and digestive system… consistent with intentional poisoning… until further investigation can be completed, the medical examiner’s office determines the cause of death to be homicide.

“Dear God,” I whispered. I looked at it again, certain I had misunderstood, but I hadn’t. It almost looked as if the words “cyanide,” “poison,” and “homicide” were in bigger, bolder print than the surrounding text, but when I looked closely, I could tell they weren’t—it was just the horror of them that made them seem that way. “Poison?” I looked at Matty. “Poison?” I said louder, as the weight of it came down on me.

I must have said it louder than I thought because I heard a clatter from the backroom and saw the few lingering afternoon customers look at me.

I gave them all a smile and a little wave. “Sorry!” I hoped they would all just think I was talking about Poison the band, not poison the killer. “Matty, what—? Who—?” I couldn’t get words out of my mouth. I had so many questions. I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading.

“I don’t know,” Matty said. “They don’t know. Mike said they’ll do an investigation, but—”

“But what?” I asked.

“But with the amount of cyanide in his system, death would have been nearly instantaneous.”

I looked at Matty, trying to process what he was saying. “Do they think someone injected him? Like some lunatic ran up while he was sitting on the back patio and stabbed him with it?”

Matty shook his head. “He ingested it.”

“What? Like a cyanide capsule? Like spies use to kill themselves if they’re captured by the enemy?”

“No. More like a food… or a drink.”

Then it dawned on me.
Ingested
.
Nearly instantaneous
. “The coffee!” I gasped.

Matty nodded, covering his face with his hands. I couldn’t believe it. Someone had snuck cyanide into Mr. Cardosi’s coffee to murder him. Then another thought occurred to me.

“The autopsy report said homicide.”

Matty nodded.

“But they don’t think he could have—” I wasn’t sure how to even say the rest. “Done it to himself?”

Matty dragged his hands down his face. After a minute, he said, “No. I asked Mike the same thing. He said that since there was no note and no indication that he might have been considering it, and he still had most of a pot of coffee inside, they’re going to investigate it as a murder. I mean, why would you make a whole pot of coffee if you just needed one cup to kill yourself, right?”

I nodded. It didn’t make sense. Not unless you added the poison to the pot itself, thinking you might need more than one cup, but even then, why not just add more poison to the one cup? Then I had another terrible thought. “Matty?”

“Yeah, Franny?”

“What if the whole coffeepot was poisoned? We drank out of that coffee pot.”

Matty held up a hand and shook his head. “I thought of that. Mike said pouring it out and rinsing it before we made another pot would probably have gotten rid of all the poison. And that we’d be long since dead if it didn’t.”

That was a relief. Although I felt bad being relieved about anything at a time like this.

Matty continued. “I’m going to meet Mike over at Dad’s house later this afternoon so he can take the coffeepot into evidence. He said there’s a good chance they won’t find anything, especially because we used it afterward, but they’ll give it a shot.”

I took another sip of my coffee. “You don’t think that’s why the coffee tasted so bad, do you? Did Mike say what cyanide tastes like?”

“Bitter almonds, apparently. But I’ve had coffee at my dad’s before. It was always pretty bad. I don’t know if it was the coffeemaker or the kind he bought, but I don’t think there was any way to redeem that stuff.”

I nodded thoughtfully. The best technique can’t save a bad brewer and bad beans. I glanced at the autopsy report again. It was so hard to believe. Even when Mike had been asking us a million questions and taking pictures of the house, I didn’t ever really think something criminal had taken place. A heart attack or stroke just seemed like the most obvious culprits. And it had turned out to be a human culprit instead.