Holiday Grind (10 page)

Read Holiday Grind Online

Authors: Cleo Coyle

Tags: #Fiction, #Detective, #Mystery, #Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction - Mystery, #Coffeehouses, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Cosi; Clare (Fictitious character), #Mystery fiction

BOOK: Holiday Grind
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I replaced her traditional anise with vanilla and used roasted pistachios to give the cookie a delicate nutty flavor as well as a hint of green for the season. Dried cranberries added a cheerful shade of Christmas red while a decadent drizzle of white chocolate evoked icy-fresh winter snow. My secret ingredient, however, was ground cinnamon. The bright, bittersweet spice—once used in love potions by wealthy Romans—may have been an unconventional addition for biscotti, but it struck a surprisingly harmonious chord with the cookie’s other flavorings while lacing the air with an evocative aroma for the holidays.
As I reentered the still-chilly bedroom, my spirits rose like a yeast panettone. Mike’s being here for me felt like an early Christmas gift. At the very least, it was a wish fulfilled. Not so very long ago I’d daydreamed a scenario exactly like this: me serving the sandy-haired detective his morning coffee in this beautiful mahogany four-poster.
There’d been times I never thought it would happen, not that Mike hadn’t been thoroughly miserable in his marriage. Between his wife’s lying, cheating, and mood swings, the man had been living in the equivalent of an emotional war zone. For the sake of his two kids, however, he’d made every attempt to keep his marriage together. His wife was the one who’d ended things.
I’d never met Leila Quinn, and I often wondered what she’d been like when he first married her. I’d heard about the end of their marriage, of course, but I was curious how they’d originally met, what made him fall in love with the woman and decide to marry her.
Mike never told me. He didn’t like talking about his ex or his past with her. And whenever the subject came up, he changed it. For now, I let him. When I’d first met the man, he’d been reduced to a shell-shocked zombie where relationships were concerned. The last thing I wanted to do at this stage of our fledgling bonding process was open barely scabbed-over wounds.
“Rise and shine, big guy,” I sang in his ear.
Without opening his eyes, Mike smiled.
I set the tray on the nightstand. “Your coffee is here, and you can try my newest recipe with it: Red and Green Holiday Biscotti.”
Mike’s eyes were still closed, but his nostrils moved. “
Mmmm
, the house smells good,” he murmured, “like my mom used to make it smell at Christmastime when I was a kid. You weren’t actually
cooking
this early, were you?”
“You don’t know the third tenet of the homemaker’s credo?”
“Never heard of it.”
“I bake, therefore I am.”
Mike laughed. “What are the first two?”
“I clean, therefore I am; I grocery shop, therefore I am; and there are at least seven more.” (During my Jersey days, when I was freelance writing to make ends meet, I’d listed them all in one of my old In the Kitchen with Clare columns.) “But my favorite is still baking.”
“Lucky for me,” he said, closing his fingers around my wrist, “because, as it happens, I’m still starving.” Then Mike pulled me back under the bedcovers; and that’s when I knew two things—it was absolutely brilliant planning on my part to pour the Blue Mountain into a thermal carafe (because we wouldn’t be getting to it for a good half hour), and those wealthy Romans were right about the cinnamon.
 
 
A short time later, Quinn was back on the job and so was I. After tying on my Village Blend apron, I helped Tucker recharge our lunchtime crush of caffeine-deficient regulars, then relieved him and our trainee.
Dante and Gardner were scheduled for the evening shifts, and we were short-staffed at the moment, which meant the Blend was all mine for the next three hours.
Only a few café tables were occupied, and after I whipped out another dozen sporadic take-out orders, there were no customers left in line. This was usually my favorite time of day—the quiet afternoon between lunch and dinner, the calm before the after-work crowd stormed our doors. But I didn’t like the calm. Not today. Not one bit. My deserted coffeehouse suddenly felt like a widow’s empty kitchen, once boisterous with family laughter, now as silent as the viewing room of a funeral home.
Around two o’clock, a number of chatty tourists and chilled holiday shoppers passed right by the shop without even glancing in. I frowned, considering writing up that sidewalk chalkboard featuring our new Fa-la-la-la Lattes, but I thought of Alf again—how the whole Taste of Christmas thing had been his idea—and my heart just wasn’t in it. So I swept the floor and wiped down our unoccupied tables.
Just before three, I felt myself tensing. Alf almost always stopped in at this time to “warm his mittens,” as he put it, and I’d take a break with him, grab a latte, and sit by the fire. At one minute after the hour, the jingle bells rang. I glanced up, half expecting to see my Santa, and instead found Matt standing there.
I smiled.
He returned my smile, clomped his snowy hiking boots across the wood plank floor, and took a load off at my espresso bar. I was a little surprised to see him dressed like the old days (before fashionista Breanne’s influence) in paint-stained jeans and a battered old parka. As he pulled off his coat and settled onto the bar stool, I took a moment to thank him for his help the previous night—and not just for coming to the crime scene.
I’d been so distraught after finding Alf that I didn’t think I could tell my staff about the murder without breaking down. Matt had understood. While I’d gone up the back stairs to collapse in bed, he agreed to return to the tasting party, break the news to my baristas, and handle locking up.
“Tucker didn’t say much about Alf’s death this morning,” I told Matt. “Just that it was
too
depressing. How did everyone else take it?”
“They were upset, of course,” he said. “But I didn’t tell them right away. I let the tasting go on as planned—”
“You
what
?” That decision stunned me.
“I broke the news near the end of the party. You wanted the tasting info, didn’t you? Oh, that reminds me—”
He shifted on the bar stool and pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his back pocket. “Here are last night’s reactions to the latte flavors. It went pretty well overall. There were only a few duds and a couple of suggestions for tweaking the recipes.”
I ignored the folded paper. “I can’t believe you let that tasting party go on! What were you thinking?! What about Vicki—”
“Vicki Glockner never showed, Clare. If she had, I would have told her about her father right away. Give me a little credit.”
“Oh.” I frowned, processing that. “Why didn’t Vicki show? Do you think the police got to her first? Called her to give her the news?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t Esther try to reach her? Call her cell?”
“Yeah, sure, but she just got Vicki’s voice mail, and—” Matt shrugged. “Esther wasn’t about to inform her friend that her father was murdered on a recorded message.”
I closed my eyes. “Of course not.” My heart really went out to Vicki—especially after I saw the morning papers. The death of her dad wasn’t just news. It was a tabloid bonanza.
Ho-Ho-Homicide
, screamed one front page in red and green letters.
Santa’s Final Sleigh Ride
, declared its rival. Randy Knox’s scandal sheet wasn’t about to miss the fun.
The Grinch Who Plugged Santa Claus
was the lead story for the
New York Journal
, complete with the head of Dr. Seuss’s Grinch Photo-shopped over the body of a gun-waving street punk.
All over the Five Boroughs, beleaguered parents now had to explain the news to distraught youngsters who’d heard on television that jolly old St. Nick would no longer be riding his sleigh—or pushing it, in Alf’s case.
“Clare?”
I opened my eyes.
“You okay?” Matt asked.
I nodded.
“Espresso then,” he said, “if you don’t mind.”
“No problem.”
I was relieved to turn my attention to something so familiar, not to mention fundamental—the espresso being the basis for most Italian coffee drinks. After burring the beans, dosing the proper amount of grounds into the portafilter, and tamping them in for perfect distribution, I locked the handle into place and sent a small amount of hot water under high pressure through the puck. In less than thirty seconds, the water extracted the flavor from the freshly roasted beans, producing that quintessential full-bodied, aromatic liquor topped with
crema
—the term for that dark golden foam that defines a correctly drawn espresso shot.
After finishing the pull, I set the white porcelain cup on its saucer and slid Matt’s shot across the blueberry marble counter.
Customers sometimes ask me if I ever grow tired of smelling coffee. I never do. Unlike perfume or incense, the caramel-sweet aroma of a perfectly pulled espresso is neither overbearing nor monotonous. To me, it’s a living scent, rising and falling with the life of the cup. Intoxicating yet invigorating, it’s like a song I never tire of hearing; the sight of an old friend stepping again and again through my front door . . .
“Getting back to last night,” Matt said as he brought the demitasse to his lips. “Did your guard dog ever call you back? Or are you frosted at him for ignoring you?”
“Mike dropped by after work. And I’m not
frosted
at him. There was a very good reason he didn’t come to the crime scene.”
“Another woman?”
Spare me.
“No. As I recall, that was typically
your
reason for not returning my calls. But only when we were married.”
Matt grunted. We’d run our wagon wheels over this road so often, the grooves reached the earth’s mantle.
“And how’s Breanne?” I asked after a long, awkward silence.
“Breanne is . . .” Matt looked into his cooling cup, where the exquisite
crema
was slowly beginning to dissipate. “The same as she ever was.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Matt shrugged. “You know how she gets.”
“What exactly are you two fighting about?”
“At the moment?” Matt shifted on his bar stool. “She’s obsessed with micromanaging her magazine’s holiday party: all the details, the food, the music, the guest list—”
“Guest list? I thought a company party was supposed to be for the employees? You know, to pat them on the back for a job well done over the past year.”
“Well, that’s your version. Breanne sees it as a networking opportunity for
Trend
. She’s invited name designers, press people, celebrities—she’s got her staff working after hours on an ‘exclusive’ holiday issue for the attendees. Photographers will be there to capture every Technicolor moment. She’s determined to garner national buzz.”
“I see. And how do you fit into all this?”
“I don’t. And frankly, Clare, I’m sick of being ignored by my own bride. I mean, I come home after a two-week tour of Central American coffee farms and what do I get? The cold shoulder. She comes to bed after I’m asleep, gets up before I’m awake—”
No sex, in other words.
I arched an eyebrow. For Matt, that was tantamount to no food or water.
“I’m just going to stay out of her way till this holiday crap blows over. But it really pisses me off. I cleared my travel schedule for December. I thought we were going to celebrate a nice, romantic Christmas together. Now I can’t wait until January second.”
Great
, I thought,
another bah-humbug refrain
. “Well, you shouldn’t be so eager to see the holidays come and go. Our daughter’s flying all the way from Paris to spend time with us.”
“Joy’s coming?”
I nodded. “She called yesterday morning—morning my time, I should say, with Paris six hours ahead. She asked for two weeks off to celebrate the holidays with us. She says the restaurant’s sure to be busy, but she’s owed a lot of time off and her bosses are willing to give it to her.”
Matt’s expression lightened. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. You know, you’re right, Clare, I should focus on our daughter . . .” He reached out and took my hand. “You want some company tonight? I mean, you’re probably still upset about Alf and everything.”
“I’m fine. I don’t need company.” I gently reclaimed my appendage. “Listen, can I give you some advice?”
Matt exhaled. Loudly.
“Breanne’s just stressed right now. A combative attitude from you is not going to help the situation. Try to be patient with her. And while you’re waiting for her workload to lessen, don’t go looking for love in all the wrong places.”
Matt glanced away. “Whatever.”
It was then I noticed his neglected espresso. Its thick, golden foam was shrinking and collapsing, breaking up into ugly patches that revealed the black pool beneath.
“Your drink’s gone cold,” I told him.
Matt should have known better. Espresso was a tricky commodity. Once the harmony of the
crema
was lost, the experience could turn bitter.
“I’ll just have a new one then,” he announced. “
Doppio
, please.”

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