Holiday Grind (4 page)

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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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Although I agreed with Esther, I wasn’t happy about ejecting anyone back out into a snowstorm. “I was trying to invite her to the party.”
“Maybe if she hadn’t cut you off and pitched a fit,” Tucker said, “she would have
heard
the invitation! Talk about rude.”
“The woman’s agitation level was off the charts,” Gardner said. “Looked to me like she needed her meds adjusted.”
“O Valium, O Valium,” Tucker sang, “how lovely are your trances—”
“That little display was nothing,” Dante said, waving a tattooed arm. “Three out of the last five nights I closed, I had to physically eject some total A-holes. It’s like the holiday season’s pissing everyone off.”
“Yeah, me included,” Gardner confessed.
“You?” I couldn’t believe my most reliably mellow barista had lost his holiday spirit. “Why?”
“It’s these nonstop loops of mediocre Christmas tunes,” he said, gesturing to our shop’s speaker system. “At least three radio stations have been repeating these same lousy playlists twenty-four-seven for weeks now, and practically every store I walk into has one of them on speaker—”
“It’s like bad sonic wallpaper,” Esther said.
“Whatever you want to call it, it’s driving me sugarplum crazy.” Gardner shook his head. “Three weeks to December twenty-fifth and I’m already fed up with the sounds of the season.”
“Me, too,” Dante said. “The CIA should abandon gangsta rap as a torture technique and try playing ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ a few hundred times in a row.”
“Oh, man.
One
time’s enough for me,” said Theo, one of Gardner’s musician friends.
“Wait!” Dante froze and pointed to the speaker system. “There it is again.”
Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock . . .
“Can we
please
cut the power on this stuff?” Theo begged.
Gardner nodded and moved to turn off the 24/7 Christmas carol station.
“But it’s a party,” I protested. “We should have
music
.” (And I actually liked “Jingle Bell Rock”—and “Winter Wonderland” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”—even if they were played twelve times in twenty-four hours.)
“Put on my ambient mix,” Dante called to Gardner, then turned back to me.
“That’s nice, mellow, latte-tasting music, don’t you think?”
“But it’s not
Christmasy
,” I pointed out.
“That’s okay by me,” said Banhi, Dante’s raven-haired roommate.
“Yeah. Me, too,” added Kiki, the pierced platinum pixie.
I couldn’t believe it. “Where’s your holiday spirit?”
Everyone exchanged glances.
Finally Dante said, “Face it, boss. There’s no holiday cheer out there because the holidays have become a grind. Everyone’s fed up with tinseled-up stores pushing commercial kitsch.”
“Yeah, what’s
good
about gridlock season?” Kiki said. “Out-of-town tourists and bridge-and-tunnel bargain hunters swinging shopping bags like medieval maces? A herd of them nearly ran me over today rushing across Thirty-fourth!”
“And don’t forget those corporate Scrooges all over the city,” Banhi added. “I temp at an office where all they do is gripe about having to use half of their bonuses to buy gifts for their families.”
“Well, don’t talk to
me
about ‘holiday cheer’—” said Esther, putting air quotes around the offending phrase. “I’m still gagging over my perfect, older, married sister’s annual year-end newsletter about her perfect suburban life.”
“I
should
have the Christmas spirit,” Tucker admitted. “Given my latest gig.”
“What’s that?” asked one of the guys in Gardner’s group.
“Dickie Celebratorio absolutely
adored
that limited-run cabaret I put together last summer, so he hired me to cast, direct, and choreograph his big holiday bash at the New York Public Library. We’ve been in rehearsal for two weeks now.”
“Celebratorio’s that big party planner, isn’t he?” I asked.
Tucker’s boyfriend, Punch, nodded. “It’s being sold to the press as a fund-raiser for New York’s public libraries, but it’s really a PR event for that big-selling children’s book they just turned into a movie.”
“
Ticket to the North Pole
?” Esther said. “Isn’t that whole thing set in Santa’s workshop or something?”
Tucker nodded.
“So you’ve basically hired a bunch of actors to play Santa’s elves?” Esther pressed.
Tucker sighed. “The money’s excellent, but when you get right down to it, my job’s essentially—”
“Head Elf,” Esther finished with a smirk.
Tucker shrugged. “Like I said, I
should
be in the holiday spirit, but the material’s just so
cheesy
.”
That’s it
, I thought.
I can’t take any more
. “Santa Claus is
not
cheesy!” I cried.
Dead silence ensued.
“You’re all forgetting what this season is really about!”
Everyone stared. I’d just become Linus in
A Charlie Brown Christmas.
“Well?” Esther finally said. “What’s it about, boss?”
I threw up my hands. “Giving! Selfless giving! That’s what we’re celebrating! The Christ child’s birth is a
gift
of
love
to a weary world! All these symbols—the tree, the lights, the carols—it all comes down to
love
!”
No one moved as my words reverberated off the restored tin ceiling and echoed through the newly decorated shop. For a full minute, we actually had a
silent night
.
I shouldn’t have been surprised at the flabbergasted expressions around the room. After all, this was the age of irony, when cynicism was the conventional norm, which was why a blasphemous string of curses would have gone over without a batted eyelash. The
truly
radical act these days was
sincerity
. Consequently, our silent night continued—until a single voice boomed—
“. . . all right, Breanne! I
heard
you!
Don’t
come, then!”
Matt had been striding into the main room from the back pantry area. Suddenly he stopped.
Yes, Matt, the entire tasting party just overheard the unhappy end to your personal call.
His cheeks, no longer ruddy from the frosty outdoors, began reddening again for an entirely different reason. Then his pleading eyes found mine—a search for rescue—and I immediately clapped my hands.
“Hey, everyone!” I shouted with forced cheer. “You know what this Taste of Christmas party needs?”
All eyes now abandoned Matt and turned to me.
“What, Clare?” Tucker asked. “What does it need?”
“Santa Claus!”
THREE
UNFORTUNATELY, Santa was late.
Earlier in the day, I’d invited St. Nick to drop by our Fa-la-la-la Latte tasting, but he hadn’t shown.
“I can’t believe Santa would stiff you,” Esther said. “Not with his daughter coming.”
Santa’s daughter happened to be my ex-barista, Vicki Glockner. And Santa Claus was really Alfred Glockner, our local sidewalk Santa, also known as—
“Alf?” Matt said. “Are you talking about Alf?”
I nodded.
Everyone in the neighborhood knew—and loved—Alfred Glockner. Even
without
his long white beard and Traveling Santa suit, Alf was a huggable guy. On the slightly paunchy side, he wore his graying hair in a retro sixties ponytail and his salt-and-pepper mustache in a slightly walruslike David Crosby-esque style. His ruddy face was close to jack-o’- lantern round, his vivid hazel-green eyes completely lit it up, and for the past month he’d been using the Blend to take a bathroom break or warm his bones.
Because his daughter had once worked as a barista here, I could see why he felt at home in my coffeehouse; and because he was collecting for groups that helped the city’s homeless and hungry, I was more than happy to supply all the free lattes the man could drink.
It was a fair exchange, too. Every time Alf came into the Blend, he’d work our customer line, making even our most jaded regulars laugh, then dig into a pocket to give a little. (And, believe me, getting a coffee addict to laugh
before
he gets his caffeine fix is no mean feat.)
One of my favorites of his shticks was Santa as urban rapper. He’d ho-ho-ho to a prerecorded hip-hop beat, then start old-school break-dancing in his padded costume. His retro moves included the Robot topped by a Michael Jackson moonwalk. Out on Sixth and Seventh avenues, I’d seen him warm up the coldest crowds, getting them to laugh, applaud, and finally dig out that loose change in their pockets and handbags.
“Alf’s a real trip,” Dante said. “Did you hear his joke this morning?”
“Was it another homeless-dude joke?” Esther asked.
“Homeless dude camps out in front of a Manhattan day spa,” Dante recited. “‘Ma’am,’ the guy says to the first woman who comes out, ‘I haven’t had a bite to eat in two days.’ ‘Wow,’ says Spa Lady. ‘I wish I had your willpower.’ ”
Everyone laughed—just like my customers did this morning. It was a dark joke, but it was funny. And according to Alf, whenever he told his homeless-dude jokes to the men in the city shelters, they laughed the hardest of all.
On one of the many days I sat down with Alf on a latte break, he told me the Traveling Santa thing was “a great gig” for him because he was also working the comedy club circuit. Not only did the Santa act pay him a regular salary, it helped him hone his stand-up routine.
Twice a week, he even made time to bring his Santa act to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. “Those places can give a person a bed or a hot meal,” he’d told me, “but what they need even more is laughter—a leavening of the life force, you know?”
He truly did embody the spirit of Christmas.
Matt stepped up and pulled me aside. “I saw your Santa on my way here.”
“Where?” I asked. “Close by?”
Matt nodded. “He was pushing his sleigh down Hudson.”
Unlike the Salvation Army, whose bell ringers staked out permanent locations throughout the city, the Traveling Santas lived up to their name by roving the busy streets. They pushed small wheeled “sleighs” in front of them while cheerfully coaxing pedestrians to throw money into “Santa’s bag.” As Alf himself said, the gig was made for him.
“So he was heading for the Blend?” I assumed.
“He might have been. But it looked to me like he was making a stop at the White Horse.”
“He must have forgotten about my invitation,” I said. “I’m going to get him.”
Matt held my arm. “Let me, Clare. The weather’s bad out there—” Just then Matt’s cell went off. He checked the Caller ID and scowled.
“Breanne?” I guessed.
He nodded. “I’ll just be a minute.”
I shrugged and headed for the back pantry to get my coat.
Take all the time you need
, I thought. The West Village was a small neighborhood. Alf and his cheery ho-ho-hos would be easy to find.
As Matt quickly strode to a corner to continue arguing with Breanne, I zipped up my parka.
Alf will lighten up my griping baristas
, I thought,
put things in perspective
.
As I headed for the door, I saw Tucker opening it, setting off our festive new jingle bells once again.
“You’re not
closed
, are you, Tuck?” boomed an impressive male voice from beyond the threshold.
I stepped closer to see an attractive man standing there. I’d seen him in the Blend a few times before, often chatting with Tucker. His fair hair and complexion were a stark contrast to his pitch-black overcoat and scarf. His boyish “look” was the kind I used to see on my daughter Joy’s teen magazine covers—cute dimples, a golden shag, trendy chin stubble—only this guy was way beyond his teen years. My guesstimate was thirty-five, maybe older.

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