Murder by Mocha (2 page)

As many of you know, I write in collaboration with my very talented spouse, Marc—a better partner a girl couldn’t ask for. He and I both owe a debt of gratitude to our publisher, Berkley Prime Crime, as well as its dedicated staff, especially our amazingly talented editor, Wendy McCurdy; her hardworking assistant, Katherine Pelz; our excellent managing editor and production editor, Jennifer Eck and Patricia Callahan; and our fine copyeditor, Jude Grant.

With the utmost respect, we tip our hats to the NYPD in general and the Sixth Precinct in particular for kindly answering our questions. As to the p’s and q’s of police procedure, this is a light work of amateur sleuth fiction. In the Coffeehouse Mysteries, the rules occasionally get bent.

Finally, we send a very special thank-you to our literary agent, John Talbot, for his astonishing good nature and unflagging professionalism. Mocha kisses always to family and friends, including the hardest-working mom in the West, Dr. Grace Alfonsi, MD, whom we thank this time out for consultation on matters medical- and zombie-related. If there are errors in this book, they are entirely our own.

When coffee dreams, it dreams of chocolate.

—Starbucks saying

PROLOGUE

There is a great deal of wickedness in village life.

—MISS JANE MARPLE,
THE THIRTEEN PROBLEMS

BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

Five years ago . . .

F
ROM
head to toe, the woman wore black.
Black for mourning,
she thought.
Black for death.

All day she waited, checking her watch, preparing the props, counting down minutes till uncertain light. When the sun sank low and the sky’s blues deepened, she made her way to the railroad bridge.

With a quick unzipping, she exposed the belly of the large Pullman, specially outfitted for this evening’s performance. She removed the old pair of white satin pumps, set them beside the four-foot rail.

In the warm purple twilight, yellow bulbs flickered on. “Spots for my stage,” she whispered. “Kliegs for this Kabuki.” Far below the river flowed, dark and distant as a starless night.

“My Rubicon . . .”

A popular eatery sat on the river’s bank, a scenic patch near the country club stables of Bay Creek Village. She saw those diners, young and old, raising glasses, speaking civilly, adhering to dress codes.

Look at them, pretending to be decent, loyal, kind
. . .
Liars! Cheaters! Monsters! Hypocrites, every one . . .

Seven years before, her mother’s trial had been passing entertainment for all of them, a morsel of scandal to be relished with appetizers, forgotten completely by the second course.

“Hey! Down there! You wanted a look at me? Look at me now!”

Fading back into the shadows, she watched the round white faces moon her way. Seconds later, a brand-new shout echoed along the water, shattering the serenity of the eight o’clock seating. Customers leaped to their feet, knocked over cocktails, stained outfits with wine.

She knew what they were seeing, as they gawked upriver—a woman plummeting off the bridge. Down the body sailed, through violet sky, wedding gown ballooning like a favorite yacht spinnaker. The figure splashed and quickly sank, as if eager to reach the underworld.

“My world now,” whispered the woman in black. “Now I am Persephone, queen of shadows . . .”

With a hollow thud, her purse dropped—well beyond any pool of illumination. Inside that bag was an epic tale, scrawled in perfect longhand on neatly folded sheets. Here were the answers to the inevitable question, “Why did she do it?” along with enough IDs to satisfy every last dull, distracted authority on Long Island.

Hurrying toward a thicket of evergreens, she found a new path. At last, her plan was under way, blossoming like Aphrodite’s red anemone beneath the dying Adonis.

Sixty yards away, every diner would tell the police they had witnessed a suicide . . .

Well,
she thought
, this is one drowned corpse who’s about to be reincarnated. And, in this new life, no one will be judging me or my mother. The turn will be mine to act as judge, jury, and executioner.

ONE

Once you wake up and smell the coffee, it’s hard to go back to sleep.

—FRAN DRESCHER

“W
HAT’S your pleasure?” I asked, holding open the “WHAT’S your pleasure?” I asked, holding open the Blend’s beveled-glass door.

Against the pink champagne of the dawning sky, Mike Quinn’s grim face gave up a small smile—not that anyone else could tell. Like New York’s police commissioner, whose official photo had every cop in the city calling him Popeye, Quinn’s smile was more of a wince.

“Got something hot for me, Cosi?”

“Maybe,” I said, stifling a yawn. “But you have to come in to get it . . .”

As the corner streetlight flickered off, Mike’s broad-shouldered form moved smoothly by, snagging my hand as he went. He’d been a street officer for years before making detective, and he brought that cop authority wherever he went, a quiet, commanding coolness that attracted me from the first moment he’d set foot in my coffeehouse.

While the heavy door swung shut, Mike backed me into the shadows of my empty shop. Flattened against an exposed brick wall, I looked up at him.

“I can’t pour from this position.”

“You can kiss from this position.”

“True,” I said, then my arms curled around his neck, and I finally gave the man a proper greeting.

Such was the oh-so-sweet beginning to my morning.

It wouldn’t last.

Before the day ended, I would have two dead bodies on my hands—one a likely murder, the other something else entirely. Soon after, I’d have two female NYPD detectives on my case, a half-naked fitness queen ready to kill me, and a member of my staff dizzy enough with unrequited love to commit a felony.

None of the above was on my mind at the moment, just Mike Quinn’s sturdy body pressing against mine and the kind of soft morning light that gave everything the illusion of beauty.

When Mike’s head finally pulled away, I noticed the gray paleness of his complexion. His jaw felt wrong, too, like sandpaper. And thin strokes of crimson slashed the whites of his midnight blues. The details of his expression implied more than physical exhaustion. He looked mentally worn down.

“So,” I said, keeping my tone light, “what kept you up all night?”

Mike’s jaw tightened. He glanced away.

“Okay,” I said, “come on . . .” Now I was the one tugging his hand, pulling him along. At the espresso bar, I moved behind the counter, scraped my Italian-roast brown hair into a kitchen-ready ponytail, and began turning ordinary cow juice into liquid velvet.

Mike peeled off his rumpled sport coat and took over his favorite stool. Then he trained his gaze on me so he could drink in the ritual.

It occurred to me then, as I fixed his steamer, that most of our days are spent in ritual and routine, at least until some dramatic event jerks us off our hamster wheels, puts us on brand new ones. Nineteen, for example, brought the end of my childhood—with the beginning of my daughter’s.

Joy’s conception was far from planned. After marrying her father, I developed close bonds with his mother and began working in their family coffee business. Ten years later, my marriage ended, and (much to the dismay of my mother-in-law) I ended my job, too.

Taking custody of my girl, I retrenched to west Jersey, land of safer schools and saner streets. Then Joy grew up.

My daughter’s coming-of-age came with her enrollment in culinary school along with a move to an apartment in the city I’d abandoned. At last, she was on her own, and so was I. At thirty-nine, I entered what felt like a second stage of adulthood; and even though I resisted making a change, I needed it.

My freelance food writing kept me far too isolated. Not that I’d been living like a nun—well,
almost
. I’d dated since my marriage ended, but every encounter had left me cold.

My subpar love life aside, Joy and her bubbly friends were no longer around. Without them, my quiet suburban ranch became intolerable. I wasn’t simply alone anymore; I was lonely.

Returning to New York’s Greenwich Village had its challenges (now there’s an understatement), but I’d never been happier. I’d always loved managing this landmark coffeehouse for my mother-in-law, and if I hadn’t taken a leap of faith and admitted to her that I wanted my old job back, I never would’ve met the man sitting across from me now . . .

After texturing the whole milk, I coated the bottom of a glass mug with our newest bar syrup, poured in the thick white milk-paint, stirred everything to blend the shades, and slid my drinkable masterpiece across the counter.

Mike’s brow furrowed. “Where are my shots of espresso?”

“You don’t need caffeine. You need sleep. I made you a chocolate steamer.”

He peered into the mug. “What’s a—?”

“Steamed milk with a special syrup. In this case, tempered bittersweet, turbinado sugar, a kiss of sea salt, vanilla, pure almond extract, and
canela
—”

“Canela?”

“Mexican cinnamon. Still spicy but with less bite.” I angled my head at the chalkboard. “It’s the same syrup we use for our new Mexican Choco-Latte.”

Mike sipped, and his eyes widened, the shadows lightening a fraction. “Really, really amazing,” he said, drawing out the words so suggestively I could have sworn he said,
Really, really orgasmic
.

I smiled. To me, great chocolate was like a perfect espresso—the quickest path between the abyss my customers were stranded in and a sensory experience of transcendent pleasure.

“We just started using a new chocolate supplier,” I explained. “Voss, in Brooklyn. They’re one of the few artisan bean-to-bar chocolatiers in the area . . .”

Bean to bar was the hottest trend in the confectionary industry, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized how much it had in common with my own seed-to-cup specialty coffee business—from partnering with farms in developing countries to small-batch production and passionate service.

“They even import and roast their own beans like we do.”

“Sweetheart, it’s heaven in a mug,” Mike said. “But I still need the espresso hit. I have a one o’clock meeting with the first deputy commissioner, and I can barely keep my eyes open.”

“Then don’t. Crash upstairs. I’ll caffeinate you in time for your meeting.” (The irony of drugging up an antidrug cop didn’t escape me, but I could see Mike wasn’t up for that particular joke.)

“I can crash upstairs?” he said. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“You have to ask? Drink this up and I’ll tuck you in.”

“Tucking me in. I like the sound of that.”

“Good,” I said, moving to check the front-door lock. “As long as you understand:
tucking
is not a euphemism for something else.”

“It’s only one letter.”

“You need your rest. You look like hell.”

“I feel like hell . . .”

“Then follow me . . .”

I
led Mike up the service staircase to my duplex above the Village Blend. (I say “my” because I lived there, not because I owned it.) The apartment was an exquisite little perk that my former mother-in-law handed me with my new employment contract.

Madame Blanche Dreyfus Allegro Dubois had lived here herself for decades when she ran the Blend. Over the years, she’d packed the apartment with imported furniture, lovingly preserved antiques, and an array of paintings and sketches from Village artists (patrons of her shop for nearly a century), which is why she considered me a curator as much as a tenant.

While Mike followed me into the master bedroom, I started some quiet tucking-in-time calculations. The bakery delivery had been made, so I had forty, maybe fifty, minutes to get the truth out of this man before I had to open the shop.

“You want a snack before you crash?” I asked. “I made a batch of my Chocolate-Glazed Hazelnut Bars yesterday. You love those.”

“When I wake up,” Mike said, letting out a long sigh. “I’ll have four.”

I stepped close, tugged the knot of his tie. “So . . . are you going to tell me?”

“What?”

“What went wrong last night. It’s obviously weighing on you.”

As head of the NYPD’s OD Squad (a nickname for a much longer, official sounding moniker), Mike supervised a small group of detectives tasked with the job of investigating criminal activity behind drug overdoses.

Like the NYPD’s Bomb Squad, Mike’s team was based at the Sixth Precinct, just up the street, but they had jurisdiction across all five boroughs, which meant Mike’s workload was heavy, his hours unpredictable, and the mental strain of the political pressure periodically appalling.

For those reasons—and a few others—the man strapped on mental armor daily, along with his service weapon. In the quiet of the bedroom, however, I expected him to loosen that armor, along with his tongue.

“Well?” I pressed.

“You really want to know?”

“You really have to ask?”

Mike didn’t answer, just watched me pull his tie free and begin unbuttoning his dress shirt. He stopped my hands, peeled off his shoulder holster, and took his time hanging it off the back of Madame’s Duncan Phyfe chair.