Through the Grinder (16 page)

“Our last night together, she’d taken her panties off at dinner, put my hand under her skirt, which gave the waiter a thrill but not me, frankly. Then she went crazy in the back of the cab home. She was just all over me…I wasn’t that turned on by her, but she was aggressive and I went with the momentum. But the event was more sordid than sexy, frankly.”

“Really?”

“Really. The idea of this stuff may fly in a fantasy porno magazine, but in reality, when you’re not young and drunk and you can’t stop worrying about one of your crews showing up on time for an important job the next day, it’s just…skeevy. The cab driver kept glancing in his mirror and…”

Bruce took a long swig of wine. “I’m just not an exhibitionist, I guess. When she got out of the cab, she was half naked, and didn’t seem to care. So I made sure she got up to her apartment safely—then I left. For good.”

“I see.”

“I like sex. I like hot sex. But I’m a conventional guy, Clare. I actually like the finer things. I like romance. I like elegance. To be blunt, I don’t want to worry about a woman I’m escorting embarrassing me. I’ve got too much on the line with my business, city officials, my work, everything I’ve built. I think at least one former president will agree that we may all be just one intern away from disaster. Anyway, the bottom line is, my work aside, I could never respect a woman that out of control. And if I can’t respect a woman, I can’t love her, can I?”

I swallowed uneasily. He sounded angry now. This really was turning into a wrecked evening. But…I had my answers.

Bruce had a plausible reason to leave the Cappuccino Connection with Sahara McNeil. And I’d always known Inga Berg liked to “shop and drop” men. Now I also knew she could be a reckless woman, one who could have gone out with any number of men who’d snapped and gone violent on her. And, clearly, Bruce was not the SUV guy. Unless he was lying to me, but with the wine and the emotion in his voice, I could tell he wasn’t.

“Thanks for being honest, Bruce. I needed to hear what you had to say.”

“Well, I’m sorry you had to hear it.”

“I’m not.”

He sighed and poured more wine. We’d come to the bottom of the bottle.

“You’re entitled to ask me the same questions,” I told him.

“I don’t need to. I’m with you now, no matter who you saw in your past, and I’m interested in being with you—and making you happy enough to want to be with me…maybe even…eventually…exclusively.”

Whoa. Did I just hear what I thought I heard?

“You haven’t known me very long to say a thing like that,” I said softly.

“Clare, I’m too old and too freaking busy to play games. These days, it doesn’t take me long to know what I want. But…I can see you need time…and I can respect that.”

“I think I know what I want, too, Bruce,” I said softly. “You won’t have to wait long.”

He smiled. “Good.”

I smiled, too. “Are you ready for some cappuccino, maybe?”

“Sure,” he said.

I set up the Pavoni for him on the scratched counter of the old, unfinished kitchen, filling the water reservoir, plugging it into the electric socket, and quickly assembling the portafilter parts. This was an extravagant home machine model—probably worth around four hundred dollars—and it included its own grinder, doser, espresso maker, and steam wand for creating foamed milk.

I hated to tell him I still had the five dollar stovetop machine my grandmother had brought over from Italy with her—and it still made the best espresso in town as far as I was concerned.

“Remember the night I met you at the Blend?” asked Bruce. “I warned you I can drink espressos all day and night, but I can’t for the life of me make them myself.”

“It’s not that hard. Remember, you’re a man who can improvise, right?” I teased.

“Still steamed about that snowball, huh?”

“Now pay attention, Rookie. The requirements for making a good espresso can be summarized by the four M’s.”

“The four M’s. Check. Will this be on the written portion of the exam?”

“
Macinazione
—the correct grinding of coffee blend,
Miscela
—coffee blend,
Macchina
—the espresso machine, and, of course,
Mano
—barista. That’s you.”

“Check.”

I ran through the basics with him, then ground the espresso beans, dosed it into the portafilter, tamped it, clamped it, and asked, “You have whole milk in that fridge?”

“I’ll get it.”

I rinsed out the stainless steel pitcher and half filled it with cold milk. “You should really prepare your milk before you draw your espresso, so your shot doesn’t deteriorate. At the Blend we dump anything that stands over fifteen seconds.”

“Whoa, that’s a tough window.”

“Better to lose a twenty-five cent shot than a regular customer.”

Bruce nodded. “I feel that way in my business, too. I’d say ‘Quality Is Job One’ but somebody in motor city stole my motto.”

“Fancy that.” I laughed. “I only wish I could clone your attitude for a few members of my part-time staff. Sometimes they can be hard to motivate.”

“Tell me about it. Hey, I meant to tell you, I tried that trick you told me about on my downtown crew yesterday, and it worked like a charm.”

“Late workers come on time when you tell them to be there a half hour earlier than you need them. I use that on Esther all the time.”

He laughed. “Okay, so how about some more tips for me—I’m very receptive.
Very
receptive.”

The tone was suggestive, but I stayed cool. “Let’s do the milk,” I said, redirecting my attention. “When you’re just steaming milk—for a latte, for example—then you want to place the wand’s nozzle close to the bottom of the pitcher.”

“I see.”

Bruce’s eyes were on me so intensely, I felt a little flustered all of a sudden. “For a cappuccino, however, you want to do more than steam. You want to create an angelic cloud of froth, which means you need to add air, so you want to place the tip of the nozzle just beneath the surface of the milk and gradually lower the steaming pitcher as the foam grows.”

“Go ahead and show me,” said Bruce.

I did, filling the pitcher halfway with whole milk, clearing the steam valve, then placing the nozzle inside the container.

“Rookie baristas think it looks cool to move the container all over the place,” I explained. “Up and down and round and round—but that’s not the way to do it.”

Bruce stepped up behind me. “Wait. I want to get this straight. Let’s go over it again.”

“Which part?” I swallowed, trying not to let the heat of his body affect me, which was about as easy as trying to keep an ice cube from melting on the surface of the sun.

He placed his hands on the hips of my little plaid skirt, gently but insistently pulling me against him. “Up and down? And round and round?
Not
the way to do it, you say?”

Slowly, he moved my hips with his.

“Uh, not when it comes to foaming milk. No. You just want to lower the pitcher slowly as the foam builds. That’s why you only fill the pitcher halfway—to leave room for the foam to grow.”

“Room for growth?” he said, his hands still moving my hips with his. “And round and round and up and down?”

“No,” I said softly, “you don’t want to do that. It gives you an inferior product. Overly aerated foam with big short-lived bubbles and lousy texture.”

“I’m hearing you. What else do I need to know?” I felt his mouth on my hair, gently inhaling, then kissing and caressing my neck.

“Ah, let’s see…” Still trying to stay in control, and barely managing, I licked my lips and cleared my throat. “The milk shouldn’t spurt or sputter, either, but should sort of roll under the tip of the wand. A gentle sucking sound is what you should hear—”

“Say that again.”

“What?”

“What you just said.”

“A gentle sucking sound?”

I felt his mouth, warm against my ear. “Again.”

“Bruce…”

“Say it.”

I inhaled sharply when I felt his lips touch my earlobe.

“Gentle sucking sound,” I whispered.

He turned me in his arms. The kiss wasn’t gentle, it was full of heat and hunger and I wasn’t stopping him.

When we came up for air, he reached behind me and hit a button on the machine. The little
ON
light faded out.

“Change your mind about that cappuccino?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I’m stimulated enough.”

I smiled as he covered my mouth with his again, and the world went away.

This time when we finished, he took my hand and pulled me gently back into the parlor and onto the soft futon in front of the fireplace. He kissed me deeply, then stretched out beside me.

“Are you okay with this?” he asked.

His eyes were kind and warm and waiting for my answer. “Better than okay,” I said, touching his cheek.

And then, for a long time, there were no more words.

T
WENTY
years ago.

The Mediterranean sun was a lemon in the sky. Brightness full of promise yet painful, too, like a squirt of citrus to the eye.

A young man played with a dog on the sand. He wore fraying combat fatigues cut into shorts and nothing else, the woven hemp choker appearing white as spun sugar against his deeply tanned chest.

The young woman was not a native of this Italian village. She was just visiting, staying with her father’s relatives so she could study art history for the summer. One week before, she’d been ogling the works of Michaelangelo in Rome, and she looked at this romping man the same way—like a sculpted statue come to life.

She admired how his chiseled calf and thigh muscles contracted and relaxed as he ran along the sand. How his flexing bicep flung a Frisbee into the surf over and over again for a happy, excited dog to fetch. She found it mesmerizing, and, at the time, had no way of knowing this was simply a “rest day” for the young man—a brief break from his typically more strenuous pursuits of bicycle racing, wind surfing, rock climbing, and cliff diving.

She didn’t know his name, had never been introduced to him or his family, and, despite her admiration of him, or maybe because of it, she kept walking.

It was the big black mixed Lab that for some reason came right for her. Probably the heavily perfumed shampoo she’d bought in the village, which gave off a strong lavender scent, most likely the same scent as someone the dog knew and loved. As if they were old friends, he bounded right up, jumping high, his big paws landed and she was slammed down into the sand.

“Mama mia! Scusi, signorina.”

Long, damp black hair, loosed from its ponytail, hung into his face. It was a pleasant face. Open and joyful. It was the kind of face that took pleasure in everything it could. And the brown eyes were curious and kind.

“It’s okay,” she said, surprise reverting her to English. “I’m not hurt.”

“You’re American! You’re from home!”

The pair chatted amiably. He told her he’d been backpacking across Europe and was passing through, visiting extended family and friends all over the Continent. He invited her to dine at his cousins’ house that evening. But she declined his invitation and kept walking.

The young man would tell her, much later, after they were married, that he’d kept his eyes glued to her ass the entire time she’d walked away. Her chestnut hair had reached all the way down her back then, and he’d been mesmerized, first by her green eyes, then by the way she’d looked leaving him, her long, dark wavy hair swinging just above what he’d call her “sweet-looking blue-jeaned booty.”

A few days later, she found him reading at a café. When she asked about the cast on his forearm, he explained that he’d broken his wrist spinning out on a motorcycle. He wasn’t sexually aggressive in the least with her, just warm and genuine. And when he politely asked if he could accompany her on her next long trip to Rome, she found herself agreeing.

Maybe it was the cast and the helpless way he asked. He seemed almost touchingly pathetic—at total a loss for what to do with himself next. And she couldn’t get over the fact that he’d been visiting Italy on and off for over a decade of summers and had never bothered to visit the Vatican museums. So she became his guide.

She’d already resolved not to sleep with him, to fend off any aggressive advances, but he wasn’t the kind of young man who came at a girl head on. He was more like a cup of espresso, warm and inviting, yet still very potent. He knew how to relax and excite at the same time. And when her guard was finally down, he played her with his light fingertips and laughing mouth and she melted like morning chocolate, right into his hands.

In the end, she would often become melancholy thinking about the way they’d met—the prophetic nature of it. How the sun had been so bright with promise it proved painful, making her smile and squint at the same time, ultimately limiting her vision.

How he’d wanted her most when she was walking away.

I
opened my eyes.

How odd,
I thought,
to dream of Matteo
. To recall so vividly my first time making love with him—which had also been my first time, period. The dream didn’t disturb me. For some reason, I found it strangely comforting.

On the futon, Bruce’s arms were still around me, his body warm, but I was cold. It was hours later, and the flames in Bruce’s hearth were dying. He was sleeping deeply beside me, and I knew it was now or never.

Easing away from him, I reached for his black fisherman’s sweater and slipped it over my head. The garment was huge on me, reaching almost to my knees, the sleeves extending far past my hands. I shoved the sleeves up and rose on bare feet, tiptoeing toward the staircase.

Okay, so sleeping with Bruce may not have been the smartest thing I’d ever done, but it was the most satisfying thing I’d done in years. Like the snow on my walk earlier in the evening, I knew I wanted to enjoy this moment while I could…because I had no idea if any of what had happened between us tonight would actually last.

I wanted it, too, of course, but I couldn’t control it any more than the early snow…and, in the end, I had to accept that it was all right.

Twenty years ago, when I’d first met Matteo, I’d needed things to last. Security was paramount, and I was desperate for permanence. Maybe it was because of my crazy, unpredictable, lawless father, or maybe it doesn’t matter who your father is. Maybe every young person feels insecure to some degree because nothing is decided yet, and the future is such a long, untraveled road.

I felt less frightened of the future now than those years when I was Joy’s age, more resigned to the notion that the one thing to be counted on was that nothing could. The only unchanging idea was that everything changes, everything is fluid, and nothing can be possessed.

Over time, the various occupants of this very house had flowed in and out, changing from rich to poor then rich again, and they would continue to change and flow through for decades to come.

Certainly nothing living and breathing could be possessed, either. Not friends, not spouses, not aging parents, not even children.

Sometimes I would look into my little girl’s green eyes and see that wary child, clinging so tightly to my hand in front of her elementary school. Then instantly she’d be grown again, transformed like a magician’s dove. And, laughing with relish, she’d fly away from me, a beautiful young thing with her brand new life.

Maybe it would be good for me to finally let go of the notion of permanence…or at least loosen my grip. Maybe in the end all I really needed to do was let go of holding on so tightly.

It certainly felt good earlier to let go of my inhibitions, to trust myself with someone new. I wondered what Matt would think if he could see his ex-wife now, with another man’s sweater over her naked form, sneaking up to his bedroom to snoop for evidence that he was not in fact a serial murderer.

Yeah. Sure.

I certainly didn’t believe it. Not for a minute. Not for a second.

No man who made love like that, so tenderly, so considerately…No man who opened himself so completely could be as cold blooded a killer as Quinn claimed. I just had to find the evidence to make that clear to my detective friend. Starting with that printer.

I crept up the old unfinished staircase, the wooden steps rough against my bare feet. An icy draft flowed down the long hallway from the front door, sweeping up the stairs and up through the bottom edge of Bruce’s heavy cableknit, chilling my thighs, and making me shiver as I hit the fifth step. On the sixth came a noisy creak.

I froze and listened intensely, but the house remained completely still. With a quiet exhale, I resumed my climb.

At the top of the stairs, the darkness was thick. I felt my way along the wall and stepped through the master bedroom’s doorway. The large room was in shadow, front windows giving enough light from the street to make my way around the great four-poster bed, which sat on one end of the room like a hulking giant. I reached for the small, bedside lamp and turned it on.

The antique roll-top sat by the window. I began to push back its cover. When it stuck midway, I cursed and pushed harder, but the damn thing was more intractable than my ex-husband.

Bending over and peering under, I could make out Bruce’s sleek little laptop computer. It sat open, the screen black. I could see the edge of what looked like a small printer, sitting at the back of the desk’s large surface.

For a few more minutes, I struggled with the cover. Finally, I smacked and shoved, and suddenly, with a loud rattle, the cover gave, rolling all the way up with a bang.

I closed my eyes, held my breath, and listened.

The desk had made a terrible racket, and I stood in dread, my mind racing to concoct some story. I was certain Bruce was already up, about to furiously bound up the stairs and demand I explain why I was snooping around his bedroom in the wee hours.

For a solid minute, I stood, hearing no sign of movement downstairs, so I swallowed, and resolutely turned back to the desk to quickly examine the printer at the back.

“Hewlett Packard DeskJet,” I whispered. “Model 840C.”

It was the same brand, the same model as the printer Quinn was trying to link to Inga Berg’s murder. I closed my eyes.
Dammit.
Quinn would take this to the bank. But I knew it was just a coincidence. It had to be.

I wrestled for a moment with telling Bruce everything, suggesting he get rid of the printer. But I knew I couldn’t. Not yet.

A part of me, a very thin slice of my being, couldn’t help asking the question: Was there a chance Bruce Bowman could be a murderer? Was there a chance?

I knew I needed more to go on—one or more threads to follow, something more to pursue myself or give to Quinn.

On a little prayer, I smacked the laptop’s spacebar. The screen jumped to life.
Bingo.
It had been in sleep mode. I searched the computer’s desktop for anything that might look like a lead.

It appeared he was hooked into a DSL line for the Internet, and he’d set his password to automatic. I quickly logged on and checked the “New Mail” box. It was empty. He must have been answering e-mails just before I arrived. The box was completely cleaned out.

I flipped over to the “Old Mail” box, looking for correspondence from any of the victims. I was fishing blindly, not sure what, if anything, I’d find, but praying I’d know it when I saw it.

The “Old Mail” box screen was set up to scroll mail from oldest to newest. The first date was thirty days ago, and I assumed this box, like my own, expired mail at that time, dumping it into a back-up folder. I didn’t have time to search for that folder, so I just began to scroll down.

There were a number of e-mails from people in his company—the URL address was tagged with “@Bowman-Restoration.com.” I ignored those. There were also dozens of e-mails from someone named “Vintage86.”

Bruce had grown up in California wine country, so it didn’t seem out of the ordinary to have a correspondence with a person who also liked wine.

At random, I opened one, my eyes scanning the long, rambling text.

“Nobody thought you were very smart. They used to say I was slumming. I was. You were just a sex toy. Nothing of any consequence….”

The words were ugly. Harsh. And they went on and on.

I shuddered. If this were his ex-wife, Maxine, then I could see why Bruce considered this new life, this new house, an escape.

I hated myself for doing this, but I clicked on the “Sent” box to see how he was answering. This was a terrible invasion of privacy. I knew that. But I had to know. Was he just as cruel? Was this a sick back-and-forth, a pattern he was maintaining? Was he really the man Quinn painted him to be—someone who could snap, give into rage and hate, someone who had the ability to kill, maybe at the moment one of these women started belittling him like his ex-wife?

The “Sent” box was set up like the “Old Mail” box. There were thirty days worth of correspondence here. Not one was addressed to “Vintage86.”

The realization stunned me. Not even I could have read those attacks and not fired off a few choice words. But Bruce hadn’t written one e-mail to Vintage86, at least not in the last thirty days. It appeared he was reading her e-mails, reading all that ugliness, all that terrible stuff, but giving none of it back.

Maybe he’d written some in the past and had simply gotten to the point where he chose to ignore her—just let her blow off steam. Either way, though, it was clear he was a man who could in fact hold his temper, even in the face of verbal abuse, not to mention in the face of my interrogation of him tonight. He’d been annoyed with me at times, even a little angry with my prying questions, but he’d always been reasonable, never lashed out, never lost his temper or turned on me, and he certainly never raised a hand.

I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

He’s innocent.
I knew it then for sure, knew it with every fiber of my being.

Quickly, I went back to the “Old Mail” and continued scrolling. In the days just prior to her death, I saw a few from “IngaBabe34_24_32,” the numbers sounding like her measurements, which was in character for Inga.

The last one read, “Where’ve you been? Are you traveling? I’ve been calling. Let’s get together and…”

The e-mail degenerated into a profane description of sex acts.

I flipped over to the “Sent Mail” and found Bruce’s answer.

“…and I’m sorry. You’re a beautiful woman, but I’m not the man for you. And you’re definitely not the woman for me. Good-bye and good luck. B.”

I shuddered, seeing that
B,
remembering that’s how Quinn said the note to Inga was signed. But Bruce wouldn’t have kissed her off like this in the e-mails if he’d intended to meet her again. It had to have been some other man she’d been involved with.