Through the Grinder (17 page)

I flipped, one more time, back to the “Old Mail,” scrolling all the way to the end of the long stack of e-mails. My eyes caught on one labeled [email protected]. The date and time indicated it had come in the evening before.

“Okay…last one…”

I opened the mail, my eyes scanning. Sally “Sahara” McNeil had provided the names addresses and phone numbers of two men she called “my old flames and your old buds…”

These had to be the old friends from college that Bruce had wanted to get back in touch with. Sally came through for him. More text below these addresses talked about how she had enjoyed seeing him again and how she’d love him to come to a gallery show the following week. She also provided a hyperlink at the bottom of the e-mail, which she said would give him more info on Death Row.

“Death Row?” I whispered, shuddering. “What the heck is Death Row?”

“Clare?”

I heard the voice. Faint and distant.
Damn.
Bruce had woken up.

It would take him at least sixty seconds to get up here. I held my breath and clicked on the hyperlink. The DSL was fast and quickly connected me to a web site for an art gallery.

In the blink of an eye, I skimmed the home page. There were a number of links listed. They looked to be artist’s names, and the tagline on the site read, “Journey into Violent Art and the Art of Violence.”

It seemed Sally McNeil’s gallery was dedicated to “art inspired by lust, morbidity, and obsession.”

When I heard the creak of the sixth step, I began quickly closing all the active windows on the laptop.

“Clare?”

The voice was louder now, slightly tense.

“Bruce?” I called as innocently as I could manage. “I’m up here. In your bedroom.”

I took hold of the open roll-top’s cover.
Please god don’t stick.

It didn’t. The cover smoothly and silently rolled down, giving me about five seconds to get to Bruce’s bureau before he appeared in the bedroom’s doorway.

When I looked up from an open drawer, he was standing there barefoot. He’d pulled his jeans back on, zipped them, but hadn’t bothered buttoning them. In the soft bedroom light, the brown mat of hair on his naked chest appeared a shade darker than the coarse stubble now shadowing his jawline.

“I was cold…so I came up here…thought I could find some extra blankets or something to sleep in…”

Bruce smiled. “I like you in
that
.”

I pinched a bit of the black cableknit. “This old thing? Oh, I just picked it up somewhere.”

He yawned. “It’s
way
too early in the morning for bad jokes.”

“Agreed.” I headed toward the doorway, still nervous. Still certain he’d heard the roll-top going down, would suspect what I’d been up to and hate me for it.

“Wait right there,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I was kidding. I have something for you to wear.”

He moved to the bureau, opened a drawer, and pulled out a pair of flannel pajamas. “You take the top, I’ll take the bottom.”

“Thanks.”

“And I have something else to keep you warm…”

I thought for sure he was setting me up for another seduction, but instead, he reached for one of two Saks shopping bags leaning beside the bureau.

He reached in and pulled out a classic, floor-length shearling with exposed seams, turn-back cuffs, and a hood. “It’s for you, Clare. Try it on.”

“Bruce? What did you do?” The coat was easily over a thousand dollars.

He shrugged. “You and Joy were going at each other just because of a stupid-looking parka. I thought it was silly. So I bought you both early Christmas gifts. You can give Joy’s to her next time you see her.”

“Bruce, it’s too much—”

“No, it isn’t.” He cut me off. “It’s a gift, Clare. Don’t turn it down. I didn’t turn down the dinner you made for me, did I? So don’t tell me you can’t accept this.”

“It’s too generous.”

“It’s just a coat. You’ll make me happy if you wear it.” He held it up, waiting for me to slip my arms in its sleeves. “Come on, try it on.”

I did, slipping my arms into the fleece-lined garment and wrapping the buttersoft leather around me. For fun, I even flipped up the hood. “It’s really warm. And it’s really beautiful. To tell you the truth, I’ve been admiring the shearling on one of our customers, and I’ve always wanted one, just could never afford it. Is Joy’s like this one?”

“Exactly.”

I laughed. “She’ll love the coat, but hate having one just like her mother’s. We haven’t had mother-daughter matching clothes since she was four.”

“Well, you can always exchange it for another style—or she can. I just figured one of you might like this version enough to keep it.”

“Thank you,” I said, then turned and kissed him. He smiled, held the kiss longer than expected. My hood slipped off as he pulled me closer, just as I was pulling away.

“You know I have to get up in less than four hours to open the Blend,” I warned him.

He nodded, went to the four-poster, and pulled down the bedcovers. “Okay…I’ll set the alarm, and then drive you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’m driving you, Cosi, so drop it. Now let’s go to bed while we can.”

I
T
was twenty-five minutes to six in the
A.M
. when I unlocked the front door to the duplex above the Village Blend. That meant I had twenty-five minutes to wash, change clothes, and be back downstairs to unlock the door for our morning pastry delivery.

I didn’t even want to think about the snow removal on the sidewalk—although I knew I’d have to think about it soon, or else risk a very hefty fine from the Sanitation Department. The city gave property owners four hours to clear their sidewalks after the snow stopped falling. I figured we were just about due for the massive ticket.

Matteo wasn’t scheduled to fly out again for another week, and I made a quiet entrance, trying not to wake him. It wasn’t that I was worried about his beauty sleep. In fact, I’d probably be pounding on his door in fifteen minutes, telling him to start shoveling the walk. I just didn’t want him to see me coming through the front door, at this hour, dressed like this.

Too late.

“Well, well,” said Matt in an injured tone. “So you finally made it home.”

“Good morning,” I said, meeting his gaze. He stood there in tight, scuffed jeans and a crinkled gray turtleneck.

I took off the beautiful shearling coat and hung it in the closet. Put down the Saks shopping bag with Joy’s and faced Matteo to find him staring at my outfit, his disapproving eyes moving from the low cleavage of my tight, pearl-buttoned sweater to the short hemline on my red plaid skirt.

“I know you were wearing Joy’s yellow parka when you left here—and I won’t even ask where the hell it is now—but you haven’t actually been borrowing the girl’s
clothes,
have you?”

“Certainly not,” I replied. “I’d never let my barely adult daughter go out in public wearing an outfit like this one.”

For a change, Matteo was speechless.

“Coffee?” I asked. “You’re up so early you probably need it.”

I headed for the kitchen and my drip coffee maker, Matt on my heels.

“Someone had to get up early,” he said. “In case you didn’t make it home. Someone would have to open the coffeehouse.”

“Please,” I said with a wave. “In all the time I managed this place for your mother—during our marriage and since I’ve returned—I’ve never once missed the opening. You, on the other hand—”

Matt put up his hand to stop me.

“Let’s not go there. It’s the here and now we’re talking about.”

Matteo sat down at the table while I scooped beans into the grinder.

“Anyway,” he said, “I wonder how much longer you’ll be able to keep that sterling employment record going? Especially with millionaire Bruce Bowman—a.k.a.
Mr. Right
—in hot pursuit. Or is the pursuit technically over now?” Matteo glanced at his watch and raised an eyebrow. “Gauging the hour—and your choice of attire—I’d say Bruce got pretty much what he was after. How about you, Clare? Happy?”

Matteo had learned the many ways to bait me early in our marriage. For the first few years, I refused to sink to his level, but soon we were fighting fairly regularly. It was possible my hostility gave him some kind of sick justification to seek comfort elsewhere—not that he’d ever really needed an excuse.

In the years since the divorce had become final, however, I’d had little to no patience with Matteo’s games.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am happy,” I tossed over my shoulder. “Bruce made me very happy. And correct me if I’m wrong, wasn’t it you who always said I was too uptight and should lighten up? You’re just mad because I didn’t lighten up while I was married to you.”

“That’s a load of—”

I pushed the button on the electric grinder, drowning out his reply. Grinding beans too long would create a bitter brew, but frankly I preferred having the bitterness on my tongue than in my ear.

When the beans were pulverized I turned off the grinder and dumped them into the drip machine’s cone filter to the sound of silence. I got the whole thing brewing, then grabbed two large mugs and set one in front of Matteo.

The nutty smell of freshly brewed Breakfast Blend gradually filled the kitchen. I yawned, leaned against the granite sink, and let the earthy aroma revive me.

It slowly dawned on me that through some bizarre circumstance of karmic justice, Matteo and I were both reliving an all too common scene from our past—only in reverse.

Back when we were married, Matt had been the one who invariably partied the night away, usually with some vivacious little bubblehead, as a result of a networking party, while I played the part of the responsible, long-suffering, faithful, injured spouse. I didn’t like my role, but what Matt saw as my “uptight” morals allowed for no other choice of lifestyles. Just because Matteo strayed at the drop of a thong, didn’t mean I would.

If I remembered correctly, it was Matteo who usually made coffee on those bleak mornings, still dressed in the clothes he went out wearing the night before—pumped full of adrenaline, or testosterone, or cocaine, or all three. He’d make coffee while I sat at the table or gazed out the window, sulking, and contemplating the end.

Now if I were a cruel person, I would take pleasure in this remarkable turning of the tide—and maybe I was a cruel person because a part of me knew Matt wanted me back, and I was honestly enjoying this moment. On the other hand, maybe I wasn’t cruel. Maybe I was just human.

When the pot gurgled its last, I carried the hot carafe to the table.

Matt spoke again. “Your friend Detective Quinn stopped by last night, around closing time.”

I froze in mid-pour, dribbling three dark drops. Matteo swept his hand across the table, wiping them away.

“Quinn put a tail on Bruce,” he continued. “From the report he received late last night, it appeared a woman with a bright yellow parka entered Bowman’s house. He thought it was Joy who had gone in. He came here, alarmed, looking for you. He found me instead, and I explained you’d borrowed Joy’s yellow parka. What his plain clothes officer saw was
you
going in. That’s when Quinn told me—”

I finished pouring and sat down at the table across from the father of my child. “I know what he told you. He told you Bruce Bowman is a suspect in a murder.”

“
The
suspect, in
three
murders.”

“Quinn exaggerates,” I said evenly. I tasted my coffee and found it bitter. I added an extra dash of cream—and, uncharacteristically, a heaping teaspoon of sugar.

“So maybe Bruce only killed one woman instead of two or more,” said Matt. “Yeah, I could see how Detective Quinn was exaggerating just a tad. Nothing to worry about.”

I shook my head, disturbed. “Matt, listen to me. Bruce is not a murderer. Quinn’s wrong. Misguided, over-wrought, and…wrong. And if he’s telling you about it, then he’s obviously trying to convince you to persuade me to stop seeing Bruce. But I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to do something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like prove Quinn wrong.”

“Whoa, Clare—”

“Don’t ‘whoa Clare’ me,” I said a little too loudly. “You want to know what I think? I think both you and Quinn are jealous. You with your public parade of serial flirtations, and Quinn with his messed-up marriage and all the baggage that comes with it. Frankly I’m sick of the both of you.”

“Aren’t we being a little harsh?”

I gritted my teeth and glared at Matt. “I meet a man. A nice man. More than a nice man. A remarkable, talented, tender, and hard-working one. Someone sane, reasonable, adult, self-aware, and brutally honest about the mistakes of his past, and you and Quinn conspire together to ruin things for me.”

“Clare, you’re starting to sound paranoid. I can’t speak for Quinn, but I’m not out to frame your boyfriend, or hurt you, believe me.”

“Not out to hurt me? That’s rich. Just what did you think you were doing all those times you had a fling with some barmaid, stewardess, or mutual friend’s wife?”

For a long minute, he had no reply.

“I didn’t do it to hurt you, Clare,” he finally said softly. “You know that.”

Sadly, I did. It had taken me years to come to terms with the idea that Matteo and I had very different attitudes toward sex. For him, physical love was just another exhilarating activity—like mountain climbing, surfing, getting falling-down drunk, or bungee jumping. Sex was no big anxiety-producing ordeal—and there certainly didn’t have to be any complicated meaning behind it. What meaning was there in a drunken binge or a bungee jump?

But for me there had to be more than the excitement of the chase, or the thrill of the seduction. Much more. I had to respect the man, and like him a lot, if not love him completely. Sex meant relationship. Sex for me could never be a one-night stand.

I know now that Matt never really understood what his little infidelities were doing to me back then. It was like he was missing some gene, or had an amazing psychological blind spot where the result of his own behavior on others was concerned. The cocaine didn’t help either, frankly. But my cognitive comprehension of my ex-husband’s shortcomings didn’t go very far to ease the pain in my heart. Or stop the anger I still felt toward him at times.

Like right now.

I picked my coffee mug up. We drank in silence.

“I’m not out to hurt you and I never was, Clare,” Matteo said after a long pause. “I just didn’t get it, you know? I do now.” He met my eyes. “I do…right now.”

I was a little taken aback. Just when I was angry with him, he said something like that—which was about as close to an apology for his past indescretions as I would ever get.

“Maybe you can help me, then. Help me find out the truth about Bruce,” I said slowly, hopefully. “These murders, if that’s what they are, and Quinn’s suspicions about Bruce…I can’t sort it all out myself…Matt, they’re like dark clouds hanging over what could be…well, what I think could be something very important for me.”

Matteo shifted impatiently, then gulped his coffee. “I’m not a cop. You’d do better getting your buddy Quinn to help.”

“You and I did pretty good the last time…with Anabelle Hart. We solved a real crime, didn’t we? We put a real killer in jail. That was something.”

Matt shook his head. “We got lucky, Clare. We could just as easily have ended up in jail for breaking and entering, or for impersonating federal officers—and need I remind you that you almost got yourself killed?”

I sat back in my chair and ran my finger along the edge of the warm coffee cup.

“You need Quinn,” said Matteo.

“I can’t go to Quinn. I can’t trust him with this.”

I paused, then decided it was time to come completely clean.

“His marriage isn’t going well, Matt…and he was telling me about it one night, and I think he might have been interested in seeing me…or at least I think he was thinking about it…before I got involved with Bruce.”

Matteo snorted. “I told you the man wanted you.”

“Christ, I didn’t say
that!
”

“You said he seemed interested. What about you? Were you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Honestly.”

“Okay, I like Quinn. He laughs at my jokes, and I usually enjoy his morose sense of humor and I find him a little bit sexy—in a rumpled, hard-boiled, film noir sort of way. And, okay, we’ve been flirting pretty heavily with each other since we first met. And it’s probably Quinn, now that I think about it, who helped me start to believe that I should give the opposite sex a chance again—”

“Clare.”

“What?”

“This is way more information than I need to hear.”

I threw up my hands. “Quinn has too much baggage. His marriage is falling apart, he loves his children and is clearly ripped up about his unresolved feelings for his wife. Anyway, I’d never get involved in a tangled mess like that and he knows it. But I also think he wasn’t thrilled to hear I was dating anybody again, let alone Bruce, and I really think Quinn’s grasping at straws where Bruce is concerned.”

“I see,” said Matt.

“I’d rather trust you with this…investigation…or whatever you want to call it. Helping Bruce is what I want to call it.”

Matteo smiled. “I’m flattered.”

“Why?”

“Because you feel you can trust me. That makes me want to help you, but the truth is you still need Quinn. He’s been investigating these crimes for weeks, he’s talked to people we don’t even know about, and he has all the facts at his disposal.”

I sat straighter and leaned across the table.

“Quinn doesn’t know everything,” I whispered. “I did a little investigating on my own. Last night, while Bruce was asleep, I logged onto his computer and read his e-mails.”

“You logged onto the man’s computer and read his e-mails? Without his knowing, I take it?”

“Of course.”

“Jesus Christ, Clare, you’ve got nerve…no wonder you found out about Daphne and me. And I thought I was so careful.”

“You were flaunting her, Matt. Even Madame knew…”

“Mother knew?”

“Yes, but she forgave you. I doubt she ever forgave Daphne, though.”

It was sad, really. Madame and Daphne had been friends for years before Daphne made a play for her best friend’s son.

The direction of the conversation was obviously making Matt uncomfortable, so he changed it.

“Clare, if you logged onto his computer, that means you had some suspicions of your own.”

“No,” I lied. (Okay so I’d had a moment of doubt after I saw the model number on his HP DeskJet, but the truth was I wanted to look for anything that might contradict the picture Quinn was trying to paint of Bruce, and I had.)

“So what did you find out from all of your investigating?”

“I think the key to this whole thing is Sahara McNeil. She was someone Bruce hadn’t seen in years, not since he was first married. He didn’t even know she was in New York until Cappuccino Connection night—”

“And then he found out Sahara was living in the city and he killed her,” concluded Matt.