Decaffeinated Corpse

Eighteen

“I better see what’s wrong,” I told Madame.

I tried to cross the room, but it was slow going. The guests were packing the place by now, and I was too short to see over most of them.

“Did you hear me?!” Matt shouted.

“Get your hands off me,” another man loudly replied, the accent sounding Spanish. “Or I swear to you... !”

“Are you threatening me?!” Matt again.

I still couldn’t see anything as I continued to squeeze through the mob. “Excuse me! Pardon me!”

Finally, I broke through the human wall. I saw my ex-husband facing off with a man half his age. The stranger had a thick moustache, curly black hair that just touched his ears, and an athletic build that rivaled Matt’s. I didn’t recognize the stranger, and apparently someone behind me didn’t, either, because I heard a woman ask, “Who is that?”

“That’s Carlos Hernandez,” another woman replied.

“Who?” I turned to find two young women, one a brunette, the other a redhead, both dressed in business suits. They looked like members of the invited press. “Does one of you know that man?” I asked them.

“Not personally,” the brunette replied. “His picture was in ‘Page Six’ last week. Carlos Hernandez is the nephew of Victor Hernandez. You know, the socialist dictator of Costa Gravas?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of him,” I assured her. “So why was his picture in the paper? I didn’t see the Post last week.”

“He’s here as part of a UN delegation. He joined in a coalition with the new socialist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia to pass a resolution opposed by the United States, but the paper was more interested in covering his extracurricular activities.”

“His what?”

“He’s here on his government’s dime, but he spent two hundred thousand dollars celebrating the resolution’s passage in a New York City strip club.”

Matt’s voice was still loud and angry. And Carlos Hernandez was still refusing to leave. He tried to step around Matt, but my ex moved quickly to block the man. Hernandez muttered something under his breath. I couldn’t hear the words, but Matteo did and he became even angrier.

“You’ve got nerve showing up here!” Matt’s face was flushed, the tendons quivering on his tanned neck. “You and your uncle are nothing but glorified thugs! You stole the Gostwicks’ plantation—land that family’s farmed for generations! You took it away by force, without a penny of remuneration!”

Oh, this is peachy, I thought. My ex was about to cause an international incident within spitting distance of the UN.

I looked around for some help. Only then did I notice Tucker standing right beside me. I pleaded with my eyes for him to step in and end the stalemate, but Tuck didn’t get the message. He just kept staring at the bickering men with fascinated glee.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” he said. “A pair of fiery Latins in designer suits. It looks like an outtake from Scarface!”

“No, Tuck,” I mumbled. “It looks like we’ve got Der real Kommissar in town.”

Madame appeared just then. She was moving toward Matt from one direction. Breanne was closing in from another. The two women’s eyes met and they both stopped dead in their tracks, just short of their goal.

I guess that leaves little old me.

If I didn’t step in, Matt was going to flatten this guy— unless Hernandez flattened Matt first. Either way, it was a lose-lose situation for my ex because Hernandez would certainly have diplomatic immunity. That realization spurred me forward. If nobody else was going to stop this, then I would!

I launched myself out of the crowd—only to be jostled aside as Federico Gostwick pushed by me.

“Back away, Matteo,” Ric warned, stepping up to face Hernandez.

“Oh, god,” I whispered, and held my breath. A silence fell over the room. Everyone in the know wondered what Ric Gostwick would do to the nephew of the man who’d exiled his family and destroyed their legacy.

“Let me handle this, my friend,” Ric told Matt. His tone actually sounded calm and reasonable.

The tendons in Matt’s neck continued to twitch, but he didn’t move. A tense moment passed. Finally, Matt stepped away.

I expected him to stick around, but he didn’t. Pushing past Hernandez, he stormed towards the stairwell door, which I knew would take him directly down one flight to the restaurant’s kitchen.

“First, let me apologize for my friend’s reaction,” Ric said to Hernandez. “Matteo has only my best interests at heart.”

Ric scanned the faces in the room. When he spoke again, his voice was loud enough for everyone to hear. “Let me also say that everyone is welcome to this tasting—” He turned back to Hernandez. “Most especially a representative of the nation that was once my home, and a land I still love. In fact, Mr. Hernandez might actually benefit from witnessing the progress free men achieve when they are permitted to keep the results of their labor.”

A smattering of applause greeted Ric’s words. He nodded, accepting the support. Then he placed his hand on Carlos Hernandez’s shoulder. “Please enjoy the tasting.”

As Ric personally led Hernandez into the restaurant, I found Gardner Evans. “Do me a huge favor, Gardner?”

“What’s that, Clare?”

I took his tray from him and pointed to the grand piano at the side of the room. “Play something.”

“Sure... Anything in particular?”

“Upbeat.”

He smiled. “I’ve got just the tune for this crowd.” Gardner sat down and began playing jazz riffs on the song “Java Jive.”

The tension was finally broken, and the room’s buzz of conversations resumed. A few minutes later, Ric found me. “Help me out, love,” he whispered, pulling me close. “Ellie hasn’t arrived yet and we can’t wait any longer. Find Matt. Tell him I’ll need his help during the presentation.”

“All right.”

Ric released me, and I moved through the crowd, making a beeline for the door to the stairs. I found Matt in the stairwell, on the damned cell phone again. I folded my arms and waited for the conversation to end. I could tell Matt wanted privacy, but I refused to budge. After listening for a moment, he interrupted the speaker.

“Look, I have to go. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.” Obviously still boiling with anger, he closed the phone and glared at me.

Hands on hips, I glared back. “Matt, for heaven’s sake, what’s gotten into you?”

“Not now, Clare,” he snapped. Matt tried to brush past me, but this time I was the person doing the blocking.

“Oh, no,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong. This is your big night, yet you’ve been on the phone since you arrived. You hardly said hello to your mother, and you haven’t lifted a finger to help with this party. And then you instigate an international incident with a relative of a Latin American dictator? It’s crazy. Irrational.”

“Clare, I—”

“Do you want to get us all in trouble?”

“I’m brokering a big deal, Clare. The timing is bad, but it can’t be helped.”

“You’re brokering coffee now?”

Matt shrugged and looked away. “Not everyone is in the same time zone.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “But I don’t have time to figure out what you’ve really been up to. You’re needed upstairs. Ellie Lassiter is a no-show, and Ric wants your help to begin the presentation.”

Without another word, Matt climbed the steps. I watched his broad back rise then disappear through the heavy, metal door. With a sigh, I collapsed against the cold stone wall and massaged my throbbing head.

A young sous chef from the room service staff appeared in the hallway. Noticing my distress, she asked if I wanted something to drink.

“I could use an aspirin,” I replied.

“No problem. Come on in.”

I followed the girl into the crowded kitchen. We kept to the edges of the busy room, away from the ovens and grills.

“Here,” she said, shaking two pills into my palm. Then she poured me a cool glass of a syrupy golden beverage to take with the medicine. “Apricot nectar,” she explained.

She wasn’t much older than Joy, and she projected that same kind of sweetness I saw in my daughter, despite her pierced tongue and scarlet hair under a mesh net.

She pointed to the apricot drink. “My grandmother swears by the stuff.”

I knocked back the pills and the nectar, which actually did make me feel a little better. I thanked the girl and headed back upstairs, arriving just in time to help Tucker close the burgundy curtains that framed the plate glass windows. Ric wanted to block the stunning view of midtown skyscrapers so his audience would focus solely on his presentation.

As Tucker and I brought the curtains together, I glanced outside. Rain showers were moving in over the city, and dark clouds were forming all around us. The omen wasn’t lost on me.

Between Ellie abandoning Ric at the last minute and Matt causing a scene with a visiting dignitary, I had a dreadful premonition that the gathering clouds would bring more than one storm before the night was done.