Latte Trouble

Five

One by one, the police questioned the partygoers. Most were sent on their way, but others who’d been standing near Ricky Flatt were forced to stay behind to sign written statements attesting to what they’d witnessed.

Evicted from the coffee bar, my staff and I huddled near the fireplace. Esther Best settled into a morose funk while Moira tearfully wrung her hands. I turned from trying to comfort the sobbing girl and saw the sour-faced Detective Hutawa walking my way.

“Do you have somewhere we can talk in privacy, Ma’am?” he asked.

I nodded. “My office.”

I led the detective up the staircase and through the coffee lounge on the second floor to my small, brick-walled office tucked away in a corner. My battered desk chair creaked as he settled himself into it. I pulled up a second chair and tightly crossed my legs and arms.

Hutawa focused weary eyes on me. “Officer Demetrios tells me you’re a friend of Mike Quinn’s. Met him through another case connected with this establishment.”

I blinked in surprise. “Detective Quinn is a regular customer,” I said guardedly.

“That I know,” said Hutawa. He finally smiled. “Mike tells me the coffee is really great here. Something special.”

“Yes, but I’ve never seen you in here. Why don’t you stop in sometime for a cup?”

Hutawa’s smile faded. “Never touch the stuff.”

I frowned. So much for attempting to establish trust. “What’s happening to Tucker, detective? When can I bail him out?”

Hutawa sighed and looked away, his eyes scanning the bulletin board on the nearby wall. “He’s being processed, Ms. Cosi. His arraignment before a judge will most likely take place in the next twenty-four hours. If bail is set at all, it will be done at the arraignment. But if you really wish to help Mr. Burton…” Hutawa’s gaze met mine, his weary tone now calm and sympathetic, “I suggest you start by answering some simple questions about him.”

“Fine.”

The detective then proceeded to ask me a lot of questions, most of them about Tucker. I was honest, though not to a fault. When he asked me if I’d known of a prior relationship between Tucker and the victim, I hedged. “If such a relationship existed, Tucker never mentioned it to me.” My answer was technically honest, anyway—it was Esther who mentioned their affair.

“Would you say Mr. Burton was acting normally today? Was he upset, agitated or angry about something?”

“Of course not. Tucker was…well, he was Tucker.”

Detective Hutawa was obviously fixated on Tucker and Ricky’s previous relationship as a motive. I knew he’d be questioning Esther—so I finally did confess that Esther had mentioned Ricky and Tucker had known one another “socially.” He didn’t press the matter, simply jotted down that fact in his notebook.

But I was firm in adding another obvious detail. “That latte on Tucker’s tray, the one Ricky grabbed and drank, was actually intended for Lottie Harmon, the jewelry designer who hosted this party.”

Hutawa stared at me in silence.

“If you’re looking for a motive, I suggest that maybe you should have a talk with Lottie.”

“That’s what you suggest, eh?” He dropped his notebook, folded his hands and stared at me. “So what do you suggest I ask this woman, Ms. Cosi? Should I ask her why a barista at the Village Blend was trying to poison her?”

“For heaven’s sake, Tucker had nothing to do with the poison in that drink—if there even was poison. If someone was intent on murder, then Tucker was as much a victim as Ricky Flatt.”

Detective Hutawa snorted. “Look, Ms. Cosi. Police work in this city is no noodle-salad picnic, and the worst part of this job is that I hear the same prevarications every day—nothing but lies and excuses.” The detective sighed. His shoulders drooped as if the weight of the world were slowly crushing them. “‘No, no, it wasn’t me, Detective, it was somebody else who looked just like me that pulled the trigger.’ Or ‘I had to kill him, man, because he screwed me in a drug deal or has evil eyes and an R in his name.’”

Hutawa paused, shook his head. “So please, Ms. Cosi, spare me the homilies. I understand the urge to protect your employee and your business interests, but don’t try to divert my attention away from the real focus of this investigation. The victim is Ricky Flatt, not this…this Lottie Harmon. And like it or not, your coffee brewer—”

“Barista.”

Hutawa grunted. “Whatever you want to call him, he’s admitted he made the fatal drink.”

“That doesn’t mean someone else didn’t poison the latte after he made it,” I countered, realizing, after the words were out, how unlikely that scenario would sound to a hardened police investigator.

But Hutawa sat back, folded his arms, and let me talk on.

“Listen, detective, I know that Tucker’s no killer. He’s one of the gentlest souls I’ve ever met. Why, Tuck even tried to help Ricky, he began to administer CPR—”

But Detective Hutawa had heard enough. “We’re through here, Ms. Cosi. If you don’t mind, I’m going to use your office for a while. Tell the rest of your staff to come up here—and please don’t attempt to concoct some phony story with the others because it will become apparent to me. It will only serve to insult my intelligence, and I don’t like to be insulted.”

Hutawa and Starkey had already made up their dual minds. To them, the case was clear. Tucker was guilty of murder. Obviously, the two detectives were only interested in building a case against him. And no doubt, the crime scene people were also working toward that same goal.

After Hutawa dismissed me, I found Esther and Moira waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. “He wants to talk to you two next,” I said. Esther frowned, Moira paled as I sent them on their way.

When I returned to the coffee bar, I got a nasty surprise. While Hutawa was grilling me, the folks from the Crime Scene Unit had wrecked the entire area. They’d emptied the refrigerator, the coffee urns, and the cupboards. They’d dismantled the espresso machine, rifled the pantry, and even searched through the loose beans in the coffee bins. They had bagged up the garbage beneath the counter—wet coffee grounds and disposable filters mostly, since we weren’t using our usual paper cups for the private party.

All this was done, I supposed, in an effort to locate the source of the poison and confirm that no more of it existed. Of course, that was only a guess on my part, because none of the crime scene investigators would tell me a thing—or even acknowledge that I was speaking to them when I politely asked when I could have my coffeehouse back.

Their silence was beyond disturbing, so I drifted to the fireplace and, with all the chairs and tables moved out for the party, simply slumped down on the wood plank floor. I scanned the room for Matteo, hoping for a sturdy shoulder to lean on, but he was gone—either he’d given his statement to the police and escaped, or he’d shown even more attitude than me to one of the detectives and had been hauled off to jail. I doubted this, however, since I noted that Breanne Summour was also missing (gee, what a coincidence). Had they left together? Is there caffeine in espresso?

Someone else was also missing from the scene. While I was being questioned, Ricky Flatt’s corpse had been carried off to the morgue—only the yellow tape outline on the floor remained to mark the place where the medical examiner had pronounced him dead.

The partygoers were mostly gone, too. I leaned my back against the cold, brick wall. Next to me, the fireplace sputtered with dying flames. I closed my eyes, lamenting the state of my coffee bar and poor Lottie Harmon’s roll-out bash, and attempted to mentally process my gentle friend being forcefully hauled away in handcuffs.

Yet the crime, and the charges, didn’t make any logical sense—maybe they did to the police detectives, but they certainly didn’t to me. I knew Tucker, and I knew he was incapable of murder. Which meant somebody else at this party had to be.

There was no way cyanide could have been placed in any of the ingredients before the start of the party—the milk, the caramel-chocolate syrup, or the coffee beans. If that had been the case, then many more guests would have become ill than simply the two who’d downed Lottie’s drink. Someone had to have placed the poison in the drink right before it was served.

He or she must have been in the vicinity of the coffee bar before Tucker picked up that tray to serve Lottie. I tried to recall who was at or near the coffee bar around the time of the incident. Tucker, of course. Esther and Moira. And I was there…on and off, until I’d had to descend to the basement steps for soy milk—for Lloyd Newhaven. Okay, so Lloyd was there. And Lottie’s partners, Tad and Rena. Others were close by when I’d left the area for the basement, and almost anyone could have stepped up to the coffee bar and dropped something in that glass mug. The only reason Tucker had taken it himself was because the models had all been busy serving.

I would have to quiz Moira and Esther on who else might have swooped in during that time. But, as I saw it, the first step in clearing Tucker of a murder charge would be to prove that Lottie, and not Ricky Flatt, had been the killer’s intended target. And that brought me back to the question of why? I could almost hear Mike Quinn’s voice coaching me….

Who would want Lottie Harmon dead? Who would gain from her murder?

And those questions led me to another—what did I really know about Lottie Harmon anyway?