Murder by Mocha

Six

Back on the tenth floor, I found Detectives Lori Soles and Sue Ellen Bass milling around the crime scene room as if it were the observation deck of the Empire State Building. The window curtains were fully open now, the morning sun streaming in.

“Why isn’t this room sealed?” I demanded.

Detective Bass folded her arms and threw a withering glance at her partner. “Excitable, isn’t she?”

Both women were dressed in beige slacks, white blouses, and sporty blazers—Lori’s milk chocolate, Sue Ellen’s bittersweet. They were acting true to form, too. If ever the Fish Squad pulled the old good-cop/bad-cop routine on a suspect, I had no doubt which one would play the heavy.

Right now Lori was shaking her short, yellow curls like a six-foot Raphaelite cherub while Sue Ellen’s dark ponytail appeared to be lashed tight enough to qualify her as a model for Munch’s Scream.

“Take it easy, Sue,” Lori told her partner, then turned to me. “When we arrived, Mrs. Dubois admitted us. There’s obviously no DOA here.”

“But there was. Didn’t she tell you that?”

“No,” Lori said, “as a matter of fact, she didn’t.”

I glanced around. “Where is Mrs. Dubois?”

“She went back to her hotel room. A lawyer arrived to consult with her friend, and they’re having a private conversation.”

“Well, take my word for it,” I said. “This is a crime scene.”

Sue Ellen waved an arm. “Does this look like a crime scene to you?”

I took a breath, let it out. “Listen, I saw the body and so did Mrs. Dubois. What exactly did she tell you?”

“What she told us,” Sue Ellen said, “was that she suspected there was some misunderstanding.”

I blinked, shocked at Madame’s equivocating. “There’s no misunderstanding. I know what I saw—”

Sue Ellen smirked. “So you know the difference between the terms DOA and MIA?”

“My DOA is MIA—and I have no idea where he went!”

“Maybe he got up and walked away.”

“That would make him a zombie.”

“Not unheard of in this town, Cosi.”

“Be serious.”

“I am. You ever work Midtown graveyard? Try the Port Authority Bus Terminal at three AM—”

While Sue Ellen and I continued to battle (what passed for) wits, Officer Suarez appeared in the doorway and motioned Lori Soles into a huddle. When they broke, she was all smiles.

“We’ll have to cut the Coffee Lady here some slack,” Lori told her partner. “She just helped nab the Key Card Burglar! They’re putting him in a sector car now.”

Sue Ellen stared. “Pull the other one.”

“No, it’s true. The uniforms responded to our call. So it’s our collar.”

Sue Ellen’s expression went dark for a second, but then a grin broke wide. “Nice going, Coffee Lady!” Her big hand slapped my back so hard I felt my teeth rattle.

Suarez nodded. “You two detectives are going to have some day. The whole city’s been waiting for this case to break.”

“Yeah,” Sue said, “the brass’ll be out for this one.”

“Hold on!” I said. “The Credit Card Burglar is not why I called you two here!”

“Key Card,” Lori corrected. “Don’t you know about this guy? He’s part of a ring that’s been ripping off rooms all over Midtown—”

“But—”

“Your loo had a theory on the case, right?” Suarez asked.

Lori nodded. “With no sign of forced entry, our lieutenant figured the perp was bribing staff members at different hotels. The staffers would sweep through rooms with pass keys, picking up small, expensive items but not taking any risk of holding them or stashing them in their lockers—”

“Smart,” Suarez said.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Instead,” Lori went on, “they’d leave the stolen goods in one empty room where this guy would pick them up and walk them out. With this perp finally in custody, we should be able to take the entire ring down.”

Sue Ellen nodded, dark ponytail swinging. “You bet.”

“Hello! What about the dead man? There was a corpse in this room!”

Suarez gawked at me, along with the two Amazon detectives.

“Okay, Cosi,” Sue Ellen said, hands on hips. “Produce the body.”

I scowled up at the woman, ready to retort when Lori jumped in. “Sorry, Cosi. My partner’s right.” She gestured to the room and slowly shook her curly blond head. “There is no evidence that anything happened here.”

Once again, Sue Ellen smirked. “Maybe the burglar stole the body.”

“I saw what that burglar stole,” I shot back. “A giant pillowcase full of it. And nobody runs down ten flights with two hundred pounds of dead weight on his back. Can’t you canvass the floor, start knocking on room doors?”

Lori put her hand on my shoulder. Her big blue eyes went wide, sympathetic. “Calm down. We’ll be canvassing guest rooms as a matter of course because of the burglary—and we’re going to need your statement on what happened in the basement between you and the perp. Can you do a lineup for us?”

I held my head. “How long will that take?”

“Maybe two hours.”

“Fine,” I said, “whatever you need, but listen to this statement, okay? I saw a man’s body in here. He had a carving knife in his chest, and there was blood all over the bed. A blond woman in a black raincoat came to the door. When I mentioned the police were coming, she ran. I chased her. She must have gone up the stairs instead of down—and I ended up chasing the burglar instead. I’m certain she’ll have some answers if we can find her. She may even be an accomplice.”

“Accomplice to what?” Sue Ellen asked. “The burglaries?”

“The murder!”

I threw up my hands. Something rotten had gone down here, and I was starting to formulate a theory. Alicia’s polished pumps were still sitting on the carpet, but the man’s scuffed-up loafers were gone, along with his clothes. The fact that the martini glasses were gone, too, made me look at that vase of wilting flowers in a whole new light.

I moved to the vase, picked up the flowers, and sniffed. “These stems smell like alcohol!”

Lori frowned. “Are you feeling okay, Cosi? You want to sit down?”

“There were two empty martini glasses on this night-stand,” I told them as calmly, clearly, and sanely as I could. “Someone removed them, along with the body and the bloody sheets. But before that happened, someone else must have dumped alcohol into this vase. Why?”

Sue Ellen glanced at her partner. “Maybe they wanted their drink shaken, not stirred.”

“Maybe the drink was drugged,” I said.

“I didn’t want the drink . . .” The voice was loud and cut-tingly clear. Alicia Bower was back.

All of us turned to see her striding into the room, head high. Her loose terry robe was now tightly wrapped and firmly knotted. Her tangled short hair was combed smooth. Her face was washed clean of tear streaks; her sickly complexion dusted with enough peach blush to make a zombie look fit.

“Dennis St. Julian and I were business acquaintances,” she explained with assiduous crispness (not one syllable burbled). I noticed her slight British accent had rejoined us, too.

“He rang me. I invited him up to my room. He brought mocha martinis from the hotel bar. I’d already had plenty of wine at dinner. Unfortunately, he insisted I drink it. I didn’t wish to argue. Instead, when he began to disrobe, I simply dumped most of it into that vase—”

She flung out her arm and held it there, pointing to the end table in the sort of exaggerated pose I hadn’t seen since I stopped watching daytime drama.

Lori Soles looked briefly at me then studied Alicia. “Was this Dennis St. Julian alive when you last saw him?”

“I woke up in a dark room,” Alicia replied, slowly lowering her arm. “I was disoriented. I’m not sure what I saw . . .”

I noticed Madame had drifted into the room. Just behind her stood an older gentleman, briefcase in hand, a scowl on his face. This, I assumed, was the lawyer Madame had called, and he didn’t appear happy with Alicia’s making statements to the NYPD. What lawyer would be? But then, I realized, what choice did he have?

Clearly, Alicia Bower’s inner executive had reemerged, most likely the instant she heard about Dennis’s body disappearing (along with all the evidence), and she’d decided to “handle” the police herself.

When Alicia fell silent, Lori glanced at me again, pointedly this time.

I was dying to speak up—with questions, accusations, critiques of Alicia’s acting ability—but Madame’s eyes were now mutely pleading for me to hold my tongue.

Fine, I thought, I’ll play along. But what the heck happened to the body? Not to mention the man’s clothes, the martini glasses, and the bloody bedding?

The answer came without my having to ask. Grimes, the officer from the basement, rushed into the room, slightly breathless, carrying a bundle of white sheets saturated with dried pools of burgundy.

“The bloody sheets!” I cried. “You found them!”

“In the laundry bin,” Grimes said with a nod. “Just like you thought, ma’am. Only I don’t think this is blood . . .”

“What?” I crossed to him, the detectives on my heels.

When I’d first glimpsed these sheets, it was at a distance, in a dimly lit room. Now the curtains were open, shedding light in more ways than one.

“You’re right . . .” I told Grimes.

The stains felt sticky and smelled sweet. I pulled a swatch of the material up to my nose. The cloying candylike scent was the same aroma I’d noticed when I first walked into the room.

Finally, I recognized the stuff. I’d just used it in my own kitchen!

“This is corn syrup.”

“Corn syrup?” Lori and Sue Ellen were now flanking me, handling the sheets for themselves.

“Are you sure?” Lori asked.

“I just used it last night on my chocolate-glazed hazelnut bars. Corn syrup is what gives the chocolate glaze the right consistency for drizzling.”

“But corn syrup is clear, isn’t it?” Sue Ellen countered. “This stuff is red.”

“Because this is flour, corn syrup, and food coloring,” I said, touching and smelling it more aggressively, “the recipe for fake blood!”

“And you know that how?”

“You’ve never heard of the Village Halloween parade? I run a coffeehouse on Hudson Street! My assistant manager is an actor and I’m a mother. . . .” Joy’s vampire phase was only eclipsed (pun intended) by a brief obsession with zombies.

“Okay,” Sue Ellen said, turning to Alicia. “So that’s it? The whole murder scene Ms. Cosi saw here was faked?”

“A prank?” Lori pressed, her big blue eyes carefully watching Alicia. Sue Ellen was watching, too.

I joined them.

With all of our gazes trained on Alicia, she appeared to be fighting for composure. I reconsidered the tale of Dennis St. Julian, the inconsistencies, not to mention the coltish blonde who came pounding on the door, acted authentically stunned at not finding him in bed, then bolted at the mention of the police.

“Alicia,” I finally said, “please tell these detectives the truth. You thought the man in your room was murdered. You were frantic, and someone wanted to put you in that state. This was much more than a prank.”

I caught her wince, but she quickly recovered, shaking her head. “This was all just a misunderstanding.”

That word again! I faced Lori and Sue. “The timing alone is alarming. Tonight is an important launch party for Ms. Bower. A new product of hers is about to be presented to the press and an international group of wholesale buyers. I think someone was setting her up. I think someone—”

“Clare, please.” Madame stepped forward, put a hand on my shoulder.

I knew she was unhappy with the direction of this conversation. The Village Blend was deeply aligned with Alicia’s deal, and Madame, for whatever reasons, never appeared to trust the police.

But I did. Something criminal had gone down here—or was just about to—and I thought these detectives should be informed of it. When I turned to tell Madame this, however, she put her finger to her lips.

“À cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents!”

I sighed, stopped talking.

Lori frowned at me, drawing her own conclusion from my limited facts, and moved closer to Alicia. “Have you received any mysterious phone calls or messages, Ms. Bower? Any threats? Has anyone made demands?”

“Of course not,” Alicia replied, folding her arms.

“And you’d report them if someone did?” Sue Ellen asked, her tone dubious.

“Most certainly!” Alicia said, smoothing her robe before recrossing her arms, even more tightly this time.

“Do you want to file a report?” Lori asked.

Alicia waved the woman off. “Please . . . I don’t have time for that. As Clare explained—against my wishes, I might add—I have a product launch to attend to. A year of work is at stake. Whatever . . . silliness happened here, we should all simply forget it ever happened.”

Lori Soles shrugged. “All right, Ms. Bower. If you don’t want to file a report, then our hands are tied.”

Alicia forced a smile. “I thank you both for coming, and I’m so sorry that Clare put you to any trouble.” She sent a pointed look my way.

Before I could retort (or lunge), Lori jumped between us: “It’s our job to investigate. Here’s my phone number . . .” She handed Alicia a business card. “Call me anytime, day or night, if anyone does attempt to threaten you or shake you down, okay?”

Madame touched Alicia’s arm. “Let’s go back to my suite, dear. We can order room service. You have a long day ahead, and you’ll need fortification.”

Alicia approached me before following Madame and the gentleman lawyer out the door. “No hard feelings, Clare. I realize you were just trying to help.”

“I would still like to know—”

“I’ll see you tonight at the launch party!” She waved as she whirled. “We’ll talk more there!”

Sue Ellen waited for the women to leave before turning to me. “Well, Clare, all I can say is, we’re very glad you called us.”

“The Key Card Burglar. I know.”

“No,” Sue Ellen said, surprising me. “I agree with your concerns. Your client is definitely a target.”

“My client?”

“Ms. Bower.”

“Actually, I work for the other woman.”

“Well, keep an eye on both of them,” Sue Ellen warned.

“What do you think happened here?” I asked.

Lori and Sue Ellen exchanged looks. “We shouldn’t speculate without more facts,” Lori said. “But we can submit the contents of that vase for a toxicology test—just in case Ms. Bower does end up being shaken down.”

“Thank you, Detectives. Thank you both for everything.”

“No,” Lori said, “you’re the one we’ll be thanking—and publicly. Are you ready to go down to the One Seven now? Do that lineup?”

“Sure.”

As Lori instructed Suarez to treat the vase and its contents as evidence, Sue tapped me on the shoulder.

“One more question, Cosi.”

“What’s that?”

“I barely passed high school French. I can ask your name and order snails, but that’s about it. What did Mrs. Dubois say to you?”

“À cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents,” I repeated with a sigh. “I’m far from fluent, either, Detective. But she’s said it often enough. And her son practically lives by it.”

“And it means?”

“Loose translation: ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’”

I didn’t tell Detective Bass, but the grandmother who raised me also had a favorite saying—only she said it in Italian: Vedo le tazze e senza café. Loose translation: “I see the cups, but there’s no coffee.”

Well, I saw the cups, and I smelled something brewing. This morning’s charge of murder may have vanished, but trouble was almost certainly heading Alicia Bower’s way, and that meant my way, too.