by Cleo Coyle
Trekking the Third World’s high-altitude coffee farms for the choicest cherries was light-years from a fashion show runway, which is why I was sure tonight’s obviously pricey outfit had been handpicked by Breanne. This was nothing new, of course. Since they’d started dating, Bree had been dolling up Matt like one of Trend’s cover models. She’d probably paid for the garments, too, or gotten them gratis from one of her designer friends.
“What is it you want to say to me, Matt? Make it quick.”
“I miss you,” he declared, his big brown bedroomy eyes wide.
“You do not.”
“Do, too.”
I folded my arms. “You’re not blinking.”
Matt pointed to his eyes and blinked. “I miss you, Clare. I miss your…down-to-earthedness—”
“My what?”
“I miss your smile, your wisecracks, your coffee—”
“You have no shame, you know that? I don’t think there’s one decent bone in your body.”
“No, Clare. There’s where you’re wrong. I have one decent bone.” Matt held up his right arm, still wrapped in the plaster cast. He shook his head. “Don’t you remember how this happened to me?”
Damn. I frowned, recalling Matt’s flying Zorro act. I’d been on the trail of a murderer, and I’d roped Matt in to helping me. But when the gun went off, it was Matt who threw himself into harm’s way, wrestling the killer to the floor. He’d gotten his arm broken for his trouble.
A wave of guilt doused some of the fury I’d been fanning. “I remember, Matt. I do,” I told him with a sigh. “And you know I’m sorry about what happened. I hated seeing you get hurt like that…”
Matt shrugged. “The cast’s coming off soon. No big deal. And it was fun letting Bree play nurse for a while. She and her people took good care of me. But you see, Clare…” He continued moving across the bedroom. “Breanne isn’t the woman I’ve been thinking about—”
“Stop it, Matt.”
“I’ve been lying in bed alone these past few nights, Clare, thinking of you—”
“Because Bree’s traveling. And you’re a child. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Matt stopped right in front of me. “Bree isn’t the woman I’ve been wanting to kiss—”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Just a bottle of Riesling.”
“An entire bottle?”
Matt grinned and nodded. “Château Bela, Slovakia 2003. Eric Ripert personally recommended it to Bree during a launch party at Le Bernardin. She scored an entire case. I’ll tell you, that woman has one impressive wine collection.”
“How long ago did you drink it? The bottle?”
Matt shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not the alcohol talking—”
“No…It’s the part of your anatomy that Bree’s momentarily neglecting.”
Matt laughed. “Say that three times fast. Anatomy, momentarily neglecting.” He laughed again.
“You are drunk.”
“Why do you think I was trying to make coffee?”
I sighed, wondering if Breanne knew this about my ex. Matteo Allegro could calmly hike through a Costa Rican mud slide or fearlessly fight his way out of a Bangkok bar brawl, but when it came to handling the minor curveballs of domestic living, he often needed a flotation device.
Well, at least this time he turned to a 2003 Château Bela instead of a line of Bolivian marching powder. For that, I have to give him credit.
“Okay, Matt, okay. Let’s go back downstairs and get you some coffee.” I moved to walk around him, but he caught my arm.
“I am sorry, Clare, about messing up your date. I really did figure you’d be at Quinn’s place. Will you forgive me?”
I took a deep breath and let it out. It wasn’t easy to let go of my righteous anger, but I did owe Matt. The cast alone was a reminder of what he’d gone through for me.
“Yes, Matt. I forgive you. All right? Let’s move on…”
“Okay,” Matt agreed, but his left hand failed to release my upper arm. The heat of his fingers penetrated the sleeve of my sheer blouse. His eyes met mine, and he leaned closer.
I leaned back. “Matt…that’s not moving on.”
“Just one kiss? I’ve been so lonely.”
“Oh, please.”
“One kiss. What’s the big deal? It’ll only take a second. Humor me…”
“You’re really trying my patience tonight. You know that?”
“I just want to know that you really forgive me. One kiss. Then we can move on.”
“And you’ll grow up?”
Matt smiled and nodded. “Close your eyes.”
With an irritated sigh, I gave in. Standing stiff and still, I closed my eyes. Matt leaned close again and brushed my lips. I figured that was it. We were done. But before I could open my eyes again, his arm was snaking around me, pressing our bodies together, trying to intensify the connection.
“I knew it! I knew I couldn’t trust you!”
“You miss me, too, honey. I can feel how much. Your body’s humming with it—”
“Your ego’s working overtime! Mike Quinn’s the one who left me humming.”
“Is that right? Well, if he left you humming, then he’s not here to close the deal, is he?”
My jaw clenched.
“Admit it, Clare. The cop’s a hard case, and you miss having fun.” Matt’s voice dropped an octave. “So have a little fun with me tonight. What’s so wrong with that?”
“Plenty. You want an alphabetized list?”
He moved to kiss me again; I stiff-armed him. Then I turned and marched out of the bedroom in my stockinged feet. Matt followed me down the stairs but not into the kitchen. He stood, leaning one broad shoulder against the doorway. For long, contemplative minutes, he watched me brew him a fresh pot of coffee in our drip maker.
As I poured him a large, black cup, he moved into the kitchen and began struggling out of his leather jacket. I helped him get the folded-up sleeve over his cast. Then I hung the expensive garment on the back of his chair for him.
“Sit,” I commanded. “Drink.”
He did. I poured him a second cup and gave him two aspirin.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome.”
“So…” he said, his mind obviously becoming clearer. “You really like the cop?”
“It’s more than like, Matt.”
He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “I figured by now you would have gotten him out of your system, but I can see you need more time.” He shrugged. “So have your fling. Just don’t give up on us, Clare…not yet…”
I closed my eyes. “Please, Matt. It’s late. You’ve had too much to drink. I’ve had too much…frustration.”
I opened my eyes to find Matt leering at me. One dark eyebrow arched. “So my kiss did affect you.”
Before I could find another shoe, the phone rang.
“Saved by the bell,” I told him, picking up the extension. “Hello?”
“Mom! Thank God!”
“Joy? What’s wrong?”
Matt was on his feet before I spoke another syllable. “What’s the matter with Joy?”
“It’s Vinny!” Joy cried from the other end of the line.
“Vinny?” I repeated.
“Who’s Vinny?” Matt demanded, breathing down my neck.
“Vincent Buccelli,” I quickly whispered, covering the mouthpiece. “He’s Joy’s friend from culinary school. They’re interning together at Solange this year.”
“Mom? I don’t know what to do!”
“Slow down, honey. Where are you?”
“I came out to Queens after work, to check on Vinny, see how he was doing.”
“You told me he called in sick today.”
“I found him on the floor, Mom.” Joy began to sob. “And there’s blood, so much blood!”
“Blood!” I repeated.
“Blood!” Matt shouted.
“Mom, I can’t believe it, but I thin
k Vinny’s dead!”
SIX
OUR yellow taxi rolled down a dim stretch of paved avenue that ran under the elevated tracks of the Number 7 line. At one in the morning, not even the flashing red beacons of the police and FDNY vehicles could penetrate the cold shadows beneath the subway’s rusty girders.
The three-story apartment house where Vincent Buccelli lived sat between an Irish pub that advertised the best hamburgers in New York City (according to the Daily News), and a Sherwin-Williams paint store, now shuttered with a steel mesh gate. The area was a typical working-class neighborhood of Queens, filled with immigrants from an array of countries: Korea, Ireland, India, Ecuador, Colombia, and dozens of others.
Tonight, the front door of the redbrick house was open, spilling yellow light from a gold ceiling fixture in the hallway. The building had white-trimmed windows and a short set of concrete steps that led to a roofless front porch. That’s where the cop was standing, a big Irish-faced officer in his thirties. He wore a dark blue uniform and a bored expression as he guarded the building’s entrance. Younger, smaller cops were patrolling the sidewalk, keeping a curious crowd of pub crawlers behind yellow crime-scene tape that had been stretched across the pavement.
“Looks like the national doughnut convention’s in full swing,” Matt muttered next to me in the cab’s backseat.
I tensed. The last thing I needed was for my authority-loathing ex to start a fight with the investigating officers, which could land us all downtown, or crosstown, or wherever the local precinct house was in this part of Queens. As Matt fumbled for his wallet with his good arm, I gripped his shoulder.
“Joy’s not a suspect,” I said. “There’s no reason to get upset.”
“Not yet,” Matt replied, thrusting a fistful of cash at the Pakistani driver.
Matt had sobered up fast the moment Joy had called for help. Knowing we’d be dealing with outer-boroughs cops, he’d grabbed an old Yankees sweatshirt from his bedroom closet. He ripped the bottom of one sleeve to accommodate his cast and—suddenly no longer needing my help—forcibly tugged it over his expensive cashmere sweater.
I’d found my brown pumps, pulled an older parka over my sheer blouse and tight skirt, and we were off, leaving Matt’s cover-model leather jacket back where it belonged, in a multimillion-dollar West Village town house.
Now I swung open the cab’s door, and the November chill struck me like a hammer. It felt much colder in the borough of Queens. This wasn’t my imagination. Frigid wind blasts flowed down from Canada and across New York’s waterways, but the buildings were lower in the outer boroughs. Manhattan’s moneyed skyscrapers couldn’t shield you the same way here.
By the time I’d climbed out of the backseat, Matt’s muscular form was already barreling toward the yellow tape. Two cops near the flimsy barrier saw him approach and tensed. Both officers were so young they had to be rookies, and both were at least a head shorter than Matt.
Behind them, on the apartment house’s front porch, stood that big Irish-faced officer. He was younger than Matt, but at least a decade older than the rookies. He also watched Matt’s approach, but his expression remained bored.
I hurried to catch up to my ex, which wasn’t so easy in high heels, and I cursed myself for not taking a minute to dig out my running shoes.
At the police line, Matt grabbed the tape and lifted it. But before he could step under it, a rookie jumped in front of him, jammed a hand into Matt’s chest. “Where are you going, sir?” the baby-faced policeman said. His tone was respectful but insistent.
“I need to get inside,” Matt forcefully replied. “My daughter’s up there.”
“It’s a crime scene, sir. No one can go in there until the forensics people are finished.”
Matt stared down at the kid. The officer’s left hand was still on Matt’s chest, his right clutched the top of a long nightstick dangling from his belt.
“I know it’s a crime scene,” Matt replied. “Now take your hand away before you lose it, flatfoot.”
Oh, damn. Here we go…
The big cop, guarding the apartment’s front door, tucked his hands into his belt and swaggered down the concrete steps and across the sidewalk. His bored expression had suddenly become animated; in fact, he seemed genuinely pleased by the ugly turn of events.
Great, I thought. And here he is, for your entertainment! A willing subject for a textbook takedown and arrest! My ex-husband!
“Flatfoot?” the older cop repeated to Matt with a smirk. His hands were still tucked into his belt, but his chest was puffed out like a bantam rooster. “That’s real quaint. Who are you, Damien Runyon?”
The younger cops chuckled. The pub crawlers laughed.
“That’s Damon Runyon, you moron,” Matt snapped.
“Uh-oooooh!” a drunk in the crowd cried. “He’s in trouble now!”
“Matt, please—” I whispered, tugging his sweatshirt, trying to get him to back down.
My ex turned and looked down at me. I expected him to bark something nasty. But he didn’t. He met my eyes and winked. “Go!” he mouthed, jerking his head in the direction of the now unguarded steps.
Matt had purposely lured the big cop away from his post by the building’s front door. If I was fast enough, they wouldn’t be able to stop me. With Matt distracting them, they might not even see me.
The older cop ripped away the yellow tape, and it fluttered to the pavement. He faced Matt, toe-to-toe, thumbs still in his belt. He was younger than my ex, but Matt was just as tall and just as powerfully built.
“You got a problem, buddy?” the cop demanded. Beneath his badge I saw the name Murphy. “’Cause if you keep up the attitude, I can make both of your arms match, if you get my drift.”
“Yeah, I get your drift,” Matt shot back. “And I also have a problem with tin-plated fascists like you. I’ve seen enough of them in the backwaters of this world, and let me tell you something, flatfoot, you’re all alike—”
I slipped into the shadows, moving forward, past the knot of policemen and up the concrete steps. No one yelled or followed me. Either they hadn’t noticed or were too focused on stopping the big, angry jerk wearing that Yankee sweatshirt in the middle of Mets country.
I shook my head as I moved, realizing Matteo Allegro was a whole lot smarter than I liked to give him credit for; but then the man would do just about anything for his daughter, even put a few extra brain cells to work.
Either way, I was inside. Now I had to find Joy.
There were two apartments on the ground floor. Both doors were shut tight. I hurried up the stairs to the first landing. There were two apartment doors here, and both were open.
Warm air poured into the drafty hallway from the apartments, accompanied by a hiss of steam from a nearby radiator. I glanced inside the first door and saw a uniformed officer speaking with an elderly woman wearing a woolen robe.
“I didn’t hear a thing, sorry to tell you. I’m a bit hard of hearing,” the gray-haired woman said in a faint but discernable Irish brogue.
Inside the second door, I saw a big African American plainclothes detective standing next to a much smaller uniformed officer. The detective was attempting to interview a young Asian couple who’d been roused from their sleep. The husband rubbed his eyes while he spoke in rapid-fire Chinese.
“What did he say, Officer Chin?” the detective asked.
The uniformed officer shook his head. “He’s speaking Mandarin.”
“So?”
“So your guess is as good as mine, Sergeant Grimes. My people are from Hong Kong, and they speak Cantonese!”
I crept past the door and moved onto the steps that led to the third floor. A bright photoflash suddenly lit the landing above me. Another flash came, and another. I moved halfway up the stairs and paused, listening to the voices coming out of the apartment.
“Tell me why you came here again. I didn’t quite get it the first time,” a man demanded.
“You heard the message Vinn
y left on my cell,” a young woman replied between sobs. “You know why I came here. Why do you keep asking me the same questions?”
“Joy!” I whispered.
I took the rest of the stairs two at a time, reaching the top landing in under a second. There were two doors on this landing. One was shut tight, newspapers and magazines piled up as if the person had been away. The other door was wide-open. I could see a number of officials inside the apartment: the first was a young man in a dark blue police uniform. He was standing in the small entryway. The second was an older, wider man in a gray suit, but I could only see his back. The third man in a dark nylon jacket was holding a small digital camera and snapping photos. A woman in the same kind of jacket was stooped over something on the floor.
I could only see bits and pieces of the room from here: there were plants and a large fish tank, some framed posters. I noticed a bank of windows along the front wall were all wide-open for some reason.
Finally, the large man in the gray suit moved aside, and I saw Joy, standing just inside the doorway to the apartment’s kitchen. She’d exchanged the chef’s jacket and black slacks she’d been wearing at Solange for a white turtleneck and blue jeans. One arm was folded over her stomach. She was wiping away tears with the other, and she was also shivering.
I took a step forward into the short entryway that led to the living room. The uniformed officer who’d been standing there suddenly blocked my path. “Whoa! Where are you going, ma’am?”
“Let me see my daughter!” I shouted.
Joy heard me and called out, “Mom!”
I charged, but the officer blocked me again. “Stop, ma’am!”
“Joy, your father and I came as quickly as we could!” I called to her, trying desperately to get around the cop, but he started moving me backward.
“Back up, ma’am!” the young officer warned, his hand moving to his nightstick. “Back up, or I’ll have to restrain you!”
“Lopez! It’s all right!” called the older man, the one in the suit who’d been questioning Joy. The detective turned and moved toward us. He had thick, coarse, slate gray hair with bushy eyebrows and a seventies-style mustache to match. His gray, rumpled suit had lapels as wide as Queens Boulevard, and his loudly patterned green and orange tie was obviously chosen by a man who wore neckwear only because he had to.