A Brew to a Kill

by Cleo Coyle

  “Uh-ooooh!”

  “I may be ‘chubby,’ yeah, I’m busty, too, and my boyfriend loves the way my booty moves…”

  “Tell her, Esther!”

  “You sell the world pink with a cheap, plastic smile, but there’s no heart in your mart. You got no class, no style. Your frosting, I hear, comes out of a can. And your beans? Sorry, honey, you can’t brew worth a dang! So get your buttercream butt off my grass, or I’ll plant my big black boot in your prissy little—”

  Beep! Beeeeeep!

  Behind the wheel, Dante had grown impatient and inched our Muffin Muse forward, lightly tapping the Kupcake Kart’s rear bumper.

  Kaylie instantly shrieked. “He hit us! Did you see that? Did you see! I’m going to call the police, Cosi. The police!”

  “Please do,” I said. “Advise them to bring a tow truck.”

  “And don’t forget the ER bus,” Esther added, tapping her watch, “because in thirty seconds’ time, I won’t have to rhyme—and you’re going to need a boot-ectomy!”

  The crowd screamed with laughter.

  Inside Kaylie’s truck, the young guy with the dragon on his arm glared with pure fury at Esther, then at me. Finally, he tugged Kaylie aside and spoke quietly. Her line of patrons was gone now, most of them gawking and laughing or inside our coffeehouse.

  “We’ll move,” Kaylie declared. Then she bent over the customer counter and lowered her voice. “I’ve got friends in this town, Cosi—and they know how to back me up. You’ll be sorry for messing with me.”

  “I’ll file that information under ‘who cares.’ Now get lost, Kaylie.” Stepping back, I pointed to the empty street ahead of her and channeled my inner NYPD traffic cop. “Okay! Move it! Clear outta here! Now!”

  With a clang, Kaylie’s window slammed closed, her engine started, and the lumbering truck rolled down the block.

  “Chocolate! Oo-la-la… Fla-vours for vous…”

  As the murmuring crowd melted away, I heard a single pair of hands clapping. Turning, I found Matt standing tall, white teeth grinning through his pirate beard.

  “Very impressive. And entertaining, too.”

  “Yes, admirable job.” Madame nodded. She shook her head at the truck’s disappearing backside and sniffed, “Gotham Beanery indeed!”

  Lilly Beth laughed. “The next time I need that woman exorcised, I’m calling vous.”

  With a low rumble, our Muffin Muse eased into its berth. Dante cut the engine, which coughed once before blessing us with a wash of exhaust. Esther held her nose. Matt stepped backward. His mother coughed, and Lilly Beth headed back inside the Blend.

  “Sorry, guys,” Dante said, climbing out of the cab. “I’m still tinkering with the mechanics. I’m sure we’ll pass the emissions inspection, though.”

  “Maybe—if you bribe the inspector,” Esther cracked.

  Dante shook his shaved head and strode into the Blend. “I have some phone calls to make.”

  Matt frowned at our truck. “It’s kind of minimalist, isn’t it?”

  For once, Matt was putting it mildly. The truck’s flat white paint job and stiff block letters identifying the vehicle as the Muffin Muse was not even close to the visual pyrotechnics of Kaylie’s Vegas-worthy showboat.

  “Don’t worry, my boy.” Madame winked. “Our artiste in residence is giving her a new paint job tomorrow, and when Dante’s finished, I’m launching her with a bottle of Laurent-Perrier Grande Siécle!”

  “Well, don’t whack her too hard, Mother. I’m not sure which will break, the bottle or the truck.”

  “Oh, pooh. She’s a rock. And the interior has been completely refurbished.”

  “Is that right?” Matt looked over the truck once more. “Okay,” he said, turning to me, “how about you show me the inside of our investment?”

  “You’re willing to keep an open mind?”

  “I’m willing to keep listening.”

  Ten minutes later, we were back on the sidewalk.

  “Seems solid,” Matt conceded.

  “It is.”

  Madame stepped toward us. “And after tomorrow our Muffin Muse will soon be just as attractive on the outside.”

  Just then, I noticed Lilly Beth moving through our sidewalk café tables, a Village Blend paper cup in hand.

  “Lilly,” I called, waving her over, “are you coming to our truck-painting party tomorrow? You should! And bring little Paz. We’re serving his favorites.”

  “I’d love to come, but this is a working weekend for me.”

  “Something with the mayor’s office?”

  “No, something else. Remember that high-end spa that I told you about? The one in Hunterdon County?”

  “Oh, right. It’s pretty out there.”

  “It is, very pastoral—and the job would be perfect, except that I miss my son. I have to leave Paz with my mother in Jackson Heights, and I can’t even call him from the place. The spa has this crazy ‘digital detox’ rule.”

  “Digital detox?” Matt laughed. “What is that? Cold turkey for smartphone addicts?”

  “Exactly,” Lilly said. “No tricknology.”

  “Tricknology?” He shot me a smile. “Never heard that one before.”

  “No cells, PDAs, tablets, or laptops allowed,” Lilly went on, waving her smartphone with a grin. “Everyone has to surrender them at the front desk until checkout, staff included.”

  Matt nodded and (predictably) pulled out his own PDA—the very idea of being forced to part with it obviously propelled him into committing to it again. (And, brother, did that sound familiar.)

  Lilly glanced at her watch. “I’d better go. I’m heading back to Queens to tuck in Baby Boy. Then I have to catch a commuter bus to Jersey at the crack of dawn.”

  “Tell Paz I’ll save him some Blueberry Pie Bars. And, Lilly—” I surreptitiously tilted my head toward the newly converted Matt. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  “No problem.”

  Lilly Beth hugged me tight, and with a final wave, she began walking around the side of our big parked truck.

  “I like your new friend,” Matt said, his gaze still fixed on his text messages.

  “I can tell. But don’t like her too much, okay? That would be weird.”

  “Weird?” Matt said. “Why?”

  “Because, Einstein—”

  The sudden roar of an engine swallowed my reply. The throaty snarl, like a revving dragster, vibrated loud enough to rattle my being. Then came the squeal of fast-spinning tires.

  The next sound I heard was sickeningly familiar—a meaty crunch like the one I’d experienced decades ago (and would never forget) when my pop hit a deer along a dark, country road in Western Pennsylvania.

  The grisly smack was followed by Esther Best’s bellowing scream.

  “Esther! What happened?!”

  “Oh, god,” she cried, hands clutching head.

  My heart raced as I hurried around our parked truck, Matt following. In tandem, we halted.

  With one more step, chaos would begin. But for this numbing fragment of time, the planet stopped turning, my limbs went rigid, and my vision tightly narrowed.

  The body of my friend, the one who’d laughed with me and held me in a hug, lay crumpled and broken in the middle of the street, the bottom half of her form twisted and twitching.

  The scene before me was violent, brutal—yet there was no active brutality to witness. Like a swiftly slicing blade or sudden slash of lightning, whatever had struck here was gone, finished, leaving behind a tableau as disturbing as Picasso’s Guernica. But this wasn’t some still-life depiction of war-torn agonies. This was real.

  Struggling to sit, Lilly reached with one arm, as if trying to trying to touch an invisible angel, as if signaling heaven for help.

  “Someone hit Lilly Beth!” I shouted, rushing forward as she fell back. “Call 911!”

  FOUR

  WHEN I reached my friend, she was lying faceup on the street, still conscious. I dropped to my knees.
>
  “Lilly, can you hear me?”

  Her eyes were open and her lips began to move but no sound came out. Then she coughed, foamy blood reddening her lips. “Clare…”

  “Try not to move.”

  “I knew it…” she said through a moan of pain. “I knew this would happen…”

  You knew? I stared into her clear, focused eyes. “Did you see the driver coming?”

  “No,” she said, her voice a rasping wisp. “You don’t understand. This had to happen. I deserve this. It’s my fault…”

  “Don’t talk,” I said.

  But Lilly Beth’s lips moved again. “My fault… my fault… my most grievous fault…”

  The words chilled me. They were not random. Like me, Lilly had been raised a Roman Catholic, and those words invoked the Penitential Rite of the Mass. I could think of only one reason why she’d uttered those words. She wanted Extreme Unction, last rites.

  My fast search of the sidewalks yielded no members of the cloth. Desperate to relieve her pain, I began whispering: “Oh my god, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee…”

  As I continued, Lilly mouthed the words with me, then her eyelids fluttered, her pupils became unfocused, dulled by pain, and she slipped into merciful unconsciousness. I say merciful because of her ghastly injuries.

  Like the canvas of some garish expressionist, her sunny blouse and crisp blue denims were streaked in red—yet I could see no gaping wound, no flowing artery to staunch, only the ghostly draining of her glowing complexion. In the starkness of car headlights, color and warmth seeped out of my friend as if her soul were spilling onto the asphalt.

  Traffic idled nearby, its exhaust washing over us, but I didn’t care. Pebbles stabbed through my jeans, like little knives, but I didn’t move; I just kept on kneeling, kept on praying as I clutched Lilly’s bone-cold hand.

  About then, my own shakes began, the shudder starting in my hands, moving down my arms and through my entire being. Closing my eyes, I was about to ask for strength when I felt a steadying presence at my shoulder. Looking up, I found the unexpected source—my ex-husband.

  Hovering over me, Matt held a tall stack of neatly folded aprons. “To keep her from going into shock,” he said.

  “Ambulance?” I asked as together we worked to cover Lilly.

  “On the way. Don’t move her.”

  “I know. What else?”

  “Watch for aspiration. She’s on her back. She could choke.”

  “But if we shouldn’t move her—”

  “We’ll log roll her,” he said.

  “Log roll?” After decades trekking the wilds of the world, Matt had acquired an Eagle Scout’s worth of first aid knowledge. “Tell me how…”

  Dropping to his knees, he showed me how to stabilize her neck and head. Together we watched and waited. On the sidewalk, Esther frantically barked at passersby—

  “We need a doctor! Anyone! How about a nurse?! Come on! I’ll take a candy striper, a Girl Scout, a Coney Island lifeguard, for cripes sake!”

  Blocks away, a single siren bleated. More howled in reply, and a man in the street started shouting, directing cars toward the curb to give the emergency vehicles room to pass.

  With my focus so intense on Lilly Beth, I nearly cried out in surprise when a hand touched my shoulder.

  “Let us take care of her, ma’am.”

  Two navy-shirted members of the fire department’s EMS team edged me and Matt out of the way, dropped to the ground beside Lilly, and pulled off the blanket of aprons. Two more arrived with a folding gurney and backboard.

  Fists clenched, I continued quietly praying as they attempted to revive her. Another minute passed, and thank god, she finally stirred, opening her eyes.

  The paramedics continued their efforts—one starting an IV in Lilly’s arm, two more strapping her to the backboard. The trio lifted her onto the waiting gurney and rolled her to the ambulance.

  I tried to climb in with Lilly, but the emergency workers shooed me away.

  “Can’t I go with her? I want to go with her!”

  Matt grabbed my arms. “Calm down.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Clare, listen to me, your friend is in good hands—and you can’t do anything for her at the hospital but pace and wait. If you really want to help Lilly Beth, your chance to do it is over there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He pointed to a spot near our sidewalk café tables. Red flashes played across Esther’s face. Flanking her were two uniformed police officers.

  “Those cops are taking statements,” Matt said.

  “I know those guys,” I said. “They’re good customers.”

  “Come on, let’s go over.”

  I nodded, still feeling numb, until we moved close enough to overhear the cops’ pointed questions.

  Then my focus came back—fast.

  FIVE

  “CAN’T you give me anything more, Ms. Best? You claim you’re an eyewitness here.”

  “It’s not a claim, it’s a fact. I’m an eyewitness, and I told you everything I saw.” Esther yanked off her glasses and began frantically rubbing the lenses with the tail of her shirt. “There was a van, no windows. Didn’t notice the driver.”

  She was speaking to Langley, a tall, ruddy-faced officer from the Sixth Precinct. Demetrios, a shorter, swarthier version of his Irish-American partner, was there, too, filling in blanks on an accident report form.

  “What about the license number?” Demetrios asked. “Did you see it?”

  “Not hardly!” Esther cried. “That idiot was driving like a goth out of Utah!”

  On the other side of the street, more navy blue uniforms were either unfurling yellow crime-scene tape or trolling for witnesses. Unfortunately, the bloated crowd had slimmed down faster than a postpartum supermodel. I wasn’t surprised.

  Accidents birthed excitement and spectacle, but spectating was easy; getting involved was not—and a statement to the NYPD could lead to depositions, court appearances, and the most irritating of all losses to speed-of-light-moving New Yorkers… time.

  The Romans had a saying: Obliti privatorum, publica curate. Loosely translated, the common good was more important than private matters. But these days, sacrifice with no discernible payoff was an exceedingly rare occurrence.

  This unhappy realization made me look with new eyes at my feisty barista. She could very well be the only obliging eyewitness to this crime scene. Langley and Demetrios seemed to have the same thought because the pair began pressing her more zealously for answers. (A reasonable reaction, given the situation. Given what I knew about Esther, however, this was a fairly large mistake.)

  “And you didn’t notice a thing about the driver?” Langley asked, moving closer.

  Esther shifted. “I think I answered that.”

  “You’re sure you can’t remember anything on the license plate?” Demetrious pushed, practically in her face. “One letter? One number?”

  “Sorry.”

  “How about the color of the plate? That could tell us what state, at least. Come on, think! New Jersey, New York, Connecticut—”

  “Why not Maine or Alaska!” Esther cried. “Toss in all fifty states because I can’t tell you that, either!”

  For a few seconds, the cops went silent, their expressions defensive—but Esther’s hostility had little to do with them. How did I know? Because I knew Esther. Just the other day, she articulated an aspect of her peculiar human condition in an argument with my youngest barista about (of all things) what constituted true love…

  “It’s simple chemistry!” Nancy had claimed between espresso pulls. “Prince Charming comes along. You fall for him. He falls for you. Then you’re together forever.”

  Esther’s reply: “Uh, right, Cinderella. Until the divorce.”

  NANCY: You’re too cynical to be in love.

  ESTHER: What I am is a realist. One can be in love and a realist. In fact, it’s better to be both.

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nbsp; NANCY: I don’t know what you’re talking about! Aren’t you in love with Boris?

  ESTHER: Sure, I’m in love with Boris, but I also love him.

  NANCY: What’s the difference?!

  ESTHER: “In love” is a noun—passive. “Loving” is a verb—active. They’re distinctive parts of life as well as speech, like the difference between theory and practicum.