by Cleo Coyle
And Matt thinks you’re a mook. “You’re amazing, Franco.”
“Be sure to tell you daughter that, will you? Early and often.”
“That’s the trouble—I don’t talk to her often enough. I did get some photos from her, taken in the Loire Valley—”
“So did I.” He smiled, the wistful boy-crush in his gaze. “They’re in my wallet.”
I knew it… I knew she’d sent him the photos, too!
“Well, thanks again, Franco. Just be careful, okay? I saw it myself. Billy Li can be dangerous.”
“So can I.”
I didn’t dispute it.
Tucking the bag under his arm, he sauntered to the truck’s back door. “As soon as I have the prints, I’ll take them to Buckman’s team at AIS.” He paused. “If anybody asks, it was you who got these prints. I’m just the delivery boy. Got it?”
“Believe me, I’m getting to know Max Buckman. Nobody will ask.”
As I watched Franco depart, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief. Billy’s prints would soon be in police custody. And if Billy’s didn’t match what Buckman’s team found on that van—or the wineglass that was curiously sitting on the front seat—Sergeant Fingerprints would help me out again.
We’d go for Kaylie’s next, then more members of her staff, ruling each one out until we found the driver.
Humming to our party’s live music, I straightened up the kitchen, finally feeling that things were back under control… until I heard the agitated tone in Madame’s voice—
“Have you seen Clare Cosi? I must speak with her at once!”
“Just a minute, ma’am. I think she’s in the truck…”
TWENTY-SIX
“MS. Cosi? Are you there?” Josh Fowler stepped into the truck’s small kitchen. “Mrs. Dubois is looking for you.”
“Thanks, I heard…”
As I moved to follow the lean young artist with the purple hair and sideburns, I noticed something for the first time. His paint-flecked tee, emblazoned with the words “A for Anarchy,” displayed a bright orange button bearing the logo for Two Wheels Good.
“Josh, hold up.” I pointed. “Where did you get that button? Is John Fairway here?”
“I don’t know if he’s here, but I got the button from that woman—”
We were outside now, and Josh pointed to a knot of people near our refreshment tables. I recognized the woman immediately—frizzy blond hair, silver bike shorts, pink sweatband. This was the Two Wheels Good activist, the one I’d seen in Chinatown. She was moving aggressively through our parking lot, passing out buttons and pamphlets. She didn’t appear to be doing anything threatening… yet.
“Is anything wrong, Ms. Cosi?”
Gee, where to start?
“Clare!” Madame cried, charging me like the java Joan of Arc. “We must talk!”
My groan was barely audible, but Josh heard me.
“What is it?” he asked. “Maybe I can help.”
Nice kid. I patted his shoulder. “Thanks, Josh. I appreciate it. I’ll get back to you.”
“That woman!” Madame wailed. “That awful woman!”
“Which one?” I asked. Helen? Tanya? Kaylie? Warrior Barbie? Or is there someone I missed?
“The woman to whom I am referring is that so-called grant director!”
“Helen Bailey-Burke?” I said, and noticed Josh stop in his tracks. He’d been moving to rejoin Dante and Nadine. Now he turned to openly stare at us.
Madame hooked my arm and guided me toward the rear of the truck, where we had a bit more privacy. We stopped next to the chain-link fence on the far perimeter of Matt’s warehouse. On the other side of the fence, a dead-end road ran straight to New York Bay, a choppy, sparkling plane of blue now scenting the breezy air with the fresh tang of sea salt.
“What happened?” I asked.
Madame’s forehead crinkled in distress. “She’s turning Esther down. She’s rejecting the grant.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m not surprised.”
“What you should be is outraged. There were five independent advisors who highly recommended approval.”
“I know.”
“And do you know how I’d characterize the reasons that woman gave me for turning Esther down?”
I shook my head.
“Bullshit!”
I’d been squinting in the sunlight; now my eyes widened. Madame rarely cursed. And when she did, it never went beyond the mild French merde. Her curse seemed to lift on the wind and bob (like our custom-shaped party balloons) before breaking to pieces.
“According to Helen Burke,” Madame furiously explained, “our Esther did not have the right ‘polish’ or ‘presence’ to join her ‘exclusive group’ of awardees for her memorial grant. Well, I’ve been around the block, and I know how to read code!”
“You’re saying the woman wasn’t judging Esther’s work?”
“She was not. Helen Burke was judging Esther on how she would look in photo ops beside her, with a caption attached to her grant. She was judging Esther on how she’d be viewed when shown off at cocktail parties—be they corporate, political, or networking shindigs masquerading as charity dinners.”
Fists on lean hips, Madame appeared ready for battle.
“I’ve met far too many Helen Burke’s in this town, Clare. So-called patrons of the arts who judge with a ridiculously superficial yardstick how poets and painters, writers and artists ‘should’ speak, act, think, and dress—just like they do, of course! Well, I gave her a piece of my mind, I can tell you.”
“You did?” I bit my cheek to keep from grinning.
“Oh, I stayed civil—even though I dearly wanted to kick that cow in the rump and be done with her. Our party was ‘low-rent’ she said. This area ‘unsavory.’ What a complete moron! Here’s a woman who has no understanding of our cultural history, who thinks Greenwich Village was always filled with trendy bistros and expensive boutiques, that the heart of bohemia is found in a chic shoe store and a cupcake shop!”
I’d never seen my former mother-in-law so angry. I was witnessing a rare thing: Madame Unleashed!
“That odious woman had the nerve to tell me she’d come here expecting a ‘classier act’ given Esther’s attachment to our Village Blend, and that’s when I educated her.”
“I see…” I finally stopped biting my cheek. The grin just had to come out. “And what did you say?”
“I informed Her Highness of High Heels that Greenwich Village—not to mention Soho, Noho, and Tribeca—may have undergone facelifts in recent years, but for over half a century, they were not ‘classy’ parts of town. The Village was a place you went because the rent was cheap! It was dangerous and dirty and filled with drunks and drug addicts, but it was also filled with brilliant oddballs: young artists and poets, musicians and painters, comedians and playwrights, none of whom could afford designer sandals, spa memberships, teeth whitening, and nose jobs!”
“Touché!”
“Then I set the woman straight. Art isn’t about what’s pretty. It’s about what’s true and what’s real. Being an artist is about finding your voice and vision—just as Esther described it. And you don’t find truth through cosmetic surgery. You find it through authenticity.”
“Beautiful!”
“I’ll tell you something else, Clare, that awful woman did one good thing today. She made me realize that this food-truck idea of yours and Esther’s is much more than a business investment. Esther was right when she talked about poetry reaching across divides.”
I couldn’t nod my head fast enough. “Didn’t you urge me to take chances, cross boundaries? Didn’t you say, ‘If you don’t dare, you don’t survive’?”
“Indeed I did, but I was so busy lecturing you, I failed to heed my own advice. Esther has restarted my engine. I will rise to her challenge and travel across divides with her, across these bridges to support tomorrow’s young artists and writers where they live now!”
Clearly, Madam
e was ready for a Washington Square soapbox, and I was delighted to see her so fired up, but I had to point out—
“We’re going to have to deal with one ugly truth today. Esther’s been badly let down. How is she taking the disappointment?”
“Our girl doesn’t know yet. My conversation with Helen was private, and I do not want Esther told.”
“Is that realistic? She’s going to find out soon enough.”
“The formal rejection will come in the mail next week. But I’ll have things in hand before that…”
“What things?” I asked, seeing the impish flash in her blue-violet gaze. “What are you cooking up?”
“I know why Esther didn’t come to me for help with arts funding. She wanted to do this on her own, and she did. The grant was technically approved. So I am going to take her written application and that videotape Boris made of her young performance poets and find her another donor. My Otto will help, of course…”
Otto was Madame’s beau—a “younger” man in his early seventies, and a gallery owner. He’d been supportive of the Village Blend for some time. Although he’d been unable to attend our Red Hook party, I had no doubt he’d join Madame in making Esther’s summer poetry outreach a pet project.
“Bailey-Burke may be brilliant at raising money, but she knows nothing about where real art comes from.” Madame waved her hand. “She needs to learn a little more about those gemstones she likes to wear. They may have been sold out of a Tiffany display case, but each was created by years of pressure and dug out of a dark mine.”
A single pair of hands began to clap. Turning, we found Josh Fowler eavesdropping.
“Ma’am, you are so right!” Before we could respond, he added, “Helen’s a snob. She always was.”
“You know her?” I asked surprised.
“I was best friends with her daughter, Meredith.”
“The one who died?”
“Yes. I was hoping Esther would get one of those grants. That’s why I told her about it. I wanted at least one of my friends to get some of Meredith’s money.”
“You mean her mother’s money, don’t you?” I said. “The endowment came from her donation. That’s why she was given director’s status.”
“Helen Bailey-Burke is pretending the money was hers. But it didn’t cost her a penny. Meredith’s grandfather put that money in trust for Meredith when she was born. She was supposed to get it on her twenty-first birthday. What she got instead was a death sentence at eighteen.”
My heart nearly stopped at his wording. “A death sentence. My god, Josh, how did the girl die?”
“You don’t know?”
I shook my head.
“Her mother killed her.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“HELEN Bailey-Burke killed her own daughter?” I asked in shock. “Why isn’t she in prison?”
“Believe me, Ms. Cosi,” said Josh, “if it were up to me, she would be.”
Madame and I exchanged confused glances. Then Josh explained his statement. Like a lot of young people, this budding young painter saw things in melodramatic terms, and the story, while awful, was more tragic than criminal.
It seemed Meredith Burke was a lot like Esther—arty, quirky, intelligent, funny. She was also on the Rubenesque side of femininity, with facial features that were strong and full of character—as opposed to delicate and runway ready.
“Meredith’s mother and father divorced when she was little,” Josh explained, “and Meredith resembled her dad. I think that was the biggest issue between her and her mother. Meredith took after her father in so many way, not just looks, that Helen never stopped wanting to change her…”
“Change her into someone more like herself?” I assumed.
“Exactly.” Josh folded and unfolded his arms. His frustration was almost palpable. “She bribed Meredith. Pushed her into getting this done and that done. Small stuff at first, but then Helen’s plastic surgeon offered this three-in-one thing. Dramatic stuff in one day. Helen told Meredith that if she went through the three-in-one, she’d release a big chunk of money from her trust fund. And we both really wanted that money…”
“Why did you want the money, dear?” Madame asked curiously. “Did you want to travel together, something like that?”
Josh shook his head. “Meredith and I had been drawing a series of comic books for years. They were her ideas and her words—but my art. We did it together, and we wanted to publish them.”
I was already dreading the end of this story. “What happened, Josh? How did Meredith die?”
“Something went wrong after her cosmetic surgery. They said it wasn’t the doctor’s fault. Whatever happened was part of the risk anyone takes when they have surgery done—and that’s why I’ll never stop blaming her mother. Helen may not have shoved Meredith off a cliff, but she sure as hell led her to the edge and bribed her to jump.”
The idea of Helen pushing her child to have herself redone made me sick to my stomach—but also grateful. Madame exchanged glances with me. I knew we were having the same thought.
Thank goodness that woman walked away from our Esther.
I’d grown as protective of my baristas as Madame had of me. And the last thing I’d want is for Esther to have someone as toxic as Helen Bailey-Burke making her doubt herself.
The irony didn’t escape me: Before this discovery, I’d been incensed over Helen’s rejection. Now I was grateful for it. Even my octogenarian employer came away with an inspiring new quest. But life was funny that way. Blessings in disguise were never recognizable—until they were. Like a dark night that gradually lightens until suddenly you realize its day.
I was just getting to feel positive about this day when the sound of bickering voices drew my attention. Two women nearby were arguing, and their conflict was escalating fast.
“Not you again…”
The first voice belonged to (surprise, surprise) our favorite person, mother of the year Helen Bailey-Burke. Her tone was thick with disdain.
“Let’s not do this, Helen. I deliberately came late, expecting you’d be gone…”
The second voice was one I didn’t recognize. The argument was taking place along the dead-end street. Helen had left our party and was walking toward her parked car when she confronted a statuesque redhead who had just arrived.
Madame gripped by arm the moment she spotted them. “That beautiful redhead—I recognize her from a New York Now feature. That’s Dr. Gwen Fischer, Councilman Chin’s fiancée.”
Oh, no. Here we go…
Matt had warned me to watch out for fireworks at our party. With two rival politicos present, he was sure there’d be an explosion. Well, he turned out to be wrong and right. The ugly scene didn’t occur between the principals but between members of their camps.
Chin’s fiancée wore light summer slacks, a sleeveless blouse, and an expression of extreme patience—a challenge in the face of Helen’s raw anger.
“Is it the guilt, Dr. Fischer?” Helen asked. “Is that why you don’t want to see me?”
Dr. Fischer ignored the question and tried to step around Helen. But the petite socialite blocked her path
“Answer the question,” Helen demanded.
“I have nothing to say because I had nothing to do with what happened—”
“I don’t want your excuses!” Helen cried, her tone growing hysterical.
Despite their remote location, the fringes of our crowd took notice of the loud squabble. They’d moved toward the fence to observe. At least one freelance photographer was among them.
Dr. Fischer noticed the audience and lowered her voice. So did Helen.
The two continued arguing until Dr. Fischer uttered a final comment. Whatever it was made Helen’s cheeks flush nearly the color of Josh Fowler’s hair.
Helen’s response wasn’t in words. Despite the audience (or maybe because of it), she lifted her hand and swung with furious force at Gwen Fischer’s cheek.
Like a gunshot, the sound of
the slap reverberated in the dead-end street, off the row houses and chain-link fence. Dr. Fischer reeled back as her cheek reddened.
Helen took a step forward, and I was sure she was going to strike again.
Cameras were snapping now. More people were moving to see what they were missing.