Decaffeinated Corpse cm-5

by Клео Коул

  Ellie reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her cell. “Excuse me,” she said and opened her phone. “Hello?”

  She listened for a moment. “Yes,” she told the caller. “Yes... oh, okay. Right now then. Hold a minute.”

  “I’m sorry, Clare, but I have to take this call, and then I have to get right back to work. It was good seeing you.” She held out her hand, and we shook. “I’m sure we’ll talk again at the end of the week.”

  Before I could even bid her goodbye, she was turning to leave. I watched as she swiftly strode away toward the greenhouse that held her exhibit.

  With a sigh, I rose from the patio table. Ellie had left her tray behind, a Cornish hen carcass on a half-eaten pile of brown rice. I bussed it to the garbage receptacle; then I bussed my own. I’d had more questions for her, but I let them go, mainly because my most pressing questions were for Ric.

  “If Ellie didn’t need to see the cutting, then why did he ‘borrow’ it from Matt?” I mumbled to myself as I left the Terrace Café. “And why in heaven’s name did he lie about it to me?”

  Thirteen

  I didn’t have to search long to regroup with Matt’s mother. She was standing near the administration building between the two lotus-filled reflecting pools, gazing up at the Palm House where Ellie had held the reception for her perfect wedding.

  “Ready to go, Madame?”

  “You know, this little Crystal Palace would be an exquisite setting for the Theater League’s next fundraiser.”

  “Think so?”

  “It’s wheelchair accessible, the restrooms are clean and convenient, and the people at the Visitor’s Center told me the local caterers are quite good.”

  “Really...”

  “You know, thanks to our donors, five thousand inner-city schoolchildren were able to experience live theater for the first time last year. And this year, we hope to double that amount.”

  “That’s nice...”

  She took a closer look at me. “Are you all right, Clare? Did you have a pleasant visit with your old friend?”

  “No.”

  Madame’s eyebrows arched. “Why not?”

  “Because, from what I just learned, I think Matt may have put us in a precarious position.”

  “My goodness!” Madame’s hand flew to cover her mouth. “Does your friend know that Breanne Summour person?”

  Oh, for pity’s sake. “No, Madame. Matt’s love life is not what’s putting us in a precarious position. His business deal is.”

  “Which business deal? You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “The Gostwick Estate Decaf deal. There are a lot of issues that Matt’s been keeping from me, and I think from you, too.”

  “Is that so? Then you’d better enlighten me. That boy’s kept me in the dark so much, I swear chanterelles are growing out of my ears.”

  “Now that’s a surreal image.”

  “Tell me the truth, Clare. Are you investigating something again? Because if you are—”

  “I know. I know.”

  “I want in.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  I was about to spill everything, starting with the bizarre mugging with the prerecorded message, when I noticed an elderly couple strolling in our direction. “Come on,” I grabbed Madame’s elbow. “Let’s go to the car. I don’t think we should have this discussion in public...”

  Fifteen minutes later, I was wrapping up the delightful tale of Ric’s mugging, the smuggled hybrid cutting, the plant certification issues, and possible biopiracy charges. I was just getting to Ellie’s secret pregnancy when I noticed the woman herself striding purposefully onto the parking lot’s asphalt.

  “Look,” I said, pointing. “There’s Ellie now.”

  Madame and I were sitting in my Honda. The doors were closed, the windows half open to keep the interior from getting too warm in the sun.

  “What is she doing out here?” Madame asked. “Didn’t you just say she had to go back to work?”

  “Yes...”

  We both fell silent as we watched her unlock a green paneled van and disappear inside.

  “Perhaps she’s retrieving something from that van,” Madame speculated. “Or maybe she’s going to drive somewhere for a meeting?”

  “Maybe...” I expected the van to start up, but it never did. After about ten minutes, the van’s door opened again, and Ellie emerged.

  “She’s changed!” Madame noted.

  “Yes, I see...”

  She’d dumped her forest ranger style uniform, replacing it with an outfit decidedly more feminine. Her loose slacks had been exchanged for a very short skirt; her boxy zipper jacket for a tight-fitting, cleavage-baring sweater. A dusty rose wrap was draped over her arm, and her manicured feet clicked across the parking lot on high-heeled sandals.

  No longer the dignified Garden curator, Ellie was now Pretty in Pink.

  Madame shook her head and murmured a series of regretful sounding tisk, tisk, tisks.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Strawberry blondes should never wear that color. What was she thinking?”

  “I don’t know, maybe that it worked for Molly Ringwald twenty years ago.”

  “Who?”

  “Women pushing forty often have these jejune moments of fashion misjudgment, Madame. Take it from me, I know.”

  “But why?” Madame asked.

  “Crow’s feet, thickening thighs, those first threads of gray—”

  “No, dear! Why did your friend change her clothes?”

  “Oh, that? I have no idea.”

  I’d already assumed, since Ellie hadn’t started up the van and driven away, that she was going to walk right back into the Garden. But she didn’t.

  Madame pointed. “It appears she’s heading toward that Town Car.”

  A dark four-door sedan sat idling near the parking lot gate, a type of vehicle that car services used.

  Although yellow cabs constantly prowled the Manhattan streets, they were practically nonexistent in New York’s other four boroughs, so I wouldn’t have thought Ellie’s hiring a car service was particularly suspicious—except for the fact that Ellie already had her own set of wheels and wasn’t using them.

  Ellie approached the Town Car and climbed inside, but the sedan didn’t take off right away. As it continued to idle, I noticed something else, or rather someone else. The Asian man, who’d barged into Ellie’s exhibit, was now swiftly crossing the parking lot.

  “That’s funny,” I murmured. “Where’s he going in such a hurry?”

  “Where’s who—”

  “Do you see that man?” I pointed to the middle-aged Asian man in the silver-blue track suit.

  “Yes, I see him,” Madame said.

  We watched as the man climbed into a black SUV.

  “What about him?” Madame pressed.

  “I think it’s a little coincidental that he’s leaving at the exact same time as Ellie.”

  “Why? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know who he is,” I said, “but he blatantly ignored a ‘staff only’ sign to inspect Ellie’s Horticulture of Coffee exhibit while I was talking to her.”

  “Didn’t she throw him out?”

  “She politely asked him to leave. He ignored her. Or didn’t understand her. Frankly, I thought he was playing possum, but Ellie was worried he might be a Garden member, and she didn’t want to offend him, so she let him look around.”

  “Well, maybe he is a member, dear. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that he’s leaving at the same time she is.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  The Asian man started up his SUV and pulled out of his parking space. As he drove it toward the parking lot exit, I started my own car and followed.

  By now, Ellie’s Town Car was taking off. The sedan turned left onto Washington Avenue. The Asian man’s black SUV turned left, too. So that’s what I did.

  “Can you see Ellie’s hired car?” Madame asked, her voice a littl
e impatient.

  “Not around that big SUV, I can’t.”

  “Darn these ubiquitous all-terrain rollover hazards!” Madame wailed. “Monstrosities like this one have been crowding the New York streets for years now, and I can’t for the life of me understand why—”

  “A lot of people like the—”

  “I’ve trekked Central America in my prime. I’ve visited high altitude farms in North Africa and Indonesia. I’ve ascended Machu Picchu. Those perilous, backwater, mud road topographies were what these four-wheel drive vehicles were invented for—not Park and Madison avenues!”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “What’s the most challenging terrain these gas-guzzlers encounter? Tell me that? A slippery bridge surface followed by a pothole?!”

  “Take it easy. We’re just taking a little drive. No need to get stressed.”

  “But behind this man’s big SUV, you can’t even see Ellie’s Town Car. And I believe you’re following the wrong vehicle. I think you need to get around this man’s and tail Ellie’s hired car.”

  “Tell you what... if Ellie’s driver turns one way and this man’s SUV turns the other, then we’ll go with Ellie, okay?”

  “Will you even notice a turn like that?” Madame asked. “I thought the traffic was quite heavy on Flatbush Avenue coming in.”

  “Then why don’t you keep your eyes open, too. Between us, we should be able to figure this out and not lose her.”

  With Madame so skeptical about the Asian man in the SUV, I decided that she was probably right. Any moment now, I expected him to peel off and head in a different direction than Ellie’s car. But he never did. When Ellie’s Town Car made a left, so did the black SUV.

  Ahead of us now was the majestic Brooklyn Art Museum, rising like a beaux arts sentry over the congested traffic of Eastern Parkway. The Museum, designed by Stanford White, was part of a complex of nineteenth-century parks and gardens that included the Botanic Gardens we’d just left as well as nearby Prospect Park—a 500 acre area of land, sculpted into fields, woods, lakes, and trails by the landscape designers Olmsted and Vaux, the same ingenious pair who’d created Manhattan’s world-renowned Central Park.

  Eastern Parkway flowed us into Grand Army Plaza, a busy traffic circle dominated by the central branch building of Brooklyn’s Public Library (one of the first libraries that allowed readers to browse). I remember one of my old professors calling the architecture a triumph of context. The smooth, towering facade was created to resemble an open book, with the spine on the Plaza and the building’s two wings spreading like pages onto Eastern Parkway and Flatbush Avenue, two of the three spokes of Grand Army’s wheel. Prospect Park West was the third spoke, but I didn’t know which direction the vehicles in front of me were going to turn.

  Sweat broke out on my palms as I followed the SUV around the whooshing spin-cycle of vehicles. While I was living in New Jersey, I’d driven every day. Now that I was a fulltime Manhattan resident again, my car sat in a garage while I mainly got around by subway, bus, or taxi, so I was pretty well out of practice putting pedal to the metal. On the other hand, I’d never liked traffic circles. I’d always end up going around and around, as if I were trapped on some out-of-control carousel, and I had to gather the nerve to jump off.

  At the moment, I didn’t have the luxury of going around more than once or I’d lose my quarry. Vans, trucks, buses, and cars were zooming by in lanes on my left and right. Signs announced the upcoming turnoffs, and it was difficult to keep my eye on the Town Car, the SUV, and the rest of the traffic.

  “Madame!”

  “Yes?”

  “Make sure you watch for any sign of Ellie’s Town Car peeling off the circle and taking a turn, okay? My eyes are still on the SUV in front of us.”

  “Okay!”

  “I’m anticipating a right onto Flatbush, by the way.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the way we came in. It’s a straight shot right up Flatbush to the Manhattan Bridge crossing, and I’m betting Ellie’s destination is Manhattan. Here it comes...” I began to swerve the wheel, moving into the turning lane, and then—

  Oh, crap... “They’re not turning!”

  “Stay in the circle! Stay in the circle!” Madame cried, her wrinkled hands practically lunging for the wheel.

  I swerved back to my original lane and an immense, white SUV behind me blew his horn. I glanced in my rear view. The man driving was cursing at me, one hand on the wheel, another holding a cell phone to his ear, which was completely illegal and reckless, thank you very much!

  “Someone should tell that guy ‘hands free’ is the law of the land now!” I cried.

  “Eyes ahead! Don’t try to turn before they do,” Madame warned.

  “Okay, okay! I was just anticipating—”

  “Don’t anticipate!”

  The black SUV kept going. It was still following Ellie’s Town Car. A few seconds later, Madame started shouting. “She’s turning now! The Town Car’s turning!”

  “So is the SUV!” I shouted back.

  Both vehicles had left the Plaza and were heading for Union Street.

  “Union Street?” I murmured, continuing to trail the sports utility vehicle. “Now why does that sound familiar?”

  We drove a few blocks, then a red light up ahead halted our progress for a few minutes.

  “I’m not too familiar with this borough,” Madame said, glancing at the rows of beautifully restored brownstones on both sides of us. “How often have you been here?”

  “Quite a few times. Matt’s been renting a storage warehouse not far from here.”

  “I remember coming to Brooklyn when Matt was very young,” Madame’s eyes took on that faraway look again. “Antonio took us to Coney Island. The park was a madhouse, of course, since we went on a sunny Saturday afternoon, Matt did so love the rides—”

  My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. If Madame went down memory lane now, I’d lose Ellie for sure!

  “Coney Island’s many miles away,” I pointedly interrupted. “It’s on the south end of the borough, on the Atlantic, probably over forty-five minutes away from where we are now.”

  “And where are we now exactly?”

  “Park Slope.”

  Brooklyn was home to at least ninety different neighborhoods and two hundred nationalities, many of whom had created ethnic enclaves (not unlike Manhattan’s Chinatown or the nearly vanished Little Italy). Brooklyn’s more recent immigrants—from the Caribbean, Middle East, and former Soviet Union—had brought cultural color to many of the borough’s streets with native restaurants, festivals, and specialty groceries. In this upscale Brooklyn area, however, the overriding heritage appeared to be that of my own Village neighborhood: Transplanted Yuppie-Hipster (“Yupster” was the current pop-sociological term, Young Urban Professional Hipster). In fact, the area had so many relocated writers, editors, academics, and lawyers, Mike Quinn once joked to me that he’d blinked one day and realized Manhattan’s Upper West Side had teleported half its residents to his borough.

  The red light changed to green, and we moved forward. We were now crossing Seventh Avenue, the main shopping area for the North Slope (the northern end of Park Slope), which boasted the sort of bistros, restaurants, and boutiques typically seen in Manhattan’s trendier neighborhoods.

  “We’re still close to the city,” I mentioned for Madame, “certainly less than thirty minutes from the Manhattan crossings.”

  “Well, you know what they say these days about real estate,” Madame noted, “anything within a half-hour commute to Manhattan, is Manhattan. I have an acquaintance in Brooklyn Heights, near the promenade—she tells me her brownstone’s been valued as high as a Chelsea townhouse.”

  Brownstone... my memory kicked in, and I suddenly knew why Union Street sounded so familiar. It was Mike Quinn’s old street address. I’d never visited him in Brooklyn, but one slow afternoon while I was doing schedules in my office, I took a break and regressed into te
enage crush mode to find his home by satellite on the Web.

  I knew he was melancholy over selling the place, which wasn’t here in Park Slope, but two neighborhoods over in Carroll Gardens. Since his wife wanted the divorce, and they jointly owned the property, he was stuck. Apparently, the building was worth so much now (easily five times the value of their original purchase price fifteen years before), he couldn’t afford to buy her out, but the good news was that he’d be getting a nice chunk of change from his share of the sale.

  “Union is definitely a cross street,” I told Madame, thinking back to that Web satellite map I’d consulted. “I’m sure we’re heading West.”

  “Toward the East River?”

  “Yes.”

  The black SUV was still rolling forward, right behind Ellie’s Town Car. And I followed them for a few more minutes. We were now leaving the restored brownstones of Park Slope and entering the far less upscale neighborhood of Gowanus.

  Madame pursed her lips as she took in the blighted area of rundown clapboard row houses tucked between dead factories and a network of abandoned shipyard waterways.

  “Are those canals?” she said, gawking down one of the channels of water as we crossed the narrow Union Street bridge.

  “You’re kidding? You’ve never heard of the Gowanus canal debate?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve heard about that, but I didn’t realize they were actually canals...”

  Gowanus, with its maze of narrow waterways, once served as a working extension of the nearby shipyard. When the ports shut down, the heavy industry left, and this neighborhood of factories and warehouses became an urban eyesore. Then artists started moving in, taking over and transforming the large spaces. A former soap factory, for instance, had been converted into a site for a community arts organization.

  In more recent years, the area was “upzoned” to allow for the construction of residential buildings. Now two new towers were standing, overlooking the once stinky canals (which had since been cleaned up). A Whole Foods store was about to open, and major developers were buzzing about turning the entire area into a “Little Venice,” complete with the sort of Yupster restaurants and upscale rents we’d just left behind in the North Slope.