Decaffeinated Corpse cm-5

by Клео Коул

  “But what is she doing here at this party?” I asked. “This event is supposed to be for international press or potential Blend clients, not other coffee distributors. Did you invite her, Madame?”

  “Me? Good heavens, no.” She lowered her voice. “The truth is, I enjoyed the company of her father. He was a real gentleman, but Monika... how shall I put it? When the woman’s not acting like a total snob, she’s talking like a total—”

  Madame was about to continue when we were interrupted by an explosion of activity near the elevators. We both heard a loud shout over the noise in the room.

  “You can leave on your own, or I’ll gladly throw you out of this building myself!”

  The voice belonged to Matt, and he sounded furious.

  Eighteen

  “I better see what’s wrong,” I told Madame.

  I tried to cross the room, but it was slow going. The guests were packing the place by now, and I was too short to see over most of them.

  “Did you hear me?!” Matt shouted.

  “Get your hands off me,” another man loudly replied, the accent sounding Spanish. “Or I swear to you... !”

  “Are you threatening me?!” Matt again.

  I still couldn’t see anything as I continued to squeeze through the mob. “Excuse me! Pardon me!”

  Finally, I broke through the human wall. I saw my ex-husband facing off with a man half his age. The stranger had a thick moustache, curly black hair that just touched his ears, and an athletic build that rivaled Matt’s. I didn’t recognize the stranger, and apparently someone behind me didn’t, either, because I heard a woman ask, “Who is that?”

  “That’s Carlos Hernandez,” another woman replied.

  “Who?” I turned to find two young women, one a brunette, the other a redhead, both dressed in business suits. They looked like members of the invited press. “Does one of you know that man?” I asked them.

  “Not personally,” the brunette replied. “His picture was in ‘Page Six’ last week. Carlos Hernandez is the nephew of Victor Hernandez. You know, the socialist dictator of Costa Gravas?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of him,” I assured her. “So why was his picture in the paper? I didn’t see the Post last week.”

  “He’s here as part of a UN delegation. He joined in a coalition with the new socialist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia to pass a resolution opposed by the United States, but the paper was more interested in covering his extracurricular activities.”

  “His what?”

  “He’s here on his government’s dime, but he spent two hundred thousand dollars celebrating the resolution’s passage in a New York City strip club.”

  Matt’s voice was still loud and angry. And Carlos Hernandez was still refusing to leave. He tried to step around Matt, but my ex moved quickly to block the man. Hernandez muttered something under his breath. I couldn’t hear the words, but Matteo did and he became even angrier.

  “You’ve got nerve showing up here!” Matt’s face was flushed, the tendons quivering on his tanned neck. “You and your uncle are nothing but glorified thugs! You stole the Gostwicks’ plantation—land that family’s farmed for generations! You took it away by force, without a penny of remuneration!”

  Oh, this is peachy, I thought. My ex was about to cause an international incident within spitting distance of the UN.

  I looked around for some help. Only then did I notice Tucker standing right beside me. I pleaded with my eyes for him to step in and end the stalemate, but Tuck didn’t get the message. He just kept staring at the bickering men with fascinated glee.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” he said. “A pair of fiery Latins in designer suits. It looks like an outtake from Scarface!”

  “No, Tuck,” I mumbled. “It looks like we’ve got Der real Kommissar in town.”

  Madame appeared just then. She was moving toward Matt from one direction. Breanne was closing in from another. The two women’s eyes met and they both stopped dead in their tracks, just short of their goal.

  I guess that leaves little old me.

  If I didn’t step in, Matt was going to flatten this guy— unless Hernandez flattened Matt first. Either way, it was a lose-lose situation for my ex because Hernandez would certainly have diplomatic immunity. That realization spurred me forward. If nobody else was going to stop this, then I would!

  I launched myself out of the crowd—only to be jostled aside as Federico Gostwick pushed by me.

  “Back away, Matteo,” Ric warned, stepping up to face Hernandez.

  “Oh, god,” I whispered, and held my breath. A silence fell over the room. Everyone in the know wondered what Ric Gostwick would do to the nephew of the man who’d exiled his family and destroyed their legacy.

  “Let me handle this, my friend,” Ric told Matt. His tone actually sounded calm and reasonable.

  The tendons in Matt’s neck continued to twitch, but he didn’t move. A tense moment passed. Finally, Matt stepped away.

  I expected him to stick around, but he didn’t. Pushing past Hernandez, he stormed towards the stairwell door, which I knew would take him directly down one flight to the restaurant’s kitchen.

  “First, let me apologize for my friend’s reaction,” Ric said to Hernandez. “Matteo has only my best interests at heart.”

  Ric scanned the faces in the room. When he spoke again, his voice was loud enough for everyone to hear. “Let me also say that everyone is welcome to this tasting—” He turned back to Hernandez. “Most especially a representative of the nation that was once my home, and a land I still love. In fact, Mr. Hernandez might actually benefit from witnessing the progress free men achieve when they are permitted to keep the results of their labor.”

  A smattering of applause greeted Ric’s words. He nodded, accepting the support. Then he placed his hand on Carlos Hernandez’s shoulder. “Please enjoy the tasting.”

  As Ric personally led Hernandez into the restaurant, I found Gardner Evans. “Do me a huge favor, Gardner?”

  “What’s that, Clare?”

  I took his tray from him and pointed to the grand piano at the side of the room. “Play something.”

  “Sure... Anything in particular?”

  “Upbeat.”

  He smiled. “I’ve got just the tune for this crowd.” Gardner sat down and began playing jazz riffs on the song “Java Jive.”

  The tension was finally broken, and the room’s buzz of conversations resumed. A few minutes later, Ric found me. “Help me out, love,” he whispered, pulling me close. “Ellie hasn’t arrived yet and we can’t wait any longer. Find Matt. Tell him I’ll need his help during the presentation.”

  “All right.”

  Ric released me, and I moved through the crowd, making a beeline for the door to the stairs. I found Matt in the stairwell, on the damned cell phone again. I folded my arms and waited for the conversation to end. I could tell Matt wanted privacy, but I refused to budge. After listening for a moment, he interrupted the speaker.

  “Look, I have to go. I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.” Obviously still boiling with anger, he closed the phone and glared at me.

  Hands on hips, I glared back. “Matt, for heaven’s sake, what’s gotten into you?”

  “Not now, Clare,” he snapped. Matt tried to brush past me, but this time I was the person doing the blocking.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong. This is your big night, yet you’ve been on the phone since you arrived. You hardly said hello to your mother, and you haven’t lifted a finger to help with this party. And then you instigate an international incident with a relative of a Latin American dictator? It’s crazy. Irrational.”

  “Clare, I—”

  “Do you want to get us all in trouble?”

  “I’m brokering a big deal, Clare. The timing is bad, but it can’t be helped.”

  “You’re brokering coffee now?”

  Matt shrugged and looked away. “Not everyone is i
n the same time zone.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “But I don’t have time to figure out what you’ve really been up to. You’re needed upstairs. Ellie Lassiter is a no-show, and Ric wants your help to begin the presentation.”

  Without another word, Matt climbed the steps. I watched his broad back rise then disappear through the heavy, metal door. With a sigh, I collapsed against the cold stone wall and massaged my throbbing head.

  A young sous chef from the room service staff appeared in the hallway. Noticing my distress, she asked if I wanted something to drink.

  “I could use an aspirin,” I replied.

  “No problem. Come on in.”

  I followed the girl into the crowded kitchen. We kept to the edges of the busy room, away from the ovens and grills.

  “Here,” she said, shaking two pills into my palm. Then she poured me a cool glass of a syrupy golden beverage to take with the medicine. “Apricot nectar,” she explained.

  She wasn’t much older than Joy, and she projected that same kind of sweetness I saw in my daughter, despite her pierced tongue and scarlet hair under a mesh net.

  She pointed to the apricot drink. “My grandmother swears by the stuff.”

  I knocked back the pills and the nectar, which actually did make me feel a little better. I thanked the girl and headed back upstairs, arriving just in time to help Tucker close the burgundy curtains that framed the plate glass windows. Ric wanted to block the stunning view of midtown skyscrapers so his audience would focus solely on his presentation.

  As Tucker and I brought the curtains together, I glanced outside. Rain showers were moving in over the city, and dark clouds were forming all around us. The omen wasn’t lost on me.

  Between Ellie abandoning Ric at the last minute and Matt causing a scene with a visiting dignitary, I had a dreadful premonition that the gathering clouds would bring more than one storm before the night was done.

  Nineteen

  “I’m sure everyone here knows that the market for decaffeinated coffee has exploded in the past few decades. One in five coffee consumers prefer it at least some of the time...”

  While Ric spoke, I oversaw the preparation of the French presses at the bar. The Gostwick Estate beans had been burred in the kitchen to spare the guests any unpleasant noise. Now my baristas were pouring steaming water over the grounds, sending the aroma of the rich, earthy decaffeinated beans through the crowd.

  “The decaffeination process was started in Germany over a century ago,” Ric continued. “Though effective, it is far from a perfect method.”

  Ric was a natural salesman. He moved around the room with ease, holding the attention of a jaded audience, most of whom had heard more than their share of presentations and sales pitches.

  “Refinements and new techniques have been made, but all of these technological processes—Swiss Water, Royal Select, the solvent method, or pressurized gas—rob the bean of its freshness and complexity, its pleasing gusto.” He stopped and grinned. “At my family’s estate in Brazil, I think we’ve discovered a better way.”

  Matt stepped forward, holding the cutting. The sprig had been planted in a mocha-colored ceramic pot filled with topsoil. It seemed like such a small thing, yet it had the potential to transform the coffee industry, not to mention put processing plants in Switzerland and Mexico out of business.

  “As you can see from this cutting, the hybrid I developed is not a typical arabica. I used another variety of the genus Coffea, crossbreeding and backcrossing with arabicas to create a wholly new, naturally decaffeinated variety of Coffea plant.”

  Men and women stepped forward to examine the cutting. “I don’t have to tell you what this breakthrough will mean. Without the intervening technological process, decaffeinated coffee will reach the market more quickly. For the consumer, that means decaffeinated coffee that is fresher, cheaper, and far superior to the products currently available.”

  While Ric spoke, my staff pressed the coffee and began to pour it into the Village Blend cups.

  “With approximately a two percent caffeine content— which is less than the amount of caffeine in average decaffeinated arabica, and far lower than decaffeinated robusta products—this hybrid bean already has been certified as a caffeine-free product.”

  Thanks to Tucker’s able choreography, my baristas moved with theatrical precision, fanning out into the crowd with their trays of cups, just as Ric’s sales pitch ended. “As for the taste? Please savor it now and judge for yourself.”

  The audience members accepted their samples, and I soon heard ohs, ahs, and a growing buzz of excitement. I wasn’t surprised. Ric had a superior product and most of the people in this room were discerning enough to appreciate it.

  Matt placed the cutting on a table in the center of the room. Ric stepped up to stand right next to it and spoke again. “The sample is here. Please feel free to take photos. I’ll be here with it, to answer any questions you may have.”

  And make damn sure it doesn’t disappear, I thought, especially since it didn’t take long for the first round of cups to disappear. With each new round, people seemed more impressed. I could tell by the astonished expression on the faces of many that Ric Gostwick’s hybrid was a genuine hit.

  Since this wasn’t a traditional cuptasting (i.e. the noisy slurping of pure, steeped coffee grinds, which were then spit out), we made sugar and cream available at the bar. Few guests used either.

  While the participants enjoyed their second or third cup, I sent Gardner back to the piano, then grabbed Esther to help me pass out the prepared press kits. They included photos and a history of the Gostwick Estate in Brazil, photographs of an actual shrub, the cultivated fields, rows of mature plants, along with close-ups of the cutting, the cherries, and contact information. I’d seen the package earlier and thought Ric and Matt had done a thorough job.

  “I know you all want to sample more after you leave here,” Ric said. “The good news is—you can. The first batch of my hybrid bean has already been shipped. You can sample it at the Village Blend here in New York City, and any Village Blend kiosk in the United States, Europe, or Canada. A new world of decaffeination is coming to the premium market in the next few weeks.”

  A smattering of applause greeted the news. I returned to the bar to continue helping with the coffee service. Tucker had transferred a third round of French pressed brew to insulated carafes, and I moved around the room with Esther, refilling cups.

  Along the way, I spied Joy. She looked lovely tonight with her hair smoothed into a grown-up French twist. Her makeup was a little heavier than usual, and the décolleté on her aquamarine dress was way too daring for my comfort level, but I said nothing. Why? Because I decided to at least try following Matt’s advice and start treating Joy like a grown up. If she chose to wear a plunging, borderline indiscreet neckline, that was her business, and I would keep my mouth shut about it.

  I was delighted that she’d come at all. And I wondered where Chef Tommy Keitel was. She’d told Matt that he was coming, but I didn’t see anyone close to her age around her, and I feared the new wunderkind chef had bowed out on my daughter at the last minute.

  With the press kits distributed, and Ric handling the questions while watching the cutting, everything seemed to be under control. Except Matteo, who was back to romancing his cell phone. I couldn’t believe it, but I spotted him in a secluded, corner booth with the thing pressed to his ear as he scribbled notes on a tiny pad.

  Too busy and weary to argue with him again, I returned to the bar to refill an empty carafe, and found Dante Silva standing behind Tucker.

  “Dante,” I said, “shouldn’t you be serving?”

  The young man ran his hand over his shaved scalp, like he was combing back hair that wasn’t there. “I can’t go out there, Ms. Cosi. He’ll see me.”

  “Who’ll see you?”

  “That guy, over there,” Dante said, suddenly looking trapped, hunted, desperate—a little like Java when I put
the little fur ball in a cage for a trip to the vet. “He works for the Times. Last week I met him at a gallery show. He said really great things about my work in the past. I... I kind of left him with the impression I was more successful than I am—”

  “You don’t want him to know you’re working as a barista?”

  Dante shook his head. “Can’t I work here behind the bar? Or help with something downstairs in the kitchen?”

  I sighed and looked at Tucker. “I hate to pull Gardner off the piano. The crowd’s responding well to him.”

  Tucker grabbed a tray. “I’m going!” he sang.

  Dante exhaled with relief. “Thanks Ms. Cosi—”

  “Dante, once and for all, will you please call me Clare? And you better not stay up here if you don’t want to be seen by that Arts reporter. Just go down to the kitchen and start packing up the grinders, okay?”

  “Sure, Ms.... Clare... thanks.”

  Dante disappeared and I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Joy! She gave me a hug and a peck on the cheek.

  “Looks like this new decaffeinated thing is a hit,” she gushed.

  I nodded, my gaze drifting to a young man lurking behind my daughter. Tall and rather shy, he was handsome and seemed very sweet. Standing next to him was an older man, maybe early fifties. He was attractive in a different way. With arresting blue eyes, a jutting chin, and salt-and-pepper hair, the man radiated confidence. He was casually dressed in an open sport shirt that revealed wiry muscles, a silver chain, and curling chest hair.

  “Mom, I want you to meet a friend of mine,” Joy announced breathlessly.

  I self-consciously wiped my damp hands on my apron, ready for a handshake from the young man at Joy’s side.

  “This is Chef Tommy Keitel.”

  I looked at the young man. He looked away. Then a strong hand wrapped around mine, pumped my arm.