Decaffeinated Corpse cm-5

by Клео Коул

“Is that what you call it?”

  “Yes, he had this costume for me, you know? I showed up here, and didn’t have one, but Neils... good man... he presented me with a package and voila! Inside was my Zorro... but... where is our lovely hostess?” Ric said loudly. “I really ought to give her a kiss. You know, when Monika and I first met? It was at a party like this. I was Zorro and I kissed her, and she never forgot me. Besides... if I don’t find her, I may have to spend the night alone, and I wouldn’t want to do that... my old hotel room... it’s a crime scene now...”

  Ric was beginning to attract attention. He lurched forward, bumping into a woman dressed as Cleopatra. I reached out to steady him and he pulled away; I was nearly jerked off my too-high heels. Ric caught me in his arms, held me close—a little too close. When I looked up, he moved to kiss me. I turned my head and felt Ric’s sour breath on me as he nuzzled my throat. I laughed it off, as if his mauling was some sort of amusing prank. Gently but firmly, I pushed him away.

  “I really don’t believe you hurt Ellie, Ric. At first, I thought it might have been her husband, and then maybe Carlos Hernandez, but—”

  “I hope Hernandez had something to do with Ellie’s murder,” Ric said.

  “Why?”

  “Because...” Ric’s eyes glazed a bit. “Because then I’ve avenged her.”

  I blinked a moment, trying to comprehend the implications of what Ric had just said. I remembered the robot voice toy in my bag. I had planned to show it to a sober Ric, asking if it sounded like the voice he’d heard the night of the mugging. Now I fumbled with my bag, curled my fingers around one of the robot voice discs. But I didn’t pull it out. Instead, I simply pressed record.

  “What did you say about Hernandez?”

  Ric’s expression darkened. “I said I hope the son of a bitch did have something to do with Ellie’s death, because if he did, then she’s avenged—”

  “You’re talking about cosmic justice?” I asked.

  “Real justice, Clare. You like to talk about morality, but look at the world we live in. Hernandez’s family and that gangster government of theirs, they stole my country, they took my family’s land. We went into exile, started over. But even here in America they hound me... I tried to be gracious, accept the inevitable, the way things are. Then that bastard Carlos followed me out to the balcony, demanding more.”

  Ric’s eyes met mine. For a moment I was afraid he’d realized what he’d been saying and pull back. But Ric didn’t care—or he was so eaten up by it all, he had to tell someone.

  “He tried to extort money from me, Clare. That’s why he came without a bodyguard. He wanted no witnesses from his entourage and that was his mistake.”

  “His mistake?”

  “The bastard wanted to be cut in. Hernandez knew there were no real legal means for his country to easily take my hybrid, so he threatened me. Unless I quietly paid half the profits on my new hybrid’s earnings to him personally, he would see that the rights to my plant were tied up in international courts for decades. That was his leverage. By the time my plant was free again, other inventors would surely beat me to the marketplace. But I refused to give in to his blackmail. I spat in his face, and he attacked me. I couldn’t take his abuse anymore, so I... I dealt with the problem. I finally fought back. I punched him hard, and he went over the balcony.”

  Near the end of his tirade, Ric’s voice seemed to fade. Suddenly pale, he swayed on his feet.

  “I’m going to the men’s room...” he said in Spanish, and he stumbled off toward a doorway near the bar. I almost followed, but decided to check the robot voice recording instead. There was a three minute memory limit, but I’d gotten the entire confession on the digital recording. Even if the evidence wasn’t admissible in court, if the detective in charge of the Hernandez murder heard the recording, they would let Matt off the hook for good.

  I had to find Matt and tell him. I turned to begin my search when I noticed Monika Van Doorn finally making her grand entrance. Dressed as a regal Marie Antoinette, she descended the carpeted staircase on ribboned pumps. Bedecked in an elaborate, pearl-trimmed gown, Monika’s expression was haughty under a towering, white powdered wig. In one raised hand she fluttered an ornate oriental fan. It was quite an entrance, and many of the guests applauded as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  I continued searching for Matt. Finally I saw Zorro emerge from the crowd, pushing his way toward Marie Antoinette. For a moment I thought it was Ric, since he’d been dressed as Zorro, too. But this man’s stride was steady—too steady for someone who had been so drunk only a few moments before.

  “So Matt’s making his move,” I whispered, silently wishing him luck. I knew what happened in the next few minutes might very well determine the future of the Village Blend. From my angle, I could only see Matt’s broad back under his flowing Zorro cape. I wondered how he was going to broach the subject of the fraudulent beans. He must have started out friendly, because Monika turned and greeted him with a smile. That’s when I saw the gun.

  Zorro’s hand pulled the weapon out from under his cape. Three cracks came in quick succession. Monika was thrown backwards, hitting the steps with the first shot. The second and third bullets struck her sprawled body. She must have died quickly because she didn’t even raise her arms in defense.

  As the echo of the shots faded, Zorro spun around and fired another shot into the ceiling. The screams of the crowd were deafening. Everyone (including yours truly) dived for the floor.

  Zorro raced across the cowering mass of bodies, heading right for a door near the bar. I realized it was the same doorway that Ric had stumbled through in his Zorro costume a few minutes before!

  But the gun-toting Zorro didn’t make it. Another Zorro, swathed in black, dived from the second floor balcony, and landed right on top of the shooter. Both men tumbled to the ground. Tables spilled over and partygoers scattered while the two men wrestled on the linoleum.

  I scrambled to my feet and raced to the middle of the restaurant, or tried to. I was fighting against a sea of costumed guests, all of them moving in the opposite direction. Finally I got a good look at the two Zorros struggling on the floor. One clutched a .38, the other held the first one’s arm and was trying to shake the weapon from his grip.

  The gun boomed again, shattering a picture window to my right. The glass crashed to the floor and someone cried out. On the sidewalk outside the restaurant, people shouted and screamed.

  Suddenly, the armed Zorro broke free. Using his gun, he pistol-whipped the other Zorro, who clawed at the mask of his armed opponent. The mask was ripped away, and his identity finally exposed.

  Neils Van Doorn waved his gun at the partygoers. “Stay back!” he cried as he made his way to the shattered ground floor window. Leveling his gun at the restaurant crowd, Van Doorn backed out through the broken frame. He was seconds away from escaping into the chaos of the Village Halloween Parade crowd.

  He never even noticed Detective Mike Quinn coming up behind him—not until Mike’s seasoned grip took hold of the Dutchman’s wrist and twisted it behind his back. Neils howled and doubled over. The .38 tumbled to the sidewalk.

  “You’re under arrest for murder,” Mike said.

  At that moment two uniformed officers arrived to help Mike cuff the man. Sirens wailed nearby. Behind me, I heard a familiar groan and rushed to Matt’s side. He sat up, yanked the mask off his face with his left hand. His eye was swollen and a welt marred his cheek from the pistol-whipping he’d received.

  “Your face!” I cried.

  “It’s my arm that’s wrecked. I would have beaten the guy if I hadn’t broken it when I did my swan dive.” Matt clutched his right arm with his left, hugged it close to his body. “Some swashbuckler I turned out to be. I couldn’t even save Monika’s life. But I thought... if Neils was gunning for anyone, it would have been Ric.”

  Suddenly Matt tried to rise. “I still have to talk to Ric. Where is he?”

  “He’s probably uncon
scious in the bathroom.” I told Matt about the talk I’d had with his old friend, and the recording I’d made. “Ric was drunker than I’d ever seen him, and I’m guessing Neils slipped him some kind of a Mickey. Grain alcohol in his cocktail, or maybe a nice date-rape drug. Either way, Ric was loopy and way too chatty. Then he got sick and ran to the men’s room—”

  I pointed to the doorway next to the bar. “That doorway is exactly where Neils was going. I’m guessing he was going to plant the gun on Ric, make it look like Zorro Gostwick killed his wife. Then Neils would slip back into the chaos of the party, wearing his pirate gear and looking innocent.”

  Beads of sweat dewed Matt’s upper lip. The shock was wearing off, and the pain setting in. “What about Ellie?” he asked.

  “I’ll bet it was Neils again, looking for Ric’s cutting. Neils was already pawning his expensive things, so Monika must have cut him off financially. He was probably desperate to make his own fortune. Stealing and selling that cutting to Carlos Hernandez or someone like him would have gotten it for him. But when Neils broke into Ric’s hotel room, looking for the cutting, Ellie was there. You yourself told me that Ellie and Ric had made love that afternoon—”

  “I see where you’re going,” Matt said. “When Neils kept failing at getting his hands on the cutting, he resorted to securing a fortune the old fashioned way—by murdering his rich, cheating wife and inheriting everything before she could dump him.”

  “Exactly.”

  Mike Quinn appeared a moment later. “You were right, Clare,” he told me.

  I met his blue eyes. “I thought you said you didn’t have the resources to follow Neils Van Doorn?”

  “We don’t. But I decided to follow Van Doorn during my off-duty hours. See what the guy was up to. I figured you had something on him, so...”

  I blinked, genuinely flattered. I was about to tell him so, too, but he was glancing in another direction, toward the staircase. “I only regret I couldn’t prevent the murder of Mrs. Van Doorn,” he said. “Her doorman wouldn’t let me into her party. I had no costume or invitation. The sidewalk outside was the best I could do.”

  While we spoke, more uniformed police officers arrived. I saw two of them escorting a stumbling Zorro out of the men’s room.

  “Hey, Mike! Look what we found. Another Zorro!”

  “That’s Ric Gostwick,” I told Mike. “But before you cut him loose I think you’d better listen to this...” I pulled out the robot voice toy and handed it over.

  “You’re not kidding?” Mike asked, looking at the cheap plastic recorder.

  “I wish I were...” I glanced at Ric. On many levels, my heart went out to him. “But in this country, we don’t exact justice at the top of twenty-sixth floor balconies. And as trying as Matt can be, I’d really like his name off that Midtown detective’s ‘persons of interest’ list.”

  Mike nodded. “I think you missed your calling, Cosi.”

  “Is that right?”

  “With your nerve, you should have been a cop, a thief, or a demolitions expert.”

  “Well, I’m too moral to become a thief, I’m too old to get into the police academy, and I’ve got more interest in working with flavor profiles than plastique. Guess it’ll have to stay a hobby.”

  “Case by case, then?”

  With everything that had happened, it felt wrong to smile, but a part of me was glad I’d finally done something right.

  “Yeah, Mike,” I said. “Like I tell my Blend trainees. ‘One customer at a time.’ ”

  Epilogue

  “What’s that?” I asked Mike Quinn a week later.

  It was early evening, a slow night, and Mike walked into my coffeehouse, ordering up his regular, as usual. When I put the double-tall latte on the counter, however, he pulled out an unusual looking piece of paper and dangled it right in front of my nose.

  “This is a BOLO, Cosi. And it’s got your name on it, and your license plate number.”

  “What is it?”

  “A ‘be on the lookout’—for your red Honda.”

  “It’s not a traffic summons?”

  “Someone driving your car went through a dead stop red light in Brooklyn last week, sped recklessly down Court Street, refused to pull over, and evaded a police chase. So, please tell me that your car was stolen.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “You’re guilty of all this?”

  “I can explain.”

  Mike reached behind him, pulled out his handcuffs, and slapped them down on the coffee bar. “These would be going around your wrists if I hadn’t seen this issued last week and claimed it for follow up.”

  “You’re burying the violation?”

  “You’re lucky you live in my precinct. I’ll talk to the Brooklyn officer who’s charging you, get him to reduce it to a traffic ticket. But I’m warning you right now, you’re going to owe me.”

  “Well, I could give you free lattes for a month, but I don’t know, Mike...” I picked up the handcuffs. “It seems to me I could do a whole lot worse than having you use these on me.”

  Mike smiled—a rare occurrence. “I told you, Cosi. You owe me. But the cuffs are Stage Five.”

  “And where are we?”

  He plucked the cuffs from my hands and put them back on his belt. “Stage One.”

  “Which is?”

  “Dinner and a movie.”

  My eyes widened. It was the first real date he’d ever proposed. “When?”

  “How about every Saturday night for the foreseeable future?”

  I laughed. “What if there are no good movies playing?” The detective took a long, satisfying sip of his latte. “I think we’ll come up with something else to occupy our time. Don’t you?”

  “Oh, sure, let’s see...” I scratched my head. “There’s Yahtzee, Scrabble, Crazy 8s...”

  Mike glanced around the coffee bar. “So where’s Zorro?”

  “Uptown. His girlfriend’s taken him in. Since his arm’s in a cast, she’s having a high time playing nursemaid. Believe me, he’s living like a prince. I actually think they’re getting serious... and speaking of serious. Any word yet from the district attorney’s office?”

  Mike nodded. “No plea deal. Van Doorn’s lawyered up pretty well, and he doesn’t want to admit his guilt, so he’s going all the way to trial. But old Neils is going to have a rough time of it. We’ve got DNA evidence nailing him to Ellie’s murder, a security camera showing him leaving the V Hotel near the time of death, not to mention all those witnesses to the Halloween shooting of his wife. There’s more than enough for a conviction on something... Gostwick, as you know, was another story.”

  “I know...”

  In the end, Ric wasn’t a stone-cold sociopath. He may have been a serial cheater, but he didn’t really want to see his oldest friend sent up for a murder he didn’t commit. When the police played him my recording, Ric officially confessed. The DA worked out a manslaughter charge of eight years, and he would likely get out in four or less for good behavior.

  As for his magic beans, they were contractually in the possession of the Village Blend. If I let Matt’s kiosks have them all, which I intended to, the Gostwick Estate Reserve Decaf would easily last the year. We’d have a good chance of turning those floundering kiosks around... and, in the meantime, Matt already found a horticultural consultant for Ric’s family, to help them keep the hybrid crops producing—Norbert Usher.

  Ellie’s young assistant at the Botanic Garden was quite eager and knowledgeable, as it turned out, and he’d learned plenty from working with Ellie and Ric over the last eight months. The Gostwick family was only too happy to have him come down to Brazil and work in their nursery and on their farm.

  The Dutch International contract for those fake Gostwick Estate decaffeinated beans was voided, and Matt was going to see what he could do to help Ric’s family expand legitimately, albeit slowly.

  Ric admitted that his fraud scheme with the late Monika Van Doorn’s company was a way for hi
m to purchase more land and quickly expand his crops. He’d been a little too eager to restore his family’s fortune to what it once had been... but all of that was behind us now.

  As for my baristas, things were working out well for them, too, although not for me. Gardner had gotten so many solo piano gigs from his single appearance at the Beekman that I was now super short-staffed, and working 24/7 while still looking for good trainee baristas.

  Meanwhile, Dante was very close to getting a second gallery show, Esther was after me to hold a Poetry Slam night at the Blend, and Tucker was auditioning for an Off-Off-Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Earnest in the Twenty-First Century... or, at least, that was the production’s working title.

  Joy and I were back on civil terms. We agreed to call a truce in our battle over Tommy Keitel. I told Joy (again) that I loved her, and I didn’t want to see her hurt. She reiterated her intention to continue her relationship with fiftysomething Tommy, although she did at least acknowledge my worries, and (in what I saw as an encouraging sign of growing maturity) said she was glad to know I’d be there to catch her if she ever fell. And we’d left it at that.

  All in all, it had been a rather trying week, and I figured I’d earned a coffee break. Reaching toward the burr grinder, my hand shifted to the one with the green tape. A decaffeinated espresso actually sounded like a nice, calming alternative for the night.

  I took a seat beside Mike at the bar. “So are you about ready to accept some help furnishing that apartment of yours?”

  “Yeah... that would be nice. The mattress on the floor currently has all the charm of Sing-Sing solitary.”

  “I’ll tell you what else would be nice.”

  “What?”

  I turned on my stool, reached my hands around his waist, grabbed the cuffs again. “Jumping forward on a few of your ‘stages’...”

  “Oh, no, Cosi. You’re on my watch now...” He pulled my wrists away from his belt, repositioning them around his neck. “And I’m a procedures kind of guy. I don’t skip stages. That’s what I tell my rookies, you know?”