Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse (A Cape Bay Cafe Mystery Book 1)

by Harper Lin

  Matty continued. “I’m going to meet Mike over at Dad’s house later this afternoon so he can take the coffeepot into evidence. He said there’s a good chance they won’t find anything, especially because we used it afterward, but they’ll give it a shot.”

  I took another sip of my coffee. “You don’t think that’s why the coffee tasted so bad, do you? Did Mike say what cyanide tastes like?”

  “Bitter almonds, apparently. But I’ve had coffee at my dad’s before. It was always pretty bad. I don’t know if it was the coffeemaker or the kind he bought, but I don’t think there was any way to redeem that stuff.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. The best technique can’t save a bad brewer and bad beans. I glanced at the autopsy report again. It was so hard to believe. Even when Mike had been asking us a million questions and taking pictures of the house, I didn’t ever really think something criminal had taken place. A heart attack or stroke just seemed like the most obvious culprits. And it had turned out to be a human culprit instead.

  Matty looked at the wrought-iron clock on the wall. “I better get going if I’m going to be on time to meet Mike.” He drained his coffee cup and set it back on the saucer. “Thanks for the coffee. Are you sure I can’t pay you for it?”

  “Absolutely not.” I closed the folder and slid it back across the table to Matty. “Thank you for letting me know about the autopsy.”

  “I needed to talk to someone about it, and I knew you wouldn’t say anything incredibly insensitive.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I’ve heard.”

  “Oh, I think I would. People have said some pretty awful stuff to me too. It’s like they don’t even think about what it sounds like to the person they’re talking to.”

  Matty picked up the folder and tapped it on the table. “Well, I’m sure once word about this gets out, there’ll be a whole new round of gossip.”

  “I’m sure there will.” Cape Bay was a small town and news, especially sordid news, traveled fast in any small town.

  Matty stood to leave. “Thanks again for the coffee.”

  “No problem,” I replied, standing also. I picked up our empty cups to take into the back to be washed. “Let me know if you hear anything else.”

  “Will do. See you later.”

  I gestured good-bye with one of the cups as he left, then I went back to work behind the counter.

  Chapter 6

  I WORKED until close that night. I’d found that I preferred to come in around lunchtime and work through the afternoon. I’d always been a bit of a night owl, so even if I got off work in the early afternoon, I’d end up staying up way too late. Then I’d be dragging when I opened the café at six. Sammy was a morning person, though, so it worked out for her to handle the morning shift.

  Right after Matty left, we got busy again as all the tourists came in off the beach and wanted to get something to eat or drink. One of the restaurants down the street had live music every night, so the evening crowd always had an atmosphere of gearing up for a party.

  The customers kept my mind off Matty and the medical examiner’s findings while I was at work, but once I got home and curled up on the couch with a book and a glass of red wine, my mind wandered back to our conversation. I was still in shock over what the autopsy report had said. The idea that someone had come into Mr. Cardosi’s house and put cyanide in his coffee was just unfathomable. Who was it? Why would they do such a thing? It must have been someone Mr. Cardosi knew if he let them get that close to him. But Matty had said that his dad didn’t have any real friends. On the other hand, Mrs. Collins had been pretty eager to get into the house. Maybe she wanted to see if she’d left any evidence behind? Maybe to dump and wash the contaminated coffee pot? It was a viable theory.

  I stopped myself. It was not a viable theory. It was ridiculous. And besides, what business was it of mine? I was a former public relations manager turned café owner and artisan barista, not a detective. Sure, I’d read a mystery novel or two (or twenty), but it wasn’t as though I was a professional or someone with any kind of background that would allow me to speculate on someone’s motives. Besides, the police were investigating. I went back to reading my book.

  On my second glass of wine, I started thinking that since I’d been the first one at the scene—I was thinking of it as “the scene” now—maybe I did have some qualification to do a little investigating. After all, I’d been the only one to see it as it originally was. I may have noticed something that no one else did. And the police didn’t know about Mrs. Collins. They hadn’t been there when the crowd spoke to Matty and me. Maybe I should just tell the police about it. But what if Mrs. Collins really was just a friend of Mr. Cardosi and had been making a genuine offer to help us? Or even just a meddling old woman? She didn’t deserve to be investigated by the police for that. Maybe tomorrow before work I could just go over and have a neighborly little chat with her. I wondered if she was still awake.

  I got up off the couch and crept across the living room to peep out the blinds. Mrs. Collins’s house was dark. Of course it was. It was after ten, and all the old folks on our street went to bed by nine. I went back to the couch and curled back up with my book and my wine. I tried to think over what else I had seen that day that Mike might not have noticed. I remembered that the front door had been unlocked when Matty and I went in. I was supposed to tell Mike about it, but it had completely slipped my mind, and Matty’s too, I guessed. That was another clue.

  A clue. I scoffed at myself. Now I really was being ridiculous, thinking about clues and suspects. Even so, I got up and found a notepad by the phone to make some notes on. Notes of things I had to remember to mention to the police, I told myself, not notes about what investigating I was going to do. Although it wouldn’t hurt to at least check a few things before I went to the police with them. I didn’t want to bother Mike with a bunch of details that seemed relevant to me when he probably had much more important leads to chase.

  I wrote down odd things I remembered—Mrs. Collins, the door—then I thought that it might be good for me to write down everything exactly as I remembered it before my memory faded. It had already been weeks since the murder, and even though I thought I remembered everything clearly, I’d probably forgotten more details than I realized. I thought I remembered something about that from my college psychology class—something about how memories fade and get altered. That was why I needed to write everything down now.

  I flipped to a fresh page and wrote down absolutely everything I could remember about that day, starting from my walk home. I read something once about how you can remember more if you tie it to sense memories, so I wrote down the color of the sky, the temperature, how windy it was, what the grass had smelled like—every sight, sound, or smell I could remember. Then I thought about how Mike had asked about the last time I saw Mr. Cardosi, so I flipped to another page and wrote down everything I remembered about every encounter I’d had with him since I got back to town.

  By the time I was finished, it was well after midnight and I was itching to talk to Matty to see if he remembered something that I’d forgotten. I could ask him more about some of what he’d said to Mike, specifically what he’d said about Mr. Cardosi’s enemies being more in his head than in real life. Apparently at least one of those enemies was in real life. It was way too late to call, so I pulled out my cell phone and sent Matty a text asking if he wanted to meet for breakfast. Getting up that early would be rough, but I wanted to talk to Matty as soon as possible.

  I went upstairs to my old childhood bedroom and got ready to go to sleep. I plugged my phone into the wall next to the bed and made sure the volume was turned all the way up. I wanted to make sure I heard it if Matty texted me back, so I put the phone right next to my head. I thought it would be impossible to fall asleep with all of the thoughts whirling through my head, but it seemed like only a few seconds later, Matty was texting me at six in the morning.

  I jumped out of bed with more energy tha
n I remembered having in the morning since high school and got dressed as quickly as I could. I took the long way to the café, out along the street instead of cutting through the neighbors’ backyards. I hadn’t taken the shortcut since the day Mr. Cardosi died, and I wasn’t sure I’d be up to it again for a long time. Part of me thought I should always take it in case someone else was dead in their backyard, waiting to be discovered by a passerby, but the more logical part of me prevailed. Either that or I gave in to the fear that I actually would find another body. I guess it just depended on how I looked at it.

  I got to the café before Matty, so I hurried in behind the counter to fix our drinks. Matty always—always, like, since high school—got a caffè mocha, so I didn’t have to wait for him to arrive to find out what he wanted.

  “Uh, Francesca?” Sammy asked as I grabbed cups and saucers.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know it’s six thirty in the morning, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, I know,” I said.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  Sammy just looked at me for a second. “Because it’s six thirty in the morning and you’re here and you’re perky.”

  “Oh, I’m just meeting Matty for breakfast.”

  “Matt Cardosi?” Sammy asked.

  “Yep.” I had my milk steaming and was ready to pull the espresso.

  “Didn’t you have coffee with him yesterday afternoon? Francesca Amaro, do you have something to tell me?”

  I wrinkled my forehead. What? How did she know about Matty’s dad? Was it all over town already? Had we been talking that loudly yesterday? Then I noticed the look on her face and realized that wasn’t what she’d meant at all. “Oh no, nothing like that. It’s—it’s actually something about his dad.”

  Before I could say anything else, Sammy leaned toward me. “Oh my gosh, have you heard? Karen Maynard, who works over at the police department, was in here when I opened up because she likes to get a cup of coffee before she goes and works out. She told me they think Mr. Cardosi was murdered!”

  I was surprised. I had never known Sammy to be much of a gossip, but then again, we didn’t really get much murder-level gossip in Cape Bay. The grapevine usually only discussed who took whose seat at a luncheon or who skipped the knitting club the night they were making sweaters for teddy bears to give to Sherpa children in Nepal.

  “Oh, of course you know. You’re good friends with Matt.” Sammy stopped for a second. “He did tell you, right? I’m not breaking this news to you now, am I?”

  “No, you’re not,” I said, perhaps a little curtly.

  The bell on the door jingled before Sammy could say anything else. It was Matty.

  “Good morning!” I called. “What do you want for breakfast? We have fruit bowls, parfaits, muffins, cupcakes… come look in the case and see what looks good.” I poured the milk in Matty’s coffee as I talked. I had decided on a butterfly to continue the theme of rebirth and renewal.

  “You’re going to let me pay today, right?” Matty said as he walked over. He looked handsome, dressed for work in gray pants and a crisp white dress shirt.

  “Nope,” I answered. “I asked you to meet me, so it’s on me.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Franny.”

  “Of course I do.” I put his finished coffee aside and started working on mine.

  “How are the snickerdoodle cupcakes?” Matty asked, inspecting the contents of the display case.

  “You want a cupcake for breakfast?” I asked.

  “Hey, you offered!”

  “They’re amazing!” Sammy interjected. “The cinnamon buttercream icing is to die for. Francesca made the cupcakes last night before she left, and you know how good her baking is.”

  “That I do,” Matty replied as Sammy handed a wax paper-wrapped cupcake across the counter.

  “Drinks are almost ready,” I told him. “Make yourself comfortable, and I’ll be right over.”

  Today, Matty chose a comfortable armchair in what my mother had called the “Chatty Cathy Corner.” It was the corner with the most comfortable chairs where, during the school year, the stay-at-home moms would settle in for the better part of the school day. When I was growing up, Cathy Sampson had been one of the most dedicated sit-and-talkers, and so that section of the café was named. It didn’t help that Cathy had been known to make snide comments about my mother being a single parent when she wasn’t quite out of earshot. My mother would just smile sweetly through clenched teeth then go in the backroom and mutter to my grandmother about it.

  I finished off my coffee, pouring a leaf into the foam. Another simple design but still beautiful. I carried our two cups of coffee over to the table between the chairs Matty had selected. His cupcake was sitting on the table, still wrapped up. I guessed he was waiting for me to get there with the coffee.

  “What are you going to eat?” Matty asked.

  “Oh, I completely forgot!” That happened sometimes when I was focused on coffee. I went back and grabbed a parfait out of the case and a spoon from the container on the counter. I made my way back over to the Chatty Cathy Corner and sat in one of the armchairs.

  Matty unwrapped his cupcake and took a bite. “Oh, it’s delicious, Franny!”

  “Thank you.” I smiled, taking a spoonful of my parfait. “How’s the coffee?”

  Matty looked at it. “I like the butterfly.” He took a sip. “Excellent.”

  “Good. Sometimes I’m not so sure this early in the morning.”

  “I don’t think you’ve made a bad cup of coffee in your life.”

  I thought for a moment. “No, I did once when I was nine.”

  Matty laughed and almost spit his coffee at me. “I’m not even sure that’s true,” he said when he’d recovered. We each ate a little bit more of our breakfast, then Matty leaned back in his chair. “So what’s up? What did you want to talk about so badly that you texted me at one in the morning?”

  I took a deep breath. “I was doing some thinking last night. About your dad. And how he died.”

  Matty nodded, looking as though he wasn’t quite sure what to expect me to say next.

  “And I want to ask you a few questions.”

  Chapter 7

  “YOU WANT to ask me a few questions,” Matty repeated. “About my dad?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah, I mean, I was thinking last night—”

  The look on Matty’s face stopped me mid-sentence. His eyebrows were raised, and he was looking at me as if antlers were growing out of my head.

  After several seconds of silence, Matty spoke. “You were thinking?”

  “Um, yeah. It’s just…” I took a deep breath. “Last night, I remembered that we never told Mike that the door was unlocked. And then there was the thing with Mrs. Collins…” I hesitated again.

  Matty wasn’t quite looking at me as though I was crazy anymore. That was a good thing.

  “And I realized there might be more that we forgot to tell him. Or that we didn’t realize at the time might be important, and now that we know he was—how he died—they might be important. And I just thought it might be good for us to go over things.”

  Matty just looked at me.

  “You know, if you want to.” I tried to read his expression, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know if he would be mad at me for wanting to investigate his dad’s murder or interested in working with me. I suddenly felt that this may have been a very bad idea.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Matty shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”

  Relief flooded me, and I smiled. “Great!”

  “So what did you want to know?”

  “Well, I’ve already written down everything I remember from that day. I know Mike asked you this that day, but what I really want to know is, now that we know your dad was—I mean, how he died—I was wondering if you can think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt your dad.”

  Matty sighed and adjusted his position in his chair. “You’re l
ooking for suspects, huh?”

  “Uh, I, uh, um—”

  A half smile crept across Matty’s face. “You can say yes. I’m not the police. I don’t care who finds out who murdered my dad, as long as someone does and the guy—or girl, I guess—goes to jail. If you asking some questions gets things done faster, ask away.”

  I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and smiled. “So can you think of anyone?”

  Matty tipped his head toward the ceiling in thought. He let out a long breath. “Well, you know how Dad was.”

  I noticed that he’d gotten used to using the past tense in reference to his dad. It was an inevitable part of the grieving process, an important part actually, but in a way, it was still sad, as if he was finally giving up his dad.

  “He thought everybody was out to get him.” Matty laughed softly. “I guess there actually was at least one person who was.” He shook his head. “Anyway, the conspiracies against him were mostly all in his head, but that didn’t mean he didn’t make enemies. It was almost a talent of his. I’ve never met anybody who could hold a grudge like him—and against so many people too. You know how there’s that new haircut place down the street?” He pointed down Main Street toward the beach.

  I nodded. It wasn’t really new, but it was new to us. It had probably been there about ten years or so.

  “Half the men in town go there now. Not because they prefer it to my dad’s place but because he banned them. If somebody said they didn’t like their haircut, banned. If they complained about having to wait, banned. If they didn’t tip enough, banned. Half the time, they didn’t even know until they showed up for their next haircut and he started waving his comb at them, telling them to get out and they weren’t welcome. I think some of the guys don’t even know why they were banned.” He chuckled. “You know, I think one time he actually kicked out the wrong guy. It was the guy’s brother or something. He kicked him out then realized later it was the wrong guy, but he’d never admit he was wrong about something like that, so both brothers were banned.”