by Cleo Coyle
Esther and her roommate, Nancy, were having a discussion about Nancy’s attempt to barbecue last evening’s dinner on the landing of their East Village fire escape.
I was about to dress down Esther for her unfiltered cry (the day after a cop shooting!) when one of the customers sitting at our crowded coffee bar jumped in to say—
“Hey, I’ve cooked over an open fire many times. You can control the smoke, if you know what you’re doing.”
“Well, please give Nancy some tips,” Esther begged. “She nearly suffocated our neighbors. Smoke alarms were beeping faster than the heart monitors in Bellevue’s cardiac ward.”
“But I miss the taste of grilled food,” Nancy whined. “That’s the worst thing about living in the city. No cookouts.”
“Why can’t you just go to Chinatown and order ribs?”
“It’s not the same,” Nancy insisted.
As our helpful customer agreed with her, I remembered her from the morning before. This was the same coffee-needy student who’d impressed Esther with her proper grammar. And she wasn’t just any student, she was an NYU law student—which was probably why she jumped to Nancy’s defense.
“Your roommate’s making a good point,” she told Esther. “There’s nothing quite like a steak you grill yourself. Chicken’s great, too, and boerewors—”
“Boer what?” Esther blurted.
“Boerewors,” Matt repeated to the group. “Beef sausage.”
“That’s right!” the young woman said, tossing back her auburn hair before shooting a flirty smile Matt’s way.
I shot something Matt’s way, too, a silent warning not to flirt with the customers, especially ones so young.
With a shrug, he explained. “I ate boerewors in South Africa. They’re very good. Lots of coriander.”
“Where I come from, people cook outside all year,” the young woman went on. “Some don’t even have kitchens, just cooking pits.”
“Sorry,” said Esther, “but cooking is the pits when you have to beg your neighbors not to call 911!”
The law student, who introduced herself as Carla, went on to give some good grilling tips to Nancy and Esther—including what to use (lighter fluid, charcoal) and what not to use.
“You hear that?” Esther said, poking Nancy’s shoulder. “Listen to Carla. I never again want to see you start a grill with old newspapers—unless you’re planning to smoke signal a hookup with a Native American in Jersey City!”
Just then, the bell over our door signaled a new round of customers, and my battling baristas got back to work. I exhaled with relief as the comforting sounds of orders being called and milk being frothed resumed.
“Come with me,” I told Matt, and led him into our back pantry, where he helped me box my Cannoli Cream Cupcakes—while sampling two in a row. As he licked sweet mascarpone frosting from his lips and made annoyingly orgasmic sounds, I admitted the real story behind today’s headlines. As usual, he didn’t bother dialing back the sarcasm.
“So? Are you going to tell me what happened after you spotted the Caped Cat?”
“Panther Man ran off toward the river and disappeared.”
“Disappeared? Then I’m sure he must have had an accomplice, Clare.”
“Why do you say that? Is there something I missed?”
“Elementary, my dear. Panther Man never goes anywhere without Cub, the Boy Marvel.”
If I wasn’t afraid of jostling my perfectly frosted cupcakes, I would have elbowed him. “I felt terrible. That front-page picture of Panther Man repeated online thousands of times was drawn from my description.”
“So? What’s wrong with that?”
I filled Matt in on my meeting with Sergeant Sitko at the hospital.
“A reporter recognized Sitko coming out of the waiting room. She knew he was a police sketch artist. She snuck into the room after we left and found the sketch he’d tossed into the wastebasket.”
“What’s your boyfriend’s take on all this?”
“I haven’t seen Mike since we left the hospital yesterday. But we talked on the phone and he’s been texting me with updates. Sully is doing fine, thank heaven; he regained consciousness overnight and is recuperating with his wife and children by his side—but that’s the only good news. It seems Mike is in trouble with his superiors, and poor Sergeant Sitko may be fired off the force.”
“Why?”
“Because that sketch I helped create should never have leaked to the press. Certainly not that way. The NYPD brass felt blindsided. Instead of a somber press conference with the police commissioner and mayor controlling the story, they get headlines screaming about a Panther Man shooter. Now everyone in the city—and most of the country—is making men-in-tights jokes instead of focusing on the seriousness of the crime. It’s just like Mike predicted, a media circus!”
I tied closed the bakery box, snapping the string with an angry yank.
“Take it easy, Clare. It’ll blow over.”
“Sure it will—and the force of the storm will leave bodies behind.”
With a furious exhale, I retied my loose ponytail.
“I listened to the mayor’s weekly radio show this morning. It was cut short after three crank callers in a row made stupid superhero cracks. After the show was over, the mayor chewed out the police commissioner, and Quinn and Sitko were called to One Police Plaza. That’s where they are now, no doubt for a bureaucratic lashing of epic proportions—or a suspension. Or both.”
Matt tilted his head. “There is a silver lining. On my way in, Tucker told me you had a big spike in business: Panther Man fans were lining up for coffee and selfies all morning.”
“And it’s made me feel even worse. We’re as good as profiting from Sully’s pain. I’m beginning to regret telling anybody what I saw.”
“Don’t get your Spanx in a bunch. You saw what you saw, and you did your civic duty reporting it. Anyway, you got lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“The newspapers have only identified you as ‘witness.’ Knock wood it stays that way.”
“Knock wood? Look who’s being ‘Old World’ superstitious now.”
With a grunt, he checked his watch. “Okay, enough chitchat. Time to bribe my godfather with our coffee—and your cupcakes.”
TWELVE
AS we walked up Hudson Street, I checked my phone about five times before Matt told me to “turn it off already” and put it away.
“I’ll put it away, but I am not turning it off . . .”
A block later, a piercing ambulance siren made me jump like a frightened rabbit—and pull out my phone again.
“Clare—”
“I’m just worried about Mike.”
“I know, but look . . .” My ex stopped me. “Making yourself a nervous wreck won’t help him or you. Try to put it out of your mind . . .”
A block later, my hand itching to check the phone again, I asked instead how Matt’s wife was doing. The fashion-forward Breanne Summour, editor of Trend magazine, was always planning some spectacular event, meeting with some flashy celebrity, or flying off to an exciting locale.
I hoped a story about his wife’s fabulous life would distract me, but Matt shut down the topic with disturbing speed. When I tried to ask what was wrong, he cut me off again—
“Let’s talk about something more productive—the Andrea Doria blend. Remember, the new ship will be cruising temperate zones, so the blend needs to be cold brew friendly.”
“So you said. About a hundred times.”
“Well, my godfather consumes cold brew the way Southerners guzzle sweet tea. We should ask Gus what he likes about it.”
“What’s not to like? When it’s made right, it passes the lips like a wake-up kiss: cool, smooth, sweet, and beautiful.”
“Nice, Clare. You should use that in the competition pre
sentation. The judges will eat it up—or more like drink it up.”
“Whatever they consume from us, let’s hope they love it.”
We turned onto Perry Street, a one-way lane lined with tall trees and brick-and-stone town houses built before the Civil War. These four-story structures also predated the building codes of the 1860s, which was why the home of the Campana family jewelers was so impressive.
The pristine white town house stood out like an untouched dove in a forest of brown and red. Its wooden shutters were also white, along with the window boxes filled with lilies of the valley, their tiny white blossoms the perfect shape for the Campana family name—which meant bell in Italian.
A white brick arch extended from one side of Gus’s building, bending over a small alleyway. This little cobblestoned corridor was guarded by a stout door of ornate wrought iron.
We moved beyond that locked black gate to the front of the white building. The only signage was a small gold plaque with the words House of Campana written inside a stylized bell. Two small windows with thick unbreakable glass displayed pieces of jewelry designed in the distinctive Campana style.
Like the bricks of this historic Village house, the windowless door to the storefront was white. And like every exclusive jeweler in Manhattan, that door was locked.
I spied a pair of security cameras aimed at our faces and smiled for them both.
We were buzzed in, and hardly stepped through the door before being greeted by an attractive young blonde wearing a baby blue minidress and shiny Louboutins with heels so high and platforms so big, the petite girl looked like she was wearing her mother’s shoes.
“I’m Matt Allegro, Gus’s godson. I’d like to see my godfather—”
Two angry voices drowned out the rest of Matt’s words. A man and a woman were loudly arguing, somewhere out of sight.
With a quick glance at my ex-husband, I knew we were thinking the same thing: the couple’s identity might be a mystery, but their argument sounded awfully familiar.
“Why have you come back?” the woman’s voice railed. “Are you so bored with bed-hopping that you decided to visit your long-suffering wife?”
The male reply was cool and confident. “The other women meant nothing, you know that . . .”
The deep voice betrayed an intriguing accent—one that I couldn’t quite identify. But boy did I recognize the adoringly seductive tone.
“Your jealousy is clouding your vision, my precious gem. You are my wife, the woman I gave my heart to in marriage, and I have always been faithful, because my heart belongs only to you.”
“Yet you’re so generous with everything else!”
THIRTEEN
MATT and I pretended not to eavesdrop. But it wasn’t easy. The showroom was partitioned into sections, and the unseen couple continued to squabble beyond one of those thin walls.
“Well, you’ve got some nerve turning up now,” the woman said. “We’re in the middle of finalizing our aquatic collection . . .”
Despite the continued warm cajoling of her husband, the wife’s tone remained as frosty as this section of the showroom’s design.
The setup displayed breathtaking pieces of Campana jewelry on glass sculpted to look like frozen ocean waves and ice-bound waterfalls. There were flowing necklaces of pearl and aquamarine; “wave” bracelets of platinum and sapphires; and drop earrings of white and blue diamonds.
Of course I wanted it all—and could afford exactly none.
The salesgirl hovered nervously, sharing an uncomfortable smile. “I’m sorry, did you say you were Gus’s godson?”
Matt nodded, repeated his request to see him, and she scampered off to phone the famous jeweler.
The next few seconds were filled with hope and dread. Hope that the feuding couple would discretely end their discussion. Dread that they would walk around the corner and realize two strangers had heard every “private” word they’d said.
Hope failed. After a beat, the man said—
“Enough. Please, my gem, I did not come to upset you. I came to see Gustavo.”
“Why? What are you peddling now? Blood diamonds? Smuggled Russian amber? Pilfered European heirlooms? Contraband jade from Myanmar?”
“I have something far more valuable—information. News that Gus will surely want to hear.”
“I doubt my father would be interested in anything you have to say.”
“Darling Sophia, I have always said that you are wrong more times than you are right, and you are very wrong about this.”
Matt groaned softly, and not because of the insult.
We both believed we’d been eavesdropping on an anonymous couple. Now we understood that the woman so bitterly arguing with her husband was the perpetually globe-trotting “Sophia”—as in Sophia Campana, Gus’s younger daughter.
I’d met Sophia years ago, when I was married to Matt. But with our divorce and all her traveling, I hadn’t seen her in years, and I’d certainly never met the Swedish gemstone dealer she had married overseas. Now Sophia was speaking again, but in a quieter tone.
“Hunter, you know Dad won’t see you. He’s done with you. If you give me the message I’ll consider passing it on.”
“You must do more than consider, given what I have learned,” he replied with earnest concern. “For his own sake—and yours, my love, and your family—you had better pass this on.”
“Just give me the message!”
“Tell Gustavo that I met a man in Rome. A very old man. A man who was aboard that sinking ship with him, your mother, and your elder sister. This man—”
“Good news!” The nervous salesgirl announced her return loudly enough to silence the feuding couple. (And just when the conversation was heating up!)
“Mr. Campana would love to see you, Mr. Allegro. He’ll meet you in the courtyard. Go back outside and through the white arch—”
“I know the way,” Matt said.
She nodded. “I’ll buzz the gate’s lock for you.”
Matt couldn’t escape that display room fast enough.
I, on the other hand, dragged my low boot heels, hoping to hear more of the argument. But that chance was already blown, and the young salesgirl on designer stilts stared hard at me until I followed Matt back out to the sidewalk.
FOURTEEN
“WELL, that was interesting,” I said, taking a much-needed breath of cool autumn air.
“Poor Sophia.” Matt shook his head. “I haven’t seen her in years, but I remember her as such a sweet kid. It sounds like she married a complete jackass.”
“Hum,” I said.
“Hum?” he echoed. “What’s that supposed to mean? You and I had rough patches, but we never sounded like that.”
“Sorry, but that’s exactly how we sounded.”
Matt grimaced at the thought, but rather than open a hermetically sealed can of petrified worms, he pushed through the stout iron gate and walked down the cobblestone alley.
A spiral staircase led up to Gus’s second-story office, over the jewelry store. But that wasn’t our destination. Instead, I followed Matt along the cobblestones, only to have my breath stolen again, this time by the splendor of a hidden treasure in the middle of Manhattan.
Nestled among the four-story buildings was a placid courtyard, completely buffered from any noise on New York’s streets and sidewalks. A fountain’s spray sparkled like diamonds in the noonday sun, and little brown mourning doves cooed among the ornamental shrubs and trees.
Lampposts topped with crystal bell fixtures marked each corner of this idyllic yard, and I could easily imagine their beauty at night, with the bell-shaped glass glowing golden.
On the far side of that magical space stood the Campana family home.
Even after a hundred and fifty years, the West Village was still dotted with Civil War–era buildings hidden from vie
w—sheds or stables converted into garages or very small dwellings.
But the home tucked behind the Campana Family Jewelers was a restored example of a pre–Civil War “backhouse”—a hidden property built behind a main structure before building codes were put into place to prevent overcrowding.
Backhouses were commissioned by the wealthy to preserve their privacy and quietude in the busy urban landscape, and both wealth and taste were reflected in the white brick facade; the tall, arched windows; and the clean white balconies overlooking the courtyard.
Wide marble steps led to the white front door, the golden Campana bell once again embossed at the center. And on the doorstep, a smiling Gustavo Campana waved to us.
FIFTEEN
BLESSED with a full head of iron gray hair, a naturally lean physique, and a spine still straight as a flagpole, Gus greeted us with surprisingly powerful hugs for a man pushing eighty.
He still made jewelry by hand, melting, molding, and beating gold and silver with the ancient tools of his craft. The work gave him the wiry muscles of a blacksmith, along with scars from a hundred forge burns that freckled his forearms, and a face that appeared etched out of still-lustrous amber.
He led us inside and we settled in an airy parlor with a gleaming wood floor and tall windows facing the sunny courtyard. The Italianate furniture had cushions embroidered so finely that I hesitated to sit down.
Instead, I opened the pastry box to show off my cupcakes, made from scratch using the most buttery, melt-in-your-mouth Golden Cupcake recipe I’d ever baked.
(The first time I made them for Quinn, he asked why I didn’t use a boxed mix. “Wouldn’t that be easier?” My response was “Not really.” Then I handed him the final product. One blissful bite and he never asked me about boxed mixes again.)
On top of these little golden cups of joy, I mounded my sweet, smooth Cannoli Cream Frosting. Some of the iced cakes I left plain, others I topped with grated dark chocolate or mini chips, and the remainder I finished with sprinkles of finely chopped pistachios.