by Клео Коул
Before I could ask another question, she wheeled on the heel of her rubber-soled boat shoe and marched off toward her home, her black-clad form quickly disappearing in the thickening dark.
By now, my pulse was racing. Marjorie Bright’s presence was both creepy and suspicious. It reminded me of something Detective Quinn had said about particular kinds of murderers, how they got off on seeing the results of their acts, something akin to arsonists sticking around to watch the sirens, the activity, the fiery destruction.
My mind began to turn this idea over and over. Was that what Marjorie had been doing? Was she the shooter? Or had she been checking on an accomplice? Clearly, she was no friend of David’s. But was an obstructed ocean view a reason to shoot your neighbor to death in cold blood?
Before I’d left the mansion’s garage, I’d pretty much convinced myself the killer had either slipped away or disappeared back into the crowded party the moment Treat had hit the floor. Now I wasn’t so sure. And the uncertainty unnerved me.
Still, I had come out here with a specific goal in mind. I hadn’t accomplished it yet, and really hated the idea of letting my fears get the better of me. So I gritted my teeth and moved on.
At the rear of the house, I circumvented the cedar plank deck and walked down the lawn, toward the ocean. About halfway there I stopped, turned, and gazed up at the sprawling mansion. I easily located David’s master bedroom window, a huge palladium number that matched the design of windows on the first floor. Next to David’s bedroom was the square window to his private bath.
I lined myself up with the bathroom where Treat’s corpse now lay. Then I walked away from the mansion again, sweeping the flashlight beam back and forth along the lawn. At the end of the grass, a narrow pathway of smooth white pebbles had been used to define the end of the manicured grounds and the start of the beach. I stepped across the pebbles and onto the sand.
As I glanced back at the mansion to check my position, I realized I’d strayed from the intended line of sight. I adjusted my position about two yards, aligning my body up once again with the south wing’s second floor bathroom window. Then I turned my gaze back towards the water—and saw I was lined up with a series of beach dunes.
I climbed the closest one, finding high scrub grass on top.
What an effective spying place this would be…that is, for anyone wanting to spy on David’s beach house.
Every room in his home with a light on was transparent. I could see the people assembled around the kitchen table on the first floor as well as David’s Tiffany bedroom lamps, shining on the second.
This dune could have been the very place where the shooter had taken a shot at Treat, I realized. Without moving my feet, I shined the flashlight beam around every inch of the dune, the high scrub, the sand, the stray gray rocks.
Behind me, the surf had become wild, the waves crashing with unnerving intensity. A sudden, earsplitting crack of thunder nearly stopped my heart. I jerked in surprise and the beam shot across a section of sand a foot away. That’s when I noticed a glimmer of something metallic.
I swept the light back again and moved closer. The pasty spotlight illuminated three brass-colored cylinders on the sand. I didn’t want to touch them, so I crouched down over them as close as I could and sniffed. The smell of gunpowder was unmistakable.
Bullet casings.
I knew very little about guns, ammunition, or caliber, but I could see these shells were long, at least two inches. Obviously, they would not have come from a small gun; more like a hunting rifle, for distance shooting.
This was it, I realized, the evidence the police could use to catch the killer. The rush of excitement was hard to suppress. Consequently, Matt’s accusations about me becoming a risk junkie came back with a vengeance.
Okay, I told myself, so it felt good to find something like this, to play detective and succeed. That didn’t mean I was happy about a young man’s life cut short. Pushing aside the memory of Matt’s words along with my fleeting high, I tried to calm down and decide what to do next.
If I left these casings here much longer, the coming storm and resulting high tide could easily wash them away. But if I disturbed them, I’d be messing with crucial evidence.
With another glance toward the mansion, I could see there was still no sign of the police. So I decided to compromise. Digging into the pocket of my khaki skirt, I came up with a lip balm and a few unused cocktail napkins. I shoved the balm back and used the napkins to carefully pick up one of the bullet casings, leaving the other two where I’d found them. Holding the single casing carefully in one hand, I used the other to sweep the flashlight beam around the area in wider and wider arcs.
If the shooter had used this dune, I figured there might be other clues around. I searched the sand for footprints, but if there had been some, the killer must have covered or obscured them. I walked closer to the water, then paralleled the breakers. About twenty yards away, I noticed something in the damp sand, not footprints but flipper prints. Diver’s flippers were leading straight into the surf.
I shined my light out over the water, but saw nothing. Just black waves. They were high now, roiling ashore with the froth of maddened animals. Lightning flashed, and I felt a few drops of rainwater on my head. On the next disturbing crack of thunder, I shuddered and gave up.
I jogged back across the dry sand, the lawn, the cedar plank deck. As I stepped through the mansion’s glass patio door, the rain began to fall, and I heard voices coming from the front foyer. At last, the police had arrived.
There were two units, four uniformed officers from the local force. To a man, they were nice and polite, but it was obviously the end of a very long day for them, and they were all looking pretty drained.
The oldest officer, a sergeant, explained what had taken them so long—a major auto accident with critical injuries had occurred on the other side of town. There’d been crowd control issues all night, as well as drunken brawls and disturbances ending in arrests. As a result, every unit had been occupied when my call came. Just as David and Suzi had predicted, the craziness of July Fourth had stressed the small local force to its limits.
“The Suffolk County detectives and their forensic team will take over the investigation in the morning,” explained Sergeant Walters, a fortyish balding officer with a friendly, round face. “We’ll take care of the basics tonight.”
He took the bullet casing I’d found and bagged it up. While his partner took statements from David, Madame, me, and the rest of the Cuppa J staff, he supervised the two younger officers in the bathroom.
They took photos of Treat, placed tape around his body, and when the ambulance arrived, helped the paramedics remove the deceased young man. Finally, they closed the bathroom door, crisscrossed it with crime scene tape and asked us not to enter.
By the time I took the sergeant and his two younger officers out back to show them the dune where I’d found the bullet casing, the storm was really raging. The officers were dressed in raingear. I was attempting to hold tight to a flimsy umbrella—a laughable sight in the face of the pelting water and blowing wind.
I pointed out the other two casings, and the officers picked them up and bagged them. Then they began to sweep their flashlights over the dune, just as I had done.
“I didn’t find anything else over there,” I called to them over the roar of the surf. “But I saw flipper prints over here.”
I waved them over to the shoreline, and swept my flashlight along the sand to show them the set of diver’s flippers leading into the water, but in the dark and the rain and the rising surf, I couldn’t find even one.
The sergeant patiently watched me flail around with my flashlight for a few minutes before he pulled the plug. “Ma’am, we’d appreciate it if you’d go on back to the house now!” he called. “Whatever you saw has probably washed away!”
As his officers attempted to rope off the high dune in the pouring rain, I walked back into the mansion looking like a drowned rat.
Madame toweled me off in the kitchen.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“The staff gave their statements and left. Joy went to her room. And David’s up in his master bedroom throwing some things into a gym bag. He’s moving into the guest wing with us.”
“There’s no way I’m sleeping next to that bathroom!” David told us when he came back downstairs. “At least, not until all that blood is cleaned up!”
Frankly, I was happy to have a man nearby, even one who wasn’t exactly Braveheart.
Five
I must have fallen asleep at some point during the night, because when I opened my eyes again, the morning sun was lasering through the curtains. I rolled out of bed with the dull throb of a headache, no doubt induced by the tight, airless space, and opened two large windows. A stiff breeze streamed into the second-floor guestroom, fluttering the diaphanous saffron and refreshing the stale air with the vigor of ocean salt.
Outside the storm had passed, the sun shone brightly, and the nearly cloudless sky looked like an artist’s rendering in cerulean blue. The rain had cleansed the air, and the surf had transformed from a roiling black cauldron into a gently lapping sea of tranquility. The morning, in fact, was so dreamy I almost forgot that a man had been shot and killed on the other side of the mansion. Almost.
Before another night came and went, I was determined to convince Joy and Madame to leave this house. I knew this would not be easy. For twenty years, I’d butted heads with one pigheaded male member of the Allegro family. Two generations of its women working together might utterly defeat me.
I decided it would be best to approach Joy and Madame separately. After that silly disagreement with my daughter the night before over that actor’s phone number, I figured it might be wise to give her a little more time to cool off.
First up would be my ex-mother-in-law—after my morning swim, which I prayed would relieve my throbbing headache and fortify me for the inevitable argument.
I ran a brush through my hair and donned my red suit, a no-nonsense one-piece that probably looked like I’d stepped out of Baywatch lifeguard training. Of course, my breasts weren’t even close to Pamela Anderson’s monumental assets, although they were enough to make me self-conscious in anything without an underwire, and ever since that hot tub incident ten years ago in that awful share house, I’d dumped bikinis from my wardrobe for good.
I wrapped myself in one of the thick, white terrycloth robes David provided for all of his guests (part of his spa product line), and with a pair of decidedly retro rubber flip-flops on my feet, I was good to go.
Halfway down the back stairs, I caught the scent of something wonderfully enticing. With one whiff, I knew someone was brewing a fresh pot of Summer Porch, a seasonal blend I’d just invented about a month ago to showcase the Bagisu Sipi Falls beans—Matteo’s latest amazing find on Uganda’s Mount Elgon. The pull of the heady roast was too powerful to pass up, and I lurched instinctively toward the kitchen like a George Romero zombie.
Mount Elgon is one of the tallest mountains in Africa, and the terrain is steep and treacherous with thick forest cover. According to Matteo, roads were less common than dirt tracks, which were often washed away during rainy season when gullies overflowed. Nevertheless, the Bagisu tribesman who lived near the Sipi Falls had become experts at coffee farming, and they had a foolproof method of transporting their cherries, even amid the challenging terrain. No, they did not use Hummers. They used donkeys.
“Good morning, dear,” said Madame, her eyes full of energy, despite the hour. Her silver hair was down this morning, sleekly combed into a pageboy. Her erect, elegant frame was wrapped in a white terrycloth robe identical to mine. She handed me a freshly-brewed cup of the Summer Porch blend. I accepted it with a nod and a grunt.
“Drink up,” Madame advised. “This is my second pot. A few cups of this and I guarantee your disposition will improve.”
My mood-altering drug of choice, I thought as I shuffled over to the kitchen table and plopped down with a weary sigh. But at least it’s legal.
Still bleary-eyed, I wondered for a moment what made Madame choose the Summer Porch this morning. I’d placed twenty different types of coffee in David’s kitchen cupboards. It was the same selection I’d put on his tasting and dessert pairings menu at Cuppa J. When I saw what Madame had placed in middle of the table, however, I didn’t have to ask why. A selection of last night’s strawberries sat mounded inside a Waterford crystal bowl like a lush ruby mountain.
The hint of strawberry in the finish of Sipi Falls was rare and surprising; and since the Sipi was the star coffee in my Summer Porch blend, it was the perfect pairing for the fresh Long Island fruit. I sipped the coffee black and let the flavors wash over me like the warm sluicing water of a Jacuzzi.
A coffee taster trains the tongue and the nose to detect the faintest traces of every flavor. There were hints of star-fruit, pear, and red cherry behind the Jasmine tealike flavors of the Sipi Falls. And I’d roasted it light to really bring out the strawberry flavor (a darker roast produced a sort of black tea finish to the cup). The coffee was sweet in the mouth and I’d balanced the blend to make sure the Sipi Falls shortcomings were diminished in the taste profile. The problem with this unique Ugandan coffee was that, unlike its East African neighbors, it lacked acidity.
In the coffee world, acidity was not a bad thing. It actually referred to a brightness or pleasant sharpness in the mouth, and you definitely wanted it in your taste profile, or your coffee would come off as flat.
Since a good blend’s three elements are acidity, aroma, and body, I remedied the low acidity of the Sipi Falls by blending it with Kenya AA beans. To boost its body, I used a Costa Rican bean. But the Sipi Falls itself was the star of this trio, providing delightful aromatic notes.
I sipped the coffee again and sighed. As it cooled, it actually gained rather than weakened in its rustic intensity. I reached for a strawberry, took a bite, then another sip. The strawberry flavor in the coffee was now enhanced a thousand percent, practically exploding in my mouth.
This was indeed a cheerful, uplifting coffee to wake up to—a bright country morning in a cup, a coffee to disperse bad dreams.
“What are you up to today?” Madame asked with an amused smile at my obvious return from the dead.
“I’m going for a swim,” I replied as she slipped a bone china saucer under my cup. “Then I’m going to check on David. After that, I’m going to help you pack and drive you to the train station.”
“Nice try, my dear,” Madame said.
“But—”
“Don’t waste your breath. I’m not leaving,” Madame pronounced with a regal wave of her hand.
“But—” I tried again.
“Drink up, Clare. You don’t want to waste your husband’s—”
“My ex-husband’s.”
“Matteo’s latest find in your latest blend, because you still don’t have your wits about you if you think I’m going back to the city and leaving you to play detective all by yourself.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a series of electronic musical tones, a snippet from Vivaldi. Madame reached into the voluminous pocket of her terrycloth spa robe and found her cell phone.
“Matteo! You’re home,” she cried upon answering.
“Speak of the devil,” I quietly muttered and gulped more coffee.
“Oh, no. Everything’s fine. Just fine,” Madame chirped, rather like her phone, before changing the subject. “How did things go in California, my boy?”
Matteo’s latest trip was not to a Third World coffee plantation, but to a series of First World shopping Meccas. David Mintzer had become one of Matt’s biggest backers in a financial plan to expand the Village Blend business via coffee kiosks in high-end clothing boutiques and department stores worldwide. This last trip of Matt’s was to the West Coast, where he was overseeing Village Blend coffee kiosk installations in Marin County, Rodeo Drive, and Palm Springs.
“Yes, she’s right here,” Madame finally said, passing the phone to me.
“Hello, Matt,” I said on a yawn.
These days, our relationship was actually pretty good. Like it or not, we were stuck with one another as business partners in the Blend, not to mention parental partners in the raising of Joy. Parenting, as I’d often lectured Matt, was not only a full-time job, it was a lifetime appointment, sort of like a judgeship on the Supreme Court, but with far less influence.
“What’s wrong out there?” Matt asked, his voice had gone low. “Mother sounded strained.”
“Everything’s fine. Just fine,” I chirped, rather like Madame. I could almost see Matteo’s eyes squinting with suspicion.
“Whatever,” he said at last. “I just phoned to tell you I’m at La Guardia waiting for a taxi. I’m heading over to the Blend to check things out.”
Good, I thought, Tucker can use the extra pair of helping hands.
“After that, I’m hitting the sack in the duplex, catching a few hours sleep. I’m wasted. Totally jet lagged.”
So much for the extra helping hands.
Tucker Burton was my assistant manager, an actor playwright whom I could always rely on to handle the Blend when I was absent. Tucker certainly wouldn’t require Matt’s help to keep things running, but it would have been nice.
“How’s my pride named Joy?” asked Matt, the smile evident in his voice, as it always was when it came to his little girl.
I glanced at the digital clock on the microwave: 7:02 A.M. “Still sleeping, I suspect.”
“Don’t wake her. I’ll try to see you both before I leave for Central America. Give Joy my love, tell her I’ll see her soon. Oh, and I bought her a present. Damn, my ride’s here. Gotta go.”
The line went dead. I handed Madame her phone and cradled the warm mug of coffee in my hands.