by Cleo Coyle
“On the contrary,” I replied, pouring out their cups, a little in Edward’s, a little in Madame’s, until both were equally filled. “Those Brazilian cherries have just spent the last fraction of their lives infusing the hot water around them with their essence, a memorable burst of flavor that will bring joy and energy to those who drink it. In the scheme of things, I’d say that’s not a pointless end at all.”
Edward’s face slowly brightened. He turned to Madame. “My goodness, you didn’t tell me I’d get philosophy with my coffee service.”
“We aim to please,” I said.
“You did, my dear.” Edward clapped his hands. “Very good.”
“Didn’t I tell you my daughter-in-law was something?” said Madame with a wink for me. “Well, she isn’t finished yet, so settle down, Edward.”
As the couple picked up their cups and sipped, I continued. “This Sul de Minas comes from a family-owned farm. In this medium roast, you have a flavor profile of a mellow, low-toned coffee with dry-yet-sweet, almost sugary figlike characteristics. The finish is sweet, rich, and long with a hint of cocoa and dry fruit notes.”
Edward smiled as he sipped. “That’s the finish I’d like, come to think of it. Sweet, rich, and long.”
Madame laughed. She dug into the Spanish fig cake and presented a forkful to Edward. “Taste a bit of this, then sip again.”
Edward’s eyes widened as he obeyed. “Fig! I taste it in the dessert, of course. But now I can really taste it in the coffee.”
I politely stated the obvious. “That’s why they’re paired.”
“Oh, but, Clare,” said Madame, “you have them paired with the almond torte as well, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, worried she was about to disagree with the combination. “And? What are you getting at?”
“Just this: one coffee can be paired quite naturally with two sweet things, depending on the situation.”
She glanced at Edward, then back at me, as if I were so very thick-headed I’d need help figuring out her analogy. Don’t worry, I got it. Loud and clear.
After excusing myself, I went to check on my other customers, then returned to Madame’s table to see if they needed anything more.
“Clare, didn’t I ever tell you how Edward and I met?” asked Madame. “I’m sure that I did.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“We met in Greenwich Village, at the Village Blend…a very long time ago.”
Edward sighed. “A lifetime ago.”
“Edward used to come in with a few friends of his,” Madame went on. “There was Alfonso Ossorio, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Truman Capote, Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, and, of course, Pollack.”
My mouth went dry. Good god, no wonder he knew what the inside of Motherwell’s Quonset hut looked like! “So, Mr. Wilson…” I said after clearing my throat and regaining my equilibrium, “you’re a painter too?”
“Not like Pollack, not in the same league,” Edward replied. “Pollack was a genius. He was also a degenerate drunk. Then, Lee—Lee Krasner, who ended up marrying him—dragged him out here to East Hampton, got him away from the demons of the city. It sobered him up being out here. Of course, back then East Hampton was a lot different. Untouched by time, quiet, pastoral…sane. Now Pollack’s buried in Green River Cemetery over in Springs. Can’t miss his grave. It’s marked by a fifty-ton boulder.”
“But you still paint?” I asked.
“Just for myself now. It’s something I thoroughly enjoy. Of course, back then I was completely consumed by it. And, oh, I thought I was hot stuff.”
Madame laughed. “You did indeed.”
“We all did. There were hundreds of artists who moved out here after Pollack in the forties and fifties. Prices for land were dirt cheap then. And we were all rivals of Pollack’s, secretly seething with jealousy over his success and fame. But, after he flipped his car at ninety on Fireplace Road and died at forty-four, I found that though I still loved the art, I’d lost my taste for the competition.”
“Edward became a professor,” Madame informed me.
“I started writing first,” Edward corrected. “Then teaching—art history, criticism. Of course, the others I knew continued to stay in the game. There’s an old joke about de Kooning looking out his window every morning at the Green River Cemetery, just to make sure Pollack was still under that fifty-ton boulder!”
“You see, Clare,” said Madame. “Edward’s been around here forever.”
“Nearly,” said Edward, interlacing his fingers with Madame’s and bringing her hand to his lips.
“That’s why I thought he could help us with David’s little, shall we say—” Madame glanced to the full tables to her left and right—“problem.”
Problem, I thought. Yes, I’d definitely characterize a sharpshooter trying to turn you into a live target at your own party as a ‘problem.’
Madame turned to Edward. “Tell Clare what you told me…about the foreclosure and the town trustees.”
Edward nodded, leaned close and motioned me to bend toward him. “This place wasn’t sold in the regular manner.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What Edward means is the previous owner closed the place last summer during a messy divorce,” Madame quietly informed me. “Because of tax delinquencies, this property ended up in the hands of the town itself.”
“O-kay,” I said slowly. “So how is that important?”
“How much did you tell me a single chair in a Hamptons’ restaurant makes in one season?” Madame asked.
“On average, about 180,000 dollars per chair.”
Edward gave a low whistle.
“Well,” Madame said, “don’t you think that’s enough of a reason to be fairly angry if your dream to open a restaurant here was thwarted?”
“But David did open a restaurant,” I pointed out.
“No, Clare, you’re not following me,” Madame said. “Edward told me that someone else wanted this place, too.”
“It was in the local papers over the winter,” Edward interjected. “There was a war, a bitter one over this place. It came down to two proposals. The town trustees chose David’s.”
“But what’s the big deal?” I said. “So the other bidder lost this place. It happens every day in Manhattan. Why not just move along and buy another building?”
“Edward, tell her,” Madame prompted.
He shrugged. “Here in East Hampton, you don’t just buy a building and open a restaurant. This is the Land of No, my dear. It’s governed by very strict rules to keep commercial growth down. If you’re an aspiring restaurateur, you must wait for one of the existing restaurants in the area to close, then you must outbid others for the property, and gain the approval of the myriad planning, zoning, and design appeals boards for the town.”
“Oh,” I said. “David never mentioned any of that.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Madame said. “Apparently, things got pretty ugly during the fight for the property. And David doesn’t like ugly.”
“So…who was the other bidder?” I asked.
“Bom Felloes,” Edward replied.
“That famous TV chef?” I said. “The one with the Good Felloes restaurant chains all over the country?”
“The very same,” Madame said. “Apparently, he’d been chomping at the bit to open an East Hampton Good Felloes restaurant like his others.”
“But the town trustees practically retched at the idea of a chain restaurant coming into this tony area,” Edward said. “And, quite frankly, the name didn’t help his case much.”
I could see what he meant. “Good Felloes” was a play on the celebrity chef ’s name, of course, but (as my dear old dad once told me) “goodfellows” was one of the ways Mafia “wise guys” referred to each other.
“Oh my goodness,” Madame said. “The very idea probably made the East Hampton officials turn green.”
“It’s absurd when one contemplates the fact that something as
historic as Motherwell’s home and studio can be demolished, yet a new restaurant cannot be built,” Edward said with another grave sigh. “But in any case…they rejected Bom’s proposal and approved David’s. I can see why they were impressed. Just look around you. Mintzer clearly spent a great deal of time and effort on designing the decor alone.”
“Not to mention a small fortune,” I added.
“You’ve got to spend it to make it,” Madame pointed out.
“So, what else do you know about Felloes?” I asked Edward.
“Not really much more. Just that he’s a single man, young and good looking, and he bought The Sandcastle about three years ago.”
I frowned, not liking that news. “The Sandcastle? That’s right near David’s place. And it sounds like he bought it the same time David bought his land out here.”
Edward nodded. “The original Sandcastle grounds were huge. When it fell to a younger generation, they broke it into two pieces. The acreage with the residence on it was bought by Bom. David Mintzer bought the plot of land next to it and built from scratch.”
I’d never seen The Sandcastle. It was completely surrounded by a wall of high green privets, and the ornamentation on its wrought-iron front gate was so Byzantine, I couldn’t see beyond it. Certainly I was aware The Sandcastle abutted David’s property. But I didn’t know that Bom Felloes was the owner. David had never mentioned Bom—I would have remembered if he had.
I tapped my chin with my ordering pencil. “David obviously has a serious rival. But I don’t doubt the man has serious rivals in all of his businesses.”
“You think Bom wouldn’t mind seeing David under a fifty-ton gravestone?” asked Edward.
“I hope Bom isn’t the one trying to put him there,” I replied. “But I need to know more about him…a lot more.”
“Well, my dear, never fear,” chirped Madame, the caffeinated sparkle in her gaze making me understandably nervous. “Edward and I are on the case!”
TEN
IT was close to midnight when I finally returned to David Mintzer’s oceanfront mansion, dead tired from hours on my feet and emotionally drained after my latest, unhappy confrontation with Joy.
I’d had no luck convincing Madame to move out of David’s because of the shooting, but I’d hoped I could at least pull rank on my own daughter. So after we closed the restaurant, I’d waved Joy into the empty break room and tried to convince her to leave East Hampton and go back to the city.
She flatly refused.
“Look, Mom,” she said. “I was ready to go into a share house, but you stopped me. I need this job, and I need the money. I’m really, really sorry Treat got shot, but it’s obvious that bullet was meant for him. He’s dead now, and it’s over. If you force me to leave David’s house, I won’t go back to the city. All the share houses are full up by now, so I’ll just move in with Graydon. And if you get me fired from Cuppa J, I’ll just find another job out here—I hear cocktail waitresses make much more if they wear a little less.”
I was flabbergasted. I stood in front of my daughter speechless. I may have trumped her earlier, but now she was trumping me, and needling me with that last comment. She had cast me as a prude and herself as a slut, just to win her point. It wasn’t fair to either of us. But that’s the trouble with children—they know just how to twist your guts.
Joy sighed. “I’m twenty-one, Mom. Stop treating me like a child.”
“You know very well why I’m worried,” I calmly reminded her. “The shooting aside, moving in with Graydon’s hardly a solution. He’s even less of an open book than Treat. What do you really know about him?”
“I know what counts. He’s sweet. He’s fun. He likes me and he treats me like I’m beautiful.”
A chill went through me. She sounded as naive as yours truly when I’d first met Matt. I’d been around Joy’s age at the time, studying art history during a summer break in Italy. My guard had been down when Matt and I had first encountered each other on a sun-drenched Mediterranean beach. He’d been warm and giving and handsome as hell, his young body tanned and hard from his typical athletic antics, sculpted as perfectly as the Renaissance statues I’d been studying, his ink-black hair, worn down to his shoulders, constantly slipping out of its ponytail.
Being in such a heavenly, exotic location, I’d found it far too easy to dreamily fall into bed with Matt over and over again. But I’d come home to America wide awake, pregnant with Joy, and agreeing to marry the absolutely wrong man.
“You’re being naive,” I told my daughter in a tone more harsh than I intented. “If you want me to see you as an adult, then you should start acting more responsibly.”
Joy’s reply was to storm off again. This time when she marched into the restaurant’s kitchen, she continued moving all the way through it and out its back door. Graydon had been waiting for her in the parking lot and together they drove away in his Mini Cooper.
By then I was totally depleted. Despite my spent spirit, however, I refused to call it a night. With my daughter and ex-mother-in-law refusing to leave David’s house, I was more determined than ever to get to the bottom of Treat’s murder. As soon as I got back to David’s mansion, I intended to ask him about Bom Felloes as well as that suspicious “ten percent deal” with the local vendors Jacques Papas had cooked up. (Pardon the pun.)
Giving my Honda more gas than necessary, I turned off the dark lane and swung onto David’s long driveway. I quickly realized something was different—a tiny gold flame was flickering inside a newly installed gas lamp. It cast a pale light on the stone path that led up to David’s front door. I rolled up to the house, staring with disbelief…and a slowly building anger.
The lamp was a genuine antique, complete with leaded glass and a blackened cast-iron post. The design perfectly suited the shingle-style beach house, but a feebly flickering gas lamp next to a footpath was not what I had in mind when I told David Mintzer that his home needed security lights!
Obviously, the man had not taken me seriously.
Okay, I admitted to myself, so I hadn’t taken him seriously either. He had asked me to drop the idea that he was the murderer’s target, and I obviously hadn’t. And wouldn’t.
David’s driveway looped in a racetrack-size circle in front of his large house. I parked near the front door, right behind the man’s small convertible sports car, noting with annoyance that the meager illumination from his quaint choice of lighting didn’t even reach the front door area.
Luckily for me, there was a nearly full moon and the stars were providing significantly more glow than the pathetic flame in the gas lamp. Still, I had trouble locating the front door key in my large handbag—something I wasn’t used to doing. Usually David’s butler, Kenneth, let me in, but he was gone for the entire weekend.
I decided simply to use the key to the kitchen door instead. I’d kept that key handy on my car keyring for convenience because that was the door I used to take beach strolls at all hours. With a shrug, I started to walk around the dark grounds to the back of the mansion.
By the time I reached the pool and deck area, my eyes became accustomed to the celestial light, and I could easily discern the outlines of the Adirondack chairs on the lawn and the frothing surf of the rising tide along the empty shoreline.
As I moved across the cedar deck, I heard someone coming towards me with heavy footsteps. If it had been David, I realized, he would have called out by now. I lunged for the back door, then nearly screamed when a gruff voice demanded—“Who are you?”
Reflexively, I lifted my hand and squinted at the blinding white beam directed at my face. Just as reflexively, I began to shout in my best aggressive, pissed off New Yorker tone—“Who the hell are you? You have no right to be here! This is private property! Get that flashlight out of my eyes!”
The blinding beam was redirected toward the heavens. I saw a shape in the shadows. I made out a dark uniform and silver badge.
“S-sorry, ma’am,” said the man with the b
adge. “Your name please?”
“Cosi. Clare Cosi.”
“Okay, your name’s on the list.”
“List? What list?”
“Mr. Mintzer’s personal list of who’s allowed to enter.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m a security guard from Shield Security Services. I’m making my rounds.”
He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, bulky, with a large round head under a blond crew cut. His half smile told me he was as nervous about this unexpected encounter as I was.
“That’s all right,” I replied with extreme relief. “I’m glad David hired security. Better safe than sorry.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Someone from Shield will be here around the clock, twenty-four seven.”
“That’s good to know.” I unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Well, goodnight.”
The youth touched the brim of his hat. “Goodnight, Ms. Cosi.”
He watched until I was safely inside with the door relocked, then he left, I assumed, to continue his rounds. Mouth dry as the Gobi, I dropped my purse on the counter and went to the refrigerator. I unscrewed a small bottle of ice-cold Perrier and gulped it down, hands a little shaky. I poured a second and pressed the bottle’s cold, frosted glass to my forehead.
I searched the house next, starting with the rooms in the guest wing. I discovered I was alone. Madame was still out with her gentleman friend and Joy was, too. Obviously, Graydon hadn’t given her a ride directly home. I was surprised to find David out—especially since I saw his car parked in the drive.
Then I realized David might have decided to move out of the guest wing and back into his own room. So I went back down the steps to the first floor and crossed over to David’s wing on the south side of the mansion. As I approached his second-floor bedroom to knock, I stopped at the door to his private bathroom.
The crime scene tape was gone now, and the door was ajar. I couldn’t resist pushing it further, flipping on the light. The last time I’d opened this door, I’d found a bloody corpse. This time there was not one sign that a crime had been committed. The formerly bloodstained marble was pristine again, the holed window pane replaced with a sparkling new sheet of glass.