by Cleo Coyle
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
RECIPES & TIPS FROM THE VILLAGE BLEND
COFFEEHOUSE TERMS
GUIDE TO ROASTING TERMS
TIPS FOR BEING YOUR OWN BARISTA
COFFEE DRINK RECIPES
COFFEE SYRUPS
CAFFE LATTE RECIPES
FA-LA-LA-LA LATTES
HOLIDAY RECIPES
Don’t Miss the Next Coffeehouse Mystery
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Cleo Coyle
Coffeehouse Mysteries
ON WHAT GROUNDS
THROUGH THE GRINDER
LATTE TROUBLE
MURDER MOST FROTHY
DECAFFEINATED CORPSE
FRENCH PRESSED
ESPRESSO SHOT
Haunted Bookshop Mysteries
writing as Alice Kimberly
THE GHOST AND MRS. MCCLURE
THE GHOST AND THE DEAD DEB
THE GHOST AND THE DEAD MAN’S LIBRARY
THE GHOST AND THE FEMME FATALE
THE GHOST AND THE HAUNTED MANSION
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coyle, Cleo. Holiday grind / Cleo Coyle. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-15114-3
1. Cosi, Clare (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Coffeehouses—Fiction. 3. Christmas stories.
I. Title.
PS3603.O94H65 2010
813’.6—dc22 2009030822
http://us.penguingroup.com
To Alex, Andrew, and Tia
Never stop believing in goodness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m often asked what coffeehouses helped inspire me to create the Village Blend. Joe is always at the top of my list—Joe, the Art of Coffee, that is, whose flagship store is located in the heart of Greenwich Village. Joe’s visionary founder, Jonathan Rubinstein, and his sister Gabri ella run Joe’s with the same dedication to quality and the community that I imagine Clare Cosi does.
I’d also like to recognize Joe’s coffee director, Amanda Byron, whose fun and informative coffee classes helped educate me on the romance of the bean as well as the culinary expertise of the barista. Since I began writing the Coffeehouse Mysteries, Joe has expanded to several locations in New York—and kudos to them for being named by Food & Wine magazine as one of the top coffee bars in the country. For more information, you can visit their online home at www.joetheartofcoffee.com.
No book goes from laptop to printed page without the help of an intrepid posse of publishing professionals, and the people at Berkley Prime Crime are among the best in the business. I’d especially like to thank Executive Editor Wendy McCurdy for her editorial ingenuity and generosity of spirit. A shout-out also goes to Allison Brandau and Katherine Pelz for their good cheer and hard work.
As always, I thank my husband, Marc, who—as many of you already know—is my partner in writing not only this Coffeehouse Mystery series but also our Haunted Bookshop Mysteries. (A better partner a girl couldn’t ask for.)
For his consistent professionalism, I thank my agent John Talbot. For advice on matters medical, Dr. Grace Alfonsi is my angel—if literary license is taken in this area, the blame is mine. A tip of the hat also goes to Sammy L. for his tips on Jamaican slang and cuisine.
A sincere salute must be given to the dedicated officers of the Sixth Precinct, which serves and protects Greenwich Village. As these are light works of amateur sleuth fiction, I sometimes take liberties with police procedure, but be assured that my respect for the men and women of the NYPD knows no bounds.
Given the premise of this fictional story, I’d also like to recognize two very real and worthy holiday charities. Operation Santa Claus, run by the employees of the U.S. Postal Service, allows the general public to answer letters to Santa from needy children and families. The dedicated bell ringers of the Salvation Army also aid families in need with the donations they collect via their street-corner kettles. If you’d like to learn more about these two charities, just turn to the afterword of this book.
Finally, I’d like to send good cheer to all of you Santa Clauses out there. In an age when anxiety and cynicism keep far too many hands firmly clenched inside pockets, you represent the true spirit of the holidays. Thank you for understanding what joy there is in the simple act of giving.
Yours sincerely,
Cleo Coyle
I have always thought of Christmas time . . . as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women . . . open their shut-up hearts freely and think of people below them
as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave . . .
—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
PROLOGUE
SANTA’D been naughty . . .
He also had a pattern, and the shooter was counting on it.
Out the door at noon, then a bus downtown. By one, the white-bearded wanderer was checking in at the depot near Union Square, picking up his green plastic “sleigh,” starting his six-hour shift.
Slowly Santa made his way down Sixth, ringing his annoying bells, collecting his precious change. At close to three, he turned west. On Hudson, he parked his little wheeled cart and disappeared inside that Village Blend coffee shop. One interminable latte break later, the wannabe saint was back on the street, ho-ho-hoing his chubby heart out.
Step by agonizing step, the shooter watched while ducking into doorways, hugging dirty buildings, keeping humanity at a chilly distance. When twilight descended, snow began to fall, the temperature dropping with it, and the watching got harder.
At least the bulky overcoat was thick and warm, the shooter thought. Ratty, too, because it came from a thrift store, but it would soon be trashed, along with the hat, the scarf, the eyeglasses, and other pieces of the disguise.
Before long, the wasted hours would finally pay off. Santa’s wayward travels led him down a stretch of deserted cobblestones. The street was quiet, secluded, frozen over in white. Everything was set now, except for the gloves.
Thick with insulation, the gloves had provided warmth to spare on this long, cold slog, but now they posed a problem. Any padding between trigger and guard could make life difficult—or death, in this case.
So off came the right glove. A bit of anxious sweat on the fingertips slickened the surface of the pocketed weapon. The seasonal weather swiftly solved that glitch.
Icy metal. My new best friend . . .
Impatient now, the shooter moved to finish the job. Then this ridiculous getup could be discarded, replaced with personal outerwear—garments now sitting inside the newly purchased gym bag, which would also be tossed.
Next the gun would be wiped clean and carefully placed. Finally, the alibi would be established, an appearance at a public place, one previously frequented. A register receipt would confirm date and time.
And speaking of time . . .
The shooter’s big boots crunched firmly through the sidewalk snow. The air was cold but blood turned colder when stiff fingers tightened around frosty metal.
It’s time to end this problem, the shooter thought. Time to silence forever the rest of Santa’s nights . . .
ONE
“WHAT does Christmas taste like?” “What does Christmas taste like?”
That was the question I’d posed to my top baristas the night I discovered Alf Glockner’s body. Until I stumbled over the man’s remains, however, I hadn’t been thinking about murder or corpses or crime-scene evidence. My mood hadn’t plummeted; my worries hadn’t started; my buoyant holiday spirits hadn’t crashed through the floor.
I, Clare Cosi—single mother of a grown daughter and manager of the landmark Village Blend—still believed this was a season for celebrating. Which was why, on that particular December evening, my mind was not focused on clues or suspects or the riskier aspects of defying a cocky NYPD sergeant, but on the much simpler problem of my shop’s bottom line. Hence the question to my staff—
What does Christmas taste like?
“Well, nutmeg’s a must,” Tucker replied.
An itinerate actor-playwright and my most reliable employee, Tucker Burton was lanky as a floor lamp, his lean form topped by a defining shock of floppy brown hair. Sitting across from me in our empty coffeehouse, he tossed back the signature hair and added—
“Cloves. And cinnamon. Definitely cinnamon.”
“Festive spices all,” I agreed. “But we’ve got them covered—” Turning in my chair, I tipped my pen toward the chalkboard behind the espresso bar. “Our Eggnog Latte’s got the nutmeg; the Caramel Apple Pie is loaded with cinnamon; the Pumpkin Spice includes all three—”
And that was the problem.
Those drinks had been on the Village Blend’s seasonal menu for years now, and they were starting to feel tired. With the sluggish economy taking its toll on everyone’s wallets (mine included), I needed to accelerate the ringing of our registers before we rang in the New Year. And, yes, I had a strategy.
Later tonight, I was holding a private latte-tasting party; and first thing tomorrow I planned to place a new menu of tempting holiday coffee drinks on a sidewalk chalkboard in front of the coffeehouse. I even had an Excel spreadsheet ready to go. Come January, after the halls were no longer decked and Santa had sent his red velvet suit to the cleaners, I’d start analyzing our sales results to get a handle on the better-selling flavors for next year.
“What else tastes like Christmas?” I repeated. “Come on, people, think back to your childhoods!”
My own foodie memories were as treasured as that over-used reference to Proust’s madeleine—from my grandmother’s anisette-flavored biscotti to the candied orange peels in her panettone. And, of course, there was her traditional struffoli: I could still see those cellophane-wrapped plates lined up in Nonna’s little Pennsylvania grocery, the golden balls of honey-drenched dough mounded into tiny Italian Christmas trees (just waiting to help make me the chunky monkey I’d been until my midteens).
Unfortunately for me, Fried Dough Latte just didn’t sound like a winning menu item.
“What I remember is the pralines,” Tucker said.
“Pecan pralines?” I assumed, because he’d been raised in Louisiana.
“Of course. Every year, our next-door neighbor made them from scratch and gave them out as presents. Another woman on the block was German, and she made up these delicious gift tins of frosted gingerbread cookies—”
“Pfeffernüsse?” I asked. “Lebkuchen?”
“Gesundheit.” Tucker replied. “Of course, my own mama, being a former Hollywood film extra, was obsessed with Bing Crosby and White Christmas, so we had all that traditional Yankee Yule stuff—fruitcake, candy canes, sugar cookies. And, of course, bourbon.”
I smiled. “With my dad it was Sambuca shots.”
He poured them like water for the army of factory guys who dropped by to place bets during the Christmas season. (Among other things, my father ran a sports book in the back room of his mother’s grocery. I’m fairly sure the “other” things weren’t legal, either.)
“In my house, it was rum,” Gardner offered.
With a voice as smooth as his jazz playlists, Gardner Evans had the kind of mellow attitude any New York retail manager would value—and I did. No amount of customer crush could frazzle the young, African-American jazz musician, who seemed able to calm our most wired customers (especially the female variety) with little more than a wink.
“Rum?” Tucker said.
Gardner nodded. “Oh, yeah. If you’re talking taste of Christmas, you’ve got to have rum.”
Esther Best—zaftig grad student, local slam poetess, and latte artist extraordinaire—peered at Gardner through a pair of black rectangular frames. “What do you mean, rum? Like the stuff pirates drink?”
“Like hot buttered rum,” Gardner said, stroking his trimmed goatee. “Like the rum in mulled cider and spiked eggnog. Like the Jamaican rum in my auntie’s bread pudding and black cake. Ever have Caribbean black cake, Best Girl?”
“Haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Well, it’s a lot like you.”
“Like me?”
“Yeah.” Gardner’s smile flashed white against his mocha skin. “It’s dark and dense with powerful flav-ah.”
Narrowing her perpetually critical gaze, Esther replied, “I am not dense.”
“But you are dark,” Tucker pointed out. “Besides, the man said dense with flavor. Or are you too dense to understand Gardner’s derisive gangsta-rap inflection?”
“Bite me, Broadway Boy. My boyfriend’s the top Russi
an rapper in Brighton Beach. I think I can recognize the mocking of urban street slang when I hear it—” Esther held a palm up to Gardner. “And do not give me another musicology lecture. I know you’ve got a major grudge against gangsta rap.”
Gardner folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Anyway—” Esther turned to face me. “We can’t put rum in a latte. Right, boss? Rum is alcohol. And unless I missed the memo, you haven’t gotten a liquor license for this place, have you?”
“No duh,” said Tucker. “We can use rum syrup. Why do you think I used peppermint syrup for my Candy Cane Cappuccino? I would have used actual crème de menthe if it were legal!”
“Now that you’ve brought it up,” Esther said, “I think we should eighty-six Tucker’s Christmas Cap.” She held up one of the many paper cups holding the evening’s first round of samples. “His Candy Cane Cappuccino’s way too sweet. If we put this on the holiday menu, I guarantee two out of three customers will complain to have it remade—or just spew it back out.”
“A lovely holiday image,” Dante Silva called from behind the espresso bar. With his sleeves rolled up to show off his self-designed tattoos, the shaved-headed fine arts painter had just begun frothing up a fresh pitcher of milk.
“Are you serious?” Esther shouted from our table. “Or is that steam wand drowning out your sarcasm?”
“I can see it now,” Dante replied with a straight face, “a cobblestone street in the historic West Village, snow falling lightly on shingled rooftops, primary colors twinkling around the trunks of bared elms, and our customers spewing Tucker’s Candy Cane Cap all over their Ugg boots.”
Tucker smirked. “Now all Dante has to do is paint it for us. Hey, Dante! Why don’t you make it into a stencil for latte toppings? Or better yet, just tattoo it to your billiard-ball head!”
Dante’s reply was a hand gesture.
I sighed, wondering what the heck had happened to our holiday spirit. An hour earlier, when we’d been decorating the shop, things had gone so well I thought I’d been painted into a Currier and Ives print.