Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse

by Harper Lin

  “Francesca!” Mrs. D’Angelo exclaimed, bursting into the café.

  I held back a groan and caught Sammy suppressing a giggle as Mrs. D’Angelo surged past her. Mrs. D’Angelo was a lovely woman but exuberant, to say the least. About once a week, she came into the café like a whirling dervish, completely unconcerned with who was there and what they were doing, to share some usually inconsequential bit of news, primarily with me, for some reason.

  Sammy had said Mrs. D’Angelo used to do the same thing to my mother, so maybe that was just something else I had inherited along with the café. Maybe she expected me to pass on the news to my customers as I served them.

  “Oh, Francesca! Samantha! Matteo!” she cried. She dug the red-painted nails of one talon-like hand into my shoulder, turning me away from the counter and toward her. She hugged me briefly and forcefully, then turned and extended her free arm out toward Sammy and Matteo, motioning for them to come closer while keeping a tight grip on me. They each stepped toward us, but I noticed they were careful to stay out of the reach of Mrs. D’Angelo’s grasping arms.

  “Oh, my dears, have you heard the news?” she asked. “It’s just awful, just—” She gasped as though overcome by whatever terrible thing she had to tell us. “Just awful!” In my experience, “just awful” to Mrs. D’Angelo wasn’t much of a concern to the rest of us. So far, that summer, “just awful” had been a body board—later found propped up against a lifeguard stand—going missing from one of the beach rental houses, the daughter of someone I didn’t know losing her job out of state, and some teenagers breaking into the local high school to fill the principal’s office with balloons as a prank.

  “What hap—?” Matt started to ask, not realizing that Mrs. D’Angelo didn’t really allow much of an opportunity to get a word in during one of her proclamations.

  “There’s been a murder!”

  All traces of amusement vanished from Sammy’s face at the same time Matt went pale. Only a short time had passed since his father’s murder. The culprit had been put in jail, thanks to my own personal investigation and Matt’s help, but I hadn’t expected another murder so soon, either. Then again, nobody ever really expects murder, especially not in a safe town such as ours.

  None of us spoke for a moment as we tried to process Mrs. D’Angelo’s news.

  “Another one?” I finally managed to ask.

  “Yes!” Mrs. D’Angelo’s voice was breathy. “Can you believe it? In our dear Cape Bay! Two murders in as many months! Good heavens, what is this world coming to? Things weren’t this way when I was a girl!” She pulled me into another hard, furious hug.

  “W-what happened?” I stuttered.

  “He was stabbed! Stabbed to death! Right in the chest! They found him this morning in the parking lot of Todd’s gym. He was there all night! Can you believe it? It’s so awful!”

  For once, she was right about it being awful. I was curious, though, why she had just referred to the place as “Todd’s gym”. I didn’t know this Todd that everyone else seemed to. I considered that I might need to work on getting out of the coffee shop a little more to reacquaint myself with the town after my long absence. There were too many people and businesses I wasn’t familiar with after having spent most of the past fifteen years living out of town.

  “Who was it?” Sammy asked softly, having finally found her voice.

  “Little Joey Davis! Oh, his poor mother! Poor Denise! She must be just devastated! Devastated!”

  Joey Davis, Joey Davis. I ran the name through my head, trying to determine if it was someone I knew. The name sounded vaguely familiar, as though it belonged to someone who may have been a few years behind me in school, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “What time is it?” Mrs. D’Angelo asked, finally letting go of my shoulder to glance at her watch.

  I rubbed the place where her fingers had been, expecting a mark there the next day.

  “I need to go. The Ladies’ Auxiliary will want to take meals to little Joey’s mother, and I’ll need to coordinate that.” She looked pointedly at me and Sammy, whose eyes were filling up with tears. “The two of you are welcome to participate if you can make the time. Just let me know!” And with that, she bustled back past Matt and out the door.

  Matt sneezed, probably from the overwhelming cloud of heavy floral perfume lingering behind.

  I immediately went to Sammy, whose tears were threatening to spill over, and wrapped her in my arms. She held on tightly for a few seconds before letting go.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, wiping at her eyes.

  “Did you know Joey?” I asked.

  “Joe,” she corrected. “He hasn’t gone by Joey since he was little. Mrs. D’Angelo probably just calls him that still because his dad’s name is Joe, too.” She took a deep breath. “I went to school with him. He was my age.”

  Sammy was twenty-seven, so it made sense that his name only sounded vaguely familiar to me. I didn’t know him, but I could have seen him or his dad around town even if I didn’t know who they were. Cape Bay wasn’t so big that residents weren’t at least passingly acquainted with each other.

  “We weren’t close or anything, but we’d chat when he came in,” Sammy went on. “He’d been having a hard time lately. He lost his job, had to move in with his parents—”

  The bell over the door jingled as a customer came in, clearly a tourist, based on his loud Hawaiian shirt and the camera draped prominently around his neck. I found it strange that people didn’t know they were dressed like a stereotype.

  “Can you take this one?” Sammy asked quietly. “I just need a minute.”

  “Of course, of course, go, go!” I waved her off toward the back room, and she hurried away. “Hi,” I said brightly, turning to the customer. “I’ll be right with you.” I headed around the counter to the register, where I could punch in his drink. “Matt, can you—” I started, motioning toward the pile of teas littering the counter.

  “I got it,” he said and started to put everything back in the box.

  “What can I get for you, sir?” I asked the customer.

  “I’ve heard you make a pretty good latte,” the man drawled in a southern accent.

  “That I do,” I said with a smile.

  “Then I’d like one of those, please, ma’am.”

  I told him the price, and he paid for the drink.

  “If you’d like to take a seat over there, I’ll have that right out to you,” I said, handing him his change.

  The man walked over to one of the tables as I pulled the espresso for his drink. After all the time I’d spent studying tea that afternoon, doing something I was comfortable with felt good. When the espresso was ready and the milk fully steamed, I poured in my design—a beach scene, complete with palm tree—to suit my customer’s vacation style. My grandparents had perfected our family’s method of brewing coffee, but I had elevated the drinks with my artistic creations.

  I took the drink out to the man’s table and set it down, the design facing him.

  “Well, look at that!” he exclaimed. “If that’s not the prettiest cup of coffee I’ve ever been served. You don’t mind if I take a picture of it, do you?” He gestured at the camera around his neck.

  “Not at all,” I replied. “Please let me know if it doesn’t taste every bit as good as it looks. I’ll be right over there.” I gestured toward the armchair Matt had parked himself in after he finished boxing up my tea order.

  “Will do. Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I headed over to the armchair next to Matt. The customer’s back was toward me, so I couldn’t see his reaction when he put his camera away and took his first sip, but he didn’t immediately turn around to find me, so I figured that was a positive indication regarding the coffee’s taste.

  “So,” I said to get the conversation started.

  “So,” Matt parroted.

  I wasn’t quite sure where to take the conversation next. “You okay?”
I asked.

  Matt sighed. “Yeah, just…” He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts, then took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “Did you know Joe?” While I had moved to New York City after college, Matt had come back home. He knew a lot more of what had gone on in town over the past several years than I did. I was slowly catching up, but there was still a lot I needed him to fill me in on.

  He shrugged. “Not really. Not too well. We’d say hello, but we weren’t buddies or anything.”

  I nodded.

  “Like Sammy said, he was a good bit younger than you and me, so we didn’t really run in the same crowd.” He chuckled. “Well, from what I know of Joe, we wouldn’t really have run in the same crowd if we were the same age.”

  I raised my eyebrows, silently asking him what crowd Joe ran with.

  Another shrug. “You know, just—”

  I looked at him. I didn’t know.

  He sighed. “Sammy would know better since she went to school with him, but I kind of remember him being a big-shot athlete in high school. Baseball, and I think he might have boxed, too. I’m not really sure. My dad was the one who kept up with all that.”

  That was it? Just that Joe was an athlete? Matt hadn’t been athletic back in school, but I didn’t think that was enough to warrant the “different crowd” comment.

  “I didn’t think you hated athletes that much,” I said. “Weren’t you friends with some of the guys on the hockey team?”

  Matt shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He had more to say. I could tell.

  “Well—” He exhaled sharply and lowered his voice even though I had only the one tourist sitting in the café. “He was supposed to have a full ride to college for baseball, but he got caught with drugs or something and lost the scholarship. Things kind of went downhill for him after that.”

  Then I understood. Matt had always been a pretty straight-and-narrow kind of guy. He wouldn’t have hung around with a guy who was into drugs.

  The tourist stood up and glanced around. I hopped up out of my chair.

  “How was the latte?” I asked, moving toward him.

  “Best I’ve had in a long while,” he responded with a smile. He held up the cup and saucer that had held his drink. “Where can I put this?”

  “You can just leave it on the table, or I can take it from you. You definitely don’t have to bus your own table.” I stepped closer to him, took the dishes from him, and placed them behind the counter.

  “Well, thank you, ma’am.” He glanced around the nearly empty café. “Things always this slow in here?”

  “No,” I exclaimed with a laugh. “You came in at the slowest time on the slowest day of the week! Give it a day or two, and we’ll be packed. Every week, there’s a couple of days before the new batch of tourists finds us. We’re busy in the mornings and evenings, no matter what. It’s just the midday that takes a hit.”

  “Well, I’ll be back for another one of those lattes before I leave town even if I have to fight a crowd!”

  “We’ll look forward to seeing you,” I replied with a smile.

  He turned to go, and I took his dishes into the backroom to be washed. Sammy was still there, leaning against the desk.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  She took a deep shaky breath. “I’m okay. I’m just kind of shaken up. I’m not sure why. I guess—just—you know…” She trailed off and took another deep breath.

  “I know,” I said. “If you want to go on home, it’s fine with me. I’ll be fine here alone, and if I’m not, I can call in one of the girls.”

  A couple high schoolers worked with us part time, in addition to a couple older women who helped out from time to time. At least one of them would almost definitely be available to come in and help me on short notice.

  “No, I’ll be okay.” She stood up.

  “Sammy?” I said, a warning tone in my voice. I knew she wouldn’t want to leave me alone, but I also knew Joe’s death was hitting her harder than she wanted to admit.

  She sighed. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay.” She reached around her back and untied her apron, then pulled it over her head, her blond ponytail momentarily flipping up over her head. “Thanks, Fran,” she said. She gave me a quick hug, grabbed her purse, and headed out the back door.

  “I sent her home,” I announced to Matt as I walked back into the main part of the café.

  “That’s probably good.” He stood from his chair and stretched. “She looked kind of shaken up.”

  “Yeah, I figured it would be better for her.” I leaned my hip against the counter. Even though I didn’t know Joe Davis, Mrs. D’Angelo’s announcement still bothered me. My entire life, Cape Bay had been a safe place, the kind of place where people barely locked their doors, especially during the off-season. We were a little more careful when tourists packed our streets. I found it troubling to think about having another murder in town. I was guessing it had at least doubled our usual murder rate.

  “So where’s this gym where Joe was found? And what’s it called?” I asked Matt.

  “Todd’s gym? It’s out on the edge of town. Near the marina.”

  I was happy to hear it was as far away as anything still in Cape Bay could be. “But what’s it called?”

  “Todd’s gym,” Matt repeated.

  “I don’t know who Todd is, and I don’t care that it’s the gym he goes to. I just want to know the name of it,” I exclaimed, getting a little exasperated by how hard it was to get Matt to give me a straight answer.

  “Franny”—he looked me in the eye—“the name of the gym is Todd’s Gym. Todd owns it, and he named it after himself. And, yes, you do know him. It’s Todd Caruthers.”

  Tea, Tiramisu, and Tough Guys: Book 2 is available everywhere