by Cleo Coyle
“Wait a minute!” I cried. “Are you telling me that since we split, you managed to get married to someone named Breanne, break the poor woman’s heart, get a second divorce, and end up with a place in the Hamptons?”
“It’s not like that,” he said.
“What’s it like, then? Does Joy have any half sisters or brothers you’re neglecting to tell me about? And likely neglecting!”
Gaze straight ahead, Matt remained stoically silent.
“Just forget about stashing me in your latest ex-wife’s former love nest,” I declared. “That is just twelve degrees of creepy.”
“Everybody, please calm down,” Madame insisted.
Suddenly, I realized that I was the only one who wasn’t calm. Matteo refused to argue—the natural-born hothead wasn’t even putting up a defense or blaming someone else for his misfortunes.
Hmmm . . . maybe he has changed. But that thought was immediately countered by another. Not if he broke his marriage vows again, he didn’t!
As the crosstown traffic began to move, Madame picked up the discussion where it left off.
“You still think DC is a bad idea?” she asked. “I’m sure Clare would love to be reunited with her daughter—”
“And the Feds would love to grab her there,” Matt returned. “Georgetown is practically the DOJ’s rumpus room.”
“I want to see my daughter,” I said.
“You will,” Madame assured me, patting my hand. “But you’ll have to be patient for your own good.”
“And Joy’s,” Matt added. “Helping you escape the way we did is bound to stir up trouble.”
“So Joy is in Washington?” I asked. “Why? Does she work for the government?”
“No, she works for us,” Madame said, “managing our second shop, the Village Blend, DC.”
“There’s a second shop? Really?”
“It was your idea,” Matt said.
I turned to Madame. “I’m surprised you agreed, given your long-standing aversion to franchises.”
“Yes, well . . .” Madame raised an eyebrow. “Let’s just say there were extenuating circumstances. Anyway, you’ll see Joy as soon as we have you settled somewhere safe. The question is where—”
“Clare can stay with me,” Esther offered.
“Or me,” Mr. Dante said. “I have two rooms I use for studio space, both with views of the High Line. I can move my paints and canvases out of one of them, easy.”
I was genuinely touched. “Thank you both for the offers, but I can’t accept—”
“Clare’s right,” Matt said. “She can’t stay with any of you for the same reason she can’t stay above the coffeehouse, or at my warehouse in Brooklyn, or in my mother’s Fifth Avenue apartment. The NYPD and you-know-who will surely sniff her out. I say the Hamptons, but I’m outvoted by a committee of one—”
As Matt paused to blow the horn at a driver about to cut him off, I asked who you-know-who was. Everyone fell silent. Matt glanced into the rearview mirror, but not at me. He made eye contact with his mother.
“You don’t need to know that right now, dear,” Madame said carefully.
“Fine.” I sat back and sighed. My life was a puzzle with far too many pieces missing.
Matt’s focus returned to the road. “Okay, then, Mother, while you’re making a decision about where we should hide Clare, where am I supposed to take us?”
“To the Parkview Palace, please.”
It was a good thing the traffic ahead of us came to a halt again, because Matt’s head snapped in Madame’s direction, his expression incredulous.
“Are you crazy? You’re going to book Clare a hotel room?”
“No. We’ll decide where to hide Clare later. Right now I’m taking her to the Gotham Suite. It’s imperative that I retrieve something, and while I’m there, I want Clare to see the suite, too.”
Matt’s face remained baffled—an expression I was getting used to.
“It’s the last place she visited before she disappeared,” Madame explained. “Seeing it again might jar her memory.”
“Can’t it wait for a day or two?” Matt countered. “Someone might identify her.”
“She’s wearing a very good disguise,” Madame argued. “And this is the best time to do it, before the police really start looking for her.”
“And is there another reason we’re returning to the scene of the crime,” Matt asked suspiciously, “besides jarring Clare’s memory, that is?”
“Let’s just say I know something about that suite the police may not.”
“How are you going to get in?” Matt pressed.
“I have a key to the private elevator. And because it’s my year to chair the Gotham Ladies’ Charity Committee, I also have a key to the Gotham Suite.”
“You’ll be spotted. Hotels have security cameras, you know.”
“Cameras won’t be an issue.”
Madame’s absolute certainty drew a puzzled glance from Matt.
“Why wouldn’t there be cameras?” he pressed.
“There were cameras once at the Parkview. But not any longer.”
“I don’t know . . .” Matt drummed the steering wheel. “Are you sure bringing Clare is wise . . . I mean, going up to that suite in that elevator, after that thing happened with Annette?”
“Quit talking around me,” I said. “Between the headlines I saw on the street and the police detectives’ questions, I know everything that happened.”
“I doubt that,” Matt said.
“Yes, perhaps not everything,” Madame agreed.
I sat back, silently admitting they were right. This trauma I supposedly experienced—whatever it was—remained buried in the same black hole as my other memories.
“All right, then,” I said, facing Madame. “What happened that night? What am I missing, other than the last fifteen years of my life?”
With a deep breath, Madame began to tell me.
SIXTEEN
“ONE of Annette Brewster’s pastry chefs recently won a James Beard Award, and you expressed interest in meeting him. Annette surprised you with an invitation to a private cake tasting at her hotel.”
“I knew Annette, then?”
“Not well,” Madame informed me. “But she and I go way back, and I’ve bragged about your accomplishments for years. One day, she stopped by the coffeehouse, claiming she had a problem—don’t ask me what. All I know is that she described her problem as ‘personal and private,’ and she wanted your help to solve it. But first, in a gesture of friendship, she wanted to help solve yours.”
“With a cake tasting? Why?”
“That’s not important,” Matt said.
“No, it isn’t,” Madame echoed.
I could tell they were holding back, but I didn’t want to waste time arguing. “Fine. What happened next?”
“At seven thirty that night, Annette Brewster picked you up in front of the Village Blend in one of her vintage cars.”
“I saw you go,” Esther cut in. “I remember because the ride was really cool, like an old James Bond car. Annette was driving, and there was no one else in the vehicle.”
“So we went to the hotel,” I said impatiently. “Then what?”
Madame shook her head. “There is more than one mystery here, I’m afraid. You see, the two of you didn’t arrive at the Parkview Palace until nine PM.”
“What happened in that hour and a half?”
“With no GPS in Annette’s vintage sports car, the police only know that you drove to New Jersey and back. Toll scans at the Holland Tunnel registered Annette’s license when you left and returned to the city. Unfortunately, you’d forgotten your smartphone—”
“I had one of those fancy phones?”
“Yes, dear. And Annette wasn’t carrying one, so there were no GPS pho
ne signals for the police to trace, either.”
“Global-positioning technology in your phones? You mean these ‘smart’ telephones also tell authorities where you are and who you’re with? There’s no privacy in the future? What kind of world has this become?”
Matt snorted. “The kind where I had to hand out untraceable prepaid phones to everyone in this vehicle for our little adventure.”
Mr. Dante waved his in the air. “I’ve got mine!”
“So Annette Brewster and I spent ninety minutes somewhere in New Jersey?” I mused aloud.
“It’s a big hole the police can’t fill,” Matt said. “But then, in my experience, there are no rocket scientists on the NYPD.”
Madame shot her son a look, as if warning him. Of what? I had no idea. Before I could ask, she continued her story—
“At nine o’clock, you and Annette arrived at the Parkview Palace. You rode the private elevator to the Gotham Suite, where Chef Tomas Fong was waiting. He hosted the tasting himself, which went on until about ten thirty.” She paused. “After that, things turned tragic, for all of us—but for you especially, Clare.”
“Go on.”
“Annette had planned to drive you home. She escorted you down to the parking garage, where an anti-theft camera inside a luxury car captured you both walking into an ambush by an armed and masked assailant.”
“There were no other surveillance cameras?” I pressed.
“Not inside the Parkview Palace. Annette had ordered them all shut down. She said it was necessary. Then she clammed up and wouldn’t tell me why. The only useful camera footage the police could find was from that anti-theft device in a hotel guest’s car—”
“And it didn’t catch much,” Matt cut in. “The recording only showed you and Annette confronted by an armed figure in an overcoat and ski mask. Then everyone moved out of camera range.”
“How do you know all these details?”
Everyone fell silent.
“I know someone,” Madame finally confessed. “He’s, ah . . . Let’s call him a source at the NYPD. He’s not in charge of the investigation, but he talks to the detectives who are.”
“I see.” (All her life, Madame had attracted male admirers, so I wasn’t all that surprised.) “He’s a special friend of yours?”
“He’s certainly a friend of our Village Blend,” she said.
“Is he ever,” Esther blurted. “He’s also in love with—”
“Our coffee,” Madame cut her off with a tight smile.
“Who isn’t?” I said. “Don’t worry. I get it. He’s a cop who likes you, which is why he stuck his neck out and bent the rules. So when did you all realize I was missing?”
“Esther became worried when you failed to return to close our Village Blend that night. She called you several times, not knowing your phone was still in the duplex upstairs, where you’d left it.”
Esther nodded. “I closed the coffeehouse at the regular time, and returned in the morning to open again because I was afraid you weren’t around to do it. On my first break I went up to your duplex and found two very hungry cats—”
“Cats?” I smiled. “I have cats?”
Esther nodded. “Java and Frothy. Don’t worry. The staff is taking turns caring for them.”
Madame continued. “When you didn’t show that night, and Esther couldn’t reach you, she called me, and I called the Parkview. I discovered Annette went missing, too, so I phoned . . . our policeman friend.”
“The next day, the cops found that surveillance video,” Esther said, “and all heck broke loose. For a whole week, we were crazy with worry, and then you magically reappeared—”
“Safe, but not sound,” Matt added as he pulled up to a red light. “A private security camera on Washington Square North caught you wandering into the park at four AM, but the police can’t find any other clear footage that traces backward to show us where you came from. They canvassed the area but came up with nothing. Their latest theory is that you were dropped off by a vehicle, and they’ve been pursuing those leads, with nothing to show for it.”
“Now you know as much as we do,” Madame said, her gaze meeting mine. “It’s not much, but it’s enough for you to make an informed decision. So, choose, Clare. You can wait in the car with Matt, or you can come up to the suite and see what there is to see—and maybe get your memories back.”
Hide from reality huddled with my ex-husband, or face the truth, no matter how painful it might be? I almost laughed. It was no contest.
“If Dr. Lorca is right, if my condition has been caused by some emotional trauma, then I want to face what happened.”
Madame seemed pleased. “You and I will go to the suite. Everyone else can wait in the car.”
“Hold on a minute!” Esther cried. “If Clare is going into that hotel, so am I. She might need more backup—”
“Then I’m going, too,” Mr. Dante insisted. “I want to be there for her.”
I should have been flattered, even honored that Esther and Mr. Dante seemed to care so much about my well-being. But the truth is, I was embarrassed, and a little ashamed, because I had no idea why they felt that way. To me, they were little more than strangers.
Taking in their concerned faces, I could see we must have been close once. I wanted to remember the reasons and feel that kinship again.
One memory did come to me in that moment, but it wasn’t recent. My late grandmother, who ran a little Italian grocery store in Western Pennsylvania (and practically raised me in it) had a saying—
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
I faced Esther and Mr. Dante. “Thank you,” I told them sincerely. Then I looked at Madame and even forced myself to include Matt in the rearview. “Thank you all for caring.”
Through the mirror, Matt’s dark gaze held mine. “You’re welcome,” he said in a voice so quiet and mature, I hardly recognized it.
The expression in his eyes was different, too. I’d never seen him look at me that way, with such sad tenderness—and something else. Regret? Or was it hope?
A blaring horn startled us, and Matt tore his gaze away. The light had turned green.
“Okay, I guess it’s settled.” He hit the gas and turned the wheel. “Next stop, the Parkview Palace hotel.”
SEVENTEEN
ALL of New York knew the Three P’s: the Plaza, the Pierre, and the Palace.
On my coffeehouse manager’s pay, I could never have afforded a stay in a luxury hotel like the Parkview Palace. But once, when Joy turned eight, and Matt failed to return from one of his many sourcing trips in time for her birthday, Madame gifted us “girls” an extravagant overnight stay in a gorgeous Palace suite facing Central Park.
The three of us enjoyed an early-afternoon high tea in the hotel’s bright and lovely Sun Court. We took a carriage ride along Fifth Avenue, ending at FAO Schwarz, where Madame indulged little Joy in a toy-shopping spree. Finally, we decked ourselves out in brand-new dresses and dined among the rich and famous in the Palace’s legendary oak-paneled Lords and Ladies restaurant, where Madame and I (and even our stately, old, iron-jawed waiter) sang a quiet but heartfelt “Happy Birthday” to our little girl.
It was a day like no other, and I was grateful the memory remained intact—so vivid, in fact, I could still remember the crunch of the candied pecans on the Parkview’s famous Palace Salad; still taste the creamy, delicate sauce on its renowned Champagne Chicken; still see the peachy-pink blush on my daughter’s cheeks; and hear the sound of her giggles as an entire fine-dining restaurant turned to smile at her. It felt as though it had happened only a year or two ago, instead of nearly twenty.
Once again, I was missing my little Joy.
Not so little anymore, said that voice, deep inside me. And I struggled to control my desperate desire to see her again, to find o
ut everything I could about the years I missed. Try to be patient. You’ll see her soon enough.
As we approached the hotel’s address, I realized Matt was entering the property from its 58th Street side, far from the Oz-like golden front steps and elaborate Parkview Palace crest that faced Central Park South. The intricately carved columns and those world-famous “five gargoyles” would have been fun to see again, too. I still remembered Joy’s eyes widening at the sight of that entranceway’s majesty, designed to impress the hotel’s well-heeled guests.
The back end of the Parkview was another story. Unremarkable office buildings flanked a gray loading dock and a very ordinary driveway, which led to the hotel’s paid underground parking garage.
Below the street, the fluorescent glare was strong, making it easy to read the posted signs warning visitors that security cameras at the Parkview had been “deactivated” during renovations. “Increased patrols” were promised. In the meantime, the public was urged to “exercise caution.”
“Is that why there are no cameras?” Matt asked his mother as he searched for a parking spot. “The hotel is under renovation?”
“That’s the excuse,” Madame muttered.
“Eureka!” Matt squeezed the panel van between a Saab and a Lexus, and we bailed out through the back doors. “Don’t take forever,” he warned. “I’m paying thirty-two bucks an hour to sit here.”
“Soldier on, my boy,” Madame replied, then began to lead Esther, Dante, and me across the underground garage.
EIGHTEEN
WE followed Madame to a remote area marked for Employee Parking. On the way we saw a few clients of the hotel, but no sign of those promised security patrols.
Our trek ended in front of an ugly steel door in dented gray. It appeared to be a janitor’s closet; but when Madame released the lock, the door opened into a tastefully appointed waiting area with a small private elevator.
Using the same key, Madame activated the elevator. As we filed into the mirror-walled car, I realized everyone was staring in my direction, waiting for me to exhibit a glimmer of recognition or explode into a psychotic episode.