Decaffeinated Corpse (29 page)
Read Decaffeinated Corpse Online
Authors: Cleo Coyle
Tags: #Mystery And Suspense Fiction, #General, #Fiction, #Detective, #Mystery, #Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, #Fashion, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction - Mystery, #Mystery & Detective - General, #Coffeehouses, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Cosi; Clare (Fictitious character), #Mystery fiction, #Restaurants - Employees
It started to drizzle and I pulled my collar up. Meanwhile Neils and the fat man haggled. Finally the man behind the bars opened the cash register and counted out money, slipped the bills through a hole in the bars. I hurried back to Matt.
“I think he’s pawning his watch,” I said incredulously.
“That’s ridiculous,” Matt replied. “The Van Doorns are rich. He’s been living at the Waldorf=Astoria for over a month. Do you realize what that costs?”
“I know what I saw. Anyway, his wife has all the money. Maybe she has him on a tight leash—wait, he’s coming out.”
I ducked into the doorway with Matt, but we were on the same side of the street. If Neils walked in our direction, there was no way he would miss seeing us. Fortunately, he paused under the shelter of the doorway.
He reached into his jacket, pulled a New York Yankee cap out of his pocket, and slipped it over his head to protect himself from the rain. Then he stepped onto the sidewalk and moved toward us.
Remembering the cap I saw on the night Ric was mugged, I was about to say something, when Matt’s hands closed around my waist. He turned me completely around and pushed my spine against the door. Then he pressed his heavy form against me, bent low and covered my mouth with his before I could say a word.
With Matt’s back turned to Van Doorn, and our faces pressed together, there was no way the man would recognize either of us. Through eyelashes dampened by the light rain, I watched Neils Van Doorn pass us by without a second glance.
I gently pushed Matt’s chest. He kept kissing me. “Matt,” I murmured against his gently moving lips—and pushed
harder
.
harder
.
“Sorry,” Matt mumbled sheepishly as he finally broke off. “I saw it in a Hitchcock movie once, thought it was a nice ploy.”
“Well, the last time I checked, I wasn’t Ingrid Bergman, not even close. And you aren’t Cary Grant, either.”
“It was a nice kiss, though.” His eyebrow arched. “Don’t you think?”
I had no time to be annoyed. I’d recognized that Yankee cap, and I told Matt about the night Ric was mugged. The attacker had knocked me down, too, and dropped the headgear. I told Matt about catching a glimpse of it.
“Come on, Clare. There are a lot of Yankee caps in New York City. Probably a million.” But even as he said it, I could tell Matt was wavering.
“It’s too much of a coincidence,” I insisted.
He gazed up the block, in the direction Neils had disappeared. “Maybe.”
“What should we do now?” I asked.
Matt frowned, glanced over his shoulder. “I guess I’m going inside that damn pawnshop.”
Inside the pawnshop, the air was warm and close. A radiator hissed somewhere nearby, and the place smelled of mildew and old paper. With each step we took, the warped hardwood floor bumped hollowly.
The shop itself had a strange layout. There was merchandise in the window, but nothing at all in the front of the store, not even shelves. Instead, all the items were piled onto aluminum racks on the other side of the cage. The items were identified by cardboard tickets attached with strings. Prices were scrawled with black magic marker on the tags. The prices seemed absurdly low, but how did one gauge the value of a used and dented microwave oven, anyway?
The wall on the right of the room was the building’s original exposed brick—highly desirable in a SoHo or NoHo loft. Oddly, the wall on the opposite side of the room was covered floor-to-ceiling by sheets of plywood painted a faded and dirty white.
There was a large square hole cut into the wood close to the ornamental tin ceiling. I would have thought it was some kind of ductwork for the heating system, but Matt warned me before we came in here to be careful—there could be a man with a loaded gun watching us through that hole right now.
“Need any help?” asked the fat man behind the cage.
He was either smiling or sneering, I couldn’t tell which. But as Matt approached the steel bars, I could see the man sizing up my ex. From Matt’s wardrobe (he still wore the formalwear from the Beekman party) the clerk could guess Matt wasn’t from the neighborhood.
Matt smiled through the bars at the fat man, who stared with close-set eyes over a pug nose.
“I believe a man came in here a few minutes ago,” Matt began. “Blond guy. Track suit. Sneakers. Yankee cap . . .”
The fat man nodded, bored.
“So you know him?” Matt asked.
“He’s been in and out for the past couple of days,” the fat man replied, regarding Matt with rising interest. “Why do you want to know? Are you a cop or something?”
I sensed no hostility in the man’s response, only wariness.
“Nothing like that,” Matt said quickly. “Van Doorn is a friend of mine, that’s all.”
“That’s his name? Von Doom?”
“Van Doorn,” Matt corrected. “Didn’t you know?”
The clerk shook his bald head. “We don’t ask for names around here. Not his. Not yours. We respect our customer’s privacy.”
“I see. Very commendable,” Matt said, humoring the man. “I appreciate your discretion in this matter, as well. You see, Van Doorn is a friend of mine. Lately I’ve become concerned. He seems to have fallen in with a bad crowd. He’s been gambling, and I’m rather afraid Mr. Van Doorn might have accrued some debt with a local gangster.”
The fat man snorted. “Do tell.”
“If you could answer a few questions, I would be very appreciative.” While Matt spoke, he laid a fifty-dollar bill on the counter. The fat man’s meaty hand slammed down on the bill like he was swatting a fly. When he lifted his hand again the money was gone.
“What sort of business does my friend do here?”
“Look around, pal,” the fat man replied. “This here is a pawnshop, and he ain’t been buying.”
“So he’s pawning things? Valuable items?”
The man behind the counter shrugged. “A cigarette case. A money clip. Cufflinks. A couple of rings. The other day he brought in an Omega watch. Today he brought in a Rolex. Took three hundred bucks for it.”
Matt pursed his lips. “And you say Van Doorn’s been doing this for a week.”
“Maybe longer,” the big man said, showing a bit of sympathy for the first time. “Folks get in trouble—”
“I know. And they have to sell their lives away, piecemeal.” Matt cleared his throat. “Roughly how much money have you paid Mr. Van Doorn for these items?”
The fat man scrunched up his face. “Hard to say, buddy. He didn’t always take money. Sometimes he traded his stuff for other merchandise.”
I was surprised and baffled. In this sea of junk, I could find nothing Neils Van Doorn would need or want. But Matt didn’t miss a beat.
“I see you have a collection of military items in the window,” he said. “Did my friend trade his jewelry for something like that? A knife, perhaps? Or something more lethal?”
The question dangled in the close air. The fat man studied Matt for a moment. My ex-husband slipped his hand into his pocket and produced another fifty dollar bill. Slowly, he slid it across the counter. But this time, when the fat man’s hand came down on it, Matt didn’t let go.
“What did Van Doorn buy from you?” he asked in a firm voice.
The fat man leaned close, until he was eye to eye with Matt. When he spoke, it was in a whisper. “Listen, buddy, I don’t want no trouble and neither do you.” The fat man’s eyes drifted up to the hole in the wall. “Let’s just say your friend took something a little more dangerous than a bayonet and leave it at that.”
“Are you saying he bought a firearm?”
The fat man yanked the bill out of Matt’s hand, leaned back. “You said your friend was in trouble, right? That he got in deep with the wrong guys, right?”
“That’s right,” Matt said with a nod.
“Then take my advice. Instead of buying his stuff back, just give him the money you were going to spend. Tell Von Doom to pay off the guys carrying his marker, and throw that .38 he’s packing in the East River.”
“Then you did sell him a gun,” Matt pressed.
The fat man spread his arms wide and grinned. “Gun? Who said anything about a gun? You sure didn’t hear it from me.”
The man sat back in his stool, peered down his nose at Matt.
“Now beat it. You and that nervous-looking babe over there. I don’t want no trouble.”
Matt grabbed my hand and practically dragged me out of the pawnshop. In the street, the wind was blowing off the Hudson River, but the misty drizzle had ceased. We walked almost two blocks before Matt spoke.
“Call Quinn. Tell him what we found out.”
I pulled out my cell, speed dialed his precinct number. To my surprise, I got through to him. While we headed east, back to Midtown, I filled Mike in on what we’d learned. I told him about my suspicions, about the hat Van Doorn was wearing, and how the man who mugged Ric that night was wearing the same kind of cap.
“It’s a nice theory, Clare, but there are several holes in it,” Mike told me.
“Holes? What holes?”
“For starters, this Neils Van Doorn has no connection to Ellie. As far as I can see, he never even met Mrs. Lassiter. And anyway, Ellie wasn’t shot.”
“Then why did he buy a gun?”
“Maybe he didn’t,” Quinn replied. “Matt was feeding cash to the guy at the pawnshop. He was probably telling tales to keep the payoff flowing. If the only proof you have is the word of that pawnshop scumbag, you really don’t have much at all.”
“But owning an unlicensed handgun in New York City is illegal, right?” I argued. “There’s no way it could be licensed. The pawnshop clerk didn’t even know Van Doorn’s name!”
I could hear Quinn’s sigh over the cell phone. “I’ll look into it,” he said.
“How about putting a tail on Van Doorn,” I suggested.
“We don’t have the manpower to chase everyone we think might have an illegal handgun.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and I was beginning to think maybe I was on the wrong trail again.
“I’ll look into it, Clare,” Quinn finally said. “That’s all I can promise.”
I thanked him and closed the phone. When I looked up, I noticed Matt was on his own call. He spoke for a minute, and then hung up, frowning.
“I just spoke to Monika Van Doorn’s personal assistant. Mrs. Van Doorn is unavailable. She’s making preparations for tonight’s Dutch International Halloween party.”
“Great. How are we going to talk to her about Ric’s decaf scheme?”
“Come on . . .”
Matt bolted for the corner of Eighth Avenue, where he frantically tried to wave down a cab.
“Where to now?” I asked.
“We’re going to see my mother. She’s been invited to Monika’s big party tonight. We’re going with her. We’ll crash it if necessary.”
“But, Matt, it’s a costume party! Do you know what the population of this burg is? Every masquerade shop is certainly cleaned out by now. Where are we going to find costumes in New York City
on
Halloween?”
on
Halloween?”
TWENTY-FIVE
“SORRY, ma’am. We can’t be going any farther. There’s craziness ahead.”
I could hear exasperation behind the limo driver’s Caribbean lilt. His Lincoln Town Car was completely surrounded by the mob of people. There was no going forward, or turning back.
“I tried to tell you two,” Matt said. “Traffic’s blocked by the parade. We’re lucky we got this close to Sixth Avenue.”
Madame sighed. “Very well, we shall walk from here.”
Matt climbed out of the Town Car. Adjusting his Zorro hat over his black mask, he circled the car and opened the door. Madame lifted her hand. With a dramatic flourish, Matt tossed the ebony cape over his shoulder, pushed back his plastic sword, and took his mother’s hand. Madame’s elaborate red and white gown rustled as she exited the car.
“Welcome to the Halloween parade, Your Majesty,” Matt said with a deep bow.
The Queen of Hearts curtsied, eliciting a smattering of applause from the spectators, many of whom were also in costume.
Madame’s outfit was suitably outrageous. Her faux Elizabethan dress, with a large scarlet heart bodice, ballooned when she stepped onto the sidewalk, and the crowd parted to give her room to pass. She wore a tasteful tiara in her upswept silver hair and long red opera gloves on her arms. A heart shaped mask with a sequin-covered handle completed her disguise.
When we’d arrived at her penthouse apartment earlier in the day, Matt and I found Madame assembling her costume. We explained our situation, and our desire to crash the party, and Madame declared she had the perfect costumes for both of us.
“Matteo shall wear the costume with which he dazzled the ladies back in his early twenties. You remember that year?” she asked Matt. “Both you and Ric went to the Dutch International party dressed as Zorro. You made the ladies swoon, and confused them, too. They never knew who they were kissing!”
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