On What Grounds (Coffeehouse Mysteries, No. 1) (A Coffeehouse Mystery) (13 page)

Matt looked like a pressure cooker ready to blow. Thank goodness Joy was canny enough to step between the two men.

“Something smells good,” she said, her voice a little too high-pitched. “What’s for dinner?”

“Carbonara,” Matt said through clenched teeth.

“And my cappuccino walnut cheesecake!” I added in a pitch even higher than my daughter’s. My god, in an effort to cut through the tension, I was actually chirping like Doris Day.

Joy looked at me. “Surprise!” she said feebly.

“Not the surprise we expected,” I said with a look that told her:
You should have warned me.
“Well, I’d better set another place at the table. Why don’t you both make yourselves comfortable.”

Though I don’t consider myself a superstitious person, as I set a new place at the dining room table, I cursed Centeotl, the Aztec goddess of corn and fertility, along with my ex-husband for bringing that golden witch under my roof.

I
returned to the kitchen to find Mario and Matteo having a little disagreement about something. Matt clutched a meat cleaver in one white-knuckled fist—not a good sign.

“Fettuccini carbonara should be prepared with pancetta,” Mario was saying. “Never with American bacon.”

“Carbonara is a Depression-era dish created by Italian-Americans,” Matt stated. “How many of them had pancetta? Anyway, Joy likes carbonara prepared with
bacon.
” He turned to Joy for some support. “Don’t you, kiddo?”

Joy turned to me, her eyes pleading.

(It occurred to me in that moment that the first young man my daughter chose to introduce to her elusive father was a tall-dark-and-handsome Italian cook with an arrogant attitude. Even their names were similar. My, my, how Freudian.)

My heart went out to my daughter. But it was
her
mess. And she was a big girl. (Even bigger with those heels.) I shook my head and showed her my empty palms.
No tricks up my sleeve for this one, honey.

“So what sort of bacon then?” Mario asked, the smirk defining his level of sincerity. “Sugar cured, hickory smoked, or do you prefer those bits you find in the supermarket jars?”

“Don’t be a jackass,” said Matt.

Joy was about to jump in, but I stopped her.

“Well, you must admit,” said Mario, “the dish does sound like something you get at the House of the International Pancake.”

“It’s IHOP—the International House of Pancakes,” said Matt. “You obviously don’t know everything.”

I sighed, considering the scene. Here I was in New York City, an international center for art, commerce, intellect, and culture. A prime symbol of Western Civilization. And what was I doing? Watching two alpha males argue over a greasy slab of pork fat.

As the barbs continued, I pulled Joy aside. “Your first lesson in understanding men,” I whispered. “There will often be times like these—when they act as if they’ve been evolution-proof for the last fifty thousand years.”

The baking timer went off, startling everyone into silence.

“Saved by the bell,” I whispered to Joy. She smiled with grateful relief as I announced: “Mario, Joy, it’s time to clear out! I have to make the cheesecake topping, and your father has to make dinner.”

I reached into the wine cooler and clutched the first bottle I could feel.

“Here!” I said, thrusting it into Joy’s hand. “Why don’t you go into the dining room with Mario and open this.”

“Wow! Mom!” Joy shrieked at seeing the label on the bottle. “Proseco, 1992. What’s the occasion?”

Ohhhhh, nooooo,
not the Venetian champagne. That was a mistake. But too late now.

“Just happy to see you,” I chirped, still channeling Doris Day. “And of course—your bringing Mario is an occasion,” I managed to choke out for Joy’s sake.

I heard a disgusted grunt from behind me. A loud slam came next, as Matteo crushed a half-dozen whole cloves of garlic with one flat-sided blow from his meat cleaver. Chunks of the powerful-smelling herb bounced off the walls.

Mario leaned close and took my hand again. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Allegro.”

It’s Cosi, you idiot!

With a wet slam, Matteo slapped his slab of good old American bacon onto the thick wooden chopping block near the sink. With quick, angry jabs, he began mincing the smoked pork into tiny shards.

“Let’s go into the dining room,” Joy said, seeing the flash of disgust cross Mario’s face.

After they’d quickly retreated, I turned to Matteo.

“You!” I hissed in my most grating ex-wife voice (a harridan tone so annoying I actually annoy myself when I use it). “Make your damn pasta and keep your mouth shut. Your one and only daughter has brought a man home to meet her parents, and you are not going to ruin this night for her!”

Matt stared at the garlic scattered across the cutting board. I took his silence for defiance.

“You are going to behave yourself or leave right now,” I added.

Matteo crushed another clove of garlic—this one with his fist.

“The pasta will be ready in half an hour,” he said, turning up the fire under a large pot of boiling water. “When you’re finished with your cheesecake, you can make the Caesar salad.”

“Oh, I’ll get right on it,” I replied tersely. As I knew already, there was no kitchen large enough!

Fortunately, things went somewhat better from then on. During dinner, Joy talked about school, and about how she aced her last saucier project—with Mario’s help.

Mario, it turned out, was from Milan, but had spent the last three years in New York City, joining a cousin who had emigrated years before to work in the restaurant business here. Mario himself had worked in a series of restaurants in both Italy and France—first as a dishwasher, then a waiter, then as a sous-chef. He was twenty-five years old and had landed a full-time kitchen staff position at Balthazar, one of the top restaurants in Soho.

I asked how he’d met Joy. Apparently, he’d been friends with the guest saucier instructor who’d balled Joy out for ruining her hollandaise sauce. Mario had been observing the class in support of his friend, and after the class, he’d approached Joy.

“My heart went out to this pretty little girl. She looked as though she was going to cry—and I remembered how
stupido
I felt when I had made a mistake at my first job in a four-star restaurant. I was hired the day I applied because the chef was on the spot. He handed me the house recipe for cream of mushroom soup and told me to prepare it for Sunday brunch. I went to work, and when it was done, the chef tried some.”

“He didn’t like it?” I asked.

“No, no,” Mario replied. “The soup was superb, and for a very good reason. Along with the cultivated mushrooms, I had diced a thousand dollars’ worth of truffles. I felt so like an ass because I had made the most expensive pot of soup in history! I explained to the head chef that I had never taken classes, that I always learned on the job. But the little restaurants I had worked in…Well, they didn’t serve truffles. I got fired anyway. Of course, that was a long time ago.”

“Oh, so you don’t make mistakes anymore?” Matt said.

Mario’s eyes met Matt’s. “No.”

Joy hung on Mario’s every word. The boy’s arrogance would be interpreted by her as confidence. I knew this because I had been young and in love with a guy like this, too.

In Mario’s defense, however, he was otherwise polite, lively, intelligent, and when it came to Joy, clearly considerate. Of course Matteo hated him already, even after Mario diplomatically asked for seconds on the carbonara (that was a nice surprise) and repeatedly complimented the Venetian champagne.

By the time dessert rolled around, things were far more congenial than they had been when the long evening began, though Matt still eyed Mario warily and answered most of the questions asked of him with a monosyllabic grunt.

Along with the chilled cheesecake, I served a hearty espresso made with a dark-roasted Antigua bean. Its smooth nutty flavor perfectly complemented the walnut crust of the cappuccino cheesecake.

To my delight, Mario went on and on about the quality of the espresso. (Okay, I admit it. The kid managed to work his way onto my good side.)

By eleven o’clock, Joy said it was time to go, claiming she had an early class tomorrow. With a final hug, she and her new boyfriend were gone.

“She sure can pick them,” Matteo said miserably.

“She’s a chip off the old block,” I replied.

Matteo looked at me, puzzled for a moment.

“Our daughter managed to find a guy who is self-assured to the point of arrogance, something of a know-it-all, but smooth and charming as they come. Sound familiar?”

“No,” Matteo said.

“No? You idiot! He’s just like you!”

“What? You’re crazy! He’s nothing like me!” Matteo threw up his hands. “I’m going to clean out the second bedroom so I don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

“Fine,” I replied. “I’ll clean up here, then go down to the Blend to close up with Tucker.”

I hadn’t forgotten the sad events of this day. And I remembered that I still had to prepare a list of employees and their addresses and phone numbers for Detective Quinn—which I didn’t want to mention to Matt, considering his opinion of our local gumshoe. I also had to juggle everyone’s work schedule to cover Anabelle’s absence.

When the kitchen was clean, the dishes done (except for a single espresso cup that seemed to be strangely missing), I bagged up the garbage to carry it downstairs. On the landing just outside the front door I found a second plastic bag full of stuff—boyhood items Matteo was tossing to make room for the foldaway bed. I peered into the bag.

There were a few dog-eared magazines, mostly, dating back to the 1970s, including vintage issues of
Playboy.
There was an old board game, Risk, which I thought quite appropriate, and a battered copy of Ernest Hemingway’s paean to the bohemian life in Paris,
A Moveable Feast
—undoubtedly a seminal influence on Matteo’s young mind.

Amazing what someone’s garbage will tell you.

Then it hit me. Garbage—specifically the garbage in the can in front of the Blend’s basement steps this morning, the garbage that Anabelle supposedly slipped on before she was sent down the stairs and into a coma.

I dropped my own sack of kitchen garbage on the landing and hurried down the steps. I wanted to grab the bag in question before Tucker carried it outside to be collected. The crime scene unit had already examined the bag and dismissed it as evidence, but they didn’t know this place as well as I did.

Within that Blend garbage, there might be something that they’d overlooked, some clue that would help me prove what I knew in my gut: That Anabelle’s “accident” was no accident at all. It was a slim hope, perhaps, but given the news of our insurance fiasco, I was close to desperate.

As I entered the Blend from the back staircase, Tucker was just locking the coffeehouse’s front door. “Garbage!” I cried out like a madwoman. “Where is this morning’s garbage?”

“Lined up in the basement with the rest,” Tucker replied. “I was about to put it outside.”

I took the basement stairs two at a time, and scanned the line of dark green plastic bags lined up against the stone wall. After singling out the one with lingering flakes of fine grayish white powder still clinging to its waterproof surface—the one the crime scene unit had dusted for prints—I dragged it directly underneath the fluorescent lights.

I was surprised they hadn’t impounded the whole mess, but I guess they didn’t need foul old garbage stinking up their evidence room. And anyway, Detective Quinn had made it clear that everything about the scene and Anabelle’s body made the incident appear to be an accident, not a crime.

I gingerly unwrapped the wire tie on the top of the bag and opened the mouth. Inside was a second bag sealed with a wire tie as well. This was standard for the Blend. Coffee and espresso grounds, as well as tea leaves, are moist, so we use two bags behind the counter—one inside the other—as double protection against breakage or spillage.

After opening both bags, I peered inside, not quite sure for what I was searching. At first glance, the contents seemed typical enough. The bag was filled with off-white paper filters stained with coffee grounds, loose grounds, and caked grounds dumped from espresso baskets—some still retaining their packed circular shape hours after being discarded. Most of the paper filters were encrusted with dark black grounds that shined like oil under the harsh light. These were the remains of our famous French Roast—the Blend’s Brew of the Day on that unfortunate evening.

Pie-pan-sized paper filters from another urn were lined with a lighter, brown mass that resembled mud—which told me a Colombian bean had been brewed at one point (and that the beans had been ground too fine, which probably resulted in a bitter cup. I made a mental note to lecture the staff yet again on the proper grinding techniques).

Soiled napkins, disposable plates, and half-eaten pastry sat amid crushed cardboard cups, stirring sticks, paper towels, and other refuse, but none of it could be considered unusual—let alone incriminating.

I sighed.

So much for intuition.

And yet…I couldn’t dismiss my feeling that there was something here in this garbage bag that could shed some light on what had really happened a little over twenty-four hours ago.

I stared down at the contents of the plastic sack and realized that this foul garbage was possibly the last thing Anabelle saw before her tumble down the stairs. The morbid thought sent a slight shudder right through me, which is the reason I screamed like a banshee when I felt strong fingers grip my shoulder.

After the bloodcurdling noise echoed off the thick stone walls, a voice spoke—

“Good god, relax. It’s me.”

“Matt!”

“Didn’t you hear me coming down the steps?”

“I was lost in thought,” I said, my voice still shaking a bit from the scare. “What the hell are you doing down here anyway?”

“I found this bag of kitchen garbage leaking on the landing,” Matteo said, tossing the sack onto the pile. “I brought it down before it ruined the parquet.”

“I guess I dropped it when I came down here.”

“You dropped the garbage on the way downstairs to put the garbage out? Clare, are you feeling all right?”

“Forget it,” I said, facing him. It was then that I noticed the tiny espresso cup Matteo gripped in one hand.

His eyes followed mine. “I found it on the end table in the hallway,” Matteo explained. “Mario must have left it there after dinner. Joy was showing him the apartment, I guess.”

“So put it in the dishwasher,” I replied. “Unless you think it’s so polluted by that boy’s touch that you’re planning on throwing it away.”

There was a pause as I waited for Matt to say something.

“I think they were kissing,” he said.

I blinked. “That’s what two people who like each other tend to do,” I said evenly. “Usually they do it every chance they get.”

“So, you really think she likes him?” Matteo asked.