On What Grounds (Coffeehouse Mysteries, No. 1) (A Coffeehouse Mystery) (23 page)

“That’s enough,” the detective said.

As arm-wrestling matches go, this one could have been a tossup. But Matt backed down. He saw that Quinn was right. After one hard punch from Matt, Flaste had sunk helplessly to the floor. Still wheezing, he didn’t even notice when the Allegro family recipe book spilled out of his jacket.

“You’re under arrest for burglary and receiving stolen goods,” Quinn announced. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

“M
YSTERY
solved,” I proudly told Quinn ten minutes later on the sidewalk outside Oscar’s Wiles’ front window.

“It would seem so,” he said, looking down at me.

Two patrol units of uniformed NYPD officers had already rolled up to the dirty brick building, their sirens and flashing emergency lights drawing a fairly large crowd. It appeared we were the biggest show in this part of town at the moment. Hoots and hollers abounded among the halfinebriated onlookers, along with an out-of-tune rendition of the theme from Cops.

One pair of officers controlled the crowd while two more packed Flaste and Mr. Blond Crewcut into the back of one of the vehicles.

“Hey, there, Ms. Cosi!” called one of the crowd control officers over the mess. It turned out to be Officer Langley, the lanky young Irish cop I’d introduced to Greek coffee the other day.

“Oh, hi!” I called back. “How are you?”

“That’s
our
question for
you
!” said his darker, shorter partner, Demetrios, as he attempted to keep back the pair of drunks singing “Bad boys! Bad boys!”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Not a scratch! Thank you both for your help!”

“Hey, all in a day’s work,” said Langley. “Right, Lieutenant?”

Quinn didn’t smile. He seemed to be mildly allergic to that facial expression. But he appeared pleased enough nonetheless. He lifted his square chin toward me and said, “
Her
work. Not mine. You did a good job, Cla…uh, I mean…Ms. Cosi.”

I appreciated the fact that he
almost
called me by my first name in public. It wasn’t exactly the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but it was something.

“No luck,” said Matteo, coming out of the bar.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “I can’t believe it. I really thought I saw Mr. Crewcut carrying the Village Blend plaque. And if he did take it, then it’s got to be in this bar.”

Quinn told me to wait a moment. He walked over to the patrol car and ducked his head into the back seat that held Flaste and Crewcut. After a few minutes of talking to the men in cuffs, he came back.

“No help. Sorry,” Quinn told me. “They’re lawyering up.”

“Excuse me? Lawyering who?” I asked. Quinn was about to explain what the heck that term meant when Matteo cut in—

“Anything they say can and will be held against them in a court of law, Clare. So they’re not talking until they see a lawyer.”

“That’s right, Allegro,” said Quinn. “You have some experience with that, do you?”

“Let’s not get personal, Quinn—”

“Gentlemen!” I cried. “This doesn’t solve the problem at hand. I would like to find the Village Blend plaque. Beyond monetary value, it is an historic antique that means the world to a woman who means the world to me. So what do we do?”

“If you’re not absolutely sure he stole it, and he’s clearly not admitting a thing,” said Quinn, “then double-check back at your shop. Confirm that it is indeed missing. Once you do that, we’ll take it from there.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s easy enough. I’ll go back right now.”

“I do need your statement, however, Ms. Cosi,” Quinn said. “And Mr. Allegro’s, too.”

“Clare,” said Matt, “why don’t you go on back to the Blend and check on the plaque, and I’ll go with Quinn and get the statements started.”

“Matt, there’s no reason I have to be the one to go back to the Blend. Why don’t
you
go back, and
I’ll
go with Quinn—”

“No,” Matt instantly responded. “I mean…uh…we locked the front door but the lights were flipped on before we left, so customers might think we’re still open—”

“But you can turn off the lights as well as me.”

“—
and
I’m pretty sure I left the door to our duplex ajar,” added Matt, “so your Java may have wandered down into the coffeehouse. And Java doesn’t know me well enough to come when I call.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes…I better go back right away then. She might run and hide from you. And Java’s had enough stress adapting to the duplex already—who knows how she’ll react once she figures out there are two more floors plus a basement to sniff out and mark.”

“Mark?”
asked Matt. “You don’t mean—”

“Java’s a girl. She won’t spray. But she may feel the need to rub up against every stick of furniture in the place.”

“Then you better get going.” Matt was speaking to me, but leveling a strange sort of warning gaze at Quinn.

Why did I get the impression my ex-husband didn’t want to be the one to go back to the Blend because that would leave me alone in the hands of Quinn for twenty minutes? Oh, well,
que sera sera.

Langley and Demetrios gave me a ride back to the Blend in their patrol car. I waved good-bye as they drove off and used my key to get back inside (the duplicated key was evidence and Quinn had wanted it).

Not taking any chances, I relocked the door immediately—and exhaled, feeling safe at last.

Unfortunately, with one glance in the front window, I saw the bad news. As I’d suspected, the store’s only window signage, the famous Village Blend plaque, which had announced
FRESH ROASTED COFFEE SERVED DAILY
to its customers for over one hundred years, had been stolen.

“Well, Quinn,” I muttered. “Guess we’ve got ourselves another mystery.”

I knew Quinn wanted me at the precinct for a statement, so I began to walk swiftly toward the staircase. Hopefully Java hadn’t wandered far from the duplex apartment. My guess was she’d descended to the second floor’s cozy setup of sofas and chairs and was sniffing up a storm.

“Java!” I called. “Java Jive!”

She always came when I called. So instead of wandering the four floors of the entire building, I decided to stay put and keep calling her. Absently, I noticed the empty demitasse cup on the counter. I automatically took it to the sink.

“Java!” I called again. Now that I was behind the counter, I remembered there were used espresso grounds in the portafilter. I had just knocked the wet grounds into the garbage can below the counter when I heard a male voice say, “Good evening, Ms. Cosi.”

My heart nearly stopped. The coffeehouse had been locked up tight. No one was supposed to be here.

A light blond, pale-skinned man emerged from the pantry area. He was wearing a finely tailored overcoat, and his features looked familiar, but for a moment I couldn’t place him. I was too busy freaking out about the fact that he’d been waiting silently back there. A white rabbit in the gray shadows.

“Who are—”

My voice choked when I saw he had something in his hand, and he was pointing it at me:
A gun. A gun. A gun. My god! My god! My god!

Still behind the counter, I glanced down. There was nothing to defend myself with—no knife, no pick, not even a glass I could throw. I was simply staring at grimy black coffee grounds. The stranger couldn’t see my hands, so I grabbed a fistful. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it, but my gut told me to grab something, anything.

“Step away from the counter and do as I say.”

“Who are you?” I asked, as I dropped my hands to my sides and stepped out toward the main room, where the stranger was standing.

“Oh, Ms. Cosi,” he said, “I’m insulted. Don’t you remember meeting me this evening?”

I stared a moment then blinked, stunned by the recognition. The man was right. I did know him. He was Richard Engstrum, Senior. I’d met him at the Waldorf charity ball.

I swiftly put together the reason he was here. Obviously, his wife had told him about my threat to go to the police tomorrow with evidence against his son. He must have come to protect his son, I decided. So all I needed to do was set him straight!

“Mr. Engstrum, listen to me—” I was about to tell him we’d caught the guilty parties tonight. I was even going to apologize for accusing his son of wrongdoing, but he interrupted me.

“No, Ms. Cosi. I’m the one with the gun. So
you’re
going to listen to me. I want you to know it was Anabelle who chose to have the first ‘accident.’ I simply made sure she had a second one. The fact is, I did try to talk her out of the blackmail. But she wouldn’t listen. So you see, since she left me with no choices, I left her with none.”

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Engstrum wasn’t here innocently chasing down some ploy of mine. That was now abundantly clear. He had just confessed to murder.

“It was you?” I asked in a weak voice. “You wanted her to lose the baby?”

“Yes,” said Engstrum.

“But she lost her life.”

“Yes, I just heard about that. And that’s why you’re going to lose yours, too, unless you give me the evidence you say you have against my son.”

Don’t lose it, Clare,
I told myself.
Don’t freak out. Keep it together. Think!

“It’s with the police!” I cried abruptly. “And they’re coming here any second!”

“No they’re not. You’re bluffing. I run a high-stakes business, Ms. Cosi. I know when people try to bluff me, and you’re bluffing now. I saw you wave good-bye to that police car a few minutes ago.”

Engstrum cocked the gun. It was small, but it looked big enough to kill. His hard, emotionless eyes gave me the impression he’d pulled the trigger on people already—maybe not
gun
triggers, but there were all kinds of other triggers that when squeezed hurt and ruined people.

I’d seen his type before. The type who could look at a human being and then assign a worth based solely on a coldly calculated business strategy or perceived use in obtaining one or another kind of self-gratification. People were no longer people, just pawns, just numbers. Madame Blanche Dreyfus Allegro Dubois had seen his type before, too. Back in World War II they’d worn swastikas.

“Really, Ms. Cosi. Do you want to die like this?”

“No! Please!”

“Where is the evidence?”

I thought fast. If I could lure him toward the stairs…and employ some sort of distraction…

“It’s in a locked container,” I lied at last. “In the enclosed alley. Right out back.”

“Let’s go get it.
Together.
”

He waved the gun, indicating that I should lead, walking in front of him. I felt my mouth go dry, my legs go weak. Adrenaline flowed through me like a hundred cups of coffee.

“Don’t you have any conscience?” I asked, trying to mentally push him off balance. “Even if you don’t care about Anabelle. How could you kill your own grandchild?”

“
Child.
Not grandchild.”

“What?!”

“I have no remorse, Ms. Cosi, because Anabelle Hart had it coming. She brought it on herself.”

“What!”

“You can’t sell yourself as one thing and then turn around and expect to be bought as another.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She was a nude dancer when I first saw her. Sure, I flattered her with some jewelry and some nights at the Plaza, but that didn’t mean I bought her as anything more than a little tramp, even after she quit the nude dancing. She thought she’d found her sugar daddy to fund her little artistic delusion. Getting pregnant was a stupid calculation on her part. I don’t dance to the tunes of tramps, they dance to mine.”

“But your son? She was seeing you son. I don’t understand—”

“When I told her to get lost, she went after my son to spite me. She suckered him into a relationship to get me to pay up. But her only leverage was that pregnancy—so I got rid of it.”

“
And
her. She
died
of her injuries!”

“That’s too bad, but like I said, she had it coming. She brought it on herself.”

My head was reeling, my mind racing. I suddenly remembered two things that Esther Best had said—that Anabelle had been arguing with her stepmother about money for a few months now…and that she’d talked to “Richard” before going to work the night she was assaulted.

All along, I had thought Richard was Richard, Junior. But it was the father. It was Richard, Senior, whom Anabelle was trying to blackmail—clearly with the help of her stepmother, who had bookmarked all those Engstum System Web sites on her laptop.

“How much did she ask for?”

“One million.”

“Oh, god…”

Engstrum was worth well over fifty times that. Suddenly, Arthur Jay Eddleman popped into my mind.

“Why didn’t you just give her some money and tell her to go away?” I said. “She was pregnant with your child after all—”

“First rule of business, Ms. Cosi,
never
pay more for a service than it’s worth. I had no intention of ever parting with one red cent. Now let’s get that evidence. Do
not
move unless I tell you. Otherwise I will shoot you.”

“Okay, okay, please don’t shoot.”

We’d come to the back door. It was chained and bolted.

“Unchain the door,” he said.
“Slowly.”

I did.

“Now unbolt it.”

I did.

“Now slowly open the door.”

I was about to pull open the door when, at last, I got the distraction I was waiting for—

Mrrrrroooooooooowwww!

Java’s jaguar-like “I’m hungry!” screeched into the tense silence of the stairwell. As Engstrum turned his head toward the noise, I spun, hurling my fist full of grounds. They hit his face, further startling him.

Remembering Dr. Foo’s chats about Wing Chung Gung Fu—and how small stature could be used to advantage—I immediately ducked low under Engstrum’s arms and kicked out, striking hard at his knee.

“
Aaaah!
Fucking bitch!” he cried. The gun went off but missed.

The back door was on the landing just above the narrow staircase to the basement and the strike sent him off balance. I struck at his knee again and down he went, tumbling head over heels all the way to the cold basement floor.

I didn’t know if or how badly the man was hurt so I raced for the front entrance, knowing I’d find help faster on Hudson than through the back alley. I was digging in my pocket for the key when I saw two familiar faces at the door.

Langley and Demetrios!!

They waved. Later, I would learn they’d been sent back over by Quinn to take me to the precinct for my statement. But that moment I didn’t care why they were there, I was just overjoyed to see their smiling faces, which dropped to grim alarm when I unlocked the door, tore it open, and screamed bloody murder.