Murder by Mocha (10 page)

“We have about thirty to forty minutes to finish our work,” I warned.

“Well, the urns of water are hot. I can start the coffee brewing,” Esther said, “or whatever a coffee powder does while
real
coffee is brewing.”

“It’s too soon,” I said. “I want the beverages served as fresh as possible. I’ll give you a five-minute warning on preparing the thermal carafes.”

“Fine,” Esther said. “Do you guys need help with anything else?”

I looked around. “The tiramisu bars are laid out. The
budini
are bu-done, and Tuck took care of the cookies. All that’s left are the Ganache-Dipped Chocolate-Chip Cookie Dough Bites, the Mocha-Glazed Rum Macaroons, and the candies.”

“My God, woman!” Esther exclaimed. “They’re not just ‘candies’! They’re Voss chocolates! Mini masterpieces. Where are they? What did they send?”

“Calm down,” I said. “They’re right here.”

The top half of the bakery cart held black, glossy boxes. Esther, Tucker, and I carried them to the serving trays and peeked inside.

“Petit Nibs!” Esther yipped.

“Baby chocolate bars with crunchy cocoa nibs,” I explained to Tuck and Nancy. “The chocolate in these is seventy-two percent cocoa.”

“Hearts of Darkness!”

“These are intense,” I warned. “Eighty percent cocoa.”

“Mocha-Mint Squares!”

“Flavored with white crème de menthe and our espresso.”

“Caramel Latte Cups!”

“Quarter-sized cups of milk chocolate laced with Village Blend espresso and liberally drizzled with
fleur de sel
caramel.”

“Chocolate-Dipped Cinnamon Sticks! Be still my heart!”

I smiled. They were one of my favorites, too. Placed on the tongue, the treat delivered a sensual, sensory experience of quality chocolate and spicy cinnamon—two ancient aphrodisiacs in themselves. Used to stir a cup of hot coffee, the melting chocolate became an instant stick of delectable mocha.

“Voss Chocolate, I love you!” Esther cried.

“One more box, Ms. Cosi.” Nancy reached down to a lower shelf of the cart and brought up a black box with the letters
REF
written in white grease pencil.

When we opened it, all of us frowned. The Raspberry-Espresso Flowers inside were not glossy and smooth like the other chocolates. They were mottled with dull white streaks.

I shook my head. “What a shame.”

“What happened to these chocolate flowers?” Tuck asked.

“Bloom,” I replied.

“Is that a joke?”

I pointed to the milky lines. “
This
is either fat bloom or sugar bloom. Both look the same.”

“So what’s the difference?”

“Fat bloom happens when chocolate hasn’t been properly tempered—”

“And tempering is?”

“Basically, a process of heating, cooling, and mixing chocolate—it’s what pastry chefs do before they mold it—and when chocolate isn’t tempered correctly, the fats don’t properly emulsify. When the cocoa butter rises to the surface and sets, you get fat bloom. Sugar bloom looks the same, but it’s caused by condensation from improper storage.” I sighed. The deduction was easy enough. “Given Voss’s expertise in tempering, I doubt this is fat bloom.”

I turned to Nancy. “Why wasn’t this box on the same shelf with the others?”

She pointed at the box. “Someone in the kitchen saw the
REF
label and thought it meant to refrigerate.”

“So this box has been in the fridge for hours?”

Nancy nodded.

“That’s a shame,” I said. “But it makes sense.”

“I don’t understand,” Nancy said. “Why would putting chocolate in the fridge cause this sugar-bloom stuff?”

“When you store chocolate in a cold, humid environment and then return it to a warm room, you sometimes get condensation on the surface. As the water evaporates, the sugar in the chocolate crystallizes. That’s what causes the white streaks. It’s perfectly safe to eat—but the texture and mouth-feel are ruined. We can’t serve this.” I handed it back to Nancy. “Set it aside, okay?”

“Too bad,” Nancy said, frowning. “The flowers were cute, like little hex signs.”

“Hex signs?” Esther said. “What’s up with that? Are you a Wiccan?”

“Not hex like a witch. Hex
sign
like from Pennsylvania Dutch country. American folk art, you know? Those cute little designs on houses and barns. I use them in my quilting and embroidery.”

“So now you lived in eastern PA?” Tuck asked.

Nancy shrugged again.

“Well, I hope nobody tells Voss Chocolate what happened.” Esther shook her head. “They’re perfectionists at Voss!”

Tucker covered his ears. “‘Voss Chocolate. Voss Chocolate.’ You sound like a corrupt audio file. If you love this stuff so much, why don’t you get your rapper boyfriend to buy you a truckload of champagne truffles the next time you visit his man cave?”

“I know you’re Manhattan-centric, Tuck, but Boris lives in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, which is not Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It isn’t even
close
to Williamsburg, and Williamsburg is where Voss Chocolate has its only retail store.”

“Whatever.”

“Anyway, Boris can barely pay the rent on his Brighton Beach walk-up,” Esther said. “So ten-dollar chocolate bars from Hipster Haven are definitely out.”

Before Tuck could reply, a familiar song began to play.

We exchanged glances. “Isn’t that ‘You Light Up My Life’?” I asked.

Tuck nodded. “That’s the
third
time I’ve heard that thing since we got here. I’d swear it was a ringtone, but whose phone would have a song
that
sappy on it?” He shifted his gaze to Esther.

Her pale cheeks reddened. “Boris put it on there while I was sleeping, okay? He thought it would be funny to have this dopey tune play whenever he calls me, but obviously, it’s just embarrassing.”

Tuck stared at Esther. “Debby Boone?”

“He heard the song on the oldies station at the bakery and liked it. I guess they didn’t allow schmaltz in the former Soviet Union, so he was never exposed to the disease that is Debby Boone.”

“If it upsets you that much,” Tuck said, “why don’t you change the ringtone?”

She threw up her hands. “Because Boris used a password to lock it in!”

I touched Esther’s arm. “Please tell your boyfriend that we’re going to be very busy, very soon, okay? Make your plans, then turn off your phone and let the rest of your calls go to voice mail.”

Esther whipped the cell out of her pocket, cooed her regrets to Boris, and clapped her hands. “So are we going to taste this java-love-potion stuff or what?”

I tensed. By now, I’d sampled a few spoonfuls of a
budino
and small bites of the pastries prepared by Voss. All were borderline orgasmic—in flavor but not so much in any other way. Frankly, the aphrodisiac part of the equation seemed rather tepid, which was what I’d feared all along (the claims were likely bogus).

I did feel a very slight tingling on my skin and a little flushed, but that was it. Maybe I needed a bigger dose for a bigger reaction? Or maybe it didn’t work without an object of affection. Unfortunately, mine had yet to arrive—even worse, after the day he had, I doubted he’d be in the mood to take our featured product out for a private test drive.

As a flavoring agent, however, Mocha Magic was a raving success, and that provided a modicum of relief to my Atlas-level worries. As for the instant powdered-coffee version of the thing, the verdict was still out, and I honestly wasn’t feeling up to hearing it.

“To tell you the truth, I’m a little apprehensive about sampling it,” I confessed to my crew.

“Well, naturally you are!” Nancy cried. “The last thing you want is to go all dizzy act, before the guests arrive!”

Tucker, Esther, and I turned to face the young woman.

“What?” Esther said.

“Dizzy act,” Nancy said. “The stuff in these pastries is an herb from Africa, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve been saying all night. This stuff is supposed to make you
act dizzy
, right?”

Tucker took hold of Nancy’s shoulders. “Sweetie, the word is not
Afro-dizzy-act.
It’s
aphrodisiac
.”

She frowned and folded her arms. “So what’s it supposed to do then, if it doesn’t make you act dizzy?”

“Oy,” Esther said.

“Nancy!” I cut in (before Esther could say any more). “We’re going to need more cups. Would you get them?”

“No problem!”

Esther held her head as Nancy dashed off. “That girl can’t possibly be that naive. It has to be an act—a really dizzy one.”

“She’s just young,” I said. “You were young once, too.”

“I was
never
young.”

(That I believed.) Just then, a cell phone went off again. This time it was mine.

“Oh, those bohemians,” Tucker gushed. “I do love Puccini!”

I silenced the ringtone opera. “Madame,” I said, picking up, “where are you?”

“In the corridor, dear, across from the elevator bank near the cloakroom.”

I slipped off my apron, retucked my white blouse, and adjusted my black skirt.

“Finish laying out all the choco-booty, okay?” I told my crew before pushing through the Loft’s closed doors. “I’m checking on the guests in the Garden.”
And a former mother- in-law who owes me some answers.

ELEVEN

“C
LARE! Here, dear!” A voice called as I moved into the long corridor.

Resplendent in a shimmering pearl sheath silk-screened with Monet’s lilies, Madame stepped out from between a pair of faux-marble columns and waved me over.

Like me, she’d swept her hair into a neat French twist for the party. But her blue-violet eyes, lightly accented with periwinkle pencil, held a stressed expression that belied the put-together package.

We embraced, first thing, and I was relieved to feel the tight hug. Things hadn’t been right between us since Alicia Bower entered our lives.

“Did you come alone?” I asked.

“Otto escorted me.” She tilted her head. “I sent him out to the Garden.”

I glanced down the corridor and through the closed glass double doors, but I couldn’t see her current beau. The twinkling Garden was too crowded.

“What happened to your promise to bring Alicia here early, so we could hash everything out?”

“She stood me up! Otto and I waited in the Topaz bar for over an hour. When I called her, she apologized, but said she just didn’t have time to meet and talk before the launch.”

“You mean she’s not here
yet
?”

“Oh, she’s here. Out there somewhere.” Madame fluttered her fingers toward the Garden doors. “She slipped by us at the hotel. Clearly, she’s avoiding me.”

“You mean
me
.” (I’d been patient up to now. But this development was the last straw.) “My crew and I have been setting up in the Loft space for the last two hours. After Alicia drove me crazy micromanaging every minute detail of this launch, she suddenly has no interest in even glancing at our display? What does that tell you?”

“It tells me she’s embarrassed.”

“More like afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of me—and some hard questions about what went on this morning.”

“Clare, you must allow me to apologize again for putting you in such an awkward position.”

“It’s all right. I told you on the phone, apology accepted.”

“But you’re still upset with me. Try to understand . . .” She waved me back into hiding between those faux marble columns, lowered her voice to a whisper. “With the blood pronounced fake and Dennis suddenly gone, the matter was no longer a criminal one. I had to side with Alicia. Involving the police any further would have risked bad publicity—and at the worst possible time for all of us.”

“But don’t you agree what happened this morning added up to much more than a
prank
?”

Madame nodded. “Yes. Now I do.”

“Did you do any follow up with this Dennis St. Julian character?”

“We tried calling him. But his phone simply rang and rang. Not even any voice mail, which Alicia said he did have for the last few weeks.”

“Probably a disposable cell,” I said. “Something untraceable that he could quickly toss.”

“Alicia did tell me that she welcomes your help tracking him down. If you can find out why he tried to scare her half to death, she would be most grateful. She’s happy to pay you for your time.”

“I’m far from a professional private investigator!”

“Please.” Madame waved her hand. “What did Roman Brio call you? Shirley Holmes? He was right. As a mama snoop, you’ve done pretty well. And, as always, I am happy to be your Watson.”

Oh brother. Here we go . . .
“Alicia should
hire
someone. I’ll ask Mike for a name—”

“Waste of time. Alicia was adamant. She doesn’t wish to bring anyone else into this, especially a professional.”

“Why not?”

“She fears her position with her company could be jeopardized if someone suspects a scandal brewing. And a hired investigator poking about asking questions is bound to raise
some
flag
some
where. Alicia would prefer to keep all of this as quiet as possible, within our little circle.”

“But—”

“Legally, we’re tied into this venture,” Madame pointed out, “which means you’re already publicly associated with Alicia.
You
can be a nosy Nellie without raising alarms. Simply make your queries sound innocent.”

Like I have time for this!

“Clare . . .” She touched my shoulder. “I know you’re not fond of Alicia. But won’t you do it for me . . . for the Blend? Please?”

I massaged my forehead. “Did this Candy Man character give you a business card?”

“Yes!” Clearly excited to reprise her Watson role, Madame gleefully fished around her small evening bag. “Here you are.”

“Kogo Sweets Inc.,” I read. The logo wasn’t embossed, and the white cardstock felt textureless and flimsy.

“The company is real,” Madame said, watching me bend the card back and forth. “I looked it up after Mr. St. Julian introduced himself a few weeks ago.”