Holiday Grind (3 page)

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Authors: Cleo Coyle

Tags: #Fiction, #Detective, #Mystery, #Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction - Mystery, #Coffeehouses, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Cosi; Clare (Fictitious character), #Mystery fiction

BOOK: Holiday Grind
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FORTY-FIVE minutes later, two dozen bottles of sweet syrups were lined up on our blue marble espresso bar; stainless steel milk-frothing pitchers stood on the work counter behind it; and I was reviewing our hastily scribbled tasting menu.
Tucker’s offerings included Butter Pecan Praline, Candy Cane (easy on the syrup), Iced Gingersnap, and Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookie. Dante’s flavors were Eggnog Cheesecake, Spiked Fruitcake, White Chocolate Tiramisu, and Toasted Marshmallow Snowflake. Gardner’s Christmas memories brought us Rum Raisin, Mocha-Coconut Macaroon, and Caribbean Black Cake. And from my own beloved Nonna’s Christmases: Candied Orange Panettone, Maple-Kissed Gingerbread, and Glazed Roasted Chestnut.
Esther also had contributions: Apricot-Cinnamon Rugelach and Raspberry Jelly Doughnut because, as she quite rightly put it, “Chanukah has its own flavors.” For Esther, this also included Key Lime Pie because, as she noted, “Every December my family fled to Florida.”
The invited guests of our latte tasting were now mingling near the crackling logs of the store’s hearth, waiting for us to whip up the samples.
Tucker was entertaining his current boyfriend, a Hispanic Broadway dancer who went by the single name Punch. Gardner was playing host to Theo, Ronny, and Chick, the three other members of his jazz ensemble Four on the Floor. And Dante had invited his two aspiring-artist roommates: a pierced platinum-blond pixie named Kiki and a raven-haired girl of East Indian heritage named Banhi.
Checking my watch, I decided to give our missing guests another ten minutes to show. Esther’s boyfriend—Boris the assistant-baker-slash-Russian-rapper—was performing at a Brooklyn club tonight. Since he couldn’t make it, she’d invited another taster, a friend named Vicki Glockner.
Earlier in the year, Vicki had worked as a barista for me. She’d loved experimenting with our Italian syrups, and I knew she’d make a good taster, but I had mixed feelings about seeing her again because she and I hadn’t parted on the best of terms.
My friend was late, too—although he’d phoned to apologize and warn that he might not make it at all. I couldn’t blame him. Since I began seeing Mike Quinn, I’d had to accept that a NYPD detective’s work was never done.
My other tasting party guinea pig was now smacking his knuckles against the beveled glass of the Blend’s front door. I moved to unlock it and realized the night had grown colder and the snow higher. Fat flakes had been falling steadily for the last hour. Now they layered the sidewalk and street with several inches of crystalline frosting. As I pulled the door wide, the newly installed jingle bells sounded above, and a chilly wind gust sent a flurry of ice diamonds into my dark brown hair.
“You actually made it?” I said with a shiver as Matteo Allegro stepped inside.
TWO
SKIN still lightly bronzed from the Central American sun, Matteo stamped the wet snow off his boots—and (happily)
not
onto the shop’s restored wood-plank floor, thanks to my brilliant managerial decision to buy the multicultural
Happy Holidays
welcome mat.
“You sound surprised to see me,” said my ex-husband, unzipping his Italian leather jacket.
“True. I didn’t think you’d show.” I shut the door on the snowy night. “You only got back from Guatemala—
what
? Six hours ago?”
“Five.”
“And I know how you feel about Fa-la-la-la Lattes.” I smiled at the catchy term. I hadn’t invented it. Alfred Glockner, our local charity Santa, had coined it. In truth, the whole Taste of Christmas idea had been Alf’s.
Matt shrugged. “What can I say? When it comes to coffee, I’m a purist.”
As an international coffee broker as well as our coffee buyer, Matt was also a coffee snob, but justifiably so. The lattes and cappuccinos were a big draw to the Blend and a healthy contributor to our bottom line. But they weren’t his area of the business; they were mine—and my staff of baristas who mixed them to order.
While I roasted and served the beans, Matt was responsible for sourcing them. And because harvest quality could change from season to season, Matt was essentially a java-centric Magellan, regularly exploring the world’s coffee belt—a band of mountainous slopes that circled the globe between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, where sunny, frost-free, moderately wet conditions allowed for the cultivation of the very best arabica beans.
“Good thing your Holiday Blend’s a winner this year,” I said, knowing that our single-origin coffees, seasonal blends, and straight espressos were what lit Matt up. (No artificial oils, no sugar syrups, just his top-quality beans with natural, exotic spice notes, which I regularly roasted in small batches in our shop’s basement.)
“So where’s Breanne?” I asked, glancing through the front door’s glass. Snow fluttered down through the light of the streetlamps, but the curb was empty. No limo. No hired car. No yellow cab with an open door sprouting an endless, designer-draped leg.
“She was supposed to meet me
here
.” Matt scanned the tasting group gathered around the fire. “She hasn’t shown yet?”
“No. Is she working late again?”
Matt’s reply was a muttered, “When isn’t she?”
“I’ll bet the snow held her up,” I said. “You know it’s murder getting a cab in weather like this.”
Matt didn’t nod or agree, just pulled off his black knit cap, ran a hand over his short, dark Caesar, and looked away.
He and Breanne had gotten married in the spring, went on a whirlwind tour of Spain for a number of weeks, then spent much of the summer in a cottony cloud of sweetness that rivaled Tucker’s Candy Cane Cappuccino. By early fall, however, the sugar had started to melt. Sharp bouts of bickering continually punctured their meringue of constant cooing.
I didn’t see this as any great sign of marital doom. Sooner or later every honeymooning couple had to deal with the struggles and drudgery of workaday life. Whether they touched down or crash-landed, newlyweds have been traveling the same trajectory for centuries.
“Maybe you should call her?” I suggested.
“Forget it,” he said, then changed the subject. “You know, Clare, our Holiday Blend’s a winner this year because of
you
. You created the blend; you perfected the roast.”
“But you found the beans, Matt.
Your
beans are incredible.” I didn’t mind giving away the credit for this year’s exotically spiced blend. Usually, Matt was so cocky it wasn’t necessary. But because he’d gone humble on me, I stated the obvious: “That microlot of Sumatra you snagged on the last trip to Indonesia was superb. You made my job easy.”
Matt’s weary expression lightened at that, and I was glad to see him smile—until his gaze drifted over me. In anticipation of the evening’s festivities, I’d fastened a prim choker of green velvet ribbon around my neck. In hopes of seeing Quinn, however, I’d squeezed into a new pair of
not
-so-prim, form-fitting low-riders. The holly-berry-colored cashmere-blend sweater wasn’t exactly loose, either. It also flaunted a borderline audacious neckline. (What could I say? I liked Quinn’s eyes on me.) Unfortunately, at the moment, it wasn’t Mike Quinn doing the looking.
“Nice sweater,” Matt said with an arched eyebrow, and before I could stop him he reached out to brush the melting snow crystals from my hair. “Have I seen it before?”
“The sweater’s new,” I informed him while carefully stepping beyond his reach.
Married or not, Matteo Allegro liked women. And because I was one, there was no getting around his occasional flirtations. I
could
get around his touches, however, and I’d found that a subtle dodge worked a whole lot better than a snippy lecture—it proved a lot less embarrassing in public, too.
Obviously, Matt and I had a history: the kind where you live together for ten years as man and wife. For various reasons—most of them having to do with his addictions to cocaine and women, not necessarily in that order—a single decade legally wedded to the man had been more than enough for me. We did, however, still share a grown daughter as well as another kind of commitment: Matt’s elderly mother owned this century-old coffeehouse and she’d bequeathed its future to the both of us. So once again Matt was my partner in
business
. I tried to keep that in mind whenever Matt’s penchant for crossing lines sprang up.
Matt glanced around. “So where’s your guard dog?”
“If you mean
Mike
, he’s got police business in the outer boroughs. He might not make it.”
Matt’s dark eyebrows rose. “Too bad,” he said, but his tone didn’t sound disappointed. “Come on, I could use some warming up. The place looks great.”
His arm began snaking around my hip-hugging jeans. I slipped clear.
“Thanks,” I said. “You go ahead and hang up your wet coat in the back. I have to lock up again.”
“I’ll save you a seat,” he said with a wink, then moved toward the back of the shop. As I turned to secure the door, however, it flew open on me.
A runway-model-tall woman jarred me and our store’s new jingle bells without so much as a
pardon me
.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “We’re closed.”
Even with half of her face mummified by a scarf the color of latte froth, I could tell the redhead was a knockout. In her midthirties, she had a stunning, statuesque figure. Peeking above the costly pashmina, her nose and cheekbones appeared daintily carved; her eyes adorably big and brilliantly blue. When I spoke to her, however, the woman’s wide, doll-like eyes collapsed into slits, squinting down at me as if she’d just noticed a bug under her boot.
“Like
hell
you’re closed!”
Okay, the woman’s tone was a tad nastier than the angelic face she showed to the world, but I forced a smile. For one thing, she was a new regular. I’d seen her in here several times over Thanksgiving weekend—wearing the same white fur-trimmed car coat and large sheepskin boots, both of which screamed designer label. Her hair was memorable, as well. From beneath her soft knit cap, her sleek curls tumbled down her shoulders in a silk stream of eye-catching scarlet, a striking contrast with the ivory car coat.
“Again, I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said with polite firmness, “but we
are
clo—”
“You are
not
,” she said, stamping her giant Ugg boot on my internationally festive welcome mat. “You have, like,
a dozen
people here!”
Anyone who’d spent five minutes in Manhattan realized that a percentage of its well-heeled population sashayed around the island with so much attitude that branding
entitlement
on their foreheads would have been redundant. In the presence of perceived “peers,” these people could be downright charming. When dealing with no one of “significance”—say, a lowly coffeehouse manager—their behavior turned less than affable. As New York retail went, however, appallingly bad customer behavior wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, so I simply stiffened my spine.
“I realize the snow’s really coming down. But I’m not lying to you. This is a private party, and we
are
closed as you can see from the sign on the door—”
“Excuse me?
Who
, in their right mind, would notice some stupid little
sign
on a night like
this
?!”
By now, the buzz of discussions near the fireplace had come to a dead stop. All eyes had turned to us, which wasn’t surprising. Everyone in the Big Apple loved a scene. Not that minding your own business wasn’t still a primary objective in this town, but there was an important distinction: Just because New Yorkers didn’t want to get
involved
in an unfolding drama didn’t mean they weren’t interested in gawking at it.
“I’ll tell you what,” I offered. “If you don’t mind meeting and mingling with some new people, you can join our—”
“Whatever!” she interrupted. “You’re closed!” Pirou etting like a girl who’d never missed a ballet recital, Red yanked open the door and stomped her big Ugg-booted feet out into the snowy night.
I locked up and turned to find everyone still watching me. “Sorry about that.”
“What do
you
have to be sorry about?!” Esther cried. “That woman was a total
be-yotch
!”

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