Murder by Mocha (16 page)

Before I could speculate which it was, Alicia tapped my shoulder.

“Excuse me, Clare, I have a question . . .”

“Alicia? What is it?”

“Have you seen Patrice Stone? I ran out of business cards. I have more in my coat pocket, but I can’t find my Burberry—the trench I lent her? Patrice needs to tell me where she tossed it . . .”

“It’s not in the cloakroom?”

“No.”

Susan Chu drifted over. “Daphne and I were looking for Patrice a little while ago, but we couldn’t find her. I mean, this isn’t that big a place so where did she go, right?”

My daughter, my ex-husband, and my newbie barista were gone, and now Patrice was missing . . .
Great
.

“Let’s pan out,” I said. “Susan and Daphne, check the ladies’ room—all the stalls . . .”

With a nod, they dashed off.

“I’ll go speak with Aphrodite,” Alicia said. “Perhaps she sent Patrice on some errand and didn’t tell anyone . . .”

After they were gone I thought back to the last time I saw Patrice Stone, it was right before she slipped into Alicia’s hooded raincoat and dashed outside to retrieve her missing smartphone.

“Keep an eye on things,” I told Esther.

“Sure, boss. Where are—”

I hurried across the half-empty party room, down the corridor, past the elevator bank, and pushed through the doors that led to the rooftop Garden. The air felt chillier, but the storm was letting up fast, the steady rain dissolving into drizzle. Rippling puddles still covered the Garden’s stone floor, acting as mirrors for the illuminated columns above them. The most brilliant light, however, radiated from St. Patrick’s white spires, gleaming across Fifth Avenue. The bells inside those twin steeples began to chime the hour. The sad, haunting sound rang across the concrete chasm and echoed through my bones.

Ignoring the few droplets of rain that pelted my skin, I dodged the puddles at my feet and headed for the podium. The little canopy over the raised stage had failed to protect a thing. Every surface was completely rain swept. I carefully climbed the few slippery steps and looked around the podium, searching for any sign of Patrice or her missing smart-phone. Finally, I turned to face the rear of the stage and the reflecting pool behind it.

That’s when I saw her. Sprawled facedown in the blue water was a human figure. The brightly lit pool framed the woman’s silhouette. Around her battered head, a blood-flecked cloud mingled with locks of golden hair to form a scarlet halo.

I stumbled back down the stairs, nearly slipping off. When I reached the pavement, I hurried to the pool’s edge, dropped to my knees, and seized Patrice with both hands.

As I heaved her toward me, Alicia’s pearl-gray trench billowed on the surface like angels’ wings. The pool sloshed over, soaking my skirt and legs. The body was heavy and limp. It took all of my strength just to drag her out of the water and roll her onto her back.

Her flesh appeared gray-white. The terrible wound on her forehead had drained to a pinkish hue. Her prairie-sky eyes were half-open and unfocused, her limbs already stiffening in the icy air.

I didn’t check for respiration or a pulse. With the dying chimes of the cathedral’s bells, the horrific truth was plainly evident. Poor Patrice Stone was stone-cold dead.

EIGHTEEN

D
RIPPING wet from the reflecting pool and fighting back tears, I returned to the hallway and the elevators. The party continued, the remaining revelers oblivious. I was numb during the ride downstairs, and by the time I reached the security station I was shivering uncontrollably, my wet ponytail plastered to my back.

I found “Matterhorn,” the security director with the muffin top neck, and stammered that I’d discovered a dead woman in the Garden. He mobilized his force, ordering them to seal off the area and lock down the elevator bank.

Despite the flurry of activity, Kevin (his real name) sat me down in a folding chair, took off his own giant blue sport coat and wrapped it around me, insisting I wait right there with him for the NYPD to arrive.

Within minutes, the night air was filled with sirens, the streets with flashing lights. Uniformed officers swarmed the art deco lobby, followed soon after by plain-clothed detectives, enough to number an entire squad. Many of them looked familiar to me since I’d seen them that morning at the One Seven.

Among the sea of suits were two of my favorite customers: Detectives Lori Soles and Sue Ellen Bass. Both were still wearing their chocolate blazers and beige slacks. Sue Ellen’s dark hair was down now, but she was still keyed up. The pair noticed me but didn’t approach. Instead, they fell into a huddle with Kevin and a man in a trench with prematurely gray hair who was most likely the squad’s senior officer. They glanced at me several times, but then the huddle broke and the Fish Squad flanked me.

Lori Soles crouched down. “How are you doing, Cosi?” she asked. Her short blond curls were frizzy from the rain; her blue eyes big and unblinking. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.”

She asked me to recount how I found the body. I did. Finally, Sue Ellen broke in with a question.

“Do you feel up to returning to the crime scene?”

“Of course.” I nodded. “I want to help.”

I tried to give the sport coat back to Kevin, but he insisted I keep it around me to stay warm and ward off any shock. I thanked him again and followed Soles and Bass to the elevator.

In the Garden the rain had stopped completely, even the mist had cleared, yet there was still silent lightning—multiple flashes from police cameras photographing every angle of the crime scene. We circled the stage and halted a dozen yards away from the reflecting pool, now surrounded by so many officers wearing CSU jackets I could hardly see the doctor who knelt at Patrice’s side. The occasional blast of wind or blare of car horns echoed up from the street below, but I clearly heard the grim words from one of the city’s thirty-two medical examiners pronouncing her dead.

Sue Ellen tied back her hair, and Lori stood quietly watching while members of the Crime Scene Unit knelt on the cold, wet stones and methodically stripped away Patrice’s clothing. They carefully searched each piece before placing it in its own plastic evidence bag. Meanwhile, the medical examiner handled the corpse with latex gloves, checking for hidden wounds, defensive marks, any evidence of foul play.

During this grisly search, I caught a glimpse of Patrice’s unfocused eyes and looked away. Gazing instead at the gleaming spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I recalled the dying bells and recited a silent prayer.

One member of the CSU stepped out of the crowd and called for the lead detectives. He was clutching an evidence bag in his hand, but I couldn’t see what was in it.

“Wait here,” Lori said as she and Sue Ellen consulted with the man. Then Sue Ellen placed a quick call. After a few minutes, the detectives flanked me again.

“Her name is Patrice Stone,” I told them.

Lori must have thought I was rattled. She put a hand on my shoulder. “We know the woman’s name,” she said very slowly and carefully. “You told us already.”

“I know I did. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t get confused. I saw them going through her pockets, and I know there are business cards in there belonging to another woman, Alicia Bower. Patrice borrowed Alicia’s trench. Did I mention that?”

“No.” Lori paused. “Alicia Bower? Isn’t that the same woman who was involved in that fake murder scene this morning at the Topaz?”

I nodded. The detectives exchanged glances.

“Listen up, Cosi,” Sue Ellen said. “Crime Scene didn’t find any business cards. All the pockets were empty, except for the breast pocket of the raincoat.”

She displayed the evidence bag. Inside was a sheet of paper with a single word printed on it.

“LAETA,” I read.

“Does it mean anything to you?” Lori asked.

I shook my head. “Looks Latin to me . . .”

“We think it’s Latin, too. We’ve got detectives backing us up at the One Seven. They’ll compile a list of possible meanings.”

“Laeta might be a last name,” Sue Ellen said. “You know anyone with that name?”

“No, I don’t. Alicia might. It’s her coat.”

Lips pinched, Sue Ellen nodded and returned the evidence bag to the CSU officer.

“Don’t sweat it,” Lori said. “We’ll follow up with the usual twenty-thousand questions. Something will turn up . . .”

“What do you two think happened here?” I asked.

Lori faced the scene, gestured as she spoke: “Ms. Stone could have climbed the podium in a hurry, slipped on the sopping wet surface, hit her head on the edge of the stage, tumbled unconscious into the pool, and drowned. CSU is on that stage right now, looking for blood splatters—tough after all the rain, but we have Luminol.”

“Luminol?”

“A chemical cocktail that adheres to the iron in hemoglobin. The blood will show up even if most of it has been washed away.”

“Of course, Ms. Stone might not have fallen by accident.” Sue Ellen noted. “Someone could have struck her in the head and dumped her in the pool—”

“We’ll know better when we get the results of the autopsy,” Lori cut in.

“Aren’t there hidden security cameras up here somewhere?” (I realized the possibility almost the moment I said it.)

“There are.” Lori turned me around and pointed to a small box on the building’s dark wall. “As you can see, one of them is aimed directly at the Garden entrance.”

I couldn’t believe how easy this was going to be. “Won’t the camera reveal who came out those doors after Patrice? And if she was murdered, won’t that be your evidence of the killer’s identity?”

“Pretty easy, huh?” Lori nodded with a little smile. “We’re waiting for a judge to grant a warrant to review the digital files. In the meantime, why don’t you give us more background on Ms. Stone and this party . . .”

I filled them in on everything: the product launch, the guests, Patrice’s job, the cutthroat company she worked for. Then Lori’s cell phone beeped and she answered. “Hello, Judge Harman, thank you for returning my call . . .” The conversation was a short one and ended with Lori smiling. “We have our warrant.”

“Now what?” I asked, pulling Kevin’s giant sport coat closer around me.

“First we meet up with the lawyer for the property management company. Then we’ll review those images—”

“Take me with you.”

Lori nodded. “We plan to. You were at the party, so we’re hoping you can ID any guest or staff member who came through those doors.”

W
E followed Kevin deep into a subbasement beneath Rockefeller Center. At an unmarked door, he pressed a buzzer. The door opened, and a man greeted us.

“I’m Ruben Salter.”

The private attorney was a balding man, not much taller than my own five-foot-two frame. He wore a three-piece suit and glasses with frames as thin as piano wire. His mouth appeared locked in a permanent grimace, but his apparent professional indifference evaporated when Lori Soles shook his hand.

The attorney could not stop staring at the Amazonian detective with a cherub’s blond curls, and it seemed to me his touch lingered longer than necessary. Even his rigid frown flatlined into what I assumed was his version of a corporate-lawyer smile.

Stepping back, Salter waved us into a series of windowless spaces. Behind a soundproof wall of glass, uniformed personnel monitored activities in and around the sprawling complex. Instead of leading us into that high-tech venue, we were ushered into a cramped room with concrete walls and unhappy green carpeting. A small fridge hummed in the corner, and a few ill-matched chairs were scattered about.

The only sign of advanced technology here was a small desk with a wide-screen monitor and a keyboard with bells and whistles I didn’t recognize. Kevin folded his massive frame onto a small chair (for him) and adjusted his position in front of the keyboard.

While Lori, Sue Ellen, Ruben Salter, and I pulled up chairs around him, Kevin cracked his big knuckles and opened a decidedly low-tech ring binder with a scuffed plastic cover.

“This is the master directory with the access codes for all the security cameras,” he explained while flipping through the binder. He squinted at an entry page while typing in a series of numbers.

The monitor came alive with a split screen image. On the left, I recognized the double doors for the Garden’s guests. On the right were those smaller, hidden service doors, the ones that led to the catering kitchen. A digital clock indicated this was real time.

“Let’s start by rewinding an hour or so,” Lori said, “to the moment when Cosi went outside and found the DOA.”

Kevin placed his hand on the mouse ball. As he spun it, the on-screen image wavered with the eerie retreat of time.

“Bingo!” Sue Ellen declared, pointing at the screen.

Kevin magnified the image. My face became more blurry, but there was no mistaking my identity.

“Go back further,” Lori said, excited now.

The split screen images wavered again. Speckles of rain hit the lens and vanished in the blink of an eye. A few times the picture shook from the wind buffeting the camera during the furious storm.

“Wait!” Lori cried. “Look at the other door, the one around the corner from the main entrance.”

“Those are the service doors,” Kevin said. “They lead to the kitchen.”

“Two people came through there.”

“I saw it, too,” Kevin agreed.

He enlarged the image of a man and woman. Though their faces were partially obscured by shadow, their activity was clear enough. Lips locked, their bodies seemed to meld together in the darkness.

I watched with mounting dread as Kevin slowed down the playback speed. Finally, he froze the image to give us all the opportunity to study every embarrassing detail.

“What the—” Sue Ellen’s eyes went wide. “Is that
you
, Cosi?”

NINETEEN

“T
HAT’S her, all right.”

Lori Soles glanced at her partner, tried not to laugh. “But who’s the lucky guy? I can’t quite see his face. Do you think we have this mug’s mug shot?”