Murder by Mocha (4 page)

“Clare is here,” Madame crooned.

“Clare?” Alicia burbled. She turned, dabbed her eyes. “Thank g-goodness you’ve arrived. Come, my friend, sit down . . .”

My friend?
I stiffened.

Over the past six weeks, this woman had been civil to me but far from warm—and she’d never, ever addressed me as
friend
. Before this moment, her treatment of me, a lowly shop manager (in her eyes), could best be described as mild condescension.

“Sit beside me, Clare, right here . . .”

Alicia patted the mattress. I ignored her direction and instead pulled over an armchair and positioned the seat opposite her—the better to see (and read) her face.

Although Madame claimed this woman was an old friend, even she wasn’t sure of Alicia’s age. (Fifties? Early sixties? I wasn’t sure, either.) “Tasteful” plastic surgery was apparently involved, but whatever the contributing factors, Alicia Bower cultivated the sort of highly polished “urban executive” look that Esther, my most acerbic barista, referred to as
severely attractive
.

Favoring dark pin-striped suits, she typically wore her cocoa-colored hair in an angular flapper cut. Her flawless skin, pale enough for the undead to covet, appeared all the more milky with fresh-blood lipstick (vampiric overkill, if you asked me, but then I seldom wore any lipstick, so who was I to judge?).

A world traveler, Alicia lately resided in London, but I’d seen her type countless times in Manhattan. Her hyperpolish came off as intimidating, and she very well meant it to be.

On this particular morning, however, the soufflé had fallen.

Dried tears mottled sunken cheeks; her Dresden doll complexion had gone from cappuccino cream to sickbed blanched; and her usually perfect-as-plastic coiffure looked like a tangled crow’s nest. What shocked me the most was her mental condition. Shaken and fragile, she had all the composure of a trapped chinchilla.

“Tell me, Clare . . .” She leaned closer, markedly widened her glistening eyes (to appear innocent?). “Madame mentioned you have close friends on the police force?”

I glanced at Madame.
You’re kidding, right?

Anyone who ran a business in Manhattan knew the entire town ran on favors. But no amount of
tucking in
an NYPD lieutenant (even a decorated leader of a task force) was going to get a suspect off a murder rap—and my former mother-in-law should have known that.

“Clare can
advise
us,” Madame quickly interjected. “That’s what I meant, dear.”

“Well, before I can do any advising,” I said, “I need to know exactly what we’re dealing with. What in the world happened?”

“Tell Clare,” Madame prompted.

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it!” Alicia blurted then her lower lip began to quiver. “I don’t
know
what happened! That’s the reason I need Clare’s help!” With a mournful wail, she ripped a succession of tissues out of the box by her side and buried her face in the paper pillow.

I turned to Madame.
Okay, Ms. Interpreter—interpret!

“The pertinent events began last night,” Madame explained. “After our little brainstorming dinner . . .”

I remembered the meal well enough. Three of us, downstairs, enjoying coq au vin and pot-au-feu in a little brasserie attached to the hotel. After my tarte tatin, I took off, leaving the two old friends chatting over French pressed Sumatra.

“Earlier in the day, Alicia had mentioned the brasserie’s breakfasts were heavenly,” Madame said. “Fresh-baked croissants, ginger-peach marmalade—”

“Strawberry-lavender jam and p-persimmon preserves,” Alicia added. “J-just divine.”

Madame nodded. “So I brought along a few things for an overnight stay and checked in. We hugged good night and Alicia went back to her room. Then she checked her messages and found a business acquaintance had left her a request for a meeting . . .”

“A business acquaintance,” I repeated into the lengthening silence. “A man? A woman?”

Alicia lifted her head. She burbled something. I looked to Madame.

“A man,” she said flatly.

I turned back to Alicia. “So this man . . . he tried to murder you?”

“No!” She shook her head, began to sob. “He came up to my room and . . . well, he was quite attractive, you know? And we’d been flirting for a few weeks. Naturally, two adults, you know . . . we started to fool around . . . but I had s-so much wine at dinner, I m-must have j-just . . .
burble, burble
. . .”

I looked to Madame. “She must have?”

“Passed out.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And then what happened?”

Alicia threw up her hands. “That’s just it! I don’t
know
what happened! Something
must
have happened. But I slept through it!” She wailed again and buried her face back into the Kleenex cloud.

Madame patted Alicia’s shoulder. “Calm yourself, dear, really . . . you must try. Your hotel room was dark when you woke, isn’t that right?”

Alicia nodded, composing herself. “Dark, yes. The sun was up, but the curtains were drawn. I turned in the bed. Dennis was beside me. I reached out for him, and his skin felt so cold. And then I felt something sticky. I turned on the bedside lamp and then I saw . . .”

Her voice trailed off and Niagara Falls turned on.

Okay, that’s it.
Between Alicia’s unremitting tears and this room’s aquatic color scheme, I was beginning to get that drowning feeling.

Standing up, I faced Madame. “What’s her room number?”

She handed me a key card. “Five doors down.” She lowered her voice. “I saw the corpse myself. The situation appears quite serious for my friend here. You let me know what you think.”

THREE

P
LAYING people was easy, so astoundingly easy. Just tell them a story—the right kind of story, a story they want to hear. They’ll swallow it whole and ask for seconds . . .

Five years ago, her suicide had been a rebirth—a new life with new people, new work, and a new identity. But she’d become more than a newborn marionette. Now she was the puppeteer, carefully pulling their strings, ultimately controlling the stage.

She glanced out the window, welcomed the strengthening light of the morning sun. Giggles bubbled up, as they often did, and she bit her cheek to quell them. Five years ago, on that railroad bridge, she’d anticipated sacrifice, challenge, pain. What she hadn’t expected was the giddiness. Or the satisfaction.

Such sweet satisfaction!

She had never guessed what astonishing powers this new life would bring: the power to lie and manipulate; the power to be invisible and invincible; the power to dream, to plan, and finally to execute . . .

I
stepped out of Madame’s room, into the carpeted corridor. Far down the hall I noticed a housekeeping cart, caught a glimpse of a slender woman with a dirty blond ponytail. Clad in the powder blue uniform of a hotel maid, she used a key card around her neck to slip into one of the guest rooms.

Other than her, the floor was deserted and deadly quiet. I moved along, passing complimentary newspapers, a half-eaten breakfast tray.

Five doors down, I halted. The metal handle looked clean (no blood, thank goodness). I pulled my henley’s sleeve over the fingertips of my right hand. With my left, I dunked Alicia’s keycard into the electronic slot. When the red light went green, I depressed the handle.

The door swung open easily. I took a step forward and shut it behind me.

Alicia had described waking up in a dark room and turning on a lamp, and there was indeed a dim light glowing somewhere inside.

From my position at the door, I couldn’t see the bed, but I could see part of the window across the room. The heavy curtains were tightly closed, which only heightened the feeling of claustrophobic gloom.

In contrast, the air was sweet. A cloying scent seemed oddly familiar, yet I couldn’t peg it. To my right, the bathroom door was half open, and I assumed the aroma came from a scented hair or beauty product.

I took a step along the short entrance hall and saw the edge of the bed. The coverlet and blanket were bunched up at the bottom. Another step revealed a naked pair of large Caucasian male feet. One more step showed hairy legs and finally—

Oh God.

The sight of blood sent me backward. The white sheets were saturated with it, dark red and appearing even darker in the dimly lit space. Dried now, the flow originated from the dead man. He was young (younger than Alicia, anyway) with a square-jawed cover-model face, a thick head of brown hair, and very long sideburns. His physique was long, too, and well muscled with weightlifter cuts and six-pack abs. His torso appeared shaved—all the better to show off his body-sculpting labors.

Unfortunately, Mr. Universe had performed his last rep. The twelve-inch carving knife protruding from his chest had seen to that.

I took a deep breath and swallowed down a bit of bile—along with the primal urge to flee.

“The man’s no longer alive,” I whispered to myself, trying to stay steady. “That’s clear enough . . .”

His chest wasn’t moving, and his complexion carried that “gray-white pallor of death” as Mike referred to it after one of his countless crime scene visits.

A medical examiner would do an autopsy before ruling on the time of death, but even in the dimly lit room, I could see his face, neck, and hands showed no signs of rigor mortis—the first parts of the body to register that morbid stiffness (according to Mike). Neither did they show any defensive wounds, which suggested to me that this man was killed in his sleep, probably within the last few hours. And
that
, among other things (
many
other things), would make Alicia a prime “person of interest” to the NYPD.

Of course, I didn’t dare touch a thing, especially the body. I didn’t move any farther into the room, either, but I did take a look around.

Alicia’s laptop sat closed on the desk, a stack of files beside it. Her leather briefcase rested on the floor. A man’s pants and suit jacket had been thrown over the back of a chair. The suit was a fine dark gray, expensive material that draped beautifully.

On the carpet near the base of the bed, Alicia’s polished burgundy pumps were cuddled up to a large pair of scuffed leather loafers. On the bedside table, two empty martini glasses sat next to a vase of severely wilting flowers.

With a start, I heard sudden music—Mimì’s tinny aria from
La bohème
. I pulled out my cell.

“Are you in?” Madame asked.

“Yes. I’m looking at the body right now.”

“What do you think?”

“This is beyond bad.”

“That’s why I called you, dear. And an attorney. He’s on his way.”

“I’m coming back to your room to talk.”

“Fine.”

With a sigh I closed my phone. There was nothing more to do here, except say a silent prayer for the soul of this poor man—and Alicia Bower. Whatever she’d done (or hadn’t done), a truckload of trouble was rolling her way.

Fearful of contaminating evidence, I carefully backed out of the room, then stopped. Remembering that maid at the end of the hall, I slipped my sleeve back over my hand and hung the
Do Not Disturb
sign on the outside handle.

I
found my employer in her own room, pacing its stunted entryway. Alicia was now lying on the bed (in a fetal position), still facing the window, quietly sobbing.

I waved Madame into the bathroom and shut the door.

“Who is that man?” (Who
was
that man would have been more accurate, but she got my drift.)

“His name is Dennis St. Julian,” she whispered. “He’s a wholesale buyer in town for the ICE.”

“The IC—?”

“The International Confectioners’ Expo. It just kicked off at the Javits Convention Center. That’s why Patrice Stone scheduled the Mocha Magic Coffee launch party for this evening—”

“Wait. Back up. Who’s Patrice Stone? You never mentioned her before.”

“Patrice is the right-hand girl to Aphrodite.”

Madame wasn’t actually referring to the Greek goddess. Alicia’s boss was an enigmatic businesswoman known only by the name Aphrodite. Just a few years ago, she’d started a Web site called Aphrodite’s Village Online.

The site began humbly enough as a chatty, informative little online catalog carrying products for women, focusing primarily on those interested in enhancing or improving their love lives and relationships.

Aphrodite found investors, added content, and ratcheted up the PR. Mentions in major newspapers, on television talk shows, and two Hollywood feature films catapulted the little product site into one of the most popular communities for women on the World Wide Web.

The site became so big that Aphrodite divided it into “temples,” each one controlled by a different so-called Sister of Aphrodite. Much like the section heads of a magazine, each “Sister” was in charge of a different area of expertise: Health and Fitness, Travel and Leisure, Arts and Entertainment, Love and Relationships, and so on.

Alicia’s temple of expertise was Food and Spirits, which was why her Mocha Magic Coffee was being given an international launch by Aphrodite. The woman and her company were essentially partners in the deal and cut in for a hefty share of profits, as well.

“Because of the ICE trade show,” Madame continued, “a number of wholesale buyers are in town this week, looking for new products, and every last one of them has been invited to the Rock’s Loft & Garden tonight to sample Alicia’s Mocha Magic—and hopefully place orders.”

“Okay. But that doesn’t tell me why Candy Man had a date with a carving knife in Alicia’s room. How long has she known this guy?”

“At the most, three weeks. He approached her in a downtown bar and they hit it off. I met the man myself last week, very briefly. He said he was originally from Long Island but based somewhere in the Midwest for the past few years—Missouri, I believe—but he travels quite a bit on business. He said he was ready to place a very large order for Alicia’s new product.”