On What Grounds (Coffeehouse Mysteries, No. 1) (A Coffeehouse Mystery) (2 page)

T
HE
perfect cup of coffee is a mystifying thing.

To many of my customers, the entire process seems like some sort of alchemy they dare not try at home.

If the beans are Robusta rather than Arabica, the roasting time too long or short, the filtering water too hot or cold, the grinds too finely or coarsely milled, the brew allowed to sit too long—any of it can harm the end product. Vigilance is what gets you that perfect cup—vigilance and stubbornness in protecting the quality.

As the 1902 coffee almanac put it, “When coffee is bad it is the wickedest thing in town; when good, the most glorious.”

Of course, seeking that perfect cup of coffee is not without risks. For instance, after you’ve found it, and then gotten yourself
addicted
to drinking it, you’ve made yourself vulnerable. Because, on those rare mornings when you are
prevented
from getting it—well, to put it as indelicately as my ex-husband might—

You’re screwed.

I was in that very position the morning I’d found Anabelle’s body.

Trapped behind the wheel of my ten-year-old Honda, I’d been in traffic for, oh, about three months, and my one little espresso at 6
A.M
. had worn off hours ago. With the freeway rest stops offering their standard range of brews—from weak as warm dishwater to bitterly burnt—I began to practice a sort of Zen caffeine visualization exercise.

All the way across Jersey, through the Lincoln Tunnel, and into the streets of midtown Manhattan, I imagined the Village Blend cup floating in front of my windshield, the earthy liquid inside, mellow and warm, yet rich and satisfying, tendrils of pearl-colored steam curling into the clouds—

“Son of a
gun
!”

A taxi swerved into my lane, cutting me off to pick up a fare. I slammed the brake pedal and my bumper stopped so close to the cab’s passenger door I thought the per-mile rates printed there would end up tattooed to my forehead.

I honked. The beturban cab driver cursed. And the Brooks Brothers suit climbed into his hired yellow box on wheels. With a door slam, we were off again. Half a block—and a stand still.

“Great. Just great.”

In a jarring instant, the real world had snatched away my perfect cup. Seconds later I knew how Shakleton felt trying to sail through icebergs. Four-ninety-five at least had been
moving.
This parking lot purporting to be the route between midtown and the West Village was driving me to homicide.

To top it off, a feeling of desperation hung in the chilly Thursday air. The early-morning clouds were black, and commuters were rushing toward their tall office buildings and storefront shops before the heavy September skies opened up on them.

Thank goodness I’m almost there.

Last night was literally my last night at my Jersey house. After only a few weeks on the market, the suburban three-bedroom ranch with front lawn and back garden had sold to a young married couple from the Upper West Side whose moving van was pulling up as I was pulling out. I’d donated most of my functional (albeit style-free) Ikea furniture to Goodwill, along with the very last of my eighties shoulder-pads. Now the bulk of my things was either in storage or had been moved to the city already.

This morning, I’d packed my remaining items, grabbed my cat, Java, and didn’t look back. The feline now sat aloofly in her pink PetLove cat carrier, licking her coffee-bean-colored paw, utterly indifferent to the desperately stressed state of her owner.

“Well, at least
one
of us is having a good trip.”

When I finally neared the Village Blend coffeehouse—and the duplex apartment above it—I saw only one space available, just off Hudson. With a few Hosannas, I slid into it—
Finally some vehicular luck!
(Okay, so it was near a hydrant. But it wasn’t that close, really, and I wasn’t going to be long. After unpacking my car, I intended to move it to the nearby garage, where I had rented a monthly space.)

Grabbing Java’s carrier, I headed for the consciously
non
commercial front of the red brick coffeehouse, ready to check in with Anabelle, who’d be serving the morning crush—and definitely more than ready to savor a cup of the Village Blend’s heavenly house blend before beginning my unloading. As I neared the twelve-foot-tall arched front windows, however, I saw the lights inside were on, but the place was empty.

Empty.

No customers.

Not one.

Inconceivable,
I thought.

As bad as the previous manager had been (in six months he’d actually eroded the customer base by almost fifty percent), the Blend had always seen
plenty
of morning business.

I tried the door.
Locked.
And the
CLOSED
sign was in the window!

What the hell is going on?
It was almost nine—and the Blend was supposed to take its bakery delivery at five-thirty and be open to customers by six!

That meant we’d already lost the rush-hour regulars: the Satay & Satay Ad people, the Assets Bank office workers, the Berk and Lee Publishing people, and the NYU crowd. If I didn’t get the place open soon, we’d even lose the neighborhood regulars, who often grabbed a mid-morning cup before heading up- or downtown on business.

And Anabelle Hart had been
so
trustworthy since I’d come back to managing the Blend a month ago!

“Don’t worry, Clare, I’ll take care of everything.”

Those were her last words to me after she’d volunteered to both close the coffeehouse last night and open it again this morning. With no one else available to cover for me, it was the only way I could complete my move from Jersey. I’d even promised her a nice bonus in her next paycheck.

Anabelle was one of my best workers, too. Once I corrected the bad training she’d received in making her espressos too fast (yes, too fast—but I’ll get to that later!), she became my top employee. Not so much for her barista skills, although those were vital to the Blend’s reputation, but because I could trust her.

One thing you learn in this business: Character can’t be taught. You’re reliable or you’re not. You do what you say you’re going to, or you don’t. Anabelle had character. She never bugged out on a shift or made an excuse to leave early. She was there when I needed her, didn’t neglect or abuse the customers, and deftly handled any abuse flung at her or the staff. This was, after all, retail. Abuse was a given. It was also New York City, land of the chronically dissatisfied.

Short of a Wonder Woman cape, you had to possess a special kind of character to resist bouncing back double-fold what came at you, to magically dissipate all hostility into the atmosphere.

Most of my part-timers were naïve college students, barely beyond adolescence—meaning hostility was handled with the most juvenile of boomerang reactions. This was why I needed assistant managers with the aforementioned special character traits.

Anabelle was the same age as my college student part-timers, but she displayed a much more advanced maturity level. An incident just the week before proved it—

An emaciated advertising executive in an Anne Klein suit and a near-permanent expression of displeasure on her thin, pallid face, ordered a Caffé Cannella (Italian for cinnamon coffee). We were very busy, and Maxwell, one of our part-time baristas, presented it quickly then turned to continue making the other coffee drinks.

“Hey, you!” the woman called to Max.

“What?”

“You’ve
ruined
my drink with too much cinnamon!”

“Lady, it’s the way we
always
make it.”

“You’re an
idiot.
”

“Who are you calling an idiot, you stupid bi—”

“Ma’am! Let me fix the problem,” Anabelle said, gliding in with the grace of a gull to retrieve the offending drink. I had been going over schedules in the corner and watched the entire save with admiration.

In two seconds flat, Anabelle had inserted herself between the angry young barista and the overwrought businesswoman, soothing ruffled feathers with apologies, chatting about not liking too much cinnamon herself, and getting a new drink made
tout de suite
. She even placed the cinnamon shaker next to the cup to allow the woman to sprinkle as much or as little as she preferred.

“Remember, garbage flows downhill,” I’d told Anabelle during the first week I’d reclaimed my position as manager of the Blend, “and a percentage of the population in this town comes out of its offices, shops, hospitals, and homes looking for the first excuse to dump a portion of it directly on our heads.”

“Don’t worry, Clare,” she’d answered. “If there’s anything I’ve had plenty of experience with, it’s handling garbage.”

I never asked why and how she’d gained that experience. I just knew she was my saving angel, someone I’d come to rely on during my first month getting the Blend back on its feet. In fact, I had
just
promoted her from barista to assistant manager.

After fishing through my shoulder bag for the key, I unlocked the shop’s glass front door and cursed like that cabbie who’d almost killed me on Ninth Avenue.

There was no sign that Anabelle—or anyone else—was even getting ready to open up. Not even the scent of brewing coffee. And the sound system was silent. Not one classical note in the air—

I sighed with the sort of profound disappointment you usually reserve for your child.

“Oh, Aaaa-na-belle,” I singsonged, much the same way I used to scold my daughter. “You’re blow-ing your bonus.”

I set Java’s carrier down, strode across the gleaming, freshly waxed wood-plank floor (which, under the previous manager, Moffat Flaste, had been allowed to deteriorate into a scuffed and grimy mess). I stepped past the refrigerated display of cold beverages (Pellegrino, Evian, and imported ginger-, lemon-, and orange-flavored Italian sodas) that I’d made “Madame,” the Blend’s owner, buy when I’d first managed the Blend for her ten years before (and which had added ten percent to the annual gross sales). I walked the length of the blueberry-colored marble coffee bar, then stopped, appalled, at the pastry display.

The shelves of the six-foot-long glass case should have been jammed with warm croissants, muffins, bagels, doughy cinnamon rolls, and fresh-baked streudels. The afternoon delivery would have a different mix of goods—biscotti, tarts, cookies, European-style pastries, and miniature bundt cakes. But never,
ever,
was it supposed to be
empty,
as it was now!

I moved from the main room into the back foyer, which amounted to a square of wood floor with the supply pantry on the left, the service staircase to the right, and the back door dead in front of me. The door was unchained, yet still bolted, and the area was dark.

I stepped in something slippery and flailed a bit, nearly tripping over a large object. Flipping on the light, I saw that one of the stainless steel under-counter garbage cans had been moved to the top of the service staircase that led to the basement.

No reason for this!
I thought instantly.

Why would Anabelle have moved the heavy can when she could easily have pulled out the plastic bag lining it and taken it to the shop’s outside Dumpster?

The can’s lid was nowhere in sight and black coffee grounds were flowing over the top, across the wood floor, and down the top few steps.

“Anabelle, I’m going to kill you!” I cried, frowning at the mess. Then I glanced down the stairway and gasped.

It looked like someone had beaten me to it.

I
ran down to the basement, almost slipping on the messy coffee grounds spilled all over the steps. Anabelle’s body was crumpled at the bottom on the cold concrete floor. Her delicate features were pale, almost milk-white. Her head was cocked at a terrible angle and her long blond ponytail stretched perpendicular to it like the yellow plume of a fragile bird.

Her twenty-year-old face appeared lifeless—but if she truly
were
lifeless, her limbs would be rigid. They weren’t. Rigor mortis certainly hadn’t set in. I knelt next to her and checked for vital signs, trying not to move the body in case of spinal injury. First I placed my ear to the girl’s nose and mouth. Thank God, she was breathing! Shallow but evident. Next I put two fingers to the girl’s neck. The skin was cold, slightly clammy. The pulse feeble as butterfly wings.

“Anabelle? Anabelle?”

Her clothes appeared to be the same ones she’d worn last evening when she’d reported to work. Blue jeans and a white midriff T-shirt with
DANCE
10 printed across the chest.

I ran back upstairs and made a frantic call to 911. Next I rang Anabelle’s roommate, Esther Best, an NYU English major from Long Island, and a weekend barista at the Blend. She lived with Anabelle in a tiny rented apartment about ten blocks away.

“Esther, it’s Clare Cosi. Anabelle—” I said.

“Well, she’s not here,” Esther cut in. “She never came home last night, although
that’s
not unusual. She might be with The Dick. You might try her cell. Unless she’s got a new one already—boyfriend, I mean, not cell phone.”

“Esther,
listen.
She’s had an accident. Come down to the Blend
now.
” I went back downstairs to sit with Anabelle until the ambulance arrived.

The next fifteen minutes passed more like fifteen hours. Mostly, I spent it fretting, and praying, and staring at Anabelle’s limp slender form, thinking of my Joy. My daughter’s features weren’t as perfectly chiseled as Anabelle’s; they were more common, like mine. Yet my Joy had more of an impish energy than Anabelle, a sense of carefree innocence that Anabelle, though she was only a year older than my daughter, seemed to lack.

I had admired Anabelle’s maturity as a worker, but seeing her like this made me admit to myself that there was something brittle and a little desperate about Anabelle Hart. Something fragile and sad, too.

This can’t be the end of her life
, I prayed.
No one should die so young…for so careless a reason.

Finally, the sound of sirens echoed off the Federal-style townhouses and boutique shop windows of Hudson. After a moment of silence, thick-soled paramedic shoes began clumping around the first floor.

“Down here! Hurry!” I called, then saw them round the corner and almost slip just as I had on the coffee grounds.

“Watch out!”

Two men, both young Hispanics in white shirts and slacks, cursed loudly then continued down. I stepped away, and they began to work. They checked Anabelle’s heart with a stethoscope, her pupils with a small flashlight, and attempted to wake her by calling her name. They tried smelling salts. Nothing worked.

Finally, they fastened a brace around her head and neck, moved her to a flat board, and strapped her down. Anabelle seemed more like a corpse than a person now. Her limbs were limp, her face ashen.

I
hated
not being able to help,
hated
being forced to watch impotently as strangers took her away.

Tears blurred my vision, made my nose run.
This can’t be happening
echoed through my mind so many times I was no longer sure whether I was thinking it, saying it, or screaming it.

At the top of the stairs, the paramedics placed the board on a folding stretcher, then pushed the thing swiftly across the main room.

About then, Esther Best burst into the Blend’s entrance. She stopped dead at the pallid, rag-doll body of her roommate.

“Ohmygod, what happened!” she cried with uncharacteristic emotion. Even Esther’s brown eyes, which were usually narrowed in some sort of jaded, hypercritical observation behind her black-framed glasses, now stared in wide-open shock.

In front of me, the two paramedics were pushing tables out of the way. I followed closely behind, so focused on the stretcher, its wheels thundering across the wood-plank floor, that I didn’t even hear the male voice calling until I tried following Anabelle out the shop’s front door—

Like a steel curtain, an impenetrable blue wall slid closed before me. Navy shirts, gun belts, nickel-silver badges. I collided right into it.

The officers stood shoulder to shoulder. Both looked to be in their mid-twenties. One tall and lean, the other shorter and broader through the chest and shoulders. The tall one with the light hair and gray eyes whose name tag read
LANGLEY
spoke first. He was holding a notebook.

“Woah, there, ma’am! Sorry, but we need to ask you some questions.”

“Where are they taking her?” I asked, bouncing backward. Instantly, I tried to move around them, but they bobbed and weaved right along with me: Left, right, left, right, left—

The whole thing looked like a pathetic one-on-two basketball game. And with my small stature, there were definitely no NBA offers in my future.

“Calm down, ma’am. They’re taking her to St. Vincent’s,” said the other cop. He was the shorter one. Dark eyes and hair. His name tag read
DEMETRIOS
.

I strained once more to look around the uniformed young men. On the street, a large crowd of onlookers had gathered—students with backpacks and older residents, many of them Blend regulars. Esther was speaking with one of the paramedics. All eyes watched as the other paramedic shut the two back doors simultaneously. The single loud thud struck me with a terrible premonition of finality.

“Yeah,” said Langley. “They’ll do what they can for her. And her roommate says she’ll go to the hospital. We got some basic information about the victim from the roommate, but right now we need to hear what happened from you.”

After the ambulance drove away—much too slowly, as far as I was concerned—Letitia Vale, one of the Blend’s regulars, poked her head of wrapped gray braids inside the front door.

“Clare? Are you all right? What happened?”

Letitia was the third-chair viola player with the Metropolitan Symphony. A tea drinker. (Tea was not the Blend’s specialty, but we did have a standard selection. Earl Grey, jasmine, camomile—the teas one would expect.) Letitia said what she mostly enjoyed about the Blend was its atmosphere and its anisette biscotti.

When I had first managed the Blend almost ten years ago, Letitia had been a loyal customer. She’d even pulled together a little chamber ensemble to play at the Blend’s annual holiday parties.

“Oh, Letitia, Anabelle had an accident…” My voice choked to a stop.

“Heaven and earth! Is there anything I can do?” asked Letitia.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the cop named Demetrios told Letitia as he moved his body to block hers in yet another bob-and-weave game, “but we need to close the store now.”

“Oh! Oh, of course. Clare, I’ll come back later.” She waved reassuringly.

I nodded, no longer trusting my voice.

“Okay, ma’am,” said Langley, opening his notebook. “It’s Clare, right? Why don’t we start with your full name and address.”

I stared at him. Suddenly I had trouble focusing.

“Ma’am?” Langley prompted.

“What?” I asked.

He gazed into my face for a long moment.

“Okay, ma’am, I need you to take it easy, okay? I need you to take some deep breaths and sit down.” He motioned to the empty chair at one of the store’s twenty Italian marble-topped tables. “Can you tell us how you found the body—”

“Body?” My stomach turned, saliva filled my mouth. “I’m not…feeling so well.”

Demetrios shot Langley a look.

“Uh, sorry, ma’am,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean the body. I meant, uh, the girl.”

“Sit down, okay?” advised Demetrios. “You don’t look so good.”

I tried, but couldn’t. It only made me feel worse. All I could think of was what Grandma Cosi used to say to women who’d just suffered a loss or shocking news and came to her kitchen for a reading of coffee grounds.
Do something familiar so you don’t faint.
I looked up. Saw Demetrios’s name tag.

“That’s a Greek name, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Let me make you some coffee.”

“What? No, ma’am, that’s not necessary—”

But I was already moving behind the counter, grabbing the tall, long-handled brass
ibrik,
measuring the water, and placing it on an electric burner.

The cops, mumbling between themselves, seemed unhappy with my activity, but it was helping me feel less numb and more normal. I’d prepared Greek-style coffee (aka Turkish coffee) many times. I’d learned how from my world-traveling ex-husband, who’d enjoyed the strong taste—even more powerful than espresso.

As I made the coffee, the cops stood at the counter and watched. After a minute or so, they began to ask me some questions.

(What time had I arrived this morning? Was the shop open or locked? How long had the girl worked for the store?)

As long as I kept busy making the coffee, I found I could answer pretty well.

(Close to nine. Locked. Six months, but I had known her only one.)

I’d explained how I’d just moved in above the store. How I’d managed the place ten years ago but had left to live and work in New Jersey.

They wanted to know why I’d decided to come back after so long.

“A lot of reasons,” I told them absently.

And over the next few minutes, as I continued to prepare the Greek coffee, I silently reminded myself of a few of them—starting with that early-morning phone call four weeks ago from Madame…