A Brew to a Kill (11 page)

He scratched the back of his head. “Sounds like a stretch.”

“Whack-jobs have killed over far less in this town. Talk to Mike sometime, he’ll tell you. Anyway, whether it’s a good lead or not, I should share it with Detective Buckman…” With confident determination, I pulled out my cell—and froze. “What do I say?”

“I don’t know. The war against mobile buttercream has had its first casualty?”

M
Y
theory made perfect sense (to me, anyway), but saying it out loud—to someone not familiar with the dark side of Kaylie—well, it did sound ridiculous.

Would Buckman laugh in my face? Or silently humor me?

Oh, who cares,
I thought, and dug out his business card. For the first time in hours, I felt a sense of direction, of control. If Highway Houdini wanted to call me an idiot, so be it, as long as he checked out my tip.

Opening my cell, I stopped again. A new message had dropped, direct from Paris.

“Matt, Joy just texted me.”

“Joy?”

A message from our daughter carried the same inherent contradictions as a shot of espresso—a rush of warmth followed by the inescapable jolt.
(Is she okay? Why is she writing? Is anything wrong?!)

Matt immediately pulled out his own PDA—the Lafite of multifunctional devices with every bell and whistle known to Silicon Valley.

The thing had been a gift from his fashionista wife,
Breanne Summour, although “gift” was a euphemism, implying shopping and purchase. As editor-in-chief of trendy
Trend
magazine, the woman got freebies and samples galore. My last birthday gift from her was a gorgeous Fen scarf—with a card that read,
Wear it with style, Bree! Love, Adele.

“I got the text, too,” Matt said.

“Here comes the bride…”
I read, confused.

“Dum, dum, de dum!”
Matt finished and locked eyes with me, his expression a combination of bewilderment and terror. “Clare, I can’t believe what I’m reading. Did our daughter just elope?!”

I stared for a moment, processing this.

“She says she sent pictures!” Matt cried.

“Calm down.”

“I can’t get the attachment open!”

“You’re going to sprain your thumbs.” I snatched away the man’s mobile keyboard, which he was beating on like a Lilliputian bongo drum. “Come on. We’ll use my laptop.”

“Fine,” he said, but he wasn’t fine. “So what’s the story? She never told
me
a thing! Did
you
have a clue? Did our daughter fall for another line cook? Or get taken in by some backpacking bum? Clare, why didn’t you warn me?”

“Will you get a grip? You’re overwrought and overreacting. I’m sure she’s just kidding around…”

Actually, I wasn’t so sure.

As our feet clanged their way up the wrought iron steps, I prayed my daughter hadn’t done anything rash—like dump her dirty work on me.

Last I heard, Joy and Sergeant Emmanuel Franco were still hot as habaneros for each other. But Franco lived and worked here in New York while Joy was completing her culinary training in France.

After they started seeing each other, I assumed it wouldn’t last. Surely one of them would meet a shiny new love interest? Or simply lose interest in the hard work of maintaining a long-distance relationship…

But I’d assumed wrong.

The two kept their passions primed via tricknology: e-mails, social networks, camera phone. In the meantime, Joy traveled back to New York when she could; and Franco’s overtime pay—not to mention his rudimentary French-speaking abilities, thanks to the Haitian families in his childhood neighborhood—kept him pond-hopping regularly to Paris, the most romantic city on the planet (unfortunately).

Was there a chance that Joy had eloped with Franco? Yes. There was also a chance an earthquake would level New York in the morning, and I hoped neither disaster was in the offing because the last thing I needed (besides a whole lot of broken latte cups) was dealing with my authority-loathing ex-husband once he knew the truth.

Not so very long ago, Sergeant Franco had chained Matt to a metal bar in an NYPD interview room and threatened to have him prosecuted for assault and attempted burglary (another story), all while pressing the most delicate emotional buttons imaginable in the man.

Since then, I had learned to like Franco. I knew the rough interviewing technique he’d used on Matt was SOP for the NYPD. But my ex-husband was another matter, and I dreaded the day he learned his baby girl was cuddling up to a gun-toting, shaved-headed Brooklynite with six-pack abs and a cocky attitude. (Suddenly, a city reduced to rubble wasn’t looking so bad.)

Cresting the staircase, we moved across the Blend’s second floor, a sprawling living room that boasted more café tables, another fireplace, and a shabby chic collection of French flea market sofas, overstuffed armchairs, and tastefully mismatched lamps.

Something else dwelled here, too. You could almost feel it in the air, the curated artwork, the exposed brick walls…

This was where Matt’s mother had nourished the bohemians of Greenwich Village for decades—with more than cups of her hot, black French roasts. With her open arms and open heart, Madame had opened this floor to artists of all kinds.
Poets had chanted newly inked verse here. Jazz musicians had tested working compositions. Experimental playwrights had staged read-throughs. Her floor lamps had served as spotlights for impromptu standup; her couches makeshift crash-pads for struggling painters who’d lost their apartments—or drunken ones who couldn’t find their way back to them.

At the moment, however, this famous floor was empty, the lights dim, the avant-garde ghosts quiet, even though Matt’s raving was loud enough to wake the dead.

“I’m betting it was some slick Parisian who schmoozed Joy up when I wasn’t looking! And I swear, Clare, over the years I gave our daughter
every
warning I could
think
of about—”

“Guys like you?”

“Exactly!”

Holding my tongue on that well-worn topic, I unlocked my battered office door and fired up my laptop. The e-mail from Joy was as terse as her text message.
Pics attached. Talk to you soon!

“Hurry it up, will you?”

“Take it easy, Big Daddy…”

I downloaded the attachment, unzipped the file. There were about a dozen photos here with captions. A quick scan and I was exhaling with relief. None of them included Franco. In fact, none of them included a
man
. Joy was posing in front of a series of fairy tale castles with her roommate, Yvette—

“Oh, right. Now I remember…”

“What?”

“Joy’s roommate is the one getting married. Joy mentioned it a few weeks ago. Yvette’s family owns an ice cream franchise. They’re loaded and they’re going all out. Joy is the maid of honor and the two girls spent a long weekend in the Loire Valley scouting a reception site—medieval châteaux cum hotel and catering hall, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, god.”

“What’s the matter? Aren’t you relieved?”

“I have to sit down. No.
Lie down
.”

Matt stumbled out of the office and collapsed on one of our couches. I took a closer view of the photos.

“You should look at these, Matt. They’re very nice!” I called.

He groaned.

I was pleased by how healthy Joy appeared; lovelier than ever with that golden tan on her heart-shaped face and her green eyes laughing in the French country light. She’d traded her bulky chef’s whites for a fetching polka-dot sundress and heeled sandals, and from the way she smiled at the camera and tossed her long chestnut hair, I just knew that Franco would be getting these photos, too.

I sighed, feeling that alliance of opposites again: this time, happiness and melancholy. Oh, Joy would make a beautiful bride. But I hoped it wouldn’t happen for a few more years because, no matter how old she got, I would always see her standing there with tomboy braids, a missing tooth, and a Hello Kitty backpack.

I knew Matt was feeling it, too—this passing of time—and more keenly than I. So if Joy
did
decide to choose Franco for a groom, then
she
could tell her father.

“I’m going to pass out right here!” Matt threatened.

“You’ll get a backache!”

Once more, I considered the on-screen photos. “They must have used Yvette’s digital camera for these. Usually, Joy just snaps a single blurry photo with her phone and hits send—”

Snaps a photo with her phone. Oh, my god…

“Matt! Did you hear me? She snaps a photo with her phone! Her phone!”

“What?” Matt called. “Who are you phoning?”

“A witness! A
camera phone
witness!”

M
Y
fingers pounded the keyboard. On my new hunch, I brought up an Internet search engine and looked for “Esther Best” in video. Hundreds of hits immediately came up with that search term—amateur videos of Esther rapping at poetry slams all over the city.

Oh, lord, I thought, how do I narrow it down? I know! Sort by date!

The most recent “Esther Best” video had been uploaded to the Internet less than an hour ago. I hit the tiny thumbnail on the list of search results and found myself viewing a YouTube broadcast recorded right in front of our Blend.

“Bingo!” I cried, and began to watch the familiar scene.

“Is that Esther I’m hearing?” Matt called. As the crowd cheered, he rose from the dead and wandered back to my office.

“It’s Esther,” I assured him. “One of her fans shot this video today…”

“Your cupcakes are mealy, your élan is fake, and your infantile jingle gives the world an earache!”

“Ouch,” Matt said. “She was kind of rough on the Kween, wasn’t she?”

“It could have been worse. Kaylie brought up Esther’s weight, but Esther refused to go that low.”

“What do you mean, ‘that low’?”

“Crimini had a nose job over the winter. Esther wouldn’t go there.”

“I may be ‘chubby,’ yeah, I’m busty, too, and my boyfriend
loves
the way my booty moves…”

“Not exactly Shakespeare.”

“I don’t know, if she switched to iambic pentameter, I think Esther would make a darn fine Kate.”

“What? Like in
Kiss Me Kate
,
The Taming of the Shrew
?”

“All she needs is a hip-hop Petruchio. I’m thinking Eminem.”

“I doubt Boris would be happy about that.”

“Your frosting, I hear, comes out of a can. And your beans? Sorry, honey, you can’t brew worth a dang! So get your buttercream butt off my grass, or I’ll plant my big black boot in your prissy little—”