Murder by Mocha (36 page)

Madame arched an eyebrow. “And what did you believe, sir? Or don’t reporters have opinions?”

Jeffries blinked, as if waking up to a sharper mind than he’d expected. “Touché, ma’am.”

“No offense,” Madame said.

“None taken. Like politics and jelly doughnuts, the good stuff is usually found in the middle, isn’t it?”

Madame sighed. “Objectivity
is
a rare thing these days.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this . . .” Jeffries sat up a little farther in his seat, the condescension gone. “I heard every bit of testimony, interviewed all the witnesses, and I think my conclusion is the right one . . ”

According to Jeffries, Mrs. Temple surprised her husband by dropping by his campus office. “A professor named Alicia Bower was standing in the hallway outside, speaking with one of her students—a Sherri Sellars. Mrs. Temple pushed past them both and burst through her husband’s door. She found her Victor half naked with one of his students, Thelma Vale Pixley. She drew the gun and aimed it directly at Thelma. Alicia and Sherri rushed in and tried to wrest the weapon away from Mrs. Temple. During the struggle, Dora pulled the trigger, and Dr. Temple was struck in the groin. He bled to death en route to Bay Village Hospital.”

Madame glanced at me. “Now that
does
sound like premeditated murder.”

Jeffries nodded. “She brought the gun and she pointed it. The prosecutor believed it was premeditated, too, and he was aggressive. Alicia and Sherri were friendly with Mrs. Temple. They didn’t want to testify against her, but they took their sworn oaths seriously and told the truth as they saw it.

“The prosecutor compelled them to testify for his side—including a statement they overheard Mrs. Temple make during the struggle. ‘I swear I’ll end them both.’ ” He snapped his fingers. “Those two sealed the deal. The scandal with all the requisite publicity ruined them at the college, of course. Alicia resigned her post and went off to be a freelance writer. The jury found Mrs. Temple guilty of all charges. She showed no remorse, and the judge sentenced her to twenty-five years to life.”

“And she died in prison?”

“After seven years, Mrs. Temple applied for early parole. The board denied her request. She still hadn’t shown any remorse, and she’d physically assaulted a female guard. When she heard her parole was denied, she hanged herself in the prison laundry.”

“Dora had a daughter,” I said. “What happened to her?”

Jeffries’s buoyancy flagged suddenly. “Olympia Temple. Now there was a tragedy.”

“How so?” Madame asked.

“Olympia hardly knew her father, but she was close to her mother. Mrs. Temple made bail, and for two years before the trial, that girl listened to her mother rail against the prosecutor, the judge, the friends who had ‘turned on her’ to testify against her. When her mother was sent to prison, the daughter was devastated.”

“Do you have a photo?” I asked.

Jeffries found only a few. Olympia was young during the height of the trial—around thirteen years old. She was a slender, Caucasian girl with long, dark blond hair, which she used to cover her face when cameras began snapping her photo.

He tapped the image on screen. “Several years after Mrs. Temple was sentenced, I wrote a piece about her life in prison. A few days after that article was published, I started getting poisoned-pen letters. Then someone slashed the tires on my car.”

Letters followed by violence?
Madame and I leaned forward. “What did you do?”

“I turned the letters over to the police. They believed Olympia was responsible. When I heard that, I couldn’t bring myself to press charges, but they spoke with her, hoped to frighten her into stopping. She didn’t. The tire slashing was repeated after I wrote an article about Mrs. Temple’s parole being denied.”

“There was no one else who could have done it?” I asked. “An angry cousin, an uncle, a sister? The Temples must have had close friends.”

“Dr. Temple and his wife were transplants from Maine. They had no relatives in the area. None that I could find, and I looked, too. Their friends were connected to the college, and when the scandal broke, most of them distanced themselves from Dora Temple—understandable since they had upstanding reputations to maintain and Mrs. Temple couldn’t escape the bad publicity. When Mrs. Temple went to prison, her daughter was taken in by guardians, not related, an elderly couple also connected to the college.”

He shook his head. “After all Olympia had been through, I didn’t wish to press charges against her, and the harassment did stop after she vanished.”

“You mean after she killed herself.”

Jeffries scratched his head. “I’m not so sure she did.”

“But Phoebe Themis told us there were witnesses. They heard a scream, saw something plunge off a bridge. Dora’s belongings and a suicide note were found on top of that same bridge. She’d worn her mother’s wedding gown for that jump and shreds of it washed ashore.”

“And no
body
was ever recovered.”

Prickles iced my skin. “Are you certain?”

“Are you hungry, Ms. Cosi?”

“Excuse me?”
Oh no,
I thought.
I hope he’s not hitting on me for a dinner date.

“I suggest you stop by the River View restaurant, just outside of our village. Ask for the head waiter, Freddie. Tell him I sent you. Freddie has an eyewitness opinion about what happened.”

“We’ll do that,” I said, rising.

“And try the bay scallops with saffron risotto.” Jeffries kissed the tips of his fingers.
“Délicieux!”

B
Y the time Madame and I arrived at the River View, dinner service was under way. In the parking lot, we paused to admire the sweeping view of the “river”—really a long, wide inlet of the Long Island Sound with strong currents shimmering between thickly forested cliffs.

“That’s where Olympia Temple jumped,” Madame said, gazing at the high bridge, where a commuter train was now rumbling across.

Inside, Madame and I grabbed a snack at the bar and asked to see the head waiter. After our wine was poured and fried oysters served, the bartender introduced us to Freddie—really Fredrick Lloyd, a round, bald little man with a charming accent, who told us he was born in London and raised in Oxford.

“Oh, sure. I was there the night of the jumper,” he said. “Me and Connie, who died last year. Most everyone else is new.”

He leaned close, glanced at his watch, and nodded in the direction of the railroad bridge, just visible in the gathering dusk through the large bay windows.

“Keep your eyes on that bridge,” he advised.

We did and within a minute the lights came on, illuminating the entire span. One central light was much brighter than the others. Like a spot, it shone all the way down to the inlet’s rippling waters.

“See that big light. The jump came from right there. I heard this scream, and then some of the guests pointed. Then everyone was screaming and running about. But not Freddie.”

He tapped his temple. “I was feeling nostalgic, so I kept on watching the girl.”

“Nostalgic?” I asked. “What do you mean by that?”

“When I was a boy, me and me mates had an annual ritual. Every May first we rose early and showed up for the Bridge Jumpin’ Festival at Magdalena.”

“Oh, the bridge jumping!” Madame nodded. “If memory serves, students from Oxford have been jumping off that bridge for more than a century. Am I correct, sir?”

“You are indeed, ma’am. But me and me mates, well, to be honest, we were there to watch the girls jump into the Cherwell. It was a long time ago—lots of pretty hippie girls around with their flowered dresses. Those dresses would balloon up, and we pimply faced boys would catch our first glimpse of bloomers, er . . . beggin’ your pardon, ladies.”

“No apologies necessary,” Madame assured him. “Boys will be boys. I have a son myself . . .”

Yes,
I thought,
one who’s made a global study of glimpsing girls’ bloomers.

“Like I say, I was no stranger to seein’ girls in dresses jump from bridges. And I watched that jumper’s white dress balloon up just fine, but the whole way down it was the same.”

Freddie pressed his arms to his side and stood erect, making like a chubby Oscar statue. “She was stiff, you know? Like an ice sculpture. She never moved once the whole drop.”

He leaned in, lowered his voice. “That’s a big, bright light there, and that bridge is plenty higher than the Magdalena. Yet I didn’t see any bloomers, and I don’t recall seein’ any legs. None at all.”

T
WENTY minutes later, we stood by our rental car while I took one last look at the railroad bridge and the dark, treacherous depths below it. Our day of inquiry was over, and it yielded a crucial conclusion.

“Olympia Temple isn’t dead,” I said. “She faked her death and created a new identity to get even with the people she blamed for her mother’s imprisonment and suicide.”

“The judge and prosecutor?”

“Yes, they were killed outright. But a quick death wasn’t vengeance enough for Olympia when it came to Alicia Bower and Sherri Sellars. Those women had testified against her mother, and Olympia wanted to see them suffer—not in one quick instant before death, but for years.”

“So she framed them for murder.”

“Exactly.”

“But who is Olympia?”

“Someone close to Alicia and Sherri. Someone who knew about the friction between the Sisters of Aphrodite and exploited it. She sent those fake letters, right? So it had to be an inside job.”

“Her age should help give her away.”

“Olympia Temple would be in her twenties. Like Nancy Kelly, our youngest barista. The killer would have attended the party at Rock Center, and the Sherri Sellars PR event on Aphrodite’s yacht . . .”

I closed my eyes, replaying my walk up the
Argonaut
gangplank, the look of our coffee and chocolate display, the meeting with Aphrodite, the scream, the
splash.

Freddie’s voice came back to me:
“She was stiff . . . like an ice sculpture.”

“Stiff,” I whispered, like the roots of Phoebe’s laurel tree.
Her face lost in the canopy. The nymph transformed.

That’s when I knew.

FORTY-FOUR

N
IGHT dropped her veil on Manhattan, turning the bright maze of city streets into a shadowy underworld. As I rolled home, the tall, spotless windows of my coffeehouse shone like welcoming beacons in a wine-dark sea. The golden glow cheered me for a moment—but only a moment.

“Where’s Mother?” Matt asked from behind the counter.

“Safe with Otto. I dropped her at his gallery. Don’t worry.”

“Worrying is all I’m doing, Clare. All I’ve
been
doing.”

“That makes two of us.”

Feeling down but not out, I settled in at my own marble-topped bar. I still hadn’t heard from Quinn—and Joy hadn’t heard from Franco, or so she had informed me the last time I’d phoned her.

Matt slid me a fresh
ristretto
, took the stool next to me. “Find out anything that will help Alicia?”

I held up a finger, knocked back the strong elixir. “We found out plenty. It will help Sherri, too.” I brought Matt up to speed on what we’d discovered.

He sat dumbfounded a moment. “You
have
been busy.”

“The ride home was just as productive. Your mother drove part of the Grand Central so I could have a long cell phone conversation with Lori Soles.”

“Wait. Didn’t Lori cut you off at the dock last night?”

“She did, but I don’t blame her. All the evidence pointed to Alicia—except for one thing. And that’s why she listened to me tonight. This morning, the crime scene people finally came up with a solid forensic image off a hidden security camera. The date and time stamp made the evidence irrefutable.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Remember those fake Greek columns at Rock Center’s Garden? They were lit from inside.”

He nodded. “I remember.”

“Well, their glow turned the rain puddles into mirrors—and one of the building’s hidden cameras picked up a clear reflection of the killer’s legs as she moved to and from the podium to bludgeon Patrice Stone.”

“You’re telling me a photo of legs will ID the killer?”

“No, but they are exculpatory for Alicia because she wasn’t wearing opaque red stockings that night, and my killer was—or, rather, the young woman I believe is really Olympia Temple.”

“So what’s Lori going to do?”

“She and Sue Ellen are starting to run background checks, follow up on that thread. I hope they come up with something, before Olympia strikes again. . . ” I dug into my bag for my cell, checked the messages. “Why won’t she call me back?”

“Who?”

“Aphrodite. She’s next on Olympia’s hit list. I’m sure of it. What I don’t know is what she’s planning—an outright murder or another frame job. And if she’s planning a frame job, I can only guess who she’s going to kill.”

“I take it you called Aphrodite to warn her.”

“Of course. I warned Lori Soles, too. I don’t know if the police have gotten in touch with her yet, but so far Aphrodite is ignoring me, just like she ignored Gudrun.” I closed my eyes. “Mike hasn’t called me, either. Not since leaving a message last night.”

“You need a cop that bad?”

I need Mike that bad.
I took a breath, tried not to ache for him, and opened my eyes. They felt wet.

“Clare?”

“It’s a cinch,” I said, swiping at my cheeks. “My own personal cop would come in handy right now.”

Matt touched my arm. “Look, as long as Dudley Do-Right is MIA, I’ll be your cop, okay?” He formed a gun with his finger and thumb, took aim, fired, even blew on the finger barrel. “No kidding. I’ll help any way I can.”

“Help!” Esther squeaked, eyes wide.

Matt and I turned to find her hanging up the store phone.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nancy has gone off the deep end!” Esther came at us, hands flying like the Scylla monster. “That crazy girl drugged Dante!”