Murder Most Frothy cm-4 Read online

  Murder Most Frothy

  ( Coffeehouse Mysteries - 4 )

  Клео Коул

  Clare Cosi’s new friend, millionaire David Mintzer, has an offer no New York barista could turn down: an all-expenses-paid summer away from the sticky city. At his Hamptons mansion, she’ll relax, soak up the sun, and, oh yes, train the staff of his new restaurant. So Clare packs up her daughter, her former mother-in-law, and her special recipe for iced coffee—for what she hopes will be one de-latte-ful summer…

  Soon, Clare tends the coffee bar at her first Hamptons gala. But the festivities come to a bitter end when an employee turns up dead in David’s bathroom—a botched attempt on the millionaire’s life. Thanks to the Fourth of July fireworks no one heard any gunshots, and the police are stuck in holiday traffic. Concerned for everyone’s safety, Clare begins to investigate. What she finds will keep her up at night—and it’s not the java jitters…

  Cleo Coyle

  Murder Most Frothy

  This book is dedicated with love to

  Evelyn Cerasini

  and Nana

  Acknowledgments

  A most frothy thanks to editors Martha Bushko and Katie Day, and literary agent John Talbot.

  Prologue

  AMID the scrub grass of the high beach dune, gloved hands gripped seven pounds of bolt-action. Through the Remington’s scope, the shooter scanned the faces on the mansion’s expansive cedar deck.

  The typical Hamptons crowd was here: Ivy League wives turned interior decorators, captains of industry turned serial cheaters, vapid heiresses turned wannabe celebrities. There were cold-blooded lawyers, eager-to-please newcomers, megalomaniacal executives, and tone-deaf pop singers—all sipping frothy drinks and wearing designer casual with diamonds as big as planets, wristwatches as pricey as middle-class cars.

  Women bared too much or too little, their laughter forced or nonexistent, their attention on each other’s clothing, on the faces in attendance, on the host’s choice of artifacts. Men acted too bored or too eager, their focus on networking, for business or pleasure, the mantra always the same: “Close the deal, close the deal.”

  And, oh, the celebrities. They were here too, looking far less air-brushed than their cover shots on TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly. But those observations would only be whispered after the party or behind their backs during it.

  At last, the shooter located the target—his short, stocky build was unmistakable, his untucked short-sleeved shirt an enormous pink flag. The trigger could have been pulled at that moment. Three rounds were loaded into the Remington’s magazine, three seven-millimeter bullets primed for their trip through twenty-four inches of steel and forty odd yards of night air. But the result would have been obvious.

  The timing had to be right.

  Guests came and went, clustering and dissipating like the tides. Music rolled over the mansion’s grounds, across the pool and manicured lawn, down the beach and onto the shoreline. Inside latex gloves, the shooter’s hands grew clammy. Behind the shooter’s feet, the foamy surf sounded restless, as if the ocean were lapping nearer with every passing minute, closing in with each incoming wave.

  Finally, the target stepped away from the crowded deck and into the great room. The place was lit up like a whorehouse. With every shade up and shutter open, every bulb and chandelier blazing, guests could readily see the mansion’s splendor—and the shooter could easily track the target’s movements down the hallway and into the south wing, up the stairs and toward the master bedroom suite.

  Rogue firecrackers had been exploding for some time, a bright bang here, a sharp crack there, just like any other Fourth of July evening, little detonations from god-knew-where. But those stray explosions were nothing. The night’s most memorable fireworks were about to start.

  Farther down the beach, the patriotic spectacle was finally launched. A succession of roman candles went up amid booms, blasts, and a pumped-up soundtrack. Rockets raced high over the water, bursting with an array of bright red light, trickling down like blood trails against the death-black sky.

  Most guests were staring upward now, their blank faces dazzled by the show. The shooter’s focus remained far lower. For a few minutes, the target disappeared from view, then reappeared on the mansion’s second floor. He had moved to the bathroom window.

  A shot rang out and then another. Both missed their target. A third round was fired. It traveled down the Remington’s barrel, through the thick window, and into the man’s skull.

  At the party below, guests were still gawking skyward. They had failed to notice the rifle’s discharge. Amid the fireworks, it was just another big bang.

  One

  Hours before I found the body, one of Detective Mike Quinn’s pithy comments came back to haunt me: “You know, Clare, it’s a little-known principle of physics, a great deal of money can create a completely separate universe.”

  “You were right, Mike,” I whispered, taking in my surroundings.

  I was standing on the bi-level oceanfront deck of Otium cum Dignitate, “Leisure with Dignity,” David Mintzer’s ten-million-dollar East Hampton mansion, where his annual July Fourth party was in full swing.

  Floating candles bobbed in the Jacuzzi like dancing water fairies. Antique porcelain planters sweetened the sea air with rare orchids and night-blooming jasmine. Speakers, hidden in the topiary, accompanied the music of the nearby rolling surf with the majestic compositions of Gershwin and Copeland. And sterling-sliver serving trays overflowed with flutes of obscenely expensive champagne and freshly picked strawberries the size of lemons, dipped in the finest Belgian chocolate.

  “East” Hampton, of course, was one of the most exclusive hamlets in the United States. It sat beside Amagansett, Wainscott, Sagaponack, Bridgehampton, Southampton, and a few other quaintly named seaside townships known collectively as “the Hamptons,” each with its own set of beaches, permits, and restrictive (some might say fascistically elitist) parking regulations.

  East Hampton was also a prime example of my detective friend’s theory. For the very wealthy who summered here, from business moguls to movie stars, old money heirs to new money wannabes, the place was a trip back in time, where neon was outlawed, scenic rural landscapes were preserved, and genteel country estates were hidden from public view by towering “stay out!” hedgerows. (Or, as the local gentry referred to them, “privets for breaking the ocean winds,” because actually admitting your aversion for allowing the general public to even peek at your property might make you appear a total snob.)

  The Hamptons, it seemed to me, were about a lot of things, but mostly they were about being one hundred miles away from the gritty threats and cheap kicks of New York City. Money had carved these people another dimension, an existence of safety and beauty and taste, free of the stench of fear and crime and tackiness.

  The villages were located at the end of Long Island’s South Fork, a picturesque strip of land filled with ponds, marshes, and hills. Bluewater bays stretched along its north side, the Atlantic ocean along its south.

  There were hiking trails here and haute cuisine. Farm stands and a film festival. Bird sanctuaries and built-in pools. Nature preserves and tennis courts. You could find Jackson Pollack’s original, unheated studio here, as well as Quelle Barn, Steven Spielberg’s multi-million dollar East Hampton summer home, supposedly guarded by retired members of the Mossad—Israel’s secret service.

  Even the light was special in the Hamptons. Artists claimed it was the peculiar shape of the landscape, the slant of the sun’s rays as they bounced off the water. Whatever it was, they could find it nowhere else, which was one reason the area had become one of America’s most famous art colonies long before La-La Land’s A-list h
ad started driving up the real estate prices.

  Hamptons’ colors actually appeared richer too (not just the people). One morning when I rose for an early swim, I found myself gaping at an azure ocean so identical to the sky above it that no horizon line presented itself—the blue seemed to go on forever.

  At the moment, on the other end of Long Island, the end without pristine white beaches, most of New York City’s residents were living on top of each other in cigar-box apartments, rundown rowhouses, and public housing—all of them sweltering in the kind of relentless city heat that liquefied every ounce of energy before sucking it right out of you. Emergency sirens and shouting neighbors routinely punctured any hope of sustained tranquility, and sidewalk garbage, baking in the summer heat, fouled the air with the sort of fragrances that Calvin Klein wouldn’t be bottling anytime soon.

  Because tempers rose with the temperature, muggings, burglaries, assaults, and murders were now statistically up all over the city. And Mike Quinn had been clocking a lot of overtime at the NYPD’s Sixth Precinct.

  Here in East Hampton, on the other hand, police work appeared to be limited to public drunkenness, auto accidents, or the occasional actress-turned-pathological-shoplifter. Delicate breezes refreshed the residents with the vigor of salt spray. And the nights were cool, quiet, and dark enough to actually see the constellations.

  This place was a dreamland, Trump-meets-Thoreau, with an ocean view. And New Yorkers who had no roots in its history bought their way in with oodles of money, staking their million-dollar claims. They had indeed violated the laws of physics, as my friend Detective Quinn had put it, and created a completely separate universe.

  So what the heck was I, middle-class working stiff Clare Cosi, doing here? At the moment, I was whipping up frothy coffee concoctions for David Mintzer’s illustrious party guests.

  I know, I know…in America the term “barista” has come to be associated with out-of-work actors and college coeds—never mind that Americans consume half the world’s coffee supply, about 100 billion cups a year, and on a typical day seventy percent of the population drinks it. Here barista is not the highly-respected job title it is in, for example, Italy, a country with over 200,000 espresso bars.

  The truth is, I’d gotten my coffee start early. My paternal grandmother taught me how. She raised me back in Pennsylvania, where I practically lived in her little grocery, making espressos for her customers and friends with the battered stovetop pot she’d brought with her from Italy. With every cup I poured, there was always a pat on the head, the pressing of a quarter into my palm.

  My father, a flamboyant, constantly wired little guy who loved a good cigar and a shot of anisette with his morning demitasse, ran an illegal bookie operation from the back of Nana’s store.

  My mother never sampled my coffee-making skills. She’d left when I was seven, and although for years I’d thought it was because I hadn’t been a good enough little girl, I eventually realized she’d become fed up with my father’s running around.

  One day when a man from sunny Miami came to our town to visit a friend, Mom ran off with him, leaving nothing but a hastily scrawled note, which made her intentions clear. She wanted to erase her past completely, which unfortunately included me.

  That’s when my grandmother stepped in. Making espresso in Nana’s grocery was one of my fondest childhood memories. So it was no big mystery why I associated the best of things with the rich, warm, welcoming aroma of brewing coffee—the essence of home, of Nana’s hugs, of unconditional love in the face of an incomprehensible rejection.

  Even after my collegiate studies and successes as a culinary writer, I ultimately decided making the perfect cup time after time for a person who might be tired, weary, thirsty, or down, was not an insignificant thing.

  Despite my function at this East Hampton party, however, my job title was not in fact “barista to the stars.” My actual occupation was full-time manager of the Village Blend, a landmark, century-old coffeehouse in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, which was where David Mintzer and I had gotten to know each other in the first place.

  In his mid-forties, David was one of those men who could be described with a list of features that had “slightly” in front of almost every one: slightly paunchy with slightly thinning dark hair, and slightly bulbous eyes. There were other things about him, however, that were far from slight: his wit for one, which was quick and wry; his business acumen for another.

  David was an unqualified genius at whatever he attempted to do. He’d designed successful lines of men’s and women’s clothing, luggage, shoes, fragrances, and bed-and-bath products that were distributed internationally. He ran three successful magazines, two restaurant chains, and he periodically appeared on Oprah to give advice on “seasonal trends” to her television audience.

  We had first met at a fashion-week party last fall. David had bought a townhouse in Greenwich Village, and he’d become a regular customer at my coffeehouse. He was so impressed with our exclusive blends and roasts, not to mention my espresso cocktails, that he made me an offer. If I would train and oversee his barista staff at “Cuppa J,” his brand new East Hampton restaurant, he would not only pay me a generous salary, he would give me a room in his oceanfront mansion all summer as his guest.

  After some persuasion, I’d finally agreed that between June and September, I would split my time between Cuppa J and the Village Blend, using assistant managers to look after things at the Blend while I was gone.

  Don’t get the wrong idea here. David and I weren’t lovers—not even close. At the moment, we had one of those gray-area personal/business relationships. And, frankly, even if I’d wanted there to be more between us, I wasn’t even sure it was possible. Sometimes he flirted like a straight man and other times he struck me as, well, slightly effeminate (there’s that “slightly” again). In the end, his sexuality seemed ambivalent at best.

  The thing is, besides being very wealthy, David was also very sweet—or, at least, he’d been sweet to me. At the start of the evening, for instance, his Cuppa J chef (Victor Vogel) and manager (Jacques Papas) had arrived at the mansion with food they’d prepared at the restaurant. David had made a big fuss about personally serving me two flutes of his imported champagne and an outrageous portion of sixty-dollar-a-pound lobster salad.

  For the rest of the night, I continued to remain entranced by the bewitching seaside setting—and, of course, the ever-flowing French bubbles. What can I say? Back in the city, I could barely afford an occasional lobster tail. Out here, sterling sliver serving trays—one of which my daughter, Joy, was now carrying—overflowed with seemingly endless rounds of seafood canapés and miniature French pastries that resembled works of modern art.

  David had graciously encouraged all of his servers to eat, drink, and be as merry as his guests, and I most definitely took him up on that offer. While it was true that I was just “the help,” and it was also true, when you got right down to it, that this whole Hamptons thing wasn’t a whole lot different than your average backyard “kegger,” I just couldn’t talk myself out of being impressed. I’d never before been to a July Fourth party in the Hamptons (a New York City social accomplishment so noteworthy you’d think it would come with a military campaign ribbon), and I was secretly thrilled.

  It’s no wonder that violence and decay were the last things I expected to encounter that night. Certainly, they were the last things on my mind before I found the body. The time of death, I would eventually learn, was around the same time the evening’s fireworks began. But I wouldn’t actually find the corpse until long after the show ended. So, at this point in the evening, I was still relatively carefree.

  The same could be said of my twenty-one-year-old daughter who had come with me to David’s while on summer break from her Soho culinary school (she came at my insistence for reasons I’ll get to later). Joy was as thrilled as me about being at this party—but for her own particular reasons.

  “Mom, Mom, did you see Keith J
udd?” she bubbled, rushing over with her empty serving tray.

  Joy had my chestnut hair, green eyes, and heart-shaped face, and her father’s height. No, she wasn’t six feet. But she was four inches taller than my five foot two and had a personality like her father’s, with more effervescence than a magnum of Asti. Tonight she was clad in the same Cuppa J outfit worn by the rest of the waitstaff—a salmon-colored Polo knit with the Cuppa J logo embroidered in thread the color of a mochaccino over the right breast. The men wore khaki pants and the females khaki skirts. At the restaurant we also wore mocha-colored aprons. For tonight, however, since we were catering a private party at David’s home, he asked us to ditch the aprons.

  “Look, Mom, look. See him over by the pool? He winked at me. He totally, actually winked. At me.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said as I dosed freshly milled Arabicas into the portafilter cup. I tamped the ground beans in tightly, swept the excess from the rim, used the handle to clamp the portafilter securely into the espresso machine and hit the start button to begin the extraction process.

  “And why is that a ‘good thing’?” I asked Joy.

  A number of Famous types—actors, pop stars, writers, television personalities—lived in or near the Village, and I’d served them many a grande latte. But even before my time, the coffeehouse’s revered owner and my ex-mother-in-law, Madame Dreyfus Allegro Dubois, had regularly served some of the most famous members of the Beat generation, from Jack Kerouac to Lenny Bruce, Willem de Koonig to James Dean. So I was far more jaded than my daughter about “celebrity sightings.”

  “C’mon, Mom. Don’t tell me you don’t know who Keith Judd is.”

  “Oh, I know who he is, honey. Star of slick spy thrillers, right? He landed a courtroom drama role that got him an Oscar nod this year. Hunk of the moment.”