Through The Grinder cm-2 Read online

  Through The Grinder

  ( Coffeehouse Mysteries - 2 )

  Клео Коул

  Business is booming at Clare Cosi's Village Blend, until her female customers start to die. Lieutenant Quinn is convinced that someone has an axe to grind, and, unfortunately, his prime suspect is the new man in Clare's life.

  Now Clare will risk her heart — and her life — to follow the killer's trail to the bitter end.

  Cleo Coyle

  Through The Grinder

  Once again to Martha Bushko and John Talbot — with whipped cream and caramel syrup on top!

  When you are worried, have trouble of one sort or another — to the coffee house!…

  You could not find a mate to suit you — coffee house!

  You feel like committing suicide — coffee house!

  You hate and despise human beings, and at the same time you can not be happy without them — coffee house!

  — “To the Coffee House!”

  Viennese poet Peter Altenberg

  Prologue

  She had to die.

  The Genius knew this and was absolutely fine with it. The problem, of course, was how.

  In the Genius’s view, almost any problem could be solved through study. So it was no surprise when the study of Valerie Lathem’s life yielded the solution to her death.

  The air on that pale November morning displayed an especially cruel bite, stabbing at cheeks, chins, and all other areas of exposed human flesh. Still, the Genius stood with the usual patience at the usual bus stop, pretending to wait for the usual bus. Reading the paper was usual enough, too, but the Times articles felt incomprehensible today, and the wait became interminable.

  When the twenty-seven-year-old woman finally emerged from her dingy brick apartment building, the Genius followed the pert face and slender figure, the shoulder-length retro flip hair the color of rancid butter, the black boots with heels too high, green cargos a size too small, and that cheap red leather jacket she’d purchased at SoHo Jeans the day before.

  With brisk steps, the woman followed Bleecker across Sixth Avenue, the wide, high-traffic chasm dividing modern Manhattan from the year 1811, when city fathers and their Euclidean plans for perpendicular streets were defied by village residents who refused to have their district’s twisted lanes made straight.

  For two hundred years, this winding web of cobblestone streets, narrow alleys, and secluded pathways has obeyed no logical pattern. The frosty air has been tinged with the acrid smell of logs burning on nineteenth century hearths. Gas lamps have been flickering near gated mews, hidden gardens, or sedate churchyards. And the sidewalks have edged not skyscrapers arranged in uniform grids, but a low-lying landscape of three-and four-story row houses, many now lodging offbeat boutiques, pricey bistros, and the occasional dark-paneled pub — all closed for business at this early hour.

  A corner on Hudson was the woman’s first stop, the site of a four-story Federal-style townhouse occupied for the last ten decades by the Village Blend coffeehouse. As she reached for the old brass handle, the beveled glass door swung wide, vomiting out three pubescent NYU students with a gust of roasting coffee.

  “Ah, yes,” whispered the genius, “that heavenly smell…”

  The earthy aroma drifted across the cobblestones on the crisp, fall air — a siren’s call of freshly frothed cappuccinos, warm pastries, anise biscotti, and bracing espressos. But entering the Blend was not an option. Not for the Genius. Not until the objective was achieved.

  “One push. Timed just right. One simple push.”

  Until then, there would be no cozy fireplace, no foamed milk, no buttery croissant. Across the street, the Genius shifted from foot to foot on the cold sidewalk, eyes peering through the Blend’s twelve-foot-tall front windows.

  Like trendy cattle, a dozen customers milled around the coffee bar counter. The woman placed her order with a lanky young man, waited a few minutes, then collected a paper cup from a petite brunette.

  At last, the door swung wide again. An enviable puff of aromatic steam rose from the cup when it hit the cold air. For a moment, Valerie Lathem’s snug green cargo pants paused on the sidewalk to touch her full lips to the edge of the lid. A shiver of delight followed, and the Genius struggled against a sharp memory of another place the woman’s lips had touched…that place on him…

  And on other men.

  For a moment, the Genius had trouble breathing. “One push. Timed just right…”

  Then the Slut continued her journey, hiking north and east, to Fourteenth and Broadway, where a wide public area of grass, tress, and benches formed Union Square Park.

  On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, the wide concrete border to the west of the park was reserved for metered parking. On Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, however, cars were banned and an open-air farmer’s market appeared.

  Regional growers from New Jersey, Long Island, and upstate New York packed the white-tented stands with produce. The Genius trailed the Slut as she visited table after table, purchasing organically grown apples and carrots, three kinds of homemade jams, a jar of natural honey, and finally a fresh-baked loaf of whole wheat bread. These were intended for the Slut’s elderly grandmother, whom she visited uptown every Saturday — most likely in an effort to cinch some share of inheritance.

  The R train had been the Slut’s transport of choice for the last two Saturdays, and when she headed toward the subway stairs again today, the Genius allowed a small exhale of relief.

  Below ground, the northwest entrance provided a bank of Metrocard machines and a “token booth” — which hadn’t sold tokens since 2003. The Slut had already purchased her Metrocard, so she strode across the black spotted concrete floor, past the vending machines to the turnstiles, and swiped the bright yellow rectangle through the silver slot.

  An almost imperceptible click sounded as the machine deducted the cost of the ride from the card. Then, with a ker-chunk, ker-chank, the Slut pushed through the metal spider and strode toward the stairwell on the left, leading down another level to the Broadway line’s Uptown platform.

  After waiting thirty seconds, the Genius swiped a pre-purchased Metrocard, just as the Slut had. But there was no click. The little screen embedded in the silver turnstile arm read STOP: PLEASE SWIPE YOUR CARD AGAIN AT THIS TURNSTILE.

  The Genius swiped.

  The STOP remained.

  On a weekday at such an early hour, this station would be packed with office workers and college students, but on a Saturday, riders were scarce. Two turnstiles away, the only other riders at this entrance — a middle-aged woman and two little girls — laughed and giggled as they swept through and away, toward the Downtown stairwell to the right.

  The Genius stared straight, trying not to call attention. Sweaty palms made the plastic moist. Slowly came a distant rumbling.

  A train was coming. Uptown or down? Unable to tell, the Genius brushed the card across a coat sleeve, and swiped again.

  The green GO appeared.

  Go! Go! Go!

  The Genius bolted through the spider arms then flowed down the stairs like liquid. Feet on the platform, the Genius leaned over the tracks. At the far end, near the mouth of the tunnel, the reflection of a headlight beam stretched along the tiled wall like the advancing movement of a pointing finger.

  The train was coming — an uptown train.

  Uptown, uptown! Now, now, now!

  The Genius swiftly snaked around the edge of the staircase. Here the narrow concrete platform measured no more than the length of two subway cars. At one end was a wall, at the other, the back of the staircase the Genius had just descended. Only commuters who wished to ride in the first two cars would wait here — riders like Valerie. She stood alone behind the staircase, hidden from the few other riders on the platform’s south end.

  The track curved a bit at this particular station, and the train could not be seen approaching unless the commuter leaned forward, peeking around the row of dull green vertical support beams. The Slut was doing just that — leaning a bit over the edge of the platform, watching the approach of her train. One hand held her bag of farmers market produce, the other her double tall cup of Village Blend coffee. No hand free — not to fight, not even to balance herself.

  The Genius stepped carefully behind the Slut, the mechanical junk-rumble of the coming train, like spare parts in a washing machine, drowning out any footsteps. This station was one of the loudest in the city — the decibel level making it impossible to hear conversation, maybe even screams. In another three seconds, the Genius would know for sure.

  One push. Timed just right. One simple push.

  As the red leather coat fell forward into the empty air, then down, toward the grimy tracks, the Genius did hear a scream. And finally there was red on the tracks. First one way. Then another.

  As the shriek of the victim was drowned out by the shriek of the R train’s brakes, the Genius backed into the shadows of the staircase, snaked around the corner, wandered back up, then through the turnstiles, and up once more, ascending into the invigorating chill of this brand new day.

  Finally, finally, that feeling of accomplishment. Objective achieved…and…time for that cappuccino!

  One

  “…And he called to tell me it’s on the covers of both the Post and the Daily News. The cover story, Clare!”

  Sitting up in bed, I rubbed my eyes, trying to concentrate on the monologue percolating against my ear. But for a good two minutes (5:02 to 5:04
a.m. Eastern Standard Time to be precise), the only thing my mind clung to was the image of something dark, powerful, rich, and warm.

  No, this something did not have bedroom eyes, a Swiss bank account, and a heavy, sinewy frame depressing the other side of my mattress. As a perpetual single mother, I’d had nothing remotely like that on the other side of my mattress for years — sinewy or otherwise — just clean cotton sheets and a sour female cat.

  In point of fact, that dark, powerful, rich, and warm something I yearned for was a cup of Guatemala Antigua — one of those smooth, tangy coffees, like Costa Rican and Colombian, which would awaken my yawning palette with a full-bodied, slightly spicy flavor and bracing, rich acidity. (“Acidity” being the pleasant sharpness as the flavor finishes in the mouth, not to be confused with “bitterness,” but I’ll get to that later.)

  I sighed, almost smelling the earthy aroma of that first morning cup, tasting its nutty essence, feeling the shudder of radiant pleasure as the jolt of heat and caffeine seemed to flow directly into my veins.

  God I loved the morning ritual.

  My ex-husband, Matteo Allegro, used to say that abandoning the peace of sleep was only tolerable if a fresh pot of coffee were waiting. He and I never agreed on much. But we agreed on that.

  “It’s very upsetting, Clare. Not the image we want for the Blend. Don’t you agree?”

  The bright voice (displaying more than trace amounts acidity) on the other end of the phone line was finally penetrating my wake-up fog.

  “Madame, slow down,” I said, rising from a half-reclined to a fully upright and locked position. The bedroom’s silk drapes were pulled shut, but it being November, no light would be forthcoming even if they had been open. The break of dawn was over an hour away.

  “What is on the cover exactly?” I asked Madame through a yawn.

  “The Village Blend,” repeated Madame. “It’s been mentioned in connection to — ”

  I yawned again.

  “Clare, dear, did my call wake you? Why are you sleeping in?”

  I rubbed my eyes and glanced at the digital alarm clock. “I’m not sleeping in. I usually sleep until five thirty.”

  “With your bakery delivery at six?”

  Madame’s censuring tone was abundantly perceptible. But, because of my enormous respect for my eighty-year-old, French-born ex-mother-in-law, I remained only mildly irritated.

  It didn’t matter to me if the bakery delivery occurred at six every morning. All I had to do was roll out of bed, shower, throw on jeans and a sweater, and descend three floors. It wasn’t as if the coffeehouse was fifty miles away. The delivery would be made literally at my back door.

  Granted, that hadn’t always been my situation….

  Just a few months ago, I’d been raising my daughter in New Jersey, writing the occasional article for coffee trade magazines, a regular cooking tips column for a local paper, and working odd catering and child day care jobs to make ends meet when one morning Madame had called. She’d begged me to come back to the city and manage the Blend for her again as I’d done years before — when I’d been her daughter-in-law.

  I’d agreed, partly because my now grown daughter had just enrolled in a SoHo culinary school and managing the Blend meant I’d be in the next neighborhood instead of the next state. And partly because Madame’s generous contract afforded me increasing ownership of the Blend as time went on, which included the incredible duplex apartment above the two-floor coffeehouse itself.

  Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to one day own a historic townhouse, complete with a duplex filled with antique furnishings, Persian prayer rugs, framed Hoppers, and working fireplaces, in one of the most in-demand areas in Manhattan? Certainly not moi.

  “I’ve never missed a bakery delivery in all the years I’ve managed the place for you,” I assured her flatly, “and I’m not about to start this morning.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “Of course, you have it in hand. It’s just that never in my life could I bathe and primp in mere minutes. Your morning routine must resemble something not found outside of sports locker rooms.”

  O-kay, it’s going to be one of those days.

  I cleared my throat, silently reminding myself that this was just Madame being…Madame. After all, the woman certainly had a right to say anything she liked about running the Blend — and not just because she owned it.

  Madame Blanche Dreyfus Allegro Dubois, an immigrant refugee of World War Two Paris, had managed the Blend herself for decades, personally pouring cups o’ joe for some of the twentieth century’s most renowned artists, actors, playwrights, poets, and musicians. Mention Dylan Thomas, Jackson Pollock, Marlon Brando, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Jack Kerouac, Barbra Streisand, Paddy Chayefsky, Robert DeNiro, Sam Shepard, or Edward Albee — and she’d share a personal anecdote.

  So, the way I looked at it, if anyone had earned the right to be a pain in the ass when it came to running the Blend, she did.

  Still…it was five in the a.m.

  “Madame, tell me again why you called?”

  “The Blend has been mentioned in the papers, dear, all of them.”

  “In connection to what?”

  “A suicide.”

  “What is it with New York 1, running the same stories, like, twenty-four times in twenty-four hours?”

  My Jersey Girl daughter, Joy, was still adjusting to the array of trivialities that characterized Manhattan life. Just before eleven o’clock, she crossed the Blend’s sun-washed, wood-plank floor on her stacked black boots and ordered her usual double tall vanilla latte.

  Current conversation topic at the coffeehouse counter — Basic Cable’s Channel 1.

  I must have heard thousands of these discussions in my time managing the coffeehouse — the eccentricities of cabbies, bad Broadway shows, sucky bands at CBGB, Time Out’s cover stories, film crews that close down entire blocks, trying to sleep through relentless ambulance sirens, kicking cars that block pedestrian crosswalks, the best slice below Fourteenth, Barney’s warehouse sales, the end of porno on Forty-Second, kamikaze bike messengers, the real meaning of some Yiddish word, the difference — if any — among the Indian restaurants lining East Sixth, the New York Post’s Page Six, the precise contents of an egg cream. And, of course, rents, rents, apartments, and rents.

  One of my best baristas and assistant managers, Tucker Burton, a lanky, floppy haired, gay playwright and actor, who also happened to believe he was the illegitimate son of Richard Burton, slid Joy’s drink across the slab of blueberry marble.

  “Sweetie, don’t knock New York 1. What other town’s got a cable channel devoted to twenty-four hours of local coverage? Okay, so the stories repeat a lot, but you haven’t yawned till you’ve heard the fisherman’s weather in rural Louisiana. Lemme tell ya, swamp humidity levels aren’t pretty — or in the least interesting. Give me a ‘Subway Surfer Falls to His Death’ story repeated ten times any day.”

  “That’s sort of morbid, Tucker,” I pointed out behind the coffee bar’s efficient, low-slung silver espresso machine.

  (We actually had a three-foot-tall, bullet-shaped La Victoria Arduino espresso machine behind the counter, too. Strewn with dials and valves, the thing had been imported from Italy in the 1920s; but, like the eclectic array of coffee antiques decorating the shelves and fireplace mantel — including a cast iron two-wheeled grinding mill, copper English coffee pots, side-handled Turkish ibriks, a Russian samovar, and a French lacquered coffee urn — it was for show only.)

  “Get over it, Clare,” said Kira Kirk, the eight-pound Sunday edition of the New York Times cradled in her slender arm like a newsprint infant. “What do you expect from a city of aberrant people?”

  “Aberrant?” said Joy.

  “Devious. Wayward. Offending. Sinning — if you will.” Kira was a crossword puzzle freak. “Where else would goofball kids think surfing on top of a subway car is something to do for kicks? If you ask me, they deserve to get squashed like bugs.”

  As a coffeehouse manager, I’d seen many flavors of urban humanity pour through our front door. Kira was one of that group who embodied those lines from the poem “To the Coffeehouse”: