Клео Коул - Murder by Mocha

While Mike followed me into the master bedroom, I started some quiet tucking-in-time calculations. The bakery delivery had been made, so I had forty, maybe fifty, minutes to get the truth out of this man before I had to open the shop.

“You want a snack before you crash?” I asked. “I made a batch of my Chocolate-Glazed Hazelnut Bars yesterday. You love those.”

“When I wake up,” Mike said, letting out a long sigh. “I’ll have four.”

I stepped close, tugged the knot of his tie. “So . . . are you going to tell me?”

“What?”

“What went wrong last night. It’s obviously weighing on you.”

As head of the NYPD’s OD Squad (a nickname for a much longer, official sounding moniker), Mike supervised a small group of detectives tasked with the job of investigating criminal activity behind drug overdoses.

Like the NYPD’s Bomb Squad, Mike’s team was based at the Sixth Precinct, just up the street, but they had jurisdiction across all five boroughs, which meant Mike’s workload was heavy, his hours unpredictable, and the mental strain of the political pressure periodically appalling.

For those reasons—and a few others—the man strapped on mental armor daily, along with his service weapon. In the quiet of the bedroom, however, I expected him to loosen that armor, along with his tongue.

“Well?” I pressed.

“You really want to know?”

“You really have to ask?”

Mike didn’t answer, just watched me pull his tie free and begin unbuttoning his dress shirt. He stopped my hands, peeled off his shoulder holster, and took his time hanging it off the back of Madame’s Duncan Phyfe chair.

“Two of my guys,” he slowly began.

“Which guys?”

“Sully and Franco . . . they spoke to a young man earlier in the week, an aspiring artist—”

“Long Island City?”

“Williamsburg. The kid was our key witness in a case against a New Jersey dealer doing business in the city. Looking over his statements, given the ME’s findings, I had some concerns. I went with them both to reinterview . . .”

“And?”

“This kid had been working all week on a sidewalk painting. When he was finished, he went to the roof of his ten-story building and dived off.”

“Oh God. That’s awful . . .”

“His painting was an elaborate bull’s-eye. Nobody realized it until he jumped. He aimed right for the center.”

Mike moved to the carved-mahogany four-poster, sank down on the mattress. “The morning papers already have the story, which I assume will be the subject of my one o’clock meeting with the first deputy commish. My captain asked me to take the meeting solo. He’ll owe me . . . he says.”

I sat next to him, touched his shoulder, felt knots as hard as baseballs. Oh, Mike. I dug in both thumbs, began to massage.

He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Thank you . . .”

I worked him over a minute. “So how messed up is your case?”

“Scale of one to ten? Nine point five. This kid was the fiancé of the girl who OD’d two weeks ago. You remember the one I told you about?”

“The singer?”

“Yeah, beautiful girl, barely out of her twenties. Came here to be the next Lady Gaga. The boyfriend was the one who gave up the dealer. He’d also been the one buying his girl the stuff.”

“It probably made him feel good,” I said. “Knowing she needed him that badly.”

“Except it wasn’t him she needed,” he said. “It was the drug.”

“Sometimes love is a drug.” (I wasn’t speaking rhetorically. Given my history with Joy’s father, I’d spent most of my twenties making amore -addled decisions.)

Mike’s gaze shifted, as if looking for a change of subject. He found it. My sketchbook lay open on the bedside table. He leaned toward it, read the large letters I’d scrawled across the top.

“Aphrodite’s Kitchen? What’s this?”

“Nothing.”

I’d been doodling elaborately around the margins: a big, voluptuous Venus emerging from the sea, a spatula in one hand, an oven mitt on the other. He picked up the book, clearly intrigued by my comic rendition of the Botticelli masterpiece.

“Hey, give that here.”

He teased it out of reach, scanned my list of recipe ideas. “These sound pretty tasty. Any test batches coming my way?”

“As long as you make it to the launch party tonight. I’ll be managing the samples table.”

“Samples for?” He tapped his forehead. “Right. That magical mocha coffee.”

“Mocha Magic Coffee.”

“A rose by any other name.”

“When the name is trademarked, there is no other name.”

“I remember now. You told me about it a few weeks ago. Some new coffee powder that enhances . . .” He smirked. “What does it enhance exactly?”

“Alicia Bower claims it’s an herbal aphrodisiac, but I still have no idea what’s in it, other than my coffee beans and Voss’s chocolate. She’s keeping everything else to herself.”

“Didn’t you mention she discovered the active ingredients in India?”

“Yes, but I have yet to try it, and frankly, I’m skeptical about its potency.”

“Well,” Mike said, arching an eyebrow, “I’m happy to be your lab rat. Got any around?”

“I hate to disappoint you, but although Alicia has been hyping this thing online for weeks, the launch party is the first place anyone’s going to try the stuff. She has me serving it up as a beverage, and to showcase its versatility as a flavoring agent, we’ll have samples of mocha candies and bite-size pastries.”

“Now you’re turning cookies and cakes into aphrodisiacs?”

“Not me. All I did was share my chocolate and mocha recipes from the Blend. Alicia gave them to her chocolatier to make—Voss, the same Brooklyn boutique we’ve started buying from.”

“I don’t know, Cosi . . . sounds like those infamous Alice B. Toklas brownies.”

“Don’t you go looking for collars on my turf, Detective. Nobody’s lacing anything with cannabis around here.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. In fact, Alicia claimed she was so happy with the results of my recipes combined with her product that she treated Madame and me to dinner last night so we could brainstorm more, which is exactly why my sketchbook is full of them.”

“Cannabis-free?”

“So far. And by the way, the original Alice B. Toklas recipe was for fudge, not brownies.”

“I hate fudge,” he said.

“You do not. Your mother told me she made cherry cordial fudge for you every Christmas.”

“Oh, chocolate fudge I’ll eat. What I can’t swallow is fudg ing —as in fudging statistics, fudging results, fudging the truth. Mathematicians call it a fudge factor—putting an extra calculation into an equation just so it will work out as expected.”

“Fudge factor?”

“Yeah. It’s what we law-enforcement types call a scam.”

“Oh God . . .” The single word deflated me. “I just hope this aphrodisiac claim of Alicia’s doesn’t turn out to be one.”

Mike paused, studied me. “You’re not kidding?”

“What I am is worried.”

“Why?”

“Alicia has been using my Village Blend beans, that’s why. As soon as her product launches, everyone’s going to know it. So if this Mocha Magic stuff tastes like merde or doesn’t live up to its claims, then it’s my rep on the line.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no it’s not. Your customers know how high your standards are. That won’t change.”

“Bad reviews can do a lot of damage, Mike, especially if her magic powder lays a big, fat chocolate egg.”

“You’re not the owner of this place; your former mother-in-law is.”

“Madame may own this business, but she’s leaving it to me and her son to run—and one day we’ll leave it to our daughter. I’m also the master roaster here, not just the manager.” I paused, took a breath. “Sorry. I just loathe not being in control.”