Клео Коул - Murder by Mocha

I’d hardly closed the phone when Madame and Alicia waved me forward. I tucked the phone away and squared my shoulders.

The time had come to confront our crafty chocolatier—Gudrun Voss.

Madame and I followed Alicia down several decks, low enough to feel the spray off the black water. We passed through a large hatch, into a hallway with royal blue carpeting and recessed lighting. Three doors opened onto the corridor, all closed except one at the far end.

One of Aphrodite’s young assistants stopped us, a petite nymph dressed in flowing spring green. Minthe was her name. She had delicate features, celadon eyes, and wavy golden hair. I nearly checked her back for wings.

“We’re here to see Gudrun Voss,” Alicia said.

“Aphrodite is still speaking with her,” she said breathlessly. “Wait here, please.”

Minthe disappeared through the open door. A minute passed. Then two. As Alicia paced, I glanced at Madame and pointed. She gave me a little smile. Go! she mouthed. I returned her smile and nodded then began to creep toward the open door.

“Clare!” Alicia rasped in alarm. “Where are you going?”

“To snoop,” I said. “Wait here.”

Hugging the wall, I moved along the corridor, as close as I could to the open door. Finally, I heard voices. Two women were speaking, one arguing passionately, the other calm. I closed my eyes and focused, straining to make out their words over the throb of the yacht’s engine.

“I told you I can’t meet your schedule without compromising quality. Voss is a boutique company with a small, highly trained staff. We don’t operate twenty-four hours a day . . .”

That’s definitely Gudrun Voss! Though we’d never actually met, I’d asked the chocolatier to speak up so many times over the phone I’d recognize her too-timid voice anywhere.

“You want me to double my output,” she continued, “but when you changed the formula, I had to readjust the recipe . . .”

Changed the formula? Alicia’s formula?

Flattening myself further against the bulkhead, I felt the engine thrum at the base of my spine as I inched closer to the door.

“You’ve ignored my e-mails and you won’t take my calls,” Gudrun said, “so I’ve come here tonight to tell you face-to-face: it can’t be done.”

Aphrodite’s silence was frustrating us both, but only Gudrun was in a position to complain about it—finally, she did. “Do you understand what I said, Aphrodite? Has anything I’ve said gotten through that Hellenic wall you’ve erected against reality?”

The response was completely devoid of emotion, almost robotic. “Yes, I heard what you said.”

I risked a peek around the corner. Aphrodite remained stubbornly out of sight, but I spied Gudrun. The famous “Chocolate Nun” was dressed in chocolate, too—not her signature black chef’s jacket but a simple cocoa pantsuit. Like Alicia, she was slender with pale skin and dead-straight black hair, although hers fell well past her shoulders—and she was much younger, of course. Alicia was in her fifties, at least; Gudrun in her mid to late twenties.

“You’ve ‘heard’ what I said!” Gudrun repeated, obviously annoyed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You have your instructions, Ms. Voss. The enhanced formula has been delivered, now produce the product.”

“Fine-quality chocolate can’t be churned out like a fast-food burger. It has to be roasted. Ground. Aged. Tempered.”

“Making the schedule is your problem, not mine,” Aphrodite said.

“It’s impossible. I can’t do it. You can sue me.”

“I don’t have to sue you. I own you.”

Gudrun cursed and whirled. Before I knew it, she burst through the door, black hair lifting on an evening breeze, pale cheeks ruddy with anger. She moved down the hall so rapidly I don’t think she realized I’d been eavesdropping.

Alicia tried to block her. “Wait, Gudrun! I want to speak with you.”

“Get out of my way!” she cried, pushing Alicia roughly as she rushed out the open hatch.

Alicia stumbled on her heels, then recovered and tossed her flapper hair. “Well, I never—”

The nymph reappeared at the door. “Ms. Bower, Aphrodite would like to see you and your friends. Now, if you don’t mind.”

As we entered, Aphrodite dismissed her assistant with a backhanded wave. In her midthirties at most, the self-styled goddess lounged on a white velvet couch under a window with a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline. Her legs were up on the couch, her feet shod in Roman-style leather sandals in the same icy blue as her silk pantsuit. Petite and small-boned, I doubted the Web mistress was much taller than my own five-foot-two frame, despite a rather bizarre, high-fashion upsweep of platinum hair that added inches to her height.

“This is my lifelong friend, Madame Dubois, and her daughter-in-law, Clare Cosi,” Alicia said. “Clare manages the Village Blend and roasts the beans for our Mocha Magic powder.”

She stood and I took Aphrodite’s proffered hand. It held all the warmth of a dead fish. Her gaze remained on the carpet, never once lifting to meet mine. Aphrodite moved from me to Madame as if she were sleepwalking. Madame and I exchanged glances. She mouthed two words—a name, a legend, and one of my idols: Andy Warhol .

Decades ago, when Madame was running the Village Blend, Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, and a motley crew of hangers-on from Warhol’s famous Factory often visited her coffeehouse.

Madame once told me how Edie and the others would behave outrageously while Warhol sat in the corner and quietly watched them, impassive behind his thick glasses, invisible under his own signature mop of platinum hair.

Was the creative genius painfully shy or was it something else? Maybe the enigma was part of the persona, or maybe, once crowned, a “visionary” monarch didn’t need to make an effort.

Aphrodite certainly fit the latter theory. While she might have been a powerful force on the World Wide Web, in the flesh this slight, soft-voiced woman presented herself as so unengaged she seemed hardly in the room. Yet from what I just overheard, this woman was fully in charge.

“Why did you want to speak with Gudrun?” Aphrodite quietly asked us.

Alicia cleared her throat. “Well, Ms. Cosi here has brought a problem to my attention.”

“Problem?”

“Yes, a problem with the Mocha Magic. The production samples seem to be much more powerful than the small-batch product we tested.” Alicia paused. “I believe another ingredient might have been added by Gudrun Voss . . .”

Aphrodite’s sigh was loud and sustained. She touched her temple and bowed her head. When she spoke again, she sounded close to tears.

“Alicia, I cannot believe that you’re troubling me with this, after all that’s happened this week. First Patrice . . . Poor Patrice. And then today, Maya . . .” Her voice caught, she swallowed, touched her eyes. “Half our events canceled. The tent wrecked. Police everywhere . . .”

Alicia jumped in, immediately solicitous. “I’m so sorry, Aphrodite, perhaps this can wait for a better time—”

“No,” I said. “This can’t wait. We need answers and we need them now.”

As if a switch had been flipped, Aphrodite’s anguish instantly vanished. For the first time, her eyes met mine. I stared hard into those icy orbs—they held no emotion beyond a cold fury at being challenged. The effect was chilling, but I squared my shoulders.

“I overheard your conversation with Ms. Voss,” I confessed. “Clearly, you were the one who altered Alicia’s formula, not Gudrun Voss.”

Alicia gasped then sputtered. “Clare, you . . . you must have misheard!”