Клео Коул - Murder by Mocha

Tucker, Esther, and Punch hooted. I didn’t blame them. It was a real bombshell.

“Apparently, Aphrodite wanted Maya Lansing, the fitness queen, to be the spokesperson for Mocha Magic. Aphrodite knew Alicia would never agree to that. Her solution was to keep Alicia away from her own launch party and allow the fitness queen to take the spotlight. Alicia’s product hadn’t even hit the market, and Aphrodite was conspiring to undercut her.”

Evidence on Aphrodite’s computer made it clear that she knew and approved of Patrice’s plan to hire parolee Troy and his girlfriend, Vanessa, which gave Alicia grounds to sue the Hades out of the woman’s estate and company.

“The attorneys are working out a big, fat settlement as we speak,” I told them. “Soon Alicia will have enough of the Love Goddess’s money to do whatever her heart desires.”

The lunch crowd came and went, the flying monkeys with them as the Broadway auditions wound down for the day. Madame stopped by. I was happy to see her and immediately pulled a fresh espresso.

“Have you heard from Lieutenant Quinn yet?” she quietly asked as I slid the demitasse across the blueberry marble.

I shook my head, unable to trust my voice. The news was good otherwise, and I tried to focus on that. Sherri Sellars was released, the charges against her dropped, and Alicia Bower was a free woman who’d soon be stinking rich. But I couldn’t stop counting the hours since I last heard from Quinn (sixty-three going on sixty-four). Late last night, alone in bed, I had broken down and tried his cell, but as he warned, I only reached his voice mail—and I cried myself to sleep.

“Try not to worry, dear,” Madame said.

“I don’t know how to do that . . .”

“Focus on what’s in front of you. Live each hour, each day, one at a time . . .”

I nodded, unable to speak again. I could tell from her answer that Madame wasn’t hopeful. This was starting to feel like Cormac O’Neil all over again.

“Mom! Mom!”

I whirled, panicked at the sound of fear in Joy’s voice.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

“I was upstairs, watching the local news. I heard something terrible . I think it’s about Franco.”

I gripped her arms. “What did you hear? Tell me.”

“Arrests were made by the Internal Affairs Bureau—arrests of officers, some of them high ranking! The mayor’s holding a press conference in a few hours.”

Oh God . . . I turned to read Madame’s face. She looked as stricken as I felt. Was this Larry Hawke again? He must have pulled the trigger on Franco and trumped up charges against Mike and Sully . . .

I would have stumbled, even fallen, if I hadn’t been more concerned about propping up my daughter. When the bell over our front door rang, I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was close the shop and turn off the lights.

“Joy? You okay? What’s wrong?” Manny Franco stood five feet away wearing a navy blue suit, his shaved head clean, his rugged face strained at the sight of my daughter’s tears.

“Franco!” Joy rushed the man so fast and hard, the mountain of muscle nearly tipped over. He held her tight as she showered him with kisses.

“J’étais ainsi inquiété,” she cooed.

“Mais je suis bon, ma joie,” he said, his accent rough. “Tout est bon!”

“Franco, what happened?” I demanded. “We thought Hawke had you arrested.”

The sergeant’s smile got bigger. “Other way around . . .”

As Franco told the story, he’d gone rogue for one reason: to prove that Larry Hawke could be bought.

Apparently, the New Jersey dealer that Franco had arrested—counter to Hawke’s orders—was the nephew of a mob boss. The reason Hawke didn’t want him touched was not to turn the file over to federal officers but to bury it completely. The boss had reached out to Hawke, paying him to protect his relative.

“I had some friends in the bureau,” Franco said, “even more in the boroughs. I asked around, put some things together, and went to Lieutenant Quinn. Turns out, he was interviewing this old-timer who’d gathered some pretty serious evidence against Hawke, too. So we all went to Internal Affairs, and they came clean with a case they’d been building against Hawke and some of his associates throughout the department. Damn good thing we came forward, too, because IAB was getting suspicious of our meetings with Hawke. They were starting to suspect me, Mike, and Sully of being just as dirty.”

The bell rang again and we all turned.

An older man stood there, tall and stoic. He had silver hair, sharp blue-gray eyes, and a bone-white scar across his ruddy cheek. Smartly dressed in a twilight blue suit, he searched the shop, finding and focusing on a single person sitting at the counter—Blanche Dreyfus Allegro Dubois.

He didn’t move and neither did we.

Slowly, Madame rose to her feet. She crossed to him and stood staring for the longest time. Then her gently wrinkled hand touched his scarred cheek.

“Hello, Mac.”

“Hello, Blanche.”

“You look like you could use a cup of coffee.”

Cormac swallowed and paused, as if he couldn’t trust his voice. “I could, Blanche. I could.”

She laced her fingers in his and led him to the bar. I blinked back tears as he took Mike’s seat, settled in as if he’d never left. Then Madame slipped behind the counter and began to fix his drink.

Instinctively, we backed away, let them have their privacy. Joy and Franco excused themselves, heading up to the closed second floor, arm in arm. I breathed a sigh of relief. Wherever Quinn was, I knew he was okay—at least I prayed he was. In fact, praying wasn’t a bad idea.

I closed my eyes and that’s when I heard it. The bell rang one more time.

“Got something hot for me, Cosi?”

I took a breath, opened my eyes.

Mike Quinn was standing in front of me, wearing a full-on smile.

“That man is the most persistent, pigheaded Irish cop I ever met . . .”

Upstairs in the duplex kitchen, Mike Quinn and I were sharing a fresh pot of coffee and fat, decadent slices of my Chocolate Blackout Cake (based on the original Brooklyn recipe). We had a lot of catching up to do, given his past few days of blackout.

“It took him ten years,” Mike said, “but O’Neil learned everything he could about the world of finance. Once he knew how to follow money, he worked to connect Larry Hawke to the secret bank accounts where his dirty payoffs were hidden. Then he found the accounts of some of Hawke’s pals, and the rest is front page news—this week, anyway.”

I refreshed our cups and sat down again. “I wonder what Madame and O’Neil are talking about downstairs.”

“I’m sure he’s trying to explain what happened all those years ago.”

“Do you mind telling me?” I didn’t want to exploit a confidence, but I was desperate to know. “Why did he leave her like that? Without even letting her know if he was dead or alive?”

“From what I gather, O’Neil believed the less Mrs. Dubois knew, the safer she’d be. He was right, obviously. She made it through just fine.”

“But if he was worried about her safety, why didn’t he stick around to protect her?”

“You don’t understand. O’Neil couldn’t even protect himself. He went to the Feds, and they relocated him in witness protection, but two killers came for him within the first few weeks. He got lucky or he wouldn’t have survived at all. That scar”—Mike swept his hand along his own cheek and across his throat—“is from the botched hit. He knew any wife of his would have been killed, too. At that point, the man had no choice. He really disappeared, created another identity and another life in Australia.”