Клео Коул - Roast Mortem

“Oh, very! She and I have so much in common. We just love to shop! She has such a good eye for shoes and jewelry, that one. We also have the same hairdresser — Gustave Flaubert — ”

“Flaubert?” I said. “The nineteenth-century novelist?”

“You know him?” She asked. “He works on Fifth at Jean Michel Dubonnet — ”

Mike caught my eye. Dubonnet on the rocks, he mouthed, and I nearly choked on the last dregs of my coffee (which would have been appropriate since I’d been gagging the stuff down for the past fifteen minutes).

“That’s where we met,” the woman continued. “It was Lucia who introduced me to her father, said it was time he started dating again — ”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” I interrupted as I shot Mike a hang-in-there-partner look. “The detective asked me about Lucia’s boyfriends. He might want to follow up with them, see if they have anything to add.” I lowered my voice. “Their statements could also help clear Enzo of suspicion.”

“Of course! She’s seeing a younger man now. His name is Glenn Duffy... I’ll spell it.” She stared at Mike. “Aren’t you going to write it down?”

Mike gave a little sigh, pulled out his notebook. “Go ahead...”

After Mrs. Q gave the background on Duffy, I waited for another name. There was none. Once again, I pressed —

“Enzo mentioned there was another man from Lucia’s past who’s been coming around lately. Do you know about him?”

“Oh, you mean the fireman?”

Fireman? I glanced at Mike. Even he seemed surprised.

“What fireman would that be?” Mike asked, his pen poised over his notebook with much more readiness.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Quadrelli said.

“You don’t know?” I couldn’t believe it.

She threw up her hands. “I asked, believe me! Enzo mentioned ‘the fireman’ was back. He said it once, but then he dropped it, refused to say more. And Lucia insists that Glenn is the only man in her life. That’s all I know.”

She shrugged. “You want more? Go ask Lucia.”

“Clare? You okay?”

Two hours after our unorthodox interview with the widow Quadrelli, I was back home in my West Village duplex with a still-empty stomach and a head full of questions.

After we’d dropped Madame off at her Fifth Avenue digs, I ran down my theories with Mike. He agreed with my observations, encouraged me to contact Stuart Rossi, and reminded me that FDNY marshals assigned to a fire were like NYPD detectives working a crime scene.

Fire marshals weren’t “just like” law enforcement officers, they were officers. They carried guns, interviewed witnesses, and (if warranted) made arrests.

“Just treat the man like a police detective,” Mike told me. “Call him first thing in the morning, give him everything you dug up, he’ll take it from there.”

Now I was descending my apartment’s staircase, dragging and tired, until a whiff of smoke hit me. Adrenaline instantly juiced my system.

“Clare? You okay?” Mike was gawking at me. I must have looked ill or gone pale or something until I realized the offending agent was safely contained in my living room fireplace.

“Did you hear me, sweetheart? You okay?”

“I’m okay.”

I wasn’t. Not really. But I didn’t want Mike feeling bad about his cozy fire-building gesture. The lengthening flames would warm the chilly room. Even the disturbing shadows flickering across the polished antiques made me conclude (in a whole new way) how lucky I was to reside in this place.

While this entire Federal-era townhouse was still technically my ex-mother-in-law’s, she’d made clear to me that she was legally willing its ownership to me as well as her son, so I felt like a caretaker now as much as a resident — an invaluable bonus that came with managing her coffeehouse two floors below.

As my sock-covered feet slipped across the chilly parquet floor, I noticed Mike’s gaze tracking me with unabashed interest. For a second, I couldn’t imagine why.

Sexy was not a word I’d use to describe me at the moment. Postshower, I’d dressed for sloppy comfort in a pair of black bike shorts and an oversized T-shirt that warned : Do Not Give This Woman Decaf!

The tee — along with an apron that said I Serve It Up Hot! — had been a gag gift from my staff last Christmas. But Mike had seen this shirt before. On the other hand, it was the first time I’d gone braless wearing it. (My street clothes, down to my underwear, had reeked of char, and my other bras were still damp from a morning’s hand-washing.)

Whatever the reason for the man’s open scrutiny, I was happy to return the gesture. With his sport coat tossed off, Mike’s muscular shoulders were nicely defined by his dress shirt — spotlessly white yet noticeably wrinkled from hours of wearing his leather holster. Tie well loosened, long, strong form folded into a relaxed crouch, he looked comfortably assured, entrenched in a zone of cool-blue control that was quintessentially Mike.

From our very first meeting, I’d been impressed by the man’s natural confidence, mainly because — unlike my exhusband — it lacked arrogance. Mike was often wary and sometimes skeptical, but he was never cynical, not in the way some people were, using it as an excuse for complacency or indifference. What attracted me most, I think, was his equilibrium. Mike was as hardened as any cop from the New York streets, yet he’d refused to let the job or the city kill his compassion.

Like a buttoned-down Ivanhoe, he now picked up the black iron poker and stabbed at the heart of the fire he’d built, not to kill the thing but to give it more air. And that’s when it hit me just how much Mike Quinn enjoyed igniting blazes in my hearth.

Hmmm...

Considering the occupation of the man’s cousin and younger brothers, I figured the desire to play with fire was probably a Quinn thing. Or maybe it was just some gene buried deep in the alpha-male string, a primal urge leftover from the DNA of grunting cavemen.

As I settled into the carved rosewood sofa, my gaze caught on his well-worn shoulder holster now hanging off the delicate lyre back of one of Madame’s heirloom chairs. Tucked inside the leather was his rather large handgun. Yet another kind of fire stick... ?

“You look a little funny, sweetheart. Do you need a drink?”

“I need to eat.”

I would have chowed down sooner, but I hadn’t been able to stand those reeking clothes another minute; so while Mike had taken care of parking my old Honda, I’d headed upstairs for a hot, soapy shower.

I could see from the shopping bag now sitting on the coffee table — not to mention the aromas of cooked meat assaulting my sensory receptors — that Mike had taken care of food, too. But what was it exactly?

The large, glossy bag didn’t look like your typical brown paper take-out sack. Vivid orange with a laminated exterior and nylon rope handles, it looked self-consciously hip, which was hardly ever a good thing when it came to authentically tasty takeout.

“UFC?” I said, reading the logo. “KFC I’ve heard of, but UFC?”

“It’s Korean-style fried chicken,” Mike said, putting down the poker.

I looked closer at the small print under the large UFC logo. “Unidentified Flying Chickens? I never heard of them.”

“There are only three stores in the metro area,” Mike said, rising to his full height, “one in Elmhurst, one in Brooklyn, and one in North Jersey. Sully swears by them, says he’s addicted. He just dropped it off.”

“Sully was here?”

Finbar “Sully” Sullivan worked closely with Mike on the OD Squad, a special task force Mike supervised out of the Sixth Precinct here in Greenwich Village. Sully was one of the nicest men I knew — an openly cheerful forty-something guy with ready quips delivered in a native Queens accent.