Клео Коул - Espresso Shot

Lori flattened the wallet out, showed me the driver’s license photo. “You’re good, Clare. The license is from the state of West Virginia.”

In the glare of the emergency services halogen lamps, I studied the photo on the girl’s license. Her normal look was as different from the super-sleek Breanne act as a new moon from the sun. The girl’s regular hair was a kinky dark brown (she’d obviously colored and straightened it). Her pretty, wide eyes appeared to be as blue as Breanne’s, but they needed eyeglasses to see, which explained why she’d been squinting when I first saw her. It also explained her bold temptress persona while performing.

To Hazel’s nearsighted vision, the faces of the leering men probably blurred together into a single impressionistic landscape. It would have been a good trick to help her performance. All she had to do was dance to the music, and the drooling men in her audience would appear no more menacing than Monet’s water lilies.

Still, even with her body swimming in an oversized flannel shirt, her ears holding up clunky, unfashionable glasses, Hazel Boggs’s resemblance to Breanne Summour was striking. She had the same facial shape, long patrician nose, model-high cheekbones, pointed chin, and perfectly shaped bee-stung lips.

As I studied the photograph, one of the older plainclothes officers in a suit and tie walked up to us. “A word,” said the African American man, staring directly at Lori and Sue Ellen.

The women nodded and stepped away. The older officer gestured to the other personnel around us. He pointed to the ground around the body, and the area farther out—a nearby mailbox and lamppost, some parked cars. Then he spoke some more, slightly shaking his head, which I assumed meant, No stray bullets on the ground or lodged in nearby objects.

Finally, all three stepped up to two officials who’d been examining the body: the middle-aged Asian man and the white woman in the dark nylon jackets. The group spoke for a few minutes.

Matt lightly bumped my arm. “Are you going to explain all this to me?”

“All what?”

Matt exhaled. “All this crap about directing initial queries to the professional on the scene. The last time I checked, Clare, the Specialty Coffee Association of America wasn’t on the NYPD payroll for third-party consulting.”

“Dial it down,” I whispered. “I helped the detectives with a case a few months ago, and the way the chips fell, they ended up assuming I was a professional private investigator. It’s no big deal. Now please be quiet. I’m trying to hear what they’re talking about.”

It was difficult to pick up the lowered voices, so I moved away from Matt and stepped closer to the powwow around Hazel Boggs’s corpse.

“. . . a single gunshot wound to the back of the head,” the Asian man in the nylon jacket was saying. “Entry wound is evident but no exit wound.”

“The witness assures us that she only heard one shot fired,” Lori Soles told the group.

“Then your only bullet is lodged right here,” the Asian man replied, “inside the victim’s skull.”

“Let’s hope it didn’t get pancaked against a bone,” Sue Ellen said.

“If there’s no exit wound—” Lori glanced down the block, “then the bullet lost velocity.”

“That’s correct.” The Asian man nodded. “The weapon couldn’t have been fired from a very close range.”

Sue Ellen pointed to the upper floors of buildings in the vicinity. “Could the gun have been fired from a window or balcony?”

“Not possible.” The man shook his head. “Look at the angle of entry on the wound. The victim was shot at street level from somewhere directly behind. We’ll know more after we get inside the skull.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Lori Soles turned to the older plainclothes officer. “I guess the guys can stop looking for bullets. There was only one, and it’s in there.” She pointed to the dead girl’s cranium.

“We’re canvassing the neighborhood now. The shooter may have dropped something...”

Just then I noticed a white panel van with a satellite antenna double-parking across the street. Emblazoned on the van’s side were three words that sent a chill though my blood: New York 1.

“Oh, God...” I muttered. Hazel Boggs’s murder was about to make the local news. As a technician jumped out and began unpacking camera equipment, I hurried back to Matt. He looked positively stricken.

“Clare,” he whispered, “I have to get out of here.”

“Wait!” I grabbed his arm before he could bolt. “These cops will detain you if you try to run. It could get loud. You’ll just end up calling attention to yourself.”

“But if Breanne sees me on the news—”

“Just give me a second.”

I rushed up to Lori Soles, who’d always been the softer touch. “Detective Soles, I’m happy to stick around, but my business partner really needs to get back to our shop. Can you talk to him another time?”

Lori frowned. “ Now would be better—”

“Oh, let the guy go,” Sue Ellen broke in, surprising the heck out of me with an accommodating hand wave. “Spinelli got a statement from him already. And we can track Mr. Tight End down tomorrow. On one condition...” She shot Matt an openly flirtatious smile. “He has to give me his digits.”

With New York 1’s cable news camera approaching, Matt wasn’t about to argue. He quickly reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, extracted a business card, and slapped it into Sue Ellen’s outstretched hand.

“My cell number’s on there,” he said before taking off. “Catch you later.”

The detective smiled as she pocketed my ex’s card. “Not if I catch you first...” she promised, her eyes following Matt’s posterior all the way back to our coffeehouse.

Fifteen minutes later, I was back inside the Blend.

“Where’s Matt?” I asked, approaching the espresso bar.

Gardner Evans glanced up, jerked his thumb toward the ceiling, and went back to crowning a hazelnut-toffee latte with spoonfuls of frothy foam.

I looked around the Blend’s first floor and realized I was witnessing an unheard-of customer pattern for a Monday at midnight. The place was packed, and I didn’t need a beverage-service management spreadsheet to analyze why.

Sitting around our marble-topped café tables was a base of neighborhood regulars, a handful of NYU undergrads, and a sprinkling of FDNY and police personnel. All of them had come here as a result of the bad business a block away. Murder and coffee, it appeared, were a profitable mix.

“You okay here?” I asked Gardner, scanning the work area. I was unhappy to see him alone. “Where’s Dante?”

“Downstairs, getting stuff from the big fridge.” Gardner drizzled the finished latte with toffee syrup, dusted it with a fine hazelnut powder, and placed the tall glass mug on the counter for the waiting customer. Three more were still in line.

“Things were dead in here an hour ago,” he told me, “and we were going to start restocking and cleaning when we got this rush—”

“Hey, boss!” Dante walked out from the back, each tattooed arm lugging a gallon of milk product. He stashed the jugs in our espresso bar fridge and moved up to the counter. “What the heck’s going on outside?”

“Yeah, we heard the sirens,” Gardner said. “A couple of customers said someone got whacked?”

“A young woman.” I rubbed my eyes. On a good day, they were emerald green, but between the beers and the tears, I figured they were massively shot with red. “Listen, I have to go upstairs and talk to Matt right now, but I’ll be back down shortly to help.”