Клео Коул - Espresso Shot

“Oh, the bitch will get what’s coming to her. I’m sure of it.”

“Are you? How? I mean... Do you need any help with that? I’m no fan of the woman, either. I wouldn’t mind seeing something happen to her. It could look like an accident. It’ll be easy.”

Winslow froze for a moment after I’d said those words. He stared at me for a long, silent minute, then he stood and said, “You have to leave now. I’m going out.”

“Out where? Maybe we can take a taxi together?”

Winslow shook his head. “Come, miss. Time to go.”

Dammit. I stood up slowly and followed him to the door, my mind racing. But I couldn’t think of what else to say. Abruptly, he turned to me.

“When will I hear from you? About the rings?”

“Soon,” I said.

Before I could think of another ploy, Winslow unlocked the apartment door and opened it. Lieutenant Quinn and Sergeant Sullivan stood there, badges in hand, two men in uniforms behind them. In one fast motion, Quinn grabbed Winslow’s wrist and twisted his arm behind his back.

“Stuart Allerton Winslow, you’re under arrest for the distribution of a controlled substance without the consent of a licensed and authorized physician.”

Quinn slipped a handcuff around one wrist. From under his tangled hair, Winslow’s eyes caught mine. “You set me up?”

I backed away from the enraged man.

“You little bitch!” he shouted. “You set me up!”

“Quiet,” Quinn said, twisting his arm a little more.

Winslow howled and spat at me. “You’ll die for this, bitch! I’ll kill you myself, with my own—owww!”

“ Listen to me, asshole ,” Quinn said as he cuffed Winslow’s other wrist, none too gently. “You have the right to remain silent ...”

When he finished rattling off the man’s Miranda rights, he handed the prisoner over to Sullivan and the two young cops in uniform. Winslow continued to shout obscenities and threats until the elevator doors closed in his face.

“Sorry, Mike,” I said, “I couldn’t get him to admit to planning the robbery or trying to kill Breanne.”

“It’s okay, Cosi. You did good. Better than good. You got us a lot of material to use for interrogation. We should be able to soften Winslow up, get him to admit conspiracy in the robbery. A confession to murder might be harder to get, but he could slip up, admit he wanted his wife dead. Then we’ll go from there, try to get him to admit to the SUV incident and the shooting of the stripper by mistake. We’ve got a search warrant on the way, too. Who knows?” He glanced inside the musty apartment. “We might find the murder weapon in this dump.”

I shook my head. Quinn had wanted to use a policewoman, but I convinced him I could do the job. “Still—”

Quinn lifted my chin. “Lighten up, sweetheart. You did what you came to do. With Winslow in custody, your ex-husband can rest easy. Breanne Summour is no longer in danger.”

“I’d like us all to raise a glass...”

Matt lifted his goblet of sangria blanco to begin a toast, but Machu Picchu’s dining room was currently displaying the noise level of a Times Square subway platform. When he realized few people had heard him, he climbed onto a chair, pulled a pen out of his pocket, and began loudly knocking it against his half-filled goblet.

“Attention! Atención! ”

It was Thursday afternoon, and all of Matt’s coffee colleagues had shown for Madame’s special luncheon. They were having a grand old time, laughing, singing, and loudly conversing over cocktails and Peruvian-style tapas.

The restaurant itself was a charmer, with terra-cotta walls, Incan art, and an impressive display of handmade clay pots. But Madame hadn’t chosen the hot, new Soho eatery for its food or decor. The place’s name was what attracted her, reminding her of a sweet memory long past: ascending the actual Machu Picchu with Matt’s late father decades ago.

“Hello! Your attention, please!”

Conversations diminished and heads turned. Matt cleared his throat and began again.

“I’d like to start today’s toasts with one to a very special woman. A woman to whom I’ll always be indebted...”

Standing next to her groom, Breanne looked sleek and gorgeous in a form-fitting white sheath. A stunning silver and turquoise necklace circled that swanlike neck, matching earrings hung from her delicate pink lobes. Her royal blue eyes were shining, her ivory skin (even more wrinkle-free than I remembered) appeared radiant, her alluring smile (more bee-stung than I remembered, too) widened with every new word of praise Matt lavished on her.

“So please raise your glasses to someone I’ve always been able to depend on,” Matt finished, “a woman who really came through for me, my business partner, Clare Cosi!”

What?!

Breanne’s perfectly made-up face fell like an eggless soufflé, and I felt like an absolute heel. As sweet as Matt was to want to thank me publicly for saving his bride’s life, I couldn’t believe he was stupid enough to do it before toasting the bride herself!

“Clare Cosi!” Everyone cried, lifting their glasses.

Matt climbed down from the chair and grinned at me. Breanne curled her lips, too; it was the kind of smile the old crone gave Hansel and Gretel the morning she wanted to pop them in her oven.

Matt turned to his bride. “Go ahead, Breanne. Don’t be shy. You can propose a toast to Clare, too.”

Bree’s Beaujolais Red lips froze so stiffly I thought they were going to crack off and fall into her antichuchos . She set her small plate of diced, marinated, and grilled cow heart down on the room’s long bar, took a substantial hit off her white sangria, and said, “I’ll pass.”

“You’ll pass?” Matt echoed.

“You’ve said it so eloquently already, darling. Why would I want to gild the lily?”

A vision of Breanne lowering me into a vat of molten gold came to mind. I shuddered—while maintaining my own plastic smile.

“My mom’s the greatest, isn’t she?” Joy gushed beside us.

I turned to my daughter and thanked her with a smile (sans synthetics). Matt and I had picked her up at Kennedy Airport the night before, and it was honest-to-God heaven having her home again. We ordered a fully loaded New York pie from Village Pizza, opened some ice-cold beer, and talked for hours (all three of us).

I couldn’t get over Joy’s transformation. Her health was back, for one thing. She’d lost a great deal of weight a few months ago. After her false arrest, the murder of her friend, and her degrading expulsion from culinary school, she’d spent two solid weeks doing nothing but crying. Her skin had gone sallow, her bright eyes had dulled.

The magnificent city of Paris had recharged her spirits and tempted her with its cuisine. Her too-thin figure had filled out again, her cheeks were rosy, her skin a warm peach. She said she and her roommate had gone down to Nice for a few days to catch a tan, not to mention the attention of a few cute-looking French boys from the cell phone pictures she’d showed me.

She looked cute herself at the moment in a sundress the color of lemon pie. She’d arranged her glossy chestnut hair in a French twist as sleek as Breanne’s golden do. But she still had my green eyes, and they looked as bright and lively as this sunny spring Thursday—a huge change from the hollow, red-rimmed look she’d sported a few months back.

It had been hard as hell, sending my broken daughter away. But seeing her so happy now recharged my own spirits. I was proud of the way she’d pulled herself together and dug into the demanding job she’d secured (with a little help from her grandmother’s connections). Working as a line cook in any restaurant had its challenges: long hours, low pay, difficult bosses. Joy was apprenticing under a demanding boss now, and the chef de cuisine and his executive staff weren’t cutting her any breaks. On her third beer last night she recited for us the long list of French obscenities she’d learned courtesy of her superiors on the Michelin-starred kitchen staff.