Клео Коул - French Pressed

“This is just too weird to tell you guys.” Joy shook her head, started to walk out of the kitchen.

“Honey, please.” Matt stood up, caught her arm. “You need to remember we’re on your side.”

“We are .” I nodded. “And you do need to tell us everything, Joy.”

After studying the floor for almost a minute, she finally admitted, “Tommy and I…we were sort of using Vinny’s place. You know, romantically .”

Oh, Lord. That word again. I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on. “How often?” I whispered.

“A few times a week, in the beginning. There’s this wholesale cheese importer just around the corner, Newton’s Fresh Market, and Tommy took me there my first week working at Solange. Tommy’s really into cheese, and he thought it would be a real education for me to visit one of the places that imports it for him.”

A real education? Right. I tried not to visibly cringe.

“It was great. We had a lot of fun tasting these amazing European cheeses. Tommy was flirting with me, and…Well, I had the key to Vinny’s place because whenever he visits his family in Ohio, I feed his fish and water his plants. So I suggested to Tommy that we go around the corner and use Vin’s apartment to…you know…”

Joy shrugged. She still hadn’t looked Matt or me in the face. Matt sat down again, exchanged glances with me. My ex-husband appeared to be as surprised as I was.

“Joy, did we hear you right?” I asked. “Are you telling us that you’re the one who suggested taking Tommy’s flirtation to the next level? Tommy wasn’t the one to seduce you?”

Joy shifted her feet, obviously uncomfortable. “You have to understand…I’ve been really into Tommy for a long time…” Her gaze moved from the floor to the window to the ceiling, anywhere but on us. “Ever since I read his book two years ago, I thought he was amazing. And then he taught a class at my school, and I totally wanted to work for him. But what really blew me away was when he flirted with me my first day on the job. Tommy never touched me or sexually harassed me or anything like that. He just gave me this amazing private tour of Solange’s wine cellar and cheese cave—”

“Cheese cave?” Matt interrupted.

Joy nodded. “Tommy’s really proud of his cheese plates. He changes the choices every week, and he picks the selections out personally. The cave’s just this small refrigerated room in the basement, where the temperature is constant. Anyway, we got in there, and he started feeding me cheese and joking with me. He was totally flirting. After that, just being around him was a high for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”

“But Tommy never actually suggested sleeping together?” I pressed. “ You did?”

“Oh, Mom, stop looking at me like you’re so disappointed in me! I know you are! And I hate that you are…And, the truth is…I’m disappointed in me, too.” Joy rubbed her eyes, let out a weary sigh. “I know it was wrong, throwing myself at a married man like that, not to mention my boss. I know it was wrong, okay?”

“Joy, honey,” I said softly, “it’s not too late to end it.”

“You just don’t understand what it feels like, Mom!” Joy threw up her hands. “Tommy Keitel wanting me ?! Tommy Keitel! I couldn’t believe it! I still can’t!”

Matt glanced at me. “Did I miss something?” he whispered. “When did young women start treating chefs like rock stars and ballplayers?”

“Give it up, Matt. You’re old.”

Matt grunted.

I focused on my daughter again. As wrong as Joy was in her actions, I knew how incredibly easy it must have been for her to fall for a man like Keitel. An infatuation burned bright as the sun at Joy’s age. It blinded you to everything else. Tommy, on the other hand, was older and presumably wiser. If I could get him to see that what he was doing wasn’t fair to Joy (not to mention his wife), maybe he’d act like a grown-up and end the affair.

Of course, I knew my grown daughter’s love life was none of my business. But as Joy’s mother, I believed my daughter’s happiness and well-being were very much my business. If I could privately persuade Keitel to cut Joy loose, at least one ugly aspect to this catastrophic mess would be over. As far as the other aspect, that was going to be much trickier.

“Let’s get back to Vinny,” I said. “Did he know that you and Tommy were using his place for sex?”

“Not the first time, but I told him about it right after. He said it was okay with him if we used his apartment, as long as I left the place clean and stuff.”

“And when was the last time you and Tommy used it?”

Joy frowned so deeply I thought she might cry. “The last time was the afternoon of Uncle Ric’s decaf coffee–tasting party at the Beekman Hotel—you remember, Mom, that’s when I introduced you to Tommy for the first time? Ever since then, Tommy said he was just too busy. He keeps saying, ‘We’ll do it again soon’…but we haven’t done it since…”

Good. “Okay, so it’s been about a month since you and Tommy were there together.” I nodded, thinking through the forensics. “From what I saw, Vincent Buccelli kept his apartment spotlessly clean. A lot of the fingerprints and DNA were probably already washed away. But you did unlock the door last night, Joy, which means your fingerprints are on the knob, right?”

She nodded silently.

“And the key?” I asked.

“Lieutenant Salinas confiscated it.”

“More evidence,” I said, sighing. I went back to massaging my temples. Joy turned around and started cleaning the dishes. Matt drank his coffee in silence. Finally, another question occurred to my ex-husband—a good one.

“Joy, did you tell Lieutenant Salinas about you and Tommy using Vinny’s place for sex?”

“No, Dad.” Joy stopped cleaning and turned around. “All I told Salinas was that I had a key to water Vinny’s plants and feed his fish. I didn’t mention Tommy at all. I didn’t see any point in bringing his name into it.”

“But Tommy may mention it when the police interview him,” I pointed out. “That’s not good, Joy. It’ll make it look like you held back information, which you did.”

“It was my private business!”

“That’s not how Salinas will see it.”

“But—”

“How about the murder weapon?” I asked, hoping she might be able to recall whether she’d seen it before. “Did you get a good look at it?”

“No. I just couldn’t…” Joy closed her eyes, hugged her stomach. “I couldn’t look at Vinny long enough. Not after seeing him in all that blood.”

“Well, I took a long look at Vinny’s corpse and the weapon that killed him.” I glanced at Matt. “It was a ten-inch chef’s knife.”

Matt blew out air.

Joy nodded, opened her eyes. “I overheard you talking about that to the lieutenant.”

“You weren’t by any chance carrying your Shun Elite last night, were you?”

“No way, Mom.” Joy shook her head. “I keep the Shun in my locker at Solange, along with the rest of my knives.”

“Good.” I’d saved up for months to buy that knife. It was probably the finest in the world: hand-forged and machine-edged by a Japanese manufacturer in Seki City, Japan, the samurai sword–making center for over 700 years. Maybe it was a venal concern, but I would have hated to find out my special Christmas present to my daughter had been confiscated by Salinas, too.

“Believe me, Mom, if the police found a knife on me last night, I would have been booked for murder already. Anyway, what about the knife? Was it one of Vinny’s, do you think?”