Клео Коул - Murder Most Frothy

“The Suffolk County detectives and their forensic team will take over the investigation in the morning,” explained Sergeant Walters, a fortyish balding officer with a friendly, round face. “We’ll take care of the basics tonight.”

He took the bullet casing I’d found and bagged it up. While his partner took statements from David, Madame, me, and the rest of the Cuppa J staff, he supervised the two younger officers in the bathroom.

They took photos of Treat, placed tape around his body, and when the ambulance arrived, helped the paramedics remove the deceased young man. Finally, they closed the bathroom door, crisscrossed it with crime scene tape and asked us not to enter.

By the time I took the sergeant and his two younger officers out back to show them the dune where I’d found the bullet casing, the storm was really raging. The officers were dressed in raingear. I was attempting to hold tight to a flimsy umbrella—a laughable sight in the face of the pelting water and blowing wind.

I pointed out the other two casings, and the officers picked them up and bagged them. Then they began to sweep their flashlights over the dune, just as I had done.

“I didn’t find anything else over there,” I called to them over the roar of the surf. “But I saw flipper prints over here.”

I waved them over to the shoreline, and swept my flashlight along the sand to show them the set of diver’s flippers leading into the water, but in the dark and the rain and the rising surf, I couldn’t find even one.

The sergeant patiently watched me flail around with my flashlight for a few minutes before he pulled the plug. “Ma’am, we’d appreciate it if you’d go on back to the house now!” he called. “Whatever you saw has probably washed away!”

As his officers attempted to rope off the high dune in the pouring rain, I walked back into the mansion looking like a drowned rat. Madame toweled me off in the kitchen.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“The staff gave their statements and left. Joy went to her room. And David’s up in his master bedroom throwing some things into a gym bag. He’s moving into the guest wing with us.”

“There’s no way I’m sleeping next to that bathroom!” David told us when he came back downstairs. “At least, not until all that blood is cleaned up!”

Frankly, I was happy to have a man nearby, even one who wasn’t exactly Braveheart.

I must have fallen asleep at some point during the night, because when I opened my eyes again, the morning sun was lasering through the curtains. I rolled out of bed with the dull throb of a headache, no doubt induced by the tight, airless space, and opened two large windows. A stiff breeze streamed into the second-floor guestroom, fluttering the diaphanous saffron and refreshing the stale air with the vigor of ocean salt.

Outside the storm had passed, the sun shone brightly, and the nearly cloudless sky looked like an artist’s rendering in cerulean blue. The rain had cleansed the air, and the surf had transformed from a roiling black cauldron into a gently lapping sea of tranquility. The morning, in fact, was so dreamy I almost forgot that a man had been shot and killed on the other side of the mansion. Almost.

Before another night came and went, I was determined to convince Joy and Madame to leave this house. I knew this would not be easy. For twenty years, I’d butted heads with one pigheaded male member of the Allegro family. Two generations of its women working together might utterly defeat me.

I decided it would be best to approach Joy and Madame separately. After that silly disagreement with my daughter the night before over that actor’s phone number, I figured it might be wise to give her a little more time to cool off.

First up would be my ex-mother-in-law— after my morning swim, which I prayed would relieve my throbbing headache and fortify me for the inevitable argument.

I ran a brush through my hair and donned my red suit, a no-nonsense one-piece that probably looked like I’d stepped out of Baywatch lifeguard training. Of course, my breasts weren’t even close to Pamela Anderson’s monumental assets, although they were enough to make me self-conscious in anything without an underwire, and ever since that hot tub incident ten years ago in that awful share house, I’d dumped bikinis from my wardrobe for good.

I wrapped myself in one of the thick, white terrycloth robes David provided for all of his guests (part of his spa product line), and with a pair of decidedly retro rubber flip-flops on my feet, I was good to go.

Halfway down the back stairs, I caught the scent of something wonderfully enticing. With one whiff, I knew someone was brewing a fresh pot of Summer Porch, a seasonal blend I’d just invented about a month ago to showcase the Bagisu Sipi Falls beans—Matteo’s latest amazing find on Uganda’s Mount Elgon. The pull of the heady roast was too powerful to pass up, and I lurched instinctively toward the kitchen like a George Romero zombie.

Mount Elgon is one of the tallest mountains in Africa, and the terrain is steep and treacherous with thick forest cover. According to Matteo, roads were less common than dirt tracks, which were often washed away during rainy season when gullies overflowed. Nevertheless, the Bagisu tribesman who lived near the Sipi Falls had become experts at coffee farming, and they had a foolproof method of transporting their cherries, even amid the challenging terrain. No, they did not use Hummers. They used donkeys.

“Good morning, dear,” said Madame, her eyes full of energy, despite the hour. Her silver hair was down this morning, sleekly combed into a pageboy. Her erect, elegant frame was wrapped in a white terrycloth robe identical to mine. She handed me a freshly-brewed cup of the Summer Porch blend. I accepted it with a nod and a grunt.

“Drink up,” Madame advised. “This is my second pot. A few cups of this and I guarantee your disposition will improve.”

My mood-altering drug of choice , I thought as I shuffled over to the kitchen table and plopped down with a weary sigh. But at least it’s legal.

Still bleary-eyed, I wondered for a moment what made Madame choose the Summer Porch this morning. I’d placed twenty different types of coffee in David’s kitchen cupboards. It was the same selection I’d put on his tasting and dessert pairings menu at Cuppa J. When I saw what Madame had placed in middle of the table, however, I didn’t have to ask why. A selection of last night’s strawberries sat mounded inside a Waterford crystal bowl like a lush ruby mountain.

The hint of strawberry in the finish of Sipi Falls was rare and surprising; and since the Sipi was the star coffee in my Summer Porch blend, it was the perfect pairing for the fresh Long Island fruit. I sipped the coffee black and let the flavors wash over me like the warm sluicing water of a Jacuzzi.

A coffee taster trains the tongue and the nose to detect the faintest traces of every flavor. There were hints of star-fruit, pear, and red cherry behind the Jasmine tealike flavors of the Sipi Falls. And I’d roasted it light to really bring out the strawberry flavor (a darker roast produced a sort of black tea finish to the cup). The coffee was sweet in the mouth and I’d balanced the blend to make sure the Sipi Falls shortcomings were diminished in the taste profile. The problem with this unique Ugandan coffee was that, unlike its East African neighbors, it lacked acidity.

In the coffee world, acidity was not a bad thing. It actually referred to a brightness or pleasant sharpness in the mouth, and you definitely wanted it in your taste profile, or your coffee would come off as flat.