Клео Коул - Murder Most Frothy

“Prin? It’s Clare Cosi, from Cuppa J. Would you please call me? It’s a matter of extreme importance.” I left the number of my own cell phone and hung up, wondering if Prin would even bother to return my call.

While I was in the kitchen, I decided to get started restocking the milk, cream, and half-and-half at the coffee bar. I checked the standing refrigerator near the dessert prep area and saw three gallons of milk, two of cream, and no half-and-half. I headed for the walk-in stainless steel refrigerator. I opened the thick, insulated door and stepped into the chilly steel box, which was nearly as large as a bedroom in my Manhattan duplex above the Village Blend.

A single bare bulb illuminated the interior, which smelled like a butcher shop—a not-unpleasant mixture of cheese and preserved meat. Shanks of dry-aged beef hung from hooks in the ceiling above, wheels and squares of imported and domestic cheeses. Boxes of green leafy vegetables, all of it produced locally, were stacked in the corner next to bags of onions, shallots, and several types of potatoes. Bundles of garlic hung from hooks on the wall, near slabs of bacon, aged prosciutto, and chorizo.

Several stacks of plastic containers stood in the corner—all of them empty. Clearly, David’s July Fourth party had drastically leached the restaurant’s supplies. Unless we got a hefty delivery of dairy products in here, pronto, our impressive array of latte drinks would be off the evening’s menu.

Rather than wait for Papas to return, I headed for his office. The manager’s inner sanctuary was untidy, but the vendor list was where I remembered seeing it a week ago, when Papas last called me in for a micromanagement session.

I found the number for Cream of the Lakes Dairy and used Jacques Papas’s phone to make the call.

“Dairy. This is the dispatcher,” a male voice said gruffly.

“Hi. I’m calling from Cuppa J in East Hampton, on—”

“Sure, sure. I know the place,” the dispatcher said, suddenly friendly.

“I was wondering if you’d made our dairy delivery for today?”

“Let me check…Ah, here it is. My guy was there at nine. Mr. Papas ordered three gallons of milk, two gallons of cream, and sixteen dozen eggs.”

Great. “Look, apparently there’s been a mistake. We’ve got no inventory here on dairy for the weekend and we need a lot more. At least twenty more gallons of milk, ten of half-and-half, and ten of cream.”

“No problem, Ma’am. We’ll get it out there in an hour.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Not a problem. You want me to bill this on the fifty-ten plan, too, right?”

“Excuse me?”

“The extra ten percent. We take fifty percent up front for deliveries, and we get the other fifty percent—plus ten—at the end of the season.”

“I, uh…suppose that’s…okay,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.

“Great. Just ask Jacques about it if you have any questions,” he added, clearly sensing my confusion. “He’s the one who worked it out.”

I hung up, even more confused.

Why, I wondered, would David Mintzer sign off on such a terrible arrangement? He had more than enough capital to pay for all of his deliveries on time. Even if he’d wanted to delay payment via a credit plan, there were certainly better interest rates out there than ten percent.

The more I thought about it, the fishier the deal sounded. David would not have signed off on such a deal, but the man at the dairy didn’t mention David. “Ask Jacques,” he’d said.

Clearly Papas was up to something—but what? Embezzlement?

I checked my watch. Papas had been gone only thirty-five minutes, so I figured I had time to do a little sniffing. I began searching through the mess on his desk, hoping to find the blue book he constantly carried. I fumbled through a week of piled up newspapers without success. Next I decided to go through the drawers in the man’s desk.

The first one I opened contained personal items—toothbrush and toothpaste, several bottles of very expensive cologne, a hairbrush, and so many men’s hair care and styling products I expected to find a tiny Vidal Sassoon in there with a pair of scissors. The second drawer contained stationery, envelopes, pens and pencils, and a stapler. The third drawer was locked.

Before I could look any further, however, Papas’s angry voice shattered the silence.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Oh, hi, Jacques, I, uh—”

“Who gave you permission to come in here?”

“I had to call the dairy. We were out of half-and-half, and far too low on milk and cream.”

Jacques Papas’s nostrils flared as he stared at me, obviously seething.

“Since you weren’t here, and we needed the supplies, I found the dairy’s number and placed the order myself,” I continued. “The dispatcher was very nice. The truck will be here within the hour.”

My words seemed to calm the man. He nodded. “You should have told me you needed supplies before I stepped out. I would have placed the order.”

“I didn’t know until I checked the walk-in. And I didn’t want to trouble you.”

Jacques nodded again. “Fine. I shall be here to meet the delivery man.”

“Great,” I said. Then I slipped by the man and out of his office.

After being jolted into near-drowning by a Suffolk County Police bullhorn and uncovering a possible extortion scheme by a workplace colleague, I didn’t think anything else could surprise me today, but that evening something managed to do just that—or rather someone.

Madame glided into Cuppa J in an elegant chartreuse sundress, on the arm of an elderly man I’d never seen before. His gray beard and tweedy blazer gave him the air of a professor, but his short, white ponytail, French beret, distressed jeans, and trendy rectangular glasses made him look more like a patriarch of West Village pop artists.

“Clare, you look so stressed,” Madame told me as I walked up to her cafe table. “Perhaps you should call it a night.”

Madame’s suggestion was kind but impractical. From five o’clock onward, the restaurant had been packed. It was now ten in the evening and most of the customers were here for coffee service and dessert. That may have slowed things down for Victor and Carlos in the kitchen, but not for me in the dining room. Because we were understaffed, I was pulling double duty, managing as well as waiting tables.

“We’re far too busy for me to ditch early,” I told my ex-mother-in-law with a patient smile. “Besides, I’m not at all tired.”

From her seat on one of the first floor’s green velvet couches, Madame raised a silver eyebrow. “I didn’t say tired, my dear. I said stressed .”

Sitting cozily beside Madame, the bohemian-looking senior stroked his neatly-trimmed beard and remarked, “I think perhaps your daughter-in-law has been spending too much time on the ‘fashionable’ side of the highway.”

I might have taken more offense at the man’s familiarity, if his bright blue eyes hadn’t been sparkling attractively with humor as he said it.

“And you are?” I asked.

Madame’s date stood up, clicked his heels, and extended his hand. “Edward Myers Wilson.”

I placed my hand in his. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Clare—”

“Allegro,” the man replied. “I know. Blanche has told me much about you already and your…shall we say very interesting Hamptons summer.”

I bristled at both points. Firstly, my surname was no longer Allegro. I had gone back to Cosi after the divorce. Madame knew this, of course. She just didn’t like it and, obviously, had misinformed Mr. Wilson.

“Clare, I can’t believe your giving up your married name,” she’d said to me years ago when I’d first told her. “Your daughter’s last name is Allegro. That’s never going to change. Why don’t you consider keeping it?”