Клео Коул - Latte Trouble

“I’m really sorry,” said Tad, “but you know that’s a very old story in this town…and probably a lot of other ones too, so don’t feel bad.”

Rena sighed and shook her head. “Wish I could say I don’t but I do.”

“You’re better off. Look, you’ve just met me, haven’t you? And I know some guys on Wall Street who might be looking for someone like you.”

Her full lips smiled and she met his gaze. “Like you, maybe?”

As the afternoon wore on, the trio talked while they consumed gallons of coffee and a dozen fresh-baked pastries. As the shadows began to lengthen, Rena looked up in surprise, then glanced at her watch. “I should go,” she announced. “I still have to clean out my office and I don’t want some security guard hovering over me while I do it, which is exactly what will happen if I try to enter the building after five o’clock.”

“Forget about that and take a look at this instead,” said Lottie. She held out the napkin. On it, she’d drawn a brooch. Text and arrows indicated the colors she’d chosen—colors that mimicked the hue of the Blend’s caramel-chocolate latte.

“It’s large, but not garish,” Lottie explained. “The branches here would be made of white gold, the central filigree coffee-brown enamel. With sculpting I could recreate a froth effect using something like a milky white chalcedony—”

“A what?” asked Tad.

“It’s a type of quartz,” explained Lottie. “And here, you see, at the center would sit a semiprecious stone like onyx or even a precious one like opal—something that’s dark and nutty, like a coffee bean. I could even work with organic material, say, use actual roasted coffee beans and experiment with lacquering and setting techniques to create complementary pieces.”

“May I see it?” I asked from behind the coffee bar.

Lottie was only too pleased to share her sketch.

“I’d buy this in a heartbeat,” I told her. “I can’t believe nobody’s done this before. When Joy was a little girl, Matt came back from Guatemala with a coffee-bean necklace for her. Down there, they’ve been making coffee-bean necklaces and bracelets from varnished roasted beans for years.”

“Interesting,” said Lottie. “So it’s a natural for any culture that embraces coffee.”

“Makes sense.” I handed Lottie back the sketch. “Which means you’ve got a worldwide market…and since specialty coffeehouses have been on the rise in America, I’d say this culture has never been more ripe for it.”

Rena Garcia tapped her chin in thought. She reached for the sketch and studied it. “You know, one of the accounts my boss managed was the Vardus line. Their stuff was cheap derivative crap compared to this, but it was my ideas for the campaign that boosted sales twenty-two percent in the first fiscal year. I could market something like this easily.”

Tad nodded. “Can’t say I know much about jewelry making, but this seems like a lucrative idea to me. Lottie, why in the world did you ever quit the fashion business in the first place?”

Lottie’s gaze broke from Tad’s. Her expression darkened. “There’s a lot of heartbreak that comes with success,” she said shortly. Then she forced that nervous, high-pitched laugh I’d heard her use the first day I’d met her. “I mean, look at Rena here. She boosted account sales and was fired anyway.”

At the time, I thought nothing of Lottie’s response. But looking back now, it seemed she’d deliberately turned the conversation back to Rena to avoid revealing what had happened in her past. I realized that I’d never heard her talk about her early years or the abrupt end to her career back then. Even when asked, she’d only want to talk about the present or the future.

That afternoon, Lottie had continued to sketch out an entire collection of possible variations on her “coffeehouse palette” theme—earrings, necklaces, bracelets, scarves, handbags. In the end, Rena never did make it to Satay and Satay to clean out her office. Instead, she helped Lottie Harmon map out a marketing strategy and come up with a catchy name for the line: Lottie Harmon’s Java Jewelry. And before that chance meeting had ended, Tad Benedict had agreed to put up a sizeable chunk of his own money to purchase raw materials and fund the crafting of prototypes based on Lottie’s designs.

Four months later—just in time for New York’s February Fashion Week—the Lottie Harmon brand name was re-born with an entire line of coffee-bean necklaces of black and brown gemstones, latte brooches, caramel-loop bracelets and rings, coffee-klatch clutches, cocoa-brown scarves dotted with “coffee-bean” beads, and dozens of other pieces.

The additional backing for Lottie’s launch came from the legendary clothing designer Fen, who had worked with Lottie through the seventies and early eighties and agreed to showcase her creations on his own models. The Lottie Harmon accessory line had been the buzz of that buying season with fall orders coming in from top retail: Harrods, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Printemps. The phenomenal sales transformed the moribund Lottie Harmon name into a multimillion dollar cash cow.

Fast forward seven months to the current Fashion Week festivities. Lottie, Tad, and Rena were all now very successful and very rich. Tad became a close friend and confidante to both women, and Lottie Harmon began to treat Rena Garcia like the daughter she never had—buying the younger woman expensive gifts, and even an apartment in the East Village.

For the current rollout, designer Fen had once again agreed to use Lottie’s jewelry designs. He would unveil his spring clothing line under the Bryant Park tents at the end of the week—which would mean a big boost for Lottie’s newest creations. Already, fashion buyers and top editors were writing about what Lottie might be “brewing up.” Everyone seemed to love the woman. She was one of the least catty and most generous people I’d met in my limited contact with the fashion world….

So why, I asked myself, would anyone want to poison Lottie’s latte?

Four A.M.

I dragged myself upstairs and was greeted by Java, a little female cat with fur the color of a medium roast arabica bean and more attitude than a pop diva.

Mrrrroooow!

She hadn’t been given her usual late night snack, and she was not amused. “Sorry, girl,” I murmured, bending to lift her into my arms. I carried her to the kitchen, scratching under her chin in a cheap a plea for forgiveness. The slow beginnings of a purr told me she was at least willing to extend an olive branch.

For the past five hours, I’d been toiling to restore some semblance of normalcy to the coffee bar, which was due to open in less than three hours for morning business. The Crime Scene Unit had been a hurricane, blowing through with no regard to private property. Esther and Moira had stayed overtime to help, and I’d called in Maxwell, another NYU student and part-time barista, to give us another pair of hands—but at one o’clock, I’d sent them all home and finished the rest myself.

Together, we’d cleaned the floor and counter and hauled the marble-topped café tables back upstairs from storage. By myself, I’d restocked the cupboards and under-counter fridge, and set up the reserve espresso machine—since the Crime Scene Unit had taken the one used during the party. And the entire time, I’d been thinking about Tucker and dreading what he might be going through. I knew he’d need a good criminal lawyer and fast, so the first thing I did, before any of the cleanup, was phone the Blend’s attorney, Larry Jacobson.

After an unfortunate accident in the store a year ago, Matt and I convinced Madame it was important to have legal counsel on retainer for any future civil entanglements, anything that could lead to our being sued to within a penny of our existence. But when I called I didn’t get Jacobson. I got his answering service, so I left a lengthy message. Then I called the Sixth Precinct for some kind of update on Tucker’s situation (which—big surprise—got me nowhere). I even tried my friend Mike Quinn’s cell, but it was obviously turned off, and I didn’t leave a message. The man had enough stress dealing with his divorce, and I certainly didn’t want to force him into any favors with a frantic, recorded plea. If I didn’t have some concrete answers from the police by morning I’d resort to trying Detective Quinn again.