Клео Коул - Latte Trouble

“No, actually,” I replied, recalling the mysterious lipstick I found on his collar. I sighed, wondering how my relationship with my ex-husband had suddenly become the topic of conversation.

“You must admit that Matteo has taken a new interest in the business.”

I nodded, conceding to myself that he’d also taken a new interest in me, at least until something better—something named Breanne—showed up again.

Madame fixed her determined eyes on me. “And I believe he’s also shown a new deference and concern for his…family.”

I sighed. “I admit that Matteo has dropped hints that he’d like to…see more of Joy.”

“And you , my dear.”

“He may want that, but it’s not something I think is wise for either of us,” I replied diplomatically, hoping I’d led Madame to a soft landing.

“But you still love him,” Madame shot back—an assertion, not a question. I met Madame’s expectant gaze.

“Oh, Madame…you know love was never the problem.”

If I ever write a manual on how to be an amateur detective, I will add a chapter on one of the most important assets any investigator can have—an impeccably dressed elderly woman who arouses absolutely no suspicion and can talk her way into or out of any situation. A woman whose presence is so imperious, so gracious, almost no one will question her motives or rudely ask about her business.

Even in these days of heightened security—bordering on paranoia here in New York City after the 9/11 attacks—Madame was easily able to charm herself past the nurse at Bellevue Hospital’s front desk and up to the tenth floor, where we were told Mr. Jeffery Lugar was resting comfortably in a semiprivate room.

Bellevue Hospital occupies a twenty-five-story, multimillion dollar patient-care facility in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Manhattan. Founded in the 1600s, the facility includes both adult and pediatric emergency facilities, along with the psychiatric emergency services with which most people associate the place. The entire facility became a part of the New York University School of Medicine in 1968. Currently its attending physician staff numbers twelve hundred and its house staff more than five hundred residents and interns.

Despite its impressive credentials and history, however, once you step out of the elevator and into one of the wards, Bellevue is much like any other hospital—white walls, white-clad nurses and staff, a medicinal smell that barely masks the scent of sickness, decay, and death.

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit too morbid, but aside from the time I spent in the hospital delivering my daughter, Joy, my memories of visiting such facilities are not fond. One of my employees died in such a place, barely a month after I took over management of the coffeehouse again. That was not a good memory, and as I walked the sterile halls, I vowed that I would never again visit a prison and a hospital in the same day.

At the nurses’ station, Madame inquired after Jeff Lugar. A middle-aged registered nurse checked the roster. “You’ll find Mr. Luger in room ten-fourteen. I believe he already has several visitors, but I’m sure he will be delighted to have a visit from his immediate family.”

“Nothing says loving like a visit from Grandma,” I whispered.

“Shush, Clare,” warned Madame.

But the nurse’s assumption proved my assertion—nobody suspects a well-dressed elderly woman of shady behavior. Nobody.

“You’ll find Mr. Lugar’s room all the way down at the end of the hall, the last room on the left,” said the nurse in a chipper voice.

As we proceeded down the corridor, a young man emerged from room 1014 just before we reached it. Before he noticed either of us, I clutched Madame’s arm and stopped her.

“Clare? What’s the matter?”

“That man,” I whispered. “I’ve seen him before. Twice before.”

The person who came out of Jeff Lugar’s room was the young man with the white-blond crewcut—the one Esther Best dubbed the “Billy Idol clone.” Mr. Eighties had been hovering around the coffee bar right before the poisoning—at least according to Esther—and then he had been at Tad Benedict’s investment seminar. Today the mystery man wore a black silk suit and a narrow scarlet tie; the sleeves of his jacket were rolled up his forearms 1980s style—to reveal a complex map of purple and blue tattoos. A blue and yellow badge dangled from his lapel. I’d seen plastic cards just like them—worn by the Fall Fashion Week staff at Bryant Park when I’d visited Lottie at the large central tent nicknamed the Plaza.

I watched, waiting for the man to turn and see us—and perhaps recognize Madame, too, from our evening aboard the Fortune . (Though I’d been in my Jackie O disguise, Madame was now dressed as elegantly as she had been on that night, and a woman of her presence was not easily forgotten.)

A voice called from the room, low and weak. I couldn’t make out the words, but I heard Mr. Eighties’s reply.

“I’m going to pop downstairs for a soda,” he said. “Be right back.”

He turned his back to us and headed down the corridor to a second bank of elevators, without noticing us.

“Curiousier and curiousier,” I muttered.

Madame lifted her eyebrow, but said nothing. When Mr. Eighties was out of sight, we knocked on the door frame. The man who looked up from the crisp white sheets was a pale ghost of the handsome, virile, tanned young man who had appeared on Ricky Flatt’s arm at Lottie’s pre-rollout party. His pale face was sunken, his eyes dull. An intravenous tube flowed into his arm and a clear plastic oxygen tube was attached to his upper lip by gauze that wrapped around his head. His flesh was sallow and pale, almost translucent, and his skin seemed as crisp and dry as old parchment paper. When he looked up, Jeff Lugar raised an arm to shield his eyes from the bright afternoon sunlight streaming through a large window. His hand quaked from the effort.

“Jeff Lugar?” I began, stepping over the threshold. “I’m Clare Cosi and this is Mrs. Dubois…”

He fixed his eyes on us. They were bright, as if with fever. “Do I know you?” he whispered hoarsely.

I shook my head. “I was at Lottie Harmon’s party…I saw what happened to you and Mr. Flatt. I just thought I’d pay you a visit…see how you’re feeling.”

Jeff Lugar laughed bitterly. “I’m fine, just fine, or so the doctors tell me.”

“Indeed? Why, that’s excellent news,” Madame said with measured enthusiasm.

“Is it?” Jeff replied. He lifted a hand to brush his shock of hair away from his face. Once again, the limb trembled so much I couldn’t look away. Jeff Lugar followed my gaze, then lowered his arm quickly.

“Neural damage caused by oxygen depravation,” he explained. “Another delightful effect of the cyanide. There’s some brain damage as well, though I’m told it’s nominal—whatever that means.”

Jeff Lugar tried to laugh again, but coughed instead. When the hacking intensified, I stepped forward and poured him some water. He drank with rasping gulps.

“Thanks…the oxygen makes my mouth dry.” He tried to pass me back the plastic cup, splashed water on my wrist and arm.

“I’m sorry. I’m…I’m not the man I used to be.”

I sat in silence for a moment, while Madame gently queried Jeff Lugar about his home and family, his health and situation. When I spied an opening in the conversation, I jumped in.

“Do you know why someone would want to poison Ricky Flatt?”

“Maybe because Ricky was a little bitch.”

I blinked.

“Look,” Jeff Lugar rasped. “I can hardly blame that waiter for poisoning Ricky. Flatt was such a turd sometimes, the way he was goading his ex-boyfriend…”