Клео Коул - On What Grounds

“Oh, shit.” The curse came from Langley, who suddenly shot up, raced to the door, unlocked it, and held it open as if this morose-looking trenchcoated man were the Prince of Wales.

“Am I open now?” I asked Demetrios with hope. My mind began to race. One phone call and I could have Tucker (my afternoon barista) take over the store and then I could run over to St. Vincent’s and sit with Anabelle.

“No. You’re still closed,” said Demetrios. “Langley’s letting in Lieutenant Quinn. From the Sixth’s detective squad.”

“A detective? What does he detect?”

“Homicides.”

Suddenly I wasn’t feeling so well again.

“Okay, lady, what’s your name?”

Lieutenant Quinn had a voice like boiled coffee. Wrung out and bitter.

I stared, trying to make sense of a homicide detective showing up in my coffeehouse, when I noticed the beige stain on the lapel of his trenchcoat. Probably Robusta bean crap from one of those Sixth Avenue bodegas. Milk, no sugar was my guess.

Why in heaven’s name did these cops drink swill when just a few blocks away for a single buck more they could drink silk? Wasn’t a single buck worth a rich, warm, satisfying experience?

“Lady?” prompted the detective. “Are you with me?”

I squinted up at him. Hadn’t I answered him already? I wasn’t sure for a moment. My brain still seemed to be processing the idea of a homicide detective showing up after Anabelle’s accident.

Accident… I found myself considering… or homicide?

Had someone actually broken into Madame’s coffeehouse under my management and assaulted Anabelle? With this thought, I must have looked ill or gone pale or something because the detective turned, his square-jawed profile addressing Officer Langley. “Does she need medical attention or not?”

The words sounded almost accusatory. Langley’s response was a shrug.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked the detective. “Articulate your response, Officer.”

Demetrios, who’d jumped to his feet the moment the detective had come on the scene, now broke in. “We were just—”

“Was I speaking to you, Demetrios?” the detective asked.

Demetrios’s jaw clenched and his body stiffened. He seemed to be struggling with a retort, but clearly thought better of it and instead looked away.

The detective turned his gaze back on Langley, folded his arms, and waited.

Langley shrugged again. “I don’t think she needs medical attention, okay, Lieutenant? She’s not in clinical shock. She’s functioning. Demetrios and I just thought she needed to putter around so she could calm herself down.”

“‘Putter around’?” repeated the detective. “‘Putter around’ a potential crime scene?”

“Yes, that’s right,” I said, speaking up at last—it was either that or let them continue talking about me in the third person, which I found beyond condescending. “Officer Langley is correct, that is exactly what I was doing.”

Lieutenant Quinn eyeballed me. I eyeballed him right back.

He now stood directly in front of my seated form—although “standing” didn’t exactly describe what he was doing. It was more like looming. Or at the very least, towering. He was at least six-three and looked down at me with midnight blue eyes that were bloodshot but still sharp enough to cut the breath from my lungs.

Slowly, his dark blond brows rose.

“Well, Mrs.—”

“Ms.”

A barely perceptible sigh came next, and then: “What is your last name, anyway?” he asked. “Officers Langley and Demetrios here somehow failed to get it.”

“It’s Cosi—Clare Cosi.” I stood, hands on hips, slightly indignant, trying to regain a bit of my lost control. I was in charge of the place, after all.

But the gesture didn’t help matters much. Even with the comfortable, low-heeled boots I’d pulled on this morning before my favorite pair of straight-legged blue jeans, I barely made five feet three—a good twelve inches below the detective, which he seemed to take note of with mild amusement.

“Spell it, please.” Lieutenant Quinn brought out his notebook and began to scribble, asking me the same general information I’d already given to Langley and Demetrios—except my last name, of course, which was really just a simple oversight in my opinion.

“Okay, Ms. Cosi,” said the detective. “Now show me where you found the body.”

“Girl,” I said.

“What?” Quinn mumbled. He was looking around the room, taking more notes.

“She’s not a ‘body,’” I said. “She’s a girl. She’s alive. And breathing.”

“Just a figure of speech,” Quinn tossed back.

“Anabelle Hart is not a figure of speech. She’s a pretty young woman. Alive and breathing. Not a body —so frankly, I don’t see why you need to be here. Nobody is dead !”

The detective’s pen stilled on his rectangular notebook. He looked at me. Then he glanced at Langley and Demetrios. I couldn’t see their faces, but I knew my own face was hot. It was probably flushed bright red by now, and I could feel my lungs laboring with each breath.

“New York City Homicide detectives don’t just investigate shootings, stabbings, and stranglings,” Quinn said, so calmly and slowly I got the feeling he thought I was about one step from Bellevue’s psych ward. “We also investigate any suspicious death or accident that appears will result in death. No need to get emotional, Ms. Cosi.”

There is nothing that makes me more emotional than a man telling me not to get emotional. My ex did that, too. As I recall, he’d said it the very day I had to tell him our marriage was over. If only everything else would have been over that day, too, including and especially the emotion. But it hadn’t. It took well over a year before I stopped wearing his ring.

I suddenly noticed the gold band on the detective’s left hand. Automatically, I glanced at the pockets of his trenchcoat. Sure enough one held that telltale sign—tiny smudges of chocolate, made by little searching fingers. Daddy, what did you bring me?

Matteo had played that same game with Joy when she’d been very young. Coming back from whatever continent he’d been exploring that month, he always had something special for her, some trinket, exotic toy, or candy. As she grew older, childish gifts gave way to audiotapes of foreign pop bands or interesting native recipes; and as she grew into a young woman and began to understand just how long Daddy was sometimes gone—without so much as a hotel postcard—the gifts became downright lavish: hand-tooled leather backpacks and jackets, filigreed rings, and necklaces of pearl, platinum, jade, and ivory.

I resented the gifts at first, saw them as cheap, pacifying bribes from a man too busy to be a father. But then I realized how much they meant to Joy. And how much her father meant. And I said nothing after that.

“We have amazing miniature pastries in the afternoon,” I told the detective. “Tiny chocolate éclairs and mini canollis. Children love them.”

Lieutenant Quinn’s brow furrowed. Now he really was looking at me as if I’d gone over the edge.

“Your right pocket,” I said, quickly realizing the pastry comment probably sounded like the looniest nonsequitur on record.

“My what ?”

“Right pocket. Of your trenchcoat.”

Langley, Demetrios, and Quinn all turned their gazes to Quinn’s trenchcoat pocket.

“It’s got chocolate smudges,” I pointed out. “Part of a little hand print. You have a small child at home, don’t you? A little one who checks Daddy’s pocket for a treat when he comes home?”