Decaffeinated Corpse

“Yes, I know. Worries about the spread of pests and disease. But I can assure you the cutting is pristine.”

“If you’re caught, the fines are astronomical. I can’t believe you took the risk!”

“It would have been a bigger risk to do it openly. They might have turned down the application, or worse, its inspection process could have gotten it stolen.”

I might have argued that his worries were pure paranoia, but it would have been a tough sell. Historically, the only reasons coffee had become a global cash crop were because of theft and smuggling.

Ethiopians might have been the first to discover the plant growing wild in their country, but Arabs were the ones who first exported it. For years they held the monopoly on its cultivation. Foreigners were forbidden from visiting coffee farms, and the beans would be sent to other parts of the world only after their germinating potential was destroyed through heating or boiling.

Around 1600, a Muslim pilgrim from India smuggled the first germinating seeds from Mecca to southern India. Soon after, Dutch spies smuggled coffee plants to Holland from Mocha. (Mocha being the principal port of Yemen’s capital Sana’a, hence the naming of Arabian Mocha Sanani, coffee beans world-renowned for their powerfully pungent flavor, with notes of wine, exotic spices, and cocoa.)

After the Dutch got hold of the plant, they began cultivating coffee in their colonies: Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Sumatra, Bali, Timor, Dutch Guiana (now Suriname), and eventually Java.

But the larceny didn’t end there. A coffee plant was shipped from Java to Holland for its Botanical Garden, and a number of visiting dignitaries were given cuttings as gifts. The mayor of Amsterdam made the mistake of giving Louis XIV of France the gift of a coffee cutting from this Java tree.

In Paris, King Louis put the coffee cutting under guard inside his famous Jardin des Plantes, Europe’s first greenhouse, where it was cultivated into seedlings. A French naval captain, eager to sever France’s dependence on the high-priced coffees of Dutch-controlled East India, stole a seedling and sailed it to Martinique, where its offspring allowed France to grow its own coffee.

And my former mother-in-law’s favorite legend was the one in which a coffee cutting was smuggled to Brazil in a bouquet of flowers. The flowers were given to a dashing Brazilian diplomat by the smitten wife of French Guiana’s governor. If the story is true, Brazil’s billion-dollar coffee trade apparently sprang from an extramarital love affair and that single smuggled cutting bearing fertile cherries.

Given coffee’s volatile past, I knew it wasn’t a stretch for Ric to be concerned about the theft of his cutting, so I held my tongue.

“Matt and I agreed we couldn’t take any chances,” Ric said, “not until it’s been properly patented.”

“Patented.” I blinked in confusion. “You can patent a plant? I didn’t think you could do that.”

Ric nodded. “It’s possible, according to Ellie.”

“Ellie?” It had been well over ten years, but I quickly recognized the name, especially when it was linked to Federico Gostwick. “Ellie Shaw?”

Ric sipped his decaf and nodded. “It’s Lassiter now. She agreed to help me.”

“Help you... how?”

“I never finished my BS in botany. Ellie did. She even went on to get a masters from Cornell with a focus on public garden management. In horticultural circles, she’s known and respected, and she’s familiar with the process of applying for a plant patent. One of her old professors is on the PVPO advisory board. So she agreed to help me secure it.”

“PVPO?”

“Plant Variety Protection Office. It’s part of your Department of Agriculture.”

“But why not just apply in Brazil? Don’t you have patent lawyers there?”

“Of course, but there are...” Ric shrugged— “complicating issues. Matt and I both agreed that the U.S. patent would solve our problems.”

“Problems? I don’t follow you. What problems?”

“Really, Clare, you shouldn’t worry about this. Matt and I have made our deal. Next week we’ll announce it, along with my breakthrough, and then we can all just sit back and get rich, eh? You don’t have to—”

A tinkling melody interrupted Ric’s equivocating. The tune sounded vaguely familiar. “What’s that?”

“My cell...” Ric pulled it out of the robe pocket. “I downloaded a Sting ringtone.” He grinned. “Can you guess the song?”

The melody wasn’t on my mind, the so-called “problems” of Ric’s patent issues were.

“It’s ‘Roxanne,’ ” he announced as he hit a button and put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

Confused as to whether Ric was referring to the Sting tune “Roxanne” or the name of the person phoning, I sipped my own cup of decaf as he took the call.

“No, darling,” Ric cooed into the phone after a minute of listening. “I had a breakfast meeting outside the hotel, a very early one.”

He tossed me a little shrug, which I assumed was supposed to persuade me to overlook the fact that he’d just lied to the person on the other end of the line.

“Why don’t you just contact me on my cell from now on....” He listened some more and checked his wristwatch. “Of course... me, too... yes, darling... that sounds lovely, but you’d better make it later than that, all right? I’ve got an important meeting...”

Ric finished his call, and I asked who had called him.

“Oh, just a friend in the city.”

“A female friend?”

“Yes.”

The phone rang once more. It was Sting’s “Roxanne,” all right.

“Hello?”

Another vague call ensued with yet another “darling.” “Me, too,” Ric purred. “And I’m looking forward to it, darling... but I’ll have to get back to you on where... yes, soon... just be patient... me, too.”

Ric hung up, and I raised an eyebrow with (as Matt used to tell me) nunlike judgment.

“Let me guess, another female friend in the city?”

“Why, Clare...” Ric’s eyes widened in mock surprise, “you didn’t tell me you were psychic.”

“Funny. You’re too funny, Federico.”

“What can I tell you? It’s a hazard having this much charisma.”

“Not to mention humility.”

Ric laughed. “I do love women.”

“You and my ex-husband... hence the ex.”

“Men who love women this much, they shouldn’t marry.”

“You’re telling me.” I was kidding, but Ric looked suddenly serious.

“This is something of an insight then?” he asked earnestly.

“Uhm... actually, I was joking. Don’t you know why Matt married me?”

“Because he adored you, of course. Why else?”

“I was pregnant with Joy. I thought you knew?”

“No, Clare.” Ric shook his head. “Matteo never said anything like that, not once, not ever.”

Honest to God, I was stunned to hear it. For those last years of our marriage, I’d assumed Matt had told every friend and colleague that I was the ball-and-chain around his neck, that he’d been pressured down the aisle because of my expecting Joy.

Ric was one of Matt’s oldest friends. If he hadn’t told Ric the truth, then he hadn’t told anybody.

“So Matt was less of a cad than I thought,” I whispered. Not much less, but enough to surprise me.

“What do you mean?” Ric asked.

Might as well set the record straight. “Matteo’s mother pressured him into proposing. I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently she made him understand that she didn’t want her only grandchild to be illegitimate.”

Ric nodded, looked down into his cup again.

Had I said too much? I wondered. Probably. The easygoing Ric looked suddenly more uncomfortable than usual. Or was there more than simple discomfort? It probably doesn’t