Twenty-One
IT was very late when I found myself standing on the corner of Forty-ninth Street and First Avenue. In the darkness I could see the long trail of traffic lights, running up to Harlem. They looked like a surreal runway, marking the path north with colorful points of illumination. First they glowed green, like newborn coffee berries; then they turned yellow, the color of caution, of not quite ready. Finally, they went red. All the way uptown, I could see the color of ripeness, maturity, fruit ready to be picked, sold, and roasted for someone else’s morning delight.
Red was also the color of blood, and I remembered the blood on the sidewalk. I looked for it on the shadowy pavement. But the dark stain was gone, washed away, I presumed, by the storm. When I looked up again, a strange, dense mist was sweeping toward me. Like those earlier clouds that enveloped the Beekman Tower, it encircled my body, blotting out everything.
“Mommy?”
The voice came to me, sweet and young. It was Joy’s voice, from years ago. Had I imagined it?
“Mommy, I’m here.”
I felt the smallness of her hand as it gripped my shoulder. I turned quickly, but no one was there. “Joy?!” I called, rubbing my arms. Alone on the street, I shivered, aware the damp night had grown colder.
“I’m up here, Mom!”
Joy’s voice again, but she wasn’t close anymore. She sounded older, angrier, much farther away. “I’m falling!” She was high above me now. I could hear her voice, near the Top of the Tower, beyond the fog.
“I’m falling, Mom!”
Frantically, I searched the misty ceiling. But there was no sign of her. No movement, no colorful points of light to guide my way north to her.
“Mom!”
“I’ll catch you, Joy!” I promised, running up and down the block, my arms outstretched. “I’ll catch you!”
I slammed into something—a solid wall. As I reeled backward, a woman stepped out in front of me, right out of the mist. She stood and stared.
“It’s me, Clare.”
“Ellie?”
It was Ellie Lassiter, but not the Ellie I’d met at the Botanic Garden. It was the Ellie I’d known years ago, when we’d been friends, with her long strawberry blond hair lifting on a breeze, her freckled smile wide. It was Ellie when she’d been young and happy... and alive.
“Catch him, Clare,” she urged me. “Please, catch him.”
I heard a vehicle racing up the avenue. I turned to see a pair of headlights cutting through the mist. The pale, weak beams grew stronger, then came the vehicle itself, a black SUV. It passed through the fog like a phantom, coming into view, then vanishing again.
I turned back to the sidewalk. Ellie was gone.
I opened my eyes.
A toy piano was playing “Edelweiss.” Still fuzzy from the dream, it took me a few seconds to realize I wasn’t listening to a child tapping out my favorite tune from
I pulled it from the pocket of my black slacks, flipped it open. “Hello?”
“Clare, it’s me.”
“Where are you?”
“Out front. Let me in.”
It was more of a command than a request, but I wasn’t going to stand on ceremony with Mike Quinn at two in the morning.
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
The lights were off downstairs because the Village Blend was closed. I’d been working in my second floor office when I grew chilly, lit a fire in the hearth, and dozed off on an overstuffed armchair. The dream I’d had was disturbing, but Mike was here and I focused on that.
Rising from the armchair, I groaned, my back stiff from the twisted way I’d been napping. Rubbing the tendons in my neck, I descended the customer staircase, a spiral of wrought iron that led right down to the first floor coffee bar.
Matt and Ric were still in police custody, and I’d had no idea what to do, other than wait for Quinn to get in touch. Breanne had run off to call one of her attorney friends, and I’d thanked her for any way she could help.
As for me, once the Midtown detectives finished questioning my staff, I returned with them to the Blend. Because of the launch party, we’d closed the coffeehouse for the night, but I still had to properly stow the French presses, cups, and the unused roasted beans. I was behind on paperwork, too, and the next day was Saturday, one of our busiest. I knew the morning would be here all too soon.
“Are you okay?”
Quinn’s first words. I was glad they were personal.
“Yes,” I said. “Just a little stiff.”
“It’s freezing tonight, don’t let in the cold.”
He looked weary but still alert. His blue eyes were sharp, though the dark smudges under them told me he hadn’t slept in a long time. His sandy brown hair was tossed by the wind, and his jawline was rough with stubble.
We headed upstairs, back to the second floor, where my fire was still burning. Quinn declined coffee, said he needed to power nap and get up early. The investigation was in high gear, but before heading back to his East Village flat, he wanted to check in with me, see how I was, and ask me a few questions.
“What’s going on with Matt?” I asked as he shed his trench coat and threw it over a chair. “Where is he? Why are you charging him with Ellie’s murder?”
“Slow down, Clare. Nobody’s charging Matt with murder.” He settled into the overstuffed sofa, across from the hearth. “We’re actually done questioning him at the Sixth, but Midtown wanted him for questioning in the Hernandez murder.”
“The man was murdered then? For sure?” I paced back and forth, in front of the fire.
“The autopsy results aren’t in yet, but there’s evidence the man’s clothes were torn before he went over the balcony. It looks like he struggled with someone before taking the plunge.”
“And your colleagues in Midtown think Matt did it?”
“They know he was angry at Hernandez and threatened him physically. It doesn’t look good, but they’re going to need more than that to get the DA to charge him. They also know Ric Gostwick had a motive, although no one at the party remembers seeing him go out on the balcony.”
“What about Ellie? What happened to her, Mike?”
He held my eyes a moment, then looked away, into the flames. “I shouldn’t discuss the details...”
“Please. You know I was her friend.”
“I know.”
“And you know you can trust me... don’t you?”
Mike rubbed his eyes for a long, silent minute. “She was found naked,” he said quietly, “although it looked like she’d had a bath towel around her and had just finished showering. No sexual assault. The physical evidence leads us to believe that she’d made love with someone in the room’s bed, showered, and then was attacked. She struggled—there are signs of it on her body. We’ve got blood and tissue under her fingernails. We’ve got a contusion at the base of her skull, and hairs and bits of blood on the edge of a heavy chest of drawers where it appears she struck her head.”
“Oh, god.”
“That’s enough—”
