Decaffeinated Corpse

“Howya doin’, Ms. Cosi,” announced Joey, the delivery driver.

I inhaled the warm batches of muffins, croissants, bagels, and mini coffee cakes, and wondered what Quinn would like with his Breakfast Blend. I couldn’t ask him yet. When I came down to open the shop, he was still snoring on the couch.

I started the coffee, and was putting the pastries in the case when the bell above the door jingled. I peeked over the counter in confusion. We weren’t open yet, and I thought I’d relocked the door after Joey left.

When I glanced up, I saw Matt standing in the doorway, fumbling to get his keys out of the lock. Shoulders hunched, eyes bloodshot and weary, he seemed to have aged five years since the night before.

“Hey,” he said, noticing me behind the counter. Matt’s ever-present masculine bravado was gone. He seemed baffled and defeated.

“Coffee’s almost ready,” I replied, setting two cups on the counter.

Matt shook his head. “I need sleep. Not coffee.”

“No. You need to tell me what’s going on.”

He exhaled heavily, sat on a stool behind the coffee bar, and leaned his elbows on the marble countertop. The Breakfast Blend was finished and I poured. He took a sip, then two. Finally he swallowed a large gulp and set the half-empty cup on the counter.

I topped off his mug.

“I get it,” he said as I poured. “You’re trying to keep me caffeinated, so you can grill me.”

I smiled. He did, too. But I figured I had a limited amount of time before Matt crashed and burned, so I cut to the chase.

“What happened, Matt?”

He took another gulp. “Ellie’s dead.”

“I know...”

I let him tell me some of the things I already knew from talking to Quinn. Finally I interrupted, “How’s Ric taking Ellie’s death?”

“I only got to talk to Ric for a few minutes, but from what I can see he’s taking it pretty hard.” Matt rubbed his face with both hands. His flesh looked pale and clammy from lack of sleep. “Ric admitted to me that he and Ellie had made love Friday afternoon, to celebrate the rollout at the Beekman. I think he’s still in shock.”

“Do you think Ric was telling the truth?”

“About Ellie? Yes.”

“So the police let you go...”

“For now... Quinn believed me about Ellie. Or, at least, he pretended to. I told him what I knew about her relationships. And after your boyfriend was done with me, I thought I was free to go.” Matt sighed in disgust. “Man, was I wrong. Instead of being released, I was handed off to some blueblood flatfoot, if you can believe it, a detective named Fletcher Endicott. What a piece of work. I’ve decided the only thing worse than a street cop with an attitude is an Ivy League cop with an attitude.”

I remembered seeing the nattily-dressed detective in charge at the Beekman, the one with the glasses and the three-piece banker’s suit, though at the time I didn’t know his name. I was interrogated by his partner, a Detective Fox. He seemed fixated on the time of Hernandez’s death, kept trying to pinpoint the minute. I felt terrible for not knowing, but the moment a body lands on the sidewalk right in front of you, checking your watch is not the first thing that occurs to you.

“Endicott hauled me all the way up to Midtown East, so he could ‘interrogate me on his own turf’ as he put it, and I spent the rest of the wee hours denying I threw Hernandez off the balcony. Then they kicked me out.”

“So in the end, Detective Endicott let you go, too?”

“Believe me, he didn’t want to. I’m sure he’s looking for more evidence to officially charge me. Apparently, they’re going with Hernandez’s broken wristwatch as the time of death, and the girl in the Beekman’s kitchen was helping me find some aspirin around that time—so, for now, it looks like I might have an alibi. But I’ve been warned not to leave the country, so clearly I’m still on their ‘persons of interest’ list.”

I wasn’t surprised. “You did threaten the man publicly.”

Matt didn’t argue. He took another noisy gulp, draining his cup. “Detective Endicott’s still looking at Ric, too. I’m pretty sure they’re checking over his business visa and paperwork.”

It was the perfect segue, and I took it. “You said Ric was being honest about Ellie. You also hinted that there was something he wasn’t being honest about. Fill me in on that...”

“I heard things. Maybe it’s nothing,” Matt replied.

I could tell he was hedging. “Please, Matt. You have to be straight with me now. That’s the only way I can help.”

Matt looked down, sighed heavily. Finally he nodded.

“There’s a guy I know. Roger Mbele, a West African coffee broker. Last month I ran into him at Kennedy Airport and we got to talking. He already knew about Ric’s hybrid coffee plant and congratulated me on the exclusive deal. Then, yesterday afternoon, he calls me out of the blue to tell me that Dutch International just cancelled its order for three hundred bags of his green beans. Roger was stuck holding the bags—so to speak—and he wasn’t happy.”

“I don’t understand. Why did he call you?”

“Roger wanted to know why his deal collapsed, so he called the buyer at Dutch International’s corporate headquarters in Amsterdam. The buyer told Roger that the company would normally purchase his beans for decaf processing, but they didn’t need Roger’s green beans any longer because they’d just made a deal to sell beans that were already botanically decaffeinated, and they were expecting their first shipment in the next few weeks. That’s when he called me.”

“Is it possible that someone else came up with a similar product and beat Ric to the market?”

Matt stared down at his empty cup. “I think it might be worse than that.”

I didn’t get much sleep the night before. Maybe that was the reason, but I didn’t make the connection until Matt mentioned her name.

“Monika Van Doorn was with Ric at—”

“That woman!” I cried. “I saw her at the party, pawing up Ric!”

Matt nodded. “Now that her father’s passed away, she’s the head of Dutch International. That’s the first thing I thought of after I got Roger’s call.”

“So you think Ric made a deal with her?” I asked. “I thought the Village Blend had an exclusive distribution deal for the initial rollout?”

“So did I.”

“Is that what all those cell phone calls were about at the tasting last night? You think Ric is cheating you?”

“Not me, Clare. I have the hybrid beans in my warehouse. Enough to last six to eight months. Ric told me I had practically his entire harvest and I believed him. I still do...” Matt’s voice trailed off.

“So what were all those calls about last night? All those numbers you scribbled on pieces of paper?”

“I called a couple of growers, asked for some up to date numbers on Brazilian yields. Then I did a little calculating.”

I was anxious to hear Matt’s conclusions. I knew that coffee yields varied wildly among countries and regions. Factors like soil, weather, and irrigation techniques had as much influence on the quality and quantity of coffee as they had on wine grapes. And yield per acre on robusta farms was generally twice that of farms that produced arabica (one reason, but not the only reason, why arabica beans were generally pricier).

“You know that Brazil is the number one producer of coffee in the world, right?” Matt said.

“Right.”

“The country averages around twenty million bags a year.”

I nodded. “At about one hundred pounds per bag.”

“One hundred and thirty-two,” Matt noted, “but there are problems in Brazil. For one thing, it’s the only high-volume coffee-producing nation subject to frost. And Brazilian estates have some of the lowest yields. In Hawaii they get over two thousand pounds of clean coffee per acre. In Brazil that average is less than nine hundred pounds per acre—which is up substantially from the four hundred pounds in the sixties, but not even close to