French Pressed

“Yeah. He helped set up dozens of robberies. He was the beverage manager for three different nightclubs. He used security cameras at each club to select whales for his crew of young robbers to harpoon.”

“Where’s Benedetto now?! Don’t you have enough on that creep to arrest him?”

“Of course. My guys are looking for him as we speak.”

“Why didn’t you tell me an hour ago?”

Mike shrugged, sipped his coffee. “I didn’t want to break the mood.”

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Mike sat up, looking around as if an emergency alert had just gone off. “What the hell was that?”

“It’s your oven timer.”

“My what?”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t bake much, do you?”

There were no oven mitts in the cardboard box, so I used a dish towel to pull the pan out. My knife got busy, and I set the warm, fresh squares of corn bread on a plate between us.

Mike stared at me as if I’d just dug a five-carat diamond out of his sink.

“Where did you get that?”

“What? The corn bread?”

“Yeah.”

“You had the ingredients. I whipped it together.”

He stared at me, still a little dumbfounded. “I had the ingredients? In this apartment?”

I laughed. “Try some.”

I didn’t have to suggest it twice. Mike grabbed a square, inhaled the aroma of the warm, sweet bread, and shoveled it in. “Hungry…” he said, as if he’d just realized it. He ate the entire square in about three bites and reached for a second.

“The standard recipe calls for skim milk, but I prefer using half-and-half anyway. It gives a much richer mouthfeel to the product, don’t you think?”

“Yhemmmh Immm thimnk so…” he replied. He swallowed the second square and reached for a third.

Finally, I thought, a man who has no issues with palate fatigue!

“So this Benedetto May-September gang thing…That’s good news, isn’t it?” I pressed. “I mean, once you get the man into custody, you can go over his computer files and papers with a fine-tooth comb, look for clues that he killed Keitel or hired someone to do it.”

Mike chewed, swallowed, and winked. “Piece o’ cake.”

Just then the phone rang. Mike got up, went into the next room for a few minutes. When he came back, he looked strange. I couldn’t read him—and that was unusual.

“What’s up?”

“My guys couldn’t find Benedetto at his apartment, so they started checking the clubs where he worked. They finally found the man about thirty minutes ago—or his corpse, anyway.”

“What do you mean his corpse?”

“He’s dead, Clare.”

“Benedetto’s dead?” I rose from the table, paced the room, tried to process this. “Benedetto’s dead? Benedetto’s dead!” Finally, I stopped pacing and faced Mike. “Where was he killed? Which club?”

“Club Flux. They found him in his upstairs office.”

“And how was he killed, Mike?”

“That’s the bizarre part. Someone slipped the man a Mickey. They found a half-empty bottle of champagne with two glasses. There are traces of the drug in Benedetto’s glass. They’re dusting for prints now.”

“The drug killed him?”

Mike shook his head. “When Benedetto passed out, the killer slit his throat.”

“Another murder with a knife?”

“Listen, Clare, I want you to think about your meeting with this guy. Did you pick up anything from Benedetto, any lead on who might have wanted him dead?”

“Billy Benedetto said he was expecting a backer. This mysterious backer was going to put up money for Benedetto’s new restaurant. The reason, according to Billy, was that he had something on this guy—and it sounded to me like—”

“Blackmail?” Mike said.

“Anton Wright!”

“What?”

“The owner of Solange! That’s who I saw go up to see Benedetto after I left him, which means Benedetto had something incriminating on Anton Wright. ‘Something big. Something bad.’ Those were his very words.”

“What did he have, Clare? What’s your theory?”

“I believe Billy and Anton conspired to kill Tommy Keitel. Anton’s a polished entrepreneur now, but Keitel told me the man started out in life as the son of a butcher—so he must have had knife skills.”

“You think Anton was the one who stabbed Tommy Keitel to death. And he did this for or with Billy Benedetto—”

“Yes, Billy had a very strong motive to want Tommy dead. But then Billy must have turned on Anton and blackmailed him. Anton obviously decided to get rid of blackmailing Billy by drugging him and slashing his throat. I can’t prove it yet, but I’m sure I’m right.”

“Murder needs a motive, Clare. And while your scenario gives a motive to Anton Wright for killing Benedetto—if he was in fact blackmailing Anton for some reason—it doesn’t answer the motive in the murder of Tommy Keitel. It comes down to a simple question. Why would Anton Wright want to kill Tommy Keitel?”

“Motive, motive…” I drummed my fingers on the tabletop. “Why would Anton kill Tommy?”

“He wouldn’t. Tommy was the jewel in the Solange crown. No sane man throws away a jewel, Clare. He goes to great lengths to hold on to it.”

Mike paused just then; his blue eyes met my green ones, held them for a long, sweet, unnervingly suggestive moment, and I got the distinct impression that he wanted us to remember the emeralds from last night, the one’s I’d worn naked while we—

I cleared my throat. Any thoughts in that direction weren’t going to solve Tommy’s murder and free my daughter.

“I’ve got no answer for Anton Wright’s motive, Mike. I’ll grant you that. But Anton and Tommy were feuding about something. So I’m not clearing him off my suspect list. Not yet.”

Mike nodded, sipped his coffee, and smiled inappropriately—probably at my use of the term suspect list.

“What’s with you, Lieutenant? Half the time when I talk to you about my theories, I catch this little smile on your face. Do I amuse you?”

Mike leaned back. “You really want me to answer that?”

“No.” I rolled my eyes, glanced at the clock. “Listen, I better get dressed and get out of here. I want to shower and change back at the Blend. Then I have to go up to Joy’s apartment, pick up some of her clothes and personal items. She should be out of jail today, and she’ll be coming back to the Blend to stay with Matt and me until her trial. Even if the judge doesn’t put her under house arrest, I’m guessing she’ll just want to crash with us for the moral support.”

“I’ll go with you,” Mike said, rising from the table. “You can use the help carrying her stuff, right?”

“I’d love you to help me. But don’t you have to go in to work?”

“I do. But there’s no hurry.” He shrugged. “The ME’s office won’t get back to us for a few more hours, and it’s not like I have to rush in to interrogate Benedetto. The only investigator getting info from that scumbag now is the doc who’s performing his autopsy.”

Twenty-Six