Latte Trouble

did Detective Quinn return. He strode through the front door and approached me at the coffee bar.

“Have a seat,” I told him as I foamed up a couple of lattes (his favorite). Quinn took a quiet corner table by a window and I joined him there. He sipped the drink, his blue gaze steady over the rim of the glass mug, never straying from my face.

“I meant what I said this morning, Clare,” Quinn began. “It is good to see you again.”

Oh god. A caffeinelike jolt that had nothing to do with the shot of espresso in my latte was rocking my metabolism. I counseled myself to keep my mind off Quinn’s incredible blue eyes and on the business at hand.

“What happened to Rena Garcia?” I asked.

Quinn sighed and finally broke his stare, looking down into the frothy cloud in his tall glass mug. “That’s a police matter—” he tried to tell me, but I was ready for him.

“Don’t you clam up on me now, Mike Quinn.”

My tone wasn’t teasing and it wasn’t warm. I’d waited for hours for him to get around to talking to me again, and I swore to myself that he wasn’t leaving this coffeehouse until I knew as much as he did.

Mike, who could obviously see I meant business, rubbed his stubbled chin, then took another sip of his latte, a long one. Foam clung to his top lip and he wiped it away with the easy brush of two fingers. He leaned close, lowered his already low voice.

“This morning the supervisor in Ms. Garcia’s apartment building received some complaints about loud music coming from the apartment. He knocked, and when he didn’t get a reply he used his pass key to enter the premises. That’s when he found the victim. The Medical Examiner estimates she’d been dead for ten to twelve hours.”

“You said she was poisoned.”

Quinn nodded. “Cyanide was used. Forensics examined the dregs of a coffee Ms. Garcia consumed, found traces of poison…” The detective paused, locked eyes with me. “It was a Village Blend take-out cup, Clare. That’s why I asked you about the poisoning that took place here the other night.”

I told Mike about that night. About Detectives Starkey and Hutawa, and Tucker’s arrest. He listened quietly to my theory that Lottie had been the original target, and I told him what Tad had admitted to me earlier today—about Fen and the blackmail threat.

“Benedict never mentioned blackmail to me,” said Quinn, clearly annoyed.

“He’s trying to protect himself,” I concluded. “One way or the other.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the truth gets out about his involvement with something as shady as Rena’s theft of Fen’s designs and Fen’s subsequent blackmail, it could ruin Tad’s investment business. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t tell you about the blackmail because he killed Rena himself—”

“No,” said Quinn quickly. “Benedict’s not a suspect. He has a rock-solid alibi from seven o’clock last evening until almost four this morning.”

“What?”

“First he and his staff were conducting some kind of investment seminar on a boat called the…” Quinn pulled a worn leather-bound rectangular notebook from the breast pocket of his trenchcoat. “Fortune.”

I nodded, recalling Tad’s seminars had been scheduled for both Wednesday and Thursday nights.

“After that,” Quinn continued, glancing at his notes, “he and his staff traveled together to their investment firm’s office and spent most of the night working with Tokyo counterparts on Nikkei stock sales.”

“So when did Rena drink the poison?”

“Between nine and eleven o’clock in the evening. And the body wasn’t moved. She drank that poison in her apartment.”

I thought that over. Could Tad have handed Rena a poisoned cup of coffee before he’d boarded the Fortune? It made no sense on the face of it. Who would carry around a cup of coffee for hours without drinking it?

I tried to make the pieces fit another way. “Could Tad have hired someone to poison her?” I pondered out loud.

Quinn shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“First, my gut. I’ve seen enough trumped-up versions of shock and grief to judge when it’s genuine, and Benedict’s reaction to his fiancee’s death was as real as I’ve seen. Second, my background work today showed that Tad Benedict put down substantial nonrefundable deposits on a Hawaiian wedding and honeymoon package, and a realtor was handling the sale of his one bedroom and the purchase of a two bedroom in the same building. The realtor said Benedict was getting married next month and wanted more space.”

“And you don’t think he could have set all that up to make himself look innocent?” I pressed.

Quinn shook his head. “If Tad Benedict had wanted to kill Rena Garcia for financial gain, he would have married her first before killing her. Then he would have inherited her shares of Lottie Harmon after her death.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then what if he was simply trying to dump Rena because Fen was blackmailing her? What if he wanted to be free of the entanglement?”

“Why not just cut and run? Why not just break off the engagement, go to Lottie and tell her everything, and let Rena take the fall? No…there’s no logical motive for Benedict killing his fiancee. With Rena dead, life gets very complicated. As it happens, Rena has no will. Her shares will be going to her closest living relative, not Tad and not Lottie.”

I sighed, agreeing—for the moment—that Tad didn’t look very good as a suspect in Rena’s murder.

“But it’s good you told me about the blackmail, Clare. This gives me an in.”

“An in? With whom?”

“Starkey and Hut aren’t exactly forthcoming, and I don’t want to horn in on their investigation of the Blend poisoning. But this Rena Garcia murder, it’s a separate case that may be connected so they can’t complain.”

“Demetrios called them bad cop, worse cop,” I said. “Are Starkey and Hut really that terrible?”

“They’re not bad cops. They just have bad attitudes.”

“Well, I think you should go after the designer Fen. Have a talk with him.”

Quinn’s lips twitched and one eyebrow arched. “Thanks for the advice, Detective Cosi. He’s the first on my list.”

I shrugged. “Just making sure you’re dotting your Is and crossing your Ts, Detective.”

We sipped in silence for a moment, then I carefully broached another subject. “I tried to reach you a few days ago…Demetrios told me you were out on leave.”

Quinn frowned. “Personal matter…”

I was going to let it drop, but Quinn obviously felt he had to explain. “My wife took the kids on a little vacation—without telling me. Wait, that’s not entirely accurate. She left a note.”

“Jesus, Mike, what happened?”

“We had a fight one night. Next thing I know, I come home from a double-shift and she’s gone—took the kids and hopped a plane to Orlando for a week. I come home to a note, you know? Needless to say, I panicked. One of her old boyfriends works at the Disney World resort, and I thought she’d decided to snatch the kids and leave me.”

For many months now, Mike had been confiding in me about his bad marriage. He’d gone back and forth many times on the issue of divorce. Finally, for the sake of his young kids, he’d decided to try marriage counseling.

“I thought you said the counseling was helping?”

“I thought it was. But she was obviously acting out….” He sighed in disgust. “When I got down there, it was passive aggressive central. She acted like it was some carefree family vacation that we’d planned for months. For the sake of the kids, I went along.” He shook his head. “She pulled the kids out of school, terrorized me, ran up our credit cards on first-class tickets…I left cases hanging, victims’ families…I could have strangled her.”

“I’m sorry, Mike.”

“I’ve consulted two lawyers. The estimates for a contested divorce and custody battle…” He shook his head. “You can’t imagine.”