Jacques nodded again. “Fine. I shall be here to meet the delivery man.”
“Great,” I said. Then I slipped by the man and out of his office.
Eight
After being jolted into near-drowning by a Suffolk County Police bullhorn and uncovering a possible extortion scheme by a workplace colleague, I didn’t think anything else could surprise me today, but that evening something managed to do just that—or rather someone.
Madame glided into Cuppa J in an elegant chartreuse sundress, on the arm of an elderly man I’d never seen before. His gray beard and tweedy blazer gave him the air of a professor, but his short, white ponytail, French beret, distressed jeans, and trendy rectangular glasses made him look more like a patriarch of West Village pop artists.
“Clare, you look so stressed,” Madame told me as I walked up to her cafe table. “Perhaps you should call it a night.”
Madame’s suggestion was kind but impractical. From five o’clock onward, the restaurant had been packed. It was now ten in the evening and most of the customers were here for coffee service and dessert. That may have slowed things down for Victor and Carlos in the kitchen, but not for me in the dining room. Because we were understaffed, I was pulling double duty, managing as well as waiting tables.
“We’re far too busy for me to ditch early,” I told my ex-mother-in-law with a patient smile. “Besides, I’m not at all tired.”
From her seat on one of the first floor’s green velvet couches, Madame raised a silver eyebrow. “I didn’t say tired, my dear. I said
Sitting cozily beside Madame, the bohemian-looking senior stroked his neatly-trimmed beard and remarked, “I think perhaps your daughter-in-law has been spending too much time on the ‘fashionable’ side of the highway.”
I might have taken more offense at the man’s familiarity, if his bright blue eyes hadn’t been sparkling attractively with humor as he said it.
“And you are?” I asked.
Madame’s date stood up, clicked his heels, and extended his hand. “Edward Myers Wilson.”
I placed my hand in his. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Clare—”
“Allegro,” the man replied. “I know. Blanche has told me much about you already and your…shall we say
I bristled at both points. Firstly, my surname was no longer Allegro. I had gone back to Cosi after the divorce. Madame knew this, of course. She just didn’t like it and, obviously, had misinformed Mr. Wilson.
“Clare, I can’t believe your giving up your married name,” she’d said to me years ago when I’d first told her. “Your daughter’s last name is Allegro. That’s never going to change. Why don’t you consider keeping it?”
“Because,” I’d answered, “your
Ever since, Madame would occasionally “forget” that I took back Cosi, an act of total passive-aggressiveness as far as I was concerned. But then, what else could I expect from Joy’s grandmother? Like my own daughter, Matt’s mother could be as stubborn as she was effervescent; as reckless as she was adventurous; as contentious as she was understanding. Also, like Joy, Madame wanted to see Matt and me get back together. In the past she’d even tried crazy schemes to achieve this goal. My greatest fear was that, one day, she might actually accomplish it.
For the moment, I silently shrugged off the Allegro surname error. I’d never seen this Wilson character before and I didn’t expect to see him again, so who cared if he got my name wrong? What I couldn’t let go, however, was Madame’s apparently telling this perfect stranger about the shooting at David’s party.
Hoping I was mistaken about his pointed implication, I went fishing. “Yes,” I replied to Mr. Wilson. “Working here has been very interesting.”
“I’m sure it has,” he said, easing back into his green velvet seat next to Madame. “But not as interesting as trying to track down a murderer, eh?”
I sent a three-alarm glare my former mother-in-law’s way. She responded with a wave of her hand.
“Don’t worry so much, Clare,” she chirped. “Edward’s here to help.”
“Help?” I whispered, glancing around me to make sure no one in the crowded dining room was listening. “How can a perfect stranger help?”
Edward Wilson appeared amused at that. He turned to Madame. “Blanche, I think perhaps you’re right. Clare does appear rather stressed this evening.”
Madame laughed.
With two fingers, I massaged the bridge of my nose, feeling the edges of a headache beginning. It was bad enough that my daughter and I weren’t talking at the moment. Now I had to put up with Ma and Pa Enigmatic.
“Edward’s not a perfect stranger,” Madame informed me.
“Although some of my colleagues have accused me of being perfectly strange,” he quipped.
“Only when the moon is full,” Madame retorted.
“And I’m out of single-malt Scotch. Either that or every last tube of 538.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Madame said. “You
“Not the color, love. The sky. Matching its palette out here has been a lifelong obsession.” He put his arm around Madame’s shoulders. “One of them anyway.”
I raised both eyebrows at the old guy’s smooth move, wondering whether or not Mr. Wilson knew (or cared) about Madame’s ongoing relationship back in the city with Dr. Gary MacTavish.
“So you two are old friends?” I prodded, expecting them to amplify the subject.
“Well, we are
“Speak for yourself.”
I couldn’t believe both Joy and her grandmother seemed set on testing my nerves this evening.
My daughter had done it earlier, when she’d shown up late to work, in the company of Graydon Faas. I’d jumped down her throat the minute she’d walked in the kitchen door. We’d had a furious fight about where she’d been all day and what she’d been doing, but she refused to answer any of my questions, or apologize for ignoring my many worried cell phone messages.
All night, I couldn’t help noticing how Joy and Graydon kept lightly brushing against each other, exchanging subtle touches. With alarm, I realized just how little I knew about this surfer-waiter “dude.” Graydon was a good worker and a quick study with the barista techniques. But I could have described Treat Mazzelli the same way, and he’d ended up being a systematic womanizer. (I couldn’t very well blame him for the bullet in his brain since I didn’t even believe it was meant for him. Nevertheless, where my daughter’s happiness was concerned, I considered womanizing bad enough, thank you very much!)
At the moment, I couldn’t discuss my thousand-and-one worries with Joy, but, considering the way Treat had ended up, I felt I had a right to butt in and grill her about her relationship with Graydon. When we finally had some privacy, I intended to do just that. I also intended to quiz Joy’s grandmother. Here she was, flirting shamelessly with a man about whom I knew even less than Mr. Faas.
“Why don’t I take your orders?” I suggested, glancing over my shoulder to make sure my other customers weren’t getting antsy. “We can chat again when I bring your food.”
“Very good,” said Edward with a smile.
“We’re just having dessert and coffee tonight,” Madame said. She pulled a delicate pair of vermilion reading glasses out of her clutch, balanced them on the end of her nose and looked over my pairings menu.
“Very nice selection, my dear,” she said after a minute.
“Thank you.” I replied, trying not to blush. A “very nice” from Madame regarding coffee was akin to a grad student finally earning that Ph.D. The woman knew more about beans, blends, microclimates, harvests, processing, roasting, brewing, and serving than any professional I’d ever met in the food and beverage trade.
