Murder Most Frothy

institution, the Village Blend?

Whether the woman had been into coffee first and Matt because of it (or vice versa), two things were true: Matt was overseeing the Village Blend’s expansion into “hot, hot, hot” coffee kiosks in upscale clothing boutiques and department stores throughout the world, and Breanne couldn’t get enough of him.

The two had been seeing each other, on and off for almost eight months now. Not that I was counting. I only knew because Esther Best, one of my part-time baristas back at the Blend, had an annoying habit of pointing out photos of Matt and Breanne. The typical shots, taken at black-tie charitable functions, gallery shows, or restaurant openings, appeared from time to time in gossip columns like New York Post’s Page Six.

Still, I could (almost) forgive poor Breanne for her nasty snipe. Anyone would have been embarrassed to see her date participating in the ugly scene that just took place. So, instead of taking the swipe I was dying to, I simply said—

“So nice to see you again, Breanne.”

Although my words were civil, I just couldn’t resist wringing out my shoulder length chestnut hair right in front of her. The water made a satisfying spat on the patio stones. A woman nearby gave me a dirty look and Breanne blanched whiter than her pantsuit.

Of course, Ms. Summour’s attention span—not unlike her magazine’s flashy, shallow articles—had always been as short as a gnat’s life, and she was already moving on. (Okay, okay, so I’d pushed it with the hair wringing. But people like Breanne Summour were almost too easy to horrify.)

Anyway, seeing Breanne here made me wish my ex-husband had minded his own business. Not that I wasn’t grateful to him for defending me. But spending the night in the Hampton Village jail with drunken college kids would have been a lot less annoying, in the scheme of things, than enduring Breanne’s smugness under these circumstances.

Ms. Summour waved a manicured, beringed hand at a group of guests she apparently hadn’t noticed before. Then, without so much as a “toodles,” she and her diamonds were gone, sweeping across the stone patio to bestow a flurry of air kisses.

After she’d zoomed out of our airspace, Matt turned to me. The sexual amusement was completely gone from his eyes now. Something a lot less playful, a lot less Matt, had replaced it.

“Clare, what’s going on?” he quietly demanded. “Why are you here, dripping wet?”

Clearly, he was taking his emotional cues from Breanne now—at least when it came to caring what people thought of his ex-wife at a public party.

“I could ask you the same question,” I replied, gesturing to Breanne’s back. “Except for the dripping wet part.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just this morning you told me you were totally jet lagged and heading back to the Village for a good night’s sleep.”

“I said a few hours sleep.”

“Whatever! You never mentioned coming out to the Hamptons…with her.”

“Bree knew I was back from the West Coast. She invited me to hop a chartered plane into East Hampton airport and join her for the weekend. I accepted.”

“I can see that’s not all you accepted, from Bree.”

“Excuse me?”

I gestured to Matt’s designer eveningwear, the kind of clothing that cost more than I grossed in a week— more than Matteo grossed in a week, too, because I saw the books.

When we’d been married, Matt’s cocaine addiction had not only eaten through our savings, it had also evaporated his trust fund and left us in terrible debt. He was off the drug now. And he’d become a hard worker. But the Village Blend expansion was a financial risk, and we had a daughter to put through school. Neither one of us had money to burn. Not by a long shot. That was why Matt had refused to give up his rights to use the duplex above the Village Blend during his periodic layovers in New York.

His mother, Madame, still owned the Greenwich Village townhouse that contained both the century-old Village Blend coffeehouse at street level and the duplex apartment above it. When she’d convinced both of us to sign contracts to co-manage and one day co-own the Blend business and its townhouse, she’d neglected to let us know we were not partnering with her but with each other.

Now Matt and I were stuck. Unless one of us wanted out of the very lucrative deal, both of us had to learn to get along. So far, we’d been doing okay, attempting to remain civil business partners. And since staying a week or more in a Manhattan hotel every month, between his buying trips or other international business, was too much of an expense for Matt, we’d ended up occasional housemates again after a decade of separation.

In any event, that’s one of the reasons I knew for a fact that my ex-husband had a finite set of fine clothes, every piece of which I’d seen already.

“So I have a new suit?” he said defensively. “It was a gift.”

“From Bree?”

Matt’s sour expression answered my question. He looked away. “She has relationships with top designers, Clare,” he said quietly. “Because of her magazine. It’s no big deal, you know?”

“What I know is that it means something when a woman starts dressing a man.”

Matt stared at me, speechless for a moment, and I wanted to take the words back as soon as I’d blurted them. I had told myself that Breanne was just another thrilling new blend, Matt’s flavor of the month—even though she was far from his typical young, bubble-headed bimbo fare (and, yes, I did wonder if maybe that was what bothered me about Breanne more than anything). But it was patently none of my business what her relationship was with my ex-husband, and Matt had every right to tell me to go to hell. But he didn’t. He simply looked uncomfortable that I’d made the observation.

“Clare, I don’t…” he said haltingly. “Bree and I…it’s just a networking thing.” He shrugged, looked away. “She needs an escort that knows which fork to use, someone to open doors for her, hold her coat, give her, you know…”

“Don’t strain yourself searching for a euphemism. I know what it is you give her.”

“It’s not like that. We’re just casual friends.”

I was sure he was serving me baloney, but I bit my tongue, feeling stupid for having let our conversation get even this far. I had allowed myself to fall back into some cheated-on wife pattern when I was no longer his wife. It was embarrassing. And Matt was being more than patient with me.

I was about to apologize when a breeze blew up off the ocean, rustling the Japanese paper lanterns and making my teeth chatter. I hugged myself, shivering, and Matt shook his head. He slipped off the Helmut Lang evening jacket and draped it over my shoulders.

“Listen, Clare, changing the subject won’t get you out of hot water…although it’s obvious the water you just stepped out of was ice cold.” His eyebrow rose again, a little of the old playful Matt back in his expression. Then he actually smiled. “Anyway, I still want an explanation from you. But first I’m going to borrow Breanne’s car and drive you home.”

“Matt, that’s okay. You don’t have to—”

“I want to talk to David anyway, tell him how the installations on the West Coast are going. I tried to get to him tonight, but there were just too many people surrounding him. I just need to tell Bree where I’m going. Back in a minute.”

I couldn’t argue, mainly because I was too chilly.

I watched Matteo cross the patio, put a light touch on Breanne’s shoulder. She turned from her small circle of friends, smiling—a little forced I thought. They spoke for a moment. The smile disappeared. Her eyebrows rose into that HDTV forehead and she glanced in my direction.

I looked away, watching the rest of the party to pass the time. Matt was at my shoulder again before I knew it. He grabbed my elbow, not much gentler than the security man had a few minutes ago. I couldn’t stop myself from observing—

“It’s amazing what an uplifting effect Breanne has on you.”

“Come on, let’s go.”