Murder by Mocha

you?”

“What she told us,” Sue Ellen said, “was that she suspected there was some misunderstanding.”

I blinked, shocked at Madame’s equivocating. “There’s no misunderstanding. I know what I saw—”

Sue Ellen smirked. “So you know the difference between the terms DOA and MIA?”

“My DOA is MIA—and I have no idea where he went!”

“Maybe he got up and walked away.”

“That would make him a zombie.”

“Not unheard of in this town, Cosi.”

“Be serious.”

“I am. You ever work Midtown graveyard? Try the Port Authority Bus Terminal at three AM—”

While Sue Ellen and I continued to battle (what passed for) wits, Officer Suarez appeared in the doorway and motioned Lori Soles into a huddle. When they broke, she was all smiles.

“We’ll have to cut the Coffee Lady here some slack,” Lori told her partner. “She just helped nab the Key Card Burglar! They’re putting him in a sector car now.”

Sue Ellen stared. “Pull the other one.”

“No, it’s true. The uniforms responded to our call. So it’s our collar.”

Sue Ellen’s expression went dark for a second, but then a grin broke wide. “Nice going, Coffee Lady!” Her big hand slapped my back so hard I felt my teeth rattle.

Suarez nodded. “You two detectives are going to have some day. The whole city’s been waiting for this case to break.”

“Yeah,” Sue said, “the brass’ll be out for this one.”

“Hold on!” I said. “The Credit Card Burglar is not why I called you two here!”

“Key Card,” Lori corrected. “Don’t you know about this guy? He’s part of a ring that’s been ripping off rooms all over Midtown—”

“But—”

“Your loo had a theory on the case, right?” Suarez asked.

Lori nodded. “With no sign of forced entry, our lieutenant figured the perp was bribing staff members at different hotels. The staffers would sweep through rooms with pass keys, picking up small, expensive items but not taking any risk of holding them or stashing them in their lockers—”

“Smart,” Suarez said.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Instead,” Lori went on, “they’d leave the stolen goods in one empty room where this guy would pick them up and walk them out. With this perp finally in custody, we should be able to take the entire ring down.”

Sue Ellen nodded, dark ponytail swinging. “You bet.”

“Hello! What about the dead man? There was a corpse in this room!”

Suarez gawked at me, along with the two Amazon detectives.

“Okay, Cosi,” Sue Ellen said, hands on hips. “Produce the body.”

I scowled up at the woman, ready to retort when Lori jumped in. “Sorry, Cosi. My partner’s right.” She gestured to the room and slowly shook her curly blond head. “There is no evidence that anything happened here.”

Once again, Sue Ellen smirked. “Maybe the burglar stole the body.”

“I saw what that burglar stole,” I shot back. “A giant pillowcase full of it. And nobody runs down ten flights with two hundred pounds of dead weight on his back. Can’t you canvass the floor, start knocking on room doors?”

Lori put her hand on my shoulder. Her big blue eyes went wide, sympathetic. “Calm down. We’ll be canvassing guest rooms as a matter of course because of the burglary—and we’re going to need your statement on what happened in the basement between you and the perp. Can you do a lineup for us?”

I held my head. “How long will that take?”

“Maybe two hours.”

“Fine,” I said, “whatever you need, but listen to this statement, okay? I saw a man’s body in here. He had a carving knife in his chest, and there was blood all over the bed. A blond woman in a black raincoat came to the door. When I mentioned the police were coming, she ran. I chased her. She must have gone up the stairs instead of down—and I ended up chasing the burglar instead. I’m certain she’ll have some answers if we can find her. She may even be an accomplice.”

“Accomplice to what?” Sue Ellen asked. “The burglaries?”

“The murder!”

I threw up my hands. Something rotten had gone down here, and I was starting to formulate a theory. Alicia’s polished pumps were still sitting on the carpet, but the man’s scuffed-up loafers were gone, along with his clothes. The fact that the martini glasses were gone, too, made me look at that vase of wilting flowers in a whole new light.

I moved to the vase, picked up the flowers, and sniffed. “These stems smell like alcohol!”

Lori frowned. “Are you feeling okay, Cosi? You want to sit down?”

“There were two empty martini glasses on this night-stand,” I told them as calmly, clearly, and sanely as I could. “Someone removed them, along with the body and the bloody sheets. But before that happened, someone else must have dumped alcohol into this vase. Why?”

Sue Ellen glanced at her partner. “Maybe they wanted their drink shaken, not stirred.”

“Maybe the drink was drugged,” I said.

“I didn’t want the drink . . .” The voice was loud and cut-tingly clear. Alicia Bower was back.

All of us turned to see her striding into the room, head high. Her loose terry robe was now tightly wrapped and firmly knotted. Her tangled short hair was combed smooth. Her face was washed clean of tear streaks; her sickly complexion dusted with enough peach blush to make a zombie look fit.

“Dennis St. Julian and I were business acquaintances,” she explained with assiduous crispness (not one syllable burbled). I noticed her slight British accent had rejoined us, too.

“He rang me. I invited him up to my room. He brought mocha martinis from the hotel bar. I’d already had plenty of wine at dinner. Unfortunately, he insisted I drink it. I didn’t wish to argue. Instead, when he began to disrobe, I simply dumped most of it into that vase—”

She flung out her arm and held it there, pointing to the end table in the sort of exaggerated pose I hadn’t seen since I stopped watching daytime drama.

Lori Soles looked briefly at me then studied Alicia. “Was this Dennis St. Julian alive when you last saw him?”

“I woke up in a dark room,” Alicia replied, slowly lowering her arm. “I was disoriented. I’m not sure what I saw . . .”

I noticed Madame had drifted into the room. Just behind her stood an older gentleman, briefcase in hand, a scowl on his face. This, I assumed, was the lawyer Madame had called, and he didn’t appear happy with Alicia’s making statements to the NYPD. What lawyer would be? But then, I realized, what choice did he have?

Clearly, Alicia Bower’s inner executive had reemerged, most likely the instant she heard about Dennis’s body disappearing (along with all the evidence), and she’d decided to “handle” the police herself.

When Alicia fell silent, Lori glanced at me again, pointedly this time.

I was dying to speak up—with questions, accusations, critiques of Alicia’s acting ability—but Madame’s eyes were now mutely pleading for me to hold my tongue.

Fine, I thought, I’ll play along. But what the heck happened to the body? Not to mention the man’s clothes, the martini glasses, and the bloody bedding?

The answer came without my having to ask. Grimes, the officer from the basement, rushed into the room, slightly breathless, carrying a bundle of white sheets saturated with dried pools of burgundy.

“The bloody sheets!” I cried. “You found them!”

“In the laundry bin,” Grimes said with a nod. “Just like you thought, ma’am. Only I don’t think this is blood . . .”

“What?” I crossed to him, the detectives on my heels.