Murder by Mocha

“Pressuring, harassing, coercing—driving him to suicide.”

As Mike dragged the razor across his cheek, I took a breath.

“They didn’t, did they?” (I hated asking, but I had to know.)

Mike’s body went rigid. “I went over everything, Clare, all night long. Every report, every statement, every phone call and follow-up. Franco and Sully did everything right. They called in Social Services for the kid, offered him witness protection—which he declined. They took his statement, left him their phone numbers, and moved along.”

“But this morning you said there was something that concerned you about their interview.”

“The kid’s timeline, that’s all. I needed firmer statements from him on the fiancée who OD’d—exactly when she’d taken the drugs he’d bought for her, how long he’d been making purchases, and more specifics as to how and where the purchases were made. He’d answered all of that on the initial interview, but his statements were too vague. I needed more to launch official surveillance and an undercover sting. At the time, right after the girlfriend’s death, Franco and Sully simply didn’t want to push the kid too hard.”

“They did everything right,” I quietly echoed.

“They did. So if the first deputy commish wants a head, he can have mine.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m volunteering to step down as head of the squad.”

“Mike, no! You love your job.”

“I’m not passing the buck, Clare. I can’t live with that.”

“Can you live with a demotion? A public censure?”

“It won’t be public. We did everything right, and the Fourteenth Floor isn’t stupid enough to open us up for a raft of civil suits, although that usually happens anyway. This is internal stuff I’m talking about. I’ll still be on the force. I’ll just be reassigned to precinct work, probably Siberia. Some outer borough desk—”

“I can’t believe your captain would let that happen!”

Mike’s laugh was sharp. “My captain was the one who told me to take this meeting solo. He expects me to offer up one of my crew to the political gods. That’s why I came in here so wrecked. But then I slept on it, and when I woke up, I had my answer. I don’t have to sacrifice anybody’s career but my own.”

“Mike, no—”

“That’s it. My decision’s made.”

I wanted to talk him out of it, but I couldn’t think how. Then my pocket started ringing. “Listen, there must be another way—”

“Answer your phone, Clare.” He gently squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll see you at the party tonight. I’ve got to get going.”

As he moved toward the bedroom, I pulled out my cell, checked the screen to see who was calling— although I really didn’t need to, the La bohème ringtone was signal enough.

I had so many questions (not to mention unbridled rants) for my former mother- in-law, I didn’t know where to start. I took a breath, let the call go to voice mail, and stepped into the bathroom.

A long, hot shower, that’s where I start.

Nine

Planning was overrated. She knew that now. The goal itself was paramount.

“Unexpected hurdles may spring up tonight,” she whispered to the image in the bathroom mirror, “but you must remain calm, evaluate quickly, counter with flexibility . . .”

Her first execution had taught her that.

She’d written out everything three years before—details worthy of a textbook flowchart. The result was a rough job at best. Stealing that van, for instance, had been harder than she thought, then pacing the judge’s SUV, lining up the accident . . . so much had been trickier than she’d anticipated. Luckily, on winter nights, most of the roads around the country club of Bay Creek Village were dark and empty.

With the “fatal crash” coming down as little more than a fender bender, improvisation became the order of the day. Idling the engine on the stolen van, she waited for just the right moment. When the judge stumbled out of her banged-up vehicle, down went the gas pedal!

The morning news called it an accident, “a terrible, tragic, hit- and-run . . .”

Boo-hoo for the judge’s husband and family—the same family that cared not a whit about the fate of her own!

By the next day, the idiot box was spinning the story another way: “Police are investigating the suspicious hit-and-run that killed longtime Long Island judge . . .”

“The authorities,” she was continually told, were “actively looking” for the driver. “Was it a tragic accident?” the anchor posited. “Or a premeditated act of vengeance?”

Day after day, it went on. She’d been sick in the bathroom for most of it. The police were going to find her! She was sure of it. They would drag her to prison like her poor mother!

But no one came for her. No one. And the relief was transcendent . . .

She waited after that—an entire year. Then she struck again, her very own act two. The second kill had been as problematic as the first, but she’d succeeded.

Once more, subsequent news reports seemed unfair, relentless, at times even ridiculous, but there was no getting sick in the bathroom. For some reason, she found the second evacuation much easier to swallow.

No one came for her, of course, and she felt even freer to do as she pleased. Still, she wasn’t stupid. She went back to waiting, this time even more than a year . . .

And now the waiting was over.

The world was her stage again, her theater for new trials. “Tonight,” she confided to the mirror. “Tonight begins act three . . .”

Ten

“I can’t believe you slapped me!”

Esther glared at Tucker, shaking her reddening hand, though she managed to hold on to the cookie she’d purloined from his silver tray.

“If you touch another Cappuccino Kiss,” Tuck warned, “I’ll whack your fingers again.”

“There’s no another. That was my first.”

My two senior baristas had been bickering since we got here. Happily, there were no witnesses. Arriving guests were immediately ushered into the rooftop Garden while we set up inside.

And where was inside, exactly? The seventh floor of a skyscraper in the legendary Rockefeller Center, a sprawling complex in midtown Manhattan, home of the GE Building and NBC television.

I had to admit, Alicia chose an impressive address to launch her new product. Crowning this art deco tower was “the Top of the Rock,” a multistory observation deck, somewhat lesser known than the Empire State Building but with equally breathtaking panoramas. Down here on the seventh floor, the Loft & Garden served as a popular space for society weddings and corporate parties. On the east end of this glorified rectangle sat the open-air Garden. It boasted a fountain and reflecting pool. At the west end was the Loft interior with floor-to- ceiling windows and space enough for a reception of two hundred.

As twilight deepened into darkness, the tall windows treated us to views of Radio City’s neon marquee and the fairylike lights of Rock Plaza’s courtyard, where a bronze-cast statue of Prometheus attempted to offer the gift of fire to oblivious tourists strolling below.