Murder by Mocha

understandings. I might have been put off if Joy and I hadn’t engaged in a few private looks of our own.

Dessert and coffee went quickly, thanks to Franco’s inhaling of my fresh-baked cookies. I’d contemplated making an easy, self-saucing Chocolate-Chip Cobbler, or my quick Chocolate Crostada, but I had two kinds of dough already chilling in the fridge. The first was my secret recipe for “Pure Ecstasy” Chocolate-Chip Cookies.

With brown butter, espresso powder, homemade brown sugar, and two kinds of chips, my version of the time-honored American cookie produced a toffee-like gourmet treat with mouthwatering notes of buttery caramel. Naming them was easy: Mike never failed to make his man-in-ecstasy noise when he consumed them. (Actually, he said they qualified as a drug.)

The other dough I had chilling was a classic peanut butter.

Franco rivaled Elvis in his love of peanut butter. (This I knew from the Five-Borough Bake Sale.) And since an ICE chocolatier handed me a promo bag of sixty percent cacoa chips, I decided to create a “surprise” cookie center of dark chocolate. The result was a sweet and tender peanut butter cookie with the kind of ooey-gooey chocolate heart that grown men swooned for.

My daughter liked the cookies okay, but her swooning was for Manny. Eager to be alone with him, they departed to go “clubbing”—in the East Village, they assured us, not East Jersey.

Just before they headed out, I noticed Quinn murmur something to Franco (in a seriously dangerous tone) about GPS tracking. The young sergeant looked fairly cowed on that front. Then again, I speared the man with the kind of motherly glare that warned: if you even think about taking my daughter across the Hudson, you won’t see another sunrise.

Alone again with Mike, the fireplace newly stoked, I settled into the sofa beside him. With our hot mugs of coffee and a fresh plate of warm cookies, time stretched luxuriously again, like that fine square of Valrhona dark chocolate melting on my tongue (or, in this case, the gooey chocolate centers of my Peanut Butter Surprises).

“Sweetheart, these are...”

I think he said outstanding. His mouth was too busy chewing to tell.

“Freezing the dough balls before baking is the secret to successfully stuffing a cookie with chocolate,” I said, absently channeling an old In the Kitchen with Clare column. “Not that you need to know that in your line of work.”

He laughed, leaned back, and put his arm across the sofa back, coaxing me to tuck into his long, strong body. (I didn’t need coaxing.)

“Actually, I made them for Franco,” I confessed, snuggling closer, “a foodie token of thanks for backing me up today.”

Mike fell silent after that, a somewhat sullen silence it seemed to me.

“Okay, what’s wrong?”

“You got a bloody nose,” he said. “Franco shouldn’t have let that happen . . .”

We’d recounted the story at dinner—Franco and I took turns telling it (although I left out the part about the Incredible Hulk Vince checking me out, and Franco left out the Milk Duds girl).

“You’re missing the point,” I said. “Troy Talos was cutting off my air. If Franco hadn’t doubled back and body-slammed the jerk, I would have had more than a bloody nose. I would have had brain damage.”

“You’re the one missing the point, Cosi. Franco shouldn’t have taken Joy across the Hudson last night—and today you and he both should have called Soles and Bass.”

“Oh, please. Do not equate what I did with what Joy did. I phoned Lori Soles. I got her voice mail. I only went to the ICE show to see if Nutrition Nation was giving out black umbrellas. Then Alicia’s Candy Man dropped in as the Apollo of Abs and . . . well, it just snowballed!”

“Take it easy. I’m not looking for an argument.”

“Neither am I...”

I shouldn’t have been surprised at Mike’s criticism of Franco. Mike was his supervisor, after all, responsible for his actions and well-being. On the other hand, I’d seen Mike bend the rules, even bend the truth if it would help him get the job done, because like all good detectives, Quinn was as much Odysseus as Dudley Do-Right. He was valiant but he was wily.

Well, so am I...

With long sips of my dark, rich (still-unnamed) coffee blend, I let the silence stretch between us until the man’s inner Odysseus emerged again.

“So what happened?” Mike finally asked (as I knew he would). “I mean after Franco sent the One Seven your convention-center cargo? What did Soles and Bass tell you?”

“Not much I didn’t know already. They did find out how Troy pulled the stabbed-to-death routine.”

“Fake knife?”

“Not exactly. The carving knife was real but the blade was sliced off, the bottom bent into a ninety-degree angle. Flesh-colored latex sealed the flat end to the man’s chest in an upright position and all that fake blood camouflaged the latex. That and a sedative with a zombie cocktail to slow his heartbeat and cool his skin and the illusion was complete.”

“Clever.”

“It was. And it almost worked, too. Vanessa was all ready to play the part of Troy’s wife, pounding on the hotel room door to confront her cheating husband—only to find him stabbed to death and Alicia the likely suspect.”

“I get the scam. Alicia should have opened the door fuzzy from a drugged martini, hysterical from waking up next to a corpse—and, therefore, amenable to Vanessa’s suggestions.”

“Like give me some money and get out of town fast,” I said. “Then Alicia would have missed her own product launch party, which would have damaged her standing with her boss, Aphrodite, especially with Maya Lansing swooping in to steal the show along with a big chunk of the Mocha Magic profits. And that’s exactly what Patrice Stone wanted—to bring Alicia down a peg and move herself up the game board, closer to becoming Aphrodite’s successor.”

“So is the Fish Squad picking up Alicia Bower for an interview?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Their lieutenant doesn’t think the case is strong enough. No physical evidence has turned up to implicate Alicia—not yet. They’re still looking.”

“Yeah,” Mike said on an exhale. “I’ve been there, all right...”

“As Sue Ellen put it to me: ‘Even a half-wit of a defense attorney could pull apart a case of circumstantial evidence.’ ”

“It’s true... especially if there were others at that party who had motive.”

“On the other hand, Lori said this new development has moved Alicia up their persons of interest list. Troy and Vanessa have solid alibis for last night: They were working the ICE show with plenty of witnesses. And they admitted that Patrice paid them for a criminal ‘prank’ against Alicia, which would have given Alicia a very strong motive for murder. The whole thing narrows the field for the Fish Squad’s investigation.”

“It also narrows the field for the detectives analyzing the crime scene.”

“You mean they’ll start looking to match physical evidence to Alicia?”

“That’s how they’ll build the case against her. They’ll find something. And when they do, they’ll secure warrants, uncover what they can to get a confession. It’s barely been twenty-four hours. You just have to—”

“Wait. I know. It’s what detectives do.”

“You’re usually pretty good at waiting.”

“Not in this case.”

“Why?”

“Well . . .”

I paused, took a breath, and raised my mug for a long, strong sip of fortification. I didn’t want to ruin the evening, but I had to bring this up—

“Alicia’s product,” I said. “The Mocha Magic powder. . .”

“What about it?”

Mike shifted on the sofa, suddenly uncomfortable—which didn’t make me all that comfortable, either. Leaning forward, I put distance between us, enough to see the truth in his midnight blues.