Murder by Mocha

brasserie attached to the hotel. After my tarte tatin, I took off, leaving the two old friends chatting over French pressed Sumatra.

“Earlier in the day, Alicia had mentioned the brasserie’s breakfasts were heavenly,” Madame said. “Fresh- baked croissants, ginger-peach marmalade—”

“Strawberry-lavender jam and p-persimmon preserves,” Alicia added. “J-just divine.”

Madame nodded. “So I brought along a few things for an overnight stay and checked in. We hugged good night and Alicia went back to her room. Then she checked her messages and found a business acquaintance had left her a request for a meeting . . .”

“A business acquaintance,” I repeated into the lengthening silence. “A man? A woman?”

Alicia lifted her head. She burbled something. I looked to Madame.

“A man,” she said flatly.

I turned back to Alicia. “So this man . . . he tried to murder you?”

“No!” She shook her head, began to sob. “He came up to my room and . . . well, he was quite attractive, you know? And we’d been flirting for a few weeks. Naturally, two adults, you know . . . we started to fool around . . . but I had s-so much wine at dinner, I m-must have j-just . . . burble, burble . . .”

I looked to Madame. “She must have?”

“Passed out.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And then what happened?”

Alicia threw up her hands. “That’s just it! I don’t know what happened! Something must have happened. But I slept through it!” She wailed again and buried her face back into the Kleenex cloud.

Madame patted Alicia’s shoulder. “Calm yourself, dear, really . . . you must try. Your hotel room was dark when you woke, isn’t that right?”

Alicia nodded, composing herself. “Dark, yes. The sun was up, but the curtains were drawn. I turned in the bed. Dennis was beside me. I reached out for him, and his skin felt so cold. And then I felt something sticky. I turned on the bedside lamp and then I saw . . .”

Her voice trailed off and Niagara Falls turned on.

Okay, that’s it. Between Alicia’s unremitting tears and this room’s aquatic color scheme, I was beginning to get that drowning feeling.

Standing up, I faced Madame. “What’s her room number?”

She handed me a key card. “Five doors down.” She lowered her voice. “I saw the corpse myself. The situation appears quite serious for my friend here. You let me know what you think.”

Three

Playing people was easy, so astoundingly easy. Just tell them a story—the right kind of story, a story they want to hear. They’ll swallow it whole and ask for seconds . . .

Five years ago, her suicide had been a rebirth—a new life with new people, new work, and a new identity. But she’d become more than a newborn marionette. Now she was the puppeteer, carefully pulling their strings, ultimately controlling the stage.

She glanced out the window, welcomed the strengthening light of the morning sun. Giggles bubbled up, as they often did, and she bit her cheek to quell them. Five years ago, on that railroad bridge, she’d anticipated sacrifice, challenge, pain. What she hadn’t expected was the giddiness. Or the satisfaction.

Such sweet satisfaction!

She had never guessed what astonishing powers this new life would bring: the power to lie and manipulate; the power to be invisible and invincible; the power to dream, to plan, and finally to execute . . .

I stepped out of Madame’s room, into the carpeted corridor. Far down the hall I noticed a housekeeping cart, caught a glimpse of a slender woman with a dirty blond ponytail. Clad in the powder blue uniform of a hotel maid, she used a key card around her neck to slip into one of the guest rooms.

Other than her, the floor was deserted and deadly quiet. I moved along, passing complimentary newspapers, a half-eaten breakfast tray.

Five doors down, I halted. The metal handle looked clean (no blood, thank goodness). I pulled my henley’s sleeve over the fingertips of my right hand. With my left, I dunked Alicia’s keycard into the electronic slot. When the red light went green, I depressed the handle.

The door swung open easily. I took a step forward and shut it behind me.

Alicia had described waking up in a dark room and turning on a lamp, and there was indeed a dim light glowing somewhere inside.

From my position at the door, I couldn’t see the bed, but I could see part of the window across the room. The heavy curtains were tightly closed, which only heightened the feeling of claustrophobic gloom.

In contrast, the air was sweet. A cloying scent seemed oddly familiar, yet I couldn’t peg it. To my right, the bathroom door was half open, and I assumed the aroma came from a scented hair or beauty product.

I took a step along the short entrance hall and saw the edge of the bed. The coverlet and blanket were bunched up at the bottom. Another step revealed a naked pair of large Caucasian male feet. One more step showed hairy legs and finally—

Oh God.

The sight of blood sent me backward. The white sheets were saturated with it, dark red and appearing even darker in the dimly lit space. Dried now, the flow originated from the dead man. He was young (younger than Alicia, anyway) with a square-jawed cover-model face, a thick head of brown hair, and very long sideburns. His physique was long, too, and well muscled with weightlifter cuts and six-pack abs. His torso appeared shaved—all the better to show off his body-sculpting labors.

Unfortunately, Mr. Universe had performed his last rep. The twelve-inch carving knife protruding from his chest had seen to that.

I took a deep breath and swallowed down a bit of bile—along with the primal urge to flee.

“The man’s no longer alive,” I whispered to myself, trying to stay steady. “That’s clear enough . . .”

His chest wasn’t moving, and his complexion carried that “gray-white pallor of death” as Mike referred to it after one of his countless crime scene visits.

A medical examiner would do an autopsy before ruling on the time of death, but even in the dimly lit room, I could see his face, neck, and hands showed no signs of rigor mortis—the first parts of the body to register that morbid stiffness (according to Mike). Neither did they show any defensive wounds, which suggested to me that this man was killed in his sleep, probably within the last few hours. And that, among other things (many other things), would make Alicia a prime “person of interest” to the NYPD.

Of course, I didn’t dare touch a thing, especially the body. I didn’t move any farther into the room, either, but I did take a look around.

Alicia’s laptop sat closed on the desk, a stack of files beside it. Her leather briefcase rested on the floor. A man’s pants and suit jacket had been thrown over the back of a chair. The suit was a fine dark gray, expensive material that draped beautifully.

On the carpet near the base of the bed, Alicia’s polished burgundy pumps were cuddled up to a large pair of scuffed leather loafers. On the bedside table, two empty martini glasses sat next to a vase of severely wilting flowers.

With a start, I heard sudden music—Mimì’s tinny aria from La bohème. I pulled out my cell.

“Are you in?” Madame asked.

“Yes. I’m looking at the body right now.”