plumping her pillows. Consuelo brought her a cup of cocoa, too, even fixed a tray for me and Matt before retiring herself.
“Okay, she’s resting comfortably,” my ex-husband said, striding out of his mother’s bedroom. “She insisted on calling a lawyer for Alicia, but she’s finally settled in. Now talk to me, Clare...”
“Sit down,” I told Matt, cradling the warm cup. The rich, heady aroma of fine European chocolate reminded me how Madame had fussed and clucked over me during my pregnancy. The drink tasted of everything that was sweet and comforting and good. “Have some cocoa.”
Matt remained standing. He folded his arms. “I want to know
“Lower your voice—I’m going to tell you. But I want you to sit down first. This is liable to be a shock . . .”
When Matt finally settled on the sofa, I explained it all: how Mike Quinn got involved, how he read the police file, how Madame was thrown in jail for protecting a cop killer.
“I can’t believe she did that . . .” Matt was holding his head now, just as shocked and upset as I knew he’d be. “When did this happen exactly?”
I gave him the dates.
“I remember that time . . .” He sat back, gaze going glassy. “About a year after my father died, Mother arranged for me to spend six months with the Gostwick family—they were good friends of my father’s, and they owned a coffee farm in Costa Gravas.”
“I know the Gostwicks, Matt. You and Ric are best friends...”
“I’m just trying to explain. I missed my dad so much back then. I was failing out of school, getting into fights . . .” He shook his head. “It must have been extremely difficult for my mother. You know, I didn’t even think about it then. I only thought about myself, my own grief. But now that I’m a father...” His voice caught. “I think it must have been very hard for her to send me away like that. Maybe it screwed up her judgment.”
“Maybe. But I’m sure she hoped the change would be good for you.”
“Oh, it was. I learned so much over those months. Ric’s father taught me about the coffee business from the bottom up, and we traveled, too, because the family loved to sail. They showed me Jamaica, Haiti, much of the Caribbean. We even motored through Central America. I came back to New York fluent in Spanish and Creole French, feeling ready to take on the world.”
“And you did . . .”
Just a few years later, Matt went off alone to backpack Europe. I was staying with relatives, studying Renaissance art. We met in Italy. One chance encounter on a beach, and our lives changed forever.
“Well,” I said, “if you were in Costa Gravas that long, it explains why you don’t remember this character O‘Neil. He must have duped your mother into the relationship because, according to the police file, Cormac O’Neil was one dirty cop.”
“Cormac O’Neil was one
Madame’s voice was fixed and strong. She stood in the doorway to her bedroom, a white silk robe wrapped elegantly around her, her bearing as regal as ever.
“Cormac was also a righteous man. The best. I’m sure he still is.”
I set down my cup. “That’s not what the police file says.”
“And I was not
Matt and I exchanged glances. Was this guy a devil or a saint? He couldn’t be both. Could he?
Matt stood. His voice was soft. “I’d like to know everything, Mother. I think you better start from the beginning.”
Forty-One
Ten minutes later, we had heard most of her story—a completely different version than the one on file with the NYPD. According to Matt’s mother, Detective Cormac O’Neil came into her life about the same time as Alicia Bower.
“You said Alicia worked for you as a barista,” Matt reminded her.
“That’s right. She’d been raised with quite a lot of money and status on Long Island, but her family lost everything when her father was caught running an investment scam. The fallout was terrible for her. She was finishing up her senior year at New York University—suddenly, she had no money to her name, and she badly needed work.
“Alicia loved our Blend. She was there all the time as a customer, with her books, between classes—so I hired her. I trained her as a barista, and she really took to it. She worked so much and so well, I even made her my assistant manager. I came to trust her like you two trust Tucker.”
“I get it,” Matt said. “But why don’t I remember her?”
“Because, by the time you came home from Costa Gravas, she was accepted into a graduate program at the school she mentioned tonight—Bay Creek Women’s College. She earned her doctorate and was offered a position as an assistant professor. But not before she helped me get through what became one of the best and worst summers of my life . . .”
“Because of O’Neil?”
“It didn’t start with him. It started with a couple of young punks who decided to run a criminal enterprise from a corner table of our second floor.”
Matt looked stricken. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, it was over by the time you came home. Everything was. And back then Greenwich Village was a much different place than it is today.”
“I remember,” Matt said.
Even I knew that. New York had gone through a devastating fiscal crisis in the seventies. The early eighties weren’t much better. Crime exploded, graffiti covered everything, dealers sold drugs openly, and the Village . . . well, it was a much less polished and picturesque place.
Because rents were lower, artists, musicians, actors, and writers were still living here in great numbers amid the cobblestone streets and Federal-style walk-ups, but so were druggies and vagrants. Eclectic, offbeat shops were more prevalent, too, and so were empty storefronts and crumbing property facades.
“Cormac came in for coffee every so often,” Madame continued. “We’d never spoken beyond polite greetings, but suddenly, I needed help. I didn’t want the police to think I was profiting from the loan-sharking and drug dealing those men were engaged in, so I told Cormac about my problem. Within a week, he set up a sting and had them arrested.”
I glanced at Matt—so far, this guy didn’t sound dirty.
“Cormac became a regular after that. Since I refused to take his money, he insisted I go out to dinner with him. He was a proud, quiet man, but he knew about loss and pain, and... he was a good listener.”
She turned toward her son. “I was still grieving for your father, and Cormac could see that. But he helped me work through my sadness over those months when you were gone, and . . .we fell in love.”
I picked up my cup and took a long drink of warm chocolate. This was a sweet and poignant story, but I knew it was about to take a bad turn. Swallowing hard, I braced myself.
“Cormac and I were happy. We’d settled into a routine, began making plans for the future, and I didn’t think anything could hurt us, but . . . as the summer progressed, he became tense and even more quiet than usual.
“One night, he confided in me. There were dirty cops in his precinct. He wasn’t sure how to handle it because he didn’t know where in the chain of command the corruption stopped, and he needed hard evidence and solid witnesses for the charge.
“Soon after, I received a phone call. Cormac was frantic. He’d been on an apartment building rooftop, arresting a dealer when a young patrolman appeared out of nowhere and blew the perpetrator’s head off.”
