Murder by Mocha

Mike sipped, and his eyes widened, the shadows lightening a fraction. “Really, really amazing,” he said, drawing out the words so suggestively I could have sworn he said, Really, really orgasmic.

I smiled. To me, great chocolate was like a perfect espresso—the quickest path between the abyss my customers were stranded in and a sensory experience of transcendent pleasure.

“We just started using a new chocolate supplier,” I explained. “Voss, in Brooklyn. They’re one of the few artisan bean-to-bar chocolatiers in the area . . .”

Bean to bar was the hottest trend in the confectionary industry, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized how much it had in common with my own seed-to-cup specialty coffee business—from partnering with farms in developing countries to small-batch production and passionate service.

“They even import and roast their own beans like we do.”

“Sweetheart, it’s heaven in a mug,” Mike said. “But I still need the espresso hit. I have a one o’clock meeting with the first deputy commissioner, and I can barely keep my eyes open.”

“Then don’t. Crash upstairs. I’ll caffeinate you in time for your meeting.” (The irony of drugging up an antidrug cop didn’t escape me, but I could see Mike wasn’t up for that particular joke.)

“I can crash upstairs?” he said. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“You have to ask? Drink this up and I’ll tuck you in.”

“Tucking me in. I like the sound of that.”

“Good,” I said, moving to check the front-door lock. “As long as you understand: tucking is not a euphemism for something else.”

“It’s only one letter.”

“You need your rest. You look like hell.”

“I feel like hell . . .”

“Then follow me . . .”

I led Mike up the service staircase to my duplex above the Village Blend. (I say “my” because I lived there, not because I owned it.) The apartment was an exquisite little perk that my former mother-in-law handed me with my new employment contract.

Madame Blanche Dreyfus Allegro Dubois had lived here herself for decades when she ran the Blend. Over the years, she’d packed the apartment with imported furniture, lovingly preserved antiques, and an array of paintings and sketches from Village artists (patrons of her shop for nearly a century), which is why she considered me a curator as much as a tenant.

While Mike followed me into the master bedroom, I started some quiet tucking-in-time calculations. The bakery delivery had been made, so I had forty, maybe fifty, minutes to get the truth out of this man before I had to open the shop.

“You want a snack before you crash?” I asked. “I made a batch of my Chocolate-Glazed Hazelnut Bars yesterday. You love those.”

“When I wake up,” Mike said, letting out a long sigh. “I’ll have four.”

I stepped close, tugged the knot of his tie. “So . . . are you going to tell me?”

“What?”

“What went wrong last night. It’s obviously weighing on you.”

As head of the NYPD’s OD Squad (a nickname for a much longer, official sounding moniker), Mike supervised a small group of detectives tasked with the job of investigating criminal activity behind drug overdoses.

Like the NYPD’s Bomb Squad, Mike’s team was based at the Sixth Precinct, just up the street, but they had jurisdiction across all five boroughs, which meant Mike’s workload was heavy, his hours unpredictable, and the mental strain of the political pressure periodically appalling.

For those reasons—and a few others—the man strapped on mental armor daily, along with his service weapon. In the quiet of the bedroom, however, I expected him to loosen that armor, along with his tongue.

“Well?” I pressed.

“You really want to know?”

“You really have to ask?”

Mike didn’t answer, just watched me pull his tie free and begin unbuttoning his dress shirt. He stopped my hands, peeled off his shoulder holster, and took his time hanging it off the back of Madame’s Duncan Phyfe chair.

“Two of my guys,” he slowly began.

“Which guys?”

“Sully and Franco . . . they spoke to a young man earlier in the week, an aspiring artist—”

“Long Island City?”

“Williamsburg. The kid was our key witness in a case against a New Jersey dealer doing business in the city. Looking over his statements, given the ME’s findings, I had some concerns. I went with them both to reinterview . . .”

“And?”

“This kid had been working all week on a sidewalk painting. When he was finished, he went to the roof of his ten-story building and dived off.”

“Oh God. That’s awful . . .”

“His painting was an elaborate bull’s-eye. Nobody realized it until he jumped. He aimed right for the center.”

Mike moved to the carved-mahogany four-poster, sank down on the mattress. “The morning papers already have the story, which I assume will be the subject of my one o’clock meeting with the first deputy commish. My captain asked me to take the meeting solo. He’ll owe me . . . he says.”

I sat next to him, touched his shoulder, felt knots as hard as baseballs. Oh, Mike. I dug in both thumbs, began to massage.

He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Thank you . . .”

I worked him over a minute. “So how messed up is your case?”

“Scale of one to ten? Nine point five. This kid was the fiancé of the girl who OD’d two weeks ago. You remember the one I told you about?”

“The singer?”

“Yeah, beautiful girl, barely out of her twenties. Came here to be the next Lady Gaga. The boyfriend was the one who gave up the dealer. He’d also been the one buying his girl the stuff.”

“It probably made him feel good,” I said. “Knowing she needed him that badly.”

“Except it wasn’t him she needed,” he said. “It was the drug.”

“Sometimes love is a drug.” (I wasn’t speaking rhetorically. Given my history with Joy’s father, I’d spent most of my twenties making amore-addled decisions.)

Mike’s gaze shifted, as if looking for a change of subject. He found it. My sketchbook lay open on the bedside table. He leaned toward it, read the large letters I’d scrawled across the top.

“Aphrodite’s Kitchen? What’s this?”

“Nothing.”

I’d been doodling elaborately around the margins: a big, voluptuous Venus emerging from the sea, a spatula in one hand, an oven mitt on the other. He picked up the book, clearly intrigued by my comic rendition of the Botticelli masterpiece.

“Hey, give that here.”

He teased it out of reach, scanned my list of recipe ideas. “These sound pretty tasty. Any test batches coming my way?”

“As long as you make it to the launch party tonight. I’ll be managing the samples table.”

“Samples for?” He tapped his forehead. “Right. That magical mocha coffee.”

“Mocha Magic Coffee.”

“A rose by any other name.”

“When the name is trademarked, there is no other name.”

“I remember now. You told me about it a few weeks ago. Some new coffee powder that enhances . . .” He