2 Grounds for Murder Read online

  In other words, Sarah chain-smoked. Except in her own house, since she was now the guardian of two children. Sarah was considerate of their lungs, but hers – and the rest of ours – didn’t seem to matter very much.

  While Caron might be both my business partner and my oldest friend, Sarah was probably my closest. Caron, despite being a terrible flirt, had that happy-marriage vibe going with her husband, Bernie. While I loved both Caron and Bernie, these days they made me want to hurl – as my son Eric would say.

  Yeah, I know. Sour grapes. Or, in my case, crushed, fermented and bottled. The only relationship in my life right now was with red wine. Red didn’t mind if I got home at eight thirty or nine at night and cried over a juicy old movie until I fell asleep on the couch. While wine might be impudent, it was seldom snarky or demanding. A little spice, a fair amount of oak and the best of them get better with age. What more could a woman want from a beau?

  Except maybe to get corked occasionally.

  I’d been hoping for a more . . . animate lover when I’d met Brookhills County Sheriff Jake Pavlik. Currently, though, we were facing date-us interruptus, a condition brought on by fifteen-hour days on my part and an unpredictable schedule on Pavlik’s. The fact that I still call him by his last name is an indication of the level of intimacy we’ve achieved.

  Which was yet another reason I couldn’t, wouldn’t devote time to Java Ho. Any free moment I had, I planned to devote to becoming a ho myself.

  Antonio slipped out the backdoor with a ‘ciao’ as the bell on the front chimed. Anxious to avoid further nagging from Caron, I fled out into the store to greet the customer, who apparently was hacking up a lung.

  I had the cough pegged before I rounded the corner. ‘Sarah, you sound awful.’ I waved at the cigarette in her hand. ‘And put that thing away. You know you can’t smoke in here.’

  Uncharacteristically, Sarah did exactly what I said. Mid-drag, she took the cigarette out of her mouth and plopped it in her jacket pocket.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ I tried to pat her pocket down.

  Sarah laughed, which was even more frightening than the spontaneous human combustion I feared. My friend has huge teeth, but not the big ‘look-at-me’ choppers of actresses and actors. Unless the actor was Mr Ed.

  ‘Gotcha,’ she said, pulling the cigarette out and waving it under my nose.

  I sniffed. ‘It’s not lighted. But I could have sworn you were inhaling.’

  ‘Who do you think I am, Bill Clinton? Of course, I inhaled.’

  I grabbed the cigarette. ‘Hey, this isn’t a . . .’ I stopped as a thought struck me. ‘This is one of those nicotine inhalers, isn’t it? Are you quitting?’ I didn’t add the word ‘again’. It seemed petty. God forbid I should be petty.

  ‘Again?’ Caron called from the back.

  Ahh. All the satisfaction with none of the guilt.

  ‘Yup.’ Sarah pulled a chair away from one of the café tables and turned it around to straddle it. ‘But this baby is going to do the trick.’

  I examined the white plastic cylinder. ‘So, how does it work?’ I asked. ‘Is it different from the nicotine patch or the gum?’

  Sarah took it from me. ‘This end of the puffer is really a nicotine cartridge. I inhale nicotine, but much less than I would smoking a cigarette.’

  ‘And “less” is enough to keep you sane?’ I was trying not to sound skeptical, but I’d already seen Sarah through four hours of cold turkey, three days of the patch, two weeks of the gum and one really embarrassing hour of hypnotic suggestion.

  She took a drag. ‘Are you kidding? They want me to use sixteen cartridges a day to start out and each cartridge lasts twenty minutes. That’s over five hours of puffing, which pretty much gives me all the oral fix that I need.’ She bared her teeth and snickered.

  There was some sense to what she was saying, though.

  I’d smoked for a short time in my early twenties and, when I’d quit, I’d missed the ‘act’ of smoking even more than those tasty toxic chemicals. Smoking gives you something to do when your dinner date stands you up, or arrives half an hour late, or picks his nose. Plus, if worst came to worst, you could set him on fire.

  Of course, that was back in the days when you could smoke in restaurants. What did people do now to kill time and the occasional bad date?

  Cellphones and text-messaging, naturally – at least for the first. The addictions of a new generation. But I mentally digress.

  ‘. . . convention center is non-smoking, so I figure this should get me through Java Ho,’ Sarah was saying.

  I tried to regain the ground I’d lost. Or missed. ‘So you really are running the exhibit hall?’

  Caron’s voice: ‘I told you.’

  I turned to Sarah. ‘But why take on such a huge headache? The exhibit hall at a coffee convention has to have hundreds of suppliers, each one of them vying for the best space.’

  ‘So? Let them vie.’ Sarah took a drag and blew make-believe smoke up to the ceiling. ‘Inside or outside, it’s still real estate.’

  ‘Location, location, location,’ Caron offered from the back.

  Shaddup, shaddup, shaddup.

  ‘Exactly.’ Sarah laughed. ‘Except in this case, I can tell them where to go.’

  ‘So you vent your nicotine rage on the Java Ho vendors, instead of your clients.’ Now that made sense, knowing Sarah.

  ‘If I scream obscenities at a bunch of coffee roasters and frappa-whatever-makers, it doesn’t cost me thousands in commissions,’ Sarah agreed. ‘Besides, I owe LaRoche. He’s bought a lot of property through me.’

  Didn’t I know it. ‘Like the spot where the new HotWired is located?’

  ‘We’ve been through this, Maggy. Business is business.’ Sarah shrugged and took a deep drag, turning a little purple in the process. ‘Another real estate agent comes in here, are you telling me you won’t sell him coffee?’

  ‘That’s different and you know it.’

  Sarah puffed again. ‘You get paid when you sell coffee. I get paid when I sell property. You tell me what’s different.’

  ‘Because I’m not . . .’ I started, then clamped my mouth closed. Sarah’s biggest competition, Rasmussen Realty, was one of our best corporate clients. We regularly supplied coffee for their meetings and ‘Welcome Home’ gift baskets for their clients when they moved into their new houses. Rasmussen brokers were in and out of Uncommon Grounds on a daily basis. I guess one could argue that we were fueling them to outsell Sarah.

  If one were an idiot.

  Caron stuck her head around the corner. ‘Sarah, can I make you the usual?’

  Sarah nodded. We both kept our mouths shut as my partner positioned the basket of our long-handled porta-filter under the cone grinder. She pulled the lever twice, releasing a measured amount of espresso into the filter basket for Sarah’s latte.

  ‘You could have warned us at least,’ I muttered, not taking my eyes off Caron.

  ‘I may not be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a priest,’ Sarah said, ‘but I do have to maintain confidentiality. I couldn’t say anything until the sale of the property to LaRoche was made public. By him.’ She took a deep drag on her nicotine inhaler. Then another.

  Caron had steamed the skim milk and set aside the pitcher. Now she twisted the porta-filter on to the espresso machine and pushed a button.

  Yet another drag from Sarah. She was going to asphyxiate herself.

  I sighed. ‘OK, so you couldn’t tell me, what with the Real Estate Brokers’ Code of Ethics and all.’ Probably right there on the shelf next to Robert’s Rules of Used Car Salesmanship.

  I hesitated. ‘But how long did you know—’

  ‘Lay off, Thorsen,’ Sarah snarled. ‘Do you want to do this convention or not? It’ll be fun. Shit or get off the commode.’

  Well, she sure was making it sound like fun.

  The espresso started to gurgle down through the filter into the miniature metal pitcher Caron had positioned below it and I glanced up at the
clock to time the shot. Ten seconds. Too fast.

  Before Caron could pour it into Sarah’s mug, I reached over and dumped the espresso down the drain. Quality control.

  ‘Short shot,’ I snapped. ‘You can’t serve that.’

  OK, so I was ornery. Caron, trying to coerce me into running LaRoche’s barista competition. Antonio, cozying up to LaRoche and his HotWired stores. And now Sarah, not only aiding the man’s expansion of his evil coffee empire, but running Java Ho’s exhibit hall. Was that a giant sucking-up noise I heard?

  Instead of getting angry at my shot interference, Caron smiled sweetly at me. ‘See? You’re a natural espresso Nazi, no matter what you think. You have to run the barista competition.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Time to back-peddle. ‘You need me here.’

  Sarah grinned. ‘Caron can handle it, Maggy. And Courtney and Sam will help.’

  Courtney and Sam were Sarah’s teenage charges. I was being manipulated by a master, I realized. By two masters. What I didn’t know was why.

  I was about to find out.

  Caron said, ‘That would be great. One thing, though –’ her smile grew wider as she turned to me – ‘while you’re there, Maggy, I need you to steal us a barista.’

  ‘To steal a . . .?’

  ‘Specifically, I need you to steal Amy.’

  Chapter Three

  Amy.

  The name struck fear within competitive barista circles.

  I have a tendency to underestimate Caron in things commercial. She’s been out of the corporate world for nearly two decades, having decided to stay home when her son, Nicky, was born. I’d continued to work after having Eric, in part because I loved what I did, but also because Ted was just getting his dental practice up and running and we needed the money.

  This was after I’d put him through dental school, of course. Not that I’d minded. It was for our future, after all. Little did I know that ‘our’ future would turn out to be a ménage à trois, with me the trois. Twit.

  I’d caught glimpses of Ted and his bit of floss playing tennis at the Brookhills Racquet Club on my way home from Uncommon Grounds recently. My ex-husband looked happy and fit – far from the man who was always ‘too tired’ to take me out on the boat or come with me to the health club. I wondered if Ted had a portrait of the couch potato he’d once been, hidden in the attic. Sort of a pudgy Dorian Grey.

  But back to Caron, who was obviously far wilier than me, despite her freckled face and button nose. She knew that the competition was a veritable smorgasbord of baristi, with the best in the business there for the picking.

  And we did need a barista. Enough of the long days and lonely nights. And, bless her, not only did Caron know where to find a barista, she had set her sights high.

  Amy was legendary. She was more rock star than barista. She had piercings. Lots of them. And racing-striped hair. And tattoos.

  Truth is, I admire people who march to a different drummer – or, in Amy’s case, dance to an alternative rock band. I was just stunned that Caron wanted that band playing in our store.

  ‘Wait a second,’ I said. ‘Remember when we used to hang out at Janalee’s Place?’ That would be back when we drank lattes instead of making them. In other words, the good old days. ‘You told me you thought Amy looked like the Antichrist.’

  Caron just grinned. ‘Amy rocks, Maggy.’

  There’s something pathetic about a forty-something talking like an eighteen-year-old.

  ‘Listen, I like her, too,’ I said. ‘But Amy manages Janalee’s Place. For your friend, Marvin LaRoche.’

  But Caron’s face was glowing with an unnatural light. ‘Amy’s the best, Maggy.’ She put her hand over her heart. ‘You must get her for me.’

  Too weird, but I was starting to understand, at least. Amy was a status symbol for Caron. Like driving a Mercedes or carrying the right handbag. ‘You want a designer barista,’ I said, flatly. ‘What is she? Gucci? Fendi? Prada?’

  ‘Nah,’ Sarah piped in. ‘Amy’s edgier. Maybe Marc Jacobs.’

  I shot Sarah a disbelieving look. I wasn’t sure which was more amazing – that Caron wanted a trophy barista, or that Sarah knew what a designer was.

  Caron reached over and took my hand. ‘Marvin LaRoche doesn’t deserve her.’

  On that, at least, we could agree.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy,’ Caron continued, as I tried to take back my hand, ‘Amy has worked for Janalee since she was in high school. But I do hear there’s some friction between Amy and Marvin. You can work that angle.’

  ‘Why am I working any angle?’ I asked. ‘Like I said, if you think this is such a good idea, you run the competition. Or if all we want is a barista, why don’t you just call Amy and make her an offer?’

  Caron and Sarah exchanged looks.

  Sarah finally answered. ‘We already have. She refused.’

  ‘We wanted to get her for you for your birthday,’ Caron added. ‘So you could have sex.’

  ‘For the record, I’m heterosexual.’ At least so far. My forty-third birthday had been just last week.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Sarah snapped. ‘We want you to have sex with that sheriff of yours, Pavlik.’

  A noble goal. And one that a barista, who could take the occasional early shift, would admittedly facilitate.

  ‘Besides,’ Caron said, ‘I think you could use some time away from the store. You’re a little . . . intense these days.’

  Intense? I was intense?

  ‘You’ve assigned seats.’ Sarah pointed to the wall where I’d tacked up a notice that read: This seat reserved for Henry. If you’re NOT Henry, keep your butt off.

  Henry Wested lived at the senior center across the street from Uncommon Grounds. He had come in once a day since we’d opened, like clockwork. Lately though, he had taken to visiting a second time, forgetting he’d already been there. Or he didn’t come in at all. It worried me.

  ‘Henry gets confused if there’s anybody sitting in his chair,’ I said, a slightly defensive tone creeping into my voice.

  ‘And you made Jodi McCarthy and Mary Smith sit together last week,’ Caron said, ‘and you know their sons are competing for starting quarterback at Brookhills High. Jodi and Mary hate each other.’

  I snorted. ‘Then they should grow up. Besides, the tennis moms needed a table, and there were four of them. I didn’t want them to walk out.’

  ‘Like Mrs Doherty did, when she said you were using the froth on her latte to make dirty pictures?’

  ‘That was Princess Leia,’ I said, through clenched teeth. ‘From Star Wars.’

  ‘Looked like a schlong to me,’ Sarah muttered, as Caron pushed the button to brew another shot of espresso.

  This time it took twenty-three seconds to pass through the grounds. Caron had timed it perfectly. I reached over, took the shot from her and tipped it into the mug.

  Sarah waggled her head. ‘Besides, just think of all the people you’ll get to push around at Java Ho.’

  ‘Don’t you have somewhere else to be?’ I asked her, adding the milk.

  ‘In fact, I do,’ she said. ‘I need to see Janalee at three thirty. Come with me and talk to Marvin.’

  I started to say ‘no’, but figured, what the hell? Why let LaRoche and HotWired hog the spotlight? Managing the barista competition would not only increase Uncommon Grounds’ visibility in the industry, it would also let me keep tabs on LaRoche. Maybe make his life a living hell for the weekend.

  Suddenly, this was sounding better and better.

  Besides, Caron was right: I did need a change of scenery, and this way I could enjoy the entire barista competition without feeling like I was ducking out on her. In fact, my partner was encouraging me to play hooky.

  Sold. I ruined the picture-perfect latte by slopping it into a to-go cup. ‘You win,’ I said, handing the cup to Sarah. ‘Let’s go, so I can be “intense” with LaRoche.’

  ‘Don’t forget about Amy,’ Caron called after us.
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br />   Marvin LaRoche’s office was above his newest store, which meant it would take us all of two minutes to reach it.

  ‘You know, a little exercise wouldn’t hurt you,’ I said, as Sarah revved up her 1975 lemon yellow Firebird. ‘We could walk.’

  She slapped the transmission into reverse. ‘It’s nearly a mile, Maggy. That’s not exercise, it’s insanity.’

  ‘It’s six-tenths of a mile,’ I said. ‘I measured.’

  ‘You would,’ Sarah muttered as we pulled out of the parking lot and on to Civic Drive. At the corner, she turned right on to Brookhill Road.

  I’d researched traffic patterns and we’d ultimately decided to locate Uncommon Grounds in Benson Plaza, a glorified strip mall on the southeast corner of Civic and Brookhill Road. Brookhill was the main drag into the city and I knew we’d attract commuters who wanted to pick up coffee for their drive to work.

  Unfortunately, HotWired’s newest location offered that same convenience, and LaRoche hadn’t needed to do any research to find that out. Not only had I done it, but I’d been stupid enough to tell him about it.

  I had met LaRoche at last year’s Java Ho and had considered him the pinnacle of my conference networking. What a find! Marvin LaRoche seemed to know everyone in coffee. He had been our coffee fairy godfather, acting as a sounding board and advising us as we were learning the ropes. After all, LaRoche said, that’s what people in the industry do for newcomers, assuming they weren’t in their market area.

  Well, now we were in his market – or more precisely – he was in ours. And I didn’t like it a bit.

  We passed Schultz’s Market and my stomach, always open to suggestion, growled. The store was a little pricey, but they had great produce, seafood and wine. Even better, they also prepared what I called TiVo-dinners. Fresh precooked meals you could take home, heat up and enjoy in front of your favorite digitally recorded movies and shows.

  Tonight, though, I planned to cook. Given my schedule and lack of funds, I was trying to eat healthier these days. And cheaper. While TiVo-dinners were good, they sure weren’t cheap.