On What Grounds (Coffeehouse Mysteries, No. 1) (A Coffeehouse Mystery) by Cleo Coyle Read Free Book Online Page A

rose.
    “Well, Mrs.—”
    “Ms.”
    A barely perceptible sigh came next, and then: “What is your last name, anyway?” he asked. “Officers Langley and Demetrios here somehow failed to get it.”
    “It’s Cosi—Clare Cosi.” I stood, hands on hips, slightly indignant, trying to regain a bit of my lost control. I was in charge of the place, after all.
    But the gesture didn’t help matters much. Even with the comfortable, low-heeled boots I’d pulled on this morning before my favorite pair of straight-legged blue jeans, I barely made five feet three—a good twelve inches below the detective, which he seemed to take note of with mild amusement.
    “Spell it, please.” Lieutenant Quinn brought out his notebook and began to scribble, asking me the same general information I’d already given to Langley and Demetrios—except my last name, of course, which was really just a simple oversight in my opinion.
    “Okay, Ms. Cosi,” said the detective. “Now show me where you found the body.”
    “Girl,” I said.
    “What?” Quinn mumbled. He was looking around the room, taking more notes.
    “She’s not a ‘body,’” I said. “She’s a girl. She’s alive. And breathing.”
    “Just a figure of speech,” Quinn tossed back.
    “Anabelle Hart is not a figure of speech. She’s a pretty young woman. Alive and breathing. Not a body —so frankly, I don’t see why you need to be here. Nobody is dead !”
    The detective’s pen stilled on his rectangular notebook. He looked at me. Then he glanced at Langley and Demetrios. I couldn’t see their faces, but I knew my own face was hot. It was probably flushed bright red by now, and I could feel my lungs laboring with each breath.
    “New York City Homicide detectives don’t just investigate shootings, stabbings, and stranglings,” Quinn said, so calmly and slowly I got the feeling he thought I was about one step from Bellevue’s psych ward. “We also investigate any suspicious death or accident that appears will result in death. No need to get emotional, Ms. Cosi.”
    There is nothing that makes me more emotional than a man telling me not to get emotional. My ex did that, too. As I recall, he’d said it the very day I had to tell him our marriage was over. If only everything else would have been over that day, too, including and especially the emotion. But it hadn’t. It took well over a year before I stopped wearing his ring.
    I suddenly noticed the gold band on the detective’s left hand. Automatically, I glanced at the pockets of his trenchcoat. Sure enough one held that telltale sign—tiny smudges of chocolate, made by little searching fingers. Daddy, what did you bring me?
    Matteo had played that same game with Joy when she’d been very young. Coming back from whatever continent he’d been exploring that month, he always had something special for her, some trinket, exotic toy, or candy. As she grew older, childish gifts gave way to audiotapes of foreign pop bands or interesting native recipes; and as she grew into a young woman and began to understand just how long Daddy was sometimes gone—without so much as a hotel postcard—the gifts became downright lavish: hand-tooled leather backpacks and jackets, filigreed rings, and necklaces of pearl, platinum, jade, and ivory.
    I resented the gifts at first, saw them as cheap, pacifying bribes from a man too busy to be a father. But then I realized how much they meant to Joy. And how much her father meant. And I said nothing after that.
    “We have amazing miniature pastries in the afternoon,” I told the detective. “Tiny chocolate éclairs and mini canollis. Children love them.”
    Lieutenant Quinn’s brow furrowed. Now he really was looking at me as if I’d gone over the edge.
    “Your right pocket,” I said, quickly realizing the pastry comment probably sounded like the looniest nonsequitur on record.
    “My what ?”
    “Right pocket. Of your trenchcoat.”
    Langley, Demetrios, and Quinn all turned