A Brew to a Kill (46 page)

A
short time later, we were in my duplex kitchen again, downing coffee and leftover slices of groom’s cake. Quinn’s team followed through with the mop up, processing the Dragon Lady and her minions, but he wanted to make sure we got home okay.

Quinn also mentioned that he was waiting for some kind of important confirmation. When a call came through, he appeared relieved by the message.

“You’ll be happy about this, Allegro,” he said after hanging up. “Looks like you can start adding those Brazil stamps to your passport again.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Just confirmed. A DEA fast-action team took out your drug lord and his gang. They’d been working off your intelligence all week, and your friend Nino—”

“Not Nino!” Matt cried. “He’s just a poor, innocent farmer. Don’t tell me—”

“Take it easy. Nino is giving us full cooperation.”

Matt paused. “Is that code? Is he an ‘asset’ now?”

“It’s better than a prisoner.”

“I’m just glad this whole thing’s over,” Matt said, rising to hit the sack. “Nothing against you two, but I cannot wait to move back to my Sutton Place apartment. Bree’s flying in tomorrow, and I plan to be at the airport with a big, fat, ridiculously expensive bouquet.”

“Good night, Allegro.” Quinn stood, held out his hand. “I’m happy you’re glad.”

“Thanks,” Matt said, clasping his hand. “I mean it.
Thanks.
That new boss of yours should be happy, too.”

“New boss?” I said.

Matt froze and the room went dead silent. Then Quinn met my eyes, and my spirits sank lower than our roasting room floor.

M
IKE
made love to me that night like he never had before. The way he touched me, looked at me, the expression in his eyes… At one point we both shed tears, and a part of me knew just because of that. But I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t ask.

The next morning, as I lay in Mike’s arms, the rising sun brought an end to our brief oasis, shedding light on the hard truth I didn’t want to face. The sacrifice Matt had mentioned, the one I’d have to make, was about to begin.

Mike’s explanation was terse but clear: The U.S. attorney who’d lured him to D.C. for a job offer had wanted him on a special task force so badly that he’d brokered a deal.

In the dead of night, when my ex-husband and I had been under arrest by the DEA, that federal attorney went to the mountaintop to help Mike help us—but with one caveat: Mike had to join the attorney’s D.C. team.

“In other words,” I whispered, “you’re leaving me.”

“I’m
not
leaving you. Get that straight.”

“But you’re taking a job in Washington.”

“It was the only way…”

“How could it be?”

Mike paused, took a breath. “Do you know who made that
phone call in the dead of night? The man who put the fear of God into those federal agents?”

“Who?”

“It was the attorney general, Clare.”

“The attorney general,” I rasped. “Of the United States of America? The man in charge of the NSA, CIA, DEA—”

“That’s right, all the A’s.”

“The
attorney general
demanded those agents release me and Matt to your custody?”

“And you were—but you don’t get favors from a deity without paying tribute.”

“You’re the tribute!”

“It’s a one-year special assignment. Sully’s taking over the day-to-day of my squad. My captain’s agreed to the arrangement. The PD’s holding my place for me. I’ll check in as much as I can.”

“And that’s your plan for us?” My voice was barely there. “Don’t you want me to move with you?”

“Clare,” he said, “Your whole life is here. It’s who you are. You can’t leave. You’ve told me that.”

“But Mike—” I couldn’t stop them any longer; the tears were spilling out.

“The year will go by fast, sweetheart. I promise.” He tightened his arms around me, pressed his lips to my head. “I’ll come back to you as often as I can—and you’re welcome to visit me as much as you like. But until this year’s assignment is over, that’s the most I can give you.”

I didn’t know what to say, and that’s when he reminded me—

“Just a short time ago, didn’t you tell me that you needed more time?”

I closed my eyes.
Oh, god.

“Well, now you have it…”

It’s one of Murphy’s Laws, isn’t it? You only get what you want when you don’t want it anymore.

The hardest part for me was knowing how this miserable situation had come about. Mike had agreed to the deal
because he cared for me. It was our closeness that made him accept a job that would keep us apart.

Could time and distance erode feelings as powerful as that? I hoped and prayed that wouldn’t happen. But I knew it could, and Mike was probably asking the very same question about me.

Digging deep, I searched for an answer to this impossible situation. I knew God worked in his own time—not to mention mysterious ways. But I’d always trusted His plan, even when my own choices had tested the heck out of me.

“At some point in their lives,” I finally said, “parents are supposed to start learning from their children.”

“Are we there yet?”

“Joy and Franco are a lot farther apart than you and I will be.” Somewhere in the tears, I found a smile. “On the other hand, you don’t Tweet. And you’re not even on Facebook.”

He touched my wet cheek, his expression raw but real. “I love you, Clare Cosi.”

“Hold that thought.”

“I will,” Mike promised. “Just remember, the train from D.C. to New York goes both ways.”

T
HE
following Tuesday, I kissed Mike Quinn good-bye on the platform at Penn Station. After watching his train depart, I wiped away my tears and returned to my Village Blend.

Lilly Beth was now conscious and out of the ICU. According to the text message I’d received from Terry, she was craving a good cup of coffee, so I prepared a very special thermos of Ambrosia, and headed across town to the hospital.

No surprise, I found Detective Buckman at her bedside. Pausing in the doorway, I watched the two of them with deep curiosity.

Lilly was cocooned in a torso-to-ankles cast. Strapped to a tilt bed set on vertical, she was lifted to an almost standing position. Her arms were free but badly bruised from IV needles. Despite her condition, she was actually smiling.

Max was in the process of cutting Lilly Beth a big slice of her mother’s light-as-a-cloud chiffon ube cake. “Got to say, this is the first neon blue cake I ever saw,” he told her. “Come to think of it, I once drove a Buick this color. What does UB stand for anyway? Ultra blue?”

Lilly’s laugh was a song to my ears. “I told you before, Detective Buckman—”

“And I told you before, the name is Max.”

“It’s not a
U
and
B
cake, Max. It’s an
ube
cake. An ube is a purple yam that gives the cake its color.”

“YOU-BEE cake,” he said, passing her the slice.

“Ooo-bee,” Lilly repeated. “You must have it by now. I’ve said it like five times.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said sheepishly. “I just like watching you say it.”

Lilly Beth’s eyes widened at that—and she finally noticed me in the doorway. Brushing away a tear, I moved to gently hug my friend, and for the next hour, she, Max, and I shared Ambrosia and sweet pieces of lavender-blue cloud.

When a team of physicians came by to examine Lilly, Max and I stepped out, and I suggested we talk in the patients’ lounge.

“I hear Quinn took that D.C. job, after all,” Buckman began, studying me.

“He did,” I confirmed.

“So how are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yeah, Max…” I tapped my watch. “After three hours and eleven minutes, no problem. Come midnight, my answer may be different.”

“Well, I was beginning to wonder. I mean, two whole days and you haven’t once pestered me for an update on our case. A guy could think you lost interest.”

I smiled and told him the truth. I hadn’t lost interest in our case. I simply trusted that he was motivated enough to nail the thing shut—which he did. With uniformed backup, Buckman had picked up Josh Fowler on Saturday night at JFK, just as the young man was about to board the redeye to Paris. By then, Max and his team had reviewed the evidence recovered from the computer at Five Points and built a strong case.

Of course, Buckman wanted more than proof of a theory. He wanted a confession; and in the quiet of the empty hospital lounge, he confided to me how he got it.

At first, Josh claimed innocence, even after Buckman played the role of sympathetic cop. “I told the kid I understood his pain over losing his best friend, Meredith,
yada, yada
, but he still didn’t open up. Fortunately, I had an ace up my sleeve.”

The ace was Josh’s comic,
The Revenger
, in which he actually drew up and dramatized the details of Dr. Land’s murder, of Lilly’s hit-and-run, even how he planned Helen’s death in Central Park.

“I showed Josh the printouts we made of his graphic novel, told him I’d read it, thought it was a masterpiece. If
The Revenger
was allowed to be published, it would
surely
become one of the most famous comics of all time.” Buckman paused, and I knew why.

“That’s when you delivered the coup de grace.”

Buckman nodded. He told Josh that
The Revenger
comic would never get published, instead it was destined to be destroyed. Of course, Josh freaked, demanding to know why the police would do such a horrible thing.

“It’s your own defense attorneys who will have the comic destroyed,” Buckman claimed. “They’ll see it as evidence, not art. They’ll want to bury it.”

Of course,
The Revenger
comic was Josh’s emotional button, and Buckman pressed it hard in the interview room. He knew Josh’s comic was marked as evidence and would not be destroyed. But Josh believed Buckman and, desperate to preserve his art, he confessed everything without a lawyer present, including exactly how he got the dark inspiration for these “hit-and-run murders”—attending one of John Fairway’s Two Wheels Good rallies.

“There’s one thing I’d still like to know,” I said. “How did Josh even find Lilly Beth? I mean, Helen’s detectives couldn’t locate her. How did he?”

“An act of God. Or bad luck,” Buckman replied.

Apparently, on a visit to see Dante at the Village Blend, Josh recognized Lilly while she was sitting at a café table, working with me. Years before, Josh had accompanied Meredith to Dr. Land’s cosmetic surgery center, holding her hand on the way in. He’d seen Lilly that day. Seeing her again in the Blend had sealed her fate. He added Meredith’s “Filipino nurse” to his hit list.

“Now Josh had three people to kill,” Buckman continued, “but he still needed one thing—”

“Someone to take the fall,” I finished, and knowing the timing, I’d already guessed who and how. “Josh saw Meredith’s mother arguing with Dr. Land’s ex-wife, Gwen Fischer, at the mayor’s Gracie Mansion birthday bash, right?”

“That’s right. Josh figured police would easily buy a woman killing her ex-husband, and the argument at the party with Helen made their animosity public. As far as a motive to kill Lilly, Josh figured the police would assume Gwen was angered by some aspect of an affair her ex-husband had with his Filipino nurse—not true, but a theory that both you and I had considered, too.”

According to Buckman, Josh swiped Gwen’s wineglass that night to plant as evidence. He found the Smile Train website, downloaded photos of Gwen, and used his 3D sculpting software and artistic talents to make a lifelike mask of her. When he was ready to strike, he stole a van from a vendor in Chinatown and used it to run down Dr. Land. Then Josh stashed it in a parking garage until he needed it again.