Billionaire Blend Read online

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Cleo Coyle

  Coffeehouse Mysteries

  ON WHAT GROUNDS

  THROUGH THE GRINDER

  LATTE TROUBLE

  MURDER MOST FROTHY

  DECAFFEINATED CORPSE

  FRENCH PRESSED

  ESPRESSO SHOT

  HOLIDAY GRIND

  ROAST MORTEM

  MURDER BY MOCHA

  A BREW TO A KILL

  HOLIDAY BUZZ

  BILLIONAIRE BLEND

  Haunted Bookshop Mysteries

  writing as Alice Kimberly

  THE GHOST AND MRS. MCCLURE

  THE GHOST AND THE DEAD DEB

  THE GHOST AND THE DEAD MAN’S LIBRARY

  THE GHOST AND THE FEMME FATALE

  THE GHOST AND THE HAUNTED MANSION

  BILLIONAIRE BLEND

  CLEO COYLE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

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  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2013 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

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  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks

  of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  A COFFEEHOUSE MYSTERY is a registered trademark

  of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62587-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Coyle, Cleo.

  Billionaire blend / Cleo Coyle.

  pages cm.—(A coffeehouse mystery ; 12)

  ISBN 978-0-425-25291-8 (hardback)

  1. Cosi, Clare (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Coffeehouses—Fiction.

  3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Mystery fiction I. Title.

  PS3603.O94B57 2013

  813'.6—dc23

  2013032871

  FIRST EDITION: December 2013

  Cover illustration by Cathy Gendron.

  Cover design and logo by Rita Frangie.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Cleo Coyle

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Fifty-six

  Fifty-seven

  Fifty-eight

  Fifty-nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-one

  Sixty-two

  Sixty-three

  Sixty-four

  Sixty-five

  Sixty-six

  Sixty-seven

  Sixty-eight

  Sixty-nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-one

  Seventy-two

  Epilogue

  Poem

  Recipes

  To Antonio A. Alfonsi—

  A daughter may outgrow your lap, but she will never outgrow your heart. I love you, Dad. Rest now, and I will see you again.

  Money often costs too much.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Prologue

  Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

  —ALBERT CAMUS

  “ABOUT time!”

  The words were not spoken, they were screeched. Bianca Hyde’s shrill echo traveled down the quiet hallway of the Beverly Palms Hotel in an octave seldom heard outside of nursery school playgrounds or tween soccer matches.

  Another potential scene, thought the Visitor. How charming.

  At one o’clock in the afternoon, Bianca’s puce lipstick was smeared, her platinum hair sleep-mussed, her designer halter stained and wrinkled. Clearly, she’d been drinking (again) . . .

  “So come in already!” Wheeling backward, Bianca released the self-closing door.

  The Visitor lurched to catch the edge and wedge it back open. The slab of northwest maple was heavy and thick. Thick enough to absorb a scream? The Visitor began to wonder . . .

  Inside the posh space, words were exchanged, bottles shoved over, caffeine ordered and delivered. Only after the room service waitress had come and gone did the real conversation begin—

  “You’re making things far too complicated,” the Visitor argued. “The solution is simple: Occam’s Razor.”

  “You want me to shave?”

  “Occam’s Razor is a scientific rule of thumb, a heuristic.”

  “A what?”

  “Just go to rehab, Binky. All things being equal, it’s the only way to repair this relationship. If you fix what’s broken, all will be well . . .”

  But Bianca didn’t agree. She wanted her freedom. And she wanted more money; lots more. The demands came after the whining and cajoling; then tears dried up and demands became threats.

  “I’ll ruin you!” she promised. “I have the proof; you know it. I can ruin you for good!”

  “Then you’ll ruin us both . . .”

  The Visitor’s tone remained reasonable, but Ms. Hyde never had much use for reason. Despite her refined surroundings, the spoiled little plaything had cultivated a savage soul.

  When her own threats were returned in kind, she lunged for a bottle. Not a room service baby but
its grown-up sister. Strangling the neck, she swung it like a club.

  The Visitor dodged the blow, simultaneously shoving and tripping the girl, perhaps a tad too violently.

  On the way down, Bianca met the coffee table—or rather, her forehead did. The flow of red stained everything—the white blond hair and porcelain skin; the perfect breasts in the halter top; the cream-colored carpet; even the long-stemmed Blue Velvets, once stunning and rare, now a spilled tangle of petals among thorns . . .

  The Visitor had become a slayer. For a moment, sheer panic set in. The impulse to dial 911. Then Occam’s Razor came sharply to mind. All things being equal, the coffee table had done what the coffee could not—

  Shut her up.

  Risks were considered, of course, loose ends and evidence. The Slayer could handle these. This mess could be tidied quickly, a new strategy devised, and in a few short hours, all would be well, for the best solution to this problem was to leave it exactly where it fell.

  One

  As long as there was coffee in the world, how bad could things be?

  —JUDITH RUMELT

  “GUESS where I am? You can’t imagine . . .”

  Pressing the phone to my ear, I waited for Mike Quinn’s gravelly voice to ride a cellular wave up the Eastern Seaboard.

  “Given the choice,” he said, “I’d rather imagine . . .”

  That shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, Michael Ryan Francis Quinn was a decorated narcotics detective, and if there was one thing the NYPD looked for when recruiting from their uniformed force, it was imagination—that and “inquisitiveness, insight, and an eye for detail.” (According to Quinn, the New York brass referred to these as “the four I’s,” although I had pointed out the last one started with an E.)

  For the past six months, Quinn had been working in Washington, DC, where a U.S. Attorney had drafted him for a special assignment. He wasn’t permitted to tell me much about his Justice Department job, although I did deduce his Federal Triangle desk phone had caller ID because he always answered my rings with a husky hello reserved only for me.

  Just the sound of his voice relieved the tension I’d been feeling about the night ahead. Of course, I didn’t have a clue what was really ahead. If I had, I might have gone straight home and pulled the covers over my eyes.

  In a short space of time, I’d be bribing a Bomb Squad lieutenant, cracking a mathematician’s seventeen-digit password, and conjuring culinary ideas for a billionaires’ potluck. That I could handle. But battling a giant octopus; raiding a forbidden coffee plantation; defusing a nitro-packed knapsack; stopping a Slayer (while working with one); and fixing my daughter’s love life? I think even 007 would have flinched.

  At this point in my story, however, my life was manageable, even pretty nice. I was sitting on hand-rubbed leather in a private limo, and a good cop was purring in my ear.

  “Let’s see now . . .” Quinn continued. “I’m imagining you in your duplex above the coffeehouse. You just stepped out of the shower, and I’m holding your robe. I’ve got a nice blaze going in the bedroom, the champagne’s poured, and I’m about to—”

  “Mike!”

  “Yes?”

  I glanced at the glass partition separating me from the male chauffeur. It wasn’t raised all the way.

  Okay, phone sex in front of an audience (even an audience of one) might have been acceptable for your average world-weary urbanite—and, yes, after living in the Big, Bad Apple for years, I was weary enough for any middle-aged single mom. But I was still my nonna’s granddaughter. (Not that my dear daughter would agree. I could just hear her now: “That’s why my generation does sexting, Mom! Type it out and it’s totally private!” Right, honey. And nobody shares stored data in cyberspace.)

  “I’m not at home,” I explained to Quinn. “I’m on my way to dinner. You’ll never guess where—”

  “You better just tell me, Clare. I have a conference call in twenty.”

  The “boyfriend voice” was gone, the warmth chilling into a tone I knew far too well—stoic, emotionless cop.

  I should have replied with something generally reassuring, like: “I miss you” (which I did); “I wish you were here” (ditto); or even . . . “On your next visit, I’m baking you up a Triple-Chocolate Italian Cheesecake like the one you inhaled on New Year’s Eve” (which I planned to).

  But I didn’t say any of those things. My excitement level was so high that I simply blurted the news—

  “I’m riding in a chauffeured limo, on my way to dinner at the Source Club!”

  The silence stretched on so long I was sure our connection was lost.

  “Mike?”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “I’m not pulling anything.”

  I couldn’t blame the man for doubting my words. Even I had trouble believing it. The Source Club was one of the most elite enclaves in Manhattan. With my anemic bank account, I was lucky to get into Sam’s Club, let alone a zillionaires’ club.

  “So what’s the story? Did your former motherin-law give up and sell the Village Blend to a national chain?”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  “You inherited a fortune from a lost relative?” He grunted. “Maybe I’d better get you to the altar already—in handcuffs, if necessary.”

  “It’s nothing like that, and I’d rather you kept those handcuffs on your belt, if you don’t mind. The last time you used them on me, I needed an ice pack.”

  “Are you fishing for another apology, or another bunch of flowers?”

  “Neither . . . although I did love the daffodils and white tulips.”

  “I’m glad,” he said. And I was, too, because the warm tone was back, and on that blustery evening in late January, I needed all the warmth I could get.

  Outside, frosty flurries were beginning to fall, and the inviting lights of my coffeehouse were no longer in sight; neither were the cozy pubs and intimate bistros of Greenwich Village. The golden glow of the historic district had been replaced with the silver glare of downtown skyscrapers.

  “You would love the limo he sent for me, Mike. It’s an antique Rolls-Royce—or is it a Bentley?”

  “A Bentley is a Rolls, and who is he?”

  “It’s so British, like something the late Princess Diana would have ridden around in, but he’s modernized the inside with all these gadgets—”

  “I repeat, who is he? And how did you end up in his limousine?”

  “That’s kind of a long story.”

  “Give me the short version.”

  “You know part of it already. Remember that poor guy I helped out the other day?”

  “The billionaire? I wouldn’t call him poor, Clare.”

  “You know what I mean. This special dinner is his way of saying thanks.”

  Suddenly I was listening to a whole new dead zone. The cellular waves kept rolling up from DC, but Quinn’s voice wasn’t riding them.

  “Maybe you’d better give me the long version,” he finally said. “And start at the beginning.”

  “I thought you had a conference call in twenty?”

  “The Los Angeles District Attorney can wait.”

  Uh-oh. “It’s completely innocent, Mike. Why do you think I’m telling you?”

  “Go on.”

  “You remember, don’t you? This all started with a coffee drink order.”

  “A coffee drink order?”

  “Actually, more like two dozen coffee drink orders . . .”

  Two

  “HE’S early . . .”

  With my crack-of-dawn shift over, I was about to head upstairs for a long, hot (hopefully) rejuvenating shower when Esther Best sounded her alarm—

  “Like the aftertaste from a bad sidewalk hot dog, I knew he’d come back!”

  “He” was the eccentric customer I’d been hearing about for going on two weeks now, and this was my first chance to see him in action.

  Like clockwork, the man came in every afternoon and proceeded to dril
l my baristas on the prep steps of some obscure coffee drink. It’s no wonder they’d labeled him the “Quiz Master.”

  With the coffeehouse still packed from the lunchtime crush, Esther pointed him out in our long line. At first glance, I was surprised by his appearance. Given the accounts of his perplexing behavior, I was expecting a middle-aged malcontent with Einstein hair and a shopping bag. Not so.

  Nearly as tall as Quinn, the “Quiz Master” had boyishly handsome features complete with dimpled chin, yet his expression looked determined and mature, and he carried himself like my police detective boyfriend, with confident authority.

  His age was closer to thirty than twenty, so I doubted that he was an undergrad. With the intelligent look about his gaze (cold-fused to his smartphone like most of my customers his age and younger), he could have been a Ph.D. candidate, except Esther didn’t recognize him from campus.

  His physique appeared quite solid, not street-tough pumped, but the kind of athletic body that came with a personal trainer—well-developed swimmer’s shoulders, trim waist, and a lean pair of hips clad in what appeared to be artfully faded designer denims.

  He wore a common Yankees baseball cap slouched over surfer-shaggy golden locks, his bangs pushed to one side. But his shearling-collared bomber was far from common—I’d bet real money the jacket’s gorgeously distressed leather was stitched together in Florence.

  Finally, this guy’s skin had a healthy, sun-kissed glow while most New Yorkers—from subway-trekking office workers to academics toiling in cramped college cubicles—displayed complexions with less color than the walking dead, especially in the dead of winter.

  Add it all up and the sum spelled rat.

  “Calm down,” I told my staff, who were already buzzing about the man’s approach. “Handle him just as you would any other difficult customer.”

  “You don’t plan to wait on him?” Esther asked, her tone almost pleading.

  “I plan to watch him.”