On What Grounds Read online

  On What Grounds

  Cleo Coyle

  PROLOGUE

  S HE was a dancer. Young, slender, pretty, but not particularly beautiful. And not special.

  From the corner of Hudson Street

  , the stalker watched her prancing about behind the tall French doors, sweeping, mopping, wiping—the gleaming wood floor, the marble-topped tables, and the silver espresso machine.

  The hour was late. The place was closed, but the coffeehouse lights beyond the tall clear windows shone with a disturbing intensity, harsh beacons that burned through the thin layer of fog rolling in off the cold, dismal river just a few blocks away.

  With tentative movements, the stalker followed those beacons, descending the curb into the empty street. Wisps of pale mist flowed in waves across the gray cobblestones, sweeping the stalker along in its ethereal current like some passenger on a ferryboat bound for the underworld.

  Reaching the other side, the stalker moved onto the wide, clean sidewalk. From above, a faux gaslamp buzzed and sputtered. How appropriate, thought the stalker, and how typical. The vile little streetlight had the façade of class, but inside it was fake—the forced flickering of a cheap electric light, an inferior imitation of the real thing—

  Just like Anabelle.

  Nothing special.

  The four-story red brick townhouse that held the coffeehouse was no different, the stalker decided. Just one of many in this historic area. Common. Ordinary.

  Below the arched front window, an antique wrought-iron bench sat bolted to the sidewalk. Seeing it, the stalker sank to its cold, hard surface.

  Breathing became difficult. No longer unconscious but an intentional thing. Purposeful, planned, and premeditated—

  IN THEN OUT.

  OUT THEN IN.

  Deliberate counts. Deliberate breaths. Wave after wave until finally the stalker rose and once again made an approach.

  The Village Blend’s door loomed large. Beveled glass in an oak wood frame. Pulsing music leaked through. The intense aroma of roasting coffee.

  The stalker’s knuckles rapped: One knock. Two.

  Inside, Anabelle spun. A dancer’s turn. The long, blond ponytail swung around the slender neck. Blue eyes widened in the oval face. The pert nose wrinkled; delicate eyebrows drew together, forcing unflattering folds into the high smooth forehead.

  When she aged, that’s what she’d look like, thought the stalker. Shriveled and wrinkled and used up—

  It was only a matter of years.

  Surprise registered on Anabelle’s face as she stared at the figure beyond the glass. Slight suspicion was evident, but not alarm, and not panic.

  Good, thought the stalker. Very good.

  It took a week for Anabelle to cross the wood-plank floor. A day for her to click-clock the dead bolt. Finally, the framed beveled glass cracked, and the stalker stiffened, swallowing down the upsurge of bile.

  THIS GIRL HAS IT COMING.

  SHE’S BROUGHT IT ON HERSELF.

  For days these thoughts had been repeated and repeated on breath after breath, in wave after wave. An unrelenting force, they became the current that carried away any last surge of sentiment, of creeping conscience, of warning whisper that one day there might be regret.

  “Hello?” said Anabelle, warily. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

  THIS GIRL HAS IT COMING.

  SHE’S BROUGHT IT ON HERSELF.

  “Do you want to come in?”

  The stalker nodded, forced a smile. Then Anabelle cracked the door wider, the music pulsed louder, and the stalker strode in, vowing—at least for this one brief moment—never to look back.

  ONE

  T HE perfect cup of coffee is a mystifying thing.

  To many of my customers, the entire process seems like some sort of alchemy they dare not try at home.

  If the beans are Robusta rather than Arabica, the roasting time too long or short, the filtering water too hot or cold, the grinds too finely or coarsely milled, the brew allowed to sit too long—any of it can harm the end product. Vigilance is what gets you that perfect cup—vigilance and stubbornness in protecting the quality.

  As the 1902 coffee almanac put it, “When coffee is bad it is the wickedest thing in town; when good, the most glorious.”

  Of course, seeking that perfect cup of coffee is not without risks. For instance, after you’ve found it, and then gotten yourself addicted to drinking it, you’ve made yourself vulnerable. Because, on those rare mornings when you are prevented from getting it—well, to put it as indelicately as my ex-husband might—

  You’re screwed.

  I was in that very position the morning I’d found Anabelle’s body.

  Trapped behind the wheel of my ten-year-old Honda, I’d been in traffic for, oh, about three months, and my one little espresso at 6 A.M. had worn off hours ago. With the freeway rest stops offering their standard range of brews—from weak as warm dishwater to bitterly burnt—I began to practice a sort of Zen caffeine visualization exercise.

  All the way across Jersey, through the Lincoln Tunnel, and into the streets of midtown Manhattan, I imagined the Village Blend cup floating in front of my windshield, the earthy liquid inside, mellow and warm, yet rich and satisfying, tendrils of pearl-colored steam curling into the clouds—

  “Son of a gun!”

  A taxi swerved into my lane, cutting me off to pick up a fare. I slammed the brake pedal and my bumper stopped so close to the cab’s passenger door I thought the per-mile rates printed there would end up tattooed to my forehead.

  I honked. The beturban cab driver cursed. And the Brooks Brothers suit climbed into his hired yellow box on wheels. With a door slam, we were off again. Half a block—and a stand still.

  “Great. Just great.”

  In a jarring instant, the real world had snatched away my perfect cup. Seconds later I knew how Shakleton felt trying to sail through icebergs. Four-ninety-five at least had been moving. This parking lot purporting to be the route between midtown and the West Village was driving me to homicide.

  To top it off, a feeling of desperation hung in the chilly Thursday air. The early-morning clouds were black, and commuters were rushing toward their tall office buildings and storefront shops before the heavy September skies opened up on them.

  Thank goodness I’m almost there.

  Last night was literally my last night at my Jersey house. After only a few weeks on the market, the suburban three-bedroom ranch with front lawn and back garden had sold to a young married couple from the Upper West Side whose moving van was pulling up as I was pulling out. I’d donated most of my functional (albeit style-free) Ikea furniture to Goodwill, along with the very last of my eighties shoulder-pads. Now the bulk of my things was either in storage or had been moved to the city already.

  This morning, I’d packed my remaining items, grabbed my cat, Java, and didn’t look back. The feline now sat aloofly in her pink PetLove cat carrier, licking her coffee-bean-colored paw, utterly indifferent to the desperately stressed state of her owner.

  “Well, at least one of us is having a good trip.”

  When I finally neared the Village Blend coffeehouse—and the duplex apartment above it—I saw only one space available, just off Hudson. With a few Hosannas, I slid into it—Finally some vehicular luck! (Okay, so it was near a hydrant. But it wasn’t that close, really, and I wasn’t going to be long. After unpacking my car, I intended to move it to the nearby garage, where I had rented a monthly space.)

  Grabbing Java’s carrier, I headed for the consciously noncommercial front of the red brick coffeehouse, ready to check in with Anabelle, who’d be serving the morning crush—and definitely more than ready to savor a cup of the Village Blend’s heavenly house blend before begin
ning my unloading. As I neared the twelve-foot-tall arched front windows, however, I saw the lights inside were on, but the place was empty.

  Empty.

  No customers.

  Not one.

  Inconceivable, I thought.

  As bad as the previous manager had been (in six months he’d actually eroded the customer base by almost fifty percent), the Blend had always seen plenty of morning business.

  I tried the door. Locked. And the CLOSED sign was in the window!

  What the hell is going on? It was almost nine—and the Blend was supposed to take its bakery delivery at five-thirty and be open to customers by six!

  That meant we’d already lost the rush-hour regulars: the Satay & Satay Ad people, the Assets Bank office workers, the Berk and Lee Publishing people, and the NYU crowd. If I didn’t get the place open soon, we’d even lose the neighborhood regulars, who often grabbed a mid-morning cup before heading up- or downtown on business.

  And Anabelle Hart had been so trustworthy since I’d come back to managing the Blend a month ago!

  “Don’t worry, Clare, I’ll take care of everything.”

  Those were her last words to me after she’d volunteered to both close the coffeehouse last night and open it again this morning. With no one else available to cover for me, it was the only way I could complete my move from Jersey. I’d even promised her a nice bonus in her next paycheck.

  Anabelle was one of my best workers, too. Once I corrected the bad training she’d received in making her espressos too fast (yes, too fast—but I’ll get to that later!), she became my top employee. Not so much for her barista skills, although those were vital to the Blend’s reputation, but because I could trust her.

  One thing you learn in this business: Character can’t be taught. You’re reliable or you’re not. You do what you say you’re going to, or you don’t. Anabelle had character. She never bugged out on a shift or made an excuse to leave early. She was there when I needed her, didn’t neglect or abuse the customers, and deftly handled any abuse flung at her or the staff. This was, after all, retail. Abuse was a given. It was also New York City, land of the chronically dissatisfied.

  Short of a Wonder Woman cape, you had to possess a special kind of character to resist bouncing back double-fold what came at you, to magically dissipate all hostility into the atmosphere.

  Most of my part-timers were naïve college students, barely beyond adolescence—meaning hostility was handled with the most juvenile of boomerang reactions. This was why I needed assistant managers with the aforementioned special character traits.

  Anabelle was the same age as my college student part-timers, but she displayed a much more advanced maturity level. An incident just the week before proved it—

  An emaciated advertising executive in an Anne Klein suit and a near-permanent expression of displeasure on her thin, pallid face, ordered a Caffé Cannella (Italian for cinnamon coffee). We were very busy, and Maxwell, one of our part-time baristas, presented it quickly then turned to continue making the other coffee drinks.

  “Hey, you!” the woman called to Max.

  “What?”

  “You’ve ruined my drink with too much cinnamon!”

  “Lady, it’s the way we always make it.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Who are you calling an idiot, you stupid bi—”

  “Ma’am! Let me fix the problem,” Anabelle said, gliding in with the grace of a gull to retrieve the offending drink. I had been going over schedules in the corner and watched the entire save with admiration.

  In two seconds flat, Anabelle had inserted herself between the angry young barista and the overwrought businesswoman, soothing ruffled feathers with apologies, chatting about not liking too much cinnamon herself, and getting a new drink made tout de suite. She even placed the cinnamon shaker next to the cup to allow the woman to sprinkle as much or as little as she preferred.

  “Remember, garbage flows downhill,” I’d told Anabelle during the first week I’d reclaimed my position as manager of the Blend, “and a percentage of the population in this town comes out of its offices, shops, hospitals, and homes looking for the first excuse to dump a portion of it directly on our heads.”

  “Don’t worry, Clare,” she’d answered. “If there’s anything I’ve had plenty of experience with, it’s handling garbage.”

  I never asked why and how she’d gained that experience. I just knew she was my saving angel, someone I’d come to rely on during my first month getting the Blend back on its feet. In fact, I had just promoted her from barista to assistant manager.

  After fishing through my shoulder bag for the key, I unlocked the shop’s glass front door and cursed like that cabbie who’d almost killed me on Ninth Avenue

  .

  There was no sign that Anabelle—or anyone else—was even getting ready to open up. Not even the scent of brewing coffee. And the sound system was silent. Not one classical note in the air—

  I sighed with the sort of profound disappointment you usually reserve for your child.

  “Oh, Aaaa-na-belle,” I singsonged, much the same way I used to scold my daughter. “You’re blow-ing your bonus.”

  I set Java’s carrier down, strode across the gleaming, freshly waxed wood-plank floor (which, under the previous manager, Moffat Flaste, had been allowed to deteriorate into a scuffed and grimy mess). I stepped past the refrigerated display of cold beverages (Pellegrino, Evian, and imported ginger-, lemon-, and orange-flavored Italian sodas) that I’d made “Madame,” the Blend’s owner, buy when I’d first managed the Blend for her ten years before (and which had added ten percent to the annual gross sales). I walked the length of the blueberry-colored marble coffee bar, then stopped, appalled, at the pastry display.

  The shelves of the six-foot-long glass case should have been jammed with warm croissants, muffins, bagels, doughy cinnamon rolls, and fresh-baked streudels. The afternoon delivery would have a different mix of goods—biscotti, tarts, cookies, European-style pastries, and miniature bundt cakes. But never, ever, was it supposed to be empty, as it was now!

  I moved from the main room into the back foyer, which amounted to a square of wood floor with the supply pantry on the left, the service staircase to the right, and the back door dead in front of me. The door was unchained, yet still bolted, and the area was dark.

  I stepped in something slippery and flailed a bit, nearly tripping over a large object. Flipping on the light, I saw that one of the stainless steel under-counter garbage cans had been moved to the top of the service staircase that led to the basement.

  No reason for this! I thought instantly.

  Why would Anabelle have moved the heavy can when she could easily have pulled out the plastic bag lining it and taken it to the shop’s outside Dumpster?

  The can’s lid was nowhere in sight and black coffee grounds were flowing over the top, across the wood floor, and down the top few steps.

  “Anabelle, I’m going to kill you!” I cried, frowning at the mess. Then I glanced down the stairway and gasped.

  It looked like someone had beaten me to it.

  TWO

  I ran down to the basement, almost slipping on the messy coffee grounds spilled all over the steps. Anabelle’s body was crumpled at the bottom on the cold concrete floor. Her delicate features were pale, almost milk-white. Her head was cocked at a terrible angle and her long blond ponytail stretched perpendicular to it like the yellow plume of a fragile bird.

  Her twenty-year-old face appeared lifeless—but if she truly were lifeless, her limbs would be rigid. They weren’t. Rigor mortis certainly hadn’t set in. I knelt next to her and checked for vital signs, trying not to move the body in case of spinal injury. First I placed my ear to the girl’s nose and mouth. Thank God, she was breathing! Shallow but evident. Next I put two fingers to the girl’s neck. The skin was cold, slightly clammy. The pulse feeble as butterfly wings.

  “Anabelle? Anabelle?”

  Her clothe
s appeared to be the same ones she’d worn last evening when she’d reported to work. Blue jeans and a white midriff T-shirt with DANCE 10 printed across the chest.

  I ran back upstairs and made a frantic call to 911. Next I rang Anabelle’s roommate, Esther Best, an NYU English major from Long Island, and a weekend barista at the Blend. She lived with Anabelle in a tiny rented apartment about ten blocks away.

  “Esther, it’s Clare Cosi. Anabelle—” I said.

  “Well, she’s not here,” Esther cut in. “She never came home last night, although that’s not unusual. She might be with The Dick. You might try her cell. Unless she’s got a new one already—boyfriend, I mean, not cell phone.”

  “Esther, listen. She’s had an accident. Come down to the Blend now.” I went back downstairs to sit with Anabelle until the ambulance arrived.

  The next fifteen minutes passed more like fifteen hours. Mostly, I spent it fretting, and praying, and staring at Anabelle’s limp slender form, thinking of my Joy. My daughter’s features weren’t as perfectly chiseled as Anabelle’s; they were more common, like mine. Yet my Joy had more of an impish energy than Anabelle, a sense of carefree innocence that Anabelle, though she was only a year older than my daughter, seemed to lack.

  I had admired Anabelle’s maturity as a worker, but seeing her like this made me admit to myself that there was something brittle and a little desperate about Anabelle Hart. Something fragile and sad, too.

  This can’t be the end of her life, I prayed. No one should die so young…for so careless a reason.

  Finally, the sound of sirens echoed off the Federal-style townhouses and boutique shop windows of Hudson. After a moment of silence, thick-soled paramedic shoes began clumping around the first floor.

  “Down here! Hurry!” I called, then saw them round the corner and almost slip just as I had on the coffee grounds.

  “Watch out!”

  Two men, both young Hispanics in white shirts and slacks, cursed loudly then continued down. I stepped away, and they began to work. They checked Anabelle’s heart with a stethoscope, her pupils with a small flashlight, and attempted to wake her by calling her name. They tried smelling salts. Nothing worked.