“How did you get up here?” he asked. “This is a crime scene.”
“I just want to talk to my daughter.”
“Let my mom come in!” Joy cried from inside. “I want to talk to her!”
The detective turned his head. “Stay put in that kitchen, Ms. Allegro! And stay quiet!”
He turned back to me. “How did you know to come here?”
“My daughter called me on her cell phone before she called you.” I frowned and put my hands on my hips. “Look, she’s the one who found her friend and notified you. Why are you treating her like a criminal?”
The man folded his arms and scowled. “Fifty percent of the time, the person who ‘finds’ the body is the person who killed the body.”
“Then I was wrong.” My eyes narrowed. “I thought we could trust the police, and that’s what I told my daughter. But I guess I should have told Joy to leave here immediately and forget what she saw.”
The man’s hard expression changed after that. He didn’t exactly turn apologetic, but the scowl had lessened considerably. He exhaled, glanced at Joy a moment, and then turned back to me. “I will let you speak with your daughter, but I’d like to talk to you first, Mrs.—”
“Ms.,” I said. “Cosi. Clare Cosi.”
“And Joy Allegro here is your daughter?”
“I’ve gone back to my maiden name—if that’s all right with you.” I put my hands on my hips. “If not, my ex-husband’s downstairs. You could consult him.”
The man didn’t blink. He yanked a big radio off his belt. “Murph? It’s Ray,” the detective said into the device. “You got a guy down there says he’s the girl’s father?”
I could hardly hear the reply. “No, don’t arrest him. Just keep him there. Lock him up in the car if you have to. Just make sure he doesn’t come up here.” The detective shot me a dark look. “Like his old lady.”
I folded my arms. “That’s ex–old lady.”
“I’ll get back to you, Murphy,” the detective said, and returned the radio to his belt.
“All right, Detective,” I said. “You know my name. Would you please tell me yours?”
“I’m Lieutenant Salinas,” the man replied. His NYPD badge appeared and disappeared in a quick sleight of hand. “And I’m in charge of this homicide investigation.”
I tensed at the word homicide.
Seven
Lieutenant Salinas cleared his throat. “Did you know the deceased, Ms. Cosi?”
“If it really is Vincent Buccelli, then the answer is yes. I met him a few times.”
“You know his family?”
I shook my head. “He moved here from Ohio a few years ago to attend culinary school. As far as I know, any family he has is back in Toledo.”
“So you know him because of your daughter?”
“Yes, Vinny and my daughter were friends—”
“Close friends? Boyfriend and girlfriend friends?” Salinas asked.
“Just friends from school and work. Platonic friends. I’m sure Joy has told you all of this.”
“She has,” he said, “but I’d like to hear it from another source. How well did you know this Buccelli kid, Ms. Cosi?”
“I met him a month ago at a business event. He and Joy came into my coffeehouse several times after that—”
“Coffeehouse?”
“I manage the Village Blend on Hudson Street.”
The man paused as if considering his options. He pulled at his loud tie, further loosening the already loose knot. “Maybe you can help us,” Lieutenant Salinas said at last.
“I’ll try.”
“First of all, would you be willing to provide a positive identification? Your daughter refused to look into the corpse’s face. Understandable, if they were friends. So would you help us out? Make the ID?”
I frowned. “Right now? This minute?”
“Yeah,” he replied with a slightly irked look that said, When else?
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Taking my arm, he steered me off the landing and into the one-bedroom apartment. The place was spacious, and the living room looked neat and comfortable with plants and a fish tank. There was a pale green sofa and chair set, a glass coffee table, a small television, and a standing bookshelf filled with cookbooks. All of the framed posters on the walls had something to do with food: an artful photo of fruit, a sidewalk scene at a French café, a colorful day at a farmers’ market.
The only sign of violence was a small end table that had been knocked down. Some mail was scattered about, and the phone lay on the floor, its receiver off the hook. I saw a dusting of white powder on the black plastic and realized the police had tested the phone for fingerprints.
An attractive middle-aged woman wearing a dark nylon jacket stood up and approached Lieutenant Salinas. She was petite, with high, prominent cheekbones and dark hair bunched up under a hairnet. She pulled a pair of latex gloves off, exposing long-fingered, mocha-hued hands and fingernails painted a scarlet so deep it was almost black. Behind the woman, the man wearing an identical jacket continued to snap pictures.
“What do we have here, Dr. Neeravi?” Salinas asked.
“This is most definitely a homicide,” the woman replied in an East Indian accent. “The victim died from a single blow with a knife to the root of the neck—”
She paused to touch an area of flesh between her neck and shoulder. “The knife was directed downward, coming in at the base of the neck, missing the collarbone, and doing major damage to the great vessels arising from the heart. In short, the victim bled to death.”
“You have a time of death?” Salinas asked.
Dr. Neeravi made a face. “That’s going to be a problem.”
“Come on, Doc,” Salinas pleaded. “Give me a ballpark.”
“Let me explain. Someone—perhaps the perpetrator—opened all of these windows. Now, perhaps it was done to dissipate any smell from the body, preventing a neighbor from alerting the authorities right away. Or perhaps the perpetrator knew it would help mask the time of the murder. Whatever the reason, the draft streaming through those windows is under thirty degrees Fahrenheit, which means the body’s change in temperature is not something I can use to pinpoint an exact time of death.”
The doctor tore the hairnet off her head and shook her shoulder-length hair loose. “If pressed, I’d say he was killed one to four hours ago. I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Was the assailant strong?”
I winced, because I knew what Salinas was really asking. Could the killer be a woman?
“The victim was not overpowered, and there are no defensive wounds because the dead man was struck from behind. Strength wouldn’t count as much as skill here, in my opinion. If the blade had struck the victim’s collarbone, he probably would have survived.”
“Skill, eh?” Salinas nodded. “Okay. The assailant may have had knife skills. That’s interesting. And there’s no sign of forced entry, which means the victim probably knew the person who murdered him.”
Dr. Neeravi nodded. “At least casually.”
Salinas snorted. “Casually enough to turn his back on his own killer—unless the murderer had a gun or waved the knife as a threat to force the victim to turn.”
“Lieutenant,” the uniformed officer called. “Look what I found.”
Holding it by the edges so as not to smudge any fingerprints, the policeman displayed a copy of a men’s magazine—and I wasn’t talking Playboy or Maxim. This was a magazine featuring young, fit men in intimate poses. It was clearly a magazine meant for gay men.
“There’s a whole pile of glossy mags just like this one over here, hidden inside this hollow ottoman,” the officer added.