“Carnegie Hall! Carnegie Hall!” I yelled while I continued to wrestle with the crazed woman.
The police who’d been waiting outside poured into the restaurant. Detective Lippert cuffed Anton Wright. Ray Tatum pulled Faye Keitel off me and disarmed her.
I stumbled backward against a table. I was a little dizzy. My shoulder hurt like a son of a bitch, and I felt something warm flowing down my arm. My knees buckled. Before I hit the floor, Sue Ellen Bass and Detective Soles caught me, one on each arm. They cleared a table and stretched me out on the white cloth. Detective Soles pressed a stack of napkins against my wound to stanch the bleeding.
They were asking me questions, but their voices were whispers. And they both seemed so far away. From my position on the table, I could see Solange’s gargoyles were still up there, on their high perches, but the detectives were closer…and they looked like angels, floating against the restaurant’s sunny yellow walls. I blinked, my vision going fuzzy.
Mike Quinn strode across the room. “We’ve got it all on tape,” he announced, glancing around, looking for me. Then Mike saw me on the table. He saw the blood. “Son of a—”
“Mike?”
“Clare! You’re hurt! My God!” His rugged face loomed over me. He looked scared.
“What’s wrong, Mike? Didn’t we get them?”
“We got them, sweetheart. You got them.”
“Good…Okay, then I can close my eyes now…finally take a rest…”
“No, Clare! Stay awake! Please, sweetheart!”
Mike’s booming voice began to fade. I saw him shouting at the female detectives. “Keep pressure on that wound, do you hear me? Where are the paramedics? Is the ambulance here? Dammit! Get the paramedics in here!”
“Sorry, Mike. I’m just a little tired…”
Then someone turned off the lights.
Epilogue
“Night, boss,” Esther called, waving at the door of my hospital room. “Take care of that shoulder now. And go easy on the meds.”
“My lady knows of what she speaks. So listen, Clare Cosi, and don’t be weak.”
“Okay, Boris.” I tipped my hat to the hippest Russian rapper in the country—or at least on this floor of the St. Vincent’s Hospital. “I’ll keep it real.”
It was late, close to the end of visiting hours, and Esther and BB Gun were the last to depart. They’d just helped me polish off a sinfully delicious box of Chef Jacques Torres’s handmade chocolates that Janelle Babcock had delivered earlier in the day.
My daughter and ex-husband were back at the Village Blend by now. Madame had gone off to meet her beau for a late dinner—that mysterious younger man I had yet to meet. And I’d been entertaining an endless stream of visitors all day long: Tucker, Gardner, Dante, Detectives Soles and Bass. Even Napoleon Dornier had dropped by to see how I was doing.
Now that Joy was cleared of Tommy’s murder, there was no more tension between Nappy and me. In fact, he confided that he’d already found a backer for his own restaurant. He was taking Tommy’s entire staff of cooks with him—Ramon included. And he was hoping I’d consider supplying the coffee beans.
Janelle was the only Solange staffer to decline Dornier’s offer. She’d found a position with one of the most prestigious cake makers on Manhattan Island, a job that would easily double her pay (which was one reason she said she’d splurged and bought me the gourmet chocolates).
I yawned and fell back against my hospital pillows. The room was full of flowers and cards, balloons and stuffed animals. The angry stab wound to my shoulder still smarted, and the meds were still necessary, but the surgery had gone well, and the doctors said I’d be leaving the hospital in a day or two.
“Knock, knock?”
“Is that the start of a joke?” I called. “Or a visit?”
“It’s a visit…from a visitor who has his hands full!”
Mike.
I’d last seen the man hours ago in his detective jacket and tie. Now he was back, in worn jeans and a distressed-leather bomber, apparently bearing gifts.
“What have you got there?”
One hand held a huge thermos, the other a stack of paper cups. “Since you can’t go to the Village Blend, I brought the Blend’s coffee to you.”
“Oh, Mike, you’re a savior! I’m dying for a cup!”
“I figured you would be about now. ’Cause I know hospital coffee. You’re talking to a real vet when it comes to line-of-duty injuries.”
I remembered the scars I’d seen on the man’s naked chest. And I remembered what had happened after I’d seen those scars…and touched them, and kissed them. But that line of thought wasn’t going to let me sleep tonight, not without a bucket of icy cold banya water dumped over me.
“So…how did we do, Lieutenant?”
Mike moved my rolling tray next to the bed and poured me a cup of French-roasted Kenya AA from the thermos. “We got it all on tape, sweetheart,” he began, handing me the steaming cup then pouring one for himself. “Anton’s admission that he killed Vinny and Benedetto, his statement that it was Faye Keitel who murdered Tommy. It was a thing of beauty what you did—including deflecting that knife.” He reached out, caressed my cheek. “It saved your life.”
“Yeah. But I shouldn’t have ended up in here at all. I should have remembered what Roman Brio told me about Tommy’s wife.”
“What?”
“Before she’d dropped her culinary career to have Tommy’s kids, she was the man’s roast chef!”
“His what?”
“It’s the position in the brigade that’s responsible for roasting meat. Like Anton, the son of a butcher, Faye Keitel definitely had knife skills. She was a cool customer, too. The thing I don’t get is what made her snap.”
“I listened to the tape about fifty times, and I can tell you why. Faye Keitel snapped the moment Anton Wright turned on her. You heard the saying ‘no honor among thieves’? It’s true among murderers, too.”
“She should have stabbed Anton then!”
“No, Clare. In more ways than one, you put yourself between them.”
As I sipped my dark cuppa, Mike updated me on the case. The detectives from the Nineteenth were handling the follow-up investigation. They’d legally confiscated and then examined the cell phones, computers, and personal files of Faye and Anton, and in short order they found evidence of their conspiracy to murder Chef Keitel.
“There are e-mail exchanges and phone messages that document it all,” Mike told me. “Their alibis don’t hold water, and because of Faye Keitel’s attack on you, we’ve gotten a confession out of her with a plea deal in the works. Anton’s hanging tougher, but we’re working on him. Worst-case scenario, Faye will have to testify against him at his trial as part of her deal.”
“That should bring the man to heel.”
“We’re looking at Anton for Benedetto’s murder, too, thanks to what you observed at Flux last night.” Mike regarded me over his coffee cup. “You’ve been one busy homicide detective, Clare Cosi.”
I raised an eyebrow at my partner. “I had a little help.”
Mike laughed.
“There’s only one thing I’m still puzzling over.”
“Mmmm?” said Mike, swallowing his fix.
“What in the world did Billy Benedetto have on Anton Wright? I mean…he was obviously blackmailing the man. But unless Benedetto was psychic—which I sincerely doubt—I can’t figure out how he knew where to pin Tommy’s murder.”
“Billy Benedetto actually saw Faye Keitel come out of Solange the night of the murder. And Benedetto knew enough about the couple to realize that Faye would never set foot in her husband’s restaurant. He also knew Anton was seeing Faye on the side. When Benedetto heard the details of Tommy’s murder, he put two and two together and solved it before us. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t try to bring them to justice. The opportunity for extortion was just too tempting. The threats and e-mails from him were among Faye’s and Anton’s personal computer files. Benedetto claimed he’d go to the police with what he knew unless Anton backed his restaurant. Good old blackmailing Billy was willing to let Joy rot in jail so he could get a bona fide backer.”