Mr. Charm’s signature snowy hair was hidden under a baseball cap. He wore a fake brown beard and mustache and tinted eyeglasses. His cheap sweatpants and sneakers were the color of night.
I stared in shock at the man. Ten minutes until Mike gets here. Maybe forty seconds have passed since I hung up. Nine minutes at least. An eternity—
“Did you hear me, Ms. Cosi?” Chatsworth drove the weapon into Joy’s temple with enough force to make her cry out.
“You son of a bitch! Leave her alone.”
“Do you want her to die?”
“No!”
“I saw you there last night,” Chatsworth said. “Do you hear me? I saw you in Kovic’s apartment.”
I swallowed hard. This creep shot two men to death in cold blood. No matter what I said or did, I knew he was going to kill Joy and me, too. I had to stall—give Mike the time to get here—and the only bargaining chip I had was the flash drive in my pocket. The second Chatsworth got it, I knew he’d have no reason to keep my daughter and me alive.
“Yes, okay, I was there last night,” I slowly admitted. I glanced at the wall clock; another minute gone, another minute for Mike to get here. “And I found Kovic’s body... but I just called the police. That’s all—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Chaz snapped. “I waited outside until the police came. When they didn’t show right away, I knew you and that guy in the tux were searching for the pictures.”
I remembered Shane Holliway and his dumb soap star act. “What pictures? I don’t know what you mean—”
Chatsworth’s arm tightened around Joy’s throat.
“Please, don’t hurt her,” I said. “She has nothing to do with all this. She doesn’t know anything. I’m the one who can help you. Just let her go—”
“Maybe I will, if you tell me something. Come on, Clare. Tell me something that will make me happy.”
“It was the kitten! The man you saw—he took the cat from Kovic’s apartment.”
Chaz frowned. “The man in the tux was carrying a pet carrier and a cardboard box. I heard him tell the cab driver to take him to the Village Blend. I want the contents of that box or your daughter dies.”
Yeah, I’ll give you the contents of that box, asshole. “That box was full of cat crap!”
Chatsworth’s nostrils flared as he tightened his choke hold on Joy. “Don’t you know that six out of ten American men experience anger when a woman lies to them!”
He’s losing it! He’s choking her! “Okay, you win!” I shouted. “Here’s what you came for!” As slowly as I could, I pulled Karl’s secret flash drive out of my pocket and held it up.
“I want your computer, too,” Chaz said. “And I’m pretty sure I’ll find it upstairs with the little girl’s help. Lights out now, Clare. I don’t need you anymore.”
“What are you going to do?” Joy screamed.
“Early-morning robbery, cute thing,” Chaz replied. “Mother and daughter dead. A tragedy.”
Joy struggled, but Chatsworth tightened his grip again, until she could hardly breathe, let alone fight.
My fists clenched. There was no time left. Nowhere near time for Mike to get here. I had to do something.
“Mom goes first,” Chatsworth said. “So I can have a little fun with daughter before I put her lights out.”
He slowly shifted the gun until I was staring down the barrel. I’ll die, I decided, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll run at him, take the bullets, give my Joy a chance to get away—
I was about to lunge when I heard the loud boom!
A gun went off, I was sure of it, but I wasn’t shot—and then I realized Chatsworth was the one reeling, blood spurting from his shoulder.
But who shot him?!
The noise of falling glass caught my attention. I looked up to see a familiar silhouette through the cracked window-pane. Mike! I tore Joy away from Chatsworth’s grip and pulled her to the ground, out of the line of fire.
Glass exploded inward as Mike Quinn came through the French doors, firing two more shots as he moved. Bullets ripped Chaz Chatsworth, twisting him around until his limp body crashed into a café table.
Quinn stood over the dead man, his weapon smoking but steady in both hands. His clothes were rumpled, a five o’clock shadow on his cheeks and chin. He kicked the gun away from Chatsworth’s dead fingers and faced me.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice tight with emotion.
I helped Joy to her feet and nodded. “We’re both okay. How did you get here so fast?”
“I never left,” he told me. “I was sleeping in my car outside when your call woke me. I would have fired sooner, but I couldn’t get a clear shot until he took the gun away from Joy’s head.”
Five minutes later, Emmanuel Franco climbed through the shattered window, followed by his partner, Charlie Hong. For a few silent seconds, we all stared down at the dead celebrity. Then Franco turned to me and asked—
“Who the hell is he?”
“It’s a long story, detective,” I said with a sigh. “And I’ll be happy to start at the beginning. But first I’m going to need a really big cup of coffee.”
Epilogue
“Look up.”
Mike Quinn’s whisper tickled my ear as I began pulling two new shots behind the espresso bar. I glanced toward the ceiling to find a small bunch of green herbs dangling above my head.
“What is that?”
“Mistletoe.”
I laughed. “Mike, that is not mistletoe.”
“No?”
I sniffed the flat-leaf bouquet. “It’s Italian parsley!”
“Really?” Quinn pointed across the Blend’s crowded main floor. “Your former mother-in-law assured me it was mistletoe.”
Madame, looking stunning tonight in a jade and burgundy ensemble, gave us a little wave. I shook my finger at her. She laughed, then turned to rejoin Otto, Matt, and Breanne.
“So what does that mean?” Quinn complained. “Are you telling me I’m not getting a Christmas kiss out of this?”
“Not a mistletoe kiss, no. Now shoo, Detective, and let me work...”
It was Christmas Eve and the Village Blend was packed with Santas—Traveling Santas. After the crime-scene cleanup, I’d called Brother Dom and suggested something that would cleanse the Blend’s karma: a party for the men and women who’d been working so hard to bring the spirit of the holidays to the needy of the city.
Once Brother Dom and his crew finished their Christmas Eve rounds at the shelters, churches, and soup kitchens, I invited them here for Fa-la-la-la Lattes and an avalanche of cookies baked by my baristas.
Brother Dom was thrilled to accept the offer, as well as the check from Madame for his charity. But that wasn’t the biggest donation. After finding out about Dexter Beatty’s and Omar Linford’s little scheme to cheat the city, I phoned Omar and strongly suggested he give back a little. Or even better, a lot.
Linford quickly—even happily—wrote the check for Brother Dom. He didn’t even mind hearing from me again (a miracle, because I’d been responsible for having his son busted). It seemed the arrest finally put the fear of the DEA into Dwayne Linford. He stopped fighting his dad and agreed to enroll in college for that music degree. At last, Dwayne’s nights of club hopping were finished (for a while, anyway) and for that, Omar was grateful.
With Chatsworth dead—and his DNA and fingerprints not only linking him to Alf’s and Karl’s murders, but also the Pilgrim’s Daughter and Cora Arnold OD cases—you’d think Madame’s friend Mr. Dewberry was finished, too. But Phyllis Chatsworth had just been handed the publicity bonanza of a lifetime.