The world began to look a little fuzzy and I wobbled in place.
“Whoa, steady, Clare.” Jim put his hands on my shoulders. “Sit down.”
I sank onto my car’s front bumper, put a hand to my forehead. “I guess Jacques panicked. I made him worried and frightened that he was going to be found out. And because of that an innocent young woman almost died.”
“Come here.” Jim pulled me up against him, and I held on, my head alongside his chest, my hands gripping the corded muscles of his arms.
“I feel sick,” I muttered. “The gas—”
“It’s not the gas, Clare,” Jim said. “It’s the adrenaline seeping away, making you feel unsteady, disoriented. My old team leader back in the SEALs had a saying. It was true in combat, and I guess it’s true in life too.”
“What’s that?” I asked weakly.
Jim shrugged. “After the thrill, comes the crash.”
Twenty-One
I literally crawled out of bed the next morning, a hint of gas still tainting my palate. I threw a robe over my pajamas and shuffled downstairs to the kitchen. On the way I passed David in the great room of Otium cum Dignitate, also wrapped in a robe. He was so intent on his telephone conversation he hardly noticed my passing.
Like me, David had been up most of the night. He’d been called to the restaurant to secure his property after the gas leak, and the fire department declared the premises off limits until the utility company could make repairs. I assumed David was on the phone doing just that.
Our collective lack of sleep called for desperate measures, I decided, and I reached for the canister holding the caffeine-loaded Breakfast Blend.
As the nutty, earthy aroma began filling the sunlit kitchen, David entered and slumped down into a chair at the big table with a long, dramatic sigh. “It’s going to be hell finding a new manager in the middle of the season.”
“Better no manager than someone like Jacques Papas,” I replied.
David shook his head. “And he came so highly recommended.”
“I can see why. He was efficient, demanding, and punctual. He was a good manager…except for the embezzlement thing. Why do you think he did it?”
David sighed. “I turned him down. I shouldn’t have, I guess. He wanted to go back to Greece and open his own place. He wanted me to put up the money for him at the end of the summer. But I wasn’t interested in backing a restaurant overseas.”
“So he decided if he couldn’t get the money from you one way, he’d get it another?”
“I suppose so. Oh, Clare, I hate to put you out, especially after all you’ve done for me, but until I do get a new manager, I’m afraid I’m going to need your help.”
I nodded. “You know you can count on me.”
“I’d like you to take over, manage Cuppa J full time for the next two weeks—perhaps longer if my search doesn’t go well. That means long hours, and it means renegotiating the lousy deals with the vendors Papas made in my name. But I’ll pay you well, Clare. You can count on that.”
“I’m happy to do it, David. I’m sure I can ask Matt to postpone his next trip and take over managing the Village Blend for that long. But what about Chef Vogel? Wouldn’t you want to consider asking him to take over the management duties before me?”
David sighed. “Chef Vogel enjoys creating menus. He does so admirably. What he does not enjoy, however, and he’s made it abundantly clear, is payroll, employee schedules, personnel problems, and customer service. He’d be a lousy manager and he’d hate it, as well.”
“All right then, I guess I accept.”
David put his hands together in silent applause. “Thank goodness. Now let’s have some of that delightful brew!”
I poured, and we sat together at the table, enjoying the warmth and much needed caffeine.
“My god, I can’t stop thinking about that poor girl,” said David, shaking his head. “Colleen almost died in my restaurant. I just…I just can’t thank you enough for saving her life. And for saving the restaurant, of course. But, really, if that poor girl had died I never would have forgiven myself!”
“What about Treat?” I said evenly. “He’s dead too.”
“Yes,” said Madame, strolling in. “Mr. Mazzelli was somebody’s son, you know.”
David nodded. “Yes, he was, somebody’s drug informant son.”
Nothing like dropping a bomb in the breakfast room. “What?” I said. “What do you know?”
“I just got off the phone with Detective O’Rourke,” David said. “He tells me the police have found the murder weapon.”
I felt my guts twisting. “Where?”
“In the trunk of a car belonging to a young man from Manhattan. He was arrested for drug dealing in the wee hours of July sixth. The authorities ran ballistics tests and checked Treat’s background. When Detective O’Rourke was sure, he called me.”
“Sure of what?” I asked.
“O’Rourke discovered that Treat was a former cocaine dealer—arrested and charged, but never convicted. He was cooperating with the D.E.A, acting as an informant in exchange for immunity.”
The news to me was stunning. It certainly didn’t fit with any of my own theories.
“Officer O’Rourke says forensics can now tie the bullet casings from the beach, as well as the bullet recovered from Treat’s head, to the rifle. And since the weapon was found in a known drug dealer’s car, O’Rourke concluded that Treat was the sole target of the hit man.”
“Because Treat was informing on drug dealers for the D.E.A?”
“Yes. Now that O’Rourke has the murder weapon, the case is closed. That piece of evidence is incontrovertible.”
“It’s also circumstantial.”
David blinked. “I don’t see how.”
“For starters, why target Treat in the middle of a party and use a hidden sniper? Wouldn’t it have been easier to wait for Treat to leave the mansion, gun him down on the road, in front of his house—anywhere but in the middle of one of the biggest social gatherings of the season?”
“A moot point, Clare,” said David.
I shook my head. “Don’t you see that the murder weapon could have been planted? That maybe that’s why the casings were so casually left behind on the beach. No professional hit man would have made such a mistake—”
“No one said the arrestee was a professional hit man,” David argued. “He was probably just a punk.”
“And I’ll bet there are no fingerprints on that gun, either,” I shot back. “I’ll bet the killer wanted that weapon to be found by the police—he probably even tipped them—so that someone else would be charged with the crime.”
“Give it up, Clare,” David warned in an irritated voice. “O’Rourke says it’s over. So it’s over.”
“One more question, then I’ll let it rest.”
He sighed. “Ask.”
“Where did they find the gun and pick this perp up?”
“The wrong side of the highway,” David replied. “Somewhere in Hampton Bays, I think. Anyway, I’m simply relieved to hear that Treat’s killer has been caught.
I can pay off the security firm and be free of people in uniform staking out my house at all hours.”
I was alarmed. “Why drop the security?”
“It’s no longer necessary.”
“Please. There’s been a murder in this mansion. Your restaurant manager just tried to blow up your business. Can’t you keep the security in place for a few more weeks? For my sake?”
Madame raised an eyebrow. “You know, David, Clare’s right. Given what just happened with your misjudgment of Jacques Papas, don’t you think you should listen to my daughter-in-law?”
Ex-daughter-in-law, I thought. And considering Matteo’s relationship with Breanne Summour, things are getting exier every day.
David’s gaze moved from me to Madame and back again. Finally he threw up his hands. “I know when I’m outnumbered!” He set the empty cup on the table and rose.
“Now I have to dress,” he announced. “I’ve got a round of social calls to make, and I have to convince the gas and the glass company to send people immediately to repair the restaurant, or Cuppa J doesn’t open tonight.”