There was a pause as I waited for Matt to say something.
“I think they were kissing,” he said.
I blinked. “That’s what two people who like each other tend to do,” I said evenly. “Usually they do it every chance they get.”
“So, you really think she likes him?” Matteo asked.
There was a touch of anguish in Matt’s voice that, to be honest, I couldn’t share. I had lived through too many of Joy’s grade school crushes, her junior high school dates, a summer fling, and even a serious high school romance to fret over yet another romantic interest in my daughter’s life. Of course, Matt was there for none of it, so this was all new to him. Poor man.
“Don’t you know how to read coffee grounds?” Matt asked.
Now that was a silly question, and certainly a leading one. My ex-husband knew perfectly well that I read coffee grounds the way some read tarot cards. I learned it from my grandmother, who learned it from hers.
I know, I know! It sounds ridiculously medieval. Yet it is an ancient art, and coffee ground and tea leaf divination—collectively known as tasseography—is a little like interpreting a work of art.
Coffee residue or tea leaves dry at the bottom of a cup to form a “picture.” Interpreting that picture is similar to gazing at clouds and trying to see the shapes of bunnies, locomotives, sheep, what have you. And as with cloud gazing, two people may see the same cloud and interpret it entirely differently.
One might see a mushroom, for instance, and another a mushroom cloud—which makes tasseography a kind of Rorschach test, too, since the person seeing the mushroom and the one seeing the nuclear detonation might just have slightly different worldviews.
In any event, to “divine” tea or coffee, you study the “picture” created by drying tea leaves or coffee residue on the bottom of a cup. You then let your subconscious loose to freely associate ideas.
When I was young, I thought it was a good party trick, and I often used it as a way to meet people, including boys. As the years passed, however, I learned that my divination skills with coffee grounds could be uncannily accurate. A few things happened that scared me. And I now did it only rarely.
“What do you see?” Matt said, waving Mario’s used espresso cup under my nose.
I wanted to turn away, but despite my better judgment I gazed into the depths of that cup. The remains of the coffee grounds had dried to form the distinctive shape of a hammer in the center of the cup. Around that hammer was a halo of stains shaped like licks of fire.
“Don’t be silly,” I said, pushing the cup away. “You know it’s just a parlor trick. And I haven’t done it in years. I can’t tell you anything more about that boy than you already know.”
“I know I don’t like him.”
“Fancy that.”
Abandoning my quest, I tied the garbage bag again. Out of habit, I tied the inner bag first. But as I was about to close the outer bag, I noticed a bulge on one side of the sack. A wad of garbage had ended up wedged between the two layers of plastic. From working behind the counter myself, I knew that happened sometimes, usually when some last-minute trash turned up after the inner bag, filled to the brim, had already been sealed.
I opened the outer bag wide and reached down between the plastic layers.
“What are you doing now?” Matt said, clearly repulsed.
“Reading garbage,” I replied. “A whole other brand of divination.”
“Not if you count the supermarket tabloids. Didn’t they go through the late JFK Junior’s garbage on a fairly regular basis?”
“I guess that’s why they call it muckraking,” I said, poking around until my fingers closed on what felt like a mushy mass of cold, wet spinach. Steeling myself, I drew out the sloppy blob.
Matt watched over my shoulder as I opened my hand. A hand that was stained with a wad of used tea leaves. Green tea leaves, just about enough for a grande cup’s worth.
Anabelle herself was not a tea drinker, so she must have brewed it for someone else. No doubt, the tea leaves were wedged between the two bags because she’d already tied the first bag for the night when she’d tossed the leaves away. So brewing that tea must have been one of the last things she’d done that evening.
If I was correct, and someone had entered the store and assaulted Anabelle that night, then said person was a tea drinker.
My mind raced. Tea drinkers were not common at the Blend. But just today I’d spoken to four—Letitia Vale, who had no motive; Anabelle’s stepmother, Darla Branch Hart, who either had a motive or was simply an opportunist in the face of her stepdaughter’s tragedy; and the two Russian dancers, Vita and Petra, who certainly did have a motive.
“What’s up?” Matt asked. “What are you thinking?”
“That maybe I should have learned to read tea leaves instead of coffee grounds.”
Seventeen
The next morning, I opened the Blend on time. At ten minutes after six, Dr. John Foo was through the door like clockwork.
“Good morning, Clare,” he said.
“The usual, Dr. Foo?”
“Yes, thank you.”
As I pulled the two espresso shots for the double tall latte, I made the usual small talk with the handsome young Chinese-American medical resident. After his morning workouts at the dojo down the street, he was usually in a chatty mood. For the past four weeks, since I began managing the Blend again, I listened and learned.
The first time we met, he’d told me one of the forms he studied was Wing Chun Gung Fu. “It was actually invented by a Buddhist nun named Ng Mui,” he’d said.
I knew nothing about martial arts, or Buddhism. But any form of self-defense invented by a nun was definitely worth learning more about in my book, so I’d been chatting about it with him ever since. Dr. Foo had even showed me a few simple moves, encouraging me to take it up at his dojo—but finding free time had been a challenge over the last four weeks. The struggle to get the Blend back on its feet had been all-consuming.
“So how are things at the hospital?” I finally got around to asking as I gave him his latte.
“They’re going well,” he said. “I’m learning a lot on this rotation in the intensive care unit.”
He took his first sip, closed his eyes and smiled. “Great cup, Clare. As usual. Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome.”
As he picked up the protective cardboard sleeve and slipped it onto the very hot cup, I asked, “Have you learned anything more about Anabelle Hart?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I got the information you wanted. But this has to stay confidential, agreed?”
“Agreed.”
What Dr. Foo said about Anabelle’s condition shocked me, but it didn’t change my plans. So, a few hours later, at just after 10 A.M., Matt took over managing the Blend and I ventured out.
The Dance 10 Studio was located in a refurbished office furniture warehouse on Seventh Avenue South, a bustling thoroughfare that cut through the heart of Greenwich Village’s historic district.
Lined with bars, restaurants, off-Broadway theaters, and cabarets, the wide, high-traffic avenue attracted high-spirited crowds nightly. On some Friday and Saturday evenings, it reminded me of Mardis Gras in the French Quarter. Anything went.
On a Friday morning, however, the wide avenue was quiet. The windows of the bars, restaurants, and cabarets were dark, and the vehicular traffic relatively light as I crossed the street.
I actually wanted to approach Dance 10 from the opposite side of the avenue from where it stood. According to Tucker, there was a little bar located there, and randy college boys, cheap beers in hand, were said to use the vantage to drool up at the dance studio’s wall of windows, where honed female forms floated across the wood floor during the last rehearsals of the night.