Remembering Dr. Foo’s chats about Wing Chung Gung Fu—and how small stature could be used to advantage—I immediately ducked low under Engstrum’s arms and kicked out, striking hard at his knee.
“Aaaah! Fucking bitch!” he cried. The gun went off but missed.
The back door was on the landing just above the narrow staircase to the basement and the strike sent him off balance. I struck at his knee again and down he went, tumbling head over heels all the way to the cold basement floor.
I didn’t know if or how badly the man was hurt so I raced for the front entrance, knowing I’d find help faster on Hudson than through the back alley. I was digging in my pocket for the key when I saw two familiar faces at the door.
Langley and Demetrios!!
They waved. Later, I would learn they’d been sent back over by Quinn to take me to the precinct for my statement. But that moment I didn’t care why they were there, I was just overjoyed to see their smiling faces, which dropped to grim alarm when I unlocked the door, tore it open, and screamed bloody murder.
Drawing their guns, they were at the back landing in seconds.
But there was no need to fire. Or even to pull out cuffs.
Richard Engstum, Senior, was sprawled at the bottom of the Blend staircase, unconscious. A wad of wet coffee grounds and a couple of well-placed kicks had reduced the fortified captain of e-business investments to a ragdoll of flesh and bone.
Now he was broken, bruised, and battered…
Just like Anabelle.
Thirty
“Don’t you know that old saying, Clare?” “What?” I asked Madame.
“You know you’re ready to die when you can no longer make a fist.”
Madame presented her open hand to me. Slowly but surely, she clenched each finger until she’d made a rocksolid ball.
“There, you see, dear. Nothing to worry yourself about. I’m feeling just fine.”
It was one week later. The police and media had come and gone, and things were slowly getting back to normal at the Blend. Madame stopped by for a visit—no longer in mourning black, thank goodness, but in a cherry red pantsuit.
With all the publicity, Matt and I finally told her all about what had transpired. She didn’t understand why we’d kept it from her. That was when Matt and I agreed to come clean with what we knew about her condition.
With a French-pressed pot of Kona, Matt and I took her up to the second floor to finally discuss it.
Madame refused to admit a thing to us about her cancer, and I was growing alarmed. She seemed to be in outright denial.
“Madame, Matt and I love you,” I said. “Don’t you want us to know?”
“Know. Know what?”
“There’s no use pretending,” I told her at last. “I saw you at St. Vincent’s with Dr. McTavish.”
Madame’s face actually paled.
“There, you see? We know,” said Matt. “So there’s no need for your pretense any longer.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said. “But I didn’t know where it was going. Now I do.”
“And?” I asked, afraid to hear the worst.
“And…We’re dating. I admit it,” said Madame.
“You’re dating your oncologist?” I said.
“My oncologist? Well, I suppose he’s mine. That’s the way we put it on Valentine’s Day, don’t we? Although that’s quite a few months away yet.”
“Wait a second,” said Matt. “Mother, do you have cancer or not?”
“Cancer? No, for heaven’s sake, I just had a spectacular physical. My doctor tells me I’ll live another twenty years. Maybe more. Why ever would you think I had cancer?”
“Because you were seeing an oncologist!” I cried.
“My dear, I was—and am—seeing a man with as much sex appeal as Sean Connery. The fact that he’s an oncologist is beside the point—”
“B-but you were sitting in a wheelchair,” I said. “Last week. On the cancer treatment floor—”
“Oh, my goodness! You must have seen me the day I’d finished passing out silent auction booklets at the hospital. I was wearing new shoes that day, and my feet hurt, so as a joke, Gary wheeled me around to deliver the last few booklets.”
“Ohmygod, and all this time we thought—”
“What? That I was dying of cancer?”
“Yes!” Matt and I said together.
Madame laughed. “That’s so ludicrous.”
“I don’t know,” I said, becoming slowly irritated. “Why else would you have gotten each of us to sign those contracts—without once mentioning the fact that you were making us de facto partners.”
“Why else indeed?” said Madame.
“This opens another whole line of discussion,” I said. “And since you’re not, in fact, dying of cancer, I’d like to point out that—”
Madame looked at her watch.
“—Matt and I cannot share the duplex apartment,” I continued. “It’s crazy.”
“You know, I just remembered something!” Madame announced, rising. “I’m running late! Gary is picking me up for an early dinner then we’re going to the new Albee play. We’ll have to discuss this another time!”
And with that pronouncement, Madame swept out of the Blend, leaving me and Matt to, as she put it, “work it out” between us.
Of course. As usual.
We’re still working it out, that’s all I’ll say for now. As for Flaste and Crewcut (who turned out to be a delinquent with an outstanding warrant named Billy Schiffer), here’s the scoop—
Flaste admitted Eduardo Lebreux had hired him to ruin the Blend. But when the plan failed, that was the end of Lebreux’s involvement. As we suspected, Flaste hatched the little burglary plan all by himself, hoping to make a tidy profit selling the secret Allegro book of recipes to Lebreux.
Since Lebreux’s involvement was underhanded but not illegal, we couldn’t do much more to him than chew him out verbally—which Matteo did admirably—ruin his reputation in the business, and shun him socially, which Madame is seeing to with her characteristic marble-fisted determination.
As for Flaste and Schiffer, they’re drinking jailhouse coffee now, which is probably punishment enough, even without their sentences.
And what ever happened to the Village Blend plaque?
Well, my old friend the butcher, Ron Gersun, walked in with it the day after the burglary.
“Ron!” I cried, seeing the plaque tucked under his beefy arm. “Where did you find it?”
“It was there…you know…. in Oscar’s Wiles.”
“Where? Matt said he looked all over that bar.”
Ron’s expression turned sheepish. “It was in the men’s room.”
I pictured my ex-husband in his search high and low, but then coming up against the men’s room door and stopping short. Matteo Allegro would fearlessly trek anywhere in the world—Central America, Africa, Asia. Anywhere but a Christopher Street men’s room. What a chicken.
“I guess Schiffer must have stashed it in there when I was around the corner stuffing my hair into a baseball cap,” I told Ron.
“You know, you looked kind of cute,” he said. Then he scratched the back of his head. “I mean as a guy.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said. “I think.”
I wanted to tell him that he looked pretty good, too, in his leather vest with his tangled chest hair and anchor tattoo, but I thought it best to derail that train of thought fast. My god, this was one weird world we lived in. Maybe Eduardo Lebreux was right after all—sometimes it all came down to the packaging.
“Well, see ya around, there, Coffee Lady.”
“Have a cup?” I offered. “On the house?”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
“Latte?”
“Hell no! Lattes are for girly men. Make mine a doppio espresso!”
“One double espresso coming up!” I said, praying all the while that Ron Gersun never ever discussed his coffee bar preferences with Detective Quinn.