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