you win,” I whispered on a yawn. “Let’s get you some breakfast.”
Rolling out of bed, I stifled a groan. The bruises along my side had been easy enough to forget about while Mike was making love to me. In the light of day, the pain wasn’t so easy to ignore. The hot shower helped; so did the Advil with espresso chaser. Within a half hour of waking, I was feeling much better—and much worse.
My contentedly full kitty was watching pigeons on a wire out the back window, my man was happily catching zzz’s in the bedroom upstairs, but I was far from serene. In the quiet stillness of the duplex’s kitchen, sipping my second espresso of the day, I couldn’t stop my mind from returning to that dingy alley down the street.
How did it all go down? I wondered. Did the creep demand money from Alf first or just start shooting? How long did it take my friend to die there in the snow? Was that ugly gray Dumpster the last thing he saw on earth?
I felt myself beginning to shake again—but not from fear or cold or Mike’s touches. This time what shook me was fury. I wanted to do something for Alf, not just sit here and think about what the killer did to him—
I suddenly stood up at the kitchen table.
I need to be busy.
Tucker was already downstairs in the shop. One of our new trainees was helping him open, and I was supposed to have the morning off. I considered getting dressed and going down to the coffeehouse anyway, but I didn’t want to abandon my still-sleeping Mike.
I know. “I’ll bake!”
Java’s ears barely twitched at my announcement, which she deemed far less significant than her pigeon watching. Given my line of thinking a moment before, I figured the cat was right—
Baking was a pathetic alternative to pursuing an active criminal investigation that could nail Alf’s killer, but it would keep me from climbing the walls this morning; and it was practical, too, because whatever new cookie, tart, or muffin I devised, I could ask my baker to re-create for the Blend’s pastry case and sell it downstairs for a profit.
Cha-ching!
I cringed at the sudden memory of my dream—Alf’s Santa’s bells transforming into ringing cash registers. Then I remembered yesterday’s holiday decorating blitz when we’d replaced the Blend’s front door dinger with jingle bells.
Is that why I dreamed what I did? Every jingle of the door’s bells signals a new Blend customer, doesn’t it? And every customer is another chance for my cash register to ring . . .
I closed my eyes. How can I use Alf’s Fa-la-la-la Latte idea now that he’s been murdered? I’ll feel like a heartless mercenary.
Stop it, Clare! Stop thinking. Just bake!
I started pulling out the flour, sugar, butter, and the old wooden bread board that Nonna had brought with her from Italy. An hour later I was carrying a breakfast tray upstairs. On it was a French-pressed pot of Matt’s annual shipment of Jamaica Blue Mountain and my modern twist to my grandmother’s biscotti.
I replaced her traditional anise with vanilla and used roasted pistachios to give the cookie a delicate nutty flavor as well as a hint of green for the season. Dried cranberries added a cheerful shade of Christmas red while a decadent drizzle of white chocolate evoked icy-fresh winter snow. My secret ingredient, however, was ground cinnamon. The bright, bittersweet spice—once used in love potions by wealthy Romans—may have been an unconventional addition for biscotti, but it struck a surprisingly harmonious chord with the cookie’s other flavorings while lacing the air with an evocative aroma for the holidays.
As I reentered the still-chilly bedroom, my spirits rose like a yeast panettone. Mike’s being here for me felt like an early Christmas gift. At the very least, it was a wish fulfilled. Not so very long ago I’d daydreamed a scenario exactly like this: me serving the sandy-haired detective his morning coffee in this beautiful mahogany four-poster.
There’d been times I never thought it would happen, not that Mike hadn’t been thoroughly miserable in his marriage. Between his wife’s lying, cheating, and mood swings, the man had been living in the equivalent of an emotional war zone. For the sake of his two kids, however, he’d made every attempt to keep his marriage together. His wife was the one who’d ended things.
I’d never met Leila Quinn, and I often wondered what she’d been like when he first married her. I’d heard about