Latte Trouble - By Cleo Coyle Page 0,28

just a bout of nervous tension, just like my doctor told me.”

ELEVEN

AFTER saying goodbye to Lottie, I hopped into a cab going west on Forty-second Street. Traffic was not as light as it had been on my way up and it took nearly forty minutes to drive less than two miles.

As I exited the cab one block from the Blend, I noticed two things. The first was a television crew doing a live interview on Hudson. The subject was a twenty-something woman with so many tattoos and pierced body parts that her round, pretty face resembled a pin cushion, her neck a brightly colored tapestry. In her hand, she clutched a Village Blend take-out cup. The interviewer’s earnest face and photogenic smile looked vaguely familiar and I assumed it was because I’d seen her on one of the local channels.

The second thing I noticed was a crowd loitering on the sidewalk in front of my coffeehouse, and I simply assumed Esther’s guess had been correct, when we’d spoken on the phone earlier, that some special event was taking place in the neighborhood.

I jostled my way through groups of people and clouds of tobacco smoke to the front door of the Blend. Inside, customers packed the main floor. It was so crowded, in fact, that some of the people had taken it upon themselves to open a few of our French doors for air and space, and they were flung wide despite the autumn chill.

At the bar alone, a line of at least twenty men and women were waiting for coffee drinks. As I threaded my way to the counter, Esther spied me, relief evident on her tired face.

Moira was behind the counter, too, along with Matteo. With his sleeves rolled up to reveal muscled forearms, he looked to be pulling espressos as fast as the Blend’s exacting standards would allow (because, if you pull an espresso too fast, i.e., if the liquid does not flow slowly out of the spout like syrup, what you’ve made isn’t espresso but brewed coffee).

“I thought Gardner was here,” I cried over the noise.

Matteo looked up, face sour. “He had a dentist appointment. Left a half hour ago. I had to take over for him.”

It was obviously not something my ex wanted to do.

“Nice of you to pitch in,” I said without a trace of sarcasm (for once). Then I slipped behind the counter, donned an apron, washed up, and replaced Moira at the espresso machine.

“What’s with the mob scene?” I asked. “Is there some event going on? A new tourist attraction?”

Matteo stared at me as if I’d cluelessly suggested we start serving instant coffee crystals. “Don’t you get it? We’re the attraction, Clare.”

I blinked. Still clueless.

“Just look around, take a look at the customers…especially the ones who’ve just been served their drinks.”

I watched a young man collect two take-out cups, slip one to a young woman hovering over an occupied table. The man opened the top of his cup, sipped his first taste, then he grimaced and made a face as if he were in his death throes. The woman slapped his arm playfully.

“I see,” I muttered.

Matteo shrugged. “I suppose it’s better than being shunned.”

Realization dawned. “That reporter…out on the sidewalk…”

“She’s from New York One,” said Esther Best, bringing more cups in from the pantry.

“Yeah, I ran the camera crew out of here a half hour ago,” Matteo said, fuming. “I can’t believe they’re still stalking our customers.”

“Have you heard anything about Tucker?” I asked.

Matt glanced at the Breitling on his wrist. “We should hear something in the next two hours. Breanne promised she’d call as soon as she spoke with her lawyer about the case.”

“So Breanne hears everything first.”

Matteo ignored me as he finished pulling another espresso, dumped the caked grounds, and reached for the coffee bin only to find it empty. “Hey, we’re out of our house espresso blend,” he complained.

“I haven’t had time to prepare any this week,” I told him. “You took over the roasting room, remember?”

Matt grunted. Which I still didn’t consider a reasonable explanation. When he’d first arrived back home from Ethiopia, he’d hardly said two words to me before vanishing into the Blend’s basement roasting room for hours. Holed up with three fifty-pound canvas bags of green coffee beans delivered from Kennedy International Airport customs, he interrupted the store’s roasting schedule in order to roast those beans. When he was finished, he divided up the entire batch into twenty-five pound, vacuum-sealed bags, carried all the bags up