Forty

WHEN I reached the shop’s main floor, I found the Village Blend was still a customer-free zone. Dante, God love him, had moved behind our counter, just in case one happened to show up.

AJ was now perched on a barstool across from him. Her pleated skirt fell to the side to reveal long legs, tightly crossed, the one on top bobbing up and down like the handle of an excited water pump.

Their private smiles and flirtatious glances quickly disappeared as I approached.

“Hey, boss, are you finished upstairs?” Dante asked, suddenly all business.

“Done,” I told him. Then I faced AJ. “Did Dante help you pack your equipment?”

“He’s been a perfect ten—” she said. “I mean gentleman!” Her cheeks blushed rosy. “I mean . . . he’s keeping me company while I wait for my Uber car.”

“So, AJ,” I began, hoping I sounded casual. “I understand you worked under Haley Hartford. She was your supervisor?”

AJ frowned. “For a while.”

“What did you and Sydney mean about not holding grudges? Did Haley leave under some kind of cloud?”

AJ shifted uncomfortably. “I really can’t talk about that.”

“Can you share anything about Haley’s new job?”

“She was developing an app for a start-up fitness company.”

I nodded. “The detectives mentioned her new boss was a Mr. Ferrell. But there’s something I don’t understand . . .” I made a show of scratching my head, doing my best to look innocently perplexed. “Why would Haley quit a full-time position at a successful company like Cinder for an untried business that might fail?”

“Money, that’s why!” AJ blurted, her leg pumping faster. “Three weeks ago, Tristan Ferrell instantly doubled Haley’s salary and gave her a ten-thousand-dollar signing bonus—in cash.”

“Cash? Why?”

“Off the books. No taxes. Haley was helping her little sister through medical school. She was always looking for a way to earn.”

“Tristan Ferrell?” Dante murmured. “Hey, I know that name! Tristan Ferrell is Nancy’s other boss.”

“Nancy Kelly? Our Nancy?”

“That’s how she keeps her membership at the Equator fitness club. She couldn’t afford it otherwise.”

“I thought that foreign exchange student from Dubai bought her a membership.”

“A one-month pass,” Dante said. “He’s already moved on to a new conquest, but Nancy found another way to extend her gift, and make a little cash on the side.”

“Well, I hope Tristan Ferrell doesn’t steal Nancy from us the way he stole Haley from Cinder.” I turned back to AJ. “I wonder . . . was Haley doing that other job on the side before she took it full-time? Was that the source of the tension? Is that why she left?”

The leg was pumping so fast now that I feared AJ was going to lurch off her stool. “There were . . . other issues,” she confessed.

Unfortunately, that’s all she confessed. An alert on her smartphone ended our conversation.

“Oh! Sorry, gotta go. My car is coming.”

As I waited for Dante to help the less-than-talkative Tinkerbell load her equipment into the hired car, I couldn’t help wondering about the “other issues,” and I made a mental note to find out. Tomorrow night Team Tinkerbell was coming back to the Village Blend. With a little luck, one of them might enjoy gossiping about office politics—or at least have looser lips than AJ.

By the time Dante returned, Esther had joined me behind the counter.

“What?” Dante said, seeing our hopeful stares follow his every step across the shop. “Did I do something wrong?”

“We have an action plan,” Esther announced.

“And this involves me?”

I nodded. “You’re the best artist on staff.”

A grin of pride split his face.

“Don’t get all peacocky, Baldini, you’re no Leonardo.”

“I wouldn’t be, would I? Da Vinci is not among my influences.”

“Let’s hope the ‘Code’ part is,” I said. “Because we need you to decipher your memory of a face, and reconstruct it as a sketch. Esther and I will help . . .”

After I explained our Barista APB idea, Dante said he understood what we wanted, but we would have to decide “which version” of Richard Crest he should draw.

Esther blinked. “What do you mean, which version?”

“There’s the one we saw the night Gun Girl confronted him, when he was trying to hide his face. And there’s the one I saw last night.”

“Last night!” Esther and I cried together.

“At that new gastropub on Bleecker. I saw him swiping through women on his phone. Fifteen minutes later, he was drinking with a giggling NYU undergrad. She was practically in his lap . . .”

I exchanged glances with Esther. She was right. Crest was still swiping. I turned back to Dante.

“You said he looked different?”

“Changed his hair. It was much darker. The top wasn’t slicked back anymore. It was shaggy and kind of tousled. The skinny suit was gone, too. He wore jeans and a hoodie. And he had lots of jaw shadow, you know, celebrity stubble.”

“Draw both versions of him. Right now.”

While Dante went to work in our upstairs lounge (sketching Village Blend wanted posters), Esther took over the empty counter, and I went to the basement to roast coffee.

In the heat of our vintage Probat, I stewed.

My staff would soon be ready to ID Richard Crest. And Soles and Bass assured me they’d pick him up when he walked in.

But what if Crest never walked in?

What I needed was something to entice the man back into my coffeehouse. Unfortunately, my expertise was culinary, and this guy wasn’t the sort who’d be seduced by sticky buns—not the kind we sold, anyway.

So what would tempt him?

As the light dawned, I pulled out my smartphone. To reel in this catfish, I would need the proper bait. And no one knew more about alluring lures than my ex-husband.

Time to consult the king of hooks—and (pickup) lines.

“Hello, Matt? Can I come over?”

“To my place? Hey, anytime . . .”