Hours before I found the body, one of Detective Mike Quinn’s pithy comments came back to haunt me: “You know, Clare, it’s a little-known principle of physics, a great deal of money can create a completely separate universe.”
“You were right, Mike,” I whispered, taking in my surroundings.
I was standing on the bi-level oceanfront deck of Otium cum Dignitate, “Leisure with Dignity,” David Mintzer’s ten-million-dollar East Hampton mansion, where his annual July Fourth party was in full swing.
Floating candles bobbed in the Jacuzzi like dancing water fairies. Antique porcelain planters sweetened the sea air with rare orchids and night-blooming jasmine. Speakers, hidden in the topiary, accompanied the music of the nearby rolling surf with the majestic compositions of Gershwin and Copeland. And sterling-sliver serving trays overflowed with flutes of obscenely expensive champagne and freshly picked strawberries the size of lemons, dipped in the finest Belgian chocolate.
“East” Hampton, of course, was one of the most exclusive hamlets in the United States. It sat beside Amagansett, Wainscott, Sagaponack, Bridgehampton, Southampton, and a few other quaintly named seaside townships known collectively as “the Hamptons,” each with its own set of beaches, permits, and restrictive (some might say fascistically elitist) parking regulations.
East Hampton was also a prime example of my detective friend’s theory. For the very wealthy who summered here, from business moguls to movie stars, old money heirs to new money wannabes, the place was a trip back in time, where neon was outlawed, scenic rural landscapes were preserved, and genteel country estates were hidden from public view by towering “stay out!” hedgerows. (Or, as the local gentry referred to them, “privets for breaking the ocean winds,” because actually admitting your aversion for allowing the general public to even peek at your property might make you appear a total snob.)
The Hamptons, it seemed to me, were about a lot of things, but mostly they were about being one hundred miles away from the gritty threats and cheap kicks of New York City. Money had carved these people another dimension, an existence of safety and beauty and taste, free of the stench of fear and crime and tackiness.
The villages were located at the end of Long Island’s South Fork, a picturesque strip of land filled with ponds, marshes, and hills. Bluewater bays stretched along its north side, the Atlantic ocean along its south.
There were hiking trails here and haute cuisine. Farm stands and a film festival. Bird sanctuaries and built-in pools. Nature preserves and tennis courts. You could find Jackson Pollack’s original, unheated studio here, as well as Quelle Barn, Steven Spielberg’s multi-million dollar East Hampton summer home, supposedly guarded by retired members of the Mossad—Israel’s secret service.
Even the light was special in the Hamptons. Artists claimed it was the peculiar shape of the landscape, the slant of the sun’s rays as they bounced off the water. Whatever it was, they could find it nowhere else, which was one reason the area had become one of America’s most famous art colonies long before La-La Land’s A-list had started driving up the real estate prices.
Hamptons’ colors actually appeared richer too (not just the people). One morning when I rose for an early swim, I found myself gaping at an azure ocean so identical to the sky above it that no horizon line presented itself—the blue seemed to go on forever.
At the moment, on the other end of Long Island, the end without pristine white beaches, most of New York City’s residents were living on top of each other in cigar-box apartments, rundown rowhouses, and public housing—all of them sweltering in the kind of relentless city heat that liquefied every ounce of energy before sucking it right out of you. Emergency sirens and shouting neighbors routinely punctured any hope of sustained tranquility, and sidewalk garbage, baking in the summer heat, fouled the air with the sort of fragrances that Calvin Klein wouldn’t be bottling anytime soon.
Because tempers rose with the temperature, muggings, burglaries, assaults, and murders were now statistically up all over the city. And Mike Quinn had been clocking a lot of overtime at the NYPD’s Sixth Precinct.
Here in East Hampton, on the other hand, police work appeared to be limited to public drunkenness, auto accidents, or the occasional actress-turned-pathological-shoplifter. Delicate breezes refreshed the residents with the vigor of salt spray. And the nights were cool, quiet, and dark enough to actually see the constellations.
This place was a dreamland, Trump-meets-Thoreau, with an ocean view. And New Yorkers who had no roots in its history bought their way in with oodles of money, staking their million-dollar claims. They had indeed violated the laws of physics, as my friend Detective Quinn had put it, and created a completely separate universe.
So what the heck was I, middle-class working stiff Clare Cosi, doing here? At the moment, I was whipping up frothy coffee concoctions for David Mintzer’s illustrious party guests.
I know, I know…in America the term “barista” has come to be associated with out-of-work actors and college coeds—never mind that Americans consume half the world’s coffee supply, about 100 billion cups a year, and on a typical day seventy percent of the population drinks it. Here barista is not the highly-respected job title it is in, for example, Italy, a country with over 200,000 espresso bars.
The truth is, I’d gotten my coffee start early. My paternal grandmother taught me how. She raised me back in Pennsylvania, where I practically lived in her little grocery, making espressos for her customers and friends with the battered stovetop pot she’d brought with her from Italy. With every cup I poured, there was always a pat on the head, the pressing of a quarter into my palm.
My father, a flamboyant, constantly wired little guy who loved a good cigar and a shot of anisette with his morning demitasse, ran an illegal bookie operation from the back of Nana’s store.
My mother never sampled my coffee-making skills. She’d left when I was seven, and although for years I’d thought it was because I hadn’t been a good enough little girl, I eventually realized she’d become fed up with my father’s running around.
One day when a man from sunny Miami came to our town to visit a friend, Mom ran off with him, leaving nothing but a hastily scrawled note, which made her intentions clear. She wanted to erase her past completely, which unfortunately included me.
That’s when my grandmother stepped in. Making espresso in Nana’s grocery was one of my fondest childhood memories. So it was no big mystery why I associated the best of things with the rich, warm, welcoming aroma of brewing coffee—the essence of home, of Nana’s hugs, of unconditional love in the face of an incomprehensible rejection.
Even after my collegiate studies and successes as a culinary writer, I ultimately decided making the perfect cup time after time for a person who might be tired, weary, thirsty, or down, was not an insignificant thing.
Despite my function at this East Hampton party, however, my job title was not in fact “barista to the stars.” My actual occupation was full-time manager of the Village Blend, a landmark, century-old coffeehouse in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, which was where David Mintzer and I had gotten to know each other in the first place.
In his mid-forties, David was one of those men who could be described with a list of features that had “slightly” in front of almost every one: slightly paunchy with slightly thinning dark hair, and slightly bulbous eyes. There were other things about him, however, that were far from slight: his wit for one, which was quick and wry; his business acumen for another.
David was an unqualified genius at whatever he attempted to do. He’d designed successful lines of men’s and women’s clothing, luggage, shoes, fragrances, and bed-and-bath products that were distributed internationally. He ran three successful magazines, two restaurant chains, and he periodically appeared on Oprah to give advice on “seasonal trends” to her television audience.
We had first met at a fashion-week party last fall. David had bought a townhouse in Greenwich Village, and he’d become a regular customer at my coffeehouse. He was so impressed with our exclusive blends and roasts, not to mention my espresso cocktails, that he made me an offer. If I would train and oversee his barista staff at “Cuppa J,” his brand new East Hampton restaurant, he would not only pay me a generous salary, he would give me a room in his oceanfront mansion all summer as his guest.
After some persuasion, I’d finally agreed that between June and September, I would split my time between Cuppa J and the Village Blend, using assistant managers to look after things at the Blend while I was gone.
Don’t get the wrong idea here. David and I weren’t lovers—not even close. At the moment, we had one of those gray-area personal/business relationships. And, frankly, even if I’d wanted there to be more between us, I wasn’t even sure it was possible. Sometimes he flirted like a straight man and other times he struck me as, well, slightly effeminate (there’s that “slightly” again). In the end, his sexuality seemed ambivalent at best.
The thing is, besides being very wealthy, David was also very sweet—or, at least, he’d been sweet to me. At the start of the evening, for instance, his Cuppa J chef (Victor Vogel) and manager (Jacques Papas) had arrived at the mansion with food they’d prepared at the restaurant. David had made a big fuss about personally serving me two flutes of his imported champagne and an outrageous portion of sixty-dollar-a-pound lobster salad.
For the rest of the night, I continued to remain entranced by the bewitching seaside setting—and, of course, the ever-flowing French bubbles. What can I say? Back in the city, I could barely afford an occasional lobster tail. Out here, sterling sliver serving trays—one of which my daughter, Joy, was now carrying—overflowed with seemingly endless rounds of seafood canapés and miniature French pastries that resembled works of modern art.
David had graciously encouraged all of his servers to eat, drink, and be as merry as his guests, and I most definitely took him up on that offer. While it was true that I was just “the help,” and it was also true, when you got right down to it, that this whole Hamptons thing wasn’t a whole lot different than your average backyard “kegger,” I just couldn’t talk myself out of being impressed. I’d never before been to a July Fourth party in the Hamptons (a New York City social accomplishment so noteworthy you’d think it would come with a military campaign ribbon), and I was secretly thrilled.
It’s no wonder that violence and decay were the last things I expected to encounter that night. Certainly, they were the last things on my mind before I found the body. The time of death, I would eventually learn, was around the same time the evening’s fireworks began. But I wouldn’t actually find the corpse until long after the show ended. So, at this point in the evening, I was still relatively carefree.
The same could be said of my twenty-one-year-old daughter who had come with me to David’s while on summer break from her Soho culinary school (she came at my insistence for reasons I’ll get to later). Joy was as thrilled as me about being at this party—but for her own particular reasons.
“Mom, Mom, did you see Keith Judd?” she bubbled, rushing over with her empty serving tray.
Joy had my chestnut hair, green eyes, and heart-shaped face, and her father’s height. No, she wasn’t six feet. But she was four inches taller than my five foot two and had a personality like her father’s, with more effervescence than a magnum of Asti. Tonight she was clad in the same Cuppa J outfit worn by the rest of the waitstaff—a salmon-colored Polo knit with the Cuppa J logo embroidered in thread the color of a mochaccino over the right breast. The men wore khaki pants and the females khaki skirts. At the restaurant we also wore mocha-colored aprons. For tonight, however, since we were catering a private party at David’s home, he asked us to ditch the aprons.
“Look, Mom, look. See him over by the pool? He winked at me. He totally, actually winked. At me.”
“Uh-huh,” I said as I dosed freshly milled Arabicas into the portafilter cup. I tamped the ground beans in tightly, swept the excess from the rim, used the handle to clamp the portafilter securely into the espresso machine and hit the start button to begin the extraction process.
“And why is that a ‘good thing’?” I asked Joy.
A number of Famous types—actors, pop stars, writers, television personalities—lived in or near the Village, and I’d served them many a grande latte. But even before my time, the coffeehouse’s revered owner and my ex-mother-in-law, Madame Dreyfus Allegro Dubois, had regularly served some of the most famous members of the Beat generation, from Jack Kerouac to Lenny Bruce, Willem de Koonig to James Dean. So I was far more jaded than my daughter about “celebrity sightings.”
“C’mon, Mom. Don’t tell me you don’t know who Keith Judd is.”
“Oh, I know who he is, honey. Star of slick spy thrillers, right? He landed a courtroom drama role that got him an Oscar nod this year. Hunk of the moment.”
“Hottie, Mom. Hunk is old school.”
With a groan, I finished pulling the two espresso shots, dumped the dark liquid into a waiting blender, added crushed ice, milk, chocolate syrup, and a dash of vanilla syrup, then took the whole thing for a spin on high. I poured the “Iced ChocoLattes” (as we called them at the Village Blend) into two glass mugs, mounded the frothy drinks with chocolate whipped cream and chocolate shavings, and waved Graydon Faas over to the outdoor espresso station.
Like my daughter, Graydon was a member of David’s Cuppa J waitstaff working tonight’s party. A surf-crazy twentysomething with a brown buzz-cut streaked blond, Graydon was the tall, silent type. With a quick, nervous-looking glance at Joy, he picked up the frothy drinks and walked them over to the two waiting guests who’d ordered them.
“Okay,” I told my daughter. “Hottie then. What I want to know is why you think I’d be happy to hear that a man at least as old as my ancient forty years, is winking at my twenty-one-year-old daughter?”
Joy rolled her eyes. “Because he’s a big star.”
“Honey, half the faces here have been on the cover of Trend magazine and the other half have been profiled in the Wall Street Journal. Didn’t you study Chaucer back in high school? The House of Fame has dubious structural integrity.”
“I don’t care. He’s cute.”
“Who’s cute?” said Treat Mazzelli, walking up to Joy and throwing a muscular arm around her shoulders. “Talking about moi again?”
Another Cuppa J waiter, Treat was in his mid-twenties. He had flashing brown eyes, raven hair, and the stocky, muscular build of a weightlifter. He was also an outspoken guy who loved to use his flirty sense of humor on the younger females of the species.
“What an ego,” teased Joy. “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about Keith Judd. He winked at me.”
I grunted in disgust and shook my head. Treat noticed my reaction. “Relax, Mother Clare,” he teased. “I saw the whole ‘Keith Judd’ incident.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It’s an incident, is it?”
Joy smirked at Treat. “What did you see?”
He shrugged. “Just Joy staring at Judd with naked abandon. Can you say ‘obvious’? The guy was clearly shining her on. Apparently, he’s used to groupies like her.”
“I am not a groupie.” Joy’s voice held mock outrage, but I could see the little flirty smile forming as she eyeballed Treat. “Yeah, okay, so I was probably staring. But at least I didn’t drop the tray, okay? Give me credit for that.”
“Okay, sweet thing.” Treat laughed. “Here’s your credit.”
The two were about the same height and he easily tightened his arm around her neck, trying to pull her into a half-nelson so he could buff her head. But Joy was too quick for him. With a squeal, she slipped out of his grip.
“Do not. Repeat. Do not touch the hair!”
Treat rolled his eyes. “What up, princess? It’s just a ponytail?”
“A neat ponytail,” Joy pointed out. “I don’t want you mussing it.”
“Check it, baby. You haven’t lived till you had Treat muss you…just a little, what do you say? After the party?” He reached out to tug her hair.
Joy flipped her chestnut ponytail out of his reach, but I could see she was enjoying the game—a little too much.
So I cleared my throat—a little too loudly.
“You two better get some more trays circulating or Madame may flog you with her Gucci shoe.”
“Aye, aye, Barista Bligh.” With a salute for me and an exaggerated wink for Joy, Treat headed off to the kitchen, where my French-born ex-mother-in-law was reigning supreme as the “Culinary Queen,” as Treat had put it earlier in the evening.
One thing about Madame, whether she was in a vintage Oscar de la Renta or a béarnaise-stained apron, she maintained a regal bearing like nobody’s business. And for a woman pushing eighty, she often displayed more upbeat energy than I could muster at the end of the day. I was glad she’d come out to visit me and her granddaughter—and even happier she’d volunteered to manage the mansion’s kitchen tonight, making sure our waiters and waitresses properly arranged their trays and kept the prepared food flowing.
Joy watched Treat head back inside the mansion. “C’mon, Mom, give me a chance to impress Keith Judd. Whip me up something extra-special to take to him.”
“No.”
“Pleeeeeze.” Joy tapped her cheek. “How about your eight-layered chocolate-almond espresso!”
The eight-layered espresso was a complicated balance of physics—it required the careful pouring of heavier syrups and lighter liquids to create a beautiful-looking drink. It was my own version of a café pousson, that multi-layered cocktail of liquors of different colors and densities, which originated in New Orleans. Since the French translation of the drink is “push coffee,” and since they say a true café pousson separates the men from the boys where bartenders are concerned, I decided to create one using actual coffee. But the last thing I wanted to do was use my talents to help my daughter impress a womanizing thespian.
“That’s a hot drink,” I told her. “I’m making iced tonight.”
“Come on,” Joy pleaded. “He’ll love a hot drink. The weather’s cooling off now anyway.”
My daughter’s eyes were as wide as emerald moons. Like a little girl she wanted what she wanted when she wanted it. So what did I do? What any self-respecting American mom would do. I sighed, shook my head, and gave in.
“Okay,” I said. “But how about a Tropical Coffee Frappe instead?” Rum and coconut had made that one a favorite of tonight’s guests.
“No. Not special enough.”
“An Amaretto Iced Coffee Smoothie?” Kahlua and amaretto gave that one a kick.
“No.”
“Please do the eight-layer thing. He’ll love it! Please, Mom!”
“Okay, but it’ll take a few minutes of concentration. You take over mixing the cold drinks for guests until I finish.”
“Deal!”
About fifteen minutes after Joy delivered my “hot” version of a café pousson cocktail to the “hottie” actor, the fireworks began.
I always was a sucker for July Fourth displays. When my ex and I had been happily married—for a few years there, when Joy was still very young and things hadn’t gone totally to hell yet—we would put Joy in a stroller and go over to the FDR drive in Manhattan. The city closed the highway off so residents could line the East River from Harlem to the South Street Seaport and watch the most spectacular fireworks display in the country. The rockets would shoot off from barges floating in the river. Ice cream, hot dog, and shish-kabob vendors would supply the crowd with delicious street fare, and portable radios would provide broadcasts of synchronized music.
I remember Joy clapping happily in her stroller, Matt putting his big, strong arms around me and telling me to just lean into him. If only we could have stayed that way, never left the FDR, kept the fireworks going forever.
Tonight’s display had been privately arranged by David, who was a newcomer to East Hampton. This was only his third annual Fourth party. Two brothers from Manhattan’s Chinatown, who had long ago worked out the pile of permits needed from the local authorities to create private fireworks for Hamptons parties, set their rockets up down the beach and angled them to fall over the ocean.
Now colors bloomed in the evening sky, painting the starry canvas with flickering lights that trailed like wet diamonds down to the black surf. We all stopped to watch the spectacle, then the party cranked up again, one last burst of energy before the guests, like the flickering lights of the expended rockets, trailed off into the night.
The fairly speedy exit of the partygoers was not surprising. Clouds were moving in fast from over the ocean—a flash of distant lightning and a rumble of thunder had been the equivalent of a Broadway curtain call. With smiles and waves, and calls goodnight to each other, the friendly, happy throng filed into the mansion and out the front door like a human commuter train.
As the last of the guests trailed off, I quickly directed Joy and Graydon Faas in a cleanup detail on the large outdoor deck. There were cups, cocktail glasses, and napkins all over the joint. Lounge chairs, antique benches, and other furniture had been scattered across the deck and lawn as well. And with the storm moving in, all of us had to work fast to get the valuable pieces inside before the skies opened up.
“Clare, what do I do with these fabulous strawberries?” Madame asked me as I moved the espresso machine back onto the kitchen counter. “There’s not one egg of caviar left and the prawns are long gone, but I have about ten quarts of fresh strawberries left over here. I can package them up for the restaurant or place them in bowls for David’s personal use.”
Even after a long night, Madame was looking as put-together as ever. Her blunt-cut, shoulder-length gray hair, dyed sleekly silver, had been twisted into a neat chignon and her sleeveless fuchsia blouse and black summer-weight slacks were protected from spills by a still nearly-spotless white chef ’s apron.
“I think David better make the decision on the strawberries,” I said, snatching a plump one to nibble on. “Where is he, anyway? I haven’t seen him since before the fireworks.”
Joy overheard us. “Maybe he’s out front with the last of the guests.”
“No, no. He wasn’t feeling well earlier,” said Madame. “He mentioned to me that he had a migraine coming on with a vengeance, said it felt like a food allergy reaction, although he was certain he hadn’t eaten anything to induce it. In any event, he went upstairs for some medicine and to lie down. He asked me to make his apologies to any guests that might leave before he came down again. Do you think he’s fallen asleep?”
I checked my watch. “If he took migraine medication, I’m betting the man’s down for the count.”
“Perhaps you better check on him,” Madame suggested. “See if he needs anything.”
“Good idea.”
“Oh,” she called after me. “If you see that young man Treat, would you send him my way? That boy went off to find a free bathroom some time ago—the first floor bathrooms were constantly in use all night—and I believe he’s been shirking work every since!”
I raised an eyebrow at that. It wasn’t like Treat Mazzelli to shirk work. He was a good, dependable waiter at Cuppa J. Nevertheless, he did seem to have a penchant for flirting, and the party atmosphere may have given him license to indulge himself. I figured I’d find him in a secluded corner with a willing female on our wait staff—and only hoped it wasn’t more than a few kisses he was stealing. David would have an absolute cow if he found out Treat was using one of the mansion bedrooms to seduce a co-worker.
“Don’t worry,” I called back to Madame. “I’ll throw a rope around him and drag him back.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance as I left the large gourmet kitchen. Still nibbling the giant strawberry, I entered the great room—a spacious salon filled with goosedown sofas, overstuffed armchairs, and dozens of gorgeous antiques. A large fireplace dominated the room on one end, and the wall parallel to the deck and beach had been made transparent by a line of tall palladium windows, closed up tight now because of the coming storm.
David’s bedroom suite was on the south end of the sprawling mansion. He’d shown it to me once, during the “grand tour” of the entire estate on the day I arrived.
I climbed a set of stairs tucked between the great room and the library. At the end of the hallway on the second floor of this wing was a set of mahogany double doors that led to David’s master bedroom suite. The doors were shut, and I was about to tap them lightly when I heard water running.
The sound came from behind a single door along the hallway, which stood perpendicular to the double doors. This door, I remembered, led to David’s private bathroom—a huge, sleekly modern affair with a Jacuzzi, mood lighting, a towel warmer, and satellite television.
David would, of course, typically enter his bathroom from inside his bedroom. This hallway entrance was for Alberta Gurt, the housekeeper. It allowed her to enter the bathroom from outside the bedroom suite and clean it without disturbing him. Of course, with the water running, I assumed David was now in there, and I lightly knocked on the bathroom door.
“David?”
No answer.
I knocked louder and waited, finished the last bite of my huge strawberry and licked my fingers.
“David! It’s Clare. Do you need anything?”
Still no answer.
I pounded as loudly as I possibly could.
“David are you all right? David?”
I turned the knob and realized the door wasn’t locked.
“David, I’m coming in!”
I slowly cracked the door, giving him time to protest. Peeking inside, I saw the pool of red on the ivory marble. Then I swung the door wide—and screamed.