A Brew to a Kill Read Online Free PDF Page A

menu—
     
    “Fla-
vours
for
vous
!
Chocolat
fooge!
Chocolat
ship…”
     
    The volume vibrated our windowpanes and rattled our demitasses. What upset me the most, however, was seeing the reaction of my former mother-in-law.
     
    Through half a century of turbulence and change, Madame had struggled to keep this shop’s doors open. She’d sheltered starving artists, sobered up drunken playwrights, and propped up penniless poets. She’d survived a world war and the loss of a beloved husband—the man who’s family had birthed this business at the turn of the nineteenth century.
     
    Now she stared with distress at our sidewalk, watching our customers casually leave our café tables to purchase goodies from that preening little vulture.
     
    “Do you want me to go out there and put a stop to this?” Matt asked, beginning to rise.
     
    “No,” I said, finding my feet. With a gentle but firm hand, I pressed him back. “Stay.”
     
    For nearly two weeks, I had ignored this situation, hoping it would resolve itself, but my conversation with Madame had woken me up to an important aspect of my business partnership with Matteo Allegro.
     
    “This coffeehouse is my responsibility. I’ll deal with it.”
     
    And her,
I silently added. Then I bolted the remains of my espresso and strode toward the door.
     

T HREE
     

    C UTTING the line, I planted myself in front of the Kupcake Kart’s service window. “Shut off those speakers.”
    For more than four decades, my West Village neighborhood—an amalgam of twisting lanes, secluded gardens, quaint bistros, and Federal-style town houses—existed under an umbrella of laws protecting its historical integrity. Generally speaking it was a neon-free zone, a picturesque respite from the city’s flash and zoom.
     
    Not tonight.
     
    The kaleidoscopic bulbs encircling Kaylie’s truck lit our tranquil café sidewalk with all the subtlety of a pole dancer’s stage. Even her front bumper blinked with the glittering LED message:
Squee! I Won!
(This was a reference to the previous year’s Vendy Awards, an annual event to honor the street chefs of the city. For that achievement, I couldn’t fault her. She took home both the Dessert and Rookie of the Year Cups.)
     
    But the lights were only part of it. Her truck’s awful rendition of “La Vie en Rose,” punctuated by—“Pea-nut Butt-
tair!
Car-a-mel! Va-nil-
la-la
!
”
—made me want to dig out my eardrums with a latte spoon.
     
    A bit of jostling occurred inside the truck with my arrival, then Kaylie Crimini’s smirking face was in mine. From previous encounters, I put the girl in her late twenties. Tonight, her tight lips and squinty glare more resembled someone entering a bitter and angry middle age. Leaning forward, she gave her head a prissy little shake. Then she made like Marcel Marceau, mutely cupping one ear to indicate she couldn’t hear me.
     
    I’d met Kaylie many times in this town. She was a sweetly perfumed, strawberry-glossed shark with a toxic competitive streak. Back in high school, she would have thought herself the most charitable, generous, virtuous person in the entire world—and would have laughed like a hyena when one of her BFFs tripped some awkward, unpopular “weird” kid in the cafeteria.
     
    I, on the other hand, was that quiet “nobody” girl who’d commit social suicide by helping the poor picked-on kid clean up her ruined lunch—while suggesting we hurl the sloppier bits in the general direction of the catty hyenas.
     
    “I
said
, turn that jingle off!”
     
    Now I was resorting to pantomime, slashing my right hand across my throat in the universal signal for
Kill it!
And, yes, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining Kaylie’s throat in convenient proximity of stainless steel cutlery.
     
    In response to my demand, Kaylie aloofly reached up to adjust the Paris pink paper tiara pinned to her hair, a honey-blond sculpture that resembled a double-dip ice cream cone—or the