No Roast for the Weary

Prologue

The late autumn morning arrived with unpredictable clouds and a brisk wind off the Hudson River. Frosty gusts whipped through the Village streets, and the sidewalks were nearly deserted, but inside our cozy coffeehouse the buzz of happy customers promised a robust winter season.

To say I was pleased would be an understatement. I could hardly believe that only a few weeks ago, I feared all was lost.

Earlier this fall, the location filming of a hit television show in and around our Village Blend had disrupted our daily revenue stream and brought a distressing deficit to our bottom line. That calamity had no sooner ended when a devastating drop in foot traffic clobbered us anew, threatening our very existence.

As the manager and master roaster of this historic shop, I could not bear to see it suffer a sad, slow death. I owed my family of baristas and beloved octogenarian mentor more than that. So, instead of giving up, I decided to fight for its life.

A remedy came in the form of an idea from the Village Blend’s own bohemian past: an upstairs writers’ lounge. Resurrecting that simple, vintage concept jumpstarted our traffic faster than a triple-shot red eye with a Red Bull chaser.

Looking around me now, our financial problems appeared to be solved. Outside our wall of French doors, the chilly sidewalks were still far too barren. But inside, our coffeehouse was no longer empty.

Our marble-topped tables were packed with contented customers sipping our drinks and nibbling our pastries. The air was filled with the scent of freshly roasted coffee and the buzz of conversation. Our espresso machines hissed, our fireplace crackled, and our speakers resonated with smooth jazz.

With a fresh tray inmy hands, I climbed the spiral stairs to our second floor. All the spots in our lounge were occupied, and every person was a writer. They came here for a place to create and collaborate, and they had my admiration. Many of them balanced multiple part-time jobs, squeezing out extra time in their schedules to type out the music of their imaginations.

As I moved among them, most were lost in the process, fingers dancing across their laptop keyboards, pens twirling on notebook pages. In the corner, I noticed a slumped figure. The poor soul had fallen asleep across their work, head down on the table, cobalt blue hoodie pulled fully up, arms sprawled out beside them.

No rest for the weary, I thought, a phrase I’d heard often among the writers who gathered here—and sometimes napped between gig-economy shifts.

As I drew closer, I sensed something was off about this writer’s slumped form. Another few steps and I nearly dropped my tray.

“Hey, are you okay?”

No response.

I shook the writer’s shoulder, and one limp arm slipped off the table. I saw the waxy flesh and curled fingers.

Oh, no. No, no, no—

Praying I was wrong, I shook the figure again. This time, the whole body toppled off the chair and onto the floor. Seeing the collapsed corpse sent an icy shock through me. Realizing what it meant chilled me to the bone.

In the next few minutes, chaos descended—the call to 911, the uproar in the shop, the desperate attempts to revive a person who could not be saved. As the inevitable whirlwind struck, the gears of my mind worked, putting pieces of a puzzle together with sickening swiftness.

Over the past few weeks, I’d learned things that had spiked my suspicions. Now I feared this poor dead writer had not died of natural causes. And there was something else. Something worse—

There could be more deaths to come.

To stop the killings, I would have to reach back to a dark night from the Village Blend’s past and predict the future moves in a murderer’s mind. I’d need to recount a dozen micro dramas, sort out specifics, and consider all the suspects: from the eccentric old poet and the bestselling author to the crazy young professor and this shop’s chief competitor.

Everyone was involved in this story, practically from the start—and it allbegan when our financial woes were at their worst. When I feared the end was near. Not the end of any writer’s life, but the existential end of our Village Blend.

Chapter 1

Greenwich Village, New York
Two weeks ago

The bell above our front door jingled.

“Hey, I’m back! What’s with the snow?! It’s too early for snow!”

Looking up from behind the counter, I found my ex-husband and current business partner struggling with a bulky backpack. Snowflakes clung to Matteo Allegro’s dark beard and crimson windbreaker—a jacket far too light for such a frosty morning.

“Don’t blame me for the weather,” I called. “Tell it to the polar vortex.”

As I pulled Matt a speedy pick-me-up from our espresso machine, he made a shivering beeline for the blazing brick hearth and slipped the big pack off his strong shoulders. It hit our restored plank floor with a loud thud.

“I’ve been gone for ten days, Clare. Don’t I deserve a ‘Welcome back, partner, how was your trip?’”

“Sorry. I was up at five AM redecorating the upstairs lounge, so I’m all out of enthusiasm. How about a caffeine welcome instead?”

Stifling a yawn, I brought over Matt’s usual, one shot with a lemon twist. He drained his cup like a busy Roman, while still standing.

“Thanks, I needed that. I’m just off a red eye from Kigali. Fifteen hours without a decent drop.”

Stripping off his now-dripping windbreaker, he revealed a short-sleeved Brazilian soccer jersey (which explained why he was freezing). After shaking the snow out of his unruly dark hair, he moved one of our (far too many) empty café tables closer to the fireplace, plopped down in a chair, and rubbed his bare hands near the flames.

I took a seat across from him and waved two fingers at my youngest barista. With a toss of her yellow braids, Nancy Kelly gave me a grinning thumbs up. She knew what we needed.

“So how was your trip?” I asked. “I hope you found some promising cherries this year.”

“Wait till you taste the Burundi!” Matt flashed me a smile, a dazzler of white teeth against his black beard and deep tan. “First shipment arrives next week. The Rwandan’s already in our warehouse—and thank goodness you’re the one roasting it.”

“I appreciate that,” I said and truly did.

My ex-husband was one of the most respected coffee brokers in our trade, and he never flattered lightly. He knew how superb Rwandan coffees could be, but they were tricky. Experienced roasters knew how to fire those green beans long enough to develop a rich mouthfeel without letting the cherries turn to charcoal. Like a lot of things in life, getting results came down to the art of nuance—not only knowing when to push, but when to back off.

“Here you go!” With fresh-faced enthusiasm, Nancy served up a demitasse for me and a new one for Matt. “I felt your pain all the way across the room, Mr. Boss, so I made yours a double.”

Matt nodded his thanks, took a satisfying hit, and leaned his tanned forearms on the Italian-marble tabletop.

“I’m back early, Clare, yet you don’t seem surprised.”

“I would have been more surprised if you were a customer.”

Matt’s tired eyes scanned the coffeehouse floor. “What day is it?”

“Are you really that out of it?”

“My phone ran out of power, and my watch is still on Central African Time.”

“It’s Monday, nine-forty AM Eastern.”

Matt frowned. “Where’s your mid-morning rush? This place should be packed, but it’s deader than my phone battery.”

“The shop is dead every day after nine AM. Even our early morning business is nothing like the old days. Unless we turn things around soon, I’m afraid the Village Blend will be dead, too.”

My unhappy news hit my ex-husband with a force harder than his bulky backpack smacking our polished floorboards.

“You can’t be serious!” he cried.

“Lower your voice,” I whispered. “You’ll upset our baristas.”

Matt stared at me. The impact of the word “dead” (in relation to our century-old shop) had produced more than a booming response. A crimson color flushed the man’s olive skin.

“This couldn’t have come at a worse time,” he said. “I took out a million-dollar loan to build our Red Hook roasting facility. It’s almost ready to open—”

“Calm down. Our wholesale business is doing fine. We’re moving more freshly roasted beans than ever. Restaurants are ordering so much that I can hardly keep up with demand.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Foot traffic. It barely came back after the pandemic. And the disruptions we endured during the location filming in our shop sealed the deal. Mid-mornings and afternoons are the worst.”

“Why didn’t I see this coming?”

“Because your focus has been on your coffee importing business. With all your traveling, you’ve failed to notice that New York City has changed. People don’t pop in and buy a morning cup before they head to the office anymore or drop in during their office lunch break.”

“What did they do? Switch to bone broth?”

“They stopped going to the office. Remote work has emptied most of the commercial buildings around us.”

Just then, Esther Best, our resident raven-haired slam poet, emerged from our pantry. As she tied an apron around her ample hips, she spotted Matt, pushed up her black-framed glasses, and cried—

“Hey, Mr. Boss! Welcome back from the Mother Continent, birthplace of the magic bean. You look tired. How ’bout an espresso? Mine are supreme!”

Matt smirked at me. “Now that’s what I call a greeting.”

“Esther is just happy to have a customer. Like all of us, she’s worried. The whole staff is sweating. Nobody wants to be cut loose.”

“You know you can’t do that. These people are family.”

“It’s the last thing I want to do. But your mother put both of us in charge of her legacy, and I can’t pretend it’s not in financial jeopardy. Our place should be packed at this hour, but it’s completely empty. You can see for yourself. Not one customer has come through that door.”

Then the bell rang and made a liar out of me.

Chapter 2

A single soul stepped into our shop.

The older gentleman was slight of build with shaggy white hair. Wrapped in a dark green puffer coat that reached down to his knobby knees, he looked like a grandpa elf who’d lost his way to the North Pole.

An old red cap, too small to cover his prominent ears, sat on his head, and a cashmere scarf dangled from his neck. The expensive, camel-colored scarf looked out of place with the ragged cap, inexpensive puffer coat, and dogeared spiral notebook tucked under one arm.

Then the newcomer spotted Esther’s goth-girl bouffant behind the counter and his pale, blank features visibly brightened. He hailed my zaftig barista with a wave of his worn notebook and, though he was small of stature, his voice was loud and strong.

“Esther, it’s a cold autumn day, but seeing you makes me feel like my spring has sprung!”

Esther put her hands on her hips and exclaimed, “Give it to me!”

The man touched his heart with one hand as he replied, “Courtesy of Robert Burns.” After clearing his throat, he began to recite—

“O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June.
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.”

With a slight blow, he pointed at her in challenge.
Esther put a finger to her round cheek, taking a moment to think. Then her voice boomed—

“Yo! My love be like a new red tat
Inked in freshest fashion.
Yo, my love be like my slammin’ rap
Brash and full of passion!”

Matt leaned across our table. “What’s going on?” he whispered.
“It’s a game they play every time he comes in. He throws out a classic stanza of poetry, and—”
“Oh, I get it,” Matt said. “Esther translates it into urban rap.”
“He hasn’t stumped her yet. Maybe today’s the day…”
As Matt and I watched with interest, the elderly man pointed at Esther and recited again—

“So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.”

This time, Esther replied immediately—

“So hot you are, my freaky boy,
For work you made me late;
My twisted heart will beat for you,
Till all gangsta crews go straight.”

The man laughed. “Very good effort, though your meter was off on that last line. One syllable too many.”

“It was worth a little freestyle, wasn’t it?”

“All right, my dear. I yield. You win again.”

Esther grinned wide, her dark eyes sparkling for the old boy as he sidled up to the coffee bar and placed his order.

Matt turned back to me. “So who is this grandpa poet?”

“He’s become a regular. Lately he’s the only dependable morning customer we have. Esther calls him Mr. Scrib.”

“Scrib? That’s an odd name.”

“He told her to call him that. He said it was his nickname. The staff thinks it’s appropriate because he spends so much time scribbling things in that notebook of his.”

“He seems to love Esther.”

“Yes, there’s a special bond between them. I’ve seen him walk in and walk out again because Esther wasn’t on duty. She’s the only one he’ll trust with his order.”

“Have you tried to engage this oddball in conversation?”

“Don’t call him an oddball. He’s a sweet man, though I admit he is quirky. And maybe a little paranoid. Tucker thought so, too—”

Tucker Burton was my trusty assistant manager. A part-time actor and downtown director, he’d dealt with plenty of artists who (as he put it) danced to showtunes only they could hear.

“One day when Tucker was working with Esther, he noticed that Mr. Scrib hardly spoke except for that poetry game. Tuck tried to engage him in wordplay, opening with a Shakespearean sonnet.”

“How did that go?”

“Mr. Scrib just gave him a dead-eyed stare until poor Tuck slinked away. Nancy once said that if it wasn’t for Mr. Scrib’s little rituals, he wouldn’t have a personality at all.”

“What little rituals?”

“Just watch.”

As he did most days, Mr. Scrib ordered a large “Coffee of the Day.” Instead of simply grabbing a take-out cup, Esther turned to the stack, asking “What’s your special number today, Mr. Scrib?”
He closed one eye, as if calculating. “Let’s try number seventeen.”

Esther patiently counted down the stack, pulled cup number seventeen, and filled it. Scrib opened his mouth, but Esther was way ahead of him.

“I remember. No lid!”

Mr. Scrib pulled out a wallet and paid with cash. Then, as he did every morning, the old man slowly climbed the spiral staircase to the second-floor lounge.

“There’s no one else up there,” I whispered to Matt. “But he’ll sit, all alone, in our lounge and write in his notebook for hours.”

“A freeloader?”

“Oh, no. Mr. Scrib will pony up for a refill every thirty minutes or so, but he refuses a fresh paper cup and insists on using the one he selected. And if Mr. Scrib comes down and finds Esther is gone, he’ll leave, too.”

Matt raised an eyebrow. “Another Greenwich Village eccentric.”

“And this neighborhood was built on them,” I reminded him. “Anyway, Mr. Scrib never gave us any trouble. He’s respectful, polite, quiet—”


“AAAAAHHHH! NOOOOOO!”

The bloodcurdling howl barreled down from our upstairs lounge in a wall of shocking sound. The shriek of earsplitting terror was so unexpected that Matt and I froze, mouths gaping like sculptures in a haunted icehouse.

That’s your quiet customer? Matt’s eyes seemed to say.

Once again, the man upstairs made a liar out of me.