Murder Most Annoying by John Duckworth

Author:John Duckworth [Duckworth, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647348823
Publisher: City Lights Press
Published: 2020-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

The name of the place was Bean Thinking.

The bad pun was no surprise, considering what some people called their coffeehouses and hair styling salons. Remarkably, though, the Bean in the logo appeared to be of the kidney or pinto variety, not the brewable kind. Whoever had painted the picture over the door had depicted Rodin’s Thinker with a large legume where his head should have been.

Entering beneath him, I felt out of my element. I tried to avoid trendy, overpriced places unless they sold clothes or shoes. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

Stephen, of course, looked right at home. He’d always spent an inordinate amount of the working day with his laptop at Starbuck’s, pretending to edit while he probably went to Snapchat and Buzzfeed.

The interior was hardly worth describing—the smells of mocha and caramel and cinnamon, the signs saying things like FAIR TRADE and FREE WI-FI, the studiously arranged shelves of hardcovers no one ever opened, the couches, the patrons staring at their MacBooks through eyeglasses with fashionably outdated frames. There was also the requisite unreadable menu on the wall, printed to look as if it had been scrawled in chalk. I peered at it, knowing we’d have to buy something to justify our presence.

There was no line, probably because the morning rush of caffeine addicts was over, and the lunchtime crowd had yet to materialize. A girl about Stephen’s age, a brunette with a wide face and long lashes, stood behind the counter.

“Hi,” she said, brushing crumbs from her rubberized apron. “What can I get you?”

“Mocha latte, tall,” Stephen said.

Checking its price on the wall, I flinched. “Iced Caramel Contemplation, short.” I’d never seen one, but it sounded appropriate for 90-degree weather and I could pronounce it.

The young lady went off to do something with a stainless-steel machine that hissed and spat like a testy feline. Another barista, this one male and morose and sparsely goateed, stepped up to the battalion of pump bottles next to the register. Choosing one, he pounded two squirts of syrup into a cardboard cup and disappeared into the back.

The girl returned, carrying our drinks. She told us the price, somewhere between that of a mass market paperback and a Mercedes-Benz. I paid it, though not gladly.

“I remember the days before coffee became an art form,” I said. “Or a major investment.”

She smiled. “Yeah, I know. My dad says, like, the same thing. Guess he’s right.”

Stephen raised his eyebrows. “He’s right? Were you home-schooled? Beaten with a wooden spoon?”

She chuckled. “No. Just kind of, like, traditional.”

I took a sip of my drink. It was fine if one enjoyed that sort of thing. Which I did if it was Free Iced Coffee Day. Which it wasn’t.

“We understand a guy named Zane Tripp used to work here,” I said.

She sighed. “Yeah. Did you know him?”

“Not exactly. But I’m trying to get acquainted with him through some people who did.”

“Are you, like, from the police?”

“No. But we’ve met more than once with the detective assigned to the case.

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