O-kay. I kept walking.

Three more tables turned out to be a bust: conversations about rent hikes, a lousy love life, and an HBO miniseries. But at the very next table, a couple of guys were talking about the shooting. It sounded to me like they were comparing notes on their separate questioning by canvassing cops.

I slowed to a complete stop.

“Did you hear anything? ’Cause I sure didn’t,” the first man said. He appeared to be in his early thirties, had a fresh-faced, midwestern look about him with thick blond hair and a J. Crew outfit of pressed khakis, a pale-yellow button-down, and a matching sweater draped over his shoulders.

“You didn’t hear anything because your apartment window doesn’t face Hudson,” the second man replied. “Mine does.”

I recognized the second man as a regular Blend customer named Barry. He was a very nice, soft-spoken but brilliant Web designer in his early forties. His brown hair was thinning, and his once-trim figure was spreading a bit, but he had a warm, genuine smile and always took the trouble to compliment our coffee. Like many of my regular Village customers, Barry also happened to be gay, and the man he was sitting with looked about ten years younger and a whole lot cuter than Barry’s current boyfriend.

“I actually heard the shot,” Barry announced.

“Really?” the other man replied. “You heard it? What about Martin?”

Barry frowned and shook his head. “Martin left.”

“Oh, really?”

The cute guy leaned forward slightly. I smiled, seeing the obvious. Barry, however, remained glum.

“He packed up three days ago,” Barry said with a sigh. “So I was alone tonight. This is actually the first time I’ve come out since he dumped me. Anyway, I didn’t know what I heard was a gunshot. Not at the time. I thought it was something harmless, you know? Then I hear sirens and forty minutes later, the cops are pounding on my door-”

“Excuse me,” I said.

Both men looked up. Barry smiled. “Oh, hi, Clare. What do you need?”

“Did you just say that you heard the gunshot in the street?”

Barry nodded. “Sure did. It was right under my window, too.”

“And where do you live exactly?”

“Two and a half blocks away, on the same side of the street as the Blend.” Barry gestured in that direction. “I’m in a second-floor apartment.”

“You heard the shot right below you?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“And what did you see?”

“Not a thing. That’s what I told the police. I went to my window and looked down-I thought it might have been a kid with fireworks or a car tire popping, something like that-but there was nothing. Not a soul.”

Barry’s story fit with what I’d experienced, too. By the time I’d turned around to look for the shooter, the person was out of view.

“Did you tell the police anything else?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I mean… You didn’t see anything, but did you hear anything after the shot? Say, like, footsteps running, something like that?”

“Well, actually, now that you mention it…” Barry scratched his chin. “I did hear some footsteps really close, but they weren’t running. They were walking.”

“What?” I’m pretty sure my bloodshot eyes bugged at that.

“I heard some footsteps, like you said. But I didn’t see anyone there, so I didn’t mention it to the cops, you know? I mean, why would that matter?”

“Well, if you heard footsteps walking, yet you couldn’t see who was walking, don’t you think this person could have been the shooter, maybe moving out of sight, say around the side of your building?”

Barry stared at me for a few dumbfounded seconds. “Oh my God, Clare. I didn’t think of that. The footsteps must have been the shooter ducking into my alley. Oh my God, I should have told the police-”

“It’s okay. Listen… Why don’t you write down this number?” I put down my cups and reached for Lori Soles’s business card in the back pocket of my jeans. “This is one of the detectives investigating the shooting. Just call her cell and tell her what you just told me. All right?”

“Okay, Clare. Oh my God…” He wrote the number on his Village Blend napkin.

“Don’t worry, Barry. You didn’t do anything wrong. Enjoy your coffee.”

Juggling the two lidded paper cups, I moved to the base of the spiral stairs in the center of the dining room, unhooked the thin velvet rope with the dangling Second Floor Closed sign, and rehooked it behind me. As I clanged up the wrought iron steps, the crowd’s raucous chattering slowly dissipated, and my mind started working.

Something isn’t adding up…

By the time I reached the quiet of the upstairs lounge, I was fairly certain of one thing where the shooter was concerned. I looked around for Matt to see what he thought, but it wasn’t easy to locate the man. Most of the room was shrouded in darkness.

SIX

THE second floor’s sofas looked like hulking silhouettes, the colorful throw rugs like gray storm puddles. There were eight antique floor lamps in this large space, an eclectic collection scattered about to give the feeling of a funky, comfortable bohemian apartment, but there was nothing cozy about the room tonight. None of the lamps were turned on. The strongest light came from the hearth at the far end of the room.

Tucked into the exposed brick wall, the split logs were crackling, their high flames flashing like tangerine lightning in the antique coffeepots above the mantel. Fog-gray shadows moved across the old tin signs on the exposed brick walls. The effect was creepy, as if the ghosts of dead customers had come back for some kind of grim midnight party.

Since Matt had taken the trouble to set the fire, I expected to see him in front of it, his muscled frame sunk into an overstuffed couch, his shoes off, his feet up. Instead, I found him standing next to the tall front windows, his body angled tensely for a better view of the activity around the emergency vehicles a block away.

Enough light spilled in from the streetlamps for me to make out a closed laptop computer on the table closest to him, along with a cluster of small porcelain espresso cups, all of which were empty.

“How many have you had?” I asked, walking up to him.

“Four.”

“Then you aren’t going to want this double macchiato, right?”

Matt grabbed the paper cup out of my hand, flipped off the lid, and bolted it.

I blinked. “Guess I was wrong.”

“I’m trying to sober up. Not that tonight’s events weren’t sobering enough already.” He crushed the cup in his hand and tossed it onto the table.

I nodded, closed my eyes, and sipped my own macchiato, pulling the richly caramelized coffee through the little island of frothed milk. It was profound, in a way, how the tiniest kiss of something sweet and white could transform the heavy impact of something so much darker. The drink’s caffeine was energizing, too, and my weary body wanted the stimulation as badly as Matt had wanted his-only not as fast, which, when you got right down to it, pretty much defined our differences.

“Listen,” I said, after opening my eyes, “I’m not scheduled for any more hours today, but Dante and Gardner have been dealing with the mob down there alone, so I told them I’d come back on. Do you think you could pitch in, too?”

Matt nodded. “I’ll help.”

Two simple words, an oasis in the desert. “Great.”

The father of my child stared at me for a long moment after that, his jaw working silently; then he peered out the window again. Obviously, the man was agitated. But I got the distinct impression it had nothing to do with the amount of caffeine he’d just consumed.

“Is something wrong? I mean other than the obvious-” I gestured in the general direction of the crime scene, where emergency lights were still flashing red against the century-old town houses.