French Pressed by Cleo Coyle Page A

the night, so he had one of his squad cars give us a lift back to Manhattan.
    The driver was Officer Brian Murphy, the big cop Matt had confronted on the street. The policeman didn’t say a word on the trip across the Queensboro Bridge and down to the Village. But when he dropped us off on Hudson Street, Officer Murphy did suggest that my ex-husband come back to a certain Woodside pub and look him up “after the doc cuts that cast off your arm.”
    Somehow, I doubted the man wanted to buy Matteo a beer.
    Joy was too distraught to go back to her empty apartment alone, and I firmly suggested she come back with us to the duplex above the Blend. Matt readily agreed.
    By the time we got there, it was four in the morning, and we were exhausted. With Matt’s broken arm, I insisted he take the big mahogany four-poster, while Joy took Matt’s smaller bed in the guest room. That put me on the downstairs couch.
    Matt pulled me aside after Joy went to bed and suggested I join him in the master bedroom. “We can share the bed, Clare. I promise I won’t touch you.”
    His eyes were wide as a puppy dog. He failed to blink even once.
    I thanked him very much and headed straight for the living room couch. Now, swathed in flannel pajamas and tube socks, I punched the feather pillow I’d snatched from the closet, pulled a knitted throw over me, and tried to get some sleep.
    But sleep wouldn’t come. My mind was too agitated. I couldn’t let the question go: Who would want to kill Vinny? Brigitte Rouille might have done it… The woman was obviously unstable, and according to Joy, she’d been picking on poor Vinny so badly that he’d called in sick. But I knew there was a huge gap between picking on a subordinate at work and actually killing him. On the other hand, Brigitte almost slashed my daughter, an event I saw with my own eyes.
    As crazy as she’d behaved with Joy, however, I frankly couldn’t see Brigitte Rouille bolting out of Solange and hopping a train to Queens to take out her frustrations on Vincent Buccelli in a homicidal bender. That assumption made me feel a little guilty about giving Salinas her name—but only a little.
    If Brigitte wasn’t guilty of murdering Vinny, then she had little to fear from some police questioning. In fact, maybe a visit from the authorities would inspire the troubled woman to seek some professional help before she did hurt someone.
    So who else could have done it? I’d been asking myself this for hours, of course, and after Salinas released my daughter, I’d specifically asked Joy about Vinny’s friends or a possible boyfriend. She said he was a loner, and it was totally news to her that he was gay. On the other hand, she confirmed that he’d never talked about having a girlfriend or liking any girl, and he’d certainly never made a pass at her.
    If Vinny Buccelli was in the closet, could he have been carrying on some kind of secret gay affair that went badly?
    By the end of the evening, Lieutenant Salinas had started asking questions around that exact theory. Vinny could have been the victim of a crime of passion, a gay lover or encounter that had turned deadly. If so, the young man’s secret affair could have been with another student at the culinary school or a fellow cook at Solange. Who else would carry a ten-inch French knife around with them?
    As I lay there in the living room, watching the slowly breaking dawn lighten the world beyond my French doors, I considered calling Mike Quinn.
    I’d thought about Mike earlier, too, while I was waiting for Joy to be released in Queens. But I’d decided not to bother him. He’d been leading his own important task force into the wee hours, and there was little he could have done to influence a man like Salinas anyway. I figured it would be better to let things play out, let Salinas see for himself that there was no reason to suspect Joy of murder.
    I’ll be seeing Mike soon enough, anyway , I told myself. I’ll ask for his advice