Dead to the Last Drop

Read Dead to the Last Drop Online

Authors: Cleo Coyle

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Cozy, #Women Sleuths, #Amateur Sleuth

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Cleo Coyle

Coffeehouse Mysteries

ON WHAT GROUNDS

THROUGH THE GRINDER

LATTE TROUBLE

MURDER MOST FROTHY

DECAFFEINATED CORPSE

FRENCH PRESSED

ESPRESSO SHOT

HOLIDAY GRIND

ROAST MORTEM

MURDER BY MOCHA

A BREW TO A KILL

HOLIDAY BUZZ

BILLIONAIRE BLEND

ONCE UPON A GRIND

DEAD TO THE LAST DROP

Haunted Bookshop Mysteries writing as Alice Kimberly

THE GHOST AND MRS. MCCLURE

THE GHOST AND THE DEAD DEB

THE GHOST AND THE DEAD MAN’S LIBRARY

THE GHOST AND THE FEMME FATALE

THE GHOST AND THE HAUNTED MANSION

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

For more information, visit
penguin.com
.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-16735-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coyle, Cleo.

Dead to the last drop / Cleo Coyle.—First edition.

pages ; cm.—A coffeehouse mystery ; [15]

ISBN 978-0-425-27609-9 (hardback)

1. Cosi, Clare (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603.O94D42 2015

813'.6—dc23

2015030696

Cover illustration by Cathy Gendron.

Cover design and logo by Rita Frangie.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

Version_1

To Wendy McCurdy, our longtime editor, for her brilliance, her patience, her kindness . . . and her belief in us.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My first thank-you is to my husband and cowriter, Marc Cerasini.
Dead to the Last Drop
marks the fifteenth book in our long-running Coffeehouse series, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner in writing—or in life.

Our nation’s beautiful capital city of Washington, DC, is second on my thank-you list. My DC experiences—interning as a newspaper reporter, studying at American University, and enjoying the nightlife of Georgetown—stayed with me for years and helped inspire key elements in the story that you’re about to read.

For coffee inspiration, Marc and I thank Holly O’Connor of One Good Woman coffee and teas from around the world, onegoodwoman.com, along with her Baltimore-based master roaster, Shannan Stroble, of Source Coffee for taking the time to share details of their life and work.

Special thanks is in order for Thomas Blanton, national security archive director, GWU, for his eye-opening appearance at the Washington National Press Club, which fueled and informed a subplot in this mystery, including the “thirty-year gap” in government e-mail archiving. See the appendix of this book for helpful links to learn more about this archiving gap and the National Security Archive, the U.S. National Archives, and the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act).

Thanks to author Ronald Kessler for information on guarding the children of the President. To learn more about the lives of U.S. Secret Service agents, read his informative book
The
First Family Detail
.

Props must be paid to the Smithsonian Institution and especially its beautiful National Museum of American History, americanhistory.si.edu. If you have never been to the Smithsonian Museums, put it on your bucket list. You won’t be sorry.

Many years ago, I hosted a radio program on WRCT FM titled “Alice’s Jazzy Restaurant,” which allowed me to celebrate brilliant jazz artists, who also inspired what you’re about to read. My thanks goes out to those artists, especially my old friend George Gee, georgegee.com, and the clubs who keep jazz alive, including: Blues Alley in Georgetown, bluesalley.com; the Blue Note, bluenote.net; and a tiny club called Smalls, where you can join me nightly in watching live jazz because their website streams directly from their Greenwich Village stage, smallsjazzclub.com.

Cheers to everyone at Berkley Prime Crime who had a hand in creating this beautiful finished book, especially our longtime editor, Wendy McCurdy—and our new editor, Kate Seaver! Our grateful appreciation goes out to assistant editor Katherine Pelz for cheerfully keeping us on track, production editor Stacy Edwards for her tireless efforts, and copyeditor Randie Lipkin for her kind diligence. We also thank our talented designers Rita Frangie and Kristin del Rosario, and our Coffeehouse Mysteries cover artist Cathy Gendron, a brilliant painter to the last drop.

Last but far from least Marc and I send a triple caffeinated thank-you to our friends and family, our fantastic readers, our tireless booster Nancy Prior Phillips, and our dedicated agent, John Talbot, for their continued faith in us.

In closing, Marc and I invite you to join our wonderful Coffeehouse community at coffeehousemystery.com, where you will find recipes, coffee picks, and a link to stay in touch by signing up for our newsletter.

May you eat, drink, and read with joy!
—Cleo Coyle

CONTENTS

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Cleo Coyle