Holiday Grind Read online

  Dex laughed. “Oh, mon! Haven’t your heard that ol’ island song? ‘How me love swimmin’ with bow-legged women.’ ”

  Esther frowned. “Isn’t that a line from the movie Jaws?”

  Dexter nodded. “It’s also a very old pirate ditty. Port Royal, you know, was once their biggest haven in the Caribbean.” He winked. “Underneath, we’re all buccaneers.”

  “If you mean all men,” Esther said flatly. “I’m in complete agreement.”

  Dex flipped through more glossy pages. “So, Matteo, what lady in here is to your likin’?”

  Matt pointed to a leggy blonde.

  “Her? Cha!” Dex shook his head. “She looks fenky-fenky to me!”

  “What’s fenky-fenky?” Esther asked.

  “It means she looks proud,” Dex said. “Stuck on herself.”

  Esther snorted and leaned toward me. “Sounds like Matt’s new wife.”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, we really should be going—”

  “Don’t you know that ol’ Jamaican saying?” Dex interrupted as he thumbed through the Post-it-tagged models.

  “Not another one.” Matt muttered.

  “Sweet nanny goat have a runnin’ belly.”

  “Excuse me?” Esther said.

  Dex turned to face her. “It means, what tastes good to a goat at noontime might ruin his belly by nightfall.”

  Esther adjusted her black glasses. “I need more.”

  Dex shrugged. “Some things that seem good to a man now, can hurt him later.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Esther said. “The running belly is the goat eating too much bad grass and then getting diarrhea.”

  “Diarrhea!” Dex vigorously nodded, sending his dreadlocks bouncing again. “Now you’re gettin’ it, sister!”

  “O-kay!” I interjected. “Now that she’s got the diarrhea, we’ll just let you two continue your, uh, browsing.”

  I grabbed Esther’s arm.

  “Clare, wait!” Matt called. “Where are you really going—”

  I heard the worry in Matt’s voice, but I didn’t care. Ignoring his question, I left my ex-husband to his lingerie models and pushed Esther out into the chilly night, my only reply the echo of jingle bells above our shop’s door.

  WHEN I finally let go of Esther’s arm, she skidded on a patch of sidewalk ice. I grabbed her in time to save her from a tumble.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “For now,” she said, shifting her big black leather shoulder bag from one arm to another. “But I’d really like to know why we’re returning to the scene of Alf Glockner’s murder in the dead of night?”

  I had to strain to hear her words over the traffic on Hudson Street, not to mention the howl from a stiff wind coming off the nearby river. It didn’t help that Esther’s chin was tucked deep into the coil of her mile-long scarf.

  “It’s not the dead of night,” I pointed out. “It’s only a little past seven.”

  A steamy sigh escaped Esther’s mouth. “Okay, maybe it’s not the dead of night, but it feels like it. It’s dark and cold and windy, which raises the question—no, two questions. Is this trip really necessary?”

  “Yes.” I flipped up the hood of my giant black sweatshirt. “We’re returning to the scene because I have a new theory about what happened to Alf in that courtyard. What’s your second question?”

  “It’s rhetorical, actually.”

  “What?”

  “Why-oh-why didn’t I go down to Florida with my parents this year?!”

  I took her arm. “Come on . . .”

  “So, Boss,” Esther piped up again as we took off down the sidewalk. “What is this new theory of yours?”

  “Sergeant Franco is searching for a random mugger, but I think he’s wrong.” I kept my voice low. There was no snowstorm tonight to scare pedestrians inside, which meant plenty of people were now strolling the Village sidewalks, including a middle-aged couple carrying bags of takeout right behind us.

  “How is Franco wrong exactly?” Esther whispered, taking my let’s-keep-this-private cue.

  “I think the killer had more to lose from Alf identifying him. I think the killer was a serious criminal, either fleeing or just beginning a break-in. That would explain the footsteps to and from the fire escape.”

  “So you think Alf was trying to stop a burglary? And caught a bullet for his trouble?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But . . . why was Alf in that courtyard in the first place? I mean, how could he know there was a burglary going on?”

  I fell silent for a moment. “Franco claimed Alf went back there for an innocent reason. As he put it: ‘to clean his pipe.’ ”

  “You mean pee?” Esther said. “Ew. Out in the open? In the middle of a blizzard?”

  “I don’t believe it, either. Alf had just left the White Horse Tavern on the corner, where he could have used a nice, warm men’s room. And he wasn’t that old—even though the Santa disguise makes him look that way—so I doubt very much that Alf had a prostate the size of a cantaloupe.”

  “A what?”

  “That was how Franco put it.”

  Esther rolled her eyes. “This dude sounds like a real class act.”

  “Well, he’s the lead detective.”

  “But you think he’s wrong, which means you still have to answer my question. What made Alf go into that courtyard?”

  Under my voluminous black hoodie, I shrugged. “Maybe he spied suspicious activity from the sidewalk and went in to check it out.”

  “But wouldn’t a burglary have been reported to the police by now?”

  “Maybe it already has. But that’s police business, so it won’t be easy to find out.”

  “Can’t your cop boyfriend help with that?”

  “Mike will help if he can. Of course, there are reasons burglaries go unreported, too. The victim could be out of town and not even know his or her place was ripped off—”

  “If it was ripped off. Of course, it is the holiday season. Lots of expensive gifts in shopping bags sitting around these posh apartments.”

  “True,” I said, “probably a lot of extra cash, too.”

  “And the people who got robbed might be criminals themselves, right?”

  “That’s possible, too,” I said. “Police involvement would be the last thing someone like that would want.”

  Esther snorted. “I guess a drug dealer isn’t going to tell the NYPD his stash was stolen—but I still don’t get what we’re doing out here in the dead of night. What are we looking for, exactly?”

  “Physical evidence of a burglary. Broken glass. A jim mied apartment window. Obvious signs of illegal entry. And it’s not the dead of night. Stop saying that.”

  “But haven’t the police been all over that place?”

  “All over the alley, yes, certainly the courtyard, too, because the policemen chased the mugger through there, but Franco shrugged off my concerns about the fire escape.”

  “The fire escape.” Esther stared at me a second. “You’re not going to climb it, are you?”

  I nodded.

  “What if you’re caught? That’s trespassing, isn’t it?”

  “I won’t be caught. Not with you watching my back.”

  “ ‘ Esther Best, accessory to felony trespass.’ ” She framed her words like a headline. “Boris would love that. I mean, talk about gangsta chic—”

  “Look, if you want to back out—”

  “No way, boss. You know I like to live on the edge.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Five minutes later, we were standing on the sidewalk just outside the alley where Alf died. “Are you sure this is the right place?” Esther asked. “I don’t see any police tape.”

  I suppressed a shiver. “This is the place.”

  “Then let’s go—”

  I stopped Esther and gestured toward an elderly couple heading right for us along the narrow sidewalk. “We can’t go into the alley yet,” I whispered. “We have to let these people
pass so they don’t notice us and get suspicious.”

  “We can’t just loiter here,” Esther whispered back. “That’s suspicious, too. Maybe we should walk on, then double back. There’s no one coming from that direction.”

  Just then, two young men entered the block from the opposite direction and across the street.

  “Crap,” I muttered.

  “Quick, pretend to tie your boot,” Esther suggested.

  I glanced over my shoulder. The older people were still moving toward us, but at a glacial pace. “I could tie my laces three times and those folks still wouldn’t be here.”

  Esther nervously shifted from foot to foot. “What do we do then? Maybe we should just leave—”

  “Spill your bag,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Spill your bag. I don’t have one. You do.”

  “No way, I—”

  I pulled the purse from Esther’s shoulder and dumped it onto the frozen concrete. Esther tried to catch it, and slipped on a patch of ice for her trouble. She grabbed my arm to steady herself, and we both went down.

  Now I felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry, Esther,” I said, taking my time scooping up change, makeup, and a pen off the ground. Across the street, I heard the two men snicker.

  Esther smirked. “They think we had a girl fight.”

  The elderly couple finally reached us. The woman inquired about our safety.

  “Just slipped in the snow!” I chirped. “Have a nice day!”

  Esther watched the couple pass. “Good thing nobody noticed us, right, boss?”

  “I think I’ve had enough irony for one night.”

  I opened Esther’s bag to dump her stuff back inside and was surprised at how heavy it was. So I took a closer look.

  “My God, Esther! You have half a brick at the bottom of your purse.”

  “It’s protection,” she said.

  “Protection? From what?”

  “Those fashion mags with their anorexic models are a crock, you know? It’s Rubenesque girls like me who bring out the worst in the guys with real testosterone. The home-boys in Air Jordans I can handle; even construction workers aren’t so bad. But when some of these Middle Eastern dudes and south-of-the-border guys spot curves like mine, they go bonkers. Their tongues loll and their eyes bulge like the wolf in that old Tex Avery cartoon.” Esther sighed and shook her head. “Sometimes, to dissuade them, I have to resort to the brick. That’s how I roll.”

  “Okay,” I replied, refilling the purse.

  Esther scanned the street. “The coast looks clear, boss.”

  “Good,” I said, rising. “Then let’s get rolling.”

  TEN

  AS we slipped into the private alley, I stared at the infamous gray Dumpster. It stood in the shadows, lid open, contents emptied.

  “This is where I found Alf,” I said softly.

  “Oh.” Esther blinked at the trash container. “Weird.”

  “What?”

  “I guess I expected something more ominous. It looks so . . . normal.”

  Esther was right. The police tape was gone by now, and so was most of the snow. There were no traces of blood on the concrete, no chalk outline, no sign that a violent crime had taken place here.

  From my talks with Quinn, I knew this was the work of the crime-scene unit. In their search for a murder weapon or forensic evidence, crime technicians would have meticulously combed through every garbage and recycling bin, then had the trash carted away and stored in case they’d missed anything during the initial search.

  I understood the procedures on an intellectual level, but the emotional effect was unsettling. It felt as if Alf never existed. Like this wonderful man had been wiped away by bureaucrats of a heartless metropolis that had no time to mourn the death of its citizen.

  In twenty-four hours, Alf went from human being to crime victim; tabloid folly to complete eradication. The speed of erasing a person in this town was too unsettling to contemplate—and anyway, I promised myself, I’m not going to forget him.

  “What did you say, boss?”

  “Nothing. Come on.”

  We moved through the dim alley and into the darkened courtyard, where the second metal Dumpster stood beside the line of blue plastic recycling bins.

  From one of my hoodie’s deep pockets, I fished out a small flashlight, one more powerful than the keychain light I’d had the night before. I flipped it on and scanned the fire escape above the trash bins. Then I moved to those crates I’d seen, stacked against a far wall. I hauled one off the top of the pile and dragged it over to the blue recycling bin to act as a step—exactly the way I was sure Alf had.

  “You’re really going up there?” Esther whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?”

  “Just watch my back and warn me if someone comes.” I turned to start climbing.

  “Wait!” she rasped. “How can I warn you if you’re all the way up there and I’m down here? I’ll have to shout.”

  “You’re right.” I thought it over. “We’ll use our cell phones like walkie-talkies.”

  We made the connection a moment later. “Keep the line open the whole time I’m up there,” I whispered. Then I pocketed the open phone and boosted myself to the top of one of the blue bins, bruising an elbow in the process.

  “Ouch.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’ll live.”

  I climbed to my feet, boots thumping dully on the frigid plastic lid, and made sure my footing was secure before I reached into my pocket to check the connection.

  “Still there, Esther?”

  “Affirmative. What next?”

  “I’m going to climb the fire escape ladder up to the second-floor landing.”

  “But those ladders are always locked in place for security,” she warned.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, eyeballing my Everest.

  The wrought-iron framework appeared pretty typical for an apartment building of this age and type: metal stair-cases connecting narrow grilled balconies that sat parallel to each story. In an emergency, a simple sliding ladder allowed tenants to move from the second-floor balcony to the ground. When not in use, the ladder was locked high off the ground—to keep people like me from trespassing.

  “I’m going to pull myself up,” I told Esther, my focus on the ladder’s bottom rung, just above my head. “Stand by; I may need help.”

  Okay, I thought, so I haven’t done a pull-up since high school gym class, but my job has its daily physical demands and I swim laps semiregularly in the local Y’s pool. I’m in passable shape. How hard can one stupid pull-up be?

  Taking a deep breath, I jumped up to grip the wrought-iron rung and heaved with all my might. But my body didn’t lift up. Instead, the freezing black bar shot out of my hands as the heavy metal structure rolled down its runner with a wince-inducing grinding. Then the bottom of the ladder slammed the ground with an explosive clang!

  I froze.

  “Crap,” Esther said over the phone. “That was loud!”

  “The ladder wasn’t locked!” I rasped into the cell. “If anyone comes out, just tell them you’re a new tenant and you were emptying your trash!”

  We waited nearly five minutes, just to be safe, but no one came to investigate. Then on a deep breath of bracing winter air, I gripped a cold metal rung and began to climb. At the top of the ladder, I stepped onto the second-floor balcony. That’s when I noticed that the security release hook had rusted through—

  It wasn’t unlocked, I realized. It was broken.

  There was still snow and ice on the grillwork. My gloved fingers grabbed the guardrail, and I knocked free an entire row of tiny icicles. With a crystalline tinkling, they rained down on Esther.

  “Watch the shrapnel, boss!” she complained over the cell. “And keep the noise down, too.”

  “Sorry.”

  Using the tiny beam from my pocket flashlight, I searched for anything out of the ordinary. Two windows fac
ed the second-floor balcony—presumably different apartments. Both were curtained and dark, and the glass on each window appeared intact and undisturbed.

  On my way to the third floor, a blast of arctic wind swept through the courtyard. The fire escape bucked under my feet like trick stairs in an amusement park fun house. Freaked a little, I clung to the rocking metal until the wind subsided.

  That’s when I heard a loud bang from the courtyard below. I put the phone to my ear and heard Esther’s frantic whisper. “Boss? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Someone came out of that steel back door.”

  She said nothing more for several long, tense moments. Finally, she spoke again, but not to me.

  “Hi, I guess you’re emptying your garbage, too.”

  A woman’s voice replied, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  “No. I just moved in.” Esther again.

  More conversation.

  “Thanks,” Esther told the stranger, “but I’m not going back inside. I was on my way out anyway, so I’ll just hit the street through the alley.”

  A moment later, I heard the steel door clang. I kept the phone to my ear and waited.

  “Boss?”

  “I heard what happened, Esther. Where are you?”

  “Back on the sidewalk out front,” she replied. “That woman was way suspicious. She waited till I left the courtyard before she went back inside. Now I’m stuck on the street. And there are like a million dog walkers out here. I can’t get back to the courtyard without being seen.”

  “Don’t worry, Esther. I’m okay up here—” And now, given that tenant’s reaction, I figured she was more likely to draw attention to what I was doing than prevent anyone from noticing. “Just wait for me on the corner, in front of the White Horse Tavern.”

  “Fine,” Esther said. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather wait inside. It’s freezing out here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  I’d noticed. “Just keep the line open, okay?”

  “Roger.”

  I pressed on. When I got to the escape’s third-floor landing, I heard laughter and conversation muffled by drawn blinds and a closed window. I flipped off my flashlight. Examining the landing and the windows on this floor, I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so I moved on.