Holiday Grind (25 page)

Read Holiday Grind Online

Authors: Cleo Coyle

Tags: #Fiction, #Detective, #Mystery, #Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction - Mystery, #Coffeehouses, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Cosi; Clare (Fictitious character), #Mystery fiction

BOOK: Holiday Grind
12.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Esther swallowed hard and stared at her food.
“I actually prefer
fresh
ackee with this particular dish,” Linford told me. “But the fruit is only harvested in the warmer months.”
The ackee fruit had the consistency of scrambled eggs; the fish was firm and resembled the Italian variety of dried codfish called
baccala
—something I ate as a child, but frankly didn’t miss (an inevitable truth of life: Not every foodie memory is a good foodie memory). Apparently, Esther agreed.
“This reminds me of
dag maluah
,” she said. “That’s Jewish saltfish.” Then she gave me a private look that said,
This sort of stuff is vile in
any
language.
Luckily, Linford served the saltfish dish with freshly baked hard dough bread and boiled bananas on the side. (I thought at first they were plantains, but Linford informed me that boiled green bananas were also a traditional pairing. The fruit was boiled in its own skin with the tips and sides sliced to make peeling easier after cooking.) Then Linford dug in and so did I. Esther pushed the fish to the side of her plate and ate the bananas and bread—both of which were quite good.
As the conversation lulled, I cleared my throat. “Speaking of ackee, Mr. Linford—”
“Call me Omar, Clare. We have a mutual friend, which makes us friends, too, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, of course. And I understand our friend, Dexter Beatty, purchases import items from you?”
Linford sat back in his chair. “From my company, yes. You are here seeking a purveyor of Caribbean foods for your store, aren’t you? Dexter told me you had questions for me about my Blue Sunshine company. It’s a very reliable source, as Dexter can attest.”
“Actually, I had the impression that you and Dexter were involved in a number of business deals.”
“Dexter and I do have a private arrangement, Clare.”
“Importing and exporting?”
“Surely you’re not here to invade our friend’s privacy. If Dexter wanted you to know what he and I were doing together, he would have told you himself.”
“I’m here, Mr. Linford, to talk about another one of your business ventures. One that wasn’t so profitable.”
Linford’s smile began to slip away. “You’re referring to?”
“Alfred Glockner.”
Linford exhaled. An expression of relief appeared to cross his face, like he’d just dodged a bullet—which made me suspicious of Vickie’s “shady” sobriquet all over again.
He cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to be rude, but how in the world would my private dealings with the late Mr. Glockner concern you?”
“I was Mr. Glockner’s friend. After his murder, someone close to Alf asked me to . . . step in and investigate.”
“You must be referring to the money I loaned to Mr. Glockner.”
I nodded. “Money he never paid back.”
Linford met my eyes. “Let me begin, Clare, by assuring you that Alfred was my friend, too, and that not all of my investments are profitable. Quite frankly, in Alf’s case, I suspected I would never see a return on my outlay.”
That surprised me. “If you wanted to help Alf, why make it a loan? Why didn’t you simply give him the money?”
“I don’t operate that way, Ms. Cosi. My charitable donations are always made with tax deductions in mind, and Alf’s business wasn’t a charity. At the time, you must understand, the loan to Alf made sound business sense.”
“How sound was it, if you lost the money?”
Linford smiled—a bit tightly this time. “You’re very direct. Dex warned me that you would be. Let’s say I had my reasons for lending Alf a hand.”
“Such as?”
“The same reason I’m in a business relationship with our friend Dexter: to keep my profile high in a community of people from whom I draw hedge fund investors.
This
community on Staten Island, Alf’s community, has changed over the years. But it wasn’t always so inviting to someone of mixed race.”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“Alf’s steakhouse catered to a wealthy, mostly white clientele, and I used it for networking, a place to connect with my well-heeled neighbors. Everyone in the community loved and respected a born-and-raised Staten Islander like Alf, and I hoped he could open a few doors for me. I also hoped Alf could keep his business going, but in these hard times, that proved impossible. And the shambles the poor man made of his personal life didn’t help.”
“Alf told me about his separation and pending divorce.”
“Did you know about his drinking?” Linford shook his head. “One morning, near the end of his marriage, I found Alf passed out in my driveway. Alf was so drunk Shelly—his wife—locked him out. He tried to come over here for a place to sleep, which I would have happily provided, but he never made it to the front door. My son, Dwayne, nearly ran him over coming home from one of those disc jockey club jobs of his.”
From the stories Linford told, I learned that Alf Glockner wasn’t just a failed restaurateur. He’d always been a borderline alcoholic who’d spiraled into dysfunction after his restaurant went belly-up. As the drinking intensified, Alf’s marriage disintegrated. The man finally hit bottom, ending up in a hospital with acute alcohol poisoning.
“I visited Alf there and met another man,” Linford said. “A high school chum, Karl Kovic is his name. Alf moved in with Karl, and shortly after, Karl got him involved with that Santa Claus thing in Manhattan—”
“The Traveling Santas.” I made a mental note to question Karl, see what he could tell me.
“I thought Alf was well on the road to recovery,” Linford continued, “until I received a rather disturbing letter from him a couple of weeks ago.”
“Alf wrote you a letter?”
“He didn’t sign it, but I know it came from him,” Linford said, his face taut.
“What did the letter say?”
“Say?” Linford shook his head, his expression looking almost pained. “It was a threat, Clare—Alf’s clumsy attempt at blackmail.”
“You’re joking.”
“I never joke about blackmail. The note demanded I forgive the debt completely—as an early ‘holiday’ gift. I was also to come up with fifty thousand more dollars by Christmas in exchange for his silence about alleged unlawful activities—”
“About your investments?”
“The allegations were not about me,” Linford said, mouth tight. “The letter suggested my son was involved in criminal activities.”
“What activities?”
Linford shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. The claims were all lies.”
Hard to believe after my encounter with the kid driving the tricked-out gangsta ride. But then Omar Linford wouldn’t be the first parent who’d blinded himself to his offspring’s malfeasance.
“Do the police have the letter now?” I asked.
Linford shook his head. “I didn’t want to get Alf into trouble, so I never alerted the authorities.”
“I see,” I said, but the claim only made me more suspicious.
“Alf was a good man at heart.” Linford held my eyes. “And the letter made no sense. I mean, Alf was the one who insisted on paying me back in the first place.”
“He
was
paying you back, then?”
“Not much—a thousand or so one week, a few hundred another. Out of respect for his pride, I took the money. I decided he must have written that letter on a bad night—probably he’d slipped and started drinking again, or he was feeling embittered and helpless. I’d planned to talk with Alf about it. My goal was to resolve the matter without bringing in the police. Then, when I read the terrible news about his death, I filed away the whole affair.”
I didn’t know whether or not to believe Omar Linford, but here was the acid test—
“You still have Alf’s letter, right?”
Linford nodded.
“I’d like to take it with me, then,” I said firmly. “You see, I’ve been advising the NYPD on this case, and the letter might help them solve Alf’s murder.”
“If it will help you catch Alf’s killer, Clare, then have it by all means.”
Linford gestured to his maid. “Has Mac come back yet?”
Her reply was a silent shake of her head.
“We have one problem with your request, Clare. Mrs. MacKenzie, my secretary, filed the letter God knows where. My wife might be a help, but she’s left on another holiday shopping spree, so I doubt very much we’ll see her before dark!” He smiled at the thought of his wife, then checked his watch. “Mac should be back here soon, certainly within the hour. When she arrives, I’ll ask her to locate the letter and hand it over to you immediately.”
Esther had remained silent through most of the questioning. But now she loudly cleared her throat. “What do we do until then?” she asked. “It’s freezing outside, you know?”
“By all means, continue to make yourselves comfortable in my home as long as you like . . .” Linford rose from the table. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I have work waiting in my study.”
TWENTY
ESTHER glanced at her watch for the third time in five minutes. Her black knee-high boot began
tap-tap-tapping
down each second as it passed. I understood her impatience—not that the waiting was unpleasant.
Linford’s maid had escorted us to this glassed-in solarium well over an hour ago. From the sunporch, the view of the surrounding neighborhood was sedately suburban. Cecily provided us with a stack of current magazines, as well as a crackling fire in the charming potbellied stove, a fresh pot of Jamaica Blue Mountain, and slices of a freshly baked flourless chocolate Jamaican rum cake, which, she confided, came from a recipe used by Dexter’s Taste of the Caribbean shops. The dessert was sinfully rich and fudgy, served on a warm little pool of coffee-rum sauce.
Everything was cozy, delicious, and copacetic—except for the fact that we’d seen no sign of Linford’s personal secretary, “Mac” MacKenzie, or the blackmail letter he’d promised to hand over to me.
“Sorry, boss, but we’ve got to roll,” Esther said, rising. “My final exam is in one hour. I own this test, but I’ve got to
show up
to pass it!”
This was the moment I’d dreaded. I knew Esther had to get back to Manhattan, and I even began to wonder if this whole “misplaced letter” wasn’t a ploy to discourage us, force us to leave without the note—something I was not about to do.
On the other hand, my best barista didn’t deserve to fail an academic test over this.
“Take my car and go,” I told Esther. “I’m going to stay and wait for Linford’s secretary to show.”
“How will you get back?”
“Easy. I’ll call a car service to take me down to the ferry.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not leaving here without that letter, if there even
is
a letter.”
Esther nodded and I called the maid to bring her coat, explaining she had to go but I was staying. As we waited, Esther noticed something going on at the house next door.
“I think that’s Vicki’s mother,” she said, pointing.
A tall, slightly heavy woman with short blond hair, wearing workout gear, running shoes, and a pink headband, was moving down the tiled walkway that bisected the expansive yard. She stooped down, picked up a
Wall Street Journal
that had been badly tossed onto the snow-covered lawn, and shook it free of snow. With her newspaper retrieved, she rose and stepped back into the house.
“That’s definitely Shelly Glockner,” Esther said. “I met her last year at Vicki’s birthday party.”
I nodded with interest. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. I mean, I’d come all the way from the West Village to Lighthouse Hill; I might as well shake another well-trimmed tree for information.
“Come on,” I whispered after the maid retrieved Esther’s coat. “I want to talk to that woman.”
The sunporch had a door that led to a wraparound cedar deck. A few steps down and I was on the lawn at the side of the sprawling house and already shivering. Away from the crackling fire, sans coat, I really felt the December chill!

Other books

Uncollected Blood by Kirk, Daniel J.
Devil's Tor by David Lindsay
Swim That Rock by John Rocco
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
The Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister
Sycamore Hill by Francine Rivers
Dead By Dusk by Heather Graham
Harriet by Jilly Cooper