Holiday Grind (23 page)
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
“No problem, Tuck. I’ll cover.” I ducked over to Esther, thanking her for staying past the end of her shift.
“What’s to thank, boss? You are paying me, right?”
I squeezed her shoulder, pushed up my sweater sleeves, and a few minutes later approached Madame with two freshly made Fa-la-la-la Lattes and a quick update on why our store was suddenly swamped.
“Well,” she said, after sampling my own late addition to the latte line-up, “if all your new flavors are as delightful as this Chocolate Cherry Cordial, I’d say we’ve struck gelt.”
I laughed. “Speaking of gelt—you should try our Apricot-Cinnamon Rugelach and Raspberry Jelly Doughnut lattes.”
“For Chanukah!” She hooted. “Wonderful!”
“Esther’s idea.” I smiled, but then glanced at the line again, a little worriedly.
“Come now, Clare, you don’t have to entertain me when the shop’s this busy. Ask me your question and get on with your day.”
I leaned closer. “I need to know if you know a man named Omar Linford.”
Madame paused a moment, thinking it over, and frowned. “Now that’s a name that does
not
ring a bell for me.”
not
ring a bell for me.”
“Too bad. I’m out of leads and Alf’s daughter’s theory is actually starting to make sense.”
“How so?”
“Alf Glockner was a warm, generous, thoughtful humanitarian. The only way I could see him turning to burglary was if he was pressured or threatened into it. He owed this man Linford a great deal of money. Alf may have turned to crime to get it, but if he had, he obviously wasn’t paying Linford fast enough and the man decided to make an example of him instead.”
“Have police questioned this man?”
“Yes, but they say he has no criminal record and they don’t see him as a viable suspect for what appears to be a random street crime, especially now, when street crime is on the rise.”
“Could the police be right, Clare? Perhaps Alf was going to burglarize this nice man James Young, but he had second thoughts and then he himself was mugged and killed—a terrible irony.”
“Yes, it could be that simple. But Vicki Glockner herself claims it isn’t—”
And although I didn’t mention it to Madame, I still had my suspicions about the lead detective in the case. “Generalissimo” Franco’s own partner practically called him a vigilante, and his hostile treatment of me, for butting into the investigation, not to mention his oddly intense statement about not “seeing evil” in me left me wondering. The night of Alf’s murder, Franco had told me he’d just come on duty. Could he have shot Alf himself in some twisted form of street justice? Or was Franco somehow involved in covering up the real truth about Alf’s murder? He wouldn’t be the first corrupt cop to take a bribe for looking the other way, especially when it involved the shooting of a man he judged to be a criminal himself.
“I have to talk to Linford,” I finally told Madame, “see what I can find out. Even a denial can be telling if the man’s not a good liar.”
“You’ll need a partner for that, too, dear.”
“I have to get a handle on this guy first. I know where he lives—next door to Vicki Glockner—but Vicki wasn’t very helpful about his background. I need to know more about him, his business, his associates. I need to know how to question him.”
Just then, a wiry young man with spiked blond hair and a pale complexion approached our table. He wore baggy jeans, motorcycle boots, and a shiny, outer-boroughs black leather blazer. The young man nodded politely, then struck a slouching hip-hop pose.
“Clare Cosi, Clare Cosi; you’re a fresh Village posy; now release my czarina; so with me she can mosey!”
Madame’s eyes widened. She glanced at me and addressed the rapper: “And who is your czarina, young man?”
“The Best girl, in the West, girl!
That
sweet-booty babe-with-the-chest girl!” The young man lifted his closed fist, shook his pinkie and index finger free, and pointed both toward the espresso bar.
That
sweet-booty babe-with-the-chest girl!” The young man lifted his closed fist, shook his pinkie and index finger free, and pointed both toward the espresso bar.
“Esther?” Madame glanced at me, just to make sure.
“This is Boris Bokunin,” I said. “He’s a Russian émigré, slam poet, and urban rapper.” He was also a hardworking assistant baker in Brighton Beach, but I knew he preferred the other identifiers. “Did I get it right, Boris?”
Boris gave a little bow. “BB Gunn. That’s my hip-hop handle! Just ask me ladies and—” He clapped his hands and pointed at us. “I’ll light your candles!”
Madame glanced at me, her laugh lines crinkling. “He reminds me of the beats!”
Boris’s eyes widened. “You need someone beat down?”
“She means
beat poetry
, Boris,” I said. “But that’s a whole other century.” I rose from my chair. “Tell Esther I’ll relieve her in a minute.”
beat poetry
, Boris,” I said. “But that’s a whole other century.” I rose from my chair. “Tell Esther I’ll relieve her in a minute.”
BB grinned at that, saluted me, bowed to Madame, then spun on his motorcycle boots and headed for the counter.
Madame touched my arm. “Do keep me informed of the developments on catching Alf’s killer. I’d like to help if I can.”
I patted her hand. “Have a good trip to Vermont with Otto. The bed-and-breakfast sounds amazing. Your beau certainly knows how to keep the romance in the holiday season.”
“Mistletoe and music, my dear.” She winked. “Candy canes by candlelight.”
I nodded, ignoring a surge of mixed feelings. With Joy away and Mike trying to crack a cold case, this Christmas wasn’t going to be a very merry one for me. On a quiet sigh, I bent down and gave Madame a good-bye hug.
I could only hope my daughter was finding the same sort of happiness in Paris that her grandmother was enjoying in New York. Despite the theme of today’s
Chatsworth Way
, it appeared the holiday season really could be the most romantic time of the year for some women. I simply wasn’t one of them.
Chatsworth Way
, it appeared the holiday season really could be the most romantic time of the year for some women. I simply wasn’t one of them.
EIGHTEEN
A FEW days after wishing Madame a good trip, I was on my way to Staten Island to have lunch with Omar Linford. I even brought backup. With Madame still away on her long romantic weekend, I tapped my old partner in anticrime, Esther Best.
We finished our morning shifts together and she agreed to do the driving—mainly because I didn’t want to burden her with balancing my
struffoli
on her lap all the way to Lighthouse Hill.
struffoli
on her lap all the way to Lighthouse Hill.
According to Dexter Beatty, bringing a home-baked gift was a sign of affection. A black cake would have been a better choice, given Linford’s Jamaican roots, but I didn’t have three weeks to macerate fruit in Manischewitz or travel to Brooklyn and back for a jar of authentic West Indian burnt sugar.
Instead, I made the famous little “Italian Christmas tree” pastry that I’d loved as a child, hoping it would start us out on the right foot (as long as I could prevent the whole thing from ending up on the dashboard, that is).
Esther had been doing fine in the bumper-to-bumper traffic across the Brooklyn Bridge, but now that we’d hit 278, she was tearing down the highway like a Goth out of hell.
“Esther, slow down! We’ve only gone from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn Heights. Not to Monaco’s Grand Prix!”
“Sorry,” she replied, easing up on the pedal. “It’s just that this part of the drive is seriously tedious . . .”
As its name suggested, Staten Island was in fact an island, connected to the borough of Brooklyn via the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Commuters without cars took the famous Staten Island Ferry.
“It would have been much easier to take the ferry from Battery Park,” Esther pointed out.
It would have, except she knew as well as I did that cars had been banned from the ferry since the 9/11 attack.
“We have no choice. We have to go through Brooklyn.”
Esther sighed and hit the gas again. “So, boss. You never told me how you managed to wrangle this invitation.”
“It was Dexter’s doing,” I explained as we zipped along the highway. “I did a little snooping and found out he knew Linford.”
“Oh, I see. No big deal, then.”
Actually it was a big deal.
I’d started my research on Saturday morning. After typing Linford’s name into a couple of Internet search engines, I learned he’d founded and managed a hedge fund called Linvantage. The fund was based in Antigua and had its prospectus posted online. It appeared to be very profitable, and I noticed the minimum investment was high enough to keep the client list exclusive.
Further research uncovered Linford’s name on the roster of half a dozen import/export companies, all of them based in the Caribbean.
Of course, when I thought of the Caribbean, I always thought of Matt’s friend Dexter—an absolute pillar of the Brooklyn Caribbean community. Any bigwigs from the Islands in the New York area probably made themselves known to Dex at one time or another to purchase authentic West Indian products for a party, family gathering, or traditional celebration.
So I called Dexter that afternoon to ask if the name Omar Linford rang any bells. Strangely, Dex claimed he’d never heard of the man, politely excused himself, and got off the phone. At first I believed him, but that night my research revealed that Linford owned a tiny Jamaica-based specialty food importer called Blue Sunshine.
Back in 2000, shortly after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lifted its ban on a potentially toxic Jamaican fruit called
ackee
, I remembered Dexter boasting that he had “a
big-up
import guy” who sold canned ackee for seventy-five dollars a case.
ackee
, I remembered Dexter boasting that he had “a
big-up
import guy” who sold canned ackee for seventy-five dollars a case.
At such a low wholesale price, Dex was able to peddle the Jamaican staple in his Brooklyn stores for six or seven dollars a can—about half the going rate everywhere else in the United States. Price points like that made Dexter’s Taste of the Caribbean stores very popular, especially around Christmas when the price of ackee almost always rose because of increased demand.
“I’m not sellin’ that hinky stuff, no neither,” Dex had insisted. “Gettin’ me the top brands for my customers. Nineteen-ounce tins of Island Sun.”
On its Web site, the Blue Sunshine company boasted that it had the lowest wholesale price for Island Sun brand Jamaican ackee on the East Coast. I put two and two together (old-school math this time) and made a pest of myself by phoning Dexter a second time.
“I really put the pressure on during the second call,” I continued explaining to Esther. “And Dex finally admitted that he has a ‘confidential business relationship’ with Omar Linford. Not just the man’s Blue Sunshine company, but Omar himself.”
“That sounds kind of fishy,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “What kind of relationship?”
“Not the kind Vicki Glockner was thinking about. I’m pretty sure Linford isn’t supplying marijuana for Dex to sell out of his stores.”
“
Pretty
sure?”
Pretty
sure?”
Esther was right. I wasn’t all that sure about anything when it came to Linford’s business interests. Even after I’d confronted Dex with circumstantial evidence that he’d been doing business with Linford’s company for years, he still refused to come completely clean about the extent of his relationship with the importer.
And while all of Linford’s business activities seemed legitimate, so what? If anybody knew how legitimate businesses could operate in a way to mask illegal activity, it was the daughter of the local sports bookie.
In the middle of my second call to Dexter, I remembered how he’d shown up at the Blend—abruptly and unexpectedly—the very same night that Vickie Glockner came to ask for my help in solving her father’s murder. Again, my mind started working and I asked Dexter point-blank if he’d been
spying
for Omar Linford, too.
spying
for Omar Linford, too.
Dex wouldn’t confirm or deny anything regarding the man, but he did get nervous enough to finally agree to arrange a “sit-down” lunch meeting at one o’clock sharp on Monday so I could ask Linford any questions “straight up” to his face. He wasn’t interested, he said, in being “caught between the diver and the pearl.”
On Sunday I phoned Matt for some kind of explanation on Dexter’s bizarre denials regarding Omar Linford, but Matt couldn’t talk more than a few minutes. Breanne had roped him into a last-minute trip to Connecticut for a “weekend in the country”—not for mistletoe and moonlight but for networking with her magazine’s publisher and his board of trustees.
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