Holiday Grind

Nine

“What are you wearing?” Esther whispered fifteen minutes later.

“For what we’re about to do, I needed something black and grungy.”

“Well, boss,” she said, making a theatrical show of looking me up and down, “you scored.”

In the apartment upstairs, I’d shed my pressed slacks and sweater, replacing them with scuffed black denims, a navy turtleneck, a faded Best Mom in the World sweatshirt, and worn hiking boots leftover from my snow-shoveling days in Jersey. I’d draped a dark hoodie over it all and weighed down its deep pockets with a few devices I thought I might find useful on the little outing on which I was about to embark.

“What about me?” Esther asked, gesturing to her ensemble. “Don’t I need to change, too?”

From her rectangular glasses to her steel-toed shoes, Esther was usually dressed for skulking around in the dark. Tonight was no exception: shiny dark pants (leather, pleather, vinyl?) topped with knee-high boots. I paused for a moment, considering the Renaissance level of cleavage bulging out of her sweater’s plunging neckline—a garment layered over what looked like a deep purple lace-up bustier. (Since she’d started dating BB Gunn, aka Russian rapper Boris Bokunin, elements of Esther’s wardrobe had taken a decidedly racy turn.) Then again, her Doctor Who scarf was the length of a football field and her ankle-length black duster would certainly provide enough warmth.

“You’re fine,” I told her.

Unfortunately, our route to tonight’s snoop wasn’t.

Dante Silva had begun bussing empty tables near the front door. When he saw my street duds, he laughed—loudly—and moved to stand right in front of us.

“Carumba, boss! Heading out for a rumble?” With one hand he brushed his shaved head in what I took to be a gang sign. “Did you join the Crips or the Bloods?”

“The Latin Kings,” Esther replied flatly. “Her café con leche won them over.”

Dante folded his tattooed arms and regarded us. “No kidding, you two, where are you cruisin’ together?”

“Out,” I replied, grabbing Esther’s arm and hustling her around the overly curious painter.

So far, so good, I thought, until someone else noticed me.

“Sister Clare! Is that you?!” The voice was male, the Jamaican lilt all too familiar.

I looked across the room, surprised to see Dexter Beatty sitting with Matt. When did he get here?

“Come yuh!” Dexter waved me over with a grin. “Come, come!”

Dex was in his early forties; his Rasta dreadlocks, which he always tied back on the job, were now loose, framing his light-skinned African features like a cocoa-brown mop. As Esther and I approached his café table, he pointed to us and said something to my ex-husband.

Matt turned in his chair, and his gaze immediately narrowed on my oversized black hoodie. “What are you dressed for?” he demanded.

“The latest trend,” I said flatly. “Gangsta chic. I’m surprised Breanne didn’t tell you about it.”

“Clare, what are you up to?”

“Not a thing,” I lied. “Java needs Cat Chow. Esther’s coming with.”

Matt scowled. “You mean you’re not all dressed up to play detective again? Because I’ll tell you right now, Clare, it’s a bad idea. You shouldn’t get involved in—”

“Don’t be paranoid! I told you where I’m going.” Time to change the subject. I turned to Matt’s friend. “And how are you, Dexter?” I chirped with more perkiness than a caffeinated Brady sister.

“Good, good,” Dex answered with a nodding grin. “You must come to Brooklyn, Clare, and see my shops all decorated for the holiday.”

“Yes, of course. You know I love your shops!”

No forced perkiness there. I really did love them. Like my grandmother’s grocery, which had kept the Italians in her zip code supplied in fresh mozzarella, prosciutto di Parma, salt-packed Sicilian anchovies, and chestnut flour; Dexter’s three Taste of the Caribbean shops kept the pantries of West Indians stocked up with pigeon peas, chicken feet, freshly cut sugarcane, ginger beer, scary-hot Scotch bonnet peppers (for your jerk seasoning), and burnt sugar syrup (for your black cake).

Also like my Nonna, Dex was a stickler for authentic products, and that included coffee. Given the world market, the Caribbean was far from a major coffee-growing player, but Matt routinely sought out its coffees for Dex—from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, even St. Vin cent, where a single coffee farmer was attempting to bring back the crop to his tiny island home.

Dex also depended on Matt to acquire one of the most expensive varieties of coffee on the planet: Jamaica Blue Mountain. Some roasters mixed JBM with less expensive beans to make a blend. But Jamaica Blue was such a smooth, mild brew that cutting it negated the entire reason for drinking it. My Village Blend JBM was pricey, but it was pure—which was one reason Dex dealt exclusively with us for that particular import.

Anyway, with the winter holidays Dex’s busiest and most profitable selling season, I was surprised to see him here this evening.

“And speakin’ of holidays,” Dexter continued. “This Blend of yours, she looks magical. The lights, the tree, the little jingle bells—to the fullness, sister!”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And this holiday latte—” Dexter raised his glass. “Sweet!”

“Sweet, huh?” Esther broke in. “Which one are you drinking? Because I still think Tucker’s candy cane concoction is borderline insipid.”

“Well, that one may be. But this one’s a marvel!”

Okay, now I was downright curious. It must have shown, because Matt caught my eye and explained.

“I asked Gardner to mix up Dex his Caribbean Black Cake from last night’s tasting.”

Dex took another sip. “The flavor of rum comes through first. Then the nutty sweetness of the brown sugar. And cinnamon is ticklin’ my tongue at the end, the way it tickled my nose at the beginnin’. I taste a note of heavy fruit flavor, too—”

“That’s the black currant syrup,” I said.

Dexter sipped again. “There’s a hint of somethin’ more. Somethin’ dark, sweet, earthy—”

“Chocolate.” I smiled. “Gard and I agreed that authentic black cake is so rich it tricks the taste buds into thinking chocolate is one of the ingredients; we compensated with a splash of my homemade chocolate syrup.”

“Clever! And what other flavors are you offerin’, Clare?” He glanced around the shop. “Where is your holiday menu?”

I shifted uneasily. “To tell you the truth: I had mixed feelings about putting it up. Something happened to a friend of mine last night and suddenly the whole Taste of Christmas thing feels... I don’t know... wrong.”

“Cha!” Dexter threw up his hands. “This Black Cake Latte brings me right back to the islands. I tell you that’s a gift, Clare, a gift for your customers, bringin’ them back to a time and a place with the simple magic of flavor. I sip this drink, and I’m with my madda and aunties again, weeks before holiday bakin’ day, when they all got together and started soakin’ their black cake fruits in wine.”

Before I could reply, he turned to my ex. “What do you think of these drinks, Matteo?”

“Sorry.” Matt shrugged. “Fa-la-la-la Lattes just aren’t my thing.”

Dexter frowned at his friend’s reply. “Hmmm, well now...” Dex said, catching my eye. “We know what is Matteo’s thing, don’t we, Clare?” He pointed to a very familiar glossy-paged publication among the papers and trade magazines on the café table.

I smirked when I saw it. Talk about being brought back to a time and a place. For my ex-husband, the Christmas season didn’t start until the Victoria’s Secret holiday catalog arrived in the mail. Perusing its pages was an annual event.

“You never change, do you, Matt?”

Matt squinted. “A man has a right to shop for lingerie gifts, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said, “but my problem was never with your giving the gift of lingerie, just the number of women you gave it to.”

Dexter opened the racy catalog. Many of its pages were marked with Post-its—color-coded Post-its. What the coding system was, I could never bring myself to ask.

“That one’s a stunner.” Dex tapped one of the scantily clad models.

Matt frowned. “Are you blind? She’s got beady eyes, her lips are too thin, and her legs are bowed.”

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.”