Клео Коул - Holiday Grind

“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.”