Madame nodded, her blue eyes brightening. “What fun!”
Twenty-Three
“Clare, I’d like you to meet someone...”
Vicki Glockner approached me with a shaky smile; her hazel green eyes, so much like her dad’s, were still red and puffy from the moving memorial service we’d attended in the storefront church above. We were now mingling in the church basement—a brightly lit space with colorfully painted walls and a big Christmas tree in the corner.
At least two hundred Traveling Santas packed the place. Homeless men and soup kitchen workers had come, too, people who remembered Alf from his entertaining “stand-up Santa” visits in the shelter system. Even some of Alf’s old Staten Island friends were here. Omar Linford was not among them, and I wasn’t surprised. Shelly Glockner wasn’t here, either. But Vicki had warned me a week ago that her mother probably wouldn’t come to today’s service.
Like me, Vicki had worn a simple black pantsuit for the event. Her mass of caramel-colored curls was tied back in a tame ponytail. Walking close beside her now was a big, bald man. Tall and only slightly paunchy, he was dressed simply in black slacks and an open-neck black shirt. The man’s cheeks were cheerfully ruddy, his brown eyes lively under bushy brows, and the soft brown beard, trimmed close to his face, was shot with only a bit of sliver.
“Clare,” she said. “This is Peter Dominick.”
“Just call me Brother Dom,” the man insisted. He smiled down at me from his substantial height. His voice was very deep but soft and kind. “I understand you’re the lady to thank for the delicious boxes of cookies and muffins and all those hot thermoses of coffee.”
“She’s the one!” Vicki nodded, her jingle bell earrings ringing.
Vicki had been wearing those same earrings a week ago, the day after Alf had died. I suspected they’d been a gift from her dad, which probably meant they wouldn’t be coming off her ears anytime soon.
“Clare’s been great,” Vicki said. “She’s doing a lot for Dad right now.”
“How’s that?”
Vicki lowered her voice. “She found Dad’s killer.”
Brother Dom’s bushy brown eyebrows rose. “So you’re a policewoman, too?”
“No, no! I’m a coffeehouse manager. I just asked a few questions and helped the police out.”
“Vicki!” One of the Traveling Santas was waving for her to come to the goody table. “There’s a girl here asking for you!”
“I’ll be right there!” she called. “Excuse me.”
Brother Dom and I talked for a few minutes about Alf—and I was glad to have this chance to question the man. Dom had founded the Traveling Santas a few years before. A former Franciscan monk, he now worked with the city and several of the city’s churches to bring aid to the homeless and hungry.
“It’s funny,” I told Brother Dom. “The more I pieced together about Alf’s life, the more I wondered about the gaps in it. There are so many things that make no sense about the man.”
“Like?”
“Like I know he was a failed restaurateur. I know he had an alcohol problem and his marriage fell apart—”
“Yes, Alf was an alcoholic, struggling to work through the twelve-step program. When I first met him, he had a lot of problems.”
“But when I met him, he wasn’t struggling at all. He seemed so certain about life, so happy, so together. He was full of optimism and purpose. His primary concern whenever I spoke with him was helping others. I just can’t reconcile the stories I’m hearing about his past—and his past actions—with the living man I knew. Or thought I knew.”
“You have questions, Clare. Ask and you shall receive answers—” He laughed. “If I can provide them...”
“Okay—what do you think turned Alf around? I mean, what made him suddenly want to do charitable work?”
“A Christmas Carol.”
“A song?”
“The book.” Brother Dom’s attention wavered when someone came up to speak with him.
Just then, my cell phone went off, vibrating in my pocket because I’d silenced the ringer for the service. I saw from the Caller ID that it was Quinn.
“Mike?”
“I have bad news.”
I braced myself—suddenly remembering Matt’s ugly story about some redhead. But Quinn’s news wasn’t personal.
“Dwayne Linford’s going to walk, Clare.”
Crap. “What happened?”
“There’s nothing we can hold the kid on. The cameras in the St. George Terminal parking area confirm his story. Dwayne picked up a man on the incoming ferry—a college counselor from NYU that his father set him up to meet. His dad wants him to get a degree in music instead of trying to make a living as a club DJ. That’s what Dwayne claims you overheard them fighting about. His father wanted him to keep the appointment with the counselor.”
“Did you confirm his alibi?”
“Of course. The guy checks out—Grant Bass works at NYU. We spoke with him. As a favor to Omar, he took the ferry over to meet with Dwayne. The kid was angry, but he didn’t disobey his dad’s wishes. He picked up the man at the ferry for their meeting. There’s no way Dwayne was on that ferry so there’s no way he could have stolen the blackmail note and thrown you overboard.”
I closed my eyes, tried to think. “Linford had a secretary. A woman named Mrs. MacKenzie. She didn’t pull out after she dropped me off. She parked her BMW in the lot.”
“I don’t know, Clare.” Quinn exhaled. “A woman wouldn’t have had the strength to toss you the way you described.”
“This woman was big, Mike. I think she could have.”
“Come to the Sixth as soon as you can and take a look at these digital recordings. If you know what she looks like, you’ll have a better shot at spotting her movements.”
“Okay, I’ll come to see you within the hour.”
“I won’t be here. Sully and I have a meeting uptown. Ask for Hong or Franco. They’ll help.”
I shuddered at the thought of seeing Emmanuel “Do-Rag” Franco again. “I’ll ask for Hong,” I replied.
“Fine—just be careful, Clare. Do not go anywhere alone today. Okay? Are you hearing me? Whoever threw you off that boat is not in custody. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Mike. I do. I won’t take any chances.”
After saying good-bye to Quinn, I noticed that Brother Dom was still hovering close by. He turned away from another conversation to get back to ours.
“Have you ever read it, Clare?” he asked me, motioning me toward the goody table.
Read it? “I’m sorry?” I said. My mind was still spinning from Mike’s news. “Read what?”
“Have you read A Christmas Carol?”
“Oh, right. You were saying that book was important to Alf... No, I’ve never actually read the Dickens story. But everyone knows about Scrooge, right? The terrible misanthrope who hated Christmas?”
Dom filled two paper cups with hot coffee and handed me one. “What else do you remember, Clare? About Scrooge?”
“Well, let’s see... he was a rich man but he was also very unhappy—and greedy and selfish and cynical. He loved money and had no use for humanity or humanitarians. Bah humbug.”
Dom smiled and sipped his coffee. “Go on.”
I paused, trying to remember the story, and took a long caffeinated sip from my own cup—as mystified as ever how the simple sharing of a warm cup o’ joe could be both comforting and fortifying at the same time.
“I think Scrooge had a business partner, didn’t he?”
Dom nodded. “His name was Marley.”
“Yes, I remember now... the story opened with Marley already dead. It was Christmas Eve and Scrooge went home alone. That’s when Marley’s ghost comes to his home to haunt him. And then what happens?”
“Marley warns Scrooge that he’s going to be visited by other specters—”