“Oh, God,” he muttered. “The coffee-slinging snoop.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.”
Our exchange wasn’t pleasant or long, but it did yield what I’d suspected. Alf Glockner had been sending digital images to Ben Tower the day he was killed.
“Alf sent me photos of James Young and Phyllis Chatsworth in the afternoon. He lost the pair for many hours, then caught up with them again going into a bistro across from the White Horse Tavern. That’s the last photo I got from Alfred.”
And that explained why Alf had been sitting in that tavern and abruptly rose and ran. He hadn’t been following James Young to rob him. He’d been following James Young and Phyllis Chatsworth back to Young’s apartment building to get more photos of them.
I remembered the night I found Alf’s body. His boot prints in the snow had led into the courtyard, where he appeared to pause and loiter. He probably stood out there in the dark, watching for a light to go on among the building’s windows. Then he climbed the fire escape hoping to get some pictures of the couple together in Young’s living room.
It all made sense now—Omar Linford had told me Alf was paying him back a little at a time: one thousand here, a few hundred there. Alf was also doing the twelve-step program; and one of those steps was to make amends. He was obviously trying to pay back his neighbor, pay off a loan that Omar had made him in good faith.
Although I couldn’t condone what Alf had done, I could understand why he’d done it. Making money on those photos wouldn’t just help him make amends to Omar. As long as he was continuing to pay back the man, Alf could feel that he was protecting his wife and daughter from being pressured in any way to sell their house and repay that loan.
The only question now was, who shot Alf? Did James Young do the deed after all? Phyllis Chatsworth? How the heck was I going to prove that? And who the heck threw me off that ferry? Linford’s amazon of a secretary still seemed the most likely suspect for that.
“There you are!”
As I reentered Brother Dom’s crowded basement, I looked up to find Vicki coming toward me with Esther Best in tow.
“Hey, boss!” Esther greeted me with surprising energy. “I’ve had exams all morning—and, man, am I glad my finals are finally over!”
“Is that why you missed the service upstairs?”
“Yes, but I made it for the wake—” She put an arm around Vicki’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “Anyway, I should have called you last night, but I was cramming.”
“Called me about what?” I asked. Esther still didn’t know about the ferry incident, but this wasn’t the time and place for that particular update.
“I have something weird to show you.”
“Show her! Show her!” Vicki pointed to Esther’s cell phone.
I studied the images on the little screen. “What is this?”
“It’s some guy coming out of the side door of Vicki’s mother’s house. When you went in the front door yesterday, I was still warming up your old car, but I noticed this guy coming out. See...”
Esther reached over and toggled the photos forward. Frame by frame they showed a man who looked a lot like Alf. He was about Alf’s height and weight with longish gray brown hair and a mustache. He wore a long, white terrycloth robe and slippers, and the digital photos showed him moving out the side door of Shelly Glockner’s ranch, then toward the back of the house—where there was a glass-enclosed hot tub and sauna.
“Who is this guy?” I whispered.
“Karl!” Vicki blurted out so loudly that a number of heads turned our way. “That’s my father’s roommate, Karl Kovic!”
Alarms were going off in my head. “Your mother is involved with Karl?”
“If she is, it’s news to me,” Vicki said looking fairly freaked. “And I can tell you I’m not happy about it. That guy is so mean. I can’t stand him!”
I stepped closer. “Mean how? Could he have hurt your dad?”
“Oh, no. I don’t think so. They were good friends. Karl never said much to me when I visited my dad at their place. He mainly kept to himself. It’s the kitten. That’s why he’s mean.”
“What kitten?” Esther asked.
“My dad found a little white kitten a few weeks ago, in an alley—”
“Oh, the kitten!” Alf had told me about the little thing. He’d been forced to sneak it into Karl’s apartment because the building didn’t allow pets.
“I asked Karl to keep the kitten for a short while,” Vicki explained. “My mom won’t let me have a pet at home, but I’m planning on moving into the city in a month or so. Then I’d be able to take care of it. Karl’s refusing to keep it for me until then! He says he’s just going to dump it in the city shelter.”
I scowled. “That is mean.”
Vicki’s hazel green eyes, still red from crying upstairs, began welling once more. “Can you help me again, Clare?”
I nodded. “Of course, I’ll stop by this evening and pay a visit to Karl. I have a cat already—I can certainly take care of another for as long as you like. And anyway, it seems to me Karl Kovic and I have quite a few things to talk about.”
Twenty-Four
“There he is. Thanks!”
The second I saw Matt, I paid the cabbie and climbed out of the idling taxi. It was past six o’clock, already dark, and for a few minutes I was actually worried I’d phoned my ex-husband with the wrong location.
Vicki supplied the address, but it wasn’t an address that made sense to me. I mean, in the past Alf had mentioned he lived uptown, but I assumed it was way up, some tiny apartment on the fringes of Harlem where rents were in the realm of being reasonable.
This part of the Upper West Side, just north of midtown and west of Central Park, was dominated by stately historic buildings sandwiched between gleaming new co-op towers and high-rise offices. The whole neighborhood seemed way too pricey for a lowly Traveling Santa to afford.
All around me, young professionals were hurrying home from office jobs. Backslapping businessmen were ducking into bars, socialites were strutting their stuff in designer ensembles, and couples in evening wear were discreetly debating places to have a light bite before attending Handel’s Messiah at nearby Lincoln Center.
In my worn jeans, scruffy sneakers, and old parka, I suddenly felt underdressed. My ex-husband, by contrast, fit right in. Six feet tall with broad shoulders, Matteo Allegro cut a dashing figure in his black-tie formalwear and tailored topcoat. More than one strutting socialite turned her salon-perfected head as she passed him on the sidewalk. I flagged him down with a waving arm, my bag (a new one after the ferry incident) slipping off my shoulder.
“Where were you when I called?” I asked, setting Java’s cat carrier down on the sidewalk to haul my shoulder bag back up my arm. “On your cell it sounded like a party?”
“It was.”
“Well...” I gave his designer tux the once-over. “Thanks for coming, Double-Oh-Seven.”
“Very funny.”
“No kidding, Matt. I’m glad you can help me out here.”
He waved a gloved hand. “I wasn’t even at the main event—that’s at eight at the public library. Bree and I were at this pre-party happy hour thing that Dickie Celebratorio is throwing.”
“Celebratorio?” I raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you were going to the big Dickie party.”
“Neither did I. Bree gets the invitations. I escort her—and since this ‘benefit’ thing is really just a PR stunt for some kiddie holiday movie, Bree’s a VIP guest.”
“Because she’s press?”
“Yep. She assigned a writer and photographer—I think she wants as many shots of the celeb attendees as the event itself.”
“Well, Tucker deserves the coverage. He spent hours rehearsing some kind of Santa’s workshop production number for the thing. Make sure you give him a big hand when the show’s over.”