Prime Crime Holiday Bundle

by Cleo Coyle; Emily Brightwell; Kenneth Blanchard

  So I leaned closer to his ear and whispered, “You don’t need to keep defending me. I can handle him.”

  Franco smirked, obviously overhearing. “Is that right, honey? Go ahead, then. Handle me.”

  “Listen to me, Sergeant, I found something important in that courtyard. Something germane to Alf’s case—”

  “Christ,” he laughed, rubbing his eyes. “Nancy Drew’s got another germane clue.”

  “I found it on the fire escape—”

  Franco met my gaze. “So you admit you trespassed?”

  I blinked. “Of course.”

  Franco went quiet. My direct admission obviously surprised him. He moseyed back to the chair in the corner, opened his Doritos, munched a few, then popped his Red Bull and took a swig—a cover, it seemed to me, for figuring out how to handle me. Finally, he shook his head.

  “Twenty-four hours after a murder takes place next to that building, you have the nerve to climb that fire escape? Are you certifiable? Or just one of those bubbleheaded broads who’ve sniffed too much nail polish remover?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Matt snorted with disdain. “She was looking for something you idiots probably missed. Then that scumbag doorman locked her in a Dumpster. In a Dumpster! He should be the one chained up here like a dog! Not me!”

  “Listen, dude . . .” Franco cast me a sidelong glance, then locked eyes with Matt. “Your little ex-wifey here is dressed like a gangbanger, and I’m the one to know, believe me. For all that doorman knew, Coffee Lady could’ve had a Glock tucked between those tasty butt cheeks of hers.”

  “Shut your damn mouth about my wife—”

  “Ex-wife,” I corrected.

  “—or I swear to God I’ll shut it for you.”

  Franco put the Red Bull to his lips again—less to take a swig, it seemed to me, than to hide a chuckle.

  I groaned, half convinced Franco’s antisocial behavior was part of some good-cop/bad-cop ploy. But only half. For one thing, where the heck was the good cop?

  “Sergeant, will you please stop trying to provoke my ex-husband and listen to me. I have something for you. Just uncuff me and I’ll show you.”

  Franco eyed me for a long, silent moment. “Where is it? This thing you want to show me”

  “It’s right here in my pocket.” I gestured with my chin.

  “I don’t know about uncuffing you, Coffee Lady. You look pretty unpredictable to me. You might even go for my gun.” He took another swig of Red Bull. “Plus you look kinda hot, all chained up like that.”

  “Fine. Have it your way. Don’t uncuff me. Just put your hand in my pocket and get it yourself.”

  Franco smiled. It wasn’t a cheerful, have-a-nice-day sort of smile. It was the sort of smile bad boys give you before they start easing down your zipper.

  Matt gritted his teeth. “Don’t go near her.”

  Franco’s eyebrow rose. “You heard her. She wants me to.”

  “Don’t touch her.”

  Oh, good God. “Matt, will you stop letting this guy push your buttons?” I shifted my body so Franco could easily reach into my front jeans pocket. “Just reach in and get it!”

  The cocky sergeant stretched out a hand, glanced furtively at Matt’s cocking leg, and stepped around me—positioning his privates far, far away from Matt’s itchy foot. Finally, he dipped his fingers into my pocket.

  For all his roguish taunting, Franco didn’t play around. His hand came right out again, clutching the white button.

  “Recognize it?” I asked.

  “It’s the missing button from Santa’s costume,” Franco said without meeting my gaze. For the first time tonight, he dropped the swaggering supercop act. “How did Crime Scene miss this and you didn’t?”

  “Because it wasn’t on the ground. I found it all the way up on the fourth floor of the fire escape—”

  “At the window you were looking through when you got spotted?”

  “Yes.”

  Franco nodded while he turned the button in his hand. “Okay. So your Santa friend may have been a peeping Tom. Or maybe even a burglar.”

  “No. I think Alf was murdered because of something he saw—”

  “On the fire escape?” he said doubtfully. “When he looked through that apartment window?”

  “Yes!”

  “Sorry, Coffee Lady. Finding this on the fire escape isn’t evidence of anything like that—only that he may have been some kind of pervert.”

  “Alf was not a pervert!”

  “How do you know?”

  I met Franco’s stare. “The same way you know I’m not a murderer.”

  The detective frowned, then looked away.

  “I found the body, didn’t I?” I quietly challenged. “I knew the victim. Yet you never once considered me a suspect. Why?”

  “Because . . .” Franco’s dark eyes returned to mine. “I didn’t see evil inside you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  It’s true. I’d heard him. I just couldn’t believe what he’d said. “So . . .” I continued carefully, “you can see evil in a person? Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  I paused to study the detective in front of me. The man’s tone was no longer taunting. He sounded deadly serious, and his unrelenting stare felt borderline chilling. I knew most cops had hunches, trusted their instincts on reading people. But this was something else—something kind of bizarre, if not downright disturbing.

  “Don’t you think a little thing like a trail of evidence would be helpful?” I asked the man. “I mean, if the DA’s office wanted to pursue charges based on something other than your insightful, apparently infallible intuition. What do you do after your nightly tours, turn in a list of who’s naughty and who’s nice?”

  Franco’s eyes flashed. “A little advice, Coffee Lady. Sarcasm’s not the way to ‘handle’ me.”

  “What about Vicki Glockner’s allegations?”

  Franco’s irritation changed quickly to surprise—unhappy surprise. “What do you know about Glockner’s daughter?”

  “She came to me earlier this evening. The girl’s convinced Omar Linford had her father executed, or even did the job himself. Don’t you think you should—”

  “I spoke with the victim’s daughter already. I’m well aware of her accusations. And let me tell you something, Coffee Lady, everybody’s got a conspiracy theory in this case. I’m waiting for the Zapruder film to pop up next.”

  “But aren’t you going to look into this Omar Linford person Vicki was talking about?”

  Franco appeared to tense. “I already have—not that it’s your business.”

  “Alf Glockner was my friend. His daughter came to me. So, yes, it’s my busi—”

  “Okay, all right, I’ll tell you—” He might as well have added just to shut you up. “Omar Linford has made no threats or shown himself to be guilty of anything. He has no state or local criminal record, and there are no charges pending. There’s no DEA file on him, and a personal contact I have at the FBI claims they have nothing on the man and no interest in him.”

  “But Linford’s loaded. If he wanted to, he could have hired a hit man.”

  “So could Donald Trump. But why would he?”

  “Donald Trump didn’t lend Alf Glockner two hundred thou. Money he never got back.”

  Franco narrowed his eyes. “How could offing St. Nick score Linford his Benjis? Answer me that.”

  “Vicki thinks it might have been a warning, that this Linford character is going to use Alf’s murder as a scare tactic, pressure her mother into selling their home or the same might happen to her—or even Vicki.”

  “Look, honey, if Omar Linford really is guilty of hiring the gunman or if he proceeds to make threats, we’ll build a case against him. But first things first. We have to arrest the perp who pulled the trigger. Locating the murder weapon would help, too.”

  “Or you could talk to the person who lives in that fourth-floor apartment,
” I said. “Find out if he knows anything. Heard or saw anything. Is guilty of anything—”

  “We canvassed the building,” said Franco, cutting me off. “I questioned the occupant of that apartment—”

  “You mean James Young,” I stated as if it were fact, even though I wasn’t at all certain. Sure, I’d spotted a Studio 19 identification badge issued to a James Young; but for all I knew, that badge belonged to a friend or relative of the person who lived in that apartment. Crossing my slowly numbing fingers—still locked behind me—I prayed Franco wouldn’t notice the ploy. He didn’t. A second later, he confirmed what I’d dug up.

  “Mr. Young had nothing significant to say regarding our investigation.”

  “Mr. James Young?” I pressed.

  “Are you deaf? Yes. James Young!”

  “And you’re certain he’s the only tenant in that apartment?”

  “As far as I know.”

  I heard male voices in the hallway. The door opened and a man leaned in—Franco’s partner, Detective Charles Hong.

  “Yo, General,” he called, gesturing.

  “General?” Matt whispered.

  Franco drained the last of his Red Bull, crumpled the can with ease, and smirked at Matt. “Stick around, Fido. I hear there’s an in-flight movie.”

  Matt shifted on the bench.

  “Temper,” I whispered.

  “General Franco,” Matt muttered, shooting me an unreadable look. “Now I’ve got this guy’s number.”

  TWELVE

  STILL chained to the rail behind me, I maneuvered my body as much as I could to get a view of the hallway outside the holding room. Through the half-open door, I saw Franco and Hong conferring with a fortyish Hispanic man in an unbuttoned trench coat—an assistant district attorney I’d seen once or twice before. There was a fourth man, too, a preppy type in his early thirties.

  By now it was close to ten at night, but the preppy new-comer looked fresher than just-squeezed breakfast juice. Blond hair impeccably coiffed, designer suit cleanly pressed, he carried a slim attaché case in his right hand and sported a Harvard ring on his left. His chiseled features displayed one of those slick smiles that almost always carried some kind of noxious threat behind it.

  I knew we were in trouble when the ADA departed and Franco ushered the preppy into the room with an almost merry disposition. Detective Hong followed, closing the door behind him.

  “Bad news, people,” Franco began. “But first—the introductions.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the Ivy Leaguer. “Meet Chip Castle, a lawyer for the management company that owns the property you two were trespassing on. It’s the same company that employs the doorman Rover here assaulted.”

  “I hardly tapped him,” Matt muttered.

  Castle eyed Matt, then me—pretty much like we were bugs. (Of course, the stench of garbage still lingering on my Boyz N the Hood ensemble wasn’t exactly a public relations booster.)

  “We’re pressing charges against you both,” Castle announced with a kind of gleeful spite. “Criminal trespass. Felony assault.”

  I blinked, Matt cursed, and Castle grinned through a fortune of pearly orthodontia.

  “Nothing personal,” he added. “My clients have no choice but to pursue the matter through the legal system. It’s in the insurance agreement for the property, you understand? We’re required to do this.”

  Franco stepped forward. “Matteo Allegro, you’re charged with felony—”

  “Screw you, Generalissimo!” Matt barked straight into Franco’s face. “You’re letting this A-hole lawyer railroad us because she’s doing your job for you!”

  “Matt, don’t make it worse—”

  “She’s trying to solve a case you can’t, or won’t, solve yourself.”

  Franco lunged for Matt, fist cocked. He’d finally gotten a taste of having his own buttons pushed. Unfortunately, Matt’s strategy—to nail Franco with police brutality charges—also meant he’d have to endure a beat down.

  “Stop it, Franco! Chill, man!” Hong threw himself between Franco and Matt. “The guy’s in cuffs! You can’t touch him!”

  “Touch me, Generalissimo!” Matt yelled. “Come on! Smack me around! You’re just a tin-pot dictator like your Spanish namesake! You want to, Generalissimo! Do it!”

  That’s when I noticed the lawyer. The smarmy grin never left Castle’s face, but now he was backing toward the door.

  Okay, boys, playtime’s over!

  “EXCUSE ME!” I shouted at a level of female shrill that was disturbing enough to cut through the testosterone-fueled bellows. “I have something germane to say to Mr. Castle!”

  Fists clenched, Franco broke free of his partner’s grip, but he stepped away from Matt instead of toward him. (Thank goodness.) Hong froze. And Castle stopped inching toward the door. He regarded me for a silent moment.

  “I’m listening,” he finally said, his tone still insufferably superior. He even made a show of glancing at his watch. “You have a germane comment, do you?”

  “I’m a businesswoman, counselor,” I replied, “so I know the score.”

  Actually, I’d learned the score from Matt’s mother. Before teaching me how to run a shop in the heart of Manhattan, Madame Dreyfus Allegro Dubois had run it herself for half a century—that meant decades of dealing with corrupt inspectors and mobbed-up garbage handlers; unethical real estate developers and slip-and-fall lawyers. Channeling Madame was getting to be a habit, and taking this guy down was going to be a pleasure.

  “Your clients are forcing you to press charges because they’re afraid of rate increases from the insurance company,” I said. “But what if this insurance company found out how easily I was able to breach your clients’ building security? Wouldn’t that raise rates, too?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “For starters, you have no security gate blocking access to the courtyard from the street—”

  “We had some construction going on a short time ago. That’s why there’s a Dumpster on the side of the building, as well as the—”

  “You have bins positioned against the back of the building and crates piled up nearby. That’s hardly secure. Your own building management has made reaching the fire escape child’s play.”

  The lawyer tossed his perfectly styled mane. “Such a situation is easily rectifiable—”

  “But most egregiously, Mr. Castle, the security hook on the fire escape was rusted completely through. All I had to do was pull down the ladder. Why, under those conditions, building management might as well hang out a sign that says Please Burglarize Our Tenants. I’m sure those very tenants would be interested to know how little management cares for their safety and security. And if we go to trial . . .” I paused to shoot Mr. Billable Hours a sharklike smile of my own. “I guarantee they’ll all find out.”

  Castle’s superior smirk started to waver.

  “Of course, to prepare for trial, I’d insist on official reports from the FDNY and Department of Buildings. I’d definitely want them to check out that fire escape. The way it was rocking in the wind, I have doubts about its structural integrity.”

  Poof! Just like that, Castle’s smirk disappeared. He loosened his tie.

  “Now listen to me, counselor, because here’s the real story: I was on that fire escape for an innocent reason—to search for evidence the police might have missed in my friend’s murder the night before. Your doorman didn’t ask what I was doing there. He simply assaulted me and threw me into that Dumpster. The only reason my ex-husband here took a few swipes at the man was because he heard me screaming. He was trying to get me out of that Dumpster—to make sure I wasn’t hurt or bleeding or raped or dying. Your employee locked me in there, by the way—with the garbage—but I’m sure your nose already told you that. So if you press charges against me and my ex-husband, I’m not only going to sue your doorman in civil court, I’m going to sue your client for five million dollars.”

  Everyone was looking fairly she
epish now. Everyone but Charlie Hong, who appeared to be suppressing a smile.

  “Take a good look at me, Mr. Castle. I’m five two in stocking feet, a single mother of a grown daughter, and a well-known shop manager in the community with no criminal history. Your doorman is a six-two, two-hundred-eighty-pound former bar bouncer. Which version of this story do you think a jury will side with?”

  Castle stood in silence for a moment. Then he motioned to Franco and Hong to follow him out the door. Lucky thing, too, because I’d just run out of options—and threats.

  After conferring with the detectives, mostly Hong, and making a cell call (presumably to that departing ADA), the Franco bomb detonated again: “What do you mean you’re not pressing charges?!”

  Mr. Castle muttered something I couldn’t hear. Then he turned his back on the sergeant and strode away. After that, Hong and Franco started talking. I overheard one telling phrase on Hong’s end: “Lieutenant Mike Quinn.” Inside a minute, Franco was striding away with obvious frustration, and Detective Hong returned to the holding room. He unlocked Matt’s cuffs first.

  “You’re free to go, Mr. Allegro, and I suggest you leave right now.”

  Rubbing his wrists, Matt stood. “Not without Clare.”

  “Fine,” Hong said. “Wait outside, then. I want a private word with Ms. Cosi.”

  Matt didn’t budge, just looked at me.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  Matt crossed the room and closed the door behind him. Hong released my cuffs, and I shook my arms to restore the feeling in my fingers.

  “I checked you out,” Hong began, sitting down next to me. “And I know you know something about police business. Lieutenant Quinn contacted me today, as well. He’s a good man. I think a lot of him.”

  “So do I.”

  “Look, Ms. Cosi, I don’t want you to think that Franco and I aren’t working hard to find the man who murdered your friend. That’s pretty much all we’re thinking about right now. I wanted you to know that—and that I fully understand your interest in this case.”