Tower, by any chance?”
“Why, yes. We’re having drinks right now at a bar on—”
“Tell Tower you’re hearing from a source right now who’s confirming that he’s been buying photos from Alfred Glockner and Karl Kovic.”
“Yes. Hold please.”
I heard some low voices in the background. Then Madame’s voice more clearly. “I cannot reveal my source, Ben.”
Madame came back on the line. “Yes, Ben is confirming what you’ve discovered.”
Oh, my God. “Put me on with him.”
“Are you sure, dear? I thought you were trying to remain anonymous?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Hello? Who is this?” Ben’s voice was familiar—a little tentative and also a little slurry. Madame wasn’t stupid. Treating a man like Ben to a liquid lunch would loosen his tongue in record time!
“This is Clare Cosi, Mr. Tower.”
“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