of cardboard, peeled the lid off its bottom and capped the box shut.
Matt held the thing at arm’s length. (I didn’t blame him.)
“Give me a five-minute head start before you call in the law,” he said, then slipped out of the apartment, the jingle-jingle-jingles of Frothy’s Santa cat pillow diminishing as he disappeared down the building’s hallway.
I hoped no one would notice Matt leaving the place, but I did realize that a hunky guy in a tux, carrying a tinkling cat carrier in one hand and a stinky box of cat crap in the other might be too much for even jaded New Yorkers to ignore.
With five minutes to wait, I decided to keep my gloves on and poke around the dead man’s apartment. The bedrooms had been tossed already. But the killer hadn’t had time to ransack the living room.
Could there be some kind of lead here?
I checked the answering machine. All the messages had been deleted. I looked for a computer, but all I found was a printer and an adapter cord. I suspected there had been a laptop here, but the killer had taken it.
After five minutes, I came up with zip, so I dug out my mobile phone to call the police. When I saw the mailbox icon on my cell’s screen, I realized I’d missed a call. I’d forgotten to take the cell off its vibrator setting. Worried it might be Matt needing more time, I quickly played it. The message wasn’t from my ex-husband but my ex-mother-in-law.
“Hello, dear, I didn’t want to tell (static) while Ben Tower (static), so I waited until . . .”
Reception was lousy, so I moved closer to the window to improve the signal. As I did, I brushed against the plastic dry-cleaning bag holding the Santa costume. The slippery plastic slithered onto the floor, taking the adjacent overcoat with it. That’s when I noticed a white envelope peeking out of the coat’s pocket. There was something familiar about the Santa Claus postage stamp in the corner.
Forgetting Madame’s message, I stooped down and carefully slipped the envelope free. As the typed name Omar Linford revealed itself, the hairs on my skin began to prickle. I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter.
Dear Omar: I have a new proposition for you. If you care about your son’s future, you will read every word of this note and do what it says. I know all about Junior Linford’s little hobbies . . .
Oh my God. I’d found the note blackmailing Omar Linford—the one someone had tossed me off the ferry to get. Now I knew who that someone was.
“Karl Kovic, you son of a—”
I shook my head, at last putting it all together . . . After I’d left Shelly Glockner’s house, she must have rushed to the back yard, where Esther noticed Kovic going out to the Jacuzzi. Then Kovic watched and waited until I left Linford’s place. He followed me onto the ferry, grabbed my bag, and threw me into water with a temperature a tad chillier than Shelly’s hot tub.
Gritting my teeth with fury, I grabbed a pen and piece of scrap paper from my bag and scribbled down the series of bank account numbers at the end of the note. I was willing to bet the account was a joint one controlled by Alf and Shelly Glockner—giving her access to the money as soon as Omar deposited it.
I’m sure she and Karl went behind Alf’s back. But . . . did they kill Alf, too?
That part didn’t make a lot of sense. Killing Alf would screw up their plan, wouldn’t it? Alf was their fall guy in case Omar went to the FBI. Why kill him?
I remembered the life insurance money, but that didn’t seem to fit, either. They could have waited until they got the payoff from Omar—unless he already told Alf he wasn’t going to pay and they became desperate . . .
The permutations were making my head hurt, and it didn’t address the question of who killed Karl, either. Would Shelly have done something like that? If she had, why would she have to ransack the apartment? Wouldn’t she have sweet-talked Karl out of whatever she wanted, and then killed him?
I tried making Omar Linford the villain here—but that didn’t seem to fit, either. If the point was to kill Karl because of his threat to go to the police about Junior Linford, then the deed was done. Why ransack the apartment? For the