Holiday Grind by Cleo Coyle Page B

doesn’t he?”
    “Yes,” I said, “but my problem was never with your giving the gift of lingerie, just the number of women you gave it to.”
    Dexter opened the racy catalog. Many of its pages were marked with Post-its—color-coded Post-its. What the coding system was, I could never bring myself to ask.
    “That one’s a stunner.” Dex tapped one of the scantily clad models.
    Matt frowned. “Are you blind? She’s got beady eyes, her lips are too thin, and her legs are bowed.”
    Dex laughed. “Oh, mon ! Haven’t your heard that ol’ island song? ‘How me love swimmin’ with bow-legged women.’ ”
    Esther frowned. “Isn’t that a line from the movie Jaws ?”
    Dexter nodded. “It’s also a very old pirate ditty. Port Royal, you know, was once their biggest haven in the Caribbean.” He winked. “Underneath, we’re all buccaneers.”
    “If you mean all men ,” Esther said flatly. “I’m in complete agreement.”
    Dex flipped through more glossy pages. “So, Matteo, what lady in here is to your likin’?”
    Matt pointed to a leggy blonde.
    “Her? Cha !” Dex shook his head. “She looks fenky-fenky to me!”
    “What’s fenky-fenky ?” Esther asked.
    “It means she looks proud,” Dex said. “Stuck on herself.”
    Esther snorted and leaned toward me. “Sounds like Matt’s new wife.”
    I cleared my throat. “Well, we really should be going—”
    “Don’t you know that ol’ Jamaican saying?” Dex interrupted as he thumbed through the Post-it-tagged models.
    “Not another one.” Matt muttered.
    “Sweet nanny goat have a runnin’ belly.”
    “Excuse me?” Esther said.
    Dex turned to face her. “It means, what tastes good to a goat at noontime might ruin his belly by nightfall.”
    Esther adjusted her black glasses. “I need more.”
    Dex shrugged. “Some things that seem good to a man now, can hurt him later.”
    “Oh, I get it,” Esther said. “The running belly is the goat eating too much bad grass and then getting diarrhea.”
    “Diarrhea!” Dex vigorously nodded, sending his dreadlocks bouncing again. “Now you’re gettin’ it, sister!”
    “O-kay!” I interjected. “Now that she’s got the diarrhea, we’ll just let you two continue your, uh, browsing.”
    I grabbed Esther’s arm.
    “Clare, wait!” Matt called. “Where are you really going—”
    I heard the worry in Matt’s voice, but I didn’t care. Ignoring his question, I left my ex-husband to his lingerie models and pushed Esther out into the chilly night, my only reply the echo of jingle bells above our shop’s door.
     
     
    WHEN I finally let go of Esther’s arm, she skidded on a patch of sidewalk ice. I grabbed her in time to save her from a tumble.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “For now,” she said, shifting her big black leather shoulder bag from one arm to another. “But I’d really like to know why we’re returning to the scene of Alf Glockner’s murder in the dead of night?”
    I had to strain to hear her words over the traffic on Hudson Street, not to mention the howl from a stiff wind coming off the nearby river. It didn’t help that Esther’s chin was tucked deep into the coil of her mile-long scarf.
    “It’s not the dead of night,” I pointed out. “It’s only a little past seven.”
    A steamy sigh escaped Esther’s mouth. “Okay, maybe it’s not the dead of night, but it feels like it. It’s dark and cold and windy, which raises the question—no, two questions. Is this trip really necessary?”
    “Yes.” I flipped up the hood of my giant black sweatshirt. “We’re returning to the scene because I have a new theory about what happened to Alf in that courtyard. What’s your second question?”
    “It’s rhetorical, actually.”
    “What?”
    “Why-oh-why didn’t I go down to Florida with my parents this year?!”
    I took her arm. “Come on . . .”
    “So, Boss,” Esther piped up again as we took off down the sidewalk. “What is this new theory of