* * *
“Now I see why you moved here—no problem getting a parking spot,” Willoughby said as he and Jane walked in the door, loaded I hoped, with news. They each carried computers.
“Scenery’s not great, but we like the neighborhood,” I said. “And from my study, you can see a sliver of two bridges and Manhattan across the river.”
“Maybe we ought to go up to your study instead of messing up your dining room,” Jane said.
Denny tried to hide his grin. “I don’t think so.” He looked at me and we laughed, one of our sparkling moments together. He tried to explain about the state of the room.
“The day I clean my study is the day I lose my mojo,” I said.
“So you haven’t cleaned it in, what, a couple of months? No big deal. It’ll remind me of home.”
“No, I haven’t cleaned it ever.”
There was a silence.
“Besides, it’s a special place. It’s where I go to figure out the deep bones of truth, and I don’t want to wear it out.”
No one said a word for a while.
“Where are we?” I asked after we got settled in the dining room with chips and dips and drinks.
“Ralph’s disappeared,” Jane said. “Crawled into some god-forsaken hole and hasn’t come out. We’ve got uniforms and detectives and Feds looking all over for him and we’ve turned up squat. We’ve put surveillance back on your house. We don’t think he knows about Winston Connors’ arrest.”
“So why doesn’t Connors tell you where he is? Or get him to stop?”
“Because he doesn’t know where Ralph is or how to reach him.”
There was a long pause while I watched Willoughby lunge at the chips. He stuffed a huge amount into his mouth.
“The Feds told us this guy doesn’t do phones. He doesn’t do newspapers or radio or TV. He might as well live on the moon. Or in the Middle Ages.”
“Why a surveillance on our house?” I asked. “Ralph doesn’t scare me.”
“That’s a problem,” Denny said and took a drink of his beer.
“A big problem,” Jane said, and Willoughby nodded. “Because Connors admitted hiring him to kill you. He tried once, and he’ll try again.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re just like your mother. You’re both like dogs with a bone.” Jane took a sip of iced tea and looked at her notes. “Connors’ exact words—‘two dogs with a bone.’ First he had your mother fired, and when that didn’t stop her, he had her killed. And when he heard Barbara hired you to investigate her mother’s death, he knew he had to get rid of you or else you’d discover the truth.”
“Thanks a lot.” But I couldn’t help smiling. I could see my mother, bright determination in her jade eyes. She fought to get her job back. I was too busy with school and pretending she was still working at the bank to pay attention to what she was doing, but I’ll bet she was uncovering every rock she could find for dirt on Heights Federal. She wouldn’t have killed herself. And I had to bite my lip, too, so I wouldn’t cry. “So that’s why Ralph attacked me yesterday morning, not because he was so passionate for me, sexy looker that I am. And you saved my life,” I said to Jane.
She shook her head. Crimson flushed up her neck and into her face.
“How much was he paid?” Denny asked.
“Nothing.”
Denny looked at me and we started laughing.
“You mean I’m not worth anything?” I stirred my tea.
“No. Money doesn’t mean anything to Ralph. The way the Feds explained it, Connors knew the Feds would find Charlie if he remained with Ralph—he’d already been spotted in a restaurant in Allentown. So he kept Charlie at the compound, telling Ralph he could have Charlie after he killed you. Because Ralph doesn’t pay attention to news, he doesn’t know about Connors’ arrest and thinks that when he returns, he’ll get Charlie back.”
“How could he not know?” I asked. Then I remembered. “Sorry, stupid question. The guy’s like a hermit.”
“Worse. The guy flies under the radar.”
“Like the Unabomber, and you know how long it took to find him,” Denny said.
“You mean there’s no radar invented that will spot him,” Willoughby said. “Got more beer?”
He and Denny went into the kitchen and we all took a break.
When we got back to the dining room all cozy next to our computers, I started in. “No, she means we have to tweak the radar to spot him,” I said. “We can do this, I know we can.”
“Connors told us about an apartment he keeps in Dumbo,” Jane said.
“You mean Marie’s apartment?”
“No, that’s in the Heights somewhere. This one’s on Water Street, in one of those huge industrial buildings.”
Ever since the Civil War, the neighborhood was all about light industry. In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the artist population blossomed, mostly painters and sculptors who moved from Soho to the area across the Brooklyn Bridge called Dumbo, short for “Down Under the Manhattan and Brooklyn Overpasses” and rented lofts there. It’s just down the road from Vinegar Hill where Denny and I live, and sometimes at night I walk around the Dumbo cobbles, listening to the ghosts of old soldiers and smelling spices from a hundred and fifty years ago. In the new millennium things changed. Dumbo got more gentrified. Lots of artists are still there, but they converted some of the warehouses to condominiums or co-ops. Now there’s some great shops and restaurants sprouting up.
Jane was still talking. “The Feds thought for sure he’d be in the apartment on Water, but he wasn’t. They searched it this morning and the CSU’s are still working it, a joint effort between us and the FBI. They’ve lifted prints off a pizza box and beer bottle they found in the kitchen trash can. They matched the prints they got from the necks of Mary Ward Simon and Arrowsmith.”
Jane reached for the chips. She crunched a few and wiped her fingers on a napkin. “Separately, the FBI investigated a call from the local police someplace near the Jersey Shore. Close to Neptune, I think. Seems they found the body of a woman in a broom closet. Strangled. She ran a motel with her son. Her body was found close to a room rented to a man and his little boy. Fingerprints on the woman’s neck matched our guy’s. Long story short, the FBI and local police think Ralph took Charlie there to—”
“Don’t even think it.”
“I’ll say it,” Willoughby said. “Just so we know what kind of a man we’re dealing with. Ralph was going to sodomize a four-year-old child, or at least get his rocks off. That’s his thing. And he thinks that if he kills you, Connors will give him Charlie.”
There was a thick silence. I looked out the window at the dark blanket spreading over Vinegar Hill.
Jane cleared her throat. “We think Ralph went to the motel with Charlie Friday night, and Francine La Rue, the woman at the desk, recognized Charlie and … interrupted Ralph.”
A cold river flowed through me and I closed my eyes swallowing the rock in my throat.
“She gave her life, but foiled Ralph’s attempt to abuse Charlie physically.”
“Charlie wasn’t touched?” Denny asked.
Jane shook her head. “We know he wasn’t molested. He was examined by our physician.”
Willoughby blew out air.
Jane went on. “We think Ralph left the motel with Charlie after he killed the woman because Connors said he turned up at the horse farm about ten that night, and that’s when Connors took the child, gave him to Marie so the Feds wouldn’t catch Ralph with him.”
“Not out of altruism or anything,” Willoughby said.
“Of course not, because later Connors told his guard to get rid of Charlie and Marie overheard him.”
“That’s what she told me on the way home,” I said. “It tipped her scales. After forty-eight years of marriage, she decided to leave her husband.”
“Getting back to Ralph,” Jane said. “We don’t know where he stayed Friday night.”
“Probably drove back to D
umbo since he was knocking on my car window early Saturday morning,” I said.
“Unless he slept in our wheelbarrow,” Denny said.
Jane nodded. “And we think he stayed in Connors’ Dumbo apartment last night, too. We don’t know how he got through the lobby without being spotted. They found old boots in a closet. One was wet, we don’t know from what because it hasn’t rained in several days and there aren’t any puddles in Dumbo.”
“What did it smell like?”
“Willoughby, please! The lab’s analyzing the boot now and our bug guys ought to be able to tell us more soon. Then they can give it to the canines.”
For once, I had nothing to say. I tried to imagine Ralph’s world. No electronics, no news, a world without words except for street signs. I couldn’t do it.
The silence stretched. We needed another break.
Afterward I said, “I just wish someone would write a front page article about my mother, about how she had nothing to do with the collapse of Heights Federal or fraudulent loans or anything like that. I suspect she tried to stop it and that’s why she was fired. Later, when she wouldn’t let go of it, she was murdered. Maybe I’m the one who’ll have to prove it.”
“And I’ll help, I swear I will,” Jane said. “I owe you big time and besides, I have to prove it, it’s part of my cold case. But right now I want to get Ralph. Maybe we can do some brainstorming.”
Her phone rang, and I took a moment to lean into Denny and take a sip of his beer.
Jane slapped off her phone. “We’re not finished with Ralph, but I have a question about Barbara. I’m assuming she was the beneficiary of her mother’s will?”
I nodded. I asked Cookie to pay a visit to the Surrogate’s court, but they didn’t have Mrs. Simon’s death certificate yet, and we were pressed for time.”
“Do I want to hear this?” Jane asked.
“All right, maybe a little back door, but the woman’s dead, so it’s all legal. Don’t listen if you don’t want to hear, but it’s not going to stop me telling the tale.”
I looked over at Denny and saw him smiling at me.
“In Mary Ward Simon’s personal contacts, I searched for lawyers and found the name and address of Smith, Jarvis & O’Leary. So I asked Cookie to call and she went over to their office on Court Street. Turns out Cookie and I went to Packer Collegiate with the receptionist. She told him I’d been hired to investigate Mary Ward Simon’s death and that her will may have some bearing on the case, blah, blah, blah, and he gave Cookie all the info.”
Jane uncovered her ears.
“As I said, don’t listen and you won’t hear. A Mr. Ashot Smith, one of the partners, was Mary’s personal attorney, and except for a bequest of one hundred and fifty thousand to her church and another bequest of fifty thousand to St. Francis Hospital in Trenton, and a small sum to a distant relative in Oregon, the bulk of her estate went to Barbara and if her daughter pre-deceased, to Charlie.”
“How did this receptionist know all of this?”
“Beats me, probably got the file out.”
“He didn’t give a ballpark I wouldn’t want to hear?”
“Around twenty-five million. Just a ballpark, you understand, because most of her assets are in stocks and bonds and some real estate. But don’t forget, Mary Ward Simon was the wife of a successful banker, and you know what bankers do.”
“Either make or steal money.”
“After her husband died, Mary increased the assets of the estate through hard work and shrewd investments.
“So Charlie is the one who profits the most because of her death.”
“But he lost a grandmother and mother and had to put up with God knows what. And by the way, he never asked for his mother, not once during that long ride from New Jersey to Brooklyn,” I said. “He asked for his gran a couple of times. But I’ll let the father handle that.”
“So much for following the money,” Willoughby said.
“Well …” I began, and caught my inner cheek. “We don’t know what Barbara’s finances were like. I deposited her retainer, but I don’t know if it’s going to clear.”
“Who knows what motivates an addict?” Denny asked.
“The next fix,” Jane said. “And enough money to buy it.”
There was a drift in the room’s flow of thought.
“So tell us what you know about Ralph.”
“From the FBI and New Jersey detectives who’ve been interviewing Connors, we’re trying to compile a profile of this guy. But it’s difficult, because the only person who really knows Ralph—James Arrowsmith—is dead. He’s the one who brought him to Winston because of his strength. The Feds said he bent his lamp pedestal in half. It was made from a brass shell.”
Denny looked at me and I shivered.
“So right now there’s a strangler on the loose with incredible strength,” Denny said. “He’s killed three people that we know of—Mary Ward Simon, James Arrowsmith, and the woman in the Jersey Shore motel.”
“And Arrowsmith’s the one who got him the job at Blue Eagle. Nice payback,” Willoughby said.
“What about the other workers on the farm?” I asked.
“They’ve taken their statements, but no one seems to know Ralph, and they haven’t a clue where he is. A real loner. We don’t even know his last name. Didn’t go to bars, didn’t smoke or drink, kept to himself. No one recalls him reading or watching TV. One of the grooms overheard Arrowsmith say that the extent of his ability was reading street signs.”
“Wait. Don’t you have to read to get a driver’s license?”
“Yes,” Jane, Denny, and Willoughby said together, but Jane expanded. “You’ve got to take a vision test and be able to follow the written test directions and read street signs.”
“If he has a driver’s license and we know his first name is Ralph, can’t we sift through all the licenses issued to people with the first name of Ralph and find out more about him that way?”
“Good question.” Jane made a call and asked her team to get on it. “Try New York for starters,” she said into the phone.
“Didn’t seem that strong to me,” I said. “I got him off me with a swift kick.”
“Maybe your mother was with you,” Denny said and kissed my cheek.
“Another thing we know about him,” Jane said, “the guy’s a neat freak.”
“I say we print an artist’s composite and drop the flyers from the sky all over Dumbo and the Heights,” I said. “And give a copy to the media.”
“The FBI has something on their site requesting information, I think,” Jane said, opening her laptop.
I looked at their composite. “They didn’t ask us for a description and this doesn’t look anything like him.”
“You’re right,” she said.
While Jane was talking, I texted Cookie and told her where we were and asked if she’d come over, telling her we needed her artistic skills. She said she was at Teresa’s and would drive over when she was finished.
“This is what we know,” I began. “Mary Ward Simon’s dead. James Arrowsmith’s dead. Barbara Simon’s dead. Ken Connors is dead. Marie Connors rescued Charlie, and he’s back with his dad and unhurt. Marie’s at an unknown safe location. Winston Connors is singing for his supper. And Ralph is missing. He’s tall and strong with big feet. He stayed in Connors’ apartment on Water Street last night, at least we’re almost positive he did. We’re searching the state’s database of all current DL’s issued to men with the first name of Ralph, looking for his car, a white Audi, have to look in my notes for the details but we’ve given the tags to everyone. It’s registered to Marie Connors.”
“The one we saw charging down Henry Street yesterday?”
Jane nodded. “Probably. As far as a photo of the suspect, we’ve got squat and the FBI composite sucks. We’re going to make a new one as soon as our artist arrives.”
There was silence. I sipped my tea and lemonade. I could tell we were slow on the draw. The horror
in Barbara Simon’s apartment had worked its spell on us, but I knew the case wasn’t over, not by a long shot. Something really off about this Ralph guy not showing up, and he was making me feel queasy.
“Let’s focus on the Simon-Connors connection, what we know about it,” Jane said. “First of all, we know Winston Connors needed to stop Mary Ward Simon’s audit—”
“So he got rid of her,” Willoughby said.
Jane gave him a look. “And we know how much Barbara stood to gain by her mother’s death, so she was all too ready to oblige.”
“Addiction costs big bucks. With twenty million, she’d be in oxycontin for at least ten years,” Willoughby said.
“But that wasn’t her only drug of choice.”
“Okay, more like five years, assuming she had no debts to pay off.”
“What addict do you know who pays off debts?”
Leave it to Willoughby to get way off point.
“A subject for another day,” Jane said.
“Barbara Simon is an enigma to me. Why would she give me her mother’s files?” I asked.
“Maybe Barbara figured you wouldn’t crack the passwords,” Denny said and took a swig of beer. “So she could look like she was feeding you when in fact, she really wasn’t.”
I shrugged. “Come to think about it, why would she hire me in the first place? Maybe she was covering herself?”
Jane wagged a finger. “You found a whole army of drugs in her bathroom—uppers, downers, all arounders. So let’s not try to understand her behavior in logical terms, because she wasn’t thinking that way.”
But I wanted Jane to take Mary Ward Simon’s computer because it had important information about the fraud at Heights Federal that Mom had no part in, and I wanted my her name cleared.
Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Page 24
