“That’s the one,” I said. “Do you remember his name?”
Nanette took several minutes to shake her head, one hand outstretched as if to ward off the question. Or the answer. “No … I … Jim was such a loner. I used to worry about him. He had his friends in high school of course, but after that they seemed to drift apart.”
“Was the friend someone from school?”
She shook her head, twisting her hands. “I don’t think so … I recall asking him where he came from and he said Arthur Avenue. Yes, that’s what he said. He was from Arthur Avenue.” Her cheeks were a bright red and beads of sweat formed above her upper lip. Her breathing was fast, and I was afraid she was going to faint. “I remember asking him if he meant the Arthur Avenue in the Bronx and he told me yes.”
“How strange life is, sometimes.” Lorraine the lifeguard swam out to save a drowning Nanette.
“Isn’t it?” Nanette fanned a hand close to her face. She talked to Lorraine as if I didn’t exist. “Can I show you the house? If you’ve never seen Victorian, you might like it.”
“Do you mind if I sit here and make a call?” I asked.
That would give Lorraine a chance to work on Nanette a little bit. I could hear Lorraine’s voice as their footsteps echoed up the stairs.
The Shore
We walked to the car. “She seemed to close off after you asked her about the friend,” Lorraine said, shaking her head, “so I thought I’d let her do the talking, but it was if she’d used up all her words. She’s holding a lot inside.”
“Did she tell you about her husband?”
“He worked in finance, she told me. She told me he’d been lost when the twin towers collapsed, but there were times she talked about him as if he were still alive.”
We were silent while I drove slowly down the street and turned onto Main crossing the bridge. The blood of my ancestors was kicking in, and a good part of me doubted a lot of what Nanette had told us. But I remembered Mom saying we humans create our own past. Our real truth is like a wave, hard to cast in bronze.
“You saw the boys’ rooms?”
Lorraine nodded. “And Donald goes to Rutgers.”
I looked at my watch, nearly eleven. We stopped and decided to sit by the little lake in town where ducks quacked. Lorraine seemed more interested in Nanette than in New Jersey.
“Thanks, by the way,” I said. “You were able to draw her out.”
“Not really. She has secrets, that one.”
I nodded slowly, trying to let go of Nanette’s past. I still needed to find out Ralph’s last name.
Shifting gears, I flipped through my notes, finding the number I wanted. After entering the digits I counted the rings, my fingers crossed. No answering machine. Why hadn’t I copied down his address?
I was about to hang up when a voice growled in my ear, “Alf.”
I told him who I was and what I wanted and asked for directions to his shop.
“Better hurry along. The FBI said they were picking the car up this morning and they’re late.”
I told Lorraine about the white Plymouth. “Do you mind if we take a ride?”
A few minutes later we pulled into Alf’s Car & Truck. Alf himself came out wearing the same hat and with the same missing teeth. I lowered my window.
He hitched back his hat showing off his hairless head and squinted in at me, scowling until his eye caught Lorraine. He smiled. “Don’t you ever wash this thing? Pretty passenger like that, you want to give her a proper ride.”
What was it with Lorraine?
“Car’s in the back. What you want to do, take pictures?”
“I want to see what’s inside,” I said, snapping on my gloves.
Lorraine shut the door and followed.
“Shoulda thought of that the first time, Missy,” he said, turning and smiling so wide at Lorraine that I thought he was going to walk back and ask her out. Sure enough, I could see him glancing at her ring.
“Don’t worry, I don’t want to take anything,” I said.
“Makes no never mind to me.”
I opened the glove compartment and peered inside at a pile of stuff, candy wrappers, wadded-up napkins and a stack of papers underneath a black paperweight.
Lorraine peered inside. “Oh, dear.” A hand flew to her chest.
“That’s right, Good Looking, that’s a gun,” Alf said. “These are bad, bad people. You don’t want to mess with them.”
Lorraine stared at him.
“I’m not interested in the Glock, that’s someone else’s to fret about,” I said, riffling through the papers. When I found it, I just about kissed it, but decided the Feds wouldn’t know what to do with my lipstick print and contented myself with copying everything down. I took a few photos, checked that they came out all right in the low light, and put everything back just the way I’d found it. I thanked Mr. Alf and Lorraine and I were on our way, but not before I called Jane and left a message.
“His name’s Ralph Hurston. Call me.”
“Are we close to the water?” Lorraine asked. “I’ve heard so much about the Jersey Shore. The storm and all.”
Fine with me. I felt the case winding down and myself reluctant to let it go, so we got back onto 195 and drove east. It was nice and warm. We lowered the windows. All the while Lorraine stared at the scenery like it was a foreign country.
“See how the trees are changing from those huge old things on the farms to pines? And you can see the soil’s becoming sandy as we near the ocean.” I said that last word with a hush in my voice and Lorraine shivered.
When we got to the water, I drove along the shore to Seaside Heights.
“The light’s different here,” Lorraine said.
“Bright and fierce,” I said.
“And the air is so fresh. So this is what it’s like.”
“Not quite. The shore’s supposed to be open next week-end. They’ve cleaned up a lot since Sandy, but we’ll see scars. People are still homeless or with a lot of stuff that still needs to be put back together.”
“Like Nanette?” she asked.
I nodded.
“And like this shore, she’s been battered a lot during her life,” Lorraine said. “But I get the feeling she’s holding back the hurricane with all her might. Soon she won’t have enough strength.”
There was more to Lorraine than I thought.
“Smell the ocean?” I asked.
We walked on the boardwalk and I felt the sun on my back. Lorraine was solemn in the face of all the destruction. I could still see chunks of Hurricane Sandy’s wrath, sand strewn farther than it should be, the remains of houses listing on the edge of the water or being carted away, or being rebuilt. People’s lives had been turned upside down in a few hours.
But the boardwalk and most of the shops and rides and games were open. Not too many people yet, a few surfers, and I smelled salt and hot dogs and watched the Ferris wheel and the waves. We leaned our elbows on the rail and looked at the ocean. Gulls cried overhead.
“Let’s grab a hot dog,” Lorraine said, unable to tear her eyes from the scene. While we waited in a small line, I texted Cookie to see if she’d gotten her voice back and she had, she said, loud and clear. “Too loud,” I could hear her mother say in the background.
We sat on a bench looking at the water. I could feel the ocean breeze kink my curls even more than usual.
Lorraine tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. It popped out again and she took a bite of hot dog. She didn’t move except to chew and shake her head. “Something about that woman. She’s going to explode with all her secrets.”
“You got that feeling, too?”
“Right away.”
I told her what I knew of James Arrowsmith’s past. “Losing her son slowly and her husband quickly.”
She frowned. “Something more, I think, but I don’t know what. I might be reading too much into what she told me when she was showing me the boys’ bedrooms.”
Whil
e we were eating, I texted Denny and told him I missed him. I’d never done that before, but there’s always a first. He shot back less than two seconds with, “I love you.” It made me smile, but the elevator in my stomach started going again.
When we were finished, the hot dog was so good, I wanted another. Lorraine wanted a soft cone.
“A bit of Coney Island here, but not very Brooklyn,” she said. “And it’s so much bigger. A whole different feel.”
I was busy biting into my dog, but managed to ask her about her tour of Nanette’s house.
“There were four bedrooms in all,” Lorraine said, “the master bedroom and ‘three for the boys,’ she told me. I didn’t say anything. I thought she had two sons, and there was that family picture in the living room with just the two children.”
Lorraine had eaten most of her ice cream while she explained, so I was getting the story in between the bites. Now she was crunching into the cone.
“Interesting,” I said, and felt my heart speed up like it always does with mysteries. And yet I didn’t want Nanette to be explained. I wanted her to remain a mystery. After all, what right did I have to go digging?
Lorraine continued. “I kept my mouth shut and didn’t look at her, just let her talk. She showed me Jim’s, then Donald’s room with the Rutgers pennant and I asked about the third, because the spread and colors were definitely male. ‘Well, the third is for my other … for a friend.’ She stumbled over her words, I know she did. I didn’t press her—I’d just met the woman, and who was I—but I perked up my ears. She seemed on the cusp of telling me something.”
I didn’t say anything for a while, just enjoyed being in my head with a new puzzle.
“Let’s just touch the water and then I’ve got to get back. You can’t tell Robert you’ve seen the Jersey Shore unless you’ve been in the ocean.”
“Not that he’d understand,” Lorraine said.
I wasn’t going to do anything with that remark. So we did, we walked on the hot sand minding the stones and one or two clumps of seaweed and hunted for shells. She stuck her hand in the water and I chased waves.
On the way back, we were quiet.
Jane called as we were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, thanking me for the information, and asked me how to spell Ralph’s last name. I told her and asked her to hang on and pulled to the side of the road while I read his driver’s license number to her.
“You sure it’s him?” she asked.
“Can’t mistake that face. And it’s a valid New York license. So do me a favor,” I began to ask, but didn’t get far because she cut in.
“I’ll see. Up to my elbows and got a pile of paperwork. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I was going to ask you if you could find the car, the one Ralph used, I can’t think right now …wait, remember we saw it run a red light on Henry? A white Audi, that’s it. Got the tags somewhere.” In a second, she gave them to me.
I knew it. The heat was off. The bad guys were behind bars, and Jane had a fresh plate in front of her. But I didn’t mind, I understood, I’d been there, too. And I knew Jane and I worked well together and would work together again. I told her no problem.
“We’re still on for Vinegar Hill House tomorrow night, aren’t we?” she asked and didn’t wait for my answer but clicked off.
We ran into traffic on the way home, but made it by six. A good thing, too, because Lorraine’s day was just starting.
“Now, what to make for dinner,” she grimaced.
See what I mean about women getting trapped in a marriage? I dropped her off in front of her house. It didn’t look like such a bad house in the waning light of day.
“Maybe you and … Robert would like to join us for dinner one night next week. We could meet at our house and walk down to a restaurant we love. I don’t cook very much.”
“I’d love to.” She thanked me and gave me a big hug, and I told her how glad I was we’d had this time together and we ought to do it more often. I really meant it, too. Now I realized why Denny was so lovable, only I didn’t tell her that. I might not even tell Denny.
“Tell me what you find out about Nanette,” she said. “I’m praying for her. And if I spot a white Audi with New Jersey license plates, I’ll let you know.”
Wrapping Up
I wouldn’t have missed Mary Ward Simon’s funeral, not for anything. I was glad she wasn’t around to know what her daughter had done to her and what kind of a cock up Barbara had made of her life. All the privilege and opportunity in the world and look what she’d done with it. Listen to me, I’m so perfect.
But then I thought of Barbara lying on a cold slab in the morgue with no one to mourn her passing. I thought of the few moments we’d shared, and wished I’d realized sooner what she was doing to herself. I compared myself to Lorraine and found I was a clod in the sensitivity department. Lorraine would have understood Barbara in two seconds. No wonder Denny is such a winner. All the shattered lives, Mom, when will it end? Bullets don’t stop with muscle and bone. Bullets whirl through generations—bullets and other kinds of goodbyes.
The weather broke its record of sunshine finally and was suitably droopy for Mary Ward Simon’s funeral. I stood outside Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, watching the mourners emerge from the mist. My curls frizzed and pulled at my scalp, but the dampness didn’t stop most of the congregation from coming to pay their respects to a fine woman, a woman you’d expect to be a member of a church like Plymouth which has such a long and illustrious history of freedom. I bowed to the statue of Henry Ward Beecher, glad he wasn’t the one eulogizing today because I heard he could speak for hours.
As I approached the front doors, I saw faces I recognized from the old neighborhood. I sat in the back over to the side, a spot reserved for the likes of me. The church was full, people standing in the back as if it was Easter. I figured that for at least one of us, it was.
The minister, the choir, and the organist were about to do their thing when I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned around to see a woman in sunglasses sliding into the pew in back of me.
Marie Connors smiled. “The least I could do is attend the funeral of Charlie’s grandmother. If he asked for her once, he asked for her a thousand times. Really.”
I asked her how she was doing.
“Fine. I’m in my apartment now that Ralph has been caught. They had me hiding out in some motel in Queens, used mostly for jury sequestration. Horrible. It had red velvet swags on the windows held up by fake wooden rods and the place smelled of cheap cleaning fluid. Nestled in a sweet little valley by the BQE.”
Marie was getting better. Stupid not to think of it until now, but I asked if she knew Ralph’s last name.
She shook her head. “I saw him for all of five minutes. Winston called him a name, but I won’t pass it on.”
I faced forward again when I heard a claque followed by a low attenuated hum that hit me right in the gut. The organ began a low hum, a bit of hope and grief all rolled into one, the way organs do sometimes, and I saw heads bow.
Shortly before the service began, Charlie and his father walked up the aisle and sat in the front row. There was a hush as he pointed to the casket. His father leaned down to him and picked him up and held him while he took a closer look.
There’s a part of me that expects our priests and ministers to explain everything and make it feel okay, and I’m always a little bit let down when they never quite do it, at least not for me. But the minister was not here to dispel my ignorance. He said he wanted to celebrate Mary Ward Simon’s life and her good deeds, her hopes and dreams, tell a few anecdotes to make some of us chuckle. His words and the music soared, a worthy tribute to a magnificent woman. When it was over, I walked out with Marie.
“I saw my car on Columbia Heights,” she said, as we walked under the church portico. I told her I’d tell the police, they’d been looking for it.
“Funny they haven’t found it, not like it’s hidden. I could have used it, but I didn’t. Tell
them if they need the keys, I have a set.”
“If you want to hide something,” I said, “put it where everyone can see it. But I think they were looking in Dumbo close to the apartment Ralph used, not in the Heights.”
“I’m sure they’ll need to have it for a few days for whatever it is they do, but I’d like it back in good order.”
She told me she would keep her apartment and for now, the horse farm. Said she’d grown to love the country and missed a particular horse she’d gotten to know.
“I’m sorry for the loss of your son.” My concern must have been written all over my face because she smiled.
She looked down. “Right now, I’m numb. They say the worst thing that can happen is to lose a child, but I’d lost him a long time ago. Ken was … I don’t know what happened to him, almost like he’d inherited a piece of Winston’s heart and nothing from me. Nothing. The youngest, and we spoiled him.”
“Still, if there’s anything I can do.”
“Don’t worry about me. Winston kept the cars, the farm, and the apartment in my name. And if I lose them, I lose them.”
“Have you seen your husband?”
She shook her head and held her lips tight. I could tell by the look on her face that she was choking back tears. It would be a while before she paid him a visit, she said. I gave her my card and asked her to call me if she thought of something I should know or if she needed me for anything.
“And thank you. I don’t know if I’d have gone through with leaving if it hadn’t been for you. I hope they give you credit. You and I saved a child’s life. I keep holding onto that thought.”
I said goodbye and walked down Henry Street and checked in at Lucy’s. Minnie was staring at her computer, the phone stuck in her ear. She smiled over her half-glasses when I came in.
With the help of Mr. Baggins who kept pawing the disconnect button, I made a few calls, texting Jane to say that Marie Connors found the car.
Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Page 27
