Mrs. Hampton folded her arms and told her she’d already contributed the last of her pin money. She turned to me, adding that her friend volunteered three days a week at the hospital.
It was a worthy cause, so I rummaged in my pockets, pulled out some dollar bills, and slipped them into the cup. “I’ve been hired to investigate Dorset’s disappearance,” I said, showing her my card.
Bea Thatchley removed her sunglasses and held it to her nose, making a show of careful examination. “Must be the real thing. It doesn’t have the scent of dried lavender. Are you sure Dorset’s missing? She has a mind of her own, you know. Might well be with one of her friends, that do-gooder what’s her name?”
Mrs. Hampton shook her head and I told her the events of the morning.
“Sounds just like Cassandra. She’s forgotten all about Dorset’s going to some event.”
“That’s doubtful,” Mrs. Hampton said and told her about Dorset’s dentist appointment.
“Then it must be something else. It’ll be all over soon. I predict she’ll be back by early afternoon,” Bea Thatchley said, backing away. Before she did, though, I told her I’d like to meet with her in private, that I had questions she might help me with.
“Gossip about the family? Then you’ve come to the right place.” She dug in her purse and gave me a card with her name, her phone number, and an address in Cobble Hill. “Call me before you come. Late afternoon is the best time to catch me at home.”
Dorset
Dorset’s Monologue
Anyway, April. Why she hangs out with me is a mystery, way up there with phantoms and other imponderables, a word Dad taught me before he left for wherever, saying they—imponderables—were all around and I’d catch on someday if I learned to look. Turns out, he was right. April has a brother and two sisters, born one after the other. They’re triplets. Like the magi, Dad once said and I haven’t figured out what he was talking about. So the magi—his word for them—they’re much older than April, although they don’t act like it. You’re lucky you don’t have them, she goes, because they’re like a conspiracy, and besides, they’re always on, the star of the show.
Another thing you should know about me, my mind goes blank at odd times, like, I can’t remember answering any of the questions on that math test, much less going home on the day they told me about Dad or eating or sleeping for, like, the next couple of weeks. I do remember Mom ripping the unlit candles out of my cake and marching into the kitchen with the wobbly mess in her hands, tears pouring out of her eyes, getting frosting all over her before she slammed the slimy mess into the sink and her screaming something about why, why, why. I was scared then, really scared. She can be really scary, Mom. And I remember walking behind the casket, holding her hand, and my little cousin asking me when they were going to open up the box. So when Johnny, Mr. Flapper Mouth, was going on yesterday about how his parents fight all the time and how gross it is and how he wished he didn’t have parents, I was thinking, are you kidding me? Nothing could be worse than parents dying or disappearing. Sometimes I wish it had been me. You know, the one who died. For one, I’d get the remaining slot in the family mausoleum and wouldn’t have to go into the ovens or whatever in order to fit into those small jobs in the columbarium. April says I’m gross when I talk like that. And for another, if I was dead, I could haunt anyone who needed it.
It was April’s idea, but we started this sort of soup kitchen for the desolates and discards. That’s what Granny C. calls them, saying they are all over the world and we must help them. She thinks the soup kitchen is wonderful and slips me money to give to April’s mom. Mom said April, who probably will grow up to be an activist, got the idea for a soup kitchen from her parents, who are deep into causes, but April told me no, it came to her one night in a dream.
So the next day she marches into Monsignor Finnigin’s office at Holy Angels and St. Pat’s, me trailing behind, and goes, “Why don’t we have a soup kitchen like all the other churches?” No hello or smile or anything. And she calls him Fahey right to his face. His first name—she read it on the church bulletin. She goes, “Fahey, aren’t you ashamed, isn’t that what Jesus would want you to do,” blah, blah, blah, and he stubs out his cigar and gets all red in the face. He explained to us about cost and how hard it would be to get volunteers and stuck in a sentence or two about how social justice was not all it was cracked up to be, that parishioners with deep pockets just needed to come to Mass each week and the Lord would take care of the rest. April stood in front of his desk with her arms crossed while I stared at the slimy cigar stub in his overflowing ashtray, my mouth all dry and wishing I had her guts.
Later in my room I practiced, but the Fahey part got stuck in my throat and wouldn’t come out. So I talked to Dad about it, but he didn’t answer; I’m not sure he was listening. He’s like that, only coming to me when he feels like it. Who knows where he flits off to, now that he’s dead? Mom said sometimes she feels him stroking her hand, like he was a soft breeze or something, but I don’t like it when she talks about him like that.
Anyway, the monsignor in his office: April was pulling my sleeve to say something and all I could do, because I’m such a scaredy cat, was watch Monsignor Finnigin jerk his fat stomach up from the chair and pace back and forth, telling us we were too young to understand. Monsignor Finnigin is an anachronism, April’s mother says, and we have to put up with him because of the shortage. We have to pray for his enlightenment, my granny says, like, it took him years to face the people during Mass and Holy Angels still has the altar railing, which is what they call that fence in the front of the church. But April didn’t give up. Her parents taught her never to take no for an answer, that’s what she said. So we stomped into his office again, she sort of dragging me behind her. Would you believe we had to go there two more times before he told us we could put our case before the parish council and they might listen because of their liberal bent. Amazed we’d gotten that far, the president told us, and said we could use the basement, but Monsignor Finnigin said we’d have to organize the whole thing. “And the first time there’s trouble, just a smattering, just a glint, if someone gets out of line, that will be the end.” Some people create the trouble they expect. That’s what my granny says.
So the soup kitchen. April and her parents with me trailing behind worked to set it up and talked after Mass and got volunteers and it’s been running now for almost six months. At first I had to plead with Mom, but April’s parents helped me out in that department and finally Mom agreed it would be good for me, as long as it didn’t interfere with my schoolwork or my drawing. Or with my baseball. She added that last one just to see if I was listening. But Mom didn’t have to worry about that one. Matter of fact, she sometimes got upset with me, always with a pencil in one hand and a mitt in the other. It’s not a pencil, I’d explain; it’s sharpened charcoal. And she’d change the subject by tweaking the mitt and telling me she’d never heard of a girl who liked playing ball as much as me. As if it was a bad thing.
But back to the soup kitchen. That’s where I met Jerry. He’s an artist, just like me. Always drawing, his head filled with shapes and color and light. Jerry didn’t tell me that. Jerry wouldn’t have. Jerry doesn’t talk too much. He nods a lot, though, and rocks back and forth. Dad would like him, I think. He would like Jerry’s work. That’s what it’s called. Not pictures. Work. I think there’s something wrong with Jerry. In the head, that is. Mom said there’s nothing wrong with him. Wrong is not the correct word. Jerry is challenged. Then she adds, we all are, only he can’t hide his. When I asked how I was challenged, she just smiled and said I was the exception, and when I objected, saying Dad’s death was a challenge, she shook her head and got into one of her silent moods.
At Lucy’s
On the way to Lucy’s, I deposited Cassandra Thatchley’s retainer, holding my breath in front of the teller until she gave me a receipt showing my bulked-out balance. That ought to make Denny smile, at least for a day or two. Re
cently money had been a little tight. To tell you the truth, it was all my fault. Business at the Fina Fitzgibbons Detective Agency had been slow, mostly because I only accepted interesting cases, but since expenses had skyrocketed, maybe I’d have to accept the ones I hated to pursue, like tailing the wife of a suspicious husband or serving papers. But it hadn’t come to that yet. I’d been a private investigator for several years and had never been stiffed. Well, maybe just the once, but that was a story for another day.
Lucy’s operates out of the ground floor of the brownstone where I grew up on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights. Not only does it exist, but it prospers, paying most of my bills, and when I think of the tough times Mom, Gran, and I had, my stomach churns. These days there’s enough space to give my detective agency three or four desks. Minnie, the office manager, runs the place, and today when I opened the door and waved hello to her, I saw she was wearing her trusty orange print dress and half-glasses and munching on potato chips from her lunch bag while talking to a client on the phone.
“It’s about time,” Cookie said. She drew out a mirror from her purse and checked her teeth. Perfect. Ran a hand through her long blond hair. Again, perfect. Stowed her mirror and folded her hands. Although Cookie had just had her second child, she’d lost all her weight and then some, one of those women born to be pregnant, her babies on time and dropping like ripe fruit off trees, her body shrinking back into its perfect shape. She looked me up and down. “You’ve grown since the last time I saw you.”
I said nothing and watched her face soften while I felt my temples pulse.
Biting her lip, she apologized, got up, and gave me a hug. “I just hate to see you let yourself go.”
“You’re my best friend. If we can’t be honest with each other …” But who was I trying to kid? Cookie’s words, although true, took a bite out of my pride.
“It’s been so long since we had work I thought you were going to close shop.”
I knew Cookie and her husband, Clancy, depended on the income Cookie earned working for me. They were saving for their own home close to where we lived in Vinegar Hill and I knew they felt the pinch just as we did these last couple of months. As a matter of fact, Clancy, an NYPD patrolman who worked with Denny, was eager to move out of Brooklyn. I imagined the two men colluding behind our backs, maybe even joining the police force someplace up north like Poughkeepsie, not that it wasn’t a lovely town. Not that I didn’t enjoy the scenery and fresh air every time we visited. Just that I was born and bred in Brooklyn. Everything I knew and loved was here, and I couldn’t imagine existing anywhere else. I knew Cookie felt the same.
She brushed a lock of hair from her face. “So tell us about the missing girl.”
Lorraine, Denny’s mom, my mother-in-law, and the soul of the business, smiled. She was wearing a Lorraine special, black slacks and a turquoise linen blouse, the one with the spot in the front she tried to hide with the silver pin Frank had given her for Thanksgiving. She was one sharp older gal and the Fina Fitzgibbons Detective Agency had prospered ever since she’d agreed to help with legal research. That was several years ago, when Denny and I were only an item; and in a time of great crunch, Lorraine had gotten her private investigator’s license. After her husband had died quite unexpectedly, she graduated to full-time investigator and, a year after his death, got herself one sexy boyfriend. Not that she didn’t miss Denny’s father, Robert, a man I was just beginning to understand before a massive heart attack took him.
Beginning with finding Cassandra Thatchley in the park that morning, I gave them the facts as I knew them, including names and addresses, watching as Minnie, the self-appointed notetaker, wrote everything down, stopping me from time to time when I went too fast for her.
“Did you say Cassandra Thatchley?” Lorraine asked. “Tall? Thin? Curly dark hair? A distinctive nose? I think I met her once. She gave a lecture at the library a few years ago.”
“And you remember her name?” I asked. My mother-in-law is amazing.
“She has a distinctive speaking style. Enthralling, actually. But, sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted.”
I told them about the trip to the hospital and the woman’s memory issues, then segued into a description of the townhouse across from the Promenade where she lived. I told them about Mrs. Hampton and the rest of the Thatchley household before running down the list of what I knew or thought I did—that Dorset, a bright ten-year-old interested in art, had been missing since at least seven that morning; that she was not with her best friend; that there was an undercurrent of sibling rivalry in an upper-class family headed by a widow who’d lost two husbands. I finished by zeroing in on our task—finding Dorset, her missing ten-year-old daughter.
“This Cassandra Thatchley woman was given drugs and she’s out of emergency already?”
“They move them out as soon as possible,” Minnie said.
I shook my head. “Cassandra Thatchley does what she wants when she wants.” I told them about her abrupt departure from the hospital and for the university minutes after we’d arrived at her home.
“She was scheduled to give a lecture and with her daughter missing, she’d forgotten all about it, that’s understandable behavior,” Lorraine said.
Minnie shot me a look. “Sounds like another one of your crazy clients.”
“So if she’s crazy, how do you know her daughter’s really missing?” Cookie asked. She was back on that again.
“How can we know anything for sure?” I countered. Lorraine gave me one of her that-wasn’t-helpful looks.
“One thing we know for sure: we’re hungry, and I for one can’t think on an empty stomach,” Cookie said. That stopped us for a few seconds. “We could order lunch while we’re brainstorming.” She began looking through the stack of menus I kept on the table.
Minnie reminded us that there were snacks in the pantry, and since we were on a budget, we should just order sandwiches. We decided on chicken salad served on onion rolls, chips, and brownies from the deli down the block. While we were waiting for the food to be delivered, Minnie made a pot of coffee and Cookie helped herself to a soft drink from the refrigerator.
“What do you know about Dorset other than she’s a bright ten-year-old who likes to draw?”
I messaged them the recent photos I had of Dorset and they all took a moment to study them.
I thought I saw tears in Lorraine’s eyes as she looked at Dorset’s image. “Such a precocious and sweet child. Seems to me we can’t sit around wondering if this is a legitimate case or not,” she said. “We have to act as though we know for certain the girl’s missing. If she turns up this afternoon or tomorrow morning because she’d been staying with a friend, with or without her mother’s knowledge, all to the good; we haven’t wasted time—we have the retainer. Besides, it’s logical—whoever drugged Cassandra Thatchley took her child, or else why would they drug her if not to do something illegal?”
“Unless she’d taken something to relax, forgotten that she’d done so, forgotten that her daughter had gone to a friend’s for the day.” Cookie stopped talking when she saw the rest of us shaking our heads.
Lorraine had just echoed my belief, and I was glad she had. I respected Lorraine. No, more than that: I’d come to rely on her judgment. Her mindfulness, another one of my clients would have called it, and I thought of another case from a few years ago involving a young teen, Kat Oxley, an orphan who’d had her world heaped with loss, losing her parents, whom she was too young to remember and then withstanding the loss of her grandmother, the only mother she’d known. I wondered how she was faring.
“So who are the suspects?” Cookie asked.
Minnie, who’d returned with napkins and a bowl heaping with chips we always keep in the pantry, dragged a whiteboard out of the corner and began hunting for markers while I got into an in-depth account of Cassandra Thatchley’s complicated household, giving them names and addresses of her mothers-in-law, her husbands’ approximate dates of deaths, and o
nly the briefest of backgrounds on children. After all, I hadn’t met them yet, I told them, something one of us needed to do, and soon. In order to make things simple, I wrote Cassandra Thatchley’s name in block letters high up on the board and underneath it, two columns with the names of both husbands at the top of each column. Underneath Ben Thatchley’s name, I wrote the names of his children, Brook and Brunswick; and underneath them, the names of the housekeeper, Mrs. Hampton, and her friend Bea, the mother of the late Mr. Thatchley, who had perished in 9/11, and therefore, Brook and Brunswick’s paternal grandmother. In the other column, I wrote the name of Cassandra Thatchley’s second husband, Ronnie Clauson, also deceased, with an arrow pointing to Dorset, his daughter; and underneath his name, the name of his mother, Dorset’s grandmother Greta Clauson.
“No mention of grandfathers?” Cookie asked.
I shook my head.
“Both husbands are deceased?” Minnie asked, her eyes squinting at the board.
“Why are we spending so much time with the rest of the family?”
“Statistics show the perp is usually someone in the family or closely connected with a family member,” Cookie said.
Before I could reply, two things happened at once: the food arrived and I got a call from Tig Able telling me he’d gotten the most recent photo of Dorset I’d sent him. He went on to say that earlier, NYPD had issued an all-points-bulletin of a missing girl, one Dorset Clauson, taken from or near her home in Brooklyn Heights. He asked how long she’d been missing.
“At least six hours,” I said and gulped, realizing I’d gotten no leads, not even a hint of what had happened to Dorset. A thousand pictures flooded my mind, none of them pleasant. We were losing precious time.
Dorset in the Dark Page 6
