Dorset in the Dark

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “I wonder where the brother is,” I said and felt myself retreating into a deep think. Or maybe it was just the weight of all I had yet to discover, a murder now piled on top of Dorset’s disappearance. I reminded myself that this crime was none of my business. And yet, wasn’t it?

  Cookie and Clancy walked over to my side and Cookie, speaking softly, said she’d found something interesting in the other room.

  “I hate to break up your party.” Jane’s arms were crossed, like when she meant business. She glared at me, as if I were the cause of everything bad in the world. “The three of you—out!”

  Cookie shook her head. “Not yet. There’s something I need to show you. It’s in the back room. A link, perhaps, to the missing girl.”

  Clancy wrapped his arm around Cookie’s waist. “She’s right. I think it could be important.”

  Jane stood there, arms crossed. I could see different emotions chasing each other across her face—fear, disgust, exhaustion. For a second, I thought she was going to relent. Instead, she called her uniform guy over.

  “These three are leaving. Show them the way out.”

  “But—”

  “Go home to your kids. It’s time to feed them.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Out!”

  Dorset

  Dorset’s Monologue

  This morning we ran up the stairs and Jerry showed me his studio, a room overlooking an empty lot where trees were beginning to leaf. He showed me the buds and how big they were getting, some bursting with tiny green. He liked the spring, he said, and the leaves. He was drying some on his worktable. Tiny things, they were shriveling underneath a piece of paper. Drying out, he said, and I felt sorry for them. There were drawings all over the room, on small tables, on the floor, shreds and pieces of glass, a stack of newspapers, tubes of paint, screws and rusting bits of metal. The floor was covered with items for his collages and the room smelled of paint and varnish and the way paper smells when it gets wet. I could have spent hours in Jerry’s room.

  In one corner was a chair, but it was filled with paper and glue, so I couldn’t sit down. My heart was pounding, probably from the climb up the stairs, but maybe it was from Kenny. I could feel him in the doorway, but I tried not to think of him. I didn’t know where to look first, there was so much color, so many shapes. Jerry showed me how he arranged items, grabbing some from the floor and from the workbench, arranging, rearranging, almost like there was an invisible puzzle in his mind and he needed to show it to me. He hauled out a big collage, one he said took him a couple of months to create, and he walked it over to the window. We were standing there when I heard Kenny’s footsteps getting closer. I could hear him breathing. It creeped me out. He swore as he stumbled over an empty can. Then he was staring at me with that rigid look, his face beginning to twist. I knew then. I felt a brush of something. Looking back on it, here in the dark, that brush must have been Dad’s warning. “Throw fast in life, kid,” I heard him say for the bazillionth time.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, but Kenny grabbed my arm and said something about not seeing all of Jerry’s work and that I still had time. Not even fifteen minutes had passed and he hadn’t seen my drawings yet.

  I pulled myself away, telling him again that I needed to go. I heard my voice as if from far away, thinking Kenny’s trying to make money off Jerry because he got him a show and he was going on about it, how one of these days if I kept up with my pictures—his words—I would have a show, too. Kenny’s not interested in art, not at all, I could tell by the way he looked at my notebook when Jerry held it out to him. Nice, nice, he kept saying while he turned the pages and looked out the window. “Almost time,” he said under his breath. “Where’s the car?” Then he held my notebook out and ran his grubby fingers over the cover. “Real nice,” he said, and asked where I’d gotten it, the book, he meant, but I know he didn’t hear my answer, and he never ever looked at my drawings. He kept looking at his watch. “It’s time.” At that moment I should have known. I should have bolted for the door. “I’ll be late,” I said and held my hand out for my notebook, but Kenny lifted it in the air away from me. “Hold on.”

  “No, I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’ve got the dentist this morning.”

  And that’s all I remember until now. I might be here or there or nowhere. An imponderable if I wanted to think about it, which I don’t. In the dark I am cold and my arms ache. I reach into my pocket and find another notebook and pencil. I put it to my nose and smell clean paper. I squeeze the notebook and run my fingers around it, feeling the edges. Open it. I can barely see the white of the pages. Not one drawing. I’ve got plenty of them to fill. I’d forgotten all about putting it in my pocket. Still got my Yankees cap. I pull on the visor. Someone is watching over me. Dad. I try to see his face. It’s there, every time I shut my eyes.

  Pizza

  I told Denny about Jane’s nasty behavior even before I shut the front door. At first amused, he soon stood up for the detective and proper procedure during a crime scene investigation. Taking off my coat, I breathed in the sweet smells of home—the lingering scent of baby food and diaper—and explained how she’d humiliated us by not listening to what Cookie had found.

  “Basically, she kicked us out. I think she wanted to be the one to discover whatever Cookie told her was important.”

  “Jane wouldn’t do that.”

  “Trust me.”

  The buzzer sounded and Denny went to answer it. As I walked down the hall, fanning my face, I could hear distant cooing coming from one of the intercoms. Robbie must have been awake in his crib and I started running up the stairs when Denny called out to me, telling me he’d been fussy the whole evening and they’d just gotten him to bed. His leave-him-alone was unsaid but clear. It figured, I was the only one who was able to calm him down—I should have been at home. Then I thought of Dorset shivering in some cold room, alone, hungry, and afraid, not knowing what had or would happen to her. Of two minds, I walked into the living room, where Lorraine, deep into her iPad, looked up.

  One glance at me and she smiled. “You’re a perfect mother and a brilliant investigator.” As usual, she said what I needed to hear.

  Before I could reply, Denny, Cookie, and Clancy entered the room.

  “The nerve, kicking a police officer out,” Clancy said, and I could see Denny looking from me to Cookie to Clancy, his forehead beginning to knit, not so ready anymore to defend his precious detective.

  I told Lorraine and Denny about Jane’s and my visit to Cassandra Thatchley’s home, questioning Brunswick, and arriving at the crime scene. Cookie told them about the dead man she and Clancy had found above Ellston Drugs. Then I repeated what the MLI had said about the probable cause of Jerry Koznicki’s death. “He was murdered.”

  “You don’t know that,” Denny said.

  I felt my temples pound. “You sound just like Jane.” I watched Denny’s face redden. He turned to me, his body rigid, fists at his side for a second; then catching himself, he motioned for all of us to take seats. He pulled me down next to him on the couch and put his arm around me, apologizing for his behavior, for not listening to what I’d just said and, more important, for not paying attention to what I was feeling.

  He sounded like shrink-in-a-can to me and I opened my mouth to say so when for whatever reason—maybe a sidelong look from Lorraine—I hesitated. Denny had been seeing a clinical psychologist, or whatever she called herself, for issues related to his father’s death, and since then, no thanks to me, we’d fought less and talked more. I breathed in. If I were honest, it was Denny who of late had doused all our flare-ups.

  “I’m starved. Got anything to eat?” Cookie asked. “Chips will do. Candy would be better, although I’ve got half a pound to lose by tomorrow night.” Her eyes slid in my direction.

  “I know, I know, I could lose a few,” I said, feeling my face burn. Lorraine was busy putting on her invisible act—sitting in the overstuffed chair in the c
orner and pinching her iPad. I’d begin a diet as soon as we found Dorset.

  “You’re letting yourself go,” Cookie said.

  “I think better after I’ve eaten.” To prove it, I dug into the cashews we kept on an end table.

  Cookie kept her eyes on the bowl of nuts. “On second thought, forget the candy and chips. I’ll get a head start by eating lightly tonight and have the weight off by tomorrow morning.” She reached into her purse; I thought it was a reflex action—she checked her lipstick on the hour—but instead she brought out a packet covered in tissue and held together with two rubber bands. She handed it over. “As long as you’re thinking so hard, wipe the high-content sodium off your hands and get a load of these.”

  I swallowed and took the packet from her, slipping the rubber bands onto my wrists and taking off the tissue. There were three pieces of artist’s paper. As I examined them, I realized they were likenesses of the dead man she’d drawn in pencil, one of him lying on the floor, another of his face, and a full-length image of him sitting in a chair, Cookie’s seated figure very much alive.

  “I thought I’d show them around the neighborhood tomorrow instead of the photos of him I’d taken with my phone. Too gross. We’ve got to find out more about him. Either Stanley Ellston is playing dumb or …”

  “Or what?”

  “Or he’s hiding something,” she said. She passed the drawings to Lorraine, who put down her iPad, studied them for a moment, and praised Cookie’s talent.

  “A gift, and you’re not using it.”

  Clancy looked up from whatever game he was playing on his phone. “That’ll change when we move to—”

  “Don’t say it.” Cookie crossed her arms and glared at her husband. One of her shoes tapped the floor. I knew my Cookie, and the toe tapping meant trouble.

  “You’re all hungry and exhausted,” Lorraine said. “We’ve got leftover pizza.” She disappeared into the kitchen and I heard the refrigerator door open.

  “A beer would go down real nice,” Clancy said and got up to help her.

  I glanced at Denny as if to say he should be the one helping his mother, but he looked exhausted, and besides, we hadn’t seen each other all day except in passing. The warmth of him next to me felt so good. I put my head on his shoulder and might have dozed but only for a minute or two.

  Before I knew it, Clancy and Lorraine called us to the table. In the middle was half of a large pizza, looking like a round piece of leather, charred from a major reheat in the microwave. Except for it and the salad Lorraine had tossed up from half a head of browning lettuce and a wrinkled tomato, the spread looked like an advertisement for leftovers with junk food—a bowl of chips, another of stale popcorn, and a tray with cookies and brownies. Denny poured coffee into two mugs; Lorraine filled her glass with water, and Cookie and Clancy shared the last beer. We were seated, about to dig in, even the intercom blissfully quiet for a change, when the front doorbell rang.

  “Probably Willoughby, who can smell food all the way from the Eight-Four,” Clancy said.

  Turned out he was correct, except that Willoughby hadn’t smelled our food. The two detectives walked in, holding pizza boxes and ice-cold six-packs. Jane’s way of apologizing for not letting me investigate the crime scene? I thought not: she needed something, although I must admit, I was glad to see them.

  “The real food’s here,” Denny said, rubbing his hands together before taking their coats. “How did you get pizza so fast?”

  “Willoughby has an understanding at the corner pizzeria,” Jane said. “I don’t know what it is he holds over their heads, but he walks in the door and two minutes later walks out with two gigantics loaded with everything, while some clueless customer wonders what’s taking so long.”

  Cookie and I cleared the leftovers from the center of the table and stashed them on the sideboard while Clancy arranged the pizzas in their place. I watched the steam rise from them, admiring their symmetry a second before grabbing a slice dripping with cheese and sauce, and loaded with sausage. Denny, who had returned from the coat closet, squeezed in two additional chairs and we sat, not saying anything for a few minutes while we dug in.

  “So you came because?” I asked, my mouth full. I washed the pizza down with beer, watching excess foam bubble up and over the bottle top when I set the bottle back on the table. I’d start my diet tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Certainly as soon as we found Dorset. I hoped they were giving her food and keeping her warm.

  “I realized I hadn’t told Denny about tomorrow’s plan,” Jane said.

  Denny was still, especially at the mention of the time and place—tomorrow at noon near the Brooklyn Bridge. He stared at Clancy, who was keeping his head down. “You knew about this and said nothing?” He turned to Jane. “Tomorrow’s our day off and we have an appointment in Poughkeepsie at eleven.”

  “Change it,” Jane said. “This is important. A child’s life is at stake and we will be that close to catching the kidnappers.” She inched two of her fingers apart and held them aloft. “We need you both. My plan is foolproof. You and Clancy will be stationed close to the corner, changing a tire.”

  There were two or three beats of silence. Clancy examined his piece of pie.

  “I suppose you’ve interviewed everyone in Dorset’s family?” Jane asked.

  I told her about meeting Mrs. Hampton, who gave me a tour of the house, including Dorset’s room. I summarized our interviews with Brook Thatchley and her grandmother Bea, saving the best for last, my dustup with April Briden’s mother and my encounters with Zizi Carmalucci. “I met her at, of all places, Holy Angels & St. Pat’s rectory, where she pranced in and began buttering up the monsignor.”

  “Not Finnigin?” Jane asked.

  I nodded, wondering how she knew the prelate. “He showed me pictures of himself serving clients at his soup kitchen.”

  “Not his idea, according to Zizi Carmalucci,” Jane said. “She’s doing a story on the soup kitchen, saving it for thin news days.”

  So Jane was friendly with the reporter.

  “According to Zizi, there are unsavory characters who frequent the kitchen. We’ve got to find out more about it. I suggest you have some of your people pay a visit.”

  Some of my people? I must have looked a question because Jane suggested my father would blend in. “He could have himself some soup while he cased the joint.”

  I did a mental eye roll, grabbed myself another slice, and swallowed down the bubble caught in my throat. “One second,” I said, and texted him a how-are-you message, hoping he’d had a miraculous recovery and would buzz me a reply. Denny and Lorraine shot each other looks while I waited. Nothing.

  “Anything to add, Lorraine?” I asked.

  She told us about her meeting with Greta Clauson. “I thought she was a lovely woman. She is reserved, not very trusting, but we just showed up on her stoop and she was gracious enough. Concerned for her granddaughter. Frank, however, who accompanied me, did not trust her.”

  “So she could have taken the granddaughter?”

  Lorraine told us about her visit to Greta Clauson’s warehouse.

  Jane flapped a hand. “She’s an old woman. She wouldn’t take her granddaughter. Besides, I have more information.”

  “You don’t want to hear about my meeting with your boss?” Lorraine asked.

  The detective perked up. “About Ronnie Clauson’s sudden death? He keeps harping on it, hanging onto the event as if it had anything to do with anything. I understand Ronnie was his best friend, but the man’s heart stopped suddenly. End of story. The chief should bury him and get on with his life.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Lorraine said. “I’ve just finished reading the police report and found something interesting—”

  Jane’s hand hit the table. “A young girl is missing. Let’s focus on finding her and fast.” She looked at her watch. “Dorset hasn’t been seen for close to eighteen hours. We have a ransom demand and the corpse of a man somehow connected
, maybe remotely, but still connected to the ten-year-old.” She dug inside her bag and brought out what looked like a piece of paper. I could tell by the slouch of her and the fact that she wasn’t looking at Cookie that she had some apologizing to do.

  Cookie stopped chewing, her eyes focusing on the object in the detective’s hand. “That’s from the dead man’s back room! It’s what I wanted you to see.”

  “You should have told me about the collage you found in the deli and the dead man’s back room filled with them the moment I walked into the scene. It links him and his death with the abduction of Dorset Clauson.”

  Jane Templeton was so good at twisting events she should have been a politician.

  I could feel my temples throbbing. “She tried to tell you about the collages on the Promenade earlier this evening, if you remember, but you were so anxious to get us out of there, you didn’t have time to listen to her.”

  Jane looked clueless. “She should have mentioned finding the collage in the dead man’s apartment the minute we walked in the door.”

  Cookie closed her eyes. “There was a corpse on the floor. I don’t run across one every day. All I could think of was calling the police and praying for his soul. Especially since Clancy was by my side, telling me not to touch anything.”

  Praying for his soul? She meant drawing his likeness.

  Jane’s eyes swiveled my way. “You would have been all over the place, searching from top to bottom. As it is, they’ll still find your DNA in every room in the apartment.”

  “Fat chance. I was there for five minutes and by your side most of the time.”

  “The Ellstons are not exactly stellar landlords.” I described the state of the apartment to Lorraine after Cookie filled her in on the deli where she’d found the first collage.

  “Plenty more where that came from,” Jane said, waving the collage she’d discovered. “There’s a room full of them in the dead man’s apartment. Too messy to search with the super breathing down my neck.”