She shook her head. “The poor man’s version in Brooklyn, some political function or other. The restaurant was over on Water Street. Picture it, here comes poor Robbie and me. Lord, when I saw all the mink and diamonds and limousines, I wanted to slink back home, but the view of Manhattan was breathtaking. I won’t forget it.”
Lorraine got that soft look on her face with the memory of it, and I could see where Denny had gotten his soul.
She continued with her Liam family saga. “Denny was a toddler then, but the Liam clan were there, all of them sitting at the front table with the cardinal. Must have given plenty to the church, what with the seaport in the distance, their grandchildren running all over the hall or petting in the corner. And in particular, there were Madeleine’s two children, Mitch and Caroline.”
“Let me get this straight. Mitch was Brandy’s father?”
She nodded. “Growing up, he and Caroline were brats, the both of them. Full of themselves, but Mitch had a smile I won’t soon forget. And their mother, Madeleine, was almost old enough to be my mother, but still a stunning woman. We worked on a committee together that I chaired one year, if you can believe it, little old me. That was when she helped all the parishes in Brooklyn with their fundraisers. Her sport, I suppose.” Lorraine shook her head. “Madeleine was not like her husband. I warmed to her, even though I was jealous of her gowns and her finish. How is she, by the way?”
“Half in the bag, I understand.”
“Pity. Happens more and more, I hear tell. When I knew her, she had that clear skin and bold Irish wit, you know, and when she entered a room, everything stopped.”
“And Brandy loves her.”
“I’ll bet she does. The old lady would make sure of that, and to the detriment of the love between mother and daughter. Some people can be lovely and so well-turned out as far as the public eye is concerned, but they take with every breath. Mitch was unaware of that, what to call it, that grasp of his mother. He doted on her. Hear tell he paid for the upkeep of her house, servants, all the medical help she must need. Trisha must foot the bill now, unless there’s still some of the old money left.”
Lorraine stopped talking and stared into Joralemon Street for a time before speaking again. “But as I say, some people have a way about them, born with a certain canniness. Take all those eighteenth-century French mistresses, that’s who Madeleine reminds me of, but with a lilt to her voice. Those women had the head and heart of the king, don’t you know, and so did Madeleine and she never got over it. Even mothers-in-law know how to steal, don’t they? Well, my dear, I’m babbling on now. I know you’ll find the child, but if I can help in any way, please call me. Please do. I often think of the day we spent in New Jersey. I’ll never forget it.”
I felt my heart pounding and wondered why the sky was turning yellow until I took a deep breath. “I could use your help big time. Right now we’ve got no leads, no real ones, and Brandy’s been missing almost twenty-four hours.”
“Who’d want to take her?” she asked.
“That’s just it. If she wasn’t abducted by human traffickers, then it was someone who held a grudge, someone connected to one of her parents.”
“Hurt in some way by their legal practice?” Lorraine asked. “I know Mitch defended some pretty seedy characters.”
“Yes, he’d just recused himself from defending a well-known local thug when he died suddenly. His death was never investigated other than by a cursory autopsy. And Trisha is a named partner in a law firm.”
Lorraine didn’t miss a beat. “We need to go through their case files. I’d be perfect for the job because of my background. I miss my work so much. Of course, Robbie insists on calling me a legal secretary, but what does he know.”
Lorraine was a hidden treasure. Before she married Robert McDuffy, she was a paralegal at Smith, Jarvis & O’Leary. “As luck would have it, I have a desk loaded with briefs and Trisha Liam’s password to her files.” I thought fast. “You could take a look at them now. They’re right around the corner. And I could use your help when I interview Madeleine Liam later this morning, but I’d hate to tie up your whole day.”
Lorraine’s face was glowing. “You could help me with something. Yesterday I bought myself one of those phones, the kind that do everything. Robbie doesn’t know about it yet, but I’ve saved a little on the side. Tell me, how do you work these blasted things? Here, I’ve got the paperwork somewhere. Stupid of me, the directions must be in there, don’t you think?”
Lorraine handed me an iPhone still wrapped in cellophane while she rooted in her purse looking for the Getting Started book. While we walked to Lucy’s, I activated it. Then I added her home phone, Denny’s cell, and my number into her Favorites. I showed her a few tricks and turned the sound to vibrate.
“Leave it turned on all the time. When it vibrates, press the screen, put it to your ear, and talk. Try calling me.”
I answered my cell when it vibrated. “And Lorraine? This means you’re on the payroll.”
We spent the next few minutes arguing, but in the end she agreed to be reimbursed.
After I got her settled at one of the desks and introduced her to Minnie, I left, watching through Lucy’s window as Minnie showed Lorraine the coffee maker. They were both laughing about something. For the first time since talking to Trisha Liam last night, things were looking up. We’d find Brandy and in one piece. God, I hoped we would.
I was now responsible for the welfare of a growing cleaning crew and two office employees, Minnie and Lorraine. Lucy’s Cleaning Service was pulling in a tidy sum, and my detective agency was off to a promising start. Maybe, just maybe, Brandy had a chance. I imagined Mom in her last frenetic days and wished she could see me now. As I hurried down the street, I felt a puff of wind graze my face.
Chapter 19
Brandy. In Chains
A door opens. Rough hands untie my feet.
“Bathroom’s in here.”
The man, the nice one, pulls me up by my shoulders, and his fingers dig into my arms. “You’re hurting me, you buzzard.”
“Sorry. Stand still until you get your balance.”
I wait in the dark for my insides to stop spinning.
“Ready?”
I nod.
“Now go this way.”
He pushes me to the wall.
“Feel the wall with your shoulder.”
I lean on the wall to stop my head from splitting open. I step and slide, bend over. I’m going to pee before I get there, I know I am.
“Toilet’s through this door, this way. Wait until I open it. I want you to remember how well we treat you. I’m not getting back at you. I like you. This is none of your doing.”
Whatever. The door slams shut, and I feel the barf bowl with my legs. It’s cold and it smells, not as bad as me, though. The smell is like the boy’s john, old pee. Got to get this rope off my wrists. Got to, or I’ll have another accident. I can hardly pull my pants down. Swell. My head’s going to crack open before then. Where am I? I’ve got a test at ten thirty, and I can’t see anything.
“I can’t see,” I yell out to him. “Please, I won’t leave you, but I’ll get sick if I can’t see. I’ll have another accident, I know I will.”
“Sit down on the seat.”
“Untie my hands, I’ll pay you. I’ve got twenty dollars in my pocket.”
“I don’t want your money.”
The man opens the door and fumbles at my wrists.
“Your hands are free for now. But don’t take the tape off your eyes. I’ll know if you do, and you won’t like what I’ll do to you.”
The door shuts again.
Hands and arms free. Stiff. The man’s pretty dumb—he fell for it. Don’t forget to wash and flush, I can hear Mom telling me.
I bump my head a couple of times, but I make it out of there. I hold my hands out, stretch my fingers, and stumble to the bed.
“Dream on if you think she’s going to pay you to get me back,” I yel
l into the dark. “Moths fly out of her wallet.” That’s one of Dad’s lines. I can see him grinning.
“I’ll have to tape your mouth, too, if you don’t stop talking.”
In the dark, the man’s voice sounds sad.
“Slap her, that’s what she needs. I’ll go in there and—”
Another voice. The mean one’s outside my room. The door rattles, like he’s coming for me.
“Put that knife away,” I hear the nice one say. “Give it to me.”
“No. It’s mine.”
“Get rid of it.”
Muffled talking, the way grown-ups do when they don’t want you to hear. I feel my heart doing flips. They’re fighting right outside my door. There’s a thud—is it me or outside of me? More angry growls. I hear them going down the stairs. Walls shake with their steps.
Now it’s quiet. Too quiet. And the voices disappeared down the hole with the rabbit. That’s what Dad would say after Mom finished with whatever lecture she was giving me. He’d look at me with that face of his, the one Mom called his motley grin. That was when she was cool, too. Then Dad died, and Pah-tricia disappeared down the hole with the rabbit. And that’s the end of the story so go to sleep. Mrs. Coltran thought the rabbit hole thing was from Alice in Wonderland, but I never could find it in the book. It must have been Dad’s special concoction. He did special concoctions all the time, like his fee-fi-fo-fum line he sometimes said during the news.
My stomach’s empty. I wonder if they’re going to feed me. Got to give them names. They won’t seem so bad, that’s what Dad said. He helped me name my other monsters, the nightmare ones. Goblin, Prancer, Sheepskin. Hey, what do you expect, I was five. But none of those names fit these guys.
It’s better if I talk out loud, but I’ll whisper so the nasty one doesn’t hear, the stupid buzzard. I can pretend the dark is a person. Dad. Just talking to you is better than nothing. That way, I won’t go bonkers, like that one custodian at school, or Heather’s grandmother who still knows how to cook but that’s about it, or come to think of it, Granny Liam, only I pretend to Mom she’s not so bad. You’ll get out of here if you play it cool, I can hear Dad telling me. Grown-ups got me in here, dumped me into this place, and so far, they don’t seem very bright, nothing I can’t handle.
Dad had this way about him. He’d be reading me a story and he’d start making it up as he went along. At first I thought it was the story, what did I know, but soon I got wise to him. If you don’t make it up as you go along, how can you defend criminals, he asked me once. I wonder if he’d defend whoever’s doing this to me.
I can’t help myself. I have to talk. “Where am I?” Nothing. I knew it, they won’t answer; grown-ups never do when it counts.
Then I feel someone outside my room. I’m getting good at this being blind thing. The door handle turns. I hear footsteps getting closer. I lie still, so still, like in the morning when I don’t want to get up and I try to fool Mom into thinking I might be dead or something, and even when she shakes me, I don’t respond. But I smell his breath close to my face. I will my lids not to stutter. Sweet baby Jesus, something’s pressing against my neck.
“Watch it, or I’ll squeeze you a little too hard.”
Chapter 20
Fina. Morning Two, In Teresa’s
The breakfast rush was over so there were only a few customers in Teresa’s, but I spotted Cookie sipping coffee and juice and sitting in our usual booth. I hadn’t seen her since we last worked together. I handed her a check for her work on the Mary Ward Simon case, but she slid it back.
“Gonna have to speak to your mom,” I said, reaching over and shoving it in her bag. “By the way, how’s your throat? I can still see marks on it. The hospital told me it might take weeks for the bruising to disappear. At least take my check, if not for your work, for your pain and suffering.”
She shook her head, gulping her juice. “I spoke with Betty at Packer Collegiate. You remember her, don’t you?”
Before I had a chance to reply, the waitress brought our pancakes and my juice and coffee. I could smell the rich buttermilk as I watched blueberries oozing out of the dark places between cakes. “I don’t care if my teeth turn purple,” I said through the pancake. “So tell me about Betty. I haven’t seen her in, what, five years. Does she still look the same?”
Cookie nodded. “Only more so. Bouncy and cute. Remember how we could always get around her when we were late?”
“Speak for yourself.”
“You were never late?”
“I didn’t say that—she caught me every time.”
“You’re such a glutton.” Cookie stopped eating long enough to examine her teeth in a pocket mirror. “Anyway, they have a lot more bells and whistles since we were in school. I felt like I was old enough to be my own grandmother trying to understand their system. I got about half of what she was trying to tell me.”
I sipped my coffee, trying to wake up. At twenty-two was I getting old?
Cookie took a bite of her pancake. I could tell she liked the food from the smile on her face. Apples and cinnamon and sour cream oozed from the corners of her mouth before she dabbed them with a napkin. “These days nothing gets past them. Betty had the call logged into the computer with all the information.”
“What call?” I asked, taking a bite and squishing blueberries.
“The call telling the school Brandy would be absent for three days, returning on Monday. It had an unfamiliar voiceprint, according to the office.”
“If the voiceprint was unfamiliar, why didn’t they contact Trisha Liam?”
“They did, on the home phone. They requested identification, and Mrs. Liam—or whoever was pretending to be her—gave them the last four digits of her social, even though she said it was an invasion of her privacy.”
“Sounds like my client, but why didn’t she tell me that? Do they have a record of the conversation?”
Cookie nodded, taking another bite of pancake and swilling what was left of her orange juice.
“So why didn’t they call her cell?”
“They did, on five separate occasions, and they have the dates and recordings. Besides, Betty told me, they keep requesting more contact information and mailing out forms. Parents should be updating their information online, but not Trisha Liam. Betty told me they’ve had meetings on security and how to work the parents’ portal, but no one in the Liam household has ever bothered to set up an account. Get this, the emergency contact they have for Brandy is Mr. Liam’s office number.”
“And he died two years ago,” I said, twirling my spoon on the table. It clattered to the floor.
“The principal spoke with Trisha Liam six months ago at the school’s open house.”
Knowing the lawyer as I thought I did, I was surprised she attended a school function. “Borders on negligence, if you ask me, but she must have legal reasons, far-fetched though they may seem to us mortals.”
“Doesn’t surprise me—such great people hire you.”
Cookie’s dig was a reference to a client in a previous case who’d disappeared for days, then showed up in the middle of the night demanding an update. After that experience, I took more care in prepping clients, I’ll tell you, and last night when I talked to her, I had Trisha Liam fill out and sign a form with every bit of information I might need—her cell phone, office address and number, driver’s license, tags. Being a lawyer, however, she refused to give me her social.
I dialed Trisha Liam’s cell and listened to it ring while Cookie brought out her mirror again and began repairing her face. Me? I don’t bother with makeup unless I’m going to Denny’s folks for dinner, especially when the buxom Zizi Carmalucci will also be supping with us.
And speaking of Denny, I sent him a text to let him know I’d gotten his reminder about tonight. His parents’ house was not my favorite place to dine, but since I’d gotten to know and appreciate his mother, Lorraine, I didn’t mind as much as I used to. His father, on the other hand … Put it t
his way, he’s Archie Bunker on a double dose of testosterone.
My phone conversation with Trisha Liam was predictable. She was in a limo on her way to work at, get this, Liam, Trueblood & Wolsey, her law firm in Lower Manhattan. As she talked, I could hear papers shuffling. Trisha’s ear canals must have had a thick coating of wax, because I had to repeat my questions several times. In sum, she vaguely remembered a recent call from the school.
“They’d hounded me for my cell phone number for weeks. Giving it to them was a mistake—throw them one piece of information, and they want more. God knew what they wanted this time. An invasion of privacy. I pay a lot of money for them to care for my daughter, and all they do is try to cover themselves. They don’t need all my phone numbers. My home phone will do.”
Cookie was right about my clients. This one had a listening issue. I explained that someone claiming to be her, Trisha Liam, had authorized Brandy’s absence from school. As proof of identity, because their security system did not recognize the voiceprint, whoever they were speaking to gave them the last four digits of her social. I asked her who could have answered her home phone. Dead silence for a second but I could feel fear crackling through the airwaves.
“It had to be me giving them the last four digits of my social. No one else knows it, not unless …” She hesitated. “No, no one else knows it.”
“You were about to say?”
More sounds of paper rustling.
“They’d have to have gone through my purse. I keep a social security card in my wallet, just in case, but no one goes through my bag, ever. It’s never out of my sight.”
I held my tongue.
“They ask for too much. It’s an invasion of privacy. I may have gotten a call from Brandy’s school the other day. You have to understand, I was preparing for an important appearance in court. When I heard who was calling, I might have given them what they wanted just to get them off my back.”
Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) Page 9
