The address Trisha gave me turned out to be a four-flat on Seventy-Ninth Street near Eighteenth Avenue. Denny parked his Jeep on the corner, reached into the back, and handed me a vest. As we walked toward the building, I noticed the bulge of his Glock. I don’t carry—insurance is too expensive, and what would I do with a gun if I had one?
We bounded up the steps and rang Phillipa’s bell. I didn’t expect an answer. We stood on the stoop for a while and then rang the other bells, hoping to get someone’s attention. While we waited, I texted Jane, telling her Phillipa hadn’t showed up for work and giving her the street number of the housekeeper’s apartment.
“May I help you?”
I turned to face the voice. It belonged to a plumpish woman wearing one of those wraparound dresses with little posies all over it, straight from the 1950s. She wore heels with white socks and held a rake, prongs up, grass and leaves moving gently in the breeze. For a second, I watched them waft in the mid-morning light.
“Are you Gladys Delucca?” I showed her my PI license, and Denny flapped his badge at her, explaining he was an off-duty cop. But we could have been waving pornographic material in her face for all the good it did.
She narrowed her eyes. “Her sister, Forsythia.”
I kept my face immobile.
“Our mother named us all after flowers. Gladys had to go to the vet, a problem with her cat. I’ll be glad to take a message, though.”
“We need to talk to one of her tenants, Phillipa Olinski.”
The wraparound lady squinted up at me and pursed her lips. “Woman on the top floor with the boy?”
“That’s the one, Mrs. … is your last name Delucca too?” I asked.
She crossed her arms but didn’t answer. Either my question was too personal or we looked like Bela Lugosi’s sidekicks. For starters, I hadn’t removed my scarf or shades, and now I wore a policeman’s vest, which hung down to my shins. And Denny didn’t look too normal himself. With his tall muscular frame and his shades and vest, he was Bruce Lee on steroids.
“Phillipa didn’t show up for work today, and her boss is worried. We’d like to talk to her,” I explained.
“Well, what would you like me to do about it?”
“Could you maybe let us in to knock on her door?”
“And why would I let you inside the building? You’re liable to steal everything we own while this man here overpowers me and takes advantage.”
We were getting nowhere when I heard Jane’s vehicle screech to a halt in back of Denny’s jeep. I turned to see her car’s rear end sticking out into the avenue. She and Willoughby ran up to us and flashed their badges.
“I suppose you’re here about the tenant, too, and want to get in, Officers?” Forsythia smiled at Jane and gave us dirty looks.
She led us up to the top floor. Jane knocked. No answer, but when I put my ear to the door, I could hear movement inside. Then I heard a loud, bellowing sound. Freddy.
“She wouldn’t leave her son. Something’s wrong. Do you have a key?” I asked.
“Not talking to you,” the woman said. She looked up at Jane and Willoughby. “Officers, these people arrived asking all sorts of questions.”
“You were prudent to be cautious, but we’re working together. Do you have a key to the apartment? We think there may be an unattended child inside.”
The woman felt one side of her garment and then the other. She shook her head. “Now where does Gladys keep the master key?” she mumbled.
“While you look for it, we’ll just stand here,” Willoughby said, palming a credit card. He waited for the woman to disappear before snapping the lock.
“Stay here,” Denny said to me. “Won’t take long. Got to make sure no moron’s hiding in there.”
He and Jane and Willoughby entered the apartment, their service pistols out and cocked. In a few minutes they returned.
Jane was on the phone. “Family services,” I heard her say. “Body’s on the floor in the kitchen. Kid with disabilities unattended still in his bedroom.” Turning to me, she said, “Your client’s housekeeper is dead.”
The landlady’s sister came back with the key. We explained that the door had been open and suggested she might not want to come inside since there’d been a death. Clutching her chest, she rushed down the stairs.
Jane handed me a pair of booties. I shot her a don’t-you-know-you’ve-been-traipsing-through-the-apartment-already look, but kept my mouth shut. We snapped on latex gloves and stepped inside.
I peered through the hall and saw Phillipa lying on the floor in the kitchen. As we neared her body, I could see a wad of paper towel on the floor beside her hand, and I swear it quivered. She lay in the fetal position, a trail of dried urine making a thin line on the linoleum. Tendrils of loose hair fell out of the bun on top of her head. For once, her face was serene. Brushing some of the strands away, I saw a bruise on her neck almost like a hickey, but bluish green. In the middle of it was a small pinprick, reddish in color. I was quick to point it out to Jane.
“Needle Man?” I asked.
“Force that mind of yours into a blank place,” she said, staring at the spot.
But I could see her mind twitching. “Tempting, though, isn’t it?” she asked.
“First Mitch Liam dies, then his child disappears, then the housekeeper gets a needle, if that’s what killed her.”
“We mustn’t jump to conclusions. We can’t. Remember, we know nothing.” I saw emotions trail across her face like fast-moving clouds, doubt followed closely by anger and exasperation—after all, I’d done all the footwork—followed by determination. “Still …”
“I know you don’t want to hear it …” I stopped talking for a beat when I saw the iron resolve in her eyes, but I continued as if I were trying to convince a jury, and in truth I was. “So if Mitch was killed by a needle, his death not investigated but left for the ages to ponder, and there’s a hit man with some sort of medical experience, and we see evidence of death by needlework on the body of a victim who almost certainly was the mole for Brandy’s kidnapper—”
“Whoa, you’re going way too fast.”
“No problem. Just don’t tell me this is coincidence.”
“You’re building your case on hearsay from the mouth of someone in witness protection.”
“Right. He’s got nothing to lose, so why not tell the truth?”
She shook her head and smiled as if I were an incorrigible child. “We’ll talk about it later. Matter of fact, write it down, why don’t you, so you don’t forget it.” She grinned.
As if I ever did what she said.
I looked at Phillipa’s face, at her fingernails. There were no signs of violence. I went back to the door and examined the locks—no signs of forcible entry. Two plates were on a table in the corner of the kitchen, a loaf of bread on the counter next to a carton of eggs. A carafe of cold coffee sat nearby and two empty mugs. Phillipa must have been murdered making breakfast for herself and her visitor. It was obvious she knew her killer.
The cries from Freddy coming from the back of the apartment were getting more insistent.
“Someone needs to care for the kid,” Jane said, motioning me and Denny toward the bellowing.
We opened the door to Freddy’s room. The boy sat on his bed, bunched up sheets stuffed between his twisted arms, drool and tears running down his face.
“Hi, Freddy,” I said. “Who was with your mom this morning?”
I waited, and Freddy rocked. “Man. Mama. Bad.”
Willoughby came into the room. “We’ll take care of him.” I looked from Willoughby to Denny, who nodded toward the door. As I left, I heard Willoughby say, “C’mon, guy, let’s get you ready for school. Your mom wants you all spiffed up today.” It was my turn to admire Jane’s partner.
“Where’s Family Services?” I asked, coming out of the room.
“On their way.” Jane hugged herself and stared at the figure on the kitchen floor. “And CSU should be here any minut
e along with my counterpart at the Sixty-Second Precinct. They’re going to stick their nose into this, even though they know it’s our investigation. In about five minutes, the place will be wall to wall.”
A cold wind blew through me. I heard the muffled voices of Denny and Willoughby talking to Freddy. He kept asking for his mother, and I had to pinch myself to keep from disappearing down the rabbit hole. Before the crime unit showed up, I had work to do.
Phillipa admitted to being technologically illiterate when Cookie and I talked to her, but just to be safe, I went through the apartment looking for a computer. Nada. I walked into her room and saw a neatly made double bed with a desk on the opposite wall. I opened the middle drawer and scanned its contents. Paperclips, pencils, the usual nothing. On one side of the bed was a nightstand and an old-fashioned princess phone on top of it. I opened the drawer and peered inside. It held a passport, comb, rosary, some hairpins and a small address book. I heard Jane’s splayed tread approaching. I whispered, “Bless me, Jane, for I’m a sinner,” and pocketed the book.
“What are you doing?”
“Having a quick look.” I smiled and walked out of the room.
I had to get away from the appalling scene in Phillipa’s apartment before it choked me. The thought of Freddy without his mother was almost too much; that I could have prevented her death, unbearable. I ran down the stairwell and outside into acid light. I found the nearest tree and, bending over, spewed the earth with my bile, then leaned back and closed my eyes. In a few minutes, I reached into my pocket, pulled out Phillipa’s little black book, and began to read, letting the tree’s bark stab me in the back.
Phillipa’s script was large, a childlike hand, but she had a well-ordered mind. Entries were arranged alphabetically. Riffling through the pages, I felt a surge of guilt in the form of violent stomach cramps and cold sweats.
I was about to go back inside when I saw the CSU van pull up, so I ran upstairs and into Phillipa’s bedroom and opened the drawer of her nightstand, about to put the book back where I’d found it. But my thumb grazed a page with the letter H at the top, and I read one word, Henry. Underneath his name was a phone number with a New Jersey area code. What if the book contained more names and phone numbers? What if the kidnapper’s was one of the names? The book was so small and my need so great, I closed the drawer and told myself that after taking one last peek, I’d return the book to its rightful place in the nightstand. I entered the ten-digit number into my smartphone’s contacts, but before I could call it, I felt Jane’s eyes staring at my back, so I slipped my cell and Phillipa’s book into my pocket.
“Tampering with the evidence?” she asked.
“Just looking. But I’m still wearing my gloves.” I shut the drawer and held up my fingers in claw formation so she could see my empty palms, pulled out my own notebook from my back pocket, and made a few scratches.
All right, maybe I was trying to get the crucial information before anyone else found it. I’m not proud of it, but, dammit, a child’s life swung from a gossamer strand. I knew if Phillipa’s address book sat until CSU techs went through her apartment with painstaking care, it would add hours, perhaps days to our getting whatever information it held. Case in point was the van—it would take weeks before we’d hear anything. Organizations get bogged down, and I couldn’t abide with the unnecessary weight. Do this; don’t do that; take this, but not before we’ve gone over it with all the tests we can devise and then some. Brandy had been missing seventy-two hours. Now there was one fatality, and it looked like a needle was involved. My stomach was in a knot.
What was I going to do with the information in the book? I had to think hard before I shared. This Henry person must be someone significant in Phillipa’s life. There were just a few other entries in the book, no other male names that I could see, but I had to study it carefully and plan my next moves.
“Medical examiner’s with the body,” Jane said. I followed her into the kitchen. It looked like he’d just finished his preliminary.
“Time of death?” I asked.
He nodded, a youngish black dude, a little on the pudgy side and too human not to be affected by Phillipa’s death. He introduced himself as Alfred, “but most people call me Al. I’d shake hands but …”
Already I liked the guy.
“Time of death, Al?” Jane echoed my question.
“Between six thirty and seven,” he said. “And before you ask me, I don’t know cause.”
“But it looks like?” I asked.
“Sudden cardiac arrest.”
“Looks to me like someone pricked her with a heavy dose of something,” I said.
He shrugged. It was an elaborate gesture, which he followed with a toothy grin. After pulling off his gloves, he wiped his brow. “Bad business, I’d say.” He struggled to his feet, motioning to Freddy’s sobs coming from his room down the hall.
“And it’s going to be days before we know what?”
He nodded, seemed about to say something, looked again at Jane, but kept his own thoughts.
Willoughby came into the room, drying his hands. “He’s bathed and dressed.”
“Combed his own hair. He looks like a movie star, don’t you think?” Denny said, wheeling Freddy out to the hall. Willoughby excused himself, making for the kitchen, telling Freddy he’d be back with juice.
I saw a startled teen, too honest to hide his emotions.
There was a knock on the door, and an older woman, tall and thin, approached.
After telling us she was with OCFS, she asked if any family members had been contacted. Jane shook her head.
“The victim’s got a mother someplace.” I got out my notebook and searched. “Kansas City. They’re estranged, though.”
“That would be the child’s grandmother?”
I nodded and gave her the name and phone number of his school, telling her about my call to them.
“Does he know about his mother’s death yet?” she asked.
Jane and I looked at each other.
The woman’s voice was accusatory. “You should have told him. At the very least, he senses something’s wrong. The longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be for him.” She wheeled Freddy into the living room and pulled his chair up to the couch. Gracefully she sat leaning toward him.
“I have bad news, Freddy. Your mother’s dead.”
I watched his body twist and slump, heard him bleat.
“I’m so sorry,” she said and waited a few seconds. “We don’t know yet how she died, but we’ll find out. For now you’ll come with me.”
“No. No! Mama.”
I came up to him and stroked his shoulder. It was the least I could do. Face it, it was the most I could do. I hoped he sensed how much we all cared for him.
“No, Mama!”
There was no consoling him.
Denny and Willoughby helped the woman take him to her car.
“What’s this I hear about a needle?” Willoughby asked when they returned.
I texted Tig and told him about Phillipa and how I think she died. I asked him to get more information about the man with the needle from Catania or whoever else were their sources.
As I walked into the hall, I heard a knock on the door, and the CSU supervisor poked her head in. I could see a crowd of techs in back of her. They must have seen Family Services with Freddy and picked up on the situation, for they were uncharacteristically somber.
“We were just leaving,” Jane said. “Let me know right away when you find anything—the vic was involved in the Brandy Liam kidnap.”
Outside I saw a woman approach wearing the same sort of wraparound as Forsythia’s. Wisps of graying brown hair flew out from beneath a large sunbonnet.
“Where are they taking Freddy?” she asked.
“You must be Gladys Delucca,” I said, showing her my ID.
She took it and held it out to one side as if she were showing it to a companion. “Should I tell her?” she asked the blank space
next to her.
Just what we needed, a nut job.
She cleared her throat. “Actually it’s Gladiolus. My mother named us after flowers, but I’ve used Gladys ever since she died. Forsythia told me about Phillipa. Is she really dead?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“How can it be true?” She put a hand to her ample chest. “She’s been with us over twenty years. Had a little financial trouble lately, nothing much. Late with the rent a couple of times, that’s all, but never more than a month or two. I need to speak with my husband.” She turned to the space next to her. “Are you sure?”
“So she was here when Freddy was born?” I asked.
The landlady nodded. “Forsythia exaggerates. I didn’t believe her, but I believe you.” She wet her lips and looked around to the Make-Believe and whispered, “Did you hear? Yes, it’s Phillipa. Poor woman. You remember her, the one with the boy? What are we going to do?” She smoothed her skirt, cocking her head as if listening. “So soon? Shouldn’t we wait a few days? Well, if you say so, dear, I’ll call the Times after they leave.”
Gladys was making me nervous. “Tell me about Phillipa’s friends.”
“Not many female friends. Works hard. She’s out of the apartment by six most days. Took Freddy to school. Stood by his side waiting for the bus in sun, rain, cold, snow.” She turned to her invisible companion. “Life’s not easy in this neighborhood, is it, honey? Gotta hand it to her, though, she’s brave to raise a child without a husband.”
“So she had male friends?”
Gladys straightened herself. “Not the way you’re making it sound. One or two, although I saw one early this morning.”
“You recognized him?”
“Come to think of it, yes, I’d seen him before, going into the apartment late one night with Henry. A friend of Henry, at least it looked like it.”
“Henry?”
“That’s her friend’s name, Henry.”
I felt my cheeks burn, and my fingers grazed Phillipa’s notebook. “Do you mind if we stop until I get the chief investigator? I’d like to have her listen to what you have to tell us, and I wouldn’t want you to have to repeat your story. Is there someplace we can be private?”
Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) Page 20
