Dorset in the Dark: A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “That would be Ben Thatchley’s mother?”

  She nodded. “The mother of Cassandra’s first husband, the one killed in 9/11. We grew up together. She asked me to help when their firstborn, Brunswick, was just a few weeks old, and I’ve stayed on ever since. Course it was good for me: I’d just lost my husband and didn’t have much by way of income. We had a little savings stashed away, but I knew I’d have to find a job. Cassandra and Ben offered me easy hours and a nice salary, a raise every year to keep up with the cost of living. So here I am, twenty-four years later.”

  I was having trouble with all the names I’d have to remember, and told myself Cassandra Thatchley’s initial family, except for herself of course, had first names that began with B—Ben, the husband; Brunswick, the son; Brook, the older daughter. The B contingent.

  “So why do they all begin with B?”

  “A tradition in the Thatchley family, you might say. My friend goes by Bea. Her real name is Beata, but only the nuns in school called her that. She was Ben’s mother. Still is, I guess, even though Ben is dead.” Her face took on a vague look and I said nothing for several seconds, silently willing her to continue. “Bea and I grew up together.”

  I wanted to learn more about Cassandra Thatchley’s second husband, also deceased, but I needed to concentrate on finding Dorset. I held out the scanned photo Cassandra Thatchley had given me of her youngest daughter. “This picture was all Cassandra had in her phone. Do you have a better likeness of Dorset, something taken, say, in the last few months?”

  Mrs. Hampton thought a moment before rising, one finger tapping her cheek. “I saw Cassandra put them in here.” In a flash she was at the desk, opening a side drawer. “I knew it.” She pulled out a handful of photos. “Brook is the photographer in the family and Cassandra asked her to take some pictures of her half sister to send to the Art Students League. Dorset’s going there next week, you know. We’re so proud: she’s been accepted in their spring workshop for gifted students. It took Brook a few weeks to do what her mother had asked. For some reason, she’s reluctant to take pictures of Dorset. I can’t understand why—Dorset is so photogenic. She’s a little genius, our Dorset is.” She stopped a moment and narrowed her eyes. “I’ll say this, and don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this in a negative way, but Dorset can be … a little too quick for her own good and that can be off-putting, I suppose, especially when it comes to Brook.” She stopped talking for a second. Again her forefinger tapped a cheek while she stared into the room. “How should I put this? Brook is our sensitive one.”

  Slowly I studied the photos, my stomach contracting as I looked at the intelligent face of a young girl, tight-lipped and smiling, captured in a moment that revealed her soul, for all the world so bright, so full of promise, but I could also see the sorrow in her eyes. In one photo she was sitting in an overstuffed chair, face bent away from the camera and drawing from memory, the light rimming her head and shoulders. I wished Cookie was there to see it, since I’m no judge of pictures. Cookie is the artist in my life. In another photo, Dorset, her brown hair in a ponytail, was seated holding an open book with a red cover on the desk; it looked like it was a journal of sorts, but I could see a design or something on the page she had been studying. The photographer had waited until Dorset had looked up before snapping the shutter, so that the photo was not just a closeup of her face but a revelation of Dorset’s personality.

  As if reading my mind, Mrs. Hampton told me the notebook belonged to Dorset. “It’s her journal. Don’t ask me where she got the idea.”

  “I have an artist friend,” I said, referring to Cookie. “At Dorset’s age she was taking drawing lessons, and she carried a journal around with her all the time. Until her father objected, afraid she’d cut off her ear or something, but that’s a story for another day. So Cassandra encourages her daughter?”

  The housekeeper nodded. “And Dorset does have a gift, even I can see that. She carries her journal around with her like most youngsters these days carry phones.”

  I scanned the image and messaged it to Tig and Jane, telling them it was a more recent photo of the missing child and asking them to disregard the earlier one I’d sent.

  “Cassandra mentioned the name of Dorset’s best friend.”

  “That would be April Briden. The two of them are inseparable. Don’t get me wrong, Dorset has lots of friends. Sometimes she gets so involved with after-school activities and the like, she forgets to come home and I have to stop cleaning and fetch her. She can be trying.”

  “You can’t call Dorset on her phone?”

  Mrs. Hampton smiled. “I can count on one hand the times I’ve been able to do that. Dorset, you see, forgets to take her phone. Now where was I? Oh yes, April Briden’s address.” She brought out her cell, hunted a few seconds, found what she was looking for, and messaged me April’s mobile and home phone numbers along with her address, which I knew to be a townhouse on Hicks Street in Cobble Hill.

  I dialed April’s home phone and waited until a machine picked up. I was in the middle of leaving a message when my call was answered by a woman whom I judged by the timbre and pitch of her voice to be about my age, maybe a little older. I told her I was a friend of Cassandra Thatchley. We were looking for her daughter, Dorset, and I held my breath while the woman hesitated. She muffled the receiver, but I heard her call April’s name. In a second the phone crackled. My heart raced as I listened to indistinct voices. In a few seconds the woman was back on the line.

  “Dorset’s not here. My daughter says she has a dentist appointment this morning. Is anything wrong?”

  I hesitated, casting a glance into Mrs. Hampton’s hopeful face and shaking my head. “Yes, now I remember. Forgive the intrusion. I’ll try the dentist.” Relieved I wouldn’t have to explain, I thanked the woman and pocketed my phone.

  Mrs. Hampton’s face reddened. “I should have called April myself. But you see …” She didn’t finish her thought. Instead, she stood and smoothed her apron, as if to dismiss me. “If there’s anything else I can help you with …”

  “Before I leave, I’d love to see Dorset’s room.”

  The housekeeper nodded and led me up the main staircase to the second floor. She walked ahead of me, a small figure with slightly hunched shoulders. And I followed her down a hall filled with photos, most of them Brooklyn cityscapes in black-and-white, two or three stunning pictures of the bridge showing its textured grit, one taken on the night of a snowfall a few years ago when the streets were muffled and pure, the rest of them taken in the soft light of sunrise or the golden haze of sunset. I could have used a day or so to immerse myself in the house and its contents, but aware of time passing, I resisted examining the photographs in detail. As if reading my mind, the woman looked over her shoulder and said, “Brook’s work.” She tapped the glass covering the nearest one with her keychain and said Brook had won a prize for it.

  At the closed door to Dorset’s room, the woman knocked and held her ear to the wood. For a second my heart flipped. What if Dorset had been there all along? But there was no reply, no sound of scurrying feet.

  “Dorset?” No answer. Mrs. Hampton glanced at me. I nodded and she opened the door to a small room filled top to bottom with Dorset’s spirit.

  It was nothing like mine had been as a girl. This one was neat, the bed made as if by the instructions of a squad leader, no clothes strewn over the floor. There was a desk on one wall, an overstuffed chair in the corner. I took a second, breathing the heady air, before walking over to it and sitting. “I know it’s too early for them, but the room smells like lilacs.”

  Mrs. Hampton nodded. “Her father gave her a bottle of the perfume before he died. I can’t stand the stuff, but then, I wasn’t sad at his death, not like Dorset was. It took her months to get over the loss, and I’m not sure she’s done with it.”

  I said nothing, taking in the gesture of the woman, a short stalk of righteousness standing in the middle of the room. If Dorset was anything li
ke I’d imagined, she’d never get over the death of her father.

  “Oh, dear, I hope nothing’s wrong with her. It’s not like our Dorset to run off without saying anything.”

  “Does she have close friends besides April?”

  Mrs. Hampton thought a moment. “I know she does. Just the other day she told her mother she was going to …” She stopped, trying to remember a name and, after a few beats, shook her head. “You know it’s hard keeping a house and recalling names of children’s friends when things are happening around you—Cassandra going this way and then that, changing her mind faster than rabbits breed, Brook yelling down the stairs, looking for her gloves and swearing Dorset’s taken them, Brunswick pacing in the hall, having one of his moods and bumping into me.”

  “I don’t blame you. You’ve been more than helpful.

  So Dorset might have gone off to see another friend. She might have said something to her mother, like, “I’m going to so-and-so’s house—her mom’s making us breakfast.” And Cassandra Thatchley’s recent memory was in such bad shape that she wouldn’t have remembered—she had no recollection of most of that morning’s events, although certain details were beginning to come back. But I banished the idea of Dorset’s momentary disappearance as something too hopeful, a lure. Besides, there was the dentist appointment, and Dorset wouldn’t have forgotten that. So if she hadn’t gone off by herself, what had happened to her? Someone had taken her. I felt my old prickly enemy scampering down my spine.

  I realized I’d been holding my breath, then scrunched more deeply into the chair, when I felt something solid beneath the cushions, so I got up and shoved my hand underneath, retrieving a rectangular metal box painted with bright flowers. I tried to open it, but it was locked.

  “Have you seen this?” I asked, holding up the box.

  Mrs. Hampton shrugged. “Probably some of Dorset’s supplies, who’s to know?”

  I went over to the desk. On top were a stack of small red notebooks. I lifted one and flipped through pages of drawings some charcoal, some pencil, some in color. On the inside front cover the words Dorset Clauson were printed in pencil.

  “She’s really serious about this, isn’t she?”

  “Always doodling, our Dorset. I thought she’d outgrow it, most children do, but not this child. After her father died, that’s all she did for two weeks, morning, noon, night, before she went back to school. It must have given her comfort. They look childish to me, her drawings, but what do I know? Cassandra claims she can see extraordinary creativity in her child’s work and that’s why the girl was chosen to attend the workshop, but that’s a mother talking.”

  The housekeeper’s put-downs of Dorset were beginning to grate. I shoved the notebook back and opened the desk drawers, looking for the key to the box, but although the contents inside the desk were neatly placed or nonexistent, I didn’t find it. I looked underneath the bed and retrieved some stuffed animals along with a few motes of dust; I lifted the bedspread and looked under the pillows. No key. I shook the metal box. There was something inside, along with contents I chose to believe were papers—at least it sounded that way.

  There was a dresser on the far wall and I was about to look inside when my phone started vibrating. It was a text from Cookie, asking me where the hell I was. She and Lorraine were waiting for me at Lucy’s, and they were about to order food. I told her to hold off for fifteen or twenty minutes. Her retort, “You mean more like thirty or forty, don’t you?” Cookie knows me too well.

  “I’ve got to go now, but I have a slew of questions, so I’ll be back.” I gave the woman my card and told her that since she seemed to be the only sane one in the family, I was relying on her and asked her to call me day or night if there was news. She said she would and walked with me to the front door.

  “One more thing. Is there anyone who would want to harm this family?”

  She thought for a long time. Too long.

  “Really, Mrs. Hampton, I need a straight answer.”

  “Hearsay, you understand, and I don’t like her at all, so you see, I’m prejudiced. But if there’s someone I don’t trust, it’s that other woman.”

  I waited for her to explain.

  “Ronnie Clauson’s mother.” I must have looked a question because Mrs. Hampton elaborated. “Cassandra’s second husband, Dorset’s father, was Ronnie Clauson.”

  “Cassandra never took her second husband’s name?”

  “Always kept Ben’s name, not because she didn’t love her second husband, which she never tired of telling me as if I’d asked, but for business purposes. She was known as Professor Thatchley at school and she wanted it to stay that way. Too many names get confusing and she’d be lost in the shuffle. Anyway, the second one, Dorset’s father, he died quite suddenly about a year ago. He’d just returned from a business trip. I’ll never forget it. Cassandra kissed him, then sent him to the store for her medication. He never returned. She was quite upset, as you can imagine. I kept my own counsel, mind, but of course I was sad for Cassandra and Dorset. They were bereft, as if their world had collapsed. And I guess it had.”

  I was silent a moment, trying to find a polite way of bringing up what I considered to be some disturbing signs in Cassandra Thatchley’s personality. “Speaking of being quite upset, I noticed that Mrs. Thatchley is a little on the flighty side.”

  “Yes, well, we’ve all learned to cope.” She studied the air for a moment. “But a better boss you’ll never find. I’ve had my share of emergencies and she was quick to let me attend to my business. Mighty quick and only with compassion, so I’ve learned how to walk away and let her moods blow over.”

  “And her other children?”

  “You mean Brunswick and Brook? They weren’t Ronnie’s children, not by blood, although he’d adopted them and tried to like them. To give the man his due, he was a real gentleman, although where he got it from, I don’t know. Not from his mother, that’s for sure. Another thing, he was a real stickler for order. I used to inspect every room before he was due to come home. I don’t miss that, I can tell you; sometimes I felt like I had to stylize the place for the House Beautiful photographers. So unreal. Perhaps it was his fetish, I don’t know, but I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.” Mrs. Hampton stopped talking and color flooded her face. “There, I’ve gone and said too much.”

  “Not at all. You’ve been such a help. We’ve got to find Dorset, so anything you say is confidential and will help me bring her home.”

  “If you say so. Where was I?”

  “Into the yin and yang of family life during round two.”

  It took a while for Mrs. Hampton to understand what I’d just said, but she smiled, nodded her birdlike head, and continued. “For her part, Cassandra claimed they were one big happy family and I’ll say this much: Ronnie Clauson tried to be a father to the older children, but they disregarded him. Totally. It’s a long story and I’m not good at telling it, especially since I, to tell you the truth, never could warm to the man.”

  She’d given me a better idea of the tension I’d been feeling in the house, an undercurrent of mistrust between two factions and dislike and resentment. Maybe it explained Cassandra Thatchley’s behavior, at least to some extent, and to tell you the truth, I was almost as concerned about her as I was about Dorset.

  “You were telling me about Ronnie Clauson’s mother, Cassandra Thatchley’s other mother-in-law.”

  “Yes. His mother, Greta Clauson. She’s the one who should have died, not her son, although he caused enough problems, not all of his making.

  “I can see why Cassandra doesn’t like her, I can tell you that, and you don’t have time for all the stories I could tell you. Prying into her daughter-in-law’s affairs, into all of our business for that matter. Has an opinion on the education of her granddaughter, I’ll say that much.”

  The woman didn’t go on, but her mood had definitely changed from serene housekeeper to a gossipy shrew withholding only with difficulty.

&nb
sp; “No more words?” I held the door open with my foot, my arms crossed. “I’ve got time.”

  But the woman shook her head. “Tell you what, though, here’s where you can find her.” She took a pad from an apron pocket and scribbled an address on Cranberry street. Ripping off the paper and handing it to me, she said, “You’ll know what I mean two seconds after you meet her. And if that’s all …” She tried to close the door, but my foot was still in the way.

  “I want to talk with Cassandra’s older children. Do you know where I can find them?”

  There were footsteps behind me. “They’ll be working, I expect.”

  I turned around to see a woman wearing dark glasses and what looked like a volunteer’s smock underneath her unbuttoned coat.

  “This is Bea Thatchley. My friend,” Mrs. Hampton said, holding out her arms by way of greeting the woman who stood a few feet from the stoop. “Ben’s mother? Cassandra’s mother-in-law? I told you about her. The real mother-in-law.”

  “The one and only,” Bea Thatchley said. After hugging her friend, she shook my hand and gave me the once-over.

  In her outfit, she had some nerve. Bright green slacks clashed with her spiky hair, which, thanks to a home dye job, verged on violet. She pushed up her rhinestone-studded shades.

  Mrs. Hampton asked if Dorset was with her.

  The woman waved a hand. “You know better than to ask me that. All my grandchildren dislike me and Dorset is no exception, even though she’s not really my granddaughter.” She looked up at the sky. “But we pretend,” she added, smiling and sliding her eyes back to her friend. “I stopped by to see if you wanted to contribute.” Jiggling a donation cup, she held it in front of Mrs. Hampton’s face. The housekeeper reached into her apron and stuffed in some change.