Early afternoon traffic was unreal: the trip from the Heights to DUMBO, normally a ten-minute jaunt, took us close to forty-five minutes. We made use of the time talking, and I learned that Frank and his family were all fine. A year after Denny’s father died, Lorraine and Frank had become an item, despite Denny’s obvious dislike of the new man in his mother’s life. Matter of fact, there was still some animosity on Denny’s part; he’d had a hard time getting over his father’s death, the catalyst that brought up lots of unresolved issues, according to what Denny told me his shrink had said, and he and Frank were still barely on speaking terms. Lorraine’s high school sweetheart, Frank owned a butcher shop on Amity Street, a great cover, and he helped us from time to time with surveillance. Although he was an older guy, I must admit he was still a heartthrob and the two of them together turned heads, especially lately, newly tanned from a two-week jaunt to Florida.
“How is Denny?” Lorraine asked, her voice hesitant, as if she knew something I didn’t.
“Therapy and the twins have made a difference in his life.”
She was silent after my reply, navigating a difficult right turn into another snarl of traffic. We sat, not speaking for a moment.
“All right, Lorraine, spill it.”
“Nothing.” She was silent; we were stopped. “I just wondered,” she said in her high-pitched withholding voice.
“Don’t give me that,” I said. After another long silence, she told me she’d run into one of Denny’s NYPD buddies on Court Street the other day. “He said something odd as he was leaving. ‘We’ll miss Denny when he goes.’ I wondered what he meant at the time, but he was rushing off, so I just waved goodbye.”
My stomach did a roll. Recently I’d overheard snatches of a conversation between Denny and Clancy when I’d come home and found them in the kitchen, sharing a pizza. He and Cookie’s husband had been looking at something, a brochure, I think, which they slid under the pizza box when I walked into the room. Although I believe in everyone’s right to privacy, even my husband’s, my curiosity was piqued and I asked what they were looking at. Denny never replied and just then we were interrupted, I can’t remember why.
We said nothing for a few minutes while Lorraine inched her way into the opposite lane, maneuvering her tank around a left-hand turn. She hadn’t been driving all that long but seemed to have improved, at least mentally, because when the driver whose bumper she narrowly missed gave her the finger, Lorraine smiled and waved.
“Clancy has a bug up his behind about wanting to move to Dutchess County,” I said. “Cookie is going crazy. I wonder if he’s been talking about it to Denny. And Denny is concerned lately about our finances, not that he has anything to worry about.” Something niggled the back of my mind and for a second I remembered Denny mentioning something about Poughkeepsie. My dislike of that part of New York along with wondering about my father’s current state flashed through my mind, but another narrow miss on Lorraine’s part brought me back to the present.
The streets were crowded with cars, the sidewalks with pedestrians, and Lorraine and I finally arrived in DUMBO, a neighborhood filled with converted light industrial buildings surrounding the Brooklyn and Manhattan overpasses. As if by a miracle, Lorraine found parking close to Brook’s studio, which we realized after we’d wormed our way into the front door, took up a large portion of the top floor of a ten-story behemoth on Water Street. We rode up the elevator, not speaking, and rang the buzzer. We waited a while.
“Perhaps we should have called,” Lorraine said.
“Not my style.”
We were about to leave when I heard footsteps on the other side and a fumbling at the lock. In a few seconds a tall, thin woman opened the door.
“Brook Thatchley?”
She nodded.
I told her we were looking for her half-sibling, Dorset Clauson, and asked if she knew where we could find her.
“You must be the detective Mom hired. Mrs. Hampton said I should expect you.”
Nice of Mrs. Hampton to warn her favorites.
“And you must be Brook Thatchley,” Lorraine said, smiling and holding out her hand. “You look just like your mother.”
Lorraine was right, the daughter was a dead ringer for her mother, but a much younger version. Same dark wiry hair, same nose only softer, same piercing look. I tried to remember the color of Cassandra Thatchley’s eyes, though, and couldn’t.
Brook must have read my thoughts. “I don’t have my mother’s eyes. Hers change color. Sometimes they’re green, sometimes a dusky blue. Mine are always just plain brown.” She smiled, and I warmed to her.
Dressed in black leggings, her top layered in a long blouse underneath a short blue sweater, Brook stared a second before inviting us inside. Although her space was a loft, it had been converted into three or four rooms, each one a studio in its own right with different kinds of photographic lights and, to my untrained eye, expensive-looking equipment. Brook explained that she made money shooting portraits and product shots in her studio, but her love was photography, real photography, roaming around the city, capturing objects in light and telling a story.
“Do you do weddings?” I asked.
Brook shook her head. “I love cityscapes of course. Here is some of my work,” she said, pointing to a wall with framed photographs evenly spaced and hung at eye level. Lorraine took her time gazing at each one, marveling at the composition, the sharpness, their color and point of view, the juxtaposition of objects.
“Let me show you around,” Brook said. “Here’s where I do portraits.” She led us into a large room with tripods and lights, some of them suspended from the ceiling. In the corner were two large monitors and a laptop on a stand. On the far wall were a chair and lights encased in what I thought looked like old-fashioned nuns’ habits. She explained they were soft boxes. She showed us another room with a large low table surrounded by lights. “Product shots,” she said, “another source of income. But lately things have been slow although I am preparing for a show next month. That ought to bring in some revenue. Word of mouth and all that. I’m awful with marketing, but I suppose I’ll have to some day.”
Then she led us into a third room, this one without photographic equipment but with a spectacular view of the East River. A large framed print hung on one wall. I couldn’t help but stare at it. It was an ultrawide aerial view of DUMBO with its large buildings, many of them from the Civil War, jutting out into the harbor. The camera had focused on the two bridges spanning the river flecked in golden light. I walked over to the windows and watched black clouds rolling toward us from New Jersey. Craning my neck, I could barely see the Statue of Liberty, and I asked my mother, who lately seemed to be always with me, to help me find Dorset.
A round table and several chairs stood in the middle of the room, and Brook motioned for us to sit.
“You lost your father when you were quite young,” Lorraine began after we refused Brook’s offer for something to drink.
“I was six,” she said, brushing back her hair and folding her hands. She studied her fingers, which I noticed were ringless. Her nails were not polished, unlike her mother’s. “Twelve when Dorset was born.” She shoved a loose strand of hair over her ear. “I won’t lie to you. I’m not fond of Dorset. I’ve resented her from the start. She came on the scene and everything changed.” She looked out the window. “No, that’s not true, everything changed when my mother married again. I don’t know why she did, although she seemed fond of Ronnie. Sometimes I think she married him for stability. But I’ll never understand what she saw in him. Dorset’s arrival just made life worse. I was in middle school, ready to spread my wings, and instead, I had to help out with Dorset—come home right after school so my mother could grade her papers or do her thing.”
“Mrs. Hampton didn’t help with Dorset?”
“Mrs. Hampton was not a nanny, something she never tired of reminding us, especially when it came to Dorset. I could see the woman wrinkling her nose wheneve
r the baby was in the room. And as for nannies, for whatever reason we couldn’t find a suitable one, not one that Mother would hire. To tell you the truth, I seem to remember she and Ronnie used to have words about it. In the morning he’d take her to day care. In the afternoon, I was the babysitter.”
I didn’t say anything for a bit, absorbing Brook’s emotion. I had to give her credit: she was open enough about not liking Dorset, and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t blame her. If it were me, I’d be throwing a hissy fit, probably disappear. At the thought, I wondered if that was what Dorset had done. If life at home was only tolerable for Cassandra Thatchley’s older siblings, imagine what it was for a ten-year-old. “So you were almost a teen when Dorset came into your world. That would make you—”
“Twenty-two in a couple of months.”
Lorraine spoke up. “You’re so young for knowing what you want to do and being able to—”
“Afford it?” She finished the sentence for Lorraine, lifting one side of her mouth and staring at her. At that moment she seemed much older and her eyes were inscrutable.
“That’s not what I meant. I give you so much credit. Look at what you’ve accomplished. You’re recognized in your field, established with clients and an overhead you can afford, and you’re barely in your twenties.”
Brook Thatchley shrugged. “I think it might be due to my father’s death. I remember I’d lost a tooth early that morning and my mother told me my father would come home that evening with a present from the tooth fairy. The memory of that day burns in me, so clear and warm. When he didn’t return that evening, I thought maybe it was because he was still searching for the tooth fairy and couldn’t find her. Some days later when Mother told me he wouldn’t come home for a while, I thought he must still be looking for my present. He wouldn’t forget to do what he’d promised. Time went on and he didn’t come home. I remember looking for him one day with Brunswick. He took me by the hand and we went to Manhattan by ourselves. Mother was not pleased. We combed the streets, calling out for my father, looking in back alleys where Brunswick swore he last saw him. Mother was frantic when we got home that afternoon. Mrs. Hampton called her, wondering where we were. The rest I really don’t remember except that we never found out what happened to him, not really.”
“Some kids would be messed up forever.”
“Like my brother.” Her eyes, which had been steady until then, darted back and forth. “Brunswick still thinks our father left us.” She caught her breath and held it in for a second or two.
“He did leave you, only not the way your brother means,” I said. “I ought to know: my father left me and my mother, and that’s a different kind of leaving than death.” I crossed my arms, trying to forget the day he left. And they expected me to rush to the hospital at his every little disturbance?
“I’m not so sure that’s true, although what do I know?” Lorraine said. “Perhaps it’s the same for a child who doesn’t know the difference between death and leaving.” She hesitated. “But do any of us, really?”
That was Lorraine—always asking questions no one could answer.
“Anyway, shortly before he disappeared, my father gave me a camera and taught me how to use it.”
“You were so young,” Lorraine said.
“And a few weeks later when I knew he wasn’t coming home again, the only peace I had was when I took pictures. So you see, photography was my father’s presence, his gift to me.”
“We’re straying,” I said and tried not to react when Lorraine gave me one of her looks. I wanted to find Dorset and we were losing precious minutes. Lorraine, I could tell, wanted to stay longer; she wanted to get to know Brook Thatchley, not just as a name on a list of people we needed to interview, but as a person with hopes, dreams, faults, thoughts. A universe. Her look said Brook might hold a piece to the puzzle. Find the rest and you unlock the mystery of Dorset’s disappearance. One of these days I might grow up to be like Lorraine if I worked hard at it. I looked at my phone: time was disappearing, whole chunks of it, like those videos you see of ice melting. Tick, tock. Now you see it, now you don’t; now it’s Christmas, a blink to spring. No Dorset.
“When was the last time you saw your sister?” I asked.
“My half sister.” She craned her neck to look outside. “Was that thunder?”
Just then there was another clap and rain pelted the windows. It sounded like someone was tossing handfuls of pellets at us. Brook got up from her chair and went to one of the windows and shut it. As she did so, the wind caught strands of her hair and whirled them about. Lightning lit up the sky and for an instant rimmed her in an eerie glow. The ends of her blouse billowed and I thought for a second some evil genie was lifting her into never-never land to be with all those who had dared to leave.
“Sit down, Brook, before you’re blown away,” Lorraine said. “What can you tell us about Dorset? Did you see her this morning?”
She shook her head and pursed her lips. “Usually I’m gone before Dorset’s up. I walk the streets before the sun rises.”
“You feel safe?”
“Why not? I’m a photographer. I love to capture objects in light, and the best times to shoot are around sunrise and sunset, so these days, I’m out of the house by five thirty, six at the very latest. If I don’t have a job, I walk to wherever, usually to one of the bridges, or I go to some neighborhood and I shoot. The Lower East Side is one of my favorites. If there’s no good light, there are decisive moments to capture, a woman bending to fix the collar of her son’s shirt, a child biting into an ice-cream cone, a vendor hawking his stuff, pedestrians waiting to cross the street, their faces filled with thought, you know, alone in a crowd. There’s always something interesting. Lucky you caught me now, I’m not usually home until an hour or so after sunset.”
“Today was no exception?”
She didn’t reply.
“Could I see some of the images you’ve taken today?” I asked.
A slight flush crept from her neck to her face. “Why the questions? Do you think I’ve taken Dorset?”
“Fina’s just being thorough,” Lorraine said.
Without another word, Brook left the room.
“What do you think?” I asked.
Lorraine crossed her legs and studied her hands. “Hard to get a feel for Brook. She’s practiced in the art of removing herself from any situation.”
The door opened and Brook returned. “This way,” she said. Her voice had a slight tremor.
We followed her to a computer in the other room. Both monitors were filled with thumbnails of images she told us she’d uploaded shortly before we’d arrived. “I never show my work like this, but since you insist.” She clicked on one of the images, an interior shot of an old building near the river, and it filled the screen. Nearly gutted, the structure must have been built sometime in the nineteenth century. Jagged pieces of plaster still stuck to the laths, the remains of an old sitting room covered with layers of peeling wallpaper in different designs. The centerpiece of the picture was a decaying loveseat listing to one side, its upholstery torn. It was lit from somewhere above, by a beam of light filled with motes of dust. Urbex, she called it, the study of abandoned objects, the detritus of civilization.
“The building is like a person,” Lorraine said, and I could see Cassandra’s daughter warming to her.
Brook clicked on it again and the photo became small. On the right-hand side was a column filled with data. She scrolled through the information, white lettering on a gray background, most of which I didn’t understand, until she got to a section labeled “Metadata.” Pointing to several lines of type, she said, “This includes the file name of the image and its capture date and time, along with other information, like the exposure information, the make of the camera, the lens and its focal length. You’re welcome to click on any of these photographs and look at their statistics; you’ll see I took them this morning.”
So I did. Most were interesting shots of building
s captured in a golden light—ancient structures in the state of being torn down, interiors that told haunting stories of times past, people long dead.
“Lovely photographs,” Lorraine said. “I could gaze at them all day. Do you have a card? I’d love to see your exhibit.”
“Please don’t,” Brook said and we shared a moment.
I stared at her work, clicking through rows of photographs, captivated by them. The shots were interesting because of the angle, the subject matter, but especially because of their mood.
“Look at their capture time.” Again, she pointed to the data.
I scrolled up and down, clicking on one after the other, tearing my eyes away from the image on display to examine its data. Brook had taken over a hundred shots between six thirty-two and eight twenty-seven that morning. The photos were an irrefutable witness of where she’d been during that time. A start, but not proof that she hadn’t been involved in the abduction of her younger sister.
Brook straightened. She struck me as a woman always in charge of her emotions. “If there’s nothing else you need, I’ve got to get back to my work.”
“And we need to interview more people—your grandmother for one, if she’s home now,” Lorraine said.
I thought I saw Brook stiffen, but she said nothing.
“I almost forgot,” I said, and asked for her brother’s phone number and address.
She hesitated, looking beyond us into the room and worrying her lip before drawing out her phone and scrolling. I gave her my number and she messaged me Brunswick’s contact information. “After Mrs. Hampton called this morning, I called and told him about Dorset’s disappearance. He said he couldn’t promise he’d be in his office, but he’d try.”
So Mrs. Hampton, Brook, and Brunswick formed a subset. No, a conspiracy.
“Can you think of anyone who’d want to take your half sister?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Anyone you’ve seen lately who looks suspicious?”
“Lots of people. No one lurking about our property, if that’s what you mean.” She gave me a smirk, and I felt like punching her, but in the next second, I pitied her for the way she’d lost her father. There must have been a part of her, maybe not as big as her brother’s, but a good chunk of her that still couldn’t believe he was gone. After all, she was very young when he died.
Dorset in the Dark: A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Page 8
