Dorset in the Dark: A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “My wife is excitable,” Mr. Ellston said.

  He told us he’d inherited the store from his father. “Over fifty years in the same spot and no trouble before this, except for the robberies and one lightning hit.”

  “It took us a couple of years to recover from that one,” Shirley Ellston said. “And lately business has been slow—it has been a horrendous six months.”

  I gave Shirley Ellston a Lucy’s card, telling her it was my cleaning service and that I’d send a crew over tomorrow.

  Jane’s eyes were all over me. “No, you don’t.”

  “We could use the help,” Mrs. Ellston said.

  “Not until we’re through with the scene,” Jane said. “And that will take a couple of days.”

  “Tell us about your upstairs tenants,” I said.

  Mrs. Ellston’s bird eyes darted back and forth. “They are so nice, two brothers. They’ve lived upstairs for how long, dear?”

  Mr. Ellston shrugged. “I inherited them with the building after my father died.” He sucked in air. “Never had trouble. They’re not demanding at all.”

  Shirley Ellston nodded. “Never give us any trouble. Always pay on time. That’s why we can’t understand this.” She pointed to the ceiling. “Could they have fought? I can’t imagine the younger one fighting. Had an intruder? Oh, I hope not, I never thought of that.”

  “Yes, they’ve been good tenants. Except once, my sweet darling, you remember, close to Christmas two years ago when their rent was late?”

  “That’s my Stanley, he keeps track of such things.”

  “Mostly up here.” The man pointed to his head.

  “But they paid up a few months later, didn’t they?”

  He nodded.

  “Just the two brothers live upstairs?” Jane asked.

  “Years ago there was a woman.”

  “The mother,” Shirley Ellston said and her cheeks grew two spots of color. “Sweet lady. Always with the younger boy.” She stopped talking and a strange look came over her face. “The younger one is an artist. Talented, too. I help out whenever I can. He collects bits and pieces for his work, don’t you know? Always looking on the ground. Forgets where he’s going. Picks up who knows what and arranges it all into clever pictures. Twigs, scraps of paper, dried grass. Dribbles paint and glue all over. Showed me once. I’m not one for art, but his pictures are so pleasing. And he is gentle and sweet, just like his mother. She passed, oh, it must have been ten or twelve years ago.”

  “She disappeared, my love.”

  The woman shook her head. “Got that wrong, precious. She passed. Whenever I saw her, the boy would be by her side. They’d walk down Montague hand in hand. A devoted mother always with her son.”

  “Which boy, Shirley? You’re talking about the younger one?”

  She nodded.

  “Challenged, I tell you,” the druggist said. “The other day I saw the taller one talking low to him, his mouth near his brother’s ear. I wouldn’t like to cross him, I can tell you. Some sort of argument. The older one wasn’t happy, but then, come to think of it, he never is.”

  “You don’t know for a fact the younger one is challenged,” Shirley Ellston told her husband. “And I’ll not have you talking that way about the sweet one.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “Never heard him say one word to me. Head down when I passed him on the street Tuesday morning. Surprised him, I guess. He crosses to the other side of the street whenever he sees me coming.”

  The couple stood on the landing as we moved toward the stairs, the man’s arm still hugging his wife, but I could tell there was something between them, because of the shock or maybe the lateness of the hour. Anyway, there was disagreement in the air. We thanked them for the information, but when we made our way past them, the woman caught my arm.

  “Come back and tell us what’s going on, promise me? First the robberies and now this.”

  I nodded. “We’ll need someone to identify the dead man upstairs.”

  “Dead man?” I thought Shirley Ellston was going to faint.

  “You don’t know that, not for sure,” Jane said, stepping on my big toe.

  I said nothing for a few seconds while I saw bright lights. “And I’m sure we’ll have more questions for you,” I managed, hurrying to keep up with the detective, who by now had changed into her official self, the set of her back accusing me of worming my way in, hoping for yet another job.

  “Pretty soon no one’s going to hire your agency, you know, especially when word gets around how you dangle your companies in front of their faces.”

  “And you’ll make sure word does get around.”

  “You might as well go home to your children. You’ve left Denny with them again, haven’t you?”

  “Lorraine’s with him. Besides, the Ellstons have already hired our agency,” I said. Gasping a little, I reminded her about our investigation of the drugstore robberies. “Cleaning up … your unfinished … business.”

  We were both taking ragged breaths and she couldn’t muster a reply. We’d run up the last flight of stairs and were nearing our destination, a door at the end of the landing. I stopped to breathe and felt sweat beginning a slow descent down my forehead. For a second yellow flickers danced behind my lids. Opening my eyes, I leaned over the railing and looked down. I saw the couple staring up at us, Mrs. Ellston holding her robe tightly around her throat, her face mottled, beads of perspiration on her forehead. She waved tentatively in my direction, a worried look on her face. Mr. Ellston’s arm was no longer around his wife; he’d fisted his hands and thrust them into the pockets of his robe, looking for all the world like a myopic tin soldier.

  Still huffing, I was in no shape to argue with the blonde nemesis at my side. Besides, her broad shoulders blocked my way as she took her time talking to the uniform at the door of the apartment. Several crime scene investigators huddled at the far end of the hall, no doubt waiting for Jane’s orders.

  At the Scene

  “Super wants to talk to you before they start,” the patrolman said to the detective, nodding in the direction of a huddled group dressed in white plastic suits. Just then I heard footsteps behind us and Willoughby appeared, wiping his mouth with one hand.

  “Took you long enough,” Jane said. “Still got a spot of sauce on one side of your face. I won’t ask what you and Sally were doing when I called.”

  “What’s it look like? She made my favorite meal and I was digging in when I got your royal summons.” He nodded to me, fingering the sleeve of my coat. “You two look like you’re dressed for a break-in.”

  Jane ignored him, but opened the door a crack, then turned to face me. “This is a crime scene. You’ll have to wait until we leave.”

  I shook my head. “Cookie and Clancy are already inside. They’re the ones who called the police, so if it weren’t for our agency, you wouldn’t be here. Besides, we’ve been hired by the owners of the building to investigate three armed robberies in their drugstore since your crew came up clueless, and this is part of the scene.” A real stretch, which I knew she wasn’t buying, but I think my conclusion stunned her because she didn’t say anything for a second. As I spoke, I pulled out gloves and booties from my bag, handing her an extra pair. “The shoe covers are a small size, so they might not fit over your fishing boats, but it’s worth a try.”

  Jane motioned to the crime scene investigators and they preceded us into the apartment, the videographer taping as he walked through the door. Following them, we stepped into a minuscule entryway consisting of worn floorboards and three walls covered with pictures filled with color. A bare lightbulb suspended from the ceiling by a threadbare cord gave off a minimal glow, enough so that I could see that the walls and ceiling were in need of a new paint job. The baseboards were scuffed, too, and peeling. A closet door with a full-length mirror, cracked and blooming, stood opposite us and I caught a brief reflection of my disheveled self. Trying not to look too closely at my image, I opened the
door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Jane asked.

  “Just looking in the closet.” It was stuffed with coats. Later, I thought, after we got rid of the police, I’d come back and take a good look around, although judging from the studied intensity of the white suits as they moved in slow motion, it was going to take days before they vacated the place. We stepped into the living room and I waved to Cookie, who stood next to Clancy in the far corner. A tall bureau next to them partially blocked my view, but I saw they were talking to the crime scene super. I inched my way over, careful not to step on the videographer, who was arranging his little measurement sticks like a champion Lego player before snapping photos.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Jane said, as if I needed instructions. I gave her one of my looks and said nothing, tiptoeing over to the group by the bureau. But before I got there, the figure on the floor mesmerized me and I stopped and knelt and quickly murmured a prayer.

  Before me lay the corpse of a man who had been in his mid to late thirties, I figured. His back lay flat on the floor, the two MLIs at either side, poking and measuring and otherwise preparing him for his final ride. His slate blue eyes stared at the ceiling, seeing, I imagined, what only the dead can discern. They were about to slip him into a bag when I asked them to wait and, despite Jane’s kick to the back of my foot, crawled closer to take a better look.

  His mouth was open slightly, his lips pulled back in a grimace, but otherwise his face had an unusual smoothness.

  “What happened?” I asked the nearest investigator, who paused to make sure Jane wasn’t listening.

  “See that facial bruising?”

  He pointed to the spot, and nodding, I took in a large patch of purple and red on one side of his face. I pulled out my phone and snapped a few. It looked like his jaw had gotten a fistful.

  “And not just the jaw—look at the guy’s left temple. Got a two-fisted killer on our hands. The first blow to the mandible softened him; then the killer finished with a right hook to the temple. One possibility, he ruptured the temporal artery. Where does the blood go?”

  “Nothing on the floor,” I said, “so I’d say not far, but that’s an uneducated guess.”

  “Right in one. The victim must have had a thin skull. It cracked and the blood pushed against the dura mater. Rapid unconsciousness followed. The perp fled and our friend here died from an intracranial bleed.”

  “You know better than to speculate,” Jane said. “One thing we know for sure. He’s dead.”

  “We also know he was murdered,” I said.

  “We don’t know for sure and that’s not your place.” The grim detective turned to the MLI. “See what you’ve started?”

  “Doesn’t he represent the coroner, and isn’t it his responsibility to determine cause and mode?”

  She motioned for a uniform and whispered in his ear before he disappeared.

  Thankfully my guy ignored her remark and continued surmising. “Or.” He paused, peering up at Jane and squinting. “He was hit and lost his balance. Easy to do to this poor creature,” the MLI said, pointing to the dead man’s legs. “See anything?” he asked me.

  When I didn’t reply, he pointed out that one of the dead man’s legs was at least two inches shorter than the other.

  “And he didn’t wear a shoe to compensate?”

  He shrugged. “He may well have hit the edge of that marble slab,” he said, pointing to the base of the fireplace.

  “So he lost his balance, fell backward with the blow, and hit his head?”

  “Something like that. One way or another, the guy was a goner. Not that the perp meant to kill him. Anyways—” he paused and slid his eyes up to Jane “—you’ll have to wait for the autopsy.”

  “So you mean whoever hit him might not know he’s dead?”

  The man shrugged. “Poor creature, he was left here to fend for himself.”

  “Two brothers live here,” Cookie said, moving toward me. She put a finger to her lips and whispered the rest. “Clancy thinks the dead man might have been involved in the drugstore robberies.”

  But eagle ears overheard. “Dream on,” Jane said. And she smiled, as if to say nothing got past her. “You mean they were stealing from their landlord?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Clancy said, coming up to us. He began telling us what he’d seen on the CCTV tapes in the drugstore, explaining that although Stanley Ellston had given the originals to the police, he’d kept a backup. “The dead man has the same build as one of the robbers, the one who stayed by the door. He must have been the lookout. I couldn’t say for sure—you know the poor quality of CCTV footage.”

  “The same build?” Willoughby asked. “That means nothing.”

  Just then the uniform returned with Stanley Ellston. Looking down at the dead man, he reeled back as if he’d been struck. I could see he was going to lose it, so searching the room, I noticed a stack of magazines on a nearby chair and grabbed a few, holding the pile underneath the retching man’s chin. Thankfully one of the techs came over with a paper bag and I dumped the stinking mess into it.

  “Do you know this man?” Jane asked the druggist when he’d recovered.

  Wiping his chin, he nodded and choked on his words. “He’s … one of my tenants. Jerry.”

  “Jerry who?” Jane asked.

  The druggist, still stunned, shook his head.

  “You don’t know the surname of your tenant? You’ve never asked him for ID? Written his lease?”

  The druggist was dazed. “There were three of them living here when I took over from my father, the mother and her two sons. I … never had a need to know.”

  “But your father, didn’t he keep a copy of the lease?”

  He shook his head. “They were good tenants. They never asked for a lease.”

  Which meant Stanley Ellston could have raised the rent in a blink or given them thirty days’ notice to clear out.

  “The brother’s name?” Jane asked.

  He shrugged. “To tell you the truth, he kept to himself. I’d recognize him if he passed me on the street, at least I think I would. I watched him grow up, at least I remember when he was much younger. The mother, now, that’s a different story. Margaret, I think her name was, although don’t quote me on that. She was so sweet, but I could tell they lived from week to week. She took in laundry, I think. This was twenty, maybe thirty years ago. And the dead man was a young boy.”

  Stanley Ellston was trembling now, maybe at the audacity of time, which mutilated all things, to say nothing about the suddenness of death. “We never wrote a lease. I meant to get around to it, but you know, one thing and another, and before you know it, years pass. It’s been a rough decade for us. What with the advent of mega drugstores and the growth of online sales, we’ve struggled. So I never did write a lease. On the other hand, I was a decent landlord. In all the years they’ve lived here, I raised the rent one or two times. And the brother paid me in cash every month. No need for ID.”

  “You have a phone number for him?”

  He shook his head. “No need. The building pays their utilities.”

  “The dead man’s brother, how can we reach him? They’ll want the next of kin to identify him.”

  Stanley Ellston was backing up. “Kenny. That’s his name, I believe, at least that’s what I’ve called him the few times I’d see him on the street and he’s looked up, acknowledged my greeting with a nod. He’d have said if I called him the wrong name, don’t you think?”

  Jane shrugged.

  “Kept to themselves, never any trouble.” The druggist took a step back, still trembling. “Shirley’s going to be … I don’t think I’ll tell her this evening. If you don’t mind, I’ve done what I can here.” He looked like he was going to be sick again, so without argument, Jane backed away.

  “I need to comfort my wife,” Stanley Ellston was saying over his shoulder as he struggled to the door. “You’ll understand, I’m sure. She’s distraught. Co
me to that, I’m distraught as well. You never dream something like this will happen. Not in your wildest. Life is so cruel.”

  After he left, the MLIs brought out the body bag and I looked away, feeling sick. A great sadness settled over me like the fog that covered our outside world. The man was identified as someone’s tenant. That was all. No last name, no trail of achievements, except maybe the pictures on the wall, no certificate of merit, no nothing. Maybe loved by his mother if we could find her. Anyone else?

  “Mind if I search him?” I asked, and Jane shook her head, reminding me not to touch anything. But Willoughby was already reaching inside the dead man’s pockets. He retrieved a worn wallet, and as he opened it, a wad of cards and photos spilled onto the floor, some of them landing on top of the corpse, eliciting an angry response from one of the MLIs.

  I almost lost it then and watched Cookie as she buried her head into Clancy’s shoulder.

  Willoughby grabbed the pile and straightened it, riffling through each item. At one point he held up a photo, a black-and-white of two small boys with a woman. Seated on a park bench in the golden hour, they were smiling at whoever had snapped the picture. Sunlight rimmed their shoulders. The smaller of the two, maybe even the dead man, sat on the woman’s lap. I studied it a moment longer. The two boys resembled the woman. She must have been the mother. Something familiar about her, but at that moment and in that light, she seemed to resemble all young mothers. Smooth skinned, bright eyed, no cares, at least, not the big ones. Oblivious to whatever bad stuff could happen to her boys. And it had. “At least she’s dead and doesn’t know about her son.”

  “You don’t know that, not for sure” Jane said, fingering the photo. “Happier days.” Turning it over, she shook her head. “No inscription.”

  “Here’s a New York State ID,” Willoughby said and held it out. I took it from him and read it. It had been issued some time ago and had a small headshot of what looked like the dead man. He was smiling, his hair brown and wispy. I gave the card to Jane who was about to pocket it when Clancy asked for a closer look. She held the card out to him, refusing to let it go. “Jerry Koznicki,” he read. “Thirty-seven. This address.”