I was about to wind it up when Jasper said, “Her and that Plymouth of hers. Twenty-five years old at least. She insists on keeping it. Terris got it when he first started Oxley Paper. I could see him never changing autos, throwing all his money into his company. Worked like a demon. In a few years, though, he bought himself another car, then another. Sometimes you can tell from the cars how folks are doing.”
“We drive a Ford,” Vera said.
“Now I help Phyllida keep the Plymouth in good shape, but you’d think with all her money …”
“Jazz helps her out as much as he can.”
“Ever see anyone in the neighborhood who might want to hurt her?” I asked.
He rubbed his chin. “Now that you ask, I did see a woman in the alley. Couple months ago. I was changing the oil in Phyllida’s car. Weird-looking woman. Appeared like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Weird? How so?”
“Dressed funny. Wearing a long skirt, no, not just long. How can I describe it? You know, like a peasant would wear. Wore a coat over it, but the coat was regular length. Now that I think about it, she was in Phyllida’s garden, walked toward me. Must have seen me staring at her, so she came up, all friendly like, asking about the car.”
“My age? Older? Younger?”
He shrugged. “Taller.”
“Everyone is.”
“Older, but not old. She seemed phony to me. Can’t tell you why.”
“Strange, a woman appearing in the backyard in winter,” Vera said. “Sure you weren’t dreaming?” She looked at the ceiling again.
“Didn’t fit in?” I suggested.
“These days you can’t say that,” Vera said. “We’re becoming, I don’t know, more cosmopolitan, wouldn’t you say?”
I didn’t answer, but thanked them for the bread and coffee and information. “If you think of anything else, please call.” I gave them my card.
I had one more question. “Can you think of anyone else, a friend, maybe, who might have called on Phyllida last night?”
He felt the whiskers on his chin again. “A few years after Terris died, I used to see her with a guy. Good looking. Older, of course. You’d say he was older, anyways. Lots of gray hair, but muscled. I’d like to have his looks. See them both in the neighborhood. Once I saw them walking into that movie house in Cobble Hill. What’s the name of that place, Vera, the one that shows all the artsy pictures?”
“Cobble Hill.” She gave him a look.
“That’s the one. Laughing, talking. Didn’t see me. And another time I saw him go into her house.”
“You sound just like a voyeur, Jazz.”
“The woman asked, didn’t she? Got to be honest.”
“Recently?” I asked.
He thought a moment. “Yes and no.”
“What kind of an answer is that?” Vera asked. “Tell the woman, was it this month, two months ago, last year?”
“Way before that. I’m trying to think of the guy’s name. Frank, that’s it. Owns Amity Meats.”
After I said goodbye to the Jeromes, I walked down to Amity Meats, but there was a Back Soon sign on the door and one of those clocks pointing to thirty, so I went back to Carroll Gardens and took a walk around the neighborhood, stopping in front of Phyllida’s home. The icicle shards were still on the sidewalk and I thought of the commotion during the early hours, saying a silent prayer for Lorraine’s friend as I made my way around to the back of the house. It was fenced in, one of those flimsy garden fences, but I found a couple of slanting posts, pushed them a little to the side, and climbed through, jumping over a flower bed, slipping on some ice, and almost landing on my keister. I looked around and saw a stone bench, so I sat and thought about Phyllida and wondered about the woman Jasper had seen in her yard a few months back and what significance if any her appearance had to do with Phyllida’s predicament. She must have startled Jasper, that’s for sure. I tried to picture the garden in summers past, Phyllida and Terris and Norris sitting there on a summer’s evening, but realized that two of the three people in that small family were dead. What were Phyllida’s chances? I would have stayed a while, trying to absorb the truth of the Oxleys, but I began to shiver, and it wasn’t just from the cold: I was feeling the doom surrounding this family. I told myself to stop it, looked at the time on my phone and started walking toward Amity Street. Time to call on Frank the butcher.
Frank the Butcher
Amity Meats was a butcher shop taking up the first floor of a converted carriage house stuck between a park and a row of brownstones on a side street in Cobble Hill. As I opened the door, a silver bell tinkled. The walls were immaculate, covered in smallish white tiles up to the tin ceiling, the floor covered in sawdust. An old-fashioned light fixture cast shadows on the counter and the guy standing behind it.
When he heard the bell, he looked up and smiled. For an older man he was handsome. He was about six feet, a little shorter than Denny, but probably Robert’s age. Although it was freezing outside and ultra cool in his shop, he wore a short-sleeve shirt. Carved features, salt-and-pepper hair, flat stomach. He had on a bloodstained butcher’s apron that sported a girly pin on the upper right-hand side, a pink plastic daisy. He introduced himself as Frank the butcher. I admired the pin and he laughed, his face crinkling up, his brown eyes sparkling. He said his sister had given it to him. “She said it would help me with all my lady customers.”
I studied the sign in back of him, the one with all the prices, pondering the meaning of “Chicken Brets, $5.99 a pound,” but poor speller that I am, I wasn’t about to correct the mistake. Matter of fact, it endeared me to the store and its owner. When he saw me studying the meats displayed so neatly behind the glass, he went back to what he was doing, pounding slabs of veal with a brass mallet.
I took a deep breath, smelling sawdust and that metallic coppery tang, and showed him my ID. “I must have passed by this place a thousand times, but I’m not much for cooking,” I said. “I’m investigating an incident last night, a woman assaulted in her home. Phyllida Oxley. Do you know her?”
His face registered shock. “She all right?”
“I think so.” Then I explained, “An assault of sorts: she was given date-rape drugs.”
He staggered back as if I’d hit him. “Poor woman. Who’d do that? She didn’t have an enemy.”
“Where were you last night?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Not with Phyllida, that’s for sure. Took care of my grandkids after work until six, maybe seven. After that, went to Cody’s for a quick one, then home. Early night. And, no, I wasn’t with anyone.” Just in case, he gave me his daughter’s phone number. “I know you gotta check.”
Setting down the mallet, he thought a moment. “Tell you what, before any customers come in, let’s take a breather.” He looked at his watch, walked over to the door, and adjusted the Back Soon sign, giving us thirty minutes. I followed him behind the counter into a back room, colder even than the front of the store. Double meat locker doors gleamed on the far wall. The area looked immaculate except for a desk in the corner piled high with folders and receipts, a few books, some waxed brown butcher’s paper and twine. He motioned me to sit in a rickety metal chair on one side. Above it was an old calendar from 1908. I touched the picture, an old photo of the store with somber men in straw hats standing on the stoop, and wondered if his ancestors knew mine.
“My grandfather started this shop when he came over from Palermo.”
I told him about my great-grandmother arriving from Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century. We didn’t say anything for a while, the silence of our ancestors flowing between us.
“You think I’d hurt Phyllida? I haven’t even seen her in a couple of years. We used to see a lot of each other, but recently when I’d call, more and more she was tied up.”
I looked into his eyes, calm, watery, trusting.
“I’d call and leave a message and she didn’t return my call. Last time we spoke, all she could talk abou
t was Kat. That’s her granddaughter. Lives with her. Couple calls like that, I got the message. She couldn’t wait to get away from me, I could tell. I mean, she must have had something important to do or I was boring her or something.”
He looked down at his desk and his cheeks were like flame.
“Someone saw you entering her building.”
Slowly he shook his head. “They were mistaken.”
His eyes drilled into mine. “I had her phone number. Still do. She had mine, maybe still does. I’d call her, see if she wanted to go to a show or dinner. We’d meet in front of the theater or restaurant, that was it. I know she lives in Carroll Gardens, but that’s all. Don’t know her address; she doesn’t know mine. Friends, that’s all we are.” He stared at his grandfather’s calendar. “Peck-on-the-cheek friends.”
He was silent for a long time before continuing. “My wife died about the same time Terris did—her husband. Phyllida and I met in grief counseling. Friends, that’s all we are, were, although I’d like to think we could have made it into something more.” He looked at me and smiled. “If we both weren’t married to ghosts.”
He stopped talking and I let the moment marinate.
“Classy woman, that’s for sure. Devoted to her late husband; I am to my late wife, but that’s not the point, is it? Just a little companionship was all I was looking for. Same with her. Went to the movies a couple of times. She likes a different kind of show, serious, a little arty, so we went to flicks at Cobble Hill Cinema. Out to eat. Once I asked her to a Mets game, but she said she’d be too bored. Then she invited me to a lecture she was giving on some French artist, but that’s not my thing. Movies, shows, restaurants, no galleries or talks or baseball. But when we were together, we never had to search for words. Got along swell.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Like I said, two, three years ago at best. You don’t think I’d hurt her?”
The man almost started to tear up and I slammed a fist into my thigh. Grief is a disease that eats a life.
We shook hands and I left.
So far, the morning had been a bust. No answers, just questions. I walked toward Lucy’s, doubting the credibility of Jasper Jerome as a witness, wondering who he saw entering Phyllida’s building, or in her backyard, or if he saw anyone.
Too Little Too Late
After I called Frank’s daughter to check out his story, I thought I’d better pay a visit to my cleaning business, so I walked down the few steps leading to Lucy’s, located on the ground floor of my girlhood home, a townhouse in the heart of Brooklyn Heights. When Mom, Gran, and I were down to pennies after my deadbeat dad left us—no goodbyes, just a flash of light glinting off his Ray-Bans as he turned and walked away for good—I had to do something. So I started cleaning apartments. The business grew into Lucy’s. I almost flunked out of Packer Collegiate, but we ate and paid my tuition and the taxes. Today Lucy’s thrived, and each time I thought of Mom pinching pennies, my stomach did a roll. Too little, too late, Mom.
Minnie, the office manager, dressed in her orange print, waved to me from the back as I entered. She was schmoozing on the phone with a customer and—a true multitasker—was eating potato chips while she talked.
“A man called for you. Wouldn’t give me his name. He asked when I expected you. When I told him I didn’t know and could I please take a message, he said he’d call back and hung up before I could talk him into leaving a number.”
“What did he sound like?” I asked.
“Not tall, dark or handsome, that’s for sure. I think he’s called here a couple of times.”
I was silent a second. “Must be a customer.”
“And speaking of customers, we’ve got a new one. This one’s big. You better sit down.” She beamed. “Brooklyn General.”
My jaw dropped. “But cleaning hospitals is a specialty.”
“Not medical cleaning—no instruments, operating rooms or ICUs. Just patient rooms, waiting rooms, reception, that kind of cleaning.”
I tried to count the floors in the main wing. “Better run an ad in the Eagle. We’ll need to hire more help.” I pulled out my phone to call classifieds, but while I looked at the screen, it vibrated.
Lorraine. “Phyllida’s in a bad way. Meet me in the hospital.”
Looking for Clues
Dr. Too Tight faked a self-assured stance. “This morning an orderly found your friend in a comatose state on the floor. Sometime during the night she must have gotten out of the bed, lost her balance, fell and hit the back of her head. She sustained a blunt trauma, which resulted in a subdural hematoma. We’ve operated. It was successful, but we’ve induced a coma. Chances are good she’ll make a full recovery.”
I’d heard “successful” and “chances are good” before. And more important, I wasn’t buying his explanation. I was sure the same person who gave Phyllida date-rape drugs had paid a visit to the hospital in the very early hours with the intention of killing her.
“You’re sure she fell?”
He shrugged. “This is a hospital, a closed, safe environment. What else could it have been?”
Lorraine’s face filled with color. “Couldn’t someone have gotten up here and hit her on the back of her skull?”
The doctor shook his head. “There are contusions on her arm consistent with a fall. And you will admit, she’s been disoriented since her arrival.”
“So you’ve written her off as a confused old lady susceptible to falls, have you?” Lorraine brushed back a lock of gray hair and crossed her arms. I watched her eyes, huge and foreboding behind the semi-fog of her lenses.
“You have security cameras,” I said. “I’d like to see last night’s file.”
He fingered his stethoscope. “You’ll need to talk with administration.”
Lorraine looked at her watch. “I promised Robbie a month ago I’d attend the retired policemen’s breakfast with him this morning. I hate to do it, but I’ve skipped the last three and can’t get out of this one. I’ve got to go.”
Poor Lorraine. Robert McDuffy, her husband, was a handful. He gave me a pain, and she managed him with such grace. I could never, ever be the saint she was. After I assured her it was no problem at all and I understood, I watched her walk away, half turn to me and blow a kiss. As I stood there, the elevator in my stomach did its thing while I fingered my engagement ring and my toes withered. In a few seconds, though, I recovered, reminding myself that Denny was more like his mother than his father in the emotional department.
I called Jane; I needed her help. I heard the rustle of papers in the background as I explained Phyllida’s state.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “You want me to send over two uniforms I don’t have at the moment to help you go through closed-circuit footage and question hospital personnel, all because your friend fell out of her bed?”
“It’s a cover-up, don’t you see? Phyllida didn’t fall as the hospital claims. Something mysterious happened to her, a patient in their charge, way after visiting hours. I say someone entered the hospital, found her room, and tried to finish the job they’d started earlier when they slipped her the roofies.”
“She’s an old woman coming down from an illegal drug, either given to her or taken by mistake. Confused, she got up from her hospital bed for whatever reason, slipped and fell.”
Into the hard silence that followed, I cautioned her to keep an open mind.
“You’re cautioning me?”
I ignored her mood and slid in a long sentence about the help the Fina Fitzgibbons Detective Agency had given her a few weeks earlier on a case—a full day of surveillance, pro bono, of course—not to mention Lorraine’s help interpreting some legal stuff for her.
No response from the other end.
I painted a dire what-if scenario, as in the unexplained hospital death of a Carroll Gardens resident and lack of due diligence on the part of NYPD’s investigative team. “Fanned by the inky fingers of Eagle reporte
rs, it’ll be front-page news for ten days at least. Think of the neighborhood repercussions, all that explaining to the chief. Anyway, no need to send someone from your team. You and Willoughby will do just fine. You can zip through the tapes while I question the night-duty nurses before they leave. How soon can you get here?”
To her credit, Jane arrived within the half hour. While she and Willoughby combed closed-circuit footage of Phyllida’s wing, the front lobby, and the elevator banks leading up to the floor, I interviewed hospital staff. Most saw nothing. Naturally. But just as they were about to leave, a bleary-eyed nurse wearing pink scrubs, a sweater, and a bun at half mast came into the cramped room they’d given me to interview. She had something for me.
“I swear I felt a small brush, a shiver.”
“Time?”
“Must have been after three thirty. Closer to four, I’d say. The others said it was my imagination. I’m coming off a double shift, you see. But, being thorough and all, I get up, take a look around.” She rolled her hair and slashed it with one of those tortoiseshell fasteners, making it worse. Now brown hair fell onto her shoulders. “Why do I bother?”
“So you said you felt a shiver, a small brush of something. That’s all?”
She shrugged.
“Time? After four, I know that, you know, that space when you just want to zone out?”
“And?”
“Everyone else thought I was crazy.”
I smiled. “What did you do?”
“Got up and looked.”
“And?”
“Found a guy in the hall who claimed he was lost.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
She shook her head. “The cold was still around him. I swear he’d just come into the building.”
“Describe him.”
“Not short, not tall, average. Good-looking, I’d say. Brown wavy hair, or maybe it was black, hard to tell in the dim light. Late thirties, maybe. Dressed nicely.”
The Brooklyn Drop (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 4) Page 4
