“Can you describe what he wore?”
“Tie, white shirt, or maybe it was blue. He wore a suit, I think, but he had on an overcoat, one of those expensive tweed jobs. Nice shoes, too. He kept stamping the snow from them. That’s another reason I thought he’d just come in from outside. I think he carried a backpack or something in one hand and flowers, definitely flowers in the other, still wrapped in cellophane like he’d just stopped at one of those all-night markets and bought a bouquet.”
We walked over to the spot where she’d seen the intruder. It was, say, twenty-five feet from the door to Phyllida’s room.
“What did you do?”
“Walked him to the nearest elevator bank and waited until he got on. He was pleasant enough. Apologized for the intrusion.”
“If you saw him again, would you recognize him?”
She buttoned her sweater. “It was dark. I’ve not had much sleep in the last forty-eight hours.”
I thanked her and went in search of the NYPD detectives, who, I learned, had commandeered a small office in the back of the nurses’ station.
As I entered, Jane tossed her blonde locks. She was staring at a screen, saying something about killing a red raccoon, her nickname for me, while Willoughby, her partner, was biting into a plastic-looking éclair.
I told her about my interviews with the staff, especially with the night nurse who’d seen a man late last night near Phyllida’s room.
Her eyebrow shot up. “Did you get a statement?”
“I took notes.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Where did you get the pastry?” I asked Willoughby.
“That’s not the half of it,” Jane said. “He’s been up and down several times while my eyeballs are falling out with work I didn’t need, thanks to you. He’s polished off two hot dogs, coffee, now this. Worse, he’s a twig.” She pointed to the squished end of chocolate icing about to be swallowed by Willoughby’s gargantuan mouth. Jonah and the whale.
“Gone over and over the stuff. Nada,” Willoughby said, trying to brush a glob of something from his tie.
“Not nothing,” Jane corrected him. “And don’t get crumbs on my side. There you go, squirting custard all over yourself. How Sally stands you, I’ll never know. Wipe up your mess, please.”
Willoughby shifted his lanky self and winked.
“What’s ‘not nothing’?” I asked.
Jane stood up and brushed her skirt. “Yuck, you’re a pig.”
I must have shot her a look because she said, “Not you, him. At four forty-seven this morning, someone got on the freight elevator.”
“Describe him.”
“Stop giving me orders. As the car ascended, the camera stopped recording. Looks like someone didn’t like being watched, because the last few frames of the clip showed a guy wearing a ski mask, his gloved hand reaching up. That’s it. I’ve asked the hospital techies to make me a dupe of the file.”
“So you don’t think I’m crazy, then?”
“I’d never say that. Plus, you are an endless pain. Now we need a statement from the night nurse. Did you hear me, Willoughby?”
He stood, straightened his bones, and walked toward the door.
“Watch. He’ll make a cafeteria stop before he gets to the nurses’ station.” She wagged her finger at me like I was responsible for Phyllida’s plight. “I’m not sure what happened to Lorraine’s friend, but I have serious doubts about the security in this place.”
“And that brings me to my final request of the day, or at least for now.”
“The answer is no.”
“Just listen. Whoever is trying to kill Phyllida Oxley is having an easy time breaching security in this place. That means they’ll try again, probably be successful. Face it, the hospital can’t be expected to have a guard by her door twenty-four seven, so we’ll have to do it.”
I ignored the bulldog set of her mouth.
“What do you mean, someone’s trying to kill her?” she asked, her eyes boring into my face. “The woman took bad meds. In the hospital, she fell out of bed.”
With my mouth flapping faster than my mind, I painted another scenario of a senior, vulnerable woman strangled in her hospital bed due to the police’s refusal to provide a watch over her room. I described three-inch headlines in the Eagle over a gruesome photo of a bloody body being rolled down to the morgue. “The chief wouldn’t be happy.”
“She’s in the ICU with a nurse assigned to her twenty-four hours a day. Do it yourself or hire Pinkerton if you can’t manage. And speaking of surveillance, when am I going to get my report on the Bensonhurst massage parlor you promised two weeks ago?”
My toes did a curl. I’d forgotten all about that job, and it was requested through Jane by none other than her bureau chief. La Belle Hélène was a massage parlor in Bensonhurst suspected of being a front for human trafficking. We’d been given three photos of some lowlives and asked to track their activity as well as any other suspicious comings and goings in and out of the parlor. That meant hours of surveillance, a perfect job for Cookie, and a way to garner Jane’s favor. Maybe. While the detective’s eyes did a half-roll, I called Cookie and apologized for not asking for it sooner, but told her to meet me at Teresa’s with her Bensonhurst report in an hour. In reply, Cookie gagged.
“Tell her to email it to me as soon as possible,” Jane said. “The chief wants to read it this morning.”
“Can’t do that,” I said, hoping my nose wasn’t growing. “We always double-check our work before delivery.”
As for guarding Phyllida Oxley, we agreed to split the workload, providing round-the-clock coverage with one person stationed outside Phyllida’s hospital room for the duration of her stay. I’d take the night shift, Jane’s crew would cover days—as I pointed out, a visible police presence. I didn’t tell Jane, but I planned on using Lucy’s cleaning crew to cover my end of the deal since my detective agency was so short staffed.
Without warning, Jane stood, my clue that our meeting was over, and with head down, she pounded out of the room, muttering, “Holy be-f’in’ J, this is the last time, the very last time.”
Kat Arrives
The nurses said we should talk, be reassuring. They said Phyllida could hear us, so for the last half hour, Lorraine had been carrying on a monologue, stroking her friend’s arm. As we stood around the bed about to leave, a young girl appeared in the doorway, her silky brown hair fastened in a ponytail. Lorraine introduced her as Kat. Lingering on the jamb of her grandmother’s hospital room, she looked thin and scared in Jeggings, down jacket, and Uggs, a book bag on her back. “Granny?”
“Don’t worry, darling, she’s fine,” Lorraine said. “They’re making her sleep; they’re just being careful. She should be awake soon. Where’s Charlotte?”
She rushed to Phyllida and stood there, scared, thin, lost.
“Talk to her. She can hear you.”
I remembered me, when was it, eight, nine years ago when Mom was in the hospital. My stomach started playing its elevator tricks, and for a while I couldn’t speak because of the lump in my throat. Don’t ask me how, but I knew this was just the beginning. Why, I don’t know, but I thought of that long bone of ice pummeling to the ground, and I vowed I’d do everything I could to find whoever did this to Phyllida. I was certain Phyllida didn’t fall, not of her own accord, and I was certain Kat needed to stay with her grandmother.
“Can you hang out with Charlotte for one more day?” Lorraine asked.
Kat nodded, a hand pressed to her mouth.
“Give it a couple of days, she’ll be her old self,” Lorraine said. “She loves you so much.”
Kat pulled up a chair and sat by Phyllida’s bed, feeling the blanket with her slim fingers.
“Tell her about school.”
Cookie at Teresa’s
The frost on the handle bit through my gloves as I opened the door to Teresa’s, a restaurant in the heart of Brooklyn Heights and a favorite hangout. It was wh
ere I usually met Cookie, even when I didn’t have a favor to ask. This morning, however, I did. It was crowded, the smell of home cooking and coffee making my stomach rumble.
“What took you so long?” I asked by way of greeting when Cookie slid into the booth. Cookie and I have been friends since forever, or at least since kindergarten at Packer Collegiate, and we’ve been through everything together—twelve years of school, her father’s cancer, my so-called father’s leaving, 9/11, Mom’s death, my black moods afterward when I wasn’t much of a friend.
“You know I haven’t done anything about the Bensonhurst massage parlor job, and now you’re promising Jane a report? I suppose I could do a surveillance this morning, although I’m supposed to be writing a paper on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives.”
“Something else has come up, and it’s more pressing. But tell me about Clancy first. Everything okay?”
Cookie blushed.
“So that means you’re in a good mood. Fine. Because I need your help.”
“Hold on until after we’ve eaten. I’m so starved I can’t hear straight.” Reaching into her bag for her mirror, Cookie applied a fresh layer of lipstick. I thought maybe she’d let herself go now that she and Clancy were an item, but not Cookie. Unlike me, she wore matching outfits, her face was always made up, her hair perfect.
Our coffee arrived and I took a sip while Cookie, disinclined to drink, stared at the table. “Feeling a little bit rocky today,” she said. “Food will calm my stomach.”
I looked up from the menu and studied her. She did look a little pale. Her lipstick, freshly applied, made her mouth look like a puckered rose in snow.
The waitress arrived, and we ordered the works to share—cheese blintzes, blueberry pancakes, two sides of bacon, four pieces of toast. Cookie took a swig of freshly squeezed orange juice. Two seconds later, she shot up and ran toward the bathrooms in the back. When she returned, she mumbled something about maybe eating tainted food last night, or maybe she was getting the flu. “Clancy cooked the dinner, and the fish was a tad underdone.”
But we both tucked into the breakfast like nothing had happened, and I started in about Phyllida. Cookie nodded while stuffing her mouth. She seemed a little bored, like she’d heard it all before. Figures, Cookie’s mother is a major mouth and friendly with just about everybody in Carroll Gardens, where news travels faster than the bullet train. Cookie said she’d heard Phyllida Oxley was in the hospital. I told her about the roofies and Phyllida’s not remembering, about the bruising and the blunt trauma resulting in intracranial bleeding. “They’ve operated. She’s in a coma.”
“From roofies?” Cookie asked.
“No. From the fall in the hospital. Apparently she slipped in her room and hit her head, or so the intern said.”
“Slipped and fell? That’s not Phyllida.”
I smiled. “You sound like you know her.”
She nodded. “Mom does, and I heard her lecture a couple of years ago at the Brooklyn Museum.”
“Good?” I asked, thinking better her than me and cutting a wedge of blintz. I stuffed myself while Cookie blotted the corners of her mouth. She said Phyllida knew her art, all right, and told me her talk was wonderful. I asked how she could remember one lecture from another.
“I’ll never forget her talk, one of the best I’ve heard. She’s an expert on Vuillard and les Nabis.
“English, please.”
“Postimpressionist avant-garde?”
I shrugged.
“Anyway, I love Vuillard.”
“Who?”
“You’re not paying attention. The painter she talked about. You know the guy I mean—early twentieth-century French? A Symbolist? The one who lived with his mother? Did lots of interiors?”
“Of course I know his work,” I lied.
“Well, after Phyllida spoke, she showed us slides from the Vuillard exhibit they had at the museum years ago.”
“Sorry I missed the show,” I said, taking a swig of brew.
“We weren’t born. But getting back to Phyllida’s lecture, someone from the museum was there, too, asking questions. Best of all, there was a crazy lady in the audience who kept yelling, ‘How would you know?’ and, ‘You understand nothing of love, of life,’ and, ‘You’re a fraud!’ The room was charged, I mean electric. But I felt for Phyllida.”
Cookie stopped talking and got a faraway look.
“Go on.”
“Phyllida just stood there, sort of smiling. Calm, waiting for the crazy lady to finish. She has a measured grace, I’ll tell you. I could learn a lot from her.”
“We all could. Losing her husband and son like that.”
Cookie shivered. “I can’t imagine living after such a catastrophe. If I ever lost Clancy—”
“You’d be fine. Remember our pact.”
“What pact?”
“Our no-man-is-everything pact.”
Cookie flapped a hand. “Anyway, two guys restrained her while someone ran for help. Finally library personnel escorted the woman out of the room. Yelling, screaming—you would have loved it.”
“What did she look like? The loopy lady, I mean.”
“That was the weird part. She was dressed like an uptown babe. Diamonds. Pearls. Feathers. Hair like yours only brighter, not so kinked and knotted.”
“That’s enough.”
“She was seriously bats, but all her screaming had the opposite effect of what she intended. After they dragged her away, Phyllida made some sort of joke. Relieved, we asked more questions. She knew everything. I’ll never forget it.”
I sopped up syrup with the last of my toast and watched the waitress refill my cup. “So would you?”
“There you go with your usual non sequitur.”
“English, Cookie.”
Suddenly she got up and made a second dash for the back rooms. When she returned, she looked paler than before.
“You’re pregnant.”
“None of your business.”
“Whatever happened to the we’ll-never-ever-have-kids vow we made?”
“I don’t remember that one. Anyway, like I told you, it was last night’s fish.”
I felt my stomach do its up and down thing, but decided to stuff Cookie’s state for now. How could she? While she examined herself in the mirror, I told her I didn’t trust the hospital’s security, especially after the night nurse’s account of the after-hours visitor on Phyllida’s floor and the broken security camera Jane and Willoughby found in the freight elevator. “Lorraine asked me to investigate, and we’re starting with Phyllida’s family. That’s where you come in.”
“Phyllida doesn’t have any family left,” Cookie said. “Except for Kat.”
“Her late son’s in-laws. If you’re such a Phyllida expert, how come you don’t know about them? The mother of Phyllida’s late daughter-in-law. The old lady’s still alive and lives in Victorian Flatbush. That’s who we’re visiting.”
“We?”
I nodded.
“I almost forgot about them,” Cookie said. “And the battle Phyllida won to become her granddaughter’s guardian. When are we going?”
“As soon as you finish your food. But there’s one more favor. You’ll be paid, of course.”
“Sounds like surveillance.”
I reminded her about the massage parlor snoop and asked for a report.
“You’re joking.”
“Take a peek and write it up? I just need time of day, traffic in and out of the parlor, unusual types in the neighborhood, thugs lurking behind garbage cans, that sort of thing. If you can do a tail, all the better. Her chief’s on her about it. She promised him something by last week. So can you start this afternoon?”
On the Way
Phyllida was still in a coma, but there was hope. According to what the doctor told Lorraine, she should recover with no long-term impairment. “Her road back will be a long one,” Lorraine added, as the three of us sat in heavy traffic on our way to meet Liese Goncourt, the m
other of Phyllida’s deceased daughter-in-law. She lived in the Victorian section of Flatbush in a Queen Anne on Westminster. Ostensibly our purpose in visiting her was to tell her about Phyllida. But I had a deeper motive. I wanted to find out more about Phyllida Oxley and Kat and those close to them. Lorraine had told me a little bit about the mysterious and haughty woman, and I wanted to judge for myself her reaction to Phyllida’s predicament.
“Did anyone call to tell this Liese woman we were coming?” Cookie asked.
I shook my head. Making an appointment was not my style. If I’d learned anything from interning at Brown’s Detective Agency, I’d learned that much. “Spring and surprise” was their mantra.
“How much should we tell her?” Cookie asked.
“As little as possible,” I said.
“We’d better rehearse,” Lorraine said. “We’re dealing with a formidable woman.”
Her remark was followed by a slab of silence. Cookie looked out the window. I looked at the road ahead. But after a few minutes of role-playing, Lorraine taking the part of Liese Goncourt, twisting our words and asking too many questions, we agreed not to tell her anything other than Phyllida was in the hospital for observation—a stretch of the truth—and Kat was staying with friends.
“I expect her sources have already given her an up-to-the-minute report on Phyllida,” Lorraine said. “How, I don’t know, but she manages to keep current with family events. We’ll learn more by watching her face than by listening to what she says.”
“Unless she’s had a fresh dose of Botox.” Cookie opened the window for air and quickly shut it after arctic wind blasted her in the face. “Do you think she could have given Phyllida the drugs? Hit her over the head in the hospital?”
“She wants to be Kat’s guardian,” Lorraine said. “Why, I’m not sure, and that’s all I’d like to say until after you’ve met her.”
I looked in the rearview mirror at Cookie, who met my gaze for a second before staring out at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch as we sat in heavy traffic in front of Prospect Park.
The Brooklyn Drop (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 4) Page 5
