Exhaust misted the windshield, and my mind took a mini journey, trying to fathom the relationship between Liese Goncourt and Phyllida Oxley. I wondered how, when they were alive, Kat’s parents, Henriette and Norris Oxley, referred to Liese and Phyllida. The two mothers? The mothers-in-law? The both of them? Beauty and the bitch? Phyllida and Liese weren’t blood relatives, but all the same, they were family. Were they friends? According to Lorraine, who put her hand to her heart when I asked her about their relationship, they “tolerated each other much of the time.”
I imagined my mother meeting Lorraine. They’d like each other, I knew that, probably be on the same wavelength the moment they met; maybe they’d be as close as Phyllida and Lorraine were, you know, going to museums and galleries, the stuff old ladies do. But Phyllida and Liese Goncourt were another matter. Lorraine didn’t use the word, but reading between the lines of what she’d told me about the two women, Phyllida and Liese were enemies—family enemies, just the worst kind. Phyllida was tall and willowy, full of fun, unmindful of what she wore; from the little I’d heard, Liese was hard-edged, painfully thin, buffed and polished and lifted, dressed to kill from dawn to dusk. Phyllida was witty, kind, loving; Liese was, well, I’d find out what she was in a few minutes, wouldn’t I? If the cars on Flatbush Avenue ever moved.
Finally we picked up speed. It was one of those frigid mornings when the sun hits the windshield with such force it blocks vision for a second, and I had to swing suddenly to avoid sideswiping an oncoming Chevy.
“Glad I wasn’t driving,” Cookie said.
“He was the one at fault: he swerved into our lane,” Lorraine said.
We were silent for a time while my heart thudded against my chest. Two near misses in less than twenty-four hours—the icicle crashing at our feet last night as we walked toward Phyllida’s house, and now some jerk who didn’t know how to drive almost slamming into us. Coincidence? I didn’t think so. Someone had it in for us.
The Visit
Liese Goncourt’s home was huge. Bay windows, turrets, the works. It occupied a corner lot and looked freshly painted, light green siding with some orange and violet trim. Single-family homes lined both sides of the parkway. This neighborhood—sometimes called Victorian Flatbush, other times the Beverley Squares—was known for its large painted houses. Queen Annes, Lorraine called them. She knew a lot about this section of Brooklyn and went to the garden show each summer. Me, I wasn’t into it, and judging from Cookie’s frown, neither was she.
We parked across the street and started up the walk but had to wait for a man with his back to us. He wore a red plaid lumberman’s jacket and was sweeping a few crusty pieces of snow off the stairs.
“Hello, Garth,” Lorraine said, and introduced us to Liese Goncourt’s youngest son.
Surprised, he wheeled around, stepped aside, and nodded. As he did, morning light caught his eyes and transformed them into shimmering gray pools. A scar created a slight indent down the middle of his forehead, reinforcing the peach shape of his head, and black stubble gave him an overall bruised look. In the cold, his face seemed to glow rose and gold.
Cookie, who’d been checking her teeth for pieces of blueberry pancake, stowed her mirror and stared at him.
He had no greeting for us. No nothing. I saw his shoulders stiffen as we passed before he turned and pounded away, disappearing around the side of the house.
“Gives me the creeps,” Cookie said.
“Garth? He’s harmless,” Lorraine said, “a thirty-something devoted to his mother.”
The bell was answered by an older woman. In her prime she must have been close to six feet, although now she was quite stooped, her neck and shoulders twisted unnaturally. Lorraine called it a kyphosis, but it looked like a dowager’s hump to me. I towered over her. She wore black, except for a white apron and rhinestone-studded sunglasses. Twisting her face up toward us as far as possible, she smiled when she saw Lorraine and kissed her on both cheeks.
“You look wonderful, Ameline.”
I watched as the woman brushed away Lorraine’s compliment. For a few seconds afterward, she seemed nonplussed, but after recovering, she introduced herself as the housekeeper and ushered us into the music room, as she called it, speaking softly and with a slight accent. “I’ll summon Mrs. Goncourt. She’s not expecting visitors,” she said, looking at Cookie and me. Before she limped away, she turned to Lorraine. “But I know she’ll be happy to see you.”
When the maid was out of earshot, Cookie said, “Mrs. Havisham in shades?”
“More like a hunched Mrs. Danvers,” I said.
Lorraine laughed. “She’s been with the household forever. Came over with Liese and her mother from Europe. Paris, I believe. But today she looks quite different, much younger than the last time we met.”
“Are you sure she’s the same person?” I asked.
Lorraine shrugged. “Hard to mistake her gait.”
While we waited, Lorraine examined the books on one wall and touched the mahogany baby grand in the corner, a Steinway with ivory keys. Cookie sat on the edge of her chair while I walked around the room filled with oak wainscoting and trim, heavy furniture, thick oriental carpets, and brass lamps with fringed shades. Probably all antiques. I looked up at the ceiling. Similar to the one in Lucy’s parlor, it had a pair of twisting angels in the center—Lorraine called it bas relief. I cast about in corners for dust, signs of wear, and found none. As I was examining a large painting over the mantel, I heard the flapping of wings close to my head and a large bird, a plumy thing, all red and yellow and blue, grazed my curls before arcing toward the corner. With a squawk and words I didn’t get, he perched on the metal edge of his cage before entering, closing the gilded door with his large beak.
I ran a hand through my hair.
“Rooster, Ameline’s scarlet macaw,” Lorraine said.
“Rooster?” Cookie asked.
Lorraine shrugged.
“I suppose he came over with her, too?” I asked.
I heard footsteps approaching, a slow, delicate movement, the practiced rustle of fabric accompanied by the scent of perfume.
Lorraine closed her eyes and breathed in. “Roses, neroli oil, ylang ylang—Chanel No. 5.”
I shot a glance at Cookie, whose eyes rounded when a tall woman wearing a silk indigo full-length gown with a mandarin collar swept into the room. Her red hair, which reminded me of a shellacked Chinese cabinet, caught the pale rays of the sun, as if invisible gaffers shone a baby spot on her head. Although her face was Botox smooth, her fingers were hooked and gnarled, ancient talons polished in red lacquer.
She gave Lorraine a peck on each cheek and sent each of us a glazed-over look. After admiring Cookie’s hair, she examined me from head to toe, but said nothing, turned to Ameline and asked her to take the bird to the kitchen.
Ameline extended her arm, and Rooster hopped on. It sounded like he said, “Bye-bye, suckers,” as the housekeeper walked him out of the room.
Liese Goncourt’s smile was of the plastered-on variety. “You’ve met my son Garth,” she said after we were introduced and she’d invited us to sit. The woman must have been watching us approach from an upstairs window.
“He’s not very talkative,” I said. “Your son, I mean.” We could still hear the parrot although the door to the hall was closed.
Silence from the rest of us while Lorraine quickly managed some light laughter.
“Garth is shy. He wasn’t always like that, you understand, but Afghanistan has had its horrible effect.” Liese told us Garth’s story, what an interesting youngster he’d been, the most intelligent of all her children, “far brighter than his older brother.” She shared his love of the military at an early age, how much he’d changed when his fellow airmen were killed at Kabul Airport and he’d survived. “Now he talks more to the bird than to humans.”
She shifted course. “Why are you here?”
“We came to tell you Phyllida’s in the hospital.”
A heavy silence while Liese collected her face, turning it toward the window. “What’s she done now?”
“A mishap with some medication, I believe,” Lorraine said.
The woman swiveled back to us, pursing her lips. She spoke more when her mouth was closed than when it was open. “Why didn’t the hospital tell us?”
“That’s why we’re here—she wanted you to know,” Lorraine said.
“She could have picked up the phone.”
I looked at Lorraine, who said nothing for a moment, until she told Liese Goncourt the hospital was keeping her overnight for observation.
“Kat should be with us. I’ll call the school.”
Liese walked over to the phone, and while her back was to us, Cookie began nudging me. “She’s the one.” At first, I was too wrapped up in the spectacle of the Goncourt woman to get what Cookie was driving at, until she kept nodding her head slowly while muttering, “The museum nut job I told you about.”
“No need to disturb Kat’s routine,” Lorraine was saying. “I’m sure Phyllida will be out of the hospital, perhaps today or tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ve made arrangements to have Kat stay with her friend—”
“How dare you!” Liese Goncourt said. “She should be with family.”
“That’s not my understanding,” Lorraine said, and her voice was steel. My heart stopped. For a second the silence covered everything.
“Believe me, the girl is fine,” Lorraine went on, walking over to Liese, guiding her back to the couch and sitting next to her. Lorraine in action—in a second she could tame the waters of the deep or shatter an oncoming Sherman tank, but do it with such grace. “You know how fragile Kat is. More than any of us, you know what she’s been through. She needs to have her world remain intact. School is everything to her, and she’s staying with the family of her best friend, Charlotte, until Phyllida is released.”
I watched Liese Goncourt’s eyes dart while her face darkened.
We were interrupted by Ameline, who, shuffling into the room like a crab, carried a tray loaded with cakes and coffee. Although we’d had a huge breakfast, I couldn’t resist more food. At one point the housekeeper’s eyes, no longer protected by sunglasses, gazed into mine and I saw the inscrutable blue of oceans.
The pastries were bite-sized and delicious. Tarts, Liese told us, the dough not an ordinary pie dough—here she made a face—but the real thing, “Pâte brisée,” she said, bought from a French bakery in the neighborhood. “Am I correct, Ameline?”
The maid smiled. “Fresh this morning from Richol Bakery.”
I knew the store, on Nostrand Avenue. “But it’s a hike from here.”
“I drive, of course,” Ameline said.
“We buy only the finest,” Liese Goncourt said, “unlike my counterpart, the miser.” As we ate, she told us the story of her arrival as a young girl right after the war, how afraid she’d been, how different America was. “But it was glittering, and I had my mother with me. The mother’s side, you see, so important.” With that she rose and poured the coffee, setting the silver pot back on its tray. She bent to an end table, where she retrieved a large album and opened the cover. “My mother,” she said, pointing a bony finger to an old black-and-white.
We gathered around, staring at a faded photo of a young girl clinging to the skirts of an older woman. It was taken on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and in the distance was the Statue of Liberty. “Her favorite,” Liese Goncourt told us.
“You look like your mother,” Lorraine said. “Her height, the shape of her head. Regal.”
Liese Goncourt told us about growing up in Brooklyn under her mother’s steady gaze, of their many moves to different neighborhoods. “We shuttled from one place to another every year. Money was tight, but apartments were plentiful and the first month’s rent, free, so we moved regularly. She was resourceful, my mother.”
“I thought you had siblings,” Lorraine said. “A brother?”
Liese’s face mottled, and she was silent for a moment. “Your mind plays tricks.”
“What did your mother do?”
As if she hadn’t heard my question, Liese Goncourt continued. “There were days we had no food. I can remember my mother rooting through garbage cans in the back of our apartment. After a childhood like that, I vowed never again to be poor. Never again.” Her fist pounded the end table.
Lorraine, Cookie, and I sat on the stiff couch, turning the pages of the album. There were pictures of Liese’s two boys, both of them wearing a school uniform; some black-and-white photos in front of the Christmas tree, opening presents; others, their colors faded, standing in front of a convertible next to what looked like a summer cottage, a lake in the background.
“I don’t see any pictures of your daughter. Wasn’t she married to Phyllida’s son?” I asked.
Liese Goncourt said nothing.
“Her death must be very painful for you,” Lorraine said.
That’s when I saw it, a shadow, a glint of something in her eyes. Only for the briefest of seconds. Not quite fear, not quite guilt, but an all-consuming emotion. Inscrutable. She gripped her chair, and rocking back and forth, she said, “She was my special child. I do not … I cannot talk about her. I cannot believe she was on the airplane, too. Who would have thought? She hated flying. Hated it.”
She made a fist and pounded the seat and I felt my heart racing.
“Garth is always so thoughtful. He removed all her pictures. My three children, like steps, they were. One day I shall be able to look at all of them again. One day.”
“I remember Henriette. She looked like your mother, too,” Lorraine said.
As if a tidal wave had swept away the conversation, Liese Goncourt rose. “We need more coffee.”
When her back was turned, I pulled out my notebook and, pretending to look up a date, scrambled to take down the conversation. Something about her words and Liese Goncourt’s expression, impossible to read, grabbed at me.
Cookie put down her cup and sniffed the air. I thought maybe she was going to be sick again. “I smell gas.”
We looked at one another for a minute.
“I’m serious. I smell gas,” Cookie said again, and got up.
“Nonsense.” Liese swiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin.
Cookie walked to the far wall. “The smell is greater over here.”
Lorraine lifted her head, sniffed, and nodded. Then I smelled it, too.
“Ameline!”
The housekeeper must have been leaning against the door because she swung it open on hearing her name, her face bent toward the ground.
“The blonde here says she smells gas,” Liese said.
“So do I,” I said.
We hurried out of the room and through a long corridor. As we did, the smell of gas became stronger and my heart raced. I figured the leak, if that’s what it was, must have been coming from the kitchen or perhaps from the laundry room. I remembered an incident from my childhood when a home down the block exploded. It was early evening and the neighborhood rushed outside and gathered in the street. Smoke and fire engulfed the townhouse. Yelling, screaming. Fire engines. The flames licked an indigo sky. Later my father told me the cause had been a gas leak.
In the Goncourt’s kitchen, I could see Garth crouching behind the range, fiddling with something. Liese told him to call the gas company “to placate our guests.”
“It’s nothing, Mother. Somehow the oven hose became disconnected. Might need a new one. I’ll fix it.”
It was the first time I’d heard him speak. His voice sounded like gravel underneath spinning tires.
The smell of gas was still strong, a noxious odor that made my throat scratchy and my eyes watery. My temples throbbed. Cookie held onto one of the counters. I thought she was going to lose it.
“But I think it should be checked,” I said. “Just to be sure. I’ve seen what can happen.”
The look Garth gave me was like fire.
Ameline thr
ew open the windows, and in a matter of minutes, the kitchen smelled of winter cold, the air relatively clean in this Brooklyn neighborhood.
Lorraine was able to control the situation, steering it away from Liese Goncourt’s swift mood changes, an iceberg looming in the distance. How she did it, I don’t know, but one minute we stood in the kitchen, strangers, wrapped in mutual distrust, and the next we were best of friends joking in the music room. As if the incident never happened, we spent the next few minutes talking about the homes in Victorian Flatbush, the garden show, the museums, and the latest Judi Dench movie until Lorraine rose. She was thanking our hostess when the doorbell rang and the conversation stopped.
Abe and Kirsten
A man entered, bringing in the outside air. I thought of what the night nurse had said about the hospital’s nighttime intruder, “The cold was still around him.” We were introduced to Liese Goncourt’s eldest son, Abelard. Tall and distinguished looking, he wore a navy pinstripe suit with a striped yellow tie and blue shirt. His hair curled in the back into one of those slick Wall Street deals.
“A morning of surprises,” Liese said, kissing him. “Where’s Kirsten?”
“Waiting for me in the car,” he said.
The bell rang, and in seconds, a woman entered. She turned out to be another formidable presence. She was lanky and had chestnut hair, and she wore a gypsy skirt and shawl as she strode in as if the world longed for a glimpse of her. Stamping her feet, she said, “Too cold out there, Abe. I don’t understand why you won’t leave the motor running. Hello to everyone, I suppose.” She introduced herself as Abelard’s wife, Kirsten Goncourt. “Not a welcome part of the family, but captivating, if I do say so myself. Of course, Kat loves me. I’m her interesting aunt, the only one she loves.”
Liese Goncourt lifted one arm in the air, a weary gesture. “Not true. The girl tolerates you. She knows your kind.”
“And good morning to you, Liese darling,” she said between her teeth.
The Brooklyn Drop (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 4) Page 6
