“And this isn’t the woman?” I asked.
“The other woman had thicker brows. She was younger, and her eyes were blue. Deep blue, like an evening sky. I made a note of it.”
Liese Goncourt straightened, her face smug, venomous.
I asked him if he could be mistaken. After all, he was seeing her in a harsher light.
But the officer was adamant. “Show me the woman, and I’ll identify her, but she’s not the one I saw last night. I’ll swear to it.”
Fighting Destroys
After a fruitless visit with Liese Goncourt, Jane and Willoughby agreed to meet with us if we could keep it brief. They brought along Officer Deems; perhaps he could contribute something more to the morning. They were all too busy, she’d said, but ever so gently I reminded her of the patrolman’s error in admitting a visitor to Phyllida’s room, and I threw in a sentence or two about Kat’s plight with her beloved granny on life support and the Goncourt family’s readiness to contest the guardianship.
We sat in the parlor one flight up from Lucy’s ground-floor office so we wouldn’t disturb Minnie, who was so busy these days vetting new customers, interviewing, and training recent hires. Besides, last year we’d had the first floor decorated in an upbeat style, the ancient furniture I remembered from my childhood carried to the attic and covered in muslin. I hoped with a new look, it would serve as a conference room for potential customers, an expression of Lucy’s—innovative, energetic, but still classic, like many of the mid-nineteenth-century brownstones of Brooklyn Heights.
Officer Deems cast his eyes to the ceiling. “All those clay roses and acanthus scrolls surrounding a portrait of a lady. Egg-and-dart molding, too. Whoever did this job knew what he was doing.”
“Knew what she was doing,” I corrected.
He told me his father was a master plasterer, and he’d helped him create many parlor details like mine.
“At least someone admires the handiwork,” I said, taking his jacket.
Willoughby sat next to Jane, looking uncomfortable, his eyes moving from right to left while his hands flipped his tie. His tie, my stomach. I did some deep breathing.
“Once again you’ve given us work, and once again it’s been a waste of time,” Jane said as she sank into an overstuffed chair.
Lorraine brought out a tray with coffee and a plate of stale cookies she’d found in the cupboard. “Help yourselves,” she said, and Willoughby dug in, avoiding eye contact with me. Officer Deems thanked her and nibbled on a chocolate chip.
“So where does this leave us?” Jane asked, looking at her watch. “And while we’re at it, if we’re going to work together, we’d better clear the air. For reasons yet to be explained except as the actions of a misguided and immature person, Fina left Denny early yesterday evening, and—”
“That’s enough,” Lorraine said.
I thought Willoughby’s eyes would pop from their sockets. “He’s my friend. I feel for the guy and she—”
“Table it!” Jane said.
Despite the hollow feeling in my stomach, I heard myself say, “Jane’s right. My leaving Denny, while none of your business, sits like a specter between us. We’ve got to clear the air if we’re to solve the mystery of—”
“What mystery?” Willoughby asked, hunching forward in his chair.
“For the last three days, someone’s been trying to murder Phyllida Oxley,” I reminded him. “Surely we can agree on that.”
“I’d agree that one mishap after another is strange,” Jane said.
“Not strange—criminal,” Lorraine said. “Unless you believe in coincidence and bizarre events happening in quick succession to a person who should be safe in her home as well as secure in a hospital, you’ve got to agree someone’s been trying to murder or at least severely incapacitate Phyllida Oxley, and unless there’s a miracle, it looks like she’s succeeded.”
Jane’s face reddened. “So you still think it’s Liese Goncourt, even after Officer Deems ruled her out as Phyllida Oxley’s last visitor?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
“I was asking Lorraine, not you.”
Officer Deems was like a spectator at a ping-pong match.
“And don’t ask me to explain how I know it, but Liese Goncourt is definitely behind the attempted murder,” I said.
Lorraine agreed.
I looked at Jane’s face, waiting for an eruption. There was none.
Lorraine asked me if I’d interviewed Phyllida’s handyman. I told them about meeting Jasper Jerome and what he had to say about seeing Phyllida several times with an older man, someone he thought he’d seen entering her house a couple of years ago, to which Lorraine said it sounded like something Jasper Jerome would say.
“He gave me the man’s name and I went to see him, a butcher in Cobble Hill called Frank.”
“The guy who owns Amity Meats?” Willoughby asked. “I know him.”
He would. I sipped my coffee.
“Nice guy. Wife died when I was a kid. Sally and I buy all our meat there.”
I told them about meeting the butcher, that he denied knowing where Phyllida lived, that they’d met in some kind of group therapy, had seen each other a couple of times after the group dispersed, but that was a while ago. “I believed him, and besides, he had an alibi for last night.”
“They always have alibis,” Jane said.
Then I told them what Jasper Jerome said about a tall woman wearing a long skirt who showed up one day in Phyllida’s backyard when he was fixing her old Plymouth.
“And I suppose you’re going to tell me this mysterious woman was Liese Goncourt,” Jane said, crossing her arms.
“Or her daughter-in-law,” Lorraine said, and told them about the mutual dislike displayed by the two women yesterday. “Odd behavior in front of outsiders.”
There was silence for a time while Jane seemed to consider Lorraine’s remark.
“Phyllida Oxley is now clinging to a thread,” Lorraine continued, “hooked up to a resuscitator against her wishes, and unless there’s vast improvement, I need to make the decision in a few hours whether or not to sustain that life support.”
Officer Deems bowed his head. Even Willoughby had nothing to say.
Into the silence that followed, we told them about the guardian clause in Henriette and Norris Oxley’s Will, mentioning the trust, emphasizing the stipulation of minimal contact between Kat and Liese Goncourt.
“How much money’s involved in the trust?” Willoughby asked.
“By now it must be in the millions,” Lorraine said.
Willoughby clicked his tongue and reached for another cookie.
“Henriette Oxley wanted to limit her daughter’s contact with the child’s grandmother, her own mother?” Jane asked.
“My reaction, too,” I said. “It’s proof there’s more to Liese Goncourt than we realize, and her daughter knew it.”
“Proof? There you go on one of your fancy flights.”
“Well, maybe Henriette didn’t get along with her mother,” Willoughby suggested.
“Something more than a tiff, wouldn’t you say?” Lorraine asked.
“I know Liese Goncourt is at the heart of this attempted murder, and she’s also mixed up in whatever’s going on with the Bensonhurst massage parlor,” I said.
Jane rose. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“That’s it. Lorraine, you do the talking from now on. She listens to you,” I said, getting up and pacing. I felt blood boiling my cheeks even as I knew I was losing it and not for the first time this week. A voice deep down told me I had to take control of myself before they locked me in a bin.
“Sit down, Fina,” Lorraine said. “Jane is playing devil’s advocate. We need to be dispassionate. I don’t discount what you say. You’ve been given the gift of special sight. But those of us who don’t have extrasensory perception find it convenient to disbelieve your leaps.”
At this, Jane lifted her eyes to my fancy new ceiling, but I could tell she
was listening.
“We need proof of our allegations, and we need to work together. Isn’t that what this meeting is about?” Lorraine asked.
“It’s about wrenching more help from us,” Jane said.
Silence for a moment. I reached for the coffee pot and poured Officer Deems another cup.
“But we need a plan.” This, from the mouth of Jane, who two seconds ago was ready to leave. “And we need more evidence.”
“We need your commitment, or we’ll never get at the truth of this, and we are far from the truth,” Lorraine said.
Willoughby nodded, looking at Jane, and the tension in the room subsided.
“I’d like to study the hospital’s security tapes,” I said, wondering when I’d get the time. “We need to take a closer look at the woman who entered Phyllida’s room two nights ago.”
“You’ll just see the back of her, no view of her face,” Jane said.
“Sure. The visitor had been there before. It was the same person who drugged Phyllida in her home, banged her over the head in the hospital, and finished the job with potassium chloride.”
“Are we sure the visitor was a woman?” Willoughby asked.
He had a point, and I acknowledged it. “What about the guy you saw in the freight elevator, the man in the suit whom the nurse saw outside Phyllida’s room shortly before she was found unconscious on the floor? Could those two have been the same person?”
“Huge stretch,” Jane said, but I could tell the steam had gone out of her. She was actually mulling the possibility.
Officer Deems shrugged and was about to say something when the doorbell rang.
“I almost forgot. I’ve asked Cookie to give us an update on her surveillance of La Belle Hélène. Notice I didn’t say ‘report.’ We’re not done, not by a long shot.”
After a brief nod around the room, Cookie threw her coat over the arm of her chair and sat, her eyes focused on the notebook she’d just shoveled out of her purse.
She didn’t look at me, but began reading. “I saw Garth Goncourt again, but this time I didn’t see him enter the parlor, only exit. And this time, he was wearing a suit.”
“Sure it was Garth?” I asked.
She showed us the photos she’d snapped of a man in a suit. There was even a close-up of his face. It looked like Garth Goncourt, I told Jane and Willoughby, who hadn’t met the man. “But I couldn’t swear to it. He looks like he’s aged about ten years.”
“Could this be the guy you saw in the freight elevator?”
Jane shrugged.
“Did I see the clips of him?” Willoughby asked.
“I doubt it. You were too busy making cafeteria runs and stuffing your face while I did all the work,” Jane said. She studied the snaps in Cookie’s phone. “Send them to me, I’ll have the lab compare them with the vid we have from the hospital.”
“Speaking of the lab, did they find fingerprints on the syringe?”
“Too early.”
“But you’re not pushing them.”
Jane smiled.
“So where are we?” I asked.
“Near the end, I hope,” she said, looking at her watch.
I listened to the gulp of liquid down Willoughby’s gullet, the heavy clink of his cup against the saucer. He grabbed his coat from the sofa where he’d thrown it and put it on, my cue that he thought the meeting was over. Not if I could help it.
“I’m still convinced Liese Goncourt is behind all the attempts to murder Phyllida Oxley,” I said. “She’s just been outsourcing the work.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Listen up. If we’re talking attempted murder—and that’s a big if—we don’t have anything that would hold up in court. And while we’re talking suspects, what about the granddaughter? Fifteen, you say? Considered her? She could have slipped her grandmother the drugs.”
“Ridiculous,” Lorraine muttered.
“While we’re all together, where’s my report on La Belle Hélène massage parlor?” Jane asked.
Jane was like a submarine firing torpedoes at us, but I could give better than she could. “Don’t tell me you’re waiting for something in writing. More to the point, what are you doing with the information I’ve already given you about La Belle Hélène massage parlor?” I asked.
“Answer my question first.”
She didn’t seem too happy with me, so I ad-libbed. “Way too early for a report, you know that. However, we’re continuing with our surveillance of the massage parlor, the one that’s owned by the Goncourts.”
Jane put on her coat and turned to Lorraine. “Can’t you leash her mouth? It’s flapping again. And you’re basing ownership on what, blurry photos of a man’s back?”
“And the shots I took today of his face,” Cookie said. “He looks just like Liese Goncourt’s youngest son.” With that, she excused herself and ran to the bathroom.
I tugged at Jane’s sleeve. “So I’d like you to question Liese Goncourt about her massage parlor.”
She brushed my hand away. “Not until I have proof she’s involved. If you want to keep busy, you can go over the hospital’s security tapes. Take Deems here with you.”
The patrolman shrugged.
Jane walked toward the door, the rest of us following. Turning as if she were the queen, she shook Lorraine’s hand. “My offer still stands. You’re respected at NYPD, and not just because you’re Denny’s mother.” She whispered something in Lorraine’s ear.
They were almost out the door when Willoughby turned to Lorraine. “How can you work with her after what she’s done to your son?”
“My work is my work; my son is my son. He’s in pain, I’ll grant you that, and I grieve for his loss. But I’m not sure who did what to whom, and I’m not sure he’s in pain just because Fina left him. But I do know this, their partnership right now is on life support, just like Phyllida. If the two of them, Denny and Fina, did more talking and less fighting, they’d both be better off. I should know, I had to learn that it’s far harder to talk than to fight. Fighting’s for sissies. Fighting destroys; talking mends.”
No Answers
After everyone else had gone, Cookie stood in the middle of Lucy’s parlor, arms crossed. “You left Denny. How could you? You know, I thought the world of you.” Tears filled her eyes. Her face was blotched, her lips swollen. “I used to look up to you; part of me still does, but when are you going to grow up?”
The temperature in the room dropped, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My eyes felt like someone had just dumped a load of sand into them. “But—”
“Better yet, don’t answer me. Whatever you say right now won’t help, and besides, you’d be talking to the wrong person.”
“Cookie, you don’t know what he did.”
“I know you left him. You’re the one throwing the relationship away. I know your anger prevents words. You were always like that. I’d be the one running after you, making you talk, remember? I’d tell you, ‘Just say anything, say your name, say my name,’ and you’d run away, but I wouldn’t let go of it.”
I remembered those times we’d fight. We still did, but somehow, it was different with Cookie. I could pick up the phone after we’d have a doozie and say, “I know we’re fighting, but you should have seen so-and-so and her new boyfriend kissing on Court Street.”
I held my stomach. “You weren’t there; you don’t know what he did.”
“I know this much: without words there’s no partnership, there’s no friendship, there’s no love. You take the coward’s way out—you don’t talk, you run away.”
I told her about the calls, my father’s appearing at the front door. “He’d run into Denny’s father. Robert and Denny helped my father’s return without consulting me.”
“Let’s see if I can finish the story. You took one look at your dad—”
“Don’t call him that! He’s not my dad. He’s a worm, a bag of—”
“You took one look at your dad, whom you hadn’t seen since he’d
left you and your mother, and you blew up, which is your way of panicking, and then after Denny’s explanation, words which you didn’t listen to at all, you became your father and did the same thing—you left.”
I sat, holding my stomach while the room became a spinning top. I don’t know how long I stayed there watching the sun move across the carpet.
Usually Cookie had some words of comfort after she’d given me a punch to the gut, but not this time.
“I’m going to Bensonhurst and I’ll finish this surveillance job, not because you’re my friend, which you are, my lifelong friend and you’ll always be, but because Clancy and I need the money. We’re saving for a house. We’re looking close to where you and Denny …”
She caught herself.
“We’re looking in Vinegar Hill. So I’ll keep working for you, but maybe you and I need a break, too.”
I couldn’t look at her, but busied myself by flexing the toes of my boots on the Persian rug.
Before she left the room, Cookie looked back. “We don’t know yet if it’s a boy or girl. Too early, but don’t breathe a word, you’re the only one I’ve told. Besides Clancy, of course.” And then she was gone.
* * *
Officer Deems was waiting for me in front of Lucy’s. He offered to drive me to the hospital, but I told him I needed to run a few errands first, so we arranged to meet in an hour in the hospital’s security room.
I started toward my car when I stopped, my mind a blank, trying to figure out who I was and where I was going. I couldn’t help it, my eyes had a mind of their own and tears coursed down my cheeks, although at that moment I couldn’t tell you why. I’d made a mistake with Denny, that was a sure bet, but that was as far as I got: I couldn’t tell you whether the error was in leaving him or becoming involved with him in the first place. I slammed a fist against my thigh. It was time to take a walk, if nothing more than to cool my ears and plan. Jerks, all of them, except for Lorraine, of course. Without her help, we wouldn’t have had NYPD on our side.
As I neared the Promenade, I felt something on the back of my neck and glanced over my shoulder just in time to see a Chevy slow down and make a sharp turn onto Columbia. This time I’d find out who was driving, so I ran after it, just in time to copy down the tags before it sped out of sight. Normally I’d feed them to Denny and he’d get the owner for me, but I’d have to do my own work. Later, I told myself.
The Brooklyn Drop (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 4) Page 12
