I grabbed several cookies and cupcakes and placed them on the tray. Lorraine filled cups with coffee, poured two glasses of milk, and insisted on paying. While she waited for change, I marveled at her strength. Before heading back to the waiting room, I stared out the cafeteria window overlooking downtown Brooklyn. I watched as gulls played in the air and a cold morning light bounced off the cathedral’s dome.
“We must find out who murdered Phyllida,” Lorraine said as we headed down to hospital reception in our search for Ameline, where we learned that she’d been released to the care of a friend, Abe Goncourt.
“Do you think there’s a connection between Phyllida’s death and the fire in Liese Goncourt’s home?” she asked.
“Does the pope say mass on Sunday?”
An Update
That night I cried myself to sleep but made it through without waking. For the next few days, I busied myself with Lucy’s, going over the incoming and outgoing accounts with Minnie, the list of clients and jobs. To clear my head, I worked alongside some of the cleaning crews, glad for the diversion. Lucy’s was in good shape, which was more than I could say about the Phyllida Oxley investigation or my personal life.
I caught myself several times trying to twirl my engagement ring and talking to Denny in my head before I remembered that he and I were an item no more. I’d ruined my life. The epiphany was like someone stuffing a rag down my gullet. In the evenings, I thought about Phyllida Oxley and her untimely end. To tell you the truth, I was empty: Love had fled, and I was devoid of leads. So when Cookie called to update me on the Bensonhurst surveillance, I called Lorraine, asking if she could meet us to plan our next moves. She sounded as if her head had been smothered with a pillow and asked for more time. So not like Lorraine.
“I know who I am,” she said. “I just need a few days to get over Phyllida’s death. I could have done more, I know I could have. All my fault.”
I ended the call, feeling so sad for the woman. I was like an urchin standing on a spit of land at the edge of a terrible sea. My team was down to two people, me and Cookie. Without Lorraine, how could I function? Was this the end of my detective agency? My hopes were deflated, like someone had let all the air out of my balloon. I needed to stop acting like a detective and concentrate on Lucy’s. But only after I’d found out who killed Phyllida.
Waiting for Cookie in Teresa’s, I played with my scrambled eggs, comparing their flavor to Denny’s cooking and wondering why he hadn’t called, then shoved the thought away, glad he hadn’t since I wouldn’t have known what to say. The longer we were separated, the more difficult it was to get us back together, even to imagine us as a couple. Then I realized a part of me was hoping for a reconciliation. I felt like I was in a dark tunnel, mesmerized by the light in the distance, reaching for it, but the hole kept getting smaller and smaller, now almost a pinprick.
“You look awful.” Cookie slid into the booth, unbuttoning her coat. “And you’ve only got yourself to blame.” She told me I needed to make the first move and I’d better do it quick.
I did that shaking thing with my head, like a dog whisking water from his coat, remembering Mom doing the same thing and thinking I’d probably inherited the gesture from her. We discussed the Goncourt explosion, and I told her what I knew—the investigation into the cause of the blast had just begun and it was going to take a while.
“So no one’s seen Garth or Liese Goncourt?”
“Not a trace. According to Jane, Abe Goncourt supplied the police with DNA for both his brother and mother, and dogs have been sniffing, but so far, no human remains have been found.”
Cookie ordered blueberry pancakes and pled ignorance when I’d asked if she’d seen Denny, except to say Clancy had lunched with him the other day and he seemed all right, “a little withdrawn. Trying to get on with his life.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, watching a tray of steaming food head our way. There’s nothing like the smell of pancakes in Teresa’s.
Cookie grabbed the plate before the waitress had time to set it down and began shoveling in food.
“You’re holding out on me.”
“He’s a red-blooded guy. What do you expect?” she asked in between bites. She swigged some orange juice.
Of course. Zizi Carmalucci. She’d be all over Denny. I slammed a fist into the cushion of my chair, imagining her smile as she looked longingly into his eyes, her arm hooked into his, her perfect set pressed into his shoulder.
I tried to decipher Cookie’s mood. At that moment, my best friend was an enigma. She shot me a glare from disingenuous eyes, so I could tell she was angry. But there was something else, too, something I couldn’t quite decipher. I decided to change the subject before my cheeks burned a hole in my face, so I asked her for an update on the Bensonhurst massage parlor surveillance. “And you haven’t seen Garth either?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?”
“Think about it. They both could have survived.”
Cookie looked at the ceiling.
“So what do you have to report?”
“Not much, but I saw the handsome one unlock the front door the other day. Some getup he’s got, too.”
I told her something was strange, how shattered Abe had seemed at the loss of his mother and her world.
“Not the way I saw him,” Cookie said, and sent me a text with the tags of Abe Goncourt’s car, a Bentley. “Royal blue and gray. Time was when I could be enticed by a dude like that. Too bad he wears a ring.” She said she’d checked using her binoculars.
“And Clancy?” I asked.
She blushed. “Just kidding.”
“Kirsten is his wife. Don’t you remember her?”
“I do. Another drama queen. But think about it: she’s got to attract attention to herself—her husband is married to his mama.”
I wondered how someone like Abe Goncourt, who seemed like such a pillar, could be mixed up in a massage parlor, unless I’d gotten it all wrong, which I doubted. Or Cookie had. We busied ourselves for the next few minutes with food, me savoring the first good meal I’d had in days.
As we sat with coffee, I updated her on what I knew about the murder of Phyllida Oxley, which, in a summarizing phrase, was as close to squat as it got. They’d found no prints on the syringe, Jane told me, and there were no frontal images of Phyllida’s mysterious visitor. I also told her that Phyllida’s body had been released after the autopsy confirmed death by sudden heart failure caused by a massive amount of potassium chloride. I don’t know how she’d done it, since Phyllida didn’t go to church all that much as far as I knew, but Lorraine had made funeral arrangements at Mary, Star of the Sea for early next week. She’d been in touch with Charlotte’s parents, who were happy to have Kat. “She’s part of the family, and I don’t know what my child would do without seeing her friend,” Charlotte’s mother had said. Trisha Liam knew about Phyllida’s death and had alerted her contact at family court in the event of a petition for a guardianship review.
“All that remains is to find out who killed Phyllida Oxley and how the Goncourts are connected to La Belle Hélène,” Cookie said, ordering a side of toast and bacon.
“Because somehow they’re connected, I feel it, but I don’t know how or why. So how we’re going to do that without Lorraine to help us plan, I’m not sure,” I said, explaining that Lorraine seemed too devastated at the moment.
Cookie gave me one of her down-from-under eye swipes. “There’s always Denny.” She pulled out a mirror and began checking her teeth while a giant hand crushed my innards. Too frozen to respond, I took the check and asked her to keep up with her surveillance of La Belle Hélène. “And maybe talk to Liese Goncourt’s neighbors while you’re at it.”
“Be happy to, whatever you say, chief.” She saluted. “Hold on while I cut myself in half.”
She was right. We weren’t just short staffed: we were no staffed. I sat back down, staring at the back wall.
Next thing I knew, Cookie was shakin
g me, saying something like, “Don’t you dare disappear. Someone’s got to plan.”
I couldn’t help it, I felt myself withdrawing.
“We need help,” she said, as if from a great distance. “What about your FBI friend?” Cookie meant Tig Able, my friend from way back when we interned together at Brown’s.
“That’s a thought. He’s been on vacation, but he should be back soon.” I made a note to call him.
As I saw it, the Bensonhurst massage parlor, Phyllida’s death, and the destruction of Liese Goncourt’s home were directly connected. Right now there were two missing people and one body—unless there were more, and I just wasn’t seeing the whole picture. It was the first time I’d thought about it. But what if, just maybe, the Oxleys’ plane crash had been murder? And what about Phyllida’s husband—how had he died? Where was Lorraine when I needed her?
“Time to go.” Cookie was pulling at my coat sleeve.
“Wait,” I said. “Who is most vulnerable?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’ve got to warn Charlotte’s parents.”
As I punched in her number, I imagined Jane’s snort when I laid out my vision, not just a theory, but harsh reality if I could only explain it before the blonde detective hung up.
“Kat’s in mortal danger,” I began when she answered.
“You’re crazy.”
“No, you’ve got to listen to me. They’re going to kill her, just like they got rid of Phyllida and her son and her husband. You’ve got to protect Kat.” I explained how someone had been after the Oxley fortune, how Terris Oxley, I was sure, was murdered, how the Oxley plane crash eight years ago had not been just a freak accident but a mechanical failure probably caused by tampering.
“You’re on something.”
I ignored her and continued with my explanation. With Phyllida’s death, Kat inherited billions.
“You don’t know that, and even if Kat died, who would stand to gain? She has no will, she’s a minor.”
I felt the sand beneath my theory, so I wasn’t surprised when Jane ended the call.
There was one person who understood me, who stood by my flights of imagination, never doubting me. Denny. Beyond that, there was a piercing in my heart when I pictured him. And what had I done? Kicked him out of my life.
I called Trisha Liam, but the lawyer was busy, so I left a message. I told her I wanted to know who stood to inherit Phyllida’s money, and if there were no descendants, what would happen to the Oxley fortune.
A Certain Lightness
“I’m not calling to persuade you to come home,” a familiar voice said, sending chills down my spine.
Denny.
I felt myself sinking back into the eiderdown of our relationship. I’d been wrong to leave, I knew that now, but what could I do about it other than crawl back and start the cycle of madness all over again. And worse: our fighting was verging on the violent.
I held the receiver tight against my ear while I paced back and forth on Montague Street, oblivious to traffic, hurtling myself back to the curb when a car almost hit me.
I tried to control my breathing. My head was spinning, and I had to sit, so I walked over to the Promenade, buffeted by runners and pedestrians.
“Watch where you’re going, lady!” someone yelled.
I stood there, speechless, unmoving. I could never tell anyone how I felt at that moment, except that an enormous animal pawed inside me at the same time a certain lightness lifted me. Hope is the thing with feathers.
“I’d like to help with your investigation,” Denny said. He asked what I’d discovered about the car following me.
I tried to tell him the investigation was going fine, but the words stuck in my throat. Besides, I knew it wasn’t going well, not at all. In addition to his physical strength, I needed his head.
“Fina, are you there?”
We agreed to meet in Lucy’s parlor in half an hour, but as I strode down Henry Street, my heart pounding, I saw his Jeep coming down Joralemon and froze. Standing by a tree for support, I watched as he circled a couple of times, disappearing for a while. My heart sank. Like me, he must have been having second thoughts, but as I waited for him to appear, I heard his voice behind me and turned to him, an older Denny, his face gaunt, and I felt the weight of our separation as if for the first time.
Cookie was waiting on the stoop.
“You put him up to this?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?”
But she had, I could tell.
When we were seated, there was a knock on the door. Clancy.
“Nice ceiling,” Clancy said. He walked around the room, looking at the shelves stacked with Mom’s books, the emptiness in the corner where Gran’s grand piano used to stand before I sold it. I’d brought the bench down from the attic and tried to fill the space with it. “Nice piano bench.”
“Enough, Clancy. Let’s start,” Denny said. “We haven’t much time.”
I looked at Cookie, who sat on the love seat as close as she could get to Clancy.
I gathered my thoughts and began, telling Clancy about Phyllida’s slow death, the attempts of someone, whom I didn’t name, although I could have, to kill her.
He frowned. “But they could have been accidents.”
“If Fina says they were attempts on her life, that’s what they were, and finally, the killer succeeded: Phyllida Oxley, Mom’s friend, is dead,” Denny said.
We told him as much as we knew about the Oxley family holdings and fortune, about fifteen-year-old Kat and the hearing ten years ago awarding her guardianship to Phyllida Oxley.
“Oxleys are rich as Croesus,” Denny said. He told Clancy about Norris. “Nice guy. Never had to work, but he did. Worked hard. Spent most weekends with his old man, learning the business. When his father died, Norris took over and grew the company. Then he was killed—his plane crashed somewhere in New Jersey. I don’t know who took his place, but I hear it’s not doing well.”
“The times,” Clancy said. “Who buys paper these days?”
“I know who took over,” I said. I dug out Abe’s card and showed it to them.
Cookie told them we’d met him the day we visited Liese Goncourt.
“Henriette’s brother? Norris’s uncle?” Denny asked.
I nodded.
He made a face. “Pushes paper and drives around in a Bentley.”
Cookie talked about her history with Liese Goncourt, seeing her rant in the museum, and the woman’s relationship with Phyllida Oxley.
“Is she the woman whose house exploded? She and her son are missing,” Clancy said.
“I believe the destruction of Liese Goncourt’s home, the guardianship fight, and Phyllida Oxley’s death are related to the Bensonhurst massage parlor,” I said. “I know it’s a leap, but—”
“Not for me,” Clancy said. “Organized crime unit has been watching the Goncourts for some time. FBI’s in on it, too. The home was heavily mortgaged and she was about to miss her third payment.”
There was silence while I tried to close my mouth. “Funny, Jane never mentioned it,” I said.
Clancy shrugged. “She wouldn’t know.”
“So you think the explosion was planned?” I asked.
“We don’t know, not yet, but they found evidence of gas-line tampering.”
Willoughby had been right about something.
“I think it’s too soon to go sifting through the remains in Flatbush,” I said.
“Besides, it’s crawling with crime techs,” Clancy said.
“But I’d like to see inside that massage parlor.”
Cookie’s eyes popped. Denny looked down at his shoes. No one said anything until Denny cleared his throat and said there’d be no harm in driving around the place, seeing what we could find out.
“After dark, though.”
I reminded them that Phyllida’s wake was that evening in a funeral home on Court Street, and I wanted to pay my respects. Not
only that, you never knew who was going to show up, Cookie reminded me. We agreed to meet in front of Russo’s Funeral Parlor at eight and drive to Bensonhurst.
“What about catching a late afternoon movie?” Clancy asked.
Cookie looked from me to Denny. “Not yet, Clancy.”
I felt my cheeks burn.
Outside, I asked Denny to wait. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
I wanted to tell him how grateful I was, how I’d made a mistake in leaving, how he didn’t understand about what my father had done, how I was sorry I’d blown up. But the words just wouldn’t come out. I felt almost as sad as when Mom died. I wanted to stop, to hold him, to tell him how much he meant to me, and yes, that I’d ruined our love, but I didn’t know where to start.
“The car following you,” he began.
I told him about the last time I’d seen it near the Promenade. I didn’t mention meeting Robert, but reached into my bag and pulled out my notebook, tearing out the page with the tags and handing it to him. He looked at the numbers and said they were dealer tags. Pulling out his smartphone, he opened an app, filled in the blanks, and shook his head. “John Smith?”
I laughed.
He looked at me and I swam for a second in his soul.
When the moment passed, he punched and swiped. “You sure the car isn’t a Toyota?”
I shrugged.
“John Smith’s address is the same as Bay Ridge Toyota. I’ve got some time; I’ll do some checking.”
Across from the Jeep, we stopped and gazed at each other, neither of us knowing what to say.
“About the house,” he began.
I couldn’t breathe.
He looked at the ground. “I guess I’ll put it on the market. I couldn’t begin to pay you for half.”
“Too soon,” I said before my tongue got caught in the back of my throat and I nearly choked.
“Yes. Too soon,” he agreed. His voice was soft, like it was filled with tears. “I’ll see you later.”
“Before you go—” But he’d already sprinted across the street and opened the car door.
The Brooklyn Drop (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 4) Page 14
