The Brooklyn Drop (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 4)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you, because you weren’t the one who met with them. Let me guess: Willoughby did.”

  “But he had the presence of mind to tape the conversation.”

  Why didn’t she say so in the first place?

  She shoved the disc into her player, pressed the button, and as we sat in a stagnant line of cars, we listened to a still small voice, Charlotte’s. As she told the story of seeing Kat waving goodbye through the Studebaker’s back window, my heart squeezed.

  “Kat was halfway into the seat when she turned to me, rolling down the window. ‘I’ll be home way before dinner. We’ve got homework. And don’t forget Granny’s wake.’ And then they drove away.”

  That was the end of the interview? Willoughby had his chance, and he blew it. Where were they taking Kat? Had she been acting strange beforehand? Why did the aunt want her now, so soon after Phyllida’s death when she knew Kat had to attend her grandmother’s funeral? Was it for money, as I feared? If so, it meant the end of her short life, or was it for something more sinister and of almost equal dread? Except where there was life, there was hope. I clung to that as the teen’s words scorched my innards.

  Finally Jane’s car began moving.

  “What was she wearing?” I heard Willoughby ask.

  “Black tights, green hoodie, matching Chuck Taylors.”

  Willoughby’s voice broke in again. “You sure? A hoodie? Wasn’t it too cold for Chuck Taylors?”

  “Snow’s mostly melted, so some kids are wearing their sneakers. Kat is. And her hoodie’s fleece lined.”

  “Have you tried calling her cell?” I heard Willoughby ask.

  There was a long pause and I heard Charlotte say she’d left messages.

  I jotted down the significant parts of the interview, which took all of two seconds, casting my eyes sideways at Jane Templeton as she sped toward the turnpike, and deciding she was more harried-looking than I’d seen her. “Let me guess what you found out from doing a neighborhood: No one saw anything.”

  She smiled with one side of her mouth. No eyes involved.

  The Turnaround

  It would be my second trip to New Jersey in less than eight hours, and I had no more information than I did last night. I couldn’t let it happen. “Turn around.”

  “You’re loony tunes.”

  “You heard me. We’ve got to interview Charlotte.”

  “She’s in school.”

  “Not on Saturday. With luck, she’ll be home. She was the last person to see Kat, and the interview Willoughby did with her was pathetic—you can’t deny that. She knows something, and he failed to ask the right questions.”

  If she’d had a full night’s sleep and if the chief hadn’t been on her tail, chances are Jane wouldn’t have turned around. But she did, flying through the service area and onto the northbound ramp, a darkness settling over her face.

  “If you’re wrong about this and Kat dies, her blood is on your hands.”

  “So get your team up and over there. Have them case the Goncourts’ neighborhood until we arrive.”

  “No can do. We’re swamped here.”

  “Have your chief call the Princeton police and have them set up a surveillance of the Goncourt home.”

  She shot me a look. “That’s why I have you, for the New Jersey due diligence.”

  “Denny has a friend on the force, I’ll have him call.”

  But Denny wasn’t answering. I left a message. In the end, Jane called her boss, asking him for his help.

  “He’ll try. We’re up to our eyeballs here with the demonstration.”

  The sky was a thick bruise surrounding us as we made our way back. When we got to the Brooklyn Bridge, there were signs warning us the ramp was closed.

  “No worries, I’ll start my strobes.”

  But the crowds with their placards like a flock of angry barn swallows swooped around Jane’s car. Bullhorns blared.

  “They shouldn’t be on the bridge,” Jane said as we made our way out of the mess and circled around Lower Manhattan. We took the Battery Tunnel, Jane’s sirens blaring as she sped through South Brooklyn toward Dumbo and Charlotte’s home. When we arrived, she stopped on a dime, and I flew forward.

  “You’re on your own with the interview. Good luck.”

  Charlotte

  Charlotte’s mother answered the door and I gave her my card. I could see worry in the set of her shoulders.

  “I remember you from the hospital. Do you have news?”

  I shook my head as she led me into the living room, a large loft space with a view of both bridges and Manhattan’s old seaport in the distance. Tugs and sightseeing boats plied the harbor while gulls flew overhead, but in this silent world of soundproofed living, the scene out the window seemed surreal. I told her I’d like to interview her daughter.

  “The police were here last night and made a recording, but I suppose you haven’t heard it.”

  “I did. I have more questions. And you’ll probably have to deal with the FBI at some point.”

  “Not surprising. A policeman was here and gone in ten minutes. No leads, I suppose?”

  “A few.” I told her about my visit last night to meet with Kat’s New Jersey relatives. “I need to ask Charlotte if she knows anything more about Kat’s disappearance, and I have some questions about her relationship with the Goncourt family.”

  She cocked her head, thinking a moment. “I think Charlotte’s met some of the Goncourts. I haven’t, although I’ve seen the aunt from a distance. Tall woman, theatrical, drives an antique car, I believe. Kat seems to like her, but doesn’t talk much about her. Not surprising. School is their world, as you can imagine. Charlotte’s doing her homework, but I’ll get her.”

  In a few minutes a young woman appeared with a head of curls so blond she looked like a teen version of the Christ child. She extended her hand to me and I shook it, smiling. I wished I had her poise. We sat in a corner of the room near the window, her mother on the couch next to her daughter, and I asked if I could take notes.

  We talked about how long Charlotte had known Kat and how they met, Kat’s favorite things, what she hated, a typical day at school. I took my time, and in getting to know Charlotte, I began to get a feel for her friend Kat.

  “Would you describe her as happy, sad, friendly, what?”

  She thought a moment. “It depends.”

  That’s what I get for asking a stupid question.

  “Favorite subject?”

  “Easy. English. She wants to be a writer, probably a journalist.”

  “And her aunt?”

  “I’ve only met her once. She seems … different, like she’s in a play.”

  “Was Kat expecting to see her yesterday?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “She thought she was here for her grandmother’s wake, but I don’t think she was expecting to meet her beforehand.”

  “Isn’t it unusual for the aunt just to show up, like she did yesterday?”

  “She never calls ahead of time, she just appears. Kat doesn’t like it.”

  “Did you see her?”

  Charlotte nodded. “We were walking toward home when she pulled up, a little bit ahead of us. The usual. She got out of the car and extended her arms and said, ‘Ladies and no Gentlemen,’ like she always does when she sees us. Kat looked at me, kind of, and walked to the car.”

  I scribbled down Charlotte’s responses and asked, “She ran up to her and hugged her?”

  “Kat doesn’t do that. Even when we were younger, she wasn’t like that. I think she waved.”

  I scribbled. “Think, Charlotte. Was there anything that seemed odd to you about yesterday?”

  “Lots.”

  I waited for her to collect her thoughts.

  “I almost thought it wasn’t the aunt.”

  “How so? She wasn’t wearing her usual outfit?”

  She thought again. “Usually she wears heels, those spiky kind, but yesterday she had flats on, and
her hair seemed different.”

  So it might not have been Kirsten but someone playing a part.

  “Wouldn’t Kat have known it wasn’t her aunt?”

  “Usually she would, but not yesterday. You know about her grandmother, don’t you? Well, she’d been crying and talking about her grandmother on the way home and she really wasn’t looking all that much at her aunt. I can tell when she’s having a bad day by looking at her shoulders. They were slumped. Kat was looking down when she got into the car.”

  “Did you hear her say anything to the aunt?”

  “Just that she had to be back in an hour.”

  “Did you hear her aunt’s reply?”

  Charlotte shook her head.

  “What was the last thing Kat said to you?”

  “She rolled down the window and looked up at me. She told me she’d be back in an hour. She told me not to forget we had her grandmother’s wake and she had to change and I had to change, too.”

  As Charlotte talked, she sat straight, her hands folded in her lap, and she didn’t move, except for her eyes, which shifted to the right when she tried to remember something. Her somber behavior didn’t change until I asked if there was anything else they’d talked about that afternoon on their walk home from school or at any time in the recent past about the aunt or that side of her family. She told me Kat didn’t like her other grandmother and she tolerated her uncles.

  Then Charlotte became animated. “Lately Kat’s talked a lot about airplanes and how she hates them and how they make her ride in one every time she visits them.”

  A chill crawled up my back, a wild specter of the mind. “Who makes her ride in them?”

  Charlotte didn’t know. “Kat says they talk a lot about her life after school and how she’d be perfect to work for them, but there’d be a lot of flying. She’d be busy, but she wouldn’t ever have to worry about money.”

  I asked if she thought Kat was looking forward to working for them.

  She shook her head. “Definitely not. We want to go to Columbia or maybe Vassar, we’re not sure. That’s what we’re looking forward to. A couple of kids want to go to NYU and there’s a couple who want to go to Arizona State. Mostly that’s what we talk about, that and school and …” She blushed.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Kat told me she doesn’t want to work for her aunt. Matter of fact, she doesn’t care if she ever sees any of them ever again. She says they’re evil.”

  “Does she talk about her other grandmother?”

  “She doesn’t like her. I met her. I don’t blame her.” She hesitated, like she was going to say more, then circled the room with her eyes.

  “She tell you about her grandmother’s house?” I asked.

  “Just that her house exploded the other day, the same day her granny died. Kat didn’t seem to care that much, I mean about the house exploding. Except she said something about everyone leaving her.”

  Charlotte’s mother leaned toward me. “Would you like to see Kat’s room?” she asked. “When her grandmother was in a coma, I thought we’d better start doing something, you know, so Kat would have a place of her own here because I knew at best it was going to be a long time before Phyllida recovered, so we fixed up the spare for her. Nothing much, and we haven’t had time to decorate. I told her she could pick out colors when she had time. I was thinking after the funeral.”

  I jumped at the chance.

  They walked me over to that side of their loft, and from the landing, which circled around the second floor, I could see pale light over Brooklyn and the harbor when Charlotte opened the door to Kat’s room.

  “It’s got a view,” I said, biting my lips as I gazed at the Statue of Liberty. Kat’s perfect world.

  There was a desk against one wall and I walked over to it, fingering a laptop’s keypad until the screen lit up. “Kat’s?” I asked.

  Charlotte nodded. “And her books.” She pointed to a shelf standing next to her desk.

  “I thought textbooks were all digitized these days,” I said.

  “Some are, but we like to hold them, too,” Charlotte said.

  Her mother smiled.

  “Will she be staying with us, I mean, when she comes home?” Charlotte asked.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to give her false hope. Unless I could prove that her family had abducted her, and unless Trisha Liam could delay any hearing until Kat was no longer a minor, even after we found her, the court would probably grant custody to next of kin. With a hole in my heart, I walked over to the closet and saw it filled with clothes.

  “Are you going to find Kat?” Charlotte asked.

  Remembering how I hated lies when I was a kid, how I hate them now, I said, “I’m going to do everything I can to find her. I’ve found missing kids before, and my track record so far is pretty good.”

  “What’s pretty good?” Charlotte asked. “Give me a percentage.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t play the numbers,” I said, and winked.

  I thanked them, and after asking them to call me if they thought of anything more I should know, however unimportant it might seem, I left. After descending in the elevator, I paused to collect my thoughts, watching the car being called back up. In a second it descended again and Charlotte’s mother got out, a little breathless.

  “I’m glad I caught you. Charlotte did remember something you should know. Maybe it’s not important, but …”

  I waited.

  “She said Kat’s aunt is a terrible driver, the car stops and starts and once Kat hit her forehead on the dash. I mean she’s a terrible driver, I don’t know how she gets away with it.”

  I bit my tongue.

  “She and Kat laugh about it. I don’t think the aunt’s car has an automatic clutch, and she probably doesn’t know how to use it. But Charlotte remembers watching them pull away yesterday afternoon and thinking her aunt must have taken lessons since the last time she’d seen her drive, because the car’s departure was smooth.”

  Push and Lift

  I drove back to Lucy’s and poked my head in the door. Lorraine was sitting at the first desk. She looked up and smiled when she saw me, but I could tell she was still into whatever it was she’d been reading on the web.

  Briefly, I went through the results of my interview with Charlotte. Her feedback regarding Kat’s recent airplane rides and the Goncourts’ insistence that she work for them after she finished school lifted Lorraine out of her chair.

  “At best, they’re grooming her for something to do with their business,” I said.

  “Grim. And at worst?” Lorraine asked.

  Briefly, I told her about our meeting last night, the details of Phyllida’s will, which we’d read from the copy we’d found on her dining room table, Trisha Liam’s corroboration of the no-heir clause, and what Tig had said about the Goncourts’ involvement with La Belle Hélène. Lorraine asked me who was in charge of the Oxley Paper Foundation, and I told her.

  She grabbed her coat. “Kat’s worth more dead than alive. We’ve got to find her now.”

  “First, I need to know what you’ve uncovered about the crash.”

  For a second Lorraine seemed disoriented. She closed her eyes for a moment. “Phyllida, give me strength.” Then she turned to me. “Ten years ago, a Piper Saratoga took off from Knob Hill Airport shortly before noon. A few minutes later, it crashed in Northern New Jersey, killing two passengers—Phyllida’s son, Norris Oxley, a crack aviator according to Phyllida, and his wife, Henriette.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I don’t think so.” Lorraine strode to Lucy’s printer to retrieve a copy of the report she’d found online. In a second, she began reading it aloud. “The aircraft was seen coming down in a left wing low, nose low attitude. It sheared off the tops of trees in a dense forest.”

  I held my breath as she read more from the report.

  “The aircraft was destroyed by impact forces and the ensuing fire. There were no survivors.”
/>   “The cause of the crash?”

  She skimmed the page, stopped, and read, “‘The NTSB focused on a push rod that separated from the control system of the plane before impact.’”

  She bent to the computer, clicked to a website, and showed me a diagram of the push rod system for elevator control. I stared at it and held out my arms in an elaborate shoulder hunch. “Do you get it?”

  “I think I get it: elevators control an airplane’s pitch. So if the push rod snapped, Norris wouldn’t have had control over the elevators.”

  “Those up and down flapper deals in the back?”

  Lorraine nodded and pointed to the diagram again. “No elevators, no lift, and his plane slammed, nose first, into the earth.”

  As Lorraine spoke, I pictured Norris frantic, Henriette screaming, the craft diving, land fast approaching, and felt the shudder of that crash.

  She went on. “That’s the way I understand it, but I’d like to have an expert explain it. One thing’s clear, though: the crash was caused by mechanical failure.”

  “Or it was made to look that way,” I said. My trust level, normally low, was hugging zero. Don’t ask me how, but at that moment, I knew for certain the Goncourts were behind Norris Oxley’s death. “Now it makes sense. Liese Goncourt and whoever else was in on her scheme planned to kill Norris.”

  Lorraine nodded. “To make way for her son’s takeover of Oxley Paper.”

  “And Liese Goncourt’s daughter?”

  “She hated flying, remember? Liese Goncourt wasn’t expecting Henriette to be on the plane. When she found out, she must have gone into shock, realizing she’d killed her own daughter.”

  “Realizing and not realizing. No wonder her behavior is so …”

  “Bizarre.”

  We hurried to my car on Joralemon Street.

  As I pulled away from the curb, I saw the dark Chevy with the dealer plates lurking at the end of the block, so I made a quick turn into the alley, sped up, and exited onto Columbia, made two additional quick turns and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge. When I looked in the rearview, no more Chevy. I might not have lost my tail for good, but I gave him something to think about.