Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) (16 page)

Despite her rejection of the plan, she and Henry became more than friends. She wouldn’t say lovers, but she thought a lot about Henry. Not that she was attracted to him. Something frenetic about him—the way he pulled at his nose. But he was kind. And convenient. And his body was long and bony and hard. Not unpleasant. It was a release, getting to know Henry. Love never entered into it. She couldn’t love again, she knew that. But Henry was gentle.

Not a sound in the house with Brandy in school. If she banished it from her mind, what she was about to do, there wouldn’t be time to worry. Breathe slow, deep, fill the lungs. She trusted Henry, didn’t she? Breathe slow, in, out. She picked up the phone.

Chapter 28

Brandy. In Chains

Something’s hissing in this house. Maybe it’s downstairs, maybe a steam kettle like Phillipa uses when she makes tea. Now what—are they going to steam me? Jerks. Figure it, they want money. They’ll maybe torture me, but they won’t kill me, not yet. Unless Mom says no. How long will it take her to say no? Or a yes-maybe, which might be the same thing as a no to them. They don’t know Pah-tricia when it comes to forking over coins—she can stall with the best of them. Their whiskers will be white waiting for her to open her purse. And what about me, will I last?

Voices raised. They’re fighting again. Soon they’ll be up here. I’d better pick at another corner, the one below my left eye. Ow, that hurt. I hope they didn’t hear the ripping. I’d better stop. One side’s off. A glob of it is still stuck in my hair, but one eye’s free. I can see. I could rip off the rest if I weren’t such a chicken. If they come in now, they’ll see what I’ve done. Just my luck, it’ll be the nasty one, too, with his knife or his needle or both.

I can’t pull anymore, it hurts too much, and don’t call me a baby. It’s like elephant tape, and if I rip it fast, it’ll tear off my scalp to shreds, and I’ll die from the bleeding. I’ve got way too much hair. Worse than brain freeze. Glad Julia can’t see me. She’s been snooting it up lately, getting too chummy with Ramona since spring break. She’s deserting us, I know she is.

Rip it off like a bandage,
Dad would say. Got to take risks if you want to live right. Try it; move like lightning. But my arms can’t move that fast.
Don’t be such a baby,
that’s what Mom would say. I want to call her Mom. I’ll even call her Trisha after I get home. If I ever do. If she ever pays those buzzards. Won’t she be surprised when I come walking through the door. Do I have my key?

I try to rip off the tape, but my arms can’t move that fast.
Trust the fingers
, that’s what Dad would say. Baby Jesus.
Risk it
, he’d say.

Off, it’s off. Got to get out of here quick. Got to figure out where I am. One step at a time.

Two windows in the room. Two doors. One gets me out of here, but I think it’s locked. It’s worth a try. I was right. Locked.

Windows got boards on them. No problem, I’ve got time, time to sit down and wait until my eyes work. Look around. Bathroom? Smells too much, it doesn’t have a window. But I should take a look. Anyway I’ve got to pee again.
Thinking makes it so
, that’s what Dad says.

Nope, no window.

Just the ones in this bedroom. It’s so gross in here, like from that movie about the sick lady. Got to get the boards off, first. Can’t do it. Got to find something to hit the boards with. Or pry them out. Wedge them. I’m small. I’ll fit through the opening if I can get just one of them off. But this room might be too high off the ground.
One step at a time
. That was Dad trying to calm me down, I know it was. One step. I can open the other door. Leads to a closet, and, yes, I can get inside. Smells like dirt in there. A man’s shirt. Pants. Ouch. What was that? Stepped on something hard. Metal. Hammer, a hammer for nails. I can pry with it, I know.

They’ll hear, I know they will. With a hammer I can punch one in the head. Makes a ripping sound like when Frankie runs her fingernails on the blackboard. Teeth start rattling.

One board almost out, and I can bend it back. Blackness out the window. A few stars. Are you up there, Dad? The ground is so far away, I can’t jump. Not that far. What’s better, staying here and letting bad things happen? Horrible. I wonder how it will feel? No, I can’t think about it. Don’t want to know. Julia was about to tell us once about her uncle, but I don’t want to think about that. No wonder Julia’s a little twitchy. Now I have to sit and think. One step at a time. How am I going to get out of here? If only I had some rope.

Help me, Dad, I know you will. I’ll sit for a second; I’m so tired. Hungry, too. I could eat anything. Sometimes I’m fussy—why, I don’t know—just to make Mom do something or say something. She’d be fine if she weren’t so perfect. I mean, she likes everything, including peas, onions, tomatoes. How I hate looking at the seeds floating in that slime, but I’d eat one now.

What will they do when they come back and see the tape off my eyes and a crooked board letting in the night? For sure Mr. Mean will do bad things, maybe shoot me.

How long will they wait for Mom to pay up? I’ve got to get out of here. I can put the tape back. For once my kinky locks are a help; they hold the tape just fine. Better hide the hammer someplace. Where? Under the bed, maybe, or there’s a dresser on the other side
. N
o, they’ll hear the drawer open—under the bed.

I hear footsteps. I can put the tape back on, and he’ll never know. There. See?

I smell something. It smells like canned soup or the cafeteria on a Friday in March—stale fish and wilted salad combo.
“I’m hungry.”
Out of the bottom of the patch, I see a man approaching. Tall. Bony.

“You’re the runner, aren’t you?”
It just slips out of my mouth without thinking.
“I’ve seen you around. Where am I? What did you make for me?”

He sets the tray on the dresser, walks over to me, and then he does it. He slaps me. My face feels like it’s been hit with a crack of thunder. My jaw screams. Then everything goes black.

Chapter 29

Cookie. Morning Two, The Surveillance

Cookie was sick and tired of Jane’s snide remarks, of her feeble attempts to give anyone credit except for her precious NYPD team. And the way she treated Willoughby was pathetic. No question, he was a slob, and his remarks were off the mark, but Jane didn’t have to be such a nut crusher. Like Fina’s mom used to say, there are people who take with every breath. Think about it, she and Fina were the only ones feeding Jane information. Same thing on the last case. No question, Jane Templeton was a taker.

There was no one better at surveillance than Cookie. She’d prove it; she had to. Maybe Jane had a point about fact gathering, even though she had haughty ways of making it. Next time Cookie interviewed anyone, she would assume nothing. She’d write down all the information and then some.

She found a spot partially concealed by shrubbery on the edge of the park. From there she could see up and down the block, Trisha Liam’s townhouse, the entrance to the Promenade—everything. She’d changed into her faded green jumper and maroon tee shirt. Her father’s scratchy wool cap covered her blonde mop, and shades covered her best feature, her eyes. Yes, she blended right into the scene. Good thing her friends couldn’t see her now, but face it, no one could and no one cared.

Mid-morning on a spring day, and Brooklyn Heights was sleepy. Not a soul around, not even a car whizzing by. Too early in the year for lawn mowers. She opened her Kindle, ready to read
Emma
,
when out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, a group of runners loping toward the park. Crouching deeper into the bushes, she peered between the leaves and held her breath. There was something familiar about one of them. He wasn’t part of the group, she could tell. She’d seen him before, she knew she had. Ran faster than the rest. Long and thin, with a beak of a nose. Spooky. Dark curly hair fringing a hat that had Sherwin-Williams written in black letters above the visor. She hadn’t seen runners wearing one of those in a long time. These days they usually wore baseball caps or ear warmers or nothing.

Cookie took out her notebook and began writing. Time, date, place. She described all the runners in the pack, but the tall, thin one in detail. She’d show that bloated blonde bunny. Painstakingly, and with enough words to choke a horse, she wrote down everything so Jane couldn’t fault her. The tall runner overtook the others and ran right past her toward the Promenade just as a woman pushing a baby carriage crossed the street heading toward Trisha Liam’s house. The mother stopped midway down the block to do something with her toddler, tuck him in or give him a kiss or whatever, then walked on and disappeared round the bend. Once again, the street was empty. Cookie heard nothing except for the pounding of her heart.

She patted her pocket and felt Fina’s check through the thin material. At first she’d refused it. Later when she’d seen the amount, she texted her, “Too much, I won’t cash it,” but it would pay a good chunk of her tuition this quarter. Maybe her dad had been right. He’d been opposed to her going to graduate school. Said she hid behind her books. Told her she should take the money she’d gotten from her grandparents and blow it on a trip to Europe. “See the world,” he’d said. That had been four years ago just before he died, and except for mini trips with Fina and Denny to New Jersey and, of course, back and forth to Morningside Heights to attend lectures, she hadn’t stepped out of Brooklyn. She had to do something about that. She was between boyfriends, so now was the time. Take a trip to Russia or India or someplace exotic like that. But she couldn’t help it. She kept getting enticed by books and the courses Columbia offered.

Figure it, what did she have to show for herself other than a couple of degrees and one published article on the importance of Ernest Hemingway in the development of chauvinistic thought. Now she was working on a series of lectures she was dying to give on Jane Austen and the fertile female mind. A friend got her the gig, and she was giving the first talk tomorrow night at her local library. Didn’t pay, but you never knew what might come of it. If anyone attended.

A blur in the corner of her vision brought her back to reality. Bony Mover had returned. But this time, he wore no hat. Brown curls flopped around his head as he shot up the street, gazing at Trisha Liam’s house. Cookie studied the lines of his face. She made a few quick sketches of him in her notebook, drawing furiously, making a notation about his missing hat. Words spilled from her pen—navy blue tee, garden gloves, blue runner’s shorts, gray New Balance shoes.

As he rounded the bend, Cookie saw Phillipa emerge from the Liam house, a wad of paper towels to her nose. Cookie’s pen flew as the housekeeper stood by the open door and peered left and right, like she was looking for someone, before she bolted down the steps, almost bumping into a man who was making his way up. He had an envelope in his hand, a Brite Messenger Service sticker on his bag, and a bald spot on the crown of his head with wisps of blond hair sticking up around it. Phillipa lifted her long skirt in one hand. In the other, she held a folded newspaper. Cookie watched her stop long enough to say something to the messenger guy, pointing to Trisha Liam’s front door before she resumed her brisk walk toward the Promenade.

Meanwhile, the runner rounded the bend and brushed past Phillipa with his elbow. She did not look at him or stop, but maintained her swift pace toward the Promenade. The time, Cookie noted, was ten thirty-seven.

Determined to cover two events at once, Cookie scrunched down her hat and ran toward Trisha’s house in time to see the messenger guy stomping down the steps while closing his bag.

“You just deliver something?” she asked the messenger, her head turned toward him while she glanced back toward the Promenade, barely able to see Phillipa’s disappearing form.

He clenched a toothpick on one side of his mouth. “What’s it to you?” He jumped on his bike and plowed across the street, inches from an oncoming car, which screeched and swerved, nearly slamming into a parked car.

“Can’t stop to chat with you, lady. Got to deliver, or I’m out of a job,” he yelled over his shoulder, his torso a corkscrew as he slalomed the wrong way into Montague Street.

Brooklyn messengers. She used to see them all the time a few years ago, but now, not so much. This one looked like a scarecrow playing in traffic. Something about him she didn’t like.

No time to dwell on the delivery she’d just seen, except to jot it down as she walked—she had to follow Phillipa. Staying well behind two other people, Cookie saw the housekeeper pounding ahead like a wounded animal.

For a weekday morning, the Promenade was fairly busy with runners and sightseers, but Cookie watched as the runner, now returning, reached underneath his shirt and brought out what looked like a manila envelope. He didn’t stop or even look at Phillipa, who brushed past him walking north. Was there a transfer of information or had Cookie imagined it?

She texted Fina, “Big stuff, call now.” Then she stood still, waiting for her phone to buzz and for Phillipa to return, but the housekeeper must have taken another route. Cookie lingered by the rail a few more minutes and watched the boats on the East River before walking back toward Columbia Heights. The street was empty.

She waited another hour. No call from Fina. No runner. No Phillipa. Perhaps he was a friend, nothing more? But the prickled skin up her spine told her she’d seen something important, and she remembered Phillipa saying she never left the house.

Cookie had to pee something fierce. She wished she didn’t have long blonde hair, but she couldn’t stand wearing the cap any longer so she shoved it down the front of her jumper. She hit the Fina button on her phone and left another message.

The morning was fading fast, and she hadn’t read two paragraphs of
Emma
. Sometime today she had to prepare her talk, but she knew she had to look for the runner’s hat. The last time she’d seen him wearing it, he was flying in the direction of the Promenade, so she made her way down a small path to the overlook.