Dorset in the Dark: A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Read online

  While I stared out over the slow-moving water, the past intruded. I thought of Mom and the many times we’d stood on this very spot together. And then in my mind I was back in high school and sitting next to her on the subway as she went for her umpteenth job interview shortly after she’d been fired from Heights Federal. Waiting for her outside the office into which she’d disappeared, I prayed for her just to be calm and impressive, not that frenetic, insistent Mom I’d known of late. I leaned against a wall, watching the traffic on Canal Street, wishing I understood Chinese while two men quarreled outside a hardware store and a shard of late afternoon light slashed pedestrians standing on silent corners. I could still see the slump of her shoulders when she returned. “Not this time,” she’d said. It was the lowest we’d ever gotten, and I knew I had to do something or we’d lose the house, so I began taking out the garbage for old Mrs. Adams across the street, then graduated to scrubbing her floors and throwing out old newspapers. Soon she recommended me to two of her neighbors, and before I knew it, Lucy’s Cleaning Service was born, a business that kept us off the streets. I can still remember the day I came home with a check to cover half the mortgage, waving it in front of Mom’s shocked face. It was enough so that our lawyer could plead our case with the bank. And after that, we’d never missed a payment. But cleaning homes and offices every night after class and on weekends meant I barely squeaked through the last two years of high school.

  The wind picked up and seagulls squawked overhead. “You’d like your grandchildren,” I whispered as the sky lightened, rosy and cloud-ladened, and I let the clean smell of the ocean dispel the ache in me. “Carmella has your eyes and Robbie, your temperament—thank God.” I heard the breeze laugh, and before I got too far down maudlin lane, reminded myself how lucky I was to have a husband who loved me; to have two healthy, happy toddlers; to have a mother-in-law who didn’t meddle and helped with my business; to live close to my best friend since kindergarten, Cookie, who also helped me in my detective agency. I needed to get her involved in the drugstore robberies.

  Watching the sun glint on the windows of a passing tug, I gave up on planning and turned back to the woman on the bench, who by now was pitching over, about to fall off her perch. Was she sleeping? In an alcoholic stupor? My heart skipped a beat. I walked over and, putting a hand on her shoulder, tried to steady her. “Ma’am?”

  No response. I noticed a slight film of perspiration on her forehead as I removed her gloves and felt for a pulse. She was alive. I lifted an eyelid. Her pupils were dilated, it seemed to me, but I was no doctor.

  “Are you okay?” I tried to ask, but my voice wouldn’t cooperate. In the distance, I heard the moan of a foghorn and sounds of runners on the Promenade, indistinct words, the beat of happy feet pounding the asphalt.

  No answer from the woman.

  She was thin, about five six or eight, much taller than me, with a high forehead, long dark wiry hair beginning to fleck with white, and a jutting nose. She wore jeans and, underneath a long coat, a polo shirt with a collar beginning to fray. Uggs on her feet. Observing the fine lines surrounding her mouth and eyelids, I pegged her as being middle-aged. On her left hand, she wore a wedding band with a hefty diamond. Her nails were long and painted with sky-blue polish. Not one chip. She was old enough and fit enough and well-put-together, so what was she doing here?

  I shook her gently on the shoulder. Still no movement. I called 9-1-1.

  Jane Templeton Arrives

  NYPD Detective First Grade Jane Templeton stood before me, clothed in a dark blue Armani suit, which hugged her hips like cellophane wrapped around a statue of the evil queen, her fists ramming her waist. My nemesis. She was accompanied by her partner, the long and bony Willoughby, who loped toward me, flapping his tie. He looked like a tired greyhound. Although we’d worked together on several cases, I still didn’t know his first name.

  “They collect around you like flies,” Jane said, whisking away a strand of her blond hair. “Explain.”

  Willoughby said nothing, just nodded his hello.

  I didn’t bother to reply because the woman on the park bench was beginning to stir. The paramedics gathered around her, taking her pulse and sticking needles into her. “What’s your name?” one of them asked her.

  Two spots of red appeared on her cheeks. At that moment, she reminded me of a painted Russian doll with a prominent nose, a little bit worn and disheveled, her wiry hair falling over her face, and my heart squeezed for her as she mumbled something unintelligible and wiped drool off her chin.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  She nodded, then shook her head.

  The EMS guy looked up at me. “Been slipped a mickey.”

  Jane crossed her arms. “You know better than to say that.” She radioed for the crime scene unit.

  As if in echo, Jane’s partner Willoughby crossed his arms and moved his head up and down.

  The EMS guy and I exchanged a look. “He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know,” I said. “Did you check if she has a purse, anything in her pockets, or are you two just decoration this morning?”

  “Time enough to investigate,” Jane said. “Brooklyn General?”

  One of the paramedics nodded.

  “Wait.” I sat down next to the woman. “Can we call someone for you? Your husband?”

  She held her head in her hands. “They’ll be …”

  I waited a while, but she didn’t finish the sentence, so I stood up and looked at Jane. “Let me know if you need me.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Willoughby asked. “Your statement?” He held out a form.

  “One of the few times I’ve seen you without food in your mouth,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. As I scribbled down a few sentences, the woman began talking.

  “What’s happened to me?”

  “I think you’ve been drugged,” I said, ignoring the jab from Jane’s foot. “What’s your name?”

  The woman shook her head. “Where am I?”

  “Pierrepont Playground,” I said, trying to be helpful.

  The blonde detective shot me her angry eyes. “I’ll do the questioning.”

  “And freedom of speech?” I asked.

  Jane brushed her sleeve and turned to the woman. “Do you have ID? A bag or something?”

  The woman stared at her.

  “Maybe a driver’s license in your pocket?”

  “Why would she have her purse with her, or for that matter, a driver’s license in her pocket?” I asked. “She was out for a morning think in the park. Same as a lot of other people. Same as me.”

  Jane looked at the sky. “A key to your house?”

  The woman groped in her pocket and brought out a phone and a set of keys.

  “Your address?”

  Willoughby spoke up. “Look in her phone.”

  I was about to remind him that her mobile wouldn’t flash back a name and address for whoever picked it up when the woman, who’d been staring at the glass and metal in her hand, gazed back up at us with a blank look. Willoughby grabbed the phone and pressed the home button, but of course the device was locked.

  The woman couldn’t remember her name, much less the password to her phone. She triple blinked. “Help me. Please.”

  “How can we help you if you can’t unlock your phone and won’t tell us your name or where you live?” Jane asked.

  By this time, I was disgusted. “She can’t. She doesn’t remember it. Give her time.” I handed the woman my card and watched as she scanned it.

  “You’re Fina Fitzgibbons?” she asked, peering up at me with a blank look.

  I nodded. “Private investigator. Call me if you need help.”

  She stuffed my card into her pocket along with her keys and phone.

  I watched as the paramedics loaded her into the ambulance and shut the door.

  “Let me know what you find out,” I said to Jane, and was walking away when suddenly there was a banging coming fr
om inside the ambulance.

  A muffled cry. “Help!” The woman’s head appeared in the window. She must have been pulling at her hair because the image staring back at me looked like a contemporary version of Medusa with her head a mass of writhing snakes.

  She screamed, “Dorset! Where is she? What have you done with my daughter?” She pounded on the window as the driver pulled away.

  I turned to Jane. “Give me a ride to the hospital.”

  The detective crossed her arms. “So now you’re chasing ambulances?”

  I gave Jane one of my beguiling grins. “You heard the woman—Dorset’s missing!”

  Willoughby held the door open for me as the NYPD crime scene investigators began taping off the area and Jane was speaking to the super, no doubt giving her orders. She pointed to the bench where I’d found the unconscious woman.

  With Cassandra Thatchley

  On the way to Brooklyn General, we learned the woman’s name—Cassandra Thatchley. She was a full professor at Columbia University and a widow who lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights with one son and two daughters. According to the ER, Ms. Thatchley seemed to be having a short-term memory problem, although some recent events, like the fact that earlier she’d been sitting in the park, were beginning to come back to her. Whoever Jane was talking to as the detective careened around corners said the patient could remember everything except what had happened to her after she sat down on the park bench. She insisted she must have taken her ten-year-old daughter with her; she would not have left her alone in the house—her two adult children would already have been at work and the housekeeper would not have arrived before she left.

  “Remind me to interview the adult children,” I said to Jane as she screeched to a halt in front of the hospital.

  “Who am I, your maid? Remind yourself she hasn’t hired you.”

  “Aren’t you going to park your car?”

  “Police business.” She slammed her door and slalomed away. Willoughby, to give him credit, held the door for me as I crawled out of the backseat.

  When we entered the hospital, the waiting room was in its usual tizzy. There’d been an accident with injuries on Court Street, and a man holding a bleeding child flew by on a gurney surrounded by nurses and orderlies. Jane flashed her badge and the doors to the ER flew open. As we strode toward the nurses’ station, I spotted Cassandra Thatchley sitting in a wheelchair, one arm flailing, the other hand holding a mobile to her ear. A nurse bustling beside us said she had refused to lie down. What’s more, she had refused a rape kit, saying it was ridiculous. Instead, the patient insisted she had to get home; she had to find her daughter before giving a lecture uptown in two hours. She wanted nurses, doctors, anyone within shouting distance to help her. Now. She’d tried calling the police; failing to get through to “the tall detective with the large chest,” she’d called me, which explained the buzzing in my back pocket as we approached.

  “Find my Dorset. Now!” she thundered, throwing her arms in the air.

  “Her school?”

  Cassandra Thatchley closed her eyes and lifted her head to the ceiling. I thought she was going to scream. “Parker Collegiate, but it’s closed for two weeks. Where’s your head?”

  I gulped. “Could she have gone to a friend’s house?”

  “Take a look at me: you expect me to let my daughter visit her friends this early? She’s ten years old.”

  I said nothing, but looked at my phone. It was a little past nine o’clock, not unusual for children to be visiting their friends at this hour when there was no school. Besides, someone, including Cassandra Thatchley herself if she’d only remember, could have taken her to a friend’s home.

  “I hired you because I thought you were a real detective.”

  I kept my voice low and steady. “Real detectives depend on real information.”

  Jane coughed and the woman glared at me.

  I tried another tack. “We’ll find her, don’t worry. You have a picture of your daughter?”

  Cassandra Thatchley pinched and punched her phone and thrust it in front of my face. “That’s my Dorset.” She smiled, then clutched her neck. I thought she was going to scream, her face screwed up in pain.

  I looked at the screen and saw a child with guileless eyes grinning back at me, her head cocked to one side, brownish blond curls catching the sun. Two front teeth were missing, and I realized the girl in the photo must be all of six. My heart pounded. I thought of this ten-year-old, cold, frightened; I thought of all the suffering children; I thought of my own children. “How old did you say she is?”

  “This picture’s my favorite, but it was taken several years ago. She’s ten now.”

  I asked for a more recent photo, and the woman shook her head. “I have lots of photographs at home, several taken last week. My oldest girl is a photographer.”

  “Do you remember what Dorset was wearing this morning?”

  Cassandra Thatchley hesitated, then shook her head.

  “Why would she?” Jane asked. “She hardly remembers her name.”

  It was true, and I scribbled myself a reminder to check out the girl’s wardrobe when I went through her home. My feet got cold: maybe Dorset ran away, the idea not so far-fetched. I shot a look Jane’s way.

  The detective shrugged. “Checking that out now.”

  I was grateful Cassandra Thatchley didn’t pick up on the possibility of her daughter as a runaway, for she certainly would have rejected it. I pictured the magnitude of her rant. Instead, she seemed to calm down. She suggested we leave the hospital. “I should have put more photos of Dorset in my phone, I know. Why didn’t I? Let’s get out of here; I’ll show them to you. We’ve got to find her and we’re wasting time sitting here.”

  I couldn’t wait for a better picture. If Dorset was missing—and I believed the mother; otherwise why had she been drugged—time was slipping away. While we stood there surrounded by scurrying hospital personnel giving us ashcan looks, I asked Cassandra Thatchley to message me the photo of her daughter, then sent the snap to Jane as well as to my favorite FBI guy, Tig Able. Actually, he was my only FBI contact. We go way back to when we both interned at Brown’s Detective Agency. I hadn’t seen him since the twins were christened, so I included a “miss me?” and that smiley face sporting a halo after my request for help. I waited a few seconds with my phone on full alert for his response before shaking my head and muttering a where-was-he-when-I-needed-him.

  “You can’t leave now,” Jane said. “We have to find out what happened to you. You don’t remember much about this morning. Is it possible, I mean, just possible that your daughter decided to stay home?”

  Cassandra Thatchley shook her head back and forth. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  The blonde detective turned to the head nurse. “You’ve drawn blood?”

  She nodded while Cassandra Thatchley, whom I was finding out could be formidable, began ripping the IV needle out of her arm while a distraught orderly tried to stop her. Willoughby, who’d stayed at the desk, asking another nurse to fill out forms, turned and in a loud voice told her that she had to stay put.

  “Who died and made you the queen?” Cassandra Thatchley snapped. She stood up, and trying to untie her gown, demanded her clothes, saying if they weren’t given to her, she’d prance nude around the nurses’ station.

  Another flurry of activity and the patient’s clothes appeared. She pulled on her jeans and faced the wall to throw on her polo shirt and coat while I fetched her shoes.

  “Don’t you want to know what drugs are in your system?” the nurse asked.

  “Not unless you can tell me now. Where’s a doctor around here, anyway?”

  “Fine,” Jane said. “You’re on your own.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  I held my breath.

  “Don’t you see? I have my detective with me,” Cassandra Thatchley said. “She’s going to find Dorset.” Asking the nurse to phone her when she had the results of the blood wo
rk or whatever they called it, she strode out of the ER, asking me why I was walking so slowly.

  The Playground

  I called an Uber, and after Cassandra Thatchley signed the release papers shoved in front of her as we were halfway out the door, we headed in the direction of what I hoped was her home. When I asked for her address, she swore she’d remember it as soon as she saw the building. “It’s a brownstone close to the park.”

  Not too promising. I’ve had my share of interesting clients, but this one was beginning to charm me.

  “There’s my house,” she said, pointing to a large Greek Revival on Columbia Heights, a street flanking the Promenade.

  “You must know Trisha Liam,” I said, “a client from a few years ago. Lives across the street? A lawyer with a teenage daughter?”

  “The one who knows everything,” Cassandra said, and we shared our first moment before she bit her lip and hugged herself. “I know Trisha Liam. She’s done work for me, and I plan to use her services again should I ever need them. Her daughter is a know-it-all, not like my Dorset.”

  “Your daughter’s ten?”

  She nodded. “But she’ll never be like that.”

  I spent a moment defending Trisha Liam’s daughter, but I could tell my client wasn’t listening, so I coursed back a few years, trying to remember what I was like growing up, and recalling a few unpleasant incidents when my smart mouth refused to shut, then closed the door to my reverie.

  “My daughter’s a lamb, and I’m not the only one who says so. April’s mother, for one, although no one should pay attention to her. All Dorset’s teachers love her.” She paused for a moment and I began to like Cassandra. “My daughter, you see, puts up with so much from my other children. It’s not that she’s simple, not like—”

  The woman stopped mid-sentence, a strange look coming over her face before shaking herself and continuing. “My older children question her every move.”