Death and Disappearance (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 5) Read online

  “Intruder. Get here quick. Just me … I’m staring right at him. Huge. Please, please hurry.”

  The guy, my tail, I realized, was the same lowlife I’d seen in Teresa’s and on the subway and running away from Karen Cojok’s two-flat in Bay Ridge. He made a move toward me.

  “You got this all wrong. I wasn’t going to hurt you, lady.”

  “Not another word.”

  He raised his hands higher, backing away. “Search me. No weapon. You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man.”

  My aim lowered and held steady. “One more step and I spray you in the balls. Quite a sting, I’m told.”

  Our house was a few blocks from the precinct, so although it seemed like hours, within a matter of seconds, I heard sirens, saw strobes flashing on the walls, and heard, “Police!” and marching feet in the hall.

  Two uniforms appeared and cuffed the guy, one looking around.

  “Denny’s house?” one of the patrolmen asked.

  The patrolwoman nodded. “Maybe he’s away.”

  I nodded. “Doing some work for his mother.” I recognized her and smiled. Sparta.

  I heard the click of heels. Jane.

  I almost wept.

  My big-eared intruder was rocking back and forth. Petrified. Served him right.

  “This woman’s nuts, Officer! Ma’am! Like I told this loony broad, I’d had a little too much and by mistake walked into the wrong house. I’m not armed, and she wet all over me.”

  “Sounds like the Fina I know,” Jane said.

  “I’m an innocent, I tell you!”

  “Yeah, and I’m Hilary Clinton,” Sparta said.

  I told Jane he’d been tailing me ever since the murder of Stephen Cojok.

  Jane’s eyes narrowed in his direction.

  I showed her the picture I’d taken of him running from Karen Cojok’s two-flat.

  “Take him away.”

  By then my wits were returning. “He must know something about the murder of Benny Stanhope. Book him.”

  As the police led him away, I heard Jane Mirandizing him amid the man’s frantic pleas: “I done nothing. Nothing! I don’t know about no Benny, you gotta believe me.”

  Willoughby hesitated before he left the scene, no doubt looking around for food. We were in his favorite room, after all, but he told me he didn’t have much of an appetite. “What’s that smell?” he asked.

  No matter. After they left, I called Lucy’s hotline and booked a cleaning service, describing the mess and telling them to hurry. What did I care if Jane had called the CSU and they intended to comb a crime scene? It was my house, after all.

  Brandy

  Next morning I slept until Lucy’s cleaners rang my bell. Most times I’d pitch in along with the crew, but I decided to stay out of the kitchen until after they’d finished mopping up last night’s mess, cautioning them as they entered to use plenty of bleach. “Brawling fight in here last night, and someone lost control. Wear gloves.”

  “We know our business, ma’am,” a young woman snapped, smiling sweetly.

  Her companion gave her the elbow. “She’s the owner!”

  The first woman reddened. “Are you sure?”

  After they left, I had a leisurely breakfast, catching up on the news by reading the online edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

  Imagine my surprise when I came across Zizi’s story about the fine police work displayed in apprehending an intruder at a nearby location. Zizi went on to say the operation was led by none other than Downtown Brooklyn’s own Jane Templeton. She praised the NYPD crack detective for linking the death of prominent designer Benny Stanhope to a body found in a dog run earlier in the week—“yet another example of investigative brilliance.” Zizi bannered a quote from Jane in large type: “We’re pursuing a person of interest and should have the case solved in a day or two.”

  No mention of the Fina Fitzgibbons Detective Agency?

  I slammed my laptop shut and punched in Zizi’s number. No surprise, my call went to voicemail.

  So I phoned my favorite celebrity detective.

  Jane didn’t wait for my hello. “I hope you’re calling to thank me. Because if it weren’t for me and my team answering your 9-1-1 in less than a minute, you’d be at the bottom of the harbor.”

  “If it weren’t for all our footwork, you’d be at square one with this case. Still are, as far as I’m concerned. You don’t have a clue who the murderer is, do you?”

  She was silent for a second. “Whereas you do?”

  “I know the names of almost everyone involved, including the puppet master. I could list them if I wanted to.”

  “Dream on. The killer is the lowlife we have locked up, and as soon as we interrogate with a little more emphasis, he’ll be singing.”

  I was so angry I almost hung up, but instead, waited, knowing full well Jane would come to her senses—she still needed me.

  Two more beats and she cracked. “All right. Zizi was standing right outside Benny Stanhope’s apartment, and after you left, I gave her a statement, even called her later and told her a little bit about the intruder with the ears whom we apprehended in your home.”

  That last remark was too much, but something prevented me from starting another rant.

  “And I’m sorry about Zizi’s article. I told her to mention you, really I did. I should have asked to read it before she published, but I needed the good word spread.”

  I hesitated. I guess I could see her point. I’d been so busy, what with my manpower evaporating, that I began to understand what Jane and her team went through every day. They had more balls in the air than a juggler with double vision. I calmed down and thanked her for her help and hung up, wishing I hadn’t let Lucy’s go so soon—now I’d have to clean up my breakfast mess.

  I looked at my phone: forty-five minutes to make it to my gynie girl.

  On impulse, I parted the living room curtains and looked out. A thin morning light was hitting the tops of the trees. I focused on my car across the street. To my surprise, I saw three people leaning against it. My heart began its rapid beating until I realized who it was—Brandy and two of her friends, both of whom I recognized as being on my payroll. Nothing like dating two guys at once. All three were outfitted in their snoop costumes—backwards baseball caps and shades, dark hoodies and jeans.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” I asked, running down the stoop.

  “Is that all you can say?” Brandy’s voice was gum-ladened and low. She twisted her head left and right. “Anyways, it’s a day off, some kind of gross teacher’s whatever.”

  “Teachers conference,” Billy added. He was the one with the long lashes and gray eyes, and way back when, I could have gone for him big time. Claiming they were only friends, Brandy had been seeing him for, what, at least two years.

  “Something like that,” Johnny added. He was her on-again, off-again. Brainy and polite. He was tall for his age with a deep voice and braces, probably a basketball player. “They’re always meeting, lucky for us.”

  I crossed my arms. “I’m late for an appointment.”

  Brandy mimicked my stance. “You haven’t answered any of my texts, and we have lots to tell you.”

  “About the landlord,” Billy said, his long lashes blinking.

  I scrolled through my texts. Sure enough, their messages were some of the many I hadn’t answered. As I’d requested, they’d been watching Jake Thompson, whom they said had made several trips to Blue Door Ceramics.

  “He, like, lives there practically?” Brandy said.

  “Stayed over last night,” Billy added. “At least as of midnight he hadn’t emerged, and his car was still parked outside.”

  “That’s my curfew,” Brandy explained.

  “That late?” I trolled back to my high school days. Ten o’clock for me, not that I’d followed it. Times had changed, and I felt jealous thinking about how cool midnight would have been.

  “Not a school night,” one of the guys said.

&
nbsp; “And something else,” Brandy went on. “Early this morning he came out of Blue Door Ceramics.”

  “Yeah, knotting his tie.”

  “I’m telling the story.” Brandy told me they’d followed him. “And the best part, we saw his car parked in the alley in back of Jake Thompson’s building.”

  “His home?”

  She shrugged. “Must be. It’s one of those old carriage houses behind the CVS.”

  “Time?”

  “Early this morning.”

  They’d snapped a bunch of pictures and sent them to me. Thumbing through, I saw the back of Jake Thompson getting into a black Mercedes parked in the alley. Another photo showed a close-up of the tags. I sent them to Jane.

  I looked at the image’s metadata: five thirty-seven. “You were out that early? What did your mother say?”

  “Please.” Brandy looked bored.

  As I flicked through the images, I began getting dizzy. “Good work,” and I meant it. So I wasn’t stretching it when I was talking to Jane. Things were beginning to coalesce, like a kaleidoscope resolving into a recognizable pattern.

  “What’s up with you?” Brandy asked.

  I explained I’d gotten little sleep and told them about finding the body of Stephen’s friend Benny. I watched as their eyes rounded while I told them the story.

  “That’s two deaths,” Brandy said.

  “Three,” I corrected, and told them about the death of the woman outside the Augustus Gallery in Manhattan, and having started the story, I had to finish it, telling them Deirdre Maccabee, the victim, was the owner of a gallery in Rhinebeck.

  I had their attention, I could tell, and capped it with a warning. “Whoever killed Stephen Cojok and Benny Stanhope and Deirdre Maccabee did it to shut them up. I’m being followed, so doubtless you are, too. Any fool can see through your outfits. We’re dealing with savage professionals who won’t shy away from killing anyone whom they think is onto them. Like you, so you need to take extra care.”

  I let my warning sink in before telling them I had an appointment in a few minutes and needed to keep it.

  “So what do you want us to do?”

  Their fear must have skimmed the surface and bounced off.

  “I’ll call you when I have something for you.”

  I watched Brandy’s disappointed face take in her companions and communicate to them in a language I barely caught. I thought I saw a spark flit from her eyes followed by a rapid change in their demeanor, the three of them filled with a new energy. It was like watching a high-flying storm pass overhead with only a slight rustle of leaves.

  While they stood there, silent, expectant, I said goodbye and started for my stoop, telling them I’d call when I needed them. Waving goodbye, I ran back into my house.

  After I took a shower and dressed for my doctor’s appointment, I decided to lie down for a five-minute snooze with trusty Mr. Baggins by my side. It must have turned into a cavernous sleep. Disturbed images coursed through my head until I heard a buzzing coming from who knew where. Like a swimmer slowly ascending from the deep, I emerged and, in a dreamlike state, felt a rumble coming from my holster. The noise stopped when I fished out my phone and watched the words Missed Call and a number scroll across my screen. Cookie’s mother.

  Mrs. Scarpanella

  When I returned the call, Mrs. Scarpanella was stringing words together nonstop. “You haven’t seen Cookie, have you? I don’t know what I’m going to do with that girl. When she has work, she forgets everything. I don’t mind she forgets me, but her own child? I thought sure I’d hear from her last night, but no, not a peep. She’s like this whenever she’s with you. You were the same way in school, the both of you. I told her specifically, I mean very specifically, I had errands to do today, and now I’m going to have to take Brooklyn with me, poor child. She hates shopping. Not that she isn’t the best baby to care for, don’t misunderstand, and I’m so glad to have extra time with her, such a darling. Looks just like her mother. Acts like her, too. It’s so sad Carmela isn’t here to see her first grandchild; she’d be so proud. I can just imagine her wheeling your newborn down Henry Street; she’d be showing her off something fierce. What will you call her, the baby, I mean?”

  When I told her I’d also been trying to reach Cookie, there was silence on the other end, and I slammed a fist into my thigh, realizing I shouldn’t have done that to the woman.

  “Hold on, I haven’t checked my messages in a while. Maybe she’s been trying to reach me.” My heart went into rapid-beat mode as I scrolled through my texts. Nothing from Cookie.

  I heard Brooklyn crying in the background.

  Now Mrs. Scarpanella was breathless, and I waited for her to catch up with herself before listening to her explain that Cookie told her they might be spending the night in Dutchess County. “You know, they were going to look for a reasonable hotel room, have a mini vacation. Not too dear, Cookie’s so good with watching the coins. But she should have called by this time.” Mrs. Scarpanella told me Clancy had been taken with the area, and they were, in all probability, going to explore, look at the price of homes, schools, restaurants, stores, that sort of thing.

  “And Cookie was looking forward to spending the night in Rhinebeck?” I asked. I was skeptical. This wasn’t the Cookie I knew. No way would she budge out of Brooklyn. She named her firstborn after the place she loved. I began to sweat and looked at the clock on my nightstand—I had just enough time to drive to my doctor’s appointment.

  “Something’s wrong, a mother knows these things. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead. For all I knew, Cookie was right now inside the roaring maw of a lion, and it was all my fault. “Your daughter is fine. Don’t worry,” I said, and hung up.

  Screw my appointment with the doc. I picked up my bag, fished out my keys, and ran out the door.

  On the Way

  After starting my BMW from the sidewalk, I yanked open the door and jumped inside, not a backward glance. I gunned the motor and flew down the street toward the Brooklyn Bridge, heading for Rhinebeck, at best, a two-hour drive. On the FDR I kept sweeping the rearview mirror for any telltale strobes. Let the police pull me over, I didn’t care. Better yet, they could follow me all the way to Dutchess County.

  Forget about the no-talk rule, I called my gynecologist and cancelled my appointment.

  My car roared down the highway, heading for the Sprain Brook Parkway while I held my breath. In a matter of minutes I was on the Taconic, traveling north. I punched in Jane’s number and cradled my phone, but there was no answer, so I left a voicemail, telling the detective where I was going and telling her to follow as soon as she got my message.

  “I know who killed Stephen Cojok, the woman outside the Manhattan gallery, and Benny. I’m going to Rhinebeck and need backup to meet me at the Henry Hudson gallery.” I asked Jane if she had Clancy’s number and told her that he, along with Cookie, were missing, reminding her I’d sent them to Rhinebeck yesterday, telling her that neither I nor Cookie’s mother had heard from them.

  I felt my temples begin to throb, but I wasn’t done talking. “And while you’re at it, call Bay Ridge and ask them to put some uniforms onto Karen Cojok’s house. This killer has many henchmen, one of whom might be lurking outside Stella’s two-flat, might already have done the deed.”

  My breathing sounded like a horse in heat, and I was beginning to fog up the window. I gripped the wheel and pressed down on the pedal, hoping a cop would pull me over. But no squads were in sight.

  Foolishly, I tried Cookie’s number again. No answer.

  I called Denny, who was sure to have Clancy’s number. No answer. I left him a message and called Lorraine’s landline and cell, but both went to voicemail. Where was everybody when I needed them?

  I was about to call my father, which was really digging down into the bottom of the pit, when Jane returned my call, saying Clancy hadn’t showed up for his shift and they were worried. “Depend
able Clancy, a rising star of the 84th Precinct,” she said, and I heard the choke in her voice, quickly morphing into anger. “I can’t believe how stupid you are. You should have told me Cookie was missing earlier. How long were you going to wait?”

  I made no reply. For once, Jane was right—I’d been an idiot not to reach out earlier when Cookie hadn’t returned my calls.

  In a few beats she recovered. “So who killed Stephen Cojok?” she asked. “Because we’re certain it wasn’t the bozo you peed on last night. At the time of the murder he was in the tank, picked up for a DUI.”

  I told her I wasn’t totally sure and felt her fury.

  “But you just left me a message saying—”

  “Several people are in on it, including Stephen Cojok’s landlord. I don’t want to name anyone else, not until I’m certain. And as to what game they’re playing, I can only guess it has to do with drugs, stolen art at the minimum.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. Both those galleries, the Henry Hudson and the Augustus, are on OCDE’s radar, as it turns out, and you’re totally wrong about Lake’s landlord.”

  I didn’t think so and was about to thunder my reply, as in, why hadn’t she told me about OCDE’s involvement with the galleries before this, when she covered her tracks, saying she’d just found out.

  “They’re dealing in stolen art and, lately, drugs. Be careful. They are extremely dangerous. They’re annihilating rival dealers and scarfing up the business.”

  “And speaking of art dealers, what can you tell me about the woman who was stabbed to death outside Augustus Gallery?”

  “Deirdre Maccabee? The owner of Henry Hudson Fine Arts. For one thing, she was killed in the garage in back of Augustus Gallery, then stuffed into a car parked on Madison Avenue; they found her blood all over—inside the garage in back of the Augustus, on the street near the vehicle, and inside the DeSoto.”

  These people didn’t fool around. “Next of kin?”

  “We haven’t found any, but as long as you’re going to Rhinebeck, you might ask.”