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

  I was about to ask what she meant—I was an only child and had no experience with sibling rivalry—when she flipped.

  “Where could my daughter be? What’s happened to me? I’m supposed to know everything. I’m all she has left.” Cassandra Thatchley began to rock back and forth and pull at her hair. “Why did he have to die? Why? We were so happy!”

  The Uber guy pulled over and shot a look over his shoulder, both eyes riveted in my direction. “Is she going to be okay, lady? I can’t afford to have another crazy in my car. Last one ripped the handle right off the door. Cost me a fortune.”

  I knew if I didn’t say anything, she’d either get worse or flip back into a controlled and silent version of herself, but in a second she shuddered a couple of times and straightened, her chin held high and trembling while I, with great effort, kept my mouth shut.

  “She’s okay now. Trust me,” I assured the driver, who told me I’d be liable if she caused any damage.

  My luck.

  During the rest of the drive, Cassandra Thatchley told me a little bit about herself, how she’d been a professor of English at Columbia for the past twelve years, how they’d offered to make her head of Comparative Literature last year, but she’d refused saying she knew she was bottom of the barrel, they couldn’t get anyone else and would have to look outside the department and that was why they’d asked her—she wasn’t into how-do-you-dos with the donors. Besides, if she accepted, she’d be bogged down in meetings and red tape and how could she raise her family; it would mean the end of teaching, the end of her quiet world and she’d just lost her second husband. I was about to ask her about her husbands—first and second—when she let out a high-pitched, “And now Dorset!” She licked her lips a couple of times while the driver shuddered. “Maybe. Maybe …” Her voice trailed off. “Maybe she’s home and this has all been … I want to go home. Too much pressure. I should have known about his heart.”

  She wasn’t making too much sense. “No, I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I’d like to go back to the scene. Just for a few minutes. I think it would be good. You might remember—”

  She looked at me as if I were crazy, not for the first time, but quickly changed her mind. “Of course.”

  Mr. Uber was relieved, I could tell, when I told him to stop anywhere, we’d get out. After paying him and watching him speed off, we walked through the small park where I’d first seen Cassandra Thatchley sitting on her bench. I watched as the English professor stood, her eyes wide, shaking her head.

  “You remember seeing me?” I asked. “Remember talking to the NYPD detectives? Getting into the ambulance?” I pointed to tire tracks. The crime scene techs were still there doing their thing and Cassandra Thatchley’s bench was still cordoned off, so we walked the ten feet or so to another bench and Cassandra Thatchley sat on that one, one hand feeling the wooden slats, her eyes closed. When she lifted her lids, her eyes pooled with water as she stared straight ahead. I could tell the woman was trying to remember.

  After a moment, she spoke. “I feel like a character in my own version of Still Alice.”

  I shook my head. “You didn’t stay in the hospital long enough to find out what you’d been given, but I’ll bet the mortgage your memory loss is temporary, a drug-induced condition that will pass. Some details will return in a few hours and by mid-week, you’ll remember everything. Did you meet someone here?”

  The woman didn’t seem to hear me, but sat, lost in whatever were her thoughts for a few more moments while I looked around, wondering when the CSU would be finished. But they couldn’t hope to uncover leads—the scene, a pocket park next door to the Promenade, had been trampled on by people jogging before work, by tourists and morning folks out for a walk and a glimpse of the best of their world, even as the paramedics were bundling Cassandra Thatchley into the ambulance, while tourists passed nearby, gazing at the view of Manhattan across the river. I let the meaning of the place, my neighborhood, wash over me and hoped it would do the same for Cassandra Thatchley.

  “Do you remember anything about this morning? Waking up? Turning off the alarm clock? Showering? Your first cup of coffee? Deciding what to wear?”

  “Dorset is everything a child should be,” Cassandra Thatchley said, ignoring my questions and staring at something in the distance only she could see. “Smart, kind, considerate. I know I sound like every mother talking about her child, but you wouldn’t hear me saying this about my other two, not that they weren’t good children. And my girl has a real talent for drawing. Wanted to go to the Met Museum when she was six. Imagine that! Don’t look at me like that. I know I’m the mother and every kid draws. But you’re talking six- and seven-year-olds. Not at ten. She’s supposed to attend a workshop at the Art Students League next week. Taking a drawing class for gifted children. I’ll have to drive her there or maybe take her on the subway. I won’t let her go alone, especially around holidays when stations fill with undesirables.”

  I said nothing, hoping that by talking, the woman might remember a shred of something that had happened. “Do you remember what Dorset was wearing?”

  Again, she didn’t respond to my question. “I thought maybe her friend April would go, too, but she’s not interested. Nice kid, but nothing like my daughter.”

  “April?” I asked, trying to get as much information from Cassandra Thatchley as I could without sitting her down and going through the typical battery of questions, which somehow I knew she wouldn’t be good with.

  “April Briden, her best friend.”

  I asked for April’s address, but Cassandra Thatchley shook her head, that vague look creeping over her face.

  “Do you know anyone who would take your daughter?” If there wasn’t a disgruntled ex or his family involved, there were two big reasons for kidnapping a minor as far as I was concerned, sex or money, and in the end, they boiled down to money.

  Cassandra Thatchley seemed not to hear my question, so I repeated it.

  “I have no enemies. Dorset has no enemies.”

  “No one in the family?”

  “Of course not.”

  “How about your extended family—uncles, cousins?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be silly.”

  I took a deep breath and looked at a clump of trees about fifty feet away. The sun, bright now and filling the park with midmorning glory, glinted on something shiny and half-hidden among the trees—the handlebars of a bike, maybe, or an abandoned shopping cart. Not abandoned, though, I realized and kept squinting at it until I got a better look. It was filled with something, clothes or rags, newspapers, maybe. It must belong to someone. I saw movement near the cart. That homeless gal I sometimes saw on Court Street? Or perhaps it was the wind moving leaves. Whatever, I made a note to come back later and explore.

  And speaking of exploring, I texted Cookie and Lorraine, told them we had a new case, a missing teen, and asked them to meet me at Lucy’s in a couple of hours. We’d have lunch and do some catching up and of course make up a plan. Lorraine was good with covering all bases like that. Not me. What I was good at was intuition, or if you prefer, sixth sense. It wasn’t always there; otherwise I’d have known what had happened to Dorset just by looking at her mother; but my canniness took over after I’d had a chance to do a deep think, to live with a problem for several days.

  The woman sitting next to me stirred.

  “I’ve got to get myself together.” Cassandra Thatchley rose.

  “Wait a minute. You meant what you said about my investigating, right?” Because one thing I’d learned, you have to pin clients down, especially, it seemed, my clients. She assured me she did, telling me money was no object, to which I countered that maybe it was no object to her, but it was to me and my family. I didn’t tell her things had been tight recently. I’d need a retainer. By this afternoon I expected to have three or four more people looking for her daughter, and my agency wasn’t cheap. She looked through me, as if I hadn’t said a word, and I began to worry.<
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  “My checkbook’s at home, and this place isn’t doing anything for me.”

  “You’re sure Dorset was with you this morning?” I asked as we crossed the street, heading for a row of brownstones whose backs faced the Promenade. Heady real estate in the Heights.

  She didn’t bother to answer. “My house is in the middle of the block,” she said, pointing to a red-brick, white-trimmed Greek Revival. The patch of green in front was manicured. The windows sparkled, and a ginkgo tree took pride of place.

  That was a good sign. I said so and asked my question about her daughter again.

  The woman looked at me as if I were crazy, her eyes wide and fixed as we climbed her stoop. “She must have been, don’t you see? She always is. I don’t go to the park without Dorset. It’s our morning ritual, especially when there’s no school. It’s the only time I see her, and I need to. Not for her, for me. I don’t know what I’ll do if …”

  But she didn’t finish. Instead, she pulled out her keys and turned the lock as I had another unbidden stab from my own past, picturing me and Mom, arm in arm, staring up at the Statue of Liberty in a time out of time. I realized then that grief was the haunting of what was once upon a time but never again could be, memory turned in on itself.

  Dorset

  Dorset’s Monologue

  First off, my name. It’s Dorset, and it’s weird, just like me, the only Dorset Clauson in the history of Packard Collegiate, or the bald universe, for that matter. That’s what Dad would say. When I asked him once why they named me Dorset, he gave me his hunched-shoulders smile and said, “Because there’s no one else like you in the bald universe”—his words. Which didn’t make much sense at the time. That’s when I was little. When I got old enough to understand deep things, Mom told me I was conceived in Dorset, England. A state of mind, she called it, a place out of time, a certainty of peace and love and fulfillment. Kids get my name mixed up lots, but I don’t care, except when they call me Dorsie or Dorse, which I hate.

  Two other things you should know about me: I love to draw and I love to play baseball. Not so good for a girl, the baseball part. That’s what Mom says, but Dad was fine with it. When I was just a kid—I’m talking four or five—Dad got me a mitt and took me to the park and told me to throw the daylights out of it. He showed me how to wind up. He showed me how to hit a tin can off the fence. “Throw fast in life, kid.” That was Dad. And he meant fast. So we practiced the daylights out of the ball, his words, and I did and that’s why they let me play on the Packers Little League team, much to my siblings’ disgust. More on them later.

  On my ninth birthday, just when everything was looking good, Dad died. It was sudden, like now you see him, now you don’t. His heart, Mom said. I didn’t believe her at first when she told me. Part of me still doesn’t believe it. Sometimes I see his shadow on the wall, late at night when everyone else is asleep, or I see part of his shirt disappearing into the den, and before I can open my mouth to yell his name, he disappears to wherever he’s going, maybe around some corner I can’t see. We had one long conversation, me and Dad—that’s what Mom says, and then she says don’t ever let it be over, so I talk to him still.

  The day he died, I got out of taking the AP Math test, although that really wasn’t such a good thing because, A, I’d studied for it, and, B, I had to take it two weeks later anyway, just me sitting after school in Mrs. Tibbet’s stuffy office while slopes and missing coordinates rusted in my head and the laughter of the other kids sitting in Elaine’s drifted in from the open window. That was on my first day back after the funeral, when I hadn’t studied all that much, but still I did manage to squeeze out a B minus. Mom tells me I’m way too bright for my own good, but I don’t feel smart, especially at dinner when I have to listen to the two of them, the stuck-up slugs I call them, my boring half siblings, going on about how I get to do stuff they never could do at my age, including playing shortstop and getting an iPhone when I was eight, and how one of these days she, Mom, would pay the price for spoiling me into sloth and wantonness. They use words they think I don’t understand. More on them later, but you should know they’re two gross miserables, especially now that Dad’s not sitting at the table. Or sitting anywhere, as far as I can tell, although April, she’s my best friend, tells me all I have to do is think of him and he’ll be there. April’s much smarter than anyone I know. She’s a saint. That’s what Mom says, and gets that grownup look in her eye and shakes her head when I ask what she means. And besides, April has perfect features. Unlike me—I was born with the Lenox nose. Nothing I can do about it until I’m older. Good job I’m tall for my age. Mom, again. But she doesn’t count: she loves my nose, maybe because it’s almost like hers.

  Cassandra Thatchley’s home

  I stood staring at a sunbeam hitting Cassandra Thatchley’s front door before she turned the key in the lock and ushered me inside. In contrast to the chill of the March morning, the air in the hall warmed me. It smelled of furniture polish and spring boughs. After my eyes adjusted to the ambient light, I realized I stood in one gorgeous townhouse. The entryway was wide with a winding staircase on one end, thick oriental rugs over wooden planks. Not my taste—too traditional for one thing—but who was I to judge? My own house in Vinegar Hill was in need of a makeover, and while I loved our nanny, the place was strewn top to bottom with blankets, leftover food finely chopped or not, throw-up stains on the backs of chairs, scuff marks on the wooden floor. At least it was real, Lorraine kept telling me. But in the Thatchley home, there were no smudges, no dust, no cracks.

  A watery light shone through from the leaded windows on either side of the front door. Someone had begun decorating for Easter with baskets of chocolate eggs surrounded by ceramic figurines sitting on a massive table against one wall, and in the corner stood a large vase filled with blossomy boughs, forsythia, I think. The walls, wainscoted and mill worked, were painted a muted beige. Egg and dart crown molding surrounded a ceiling decorated in bas relief acanthus leaves, in the middle of which hung a crystal chandelier. A huge mirror ornately framed in gold leaf hung in the hall. I gazed at my reflection in the glass and saw that my new client and I had something in common, a look of surprised dishevelment, to say nothing of wild kinky hair. But there all similarity ended. She was tall and thin; her nails were immaculate. I was, well, short and dieting and desperate for a manicure.

  An aproned woman bustled into view. “Cassandra! I didn’t expect you until supper. And where’s Dorset? She’s got a dentist appointment in ten minutes. If we don’t leave now, she’ll be late.”

  Cassandra Thatchley stood in the hall, straight and silent, a hand covering her mouth. “I remember now. I know I reminded her about the dentist, but when was that? Where were we? Or did I only dream it?” She shook her head the way a dog shakes off water. “Unless …”

  The housekeeper shot me a look and pursed her lips. “Don’t worry, dear, she’ll be here soon enough. You know Dorset.”

  Suddenly, Cassandra Thatchley seemed furious. A good sign, I thought. She reminded the woman that Dorset was never late, that she never forgot appointments, not like her other two children, who would suffer, she went on to declaim, their father’s death for the rest of their lives.

  “Dorset’s had a loss, too, don’t forget,” the woman countered. “It’s recent, and she was so close to her father.”

  Cassandra turned on her. “Don’t you presume to tell me how to measure their grief or the state of my children’s minds!”

  The air was electric. I thought the two women were going to have a knock down. But as quickly as it began, their squall or whatever it was—I couldn’t call it a fight, not by comparison with the sudden storms between Cookie and me—disappeared, and the house once more settled into calm. I heard distant traffic, the roar of an engine. It grew fainter, dying into silence except for the beating of my heart.

  “Where can we sit?” I asked after Mrs. Hampton, a short birdlike woman with hair like white cotton candy, introduc
ed herself as the housekeeper. She held out a hand and I shook it. Her fingers were thin, like claws almost, and cold as ice.

  “You must be Cassandra’s friend?” she said, leading us across the hall and opening the door to a large room.

  I shook my head, explaining how I’d found Cassandra in the park. I told her about the trip to the hospital as we walked into the front parlor, high-ceilinged and airy despite being filled with furniture I could never afford. Or would want. I told her how Dorset for the moment was missing.

  Mrs. Hampton seemed unconcerned as she motioned us to chairs and patted Cassandra Thatchley’s hand. “I’m sure she’ll turn up. You know our Dorset.”

  And with that, they were off again, Cassandra reminding the housekeeper that Dorset was not “our Dorset,” that she was the brightest, the most dependable of all her children. But in a flash, the churning waters stilled and Mrs. Hampton hugged her employer. “You’ve had a fright, dear, that’s all. What’s today—Tuesday? Maybe she’s with April.”

  Before I could ask where April lived, Cassandra Thatchley pulled away from Mrs. Hampton. “Did Dorset … did she go with me as usual this morning?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Mrs. Hampton said, narrowing her cornflower blue eyes and staring for a moment too long at Cassandra. “You know I don’t arrive until eight.” She turned to me, giving me an admonishing look, as if I were responsible for Cassandra’s mental state. Then she lifted the end of her apron and twisted it in both hands before collecting herself and smoothing the fabric back into place. The light from the windows across the room rimmed her wispy strands of hair, and as we stood there, she surprised me by pulling out an iPhone from the pocket of her slacks and expertly tapping until she was connected with Dorset’s dentist. After cancelling the appointment, she suggested something warm to drink. Cassandra asked for coffee; I said I’d prefer water with one cube of ice, and the housekeeper was about to leave when I asked to go with her. I wanted to see the state of the kitchen.