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

  Cookie shot me a look. I welcomed this battle of the titans. Maybe we’d learn something.

  “Why have they let you cross state lines?” Liese asked.

  “Brooklyn should be so lucky every day,” she said. “Give her the book and let’s get out of here.”

  Liese Goncourt’s son straightened. “Everyone calls me Abe.” He nodded at Lorraine and Cookie, and shook my hand. He carried a yellow rose and a book with a worn cover. Handing them both to his mother, he said, “The book is the one you’ve been looking for, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.”

  Liese jumped from her seat. “See how good he is to me? Pity it doesn’t have the dust jacket.”

  I glanced at Lorraine, who was busy examining her shoes. Cookie stared at Liese Goncourt, opened her mouth but must have thought better of it, and closed it again. The look on Abe’s face was hard to describe, but I’d say anger and fear were overshadowed with a thick layer of defeat.

  “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  Kirsten Goncourt folded her arms. “Don’t grovel, Abe.”

  “Think of what you’re doing next time, Abelard,” Liese Goncourt said.

  “Hercule Poirot’s first appearance,” I said.

  He nodded. “It’s a first edition of Agatha Christie’s first book. Published in 1920.”

  Liese Goncourt opened the cover and turned the page. “Toronto, not London. I suppose you were shopping instead of working?” She tossed the book aside, crushing the rose.

  More silence.

  I’d priced the book online. Collectable but not rare, it was still out of my league. “It’s the first edition, though, and precedes the London edition. The first edition was printed in the United States.”

  Liese Goncourt rose. “What do you know? Nothing. That’s the problem with young people. You dress like filth and think you’re so smart.”

  I felt color flood my cheeks and had to look at Lorraine to hold my tongue. At that moment I was convinced that Liese Goncourt was somehow behind Phyllida’s drugging if not the blow to her head or whatever it was that caused her coma. I would find out and bring that haughty woman to justice. And she called herself a mother?

  She pointed a finger at the book. “This was printed using the U.S. plates. I was looking for the U.S. edition with dust jacket, and he brings me a fake.”

  Cookie’s eyes widened and her lips moved.

  “Our coats, Ameline,” Lorraine said to the maid. Her voice was a blade. We said goodbye to Abe and Kirsten and walked out of the room.

  “Tell that woman to call me when she wakes up,” Liese Goncourt said to our backs.

  “That was interesting,” Lorraine said when we’d settled in the car and were rolling.

  I said nothing, trying to digest the morning, the house, the visit, the players, especially our hostess.

  “Phyllida has a heavy load dealing with Liese Goncourt,” Cookie said.

  “Indeed,” Lorraine said, “but she has the grace not to mention her, at least when we’re together.”

  We rode in silence until we had to stop for more traffic. Horns blared. A bus cut in front of us. I breathed in frozen exhaust. It felt good to be back in South Brooklyn.

  “Even Court Street seems calm compared to Liese Goncourt.”

  “I’m tempted to use the B word,” I said.

  “Don’t hold back on my account,” Cookie said. “For starters, who would name a poor parrot Rooster?”

  She had a point. Like everything else in that house, things weren’t as they seemed.

  “Like I said,” Cookie went on, “she’s the one I told you about this morning, the heckler at Phyllida’s lecture.” Cookie filled Lorraine in on Liese Goncourt’s appearance at Phyllida’s Vuillard lecture a few years ago, her horrible behavior, her scurrilous remarks, and how she’d been escorted out of the hall. “Phyllida took it like a trouper. She was gracious and, after Liese Goncourt was led away, changed the subject and answered our questions about the artist and nineteenth-century France.”

  “I missed that talk,” Lorraine said, “and Phyllida never mentioned it. I asked her once how she dealt with Norris’s in-laws. ‘The Goncourts?’ she asked, as if I were silly to mention them. She said she dealt with Liese Goncourt by shoving her out of her mind. Literally. You know, she rarely saw her and most important didn’t dwell on her. She thought Abe was sweet, but weak when it came to his mother.”

  “And his wife, too, it seems.”

  “Are they so different?” Lorraine asked.

  That remark gave me pause.

  “At first I knew I’d seen Liese Goncourt somewhere,” Cookie said, “but didn’t realize where until her hissy over her granddaughter’s whereabouts. And did you see her son’s face when she threw the book on the table and crushed the rose he’d given her?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lorraine stiffen.

  “Did you hear his wife?” Cookie asked. “If I ever talk to Clancy that way …”

  “They must be loaded,” I said after moving all of two inches before stopping again for a red light. “The book he bought her is big bucks, and for no occasion other than she’d wanted it. A son trying to please.” I thought of Denny and his father and how, no matter what he did, he could never please Robert, and how that had a boomerang effect on Denny because when Robert ranted, Denny tried all the more to please. I shot Lorraine a knowing look and she read my mind, I know she did, but she said nothing. Lorraine might be my future mother-in-law, but we were becoming friends. Except, of course, for the age difference, but in my head, I was trying to overcome that.

  “Poor man,” was all Lorraine said. “I don’t know whom I admire less, his mother or his wife.”

  “Great perfume, though. The mother, I mean,” Cookie said. We were silent for a few minutes. I watched the road, waiting for the cars to move.

  “She’s got anger issues big time,” Cookie said. “Okay for young people, but at her age?”

  “It’s not all right for anyone, not good for the heart. With her history, it’s amazing she’s lived this long,” Lorraine said. “Still, she’s been through a lot. She told me once she’d been born in a Nazi concentration camp, came to this country not knowing the language, lost her mother at an early age. But there was more to her story. I thought for sure she had a brother. He disappeared one day, or so I remember. I’ll see if I can’t find out. Anyway, Liese Goncourt worked hard and made something of herself.”

  “Sounds like a made-up story if you ask me. I mean, how old would she be if she were born during World War II? And she has sons in their thirties?” Cookie asked.

  “Not her husband’s money?” I asked.

  “She never married as far as I know,” Lorraine said. “At least she never talked about a husband.”

  “But she’s got children.”

  Lorraine shrugged.

  “Wears a diamond the size of a peach pit,” Cookie said.

  I twirled my engagement ring as we turned into Lorraine’s street. A few months ago, Denny and I decided to marry sometime in the near future. I smiled remembering how we’d just finished a meal at our favorite restaurant and in front of all the other diners, he’d gotten down on his knees and proposed. He was shocked when I’d said yes, and there was a burst of applause from the people around us.

  Slowing to park in front of the hydrant near her four-flat, I asked Lorraine how she knew so much about the Goncourts.

  “For many years Liese Goncourt chaired a committee I worked on to help raise money for the homeless. She’s quite a devout woman, indefatigable and generous in aiding the poor. I can still see her dishing out food in the church basement on Christmas Eve, talking to her ‘street friends,’ as she called them.”

  “Are we talking about the same woman?” Cookie asked.

  Lorraine shook her head, staring out at something only she could see. “Poor lost soul. Usually she can control herself after an outburst, but not when she’s with her oldest son. Something about the two of them—like mixing two ex
plosive chemicals. She was always headstrong, but after her daughter died …”

  “A loon is a loon,” Cookie said. “I can’t see her chairing an important committee and being so unpredictable.”

  “She does function. I think it’s when she remembers her daughter, that’s when she dives into her own prison.”

  I remembered the piercing light in Liese Goncourt’s eyes when her daughter was mentioned. “I wonder where she gets the money to support herself. I mean, consider the upkeep of that home.”

  “The property taxes alone must be close to $10,000 a year,” Cookie said. “And her clothes. Imagine how much she must spend primping and lifting.”

  “Someone bankrolls her. Maybe her oldest son.”

  “I don’t get it. She dumps on him, but favors the younger one.”

  “And he’s totally weird,” Cookie said.

  “We need to find out more about her,” Lorraine said, opening the car door, “and I know where to start.”

  Trisha Liam

  While Cookie went to Bensonhurst to begin the massage parlor surveillance job, Lorraine suggested we visit Trisha Liam since her law firm’s letterhead appeared on some of the papers we’d lifted from Phyllida’s house. According to Lorraine, who’d only had time for a quick read, the documents concerned the hearing awarding Kat’s guardianship to Phyllida.

  As we waited for the lawyer in her conservatory, we sipped coffee served by a pleasant housekeeper wearing gray slacks and sweater. Judging by the gleaming state of Trisha’s Greek Revival townhouse overlooking the Promenade, business was good. As always, the floor-to-ceiling view of the East River and Manhattan’s old seaport stopped my heart. Cars honked on the BQE below, their exhausts making silvery trails in the cold while tugboats plowed the waves and the green lady held up her torch in the near distance.

  In a few moments, Trisha Liam entered, apologizing for keeping us waiting. It had been a while since I’d last seen her. We talked on the phone often enough; whenever she needed some snoop information, she’d called the Fina Fitzgibbons Detective Agency for assistance. Usually the job was a small one, perfect for Cookie, who wanted the extra money—investigating an insurance claim or securing information for a court hearing—but sometimes she gave us lucrative surveillance jobs. I figured that was because we had lived through harrowing times together in the recent past.

  This morning she looked her usual bony self, but since an incident about a year ago involving her teenage daughter, she’d softened. Her smile, as she hiked up her slacks over a nonexistent waist, was genuine, and I thought I saw a few tears glistening at the corners of her eyes as she gave me a hug. So not like the Trisha Liam I’d first met. Still, as she listened to Lorraine talk, her face hardened into that lawyerly glaze I suspected most of us were familiar with. She was a few inches taller than me, in her late thirties, and she wore those rose-colored transitional lenses. Her hair, the color of dirty straw, stood on end like an electric halo.

  After apologizing for keeping us waiting and pouring herself some coffee, she sat. “Phyllida knew there’d be trouble at the guardianship hearing, so she hired me.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “You’ve met Liese Goncourt?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

  Lorraine smiled. She filled Trisha in on our earlier visit with Liese, including the woman’s erratic behavior, the gas leak, Garth, even the parrot. We asked her to tell us about the guardianship hearing.

  “I prepared arguments, anticipated all of the rocks she’d throw at Phyllida, even had a neuropsychologist test her for competency. In short, the doctor found Phyllida to be of sound mind with a facile brain for her age, super intelligent with a high degree of empathy. It was obvious she would be awarded guardianship—the child’s parents made their preference clear in their will. I remember while reading it how impressed I was with the thoroughness and care they’d taken, or their lawyers had, with the whole document and the guardianship clause in particular.”

  “Figures, they hired a slew of lawyers.”

  “The Oxleys came from money on both sides, but Norris Oxley’s holdings accounted for most of their estate. When they died, it was worth several billion. I haven’t kept up, why should I, but their accountants still manage it.”

  I asked where we could get a copy of their will.

  “I think I may still have it somewhere,” she said, turning on her computer. “But if not, it’s a matter of public record—both parties are deceased—so you’re free to contact their law firm and request an official copy. I believe they have offices in Carroll Gardens, where Terris Oxley lived and started his company.”

  Lorraine explained that she knew a little bit about Phyllida Oxley’s finances since she now was her executor.

  “I know,” Trisha Liam said. “She asked me, but I declined. I’m too busy with my existing practice. I’m not taking on new clients unless the job is a one-off, as was the case with the guardianship hearing.”

  Lorraine explained that Terris, whom she’d met once or twice, started Oxley Paper years ago when his son, Norris, was a youngster. “Terris worked day and night, and became quite wealthy,” she said, adding that they began doing business in a small warehouse on the outskirts of Carroll Gardens, but some years later, opened a large plant in New Jersey. Lorraine told us that Phyllida knew very little about the business, would have nothing to do with it, although, or maybe because of her noninvolvement, their marriage was a happy one.

  While Trisha Liam searched for the younger Oxleys’ will in her computer, Lorraine said she knew that Oxley Paper had become one of the largest private companies in the metro area.

  Trisha nodded. “In the eighties and nineties, the Oxley family made the Forbes America’s Richest Families list.”

  “You’d never know it, looking at Phyllida,” Lorraine said. “She doesn’t have a snooty bone in her body. She dresses tastefully but not expensively, complains about food prices, and drives an old Plymouth.”

  “A gracious client,” Trisha Liam said.

  “And she’s doing a wonderful job with Kat, sending her to Brooklyn Friends.”

  “Well, she has the wherewithal, doesn’t she?” Trisha Liam said. “Norris set up a generous trust for his mother, not that she was destitute to begin with—Phyllida and Terris were truly wealthy when he died. He left everything to her, of course. But the guardian clause sets up a fund to be used for Kat’s expenses.”

  All this legal talk was beginning to make me dizzy, but on hearing the part about a guardian clause, my heart did its thumping trick and I perked up. “So a guardian would gain monetarily?”

  “Not exactly,” Trisha Liam said. “The clause expressly states that the guardian trust is to be used for the child, her daily expenses, tuition to the finest schools, learning opportunities, including trips abroad. And we’re not talking a few thousand. I haven’t kept up, but last time I looked, the Oxley guardian trust was worth several million, and I’ve no doubt it has grown. They invested wisely.”

  “They?”

  “It’s watched over by the firm’s accountants.”

  I dropped my jaw while Lorraine looked out at the harbor. “When you think of it,” she began, then stopped.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking of Henriette and Norris and their tragic death at such an early age. When they drew up their will, the possibility of their imminent death must have seemed so remote to them. Who expects to die in their twenties?”

  I’d never really thought of my death. One day here, the next day there, wherever the there is. The thought rolled off me. “I’d say the guardianship clause was their lawyer’s idea.”

  “It’s not my area of expertise,” Trisha said, “but there must be a boilerplate for guardianship clauses. Whatever, this one was well thought out. It even restricted visitation with the maternal grandmother to a maximum of once every month.”

  Lorraine raised her brows. “That’s strange. In the event of her death, Henriette agreed to curtail her
own mother’s rights to visit her granddaughter?”

  “We’re talking about Liese Goncourt, don’t forget,” Trisha Liam said. “Perhaps there was a falling out between mother and daughter.”

  Or the late Henriette Oxley knew something sinister about her mother, best kept a secret. For whatever reason, Henriette Oxley wanted to keep Liese Goncourt’s influence on her daughter to a minimum. I needed to find out why.

  “If Liese Goncourt were my mother, I wouldn’t want my child exposed to her kind of erratic behavior,” Trisha Liam said, “but you didn’t hear that from me. At the hearing she was like Snow White’s wicked stepmother. Quite frankly, she stopped the proceedings.”

  We were silent for a moment, enough time for my mind to wander in its own playground. I pictured Liese Goncourt at the hearing, wearing one of those long black capes with the high collar, strutting back and forth while her distraught mouse of a lawyer made weak objections to Phyllida’s guardianship. I tried to figure out why Liese Goncourt was so intent on gaining guardianship. I didn’t buy that bit about the child should be reared by her maternal relatives. I had a hunch that the love of lucre played more of a part than Liese Goncourt’s grandmotherly cast of mind, although she seemed to reign over a kingdom all her own. On the surface, it seemed, she didn’t need Kat or her money. Or did she?

  I tuned back in to Trisha, who had the floor. “The clause states—I’m paraphrasing now—that should they predecease their daughter, Kat, Phyllida Oxley, the child’s paternal grandmother, agrees to her protection and care until the child reaches her majority. In the end, family court awarded guardianship to Phyllida.”

  Trisha stopped talking. Her fingers did a little more tapping and the printer spit out a copy of the Norris and Henriette Oxley Last Will and Testament. She handed it to Lorraine.

  Lorraine flipped through the pages, stopping at the guardianship clause and running her finger over the words. In a minute she said, “I hope this will stop legal action on Liese’s part, but we need to be one step ahead. Will you defend Phyllida if her guardianship is contested?”