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

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

  “You don’t understand—he’s everything to me. He gives me so much; so many nights I worried about Stephen, Blue was the one who understood. He’s always there for me. If something happened to him …”

  I left a message with Brandy, telling her to look for a cream and white cat called Blue and gave her the address in Cobble Hill. Then I asked Lake why she hadn’t returned any calls to her cell phone.

  “I’ve been painting,” she stammered. “My mother knows not to worry if I don’t answer the phone. I turn it off when I paint.”

  “But she’s been trying to reach you for hours.”

  She explained that after my visit yesterday, she’d decided to clean her studio and finish the series she’d been working on so we could get a good feel for her style when we visited today. As she talked, she motioned us into her studio’s interior, a cavernous space with spots and skylights. The place was immaculate, not a speck of paint on the hardwood floor. In one corner, tall rolls of canvas were leaning against the wall. A long worktable stood on one side, and several large rolling tables were scattered about. On the opposite side were drying racks, which held finished work. Three easels were placed together near the worktable so Lake could paint multiple canvases at one time.

  “I lose myself when I paint; it’s my only peace.”

  I admired her. If I had to live with an addict, someone I loved, but a man caught up in debt and fear and his past, I wondered if I’d manage as well as Lake seemed to be doing.

  “I’m beginning to make a small profit, but you can imagine the overhead.”

  She didn’t seem concerned about the ransacking of her apartment but turned on spots above the easels, and I followed Cookie’s lead, keeping my mouth shut while she talked shop with Lake.

  “You’ve got such a distinctive line, such vibrant color,” Cookie said. “Galleries must be clamoring for your work.”

  “From your lips.” Lake didn’t try to hide her pride. “You must think me harsh and insensitive. I should be crying in the corner over Stephen’s death, but painting is my only way to work through whatever’s happened to him. And a lot has happened with him, believe me. Almost every day since we’ve been married. I’d have lost my mind if I couldn’t paint.”

  As I looked into her face, I could see evidence of deep sorrow. More than that, Lake seemed like a woman who’d found the peace beyond calamity. But I was wrong.

  I tried again. “Who would steal everything from you?”

  She looked at me with saucers for eyes, the news beginning to sink in, and when we led her back to the couch, I asked her where she kept her cell phone. She pointed to a canvas bag on the floor next to her easel, and Cookie went over to retrieve it. We convinced her to call her mother, and when she did, we could hear choked noise coming from the speaker.

  “I was painting, Mom. You know me.” More noise on the other end. She held her phone away from her ear and closed her eyes. I could hear Ina O’Neill ’s voice pleading with her daughter to come home.

  After she hung up, Lake explained that it was against the law to live in her studio, so for the time being, she’d have to live with her mother.

  “Unless we recover the contents of your apartment.”

  “Dream on,” Cookie said. “Druggies at work. Besides, who would want to live there after it’s been violated?”

  “Just change the locks. Speaking of which, do you know anyone who has keys to your apartment?” I asked.

  “My mother. No one else.”

  “That you know of.”

  “Meaning?” Either Lake was having trouble comprehending or she was a good actress.

  “Stephen could have given a set of keys to someone. Or the killer could have taken his keys.”

  Lake clutched at her stomach.

  “And don’t forget the landlord. He must have a master key.” I thought of my meeting that morning with Jake Thompson and looked over at Lake, wondering what she thought of him, but she had gone into herself. Stephen’s murder and her empty apartment were beginning to sink in. Or maybe she was trying to hide something?

  Cookie, ever the practical mind, asked if Lake had insurance. When she nodded, we told her she should call the company right away, reminding her they had investigators who might help recover her stuff and reimburse a portion of what she’d lost.

  “It won’t begin to touch the cost, but it’ll be a help.”

  Lake continued to stare into her studio, a lost soul.

  “Someone must have been watching your building and must have seen you leave. You took the subway?”

  She shook her head and told us Stephen had found an old jalopy of a car last year, which he fixed up; they kept it in a garage in the back of her apartment building, and yesterday, like she usually did, she’d used it to get to her studio.

  “Time?”

  She shrugged and said she wasn’t good with time.

  “Can you tell us anything more about the man who came to see your work?”

  That drew a blank.

  “The one who you told me paid you a visit prompted by Stephen’s praise of your work?” I asked. “The guy you didn’t like?”

  “What does he have to do with anything?”

  I held my breath. There was a lot I didn’t understand about Lake.

  Her eyes slid around the room. “I think I might still have his card somewhere.”

  She walked over to the worktable, shaking her head, pushing aside tubes of paints, bottles filled with chemicals, some large brushes. Her movements seemed disjointed, listless, painfully slow. She looked underneath a tray of tools, then crouched on her hands and knees and peered underneath the table, shining a flashlight into the dark. Extending her arm into the small space beneath the worktable’s lower shelf and the floor, she grunted. “Might be it.” She got up, handing me a wrinkled business card.

  I blew off the dust clinging to it. “Augustus Gallery?”

  “Recognize the name?” I asked Cookie, who took the card from my hand and looked at the address. “I think I remember it. An address on Madison Avenue—there are so many of them in that area. Probably a hole in the wall.”

  Lake shook her head. “On Madison Avenue? There are no holes in the wall.”

  “Name’s Moses Longfellow?”

  “A real snot,” Lake said.

  Cookie pursed her lips. “A made-up name if there ever was one.”

  “I think I’d like to paint now.”

  Again I shot Cookie a look and we both rose, asking Lake to please keep in touch.

  I had an uneasy feeling walking to the car. “She’s forgotten all about her missing cat?” I asked.

  Cookie shrugged. “Like I say, you don’t know painters. Their work is their world. And think of what she’s lost in two days. At the very least, she’s in coping mode.”

  Lucy in the Sky

  On the way out, I texted Brandy and asked her to call me, which she did almost immediately. She and her friends must have been in Elaine’s because I heard a loud rhythmic pounding in the background. Just what I needed—Brandy and her merry band of friends.

  “Checking up? Six of us are looking for Blue already.”

  At one point she muffled the phone and I heard her barking some orders. The noise softened. Not so long ago, I called it music. Between beats, I told her about Lake’s apartment. It took her a while to process the information, so I had to wade through a lot of her questions, updating her on our discovering Lake in her Greenpoint studio, oblivious to the ransacking that had taken place in her apartment. Then I asked her to keep a sharp eye out on the old bank building, telling her about my meeting with Lake’s landlord, Jake Thompson.

  “You might have to tail him, but don’t take it too far.”

  “Know what kind of car he drives?”

  “You can’t drive.”

  “Don’t worry, we have wheels.”

  “You’d be breaking the law.”

  “You forget, I have
my own built-in lawyer, and besides, Johnny’s brother is twenty-one, not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Stay in the neighborhood. Those are orders. Pay a visit to Lucy’s and ask Minnie to fish up whatever background she can find on Mr. Thompson.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  In case you were wondering, Lucy’s was the cleaning service I started in order to make ends meet way back when I was in high school and Mom had lost her job at the bank and we were about to lose our house. It was named after a song Mom used to sing, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and every time I walked into Lucy’s, which was situated on the ground floor of our old house, the song played in my head and, with a pang, I remembered Mom and her indomitable spirit, crushed with the weight of false accusation before she was murdered. I wondered what she’d make of me, being married and puffy pregnant and all. Now Lucy’s rented out space to my detective agency, and whenever I talked about it—the Fina Fitzgibbons Detective Agency, that was—I called it Lucy’s. Minnie, the office manager, practically ran the place.

  “Anything else?” Brandy asked, bringing me round.

  I told her that while she was looking for the cat, surveilling Lake’s apartment building might not be a bad idea. I gave her the address.

  “You mean sitting and doing nothing?”

  We’d been through surveillance before, so I didn’t answer. Before I hung up, I asked her to repeat my request and she did, and when I ran through the take-extra-care-these-people-are-dangerous routine, I heard more than a note of sarcasm in her voice as she assured me she would.

  “And Brandy? Ditch the dorky badge.”

  I heard her breathing on the other end before she hung up.

  It was time to get Jake Thompson’s reaction. He picked up on the first ring and I told him about finding Lake.

  He said nothing for a couple of beats, perhaps rehearsing. I’m such a skeptic, but Jake Thompson was someone whom I did not trust.

  “Thank God!” I could almost feel his relief. “Tell her to call me. I’ve got some old furniture in the basement of one of my buildings. She can use it until they return hers.”

  “Until who returns hers?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You don’t have her phone number?”

  “Not in my contacts. On the lease, I suppose.”

  So he didn’t have that kind of a relationship with Lake. Otherwise he would have called her himself. Unless it was all an act.

  Closed

  By the time Cookie and I drove to the Upper East Side to pay a visit to Moses Longfellow, the sun’s rays were bouncing off windows and No Parking signs. It took a while to find a space a few blocks away from the address, and as we walked downhill to the gallery, I was surprised we were the only pedestrians on the block. Cookie muttered something about the moment being filled with Edward Hopper light. She explained what she meant as we neared our destination. “Look at the deep saturation of the sky, the rich colors of storefronts, the clarity of late afternoon light.” She had a point. Not a breeze stirred. It was as if we were two lone figures in a painting. I stopped and admired the stillness of the place.

  Augustus Gallery had a small storefront, but it was on the street level, which, Cookie pointed out, was a plus. Gold-painted letters in the left-hand corner of the plate-glass window indicated it had been in existence since 1962, long before I was born. Long before my parents were married. In the center of the window were two vases taking pride of place, old and expensive looking. Flanking these were a few easels holding small paintings, which were pleasant enough. Country scenes in fancy frames. I peered inside and saw other paintings on the walls in a different style. Abstracts, Cookie called them, but all of them derivative—her word.

  “Uptown galleries have been here since forever, even before World War II.”

  “Uptown? You mean there are downtown galleries?”

  She nodded. “We’re talking Manhattan now, not Brooklyn or Queens or Jersey or Upstate. Manhattan is where the gallery scene started—I mean in the States. The nineteenth century, we’re talking, on Fifty-Seventh Street and around Seventy-Second and Fifth Avenue, spilling onto Madison Avenue. There used to be plenty in Soho; they sprang up in the 1960s, but in the late ’80s they moved to Chelsea, where most galleries show large works in huge spaces.” She gestured up and down Madison Avenue. “Some of these dealers are famous for discovering certain artists and movements; others, not so much. This place, for instance, looks like it carries knockoffs of one style or another. A hodgepodge rip-off.”

  I was beginning to get bored when she pointed to a painting in the window, filled with black lines and balloons and other funny shapes. “The poor man’s version of Joan Miro.” I nodded, pretending to understand. In the corner, a winter scene. “That could have been painted by Monet except for those two children walking hand in hand down that dorky path.”

  I stared at the display, vaguely aware of what she meant. “Who’s Monet?”

  Cookie made a strangling noise. “You won’t find a price tag on anything, but we can pick up a catalogue from one of their shows. That will give us an idea of what they charge.” She walked over to the door. “Now we’ve done it.” She pointed to the closed sign in the window.

  Just to make sure, I tried the doorknob. Locked.

  “We should have called before we drove all this way.”

  “And warned this Longfellow guy we were coming?” I reminded Cookie that was not my style—I was into surprise and strike.

  Peering inside, I saw what Cookie meant by derivative. An abstract head or something on a pedestal in between two paintings on the wall. More country scenes mingled with still lifes and abstracts. The metal statue of an elongated guy in the act of walking. All vaguely familiar, even to me.

  Cookie held her nose. “This guy Moses Longfellow doesn’t know art.”

  Propped on a chair in the corner, I spotted an abstract. Not totally visible, but even I recognized the artist’s style. “Look over there.”

  Cookie squeezed into the narrow entryway. Picture two pregnant women crowding into a tiny space. She visored her eyes. “Got to be Lake’s work. I wonder how …”

  “So you see, we didn’t make the trip for nothing.”

  Cookie was silent.

  I could feel her confusion, or maybe it was jealousy. Remember, we’d been friends since kindergarten. Anyway, her cheeks were crimson, and that was a sure sign of trouble.

  I dialed Lake’s number. No answer, but I left a message asking her to call. Had Lake given the painting to Moses Longfellow when he’d visited her studio? Or was it part of the cache stolen from her apartment?

  Suddenly the atmosphere changed. Bus exhaust wafted toward us and cars honked. A long line of traffic stopped for a light as we started walking back up the hill to where we’d parked. We passed a coffee shop, and my stomach growled and I said something about being famished.

  “I’ll have coffee and sit with you for a few minutes, but I’m not hungry,” Cookie said, looking at my stomach. “Besides in this neighborhood, a roll’s probably five dollars.”

  “Just because you’re six months along and still not showing—”

  Not Buying It

  While I waited for my order of black forest chocolate cake and white coffee, which I doused with sugar for the energy, I got a call from Jane.

  “Stephen was killed with a kitchen knife. Two stabs—a prick on the back to get his attention, and the real blow, a thrust to the heart. We’re looking for a wide-bladed job, according to the forensic pathologist. A knife for dicing and slicing.”

  “So a woman could have done it?”

  “Yes, but not likely, unless she had great strength.”

  That gave me pause. I pictured the scene: the killer poking Stephen on the back; Stephen, surprised, turning around; the killer shoving the knife into his heart. No cry, then? “Wouldn’t someone have heard?”

  “The park must have been deserted.”

  “Time of death?”<
br />
  “Yesterday morning, sometime after the K-9 cop on duty made his scheduled rounds a little after three and before six thirty when your illegal hire found him.”

  I reminded Jane that Brandy and her friends were interns. “And I suppose you haven’t found the murder weapon?”

  “I’ll tell you when we do.”

  “One more thing—the glove compartment?”

  “Empty except for the van’s registration. No other information.”

  “And I suppose it was registered to Stephen?”

  But she’d already hung up.

  I figured Lake didn’t need to know the details of her husband’s murder—knowing that the killer or killers had used an ordinary kitchen utensil to kill him wouldn’t make her feel any better, but we needed to start looking for the weapon. I texted Brandy. I didn’t have the energy to talk to her again but told her the police were still looking for the knife that killed Stephen Cojok. I passed on the description and asked her to keep her eyes open, knowing full well her chances of finding it were next to none. Remembering my pact with the devil, I also texted Zizi and gave her the details Jane had given me. She texted back saying thanks anyway, but I was a day late—she’d heard about the kitchen knife “hours ago.” It proved my point: Jane or someone on her team was feeding information to the press.

  Cookie put down her coffee cup and stared some more at my cake.

  I scraped the plate. “You haven’t said a word since we sat down.”

  “Just wondering how Lake got her painting in that gallery.”

  “You had your chance, remember? And besides, Lake’s talent pales by comparison with yours. No one can draw better than you.” She wasn’t buying it.

  After dropping Cookie off, I decided to pay Ina O’Neill a visit. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I was beginning to mistrust everyone connected to the whole business. Was it the mother or the daughter or both who were pulling my chain? After finding a parking space down the block, I sat in the car for a few minutes, staring straight ahead, watching the evening descend and letting my subconscious have at it. I was nowhere with this case, having wasted an entire day running here, driving there.