It was Cookie. I told her that I’d found the dead woman’s daughter and had broken the news to her. “Barbara’s little boy is missing. Seems he was staying with his gran today. We’ve got to find him.”
That elicited shrieks from Cookie and a bunch of questions, mostly about the child so I told her what I knew about Charlie. I gave her Mary Ward Simon’s address and asked her to troll around the neighborhood to see what she could find out. “You know the drill, anyone see anything this morning, no matter if it seems unimportant. Take down the particulars—their name, number, time of day.”
The call gave Barbara a few minutes to herself, exactly what she didn’t need right now. I told her that the lead investigator will want her to identify her mother and asked if there was anyone who could go with her to the morgue.
She blew her nose, shook her head. “Like I said, I’m it.”
“If you change your mind, let me know. Would you like to make a call to a close friend, a college roommate, a cousin, someone you’re close to?”
She nodded. “I’ll call him later.”
There was very little time. I expected Jane to march through the door any minute, so I continued. “When the police arrive, there’ll be a lot of them, detectives whose job it is to work a crime scene—that’s what your mother’s home is right now. Trust me, I know the personalities involved, and at first it’s going to be overwhelming. There won’t be any privacy, nowhere to sit nowhere to think, no peace. So before they get here, I want to go through the house with you, unless you’d rather sit here and wait for them.”
“No, no, please no.”
“We’ll start at the top, go down to the garage and basement and outside,” I said, snapping on latex gloves.
I discovered a lot about Mary Ward Simon’s life going through her house with her daughter, but nothing about her death, not directly, that is. There was nothing out of place, and believe me, I know a clean house when I see it. Nothing obsessive, mind, just immaculate.
The formal dining room, complete with crystal chandelier, held table and six chairs, not my taste but polished to a high luster. The living room had pillows on the sofas and chairs, no notes like I was hoping to find—like, “gone to the grocers” or “be back in a couple of hours” or “help, I’m being strangled”—not a dust ball anywhere. Not a dirty dish or an empty coffee cup in the kitchen. The stainless steel sink and appliances shone. Food in the refrigerator and freezer was arranged, like with like, in some cases into subcategories and in alphabetical order. No garbage underneath the sink or in waste baskets, nothing to suggest any of the rooms had been used since the last cleaning except for one shelf in the library, a small den off the living room filled with children’s books. Three or four were lying flat. One was upside-down. The shelf looked messy by comparison with the rest of the house.
Barbara stared at the bookshelf, wiping her eyes. “It’s gone.”
“What?” I asked as I picked up the receiver, popped in the three magic digits. In a second I retrieved Mary Ward Simon’s home phone number and scribbled it in my book.
“Charlie’s favorite book, The Giving Tree.”
She leaned against the case, an arm over her eyes, rocking slightly back and forth.
“Not much time,” I said, taking a breath. Better right now to keep her moving, give her work to do, but I liked Charlie already. Any child whose favorite book was The Giving Tree was my kind of kid.
As we climbed the stairs, I said, “Don’t think that we’re forgetting about Charlie, not for one second. Charlie’s disappearance is directly related to your mother’s death, I’ll bet my house on it. The way to find Charlie is to find your mother’s killer. The closer we are to catching him, the closer we are to finding your boy.” I might have made a leap there, but I didn’t think so. The chances of two simultaneous catastrophic events happening to one person was slim indeed.
That brought a response I was unprepared for, Barbara hugged me. “I’m so glad I found you.”
“Let’s get Charlie back first, then you can thank me. Right now we’ve got to find you more tissues.”
My head felt light, perhaps a reaction to the stuffiness of the house, or maybe the bruise to my eye. She crossed the landing into the master suite and came out with the box of tissues.
I glanced inside the bathroom. It was spotless. “Wonder what service cleans your mother’s house.”
“She does it all herself. She doesn’t want anyone …” She stopped. “Didn’t want anyone touching her things. She was a CPA. When I was young, she worked for one of those big firms in Manhattan. Specialized in forensic accounting and had a heavy schedule, but after she retired, she still got a lot of work, too much she told me last week, but she couldn’t resist it when old clients would ask for her. Even when Dad was alive and she worked seventy, eighty hours a week, she still managed to do her own cleaning and cooking. Her gym, I guess.”
“Did she have a cell phone?”
Barbara nodded. “Probably in her purse.”
While Barbara talked, I looked into all the cabinet drawers. Everything neat, cosmetics and one bottle of perfume, Chanel No. 5, displayed on the counter, no dust, no stray hairs, not even on the brush. The only medicine, other than a tube of bacitracin, a box of Spider Man adhesive bandages, and a child’s liquid aspirin, was a generic medicine taken for high blood pressure.
In the bedroom, I said, “I’d love to go through the documents in that desk, but the police should be here any minute. Is there something you know about, an address book, a diary, files, something that would tell me about her?”
Barbara opened the desk. It was antique chestnut, I think, and in beautiful condition. Lots of cubby holes. She must have known all about her mother’s affairs. Barbara didn’t hesitate, but reached into the middle drawer and handed me three items, a MacBook Pro, a check book, and a folder with a picture of the Plymouth Church on the cover.
“My mother was the chairperson of the women’s ministry at her church. I don’t know that much about what they do, but it’s charity of some sort. When I was growing up and my father was alive, we lived closer to the church, but as a young adult, I opted out, a source of disagreement between my mother and me, I can tell you. It all seems so petty now.”
I nodded.
She riffled through the folder, took out a page, opened the small printer underneath the desk, and made a copy. “These are names and addresses of members, their calendar and agenda for the year. It may give you something to go on. And while I’m on the subject, the senior minister and her friends should be notified, once I … identify the body, so I’ve made a copy for myself.” She shivered.
Where was Barbara’s uncertainty, her overwhelming sorrow? Again I marveled at her ability to cope. If I’d lost my son and my mother on the same day, I’d be churning in grief, either numb or screaming my bloody head off about now, useless, and into my third or fourth hissy fit, wondering what the police were doing about my child and why they hadn’t found him yet. At least that’s what I liked to think I’d be like. And as I recalled, after my mother’s death, I was angry one minute, numb the next, and wondering if the police had suspects, overwhelmed for months when their conclusion was a possible suicide. But I knew I wasn’t seeing the normal Barbara; I was seeing a Barbara battered by sudden loss. Still, a petty thought crept around my brain. I had to remember that from what I could see, Barbara Simon stood to inherit a lot.
I stuffed everything into my bag, struggled to sling it over my shoulder. “I’ll have lots of questions. Mind if I call you when I do?”
“Anytime. I won’t be getting much sleep. You have my cell and I’ll text you my home phone number. I hope you’re familiar with the Macintosh?”
“My drug of choice.” I patted the bag. “But I do windows, too.”
“Good.”
I reminded her that we hadn’t found her mother’s purse yet. “Is there a place in the house where she keeps it, like by the side of her bed or on a certain chair in the di
ning room or in the kitchen?”
She thought a minute and told me she’d often seen it behind the overstuffed chair in the living room or near her desk, depending on where she was at the time. If it were in one of those places, we’d have seen it. A sign was flashing inside my head, “Find purse, find purse.”
Walking to the far wall, she said, “There’s a roof garden you ought to see. My mother spent lots of time there on nice days. Out this door.” Barbara opened it and flipped the switch, illuminating a string of small Christmas lights surrounding the garden. It looked like the set of an Italian wedding. While I walked around, she made that call to her friend. Her face took on a glow.
In one corner was a gas grill and in the middle were lawn tables and chairs, deep and comfortable looking. I could have stayed out there all evening. Adjacent to the chair next to me was a plate with crumbs and a few pieces of Oreos and a half a glass of milk.
Pocketing her phone, she said, “It’s not like my mother to leave Charlie’s snack lying about.” She worried her lips and stomped her foot, folding her arms. “Oh, God, I can’t stand it!” She slumped into the nearest chair.
A sudden shift. Was it acting? Probably not, but whatever it was, I let her have her moment.
In a while I said softly, “C’mon Barbara, we’ve got a job to do. Let’s finish it.” The sky was a rich indigo by now. I looked up and searched for stars. Too early, but I saw a newborn, twinkling down at us.
Barbara nodded slowly and rose. I followed her down the stairs and detoured back into the living room, peeping behind the overstuffed chair and shaking my head before following her to another door off the mudroom.
As we entered the garage, I found the switch and flipped it on. From what I could see, it was like the rest of the house, neat as a pin, the cement floor painted a shiny gray, the walls and cabinets white. Somebody who knows her whites like my gran would be able to tell you if it was Antique White or Linen White. Not me.
Nothing seemed amiss. Well, almost nothing. I opened the cabinet doors. Empty and spotless. Odd, I thought. She must need lubricating oil for the garage door at least. And the house had two gardens, so where were the tools?
Mary Ward Simon’s car, a black Mercedes with New York State vanity license plates, MWS38CP, took up most of the space. I touched the hood—stone cold—hadn’t been used in a long while.
It felt cramped in here. Still, I’d love to have a garage like this, a luxury in Brooklyn Heights. Matter of fact, the whole house was. In the nineteenth century it was a carriage house, refurbished sometime after the war for gracious living. Now they were scarce as hen’s teeth, and I’d do almost anything for one, other than kill or rape or other bad stuff I could think of and wanted to do to some people. I stood still and breathed, trying to smell horses and thinking that things were not always what they seemed.
I tried the car door. It opened. Digging into the front pocket of my jacket, I glommed onto a flashlight and shone it on the floor, back up to the steering column looking for keys, scrunched up good so I could look on the seats, underneath them, in the glove compartment, all around the perimeter and underneath the car itself. No purse. Nothing except for a few blades of grass, but I wasn’t with the lab. They’d find plenty, I was hoping, and I sure the heck didn’t move anything. Jane’s snarl swam into my mind.
I popped the lock to the trunk, looked inside, and found nothing, not with my naked eye at least—no dust, no paper scraps, no nothing.
Barbara opened the back door on the passenger side and gasped. My heart reared up, almost hitting the roof of my mouth.
“Look,” she said, pointing with her arm, her whole body rigid.
In the back was a child’s seat, a woman’s sweater lying on the floor and a torn piece of glossy kelly green paper, thick.
“From the cover of Charlie’s book, I know it.” Barbara reached out to grab it.
“Don’t touch it. Let’s leave everything. Crime scene techs has sophisticated ways of lifting prints. Let’s let them find it. But would Charlie tear the cover off a book like that?”
She shook her head back and forth several times. It looked like she was holding her breath because her face became flushed. “He loves his books. Takes good care of them. And this one’s special. He’d never tear the cover or the pages of this one.”
“He’s too young to read, I guess.”
She nodded. “He’s beginning to sound out letters. They teach them in pre-school.”
“So we know there was a struggle, or at least a change of plans,” I said, taking out my phone and snapping a few pictures. A little too dark, but I could lighten them in iPhoto.
Barbara cupped her forehead. She was still for a moment and I could almost see her grief, a thick field of smog wrapping her like a cloak, enveloping the air around her, and drowning out everything else. It was deep, honest. I felt like a rat for doubting her.
While there was still some light, I told her I wanted to explore the back yard, trying for the most gentle sound to my voice, and found a side door leading to the garden.
Outside the evening was beginning to cool and the back of the house was fenced and lovely, that time of year before mosquitos. It was a shade garden and small like most outdoor patches in the Heights. This one was neat and trim, with a miniature blue spruce in one corner, good spacing in between the plants, a potted blue oat grass, and some higher grasses I didn’t know the names of. In the middle was a small patch of grass, thick and newly mown, a Japanese maple on the other side, a few ferns, some alum root, lamb’s ear and a clump of lavender edging the beds. In the far corner, half hidden by the spruce, was a small tool shed where Mary Ward Simon must have kept the garden supplies. It was locked and Barbara said she didn’t have the key with her, so I made a note to return and get into that shed. I bent down to take a deep breath, but still smelled that faint odor of cordite. There were stones around the borders, a slate patio close to the house with a round glass-top table and chairs. It looked unused.
“She didn’t sit out here much,” Barbara said.
“Did your mother garden, too?”
“Only the roof garden.”
“So she must hire gardeners for this?”
She nodded. “But she has trouble keeping them.”
Someone had turned on a porch light across the way and a piece of metal on the ground glinted its presence. I walked over to the far end of the beds. I smelled the evening and newly mown grass and got a whiff of cordite again or maybe it was gasoline, I couldn’t tell which—the two seemed to go together. I saw that someone had been cultivating and pulling weeds and shone my flashlight on some garden tools and evidence of work. I walked over examining the edging. Not a good job, not at all. There were dead weeds in a barrow, garden implements with the dirt encrusted on them, pansies mixed in with dandelion weeds. “Whoever does her yard doesn’t know what he’s doing.” I crouched down smelling the pungent order of dying dandelions. Barbara was crying again and a big red flag was in my head. I remembered the boozy-breathed man this afternoon with bits of mown grass on his shoes. I thought of the sweater and the torn piece of book cover on the floor of the car and felt my skin prickle.
“Trust me, that’s not the way I’d go through the house if we had enough time.”
Barbara nodded and the doorbell rang. “Police!” someone yelled, as if I didn’t know.
At the moment, I still had a million questions to ask Barbara, but I sat with her in her mother’s living room, speaking in low tones and giving her a rundown of what I thought law enforcement had done so far and what to expect them to do here. When Denny saw me, he dropped his jaws and I got up and walked over to him.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“That’s Cookie’s line, you can’t have it.”
He wasn’t amused.
“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later.”
“You weren’t watching where you were going?”
“Not exactly.” I cocked my head in Barbara’s di
rection, pulled him closer and whispered, “Charlie’s mother.”
“Oh my God.”
We walked over to Barbara and I introduced her to Denny and to Jane Templeton.
“Denny and I are lovers, Jane and I are not.”
Barbara started crying and laughing at the same time while they expressed their condolences and gave me sharp looks.
Afterward the tall detective took me aside and poured out a little of her venom. “You again? Let me guess, you’ve been traipsing all over this crime scene, you and the daughter, am I right?”
I hung my head and switched tunes. “Hold on. Who’s the only one feeding you information for all your huge AFIS and expensive forensic labs and help from the FBI and every single whoop-de-do law enforcement agency giving you a big fat squat nothing—no missing persons, no names, no nothing?”
In response to my hissy, she raised her voice good this time and that turned out to be a mistake. “This is a crime scene, missy, and you have no business here, none at all. I want you out of here, you and your raccoon eye, while I question the family, you hear me?”
“Excuse me,” Barbara said, coming over to where we stood. “I’m the family, all that’s left of it, and I’ve hired Ms. Fitzgibbons as my private investigator. I’m in corporate law, but many of my friends are criminal lawyers and if I understand the law correctly, my PI stays. I want her to have full access to this investigation, and that means all related documents and all crime sites. And if I don’t get my way, I know who to call. I’m the one who wanted to go through the house and she’s the one who’s wearing gloves and told me not to touch things, so she’s been helping you, but apparently you don’t know it. Furthermore, as a representative of the family, I expect all of you to respect my grief and refrain from raising your voices. And I expect full cooperation between all agencies. As a private citizen, Fina Fitzgibbons does enforce the law. Do I make myself clear?”
There was silence as I stared into Jane’s face, almost daring her to breathe fire, but she didn’t. Instead she stood there, looking a little deflated but impossible to read. She and her partner glanced at each other and I saw one corner of his mouth do a slight uptick.
Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Page 7