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

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “Fina was there, too. Did I leave anything out?”

  Wuss that I was, I managed a shake of the head. No words. I looked down at the tablecloth.

  “I blame myself,” Lorraine said, looking at her son. “I rushed into life without taking stock of where you were. And whether you like it or not, you are still my child, I am your mother, and you will listen to me.”

  Like a rock he hunched over in his chair, boring a hole with his eyes into his empty plate.

  “More chicken?” I asked.

  No answer. It was as if I wasn’t in the room, and in a sense, I wasn’t.

  Back and forth, he swiveled, rubbing the tablecloth, twisting in his chair. I thought everything was over when he stood again, hands fisted, arms crossed, face like fire.

  Lorraine shot him a look full of steel. “Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t finished.”

  He started for the kitchen. “To get more wine. Your glass is empty, and I’m just beginning.”

  When he returned, he held a bottle of champagne and the rest of the cranberry juice, pouring me another glass of my favorite substitute. I smelled its sour sweetness and took a swig. I blew out air and took a third piece of chicken and more potatoes.

  “This is the plan.” Lorraine was talking in steady tones as she held up her glass and ticked off points. Denny, as if by a miracle, was listening while he poured. “You will stay here for the next week. This house needs you. And I mean needs you. More to the point, you need it. And I have chores. I want the upstairs bathroom refinished, and you’re going to help me with it.”

  “But—”

  “Fina’s a big girl. She can live without you for a while, and I’ve arranged for your absence from work with Jane. We’ve got lots to do, you and I, worlds to discover. You can sleep in your old room. And we’ll talk about your father and cry over pictures and talk about what he meant to you and still does, and how he prepared for your birth and loved you like a son with every breath he took and how you’re made in his mirror image.”

  He smiled. “So you’re over Frank?”

  “Not a chance. He’s visiting a daughter in Omaha, so get over it.”

  To my surprise, Denny smiled. “Have you chosen the paint?”

  “First things first,” she said, carrying in the pie, a lemon meringue loaded with whipped cream.

  Denny got out his wallet and produced the tickets for the Brahms concert next month. I listened as they talked about the ins and outs of some symphony or other and of how Frank would be miserable. But it would be good for him, Denny told her. I watched him wink, heard Lorraine say how horrible he was, listened to them laughing together. Mothers and sons. I took a huge bite of pie. Tomorrow, I vowed, was the beginning of my diet.

  At Home

  I said goodnight to Denny on the steps of his mother’s home, feeling a weirdness in the pit of my stomach. He insisted on getting me an Uber, so I piled in, blew him a kiss, and halfway down Clinton Street, phoned Stella.

  The landlady was glad I called—I’d caught her just in time—she was about to turn out the light. They’d had a good evening; she’d even persuaded Karen to eat. “One of my casseroles,” and she began talking me through the recipe. I let her go on, figuring one of these sentences she’d get to the heart of what I wanted to hear.

  “Did Karen talk about her son?”

  “And her leaving him, too. But I’m not at liberty to say anything. It was a confidence, poor misguided child. We all make mistakes, but hers was a whopper.”

  I’ll admit it: I was a mental voyeur. Secrets intrigued me, and I’d have given anything at that moment to hear more about Karen’s past, convincing myself that it had a relevance to her son’s murder, so I wheedled some of the truth out of Stella. Seemed Stephen’s mother met an old high school flame in the supermarket one morning as she shopped with the five-year old Stephen. One small flirt in the produce aisle led to another, and they began seeing each other. A cautionary tale with a predictable end, the breakup of three lives. Karen Cojok left everything for a man who hated kids and turned out to be a real head case. The affair lasted six months, after which he began stalking her. She obtained a court order of protection and lost everything, doing irreparable harm to her son and husband. Two months of bliss and twenty-five years of shame.

  “The man’s name?”

  Stella didn’t know.

  “Do you know anything more about her son’s employers?”

  Stella told me she and Karen hadn’t discussed Stephen, saying there were large gaps in their conversation while Karen mourned her son’s demise, and Stella had avoided talking about her attacker.

  “She’s sleeping like a baby in the spare bedroom,” she said, taking credit for knowing how to raise children. And she was right—in her sorrow and shock, Karen was a child.

  After I ended the call, I thought for a second before buzzing Zizi, but only for a second. I was desperate for manpower what with Cookie not responding, and the hour being too late and too dangerous to send Brandy and her crew. Bottom line, I feared for Karen’s life. So I called the endowed reporter, who answered on the half ring, and told her I’d located Stephen’s mother. It was like throwing red meat to a tiger with hungry cubs. I was sacrificing Karen’s privacy for surveillance, the way I figured it. Zizi Carmalucci would be all over the story, hanging out in the neighborhood, another pair of eyes. No doubt she’d pick up the scent of Karen’s tail. Just to make sure, I sent her the shadowy image I’d taken of the intruder running away from Stella’s living room window. I begged her to lay off interviewing Karen, saying she’d just heard about the death of the son she’d abandoned as a child. I could hear Zizi breathing over the wire.

  “What a ball-busting heartbreaker,” Zizi said. “How can I thank you?”

  “Go easy on Karen Cojok, you’ve got to promise me.”

  She said nothing, and I could see the headline she’d create.

  “And it wouldn’t hurt,” I said, “to hang out in front of the two-flat.” I told her about the attempt on Karen Cojok’s life.

  I could hear Zizi scribbling.

  “And while you’re at it, check out the Lai Tai restaurant on Third Avenue.”

  “What’s up with that?”

  I told her about Stephen’s purported deliveries and described the powdery substance I’d seen in a wheelbarrow in the back of the restaurant.

  We ended the call, not before Zizi thanked me again for the story.

  “I’ll never forget this, I swear,” Zizi said.

  I’ll bet. I made it all the way home, paid the driver, and stopped in front of our Vinegar Hill Greek Revival, worrying about the case. I’d gotten nowhere, and it had been a full three days since we’d found Stephen’s body. What was I missing?

  I was having trouble moving my brain, but a name began worming itself into my consciousness. Benny.

  So despite the hour and my sand-encrusted eyes, I walked the two blocks to my car, pressed the starter, and tooled down Henry Street, swinging by Benny’s apartment on Livingston. There was a light on in the living room. I looked at my watch and figured it was too late to drop in, and besides, what would he have to tell me? In his words, he was more of a ship passing in the night than a real friend to Stephen. I sat in front of his apartment for a few minutes before turning around and driving home, this time, for good.

  I didn’t like walking into an empty house, although Denny, more thoughtful than I, had put on enough lights before we left to ward off the devil. Since the caper nearly costing me my life a couple of years ago, we’d gotten a security system, which, as was my wont, I almost forgot to disarm before unlocking the door. But thankfully, there was a flashing red light and a thirty-second grace period.

  Mr. Baggins was waiting for me when I opened the door, needy and whirling his bulk around my legs. I picked him up and listened to his loud purr, taking comfort in his unending love. After I fed him, he bounded onto my lap while I stared into the dark of the kitchen, trying to plan my next m
oves.

  Not trusting my brain to remember, I added my twice-cancelled, finally reinstated doctor’s appointment to my calendar, giving myself two alerts. Afterward, I stared at my computer screen for who knew how long, finally pulling myself up and telling myself to get with it. The noises outside were distant as I prepared for bed. Before I changed, I looked at my phone to see if there were any messages from Cookie. None. I left yet another voicemail for her, and my full stomach began its slow trek to discomfort city. Why hadn’t she replied to any of my messages or returned my calls? Just in case she wouldn’t check her voice messages, I texted her, asking her to call as soon as she got it. I looked at the clock by my bed. Too late to call Mrs. Scarpanella, but I figured if she was worried, she would have gotten in touch.

  I was just about asleep when I heard a sharp noise, and my eyes shot open as Mr. Baggins jumped onto my legs and pressed his fat body into the covers, moving as close as he could get to me. I listened, every nerve expectant.

  Silence. Must have been the house settling. Things were different without Denny, and I realized how much I missed him, and how seldom I’d been alone. Just then there was the roar of an engine, the sound of a car speeding down the street. I listened to the motor as the rumbling grew fainter, heard branches slapping the window panes, and squeezed my eyelids, longing for sleep.

  Another noise, almost like a crack, and I grabbed the mace from my bag, a flashlight, and as quietly as I could, tiptoed to the closet and put on my robe and an old vest Denny had hanging there. Slowly I opened the door and listened. The wind was kicking up, and I heard the fir tree in the backyard moaning.

  I crept down the stairs, my heart pounding. Another car sped down the street, its lights like beacons. Should I call 9-1-1? I’d feel ridiculous if there was no one in the house but Mr. Baggins and me.

  I waited at the foot of the stairs for several minutes. No other sound except for Mr. Baggins bounding down the steps and sitting beside me. We sat there, me and my trusty companion, for several more minutes. In the end, I decided my imagination had been playing tricks. My eyes felt like hot coals as I made my way back upstairs, and for the next few hours, I tossed, turned, wishing for sleep, which finally came, but as it turned out, not for long.

  The Call

  It must have been the lemon meringue, but I was in the middle of a monstrous nightmare, the kind you can’t remember except for how bad it is, when there was a buzzing in my ear and I woke to a sour taste in my mouth and a rumbling in my stomach. I was not prepared for Jane’s call.

  “There’s been another death, and you were the last one seen going into the apartment.”

  I thought of Karen.

  “But she was staying with Stella. Did he kill both of them?”

  “Not Karen Cojok. Benny Stanhope, probably the Benny you were telling me about this afternoon?”

  “On Livingston?”

  She answered in the affirmative.

  “But I just saw—”

  “And a black BMW was seen lurking outside a few minutes before one of the neighbors heard a piercing scream. They caught three letters of the tags, and your plates are a match. I commissioned you to help on the case and now you’re a suspect? Chief’s going to have my badge.”

  I told her I’d meet her there in fifteen minutes, pulled on my tights, and noticing a huge run, had to rethink my outfit, balling up the abomination and throwing it into the trash. So I changed into a pair of jeans with a ballooning waist Lorraine bought for me and ran my fingers through impossible kinks. Then I threw on one of Denny’s old shirts and snatched my bag. I gave Mr. Baggins a kiss and hug and changed his water, filled his bowl, and told him to hold down the fort. I rejected the idea of calling Denny and Lorraine, but for the first time in months, I began praying that Lorraine could work miracles with him, knowing full well in the back of my mind that it would take more than Lorraine’s magic to right Denny’s head. All I knew was that somehow things had to get better before this baby arrived.

  A low-lying mist covered the ground as I parked a few blocks away and walked to Benny’s address. Outside stood a morgue van and two squads, their strobes silently turning.

  A uniform guarded the yellow crime-scene tape. I flashed my ID, and he waved me through.

  At the front door I put on gloves, nodded to the MLIs waiting for the CSU to document the scene, and told a policewoman standing at the entrance of the building that Jane Templeton was expecting me.

  She looked at my ID. “In the living room.”

  I tiptoed down the hall. The smell of blood was almost overpowering.

  “What took you so long?” Willoughby asked. “And where are your booties?”

  “Where are yours?” I countered.

  He flapped his tie. “Don’t touch anything, or the crime scene super will flail me when she gets here.”

  “I can only hope,” Jane said, and pointed to the middle of the room.

  The body of Benny Stanhope lay face up on the couch almost as if he were sleeping. The saint of ships passing in the night. He was clothed in the same outfit I’d seen him wearing that morning when he was breathing and smiling. But now his hands were folded together over the spine of a book that lay open on his stomach. His head was propped up on one of the armrests. His eyes were filmed over and unseeing, his face smooth and soft and kissed by the yellow light from the chandelier, just as I remembered it looking that morning. Except now there was a deflated otherness about him—that, and a gash on one side of his neck. Blood pooled around his head and into the surrounding pillows. I said a silent prayer for the repose of his soul.

  “Except for the wound and the blood, it almost looks like he’s sleeping.”

  “He knew his killer,” Willoughby said.

  Jane shook her head. “And how do you know that?”

  Willoughby crossed his arms. “No sign of forcible entry—no locks picked. How else could the perp enter except by knocking on the door. Or maybe he had a key.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? The victim was sleeping when he was stabbed. How could he have answered the door? And what about the open window on the side of the house?”

  I ignored the two arguing detectives and spoke to the dead man. “What did you know that you weren’t telling me?”

  “Right.” In one of her usual moods, Jane fisted her hands and turned to me. No more praise for a job well done. But then I didn’t blame her—Benny Stanhope was yet another homicide on her patch. “You’d better start talking, and it had better be good.”

  I told her what little I knew about the victim, repeating word for word what I’d said about him when she’d called that afternoon. Obviously she was focused on Denny at the time and hadn’t been listening.

  “And your car was seen idling outside moments before he was killed. Explain that.”

  “A fluke. I was going to talk to him, then realized how late it was and decided to return in the morning.”

  “He was mixed up with Stephen?” she asked.

  “He wasn’t Stephen’s friend. They met in the park, nowhere else. He was someone who knew surface information about Stephen that I needed—he led me to his mother. But that was all. He was a successful interior designer, not a drug dealer.”

  “So why did he wind up dead?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that, not totally. “Benny Stanhope was knifed in the carotid artery, same as that woman Lorraine found in front of Augustus Gallery.”

  “She was stabbed in the chest,” Jane said.

  “Same killer, though,” Willoughby said.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Jane said, but her tone had softened.

  “Who found him?” I asked.

  “He’s in the kitchen.”

  “Sitting in the middle of a crime scene?” I shot Jane a look, and she shrugged, saying she’d square it later with the crime scene super.

  “What’s taking them so long?” Willoughby asked.

  “Got a bunch of scenes to process tonight.”

>   I said nothing.

  The man stood when we entered and introduced himself as Rennart Bigelow, Benny’s friend.

  “You live here with Benny?”

  “Upstairs. We’re partners, you see. We keep our own space, but we live close by.”

  “Next of kin?”

  “He has a mother. I’ve never met her. Talked to her once on the phone.”

  A bone of a man with a crew cut and a mouth crowded with teeth, he sat back down at the round table placed at the far end of Benny’s kitchen in a sort of breakfast alcove. As an afterthought, he offered us seats, apologizing for his lack of manners and looking up at us with bloodshot eyes. He took a sip of coffee from a dainty china cup, which shook in his thin hands.

  “So tell me what happened this evening,” I asked.

  Rennart Bigelow pointed to Jane and Willoughby. “They’ve already taken my statement.”

  “But we wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

  The man wiped his forehead with one hand. “An animal shriek woke me from a sound sleep. I’d been dozing in the chair—it happens when I’m not with him—one glass of wine and a boring book and I’m off.”

  His own words must have recalled the sudden loss, and he gazed into the void.

  “Go on. You were at ‘animal shriek.’”

  “I knew before I saw his body that it was Benny’s cry and that when I found him, he would be dead. I just knew it. I rushed down the stairs, telling myself I was dreaming, that I’d wake up and we’d laugh about it later. He’d wanted to get together earlier, but I’d had a day, fighting with the landlord over the water pressure, always an issue with my apartment being on the fifth floor. Do you want to hear all of this?”

  I nodded. I let him talk about Benny. Sometimes he would come up to Rennart’s apartment and they’d watch one of his DVDs—he had a vast collection—but most of the time it was dinner at Benny’s. He was a cook who specialized in a subtle mix of Far Eastern and French cuisine.

  “About what time did you hear the scream?”