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

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “Not on your life. I’m going to rescue Cookie and Clancy.”

  “And you don’t think she has anything to do with this whole mess? She owned a lucrative gallery, one with a perfect location, in the middle of the drug run from Manhattan to Canada.”

  By now my heart was in my throat, and I pressed the pedal, watching the scenery fly by.

  Jane was winding up. “When you get to Rhinebeck, assuming you arrive in one piece, don’t do anything foolish. Above all, don’t deal with anyone suspicious.”

  What was that supposed to mean?

  “Wait for us. We’ll have uniforms and undercover agents there in ten minutes.”

  I knew how Jane’s ten minutes could stretch into hours, especially when coordinating between different departments was necessary, to say nothing about obtaining warrants. There was a raw nerve giving my left cheek a tic. “Tell them to hurry.”

  About ten miles from my destination, I saw movement in my rearview mirror—the tarpaulin I’d placed in the back was slowly undulating. My stomach traveled to my throat, and I stepped on the gas. The car reared forward. I glanced at the speedometer. Close to ninety.

  “Don’t you dare try anything cute,” I yelled, “or I’ll slalom off the road—you’ll be mincemeat without a seat belt.”

  I pressed the buttons to open both back windows and my whisper-quiet world morphed into a class one storm. On the plus side, the fresh air woke me. My ears popped. I hoped the wind would knock my stowaway off balance.

  The speedometer inched past ninety-five, and I felt my curls flattened against my skull.

  Speeding to who knew where, I missed the turn and kept flying. A stop sign loomed ahead, and I stopped on a dime, waiting a few seconds before flooring the pedal, jerking the car into high gear.

  We were speeding down another two-lane country road when I heard, “Stop! You’re going to kill us!” coming from the back.

  Brandy.

  Gravel spit underneath the tires as I came to another sudden stop. The three of them shot forward, falling against one another.

  My nostrils were flared, my heart pounding. “Serves you right. You scared me half to death. I could have lost this baby. You could have killed us all, and here I am, trying to rescue my friends.”

  “The way you drive, you could have killed everyone on the highway.”

  Brandy had an answer for everything.

  While the dust wafted around us and sweat poured down my neck, I sat and thought, half listening to a cow mooing in the field a few feet away. I had half a mind to dump the three teens out and make them walk home. Then I thought of what Trisha Liam would do. It was too late to turn around and bring them back to Poughkeepsie, where they could take a train to Manhattan and the subway home. They’d have to come with me.

  Brandy’s still soft voice of reason: “Face it. You need us.”

  “You’ve broken the rules. I’ll drop you off in town and pick you up when I’m through. Call your mother and tell her where you are. And do it now.”

  “Dream on.”

  But I wasn’t budging and she knew it. Reluctantly she pulled out her cell and whispered into it. I could almost hear Trisha Liam’s reply.

  “Well?”

  “She’ll calm down in a couple of hours.”

  Silence from the backseat.

  I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going, other than to the gallery in Rhinebeck, so I adjusted the GPS and drove the rest of the distance, this time with Brandy in the passenger’s seat and her two companions seated upright and unmoving in the back. I checked the clock on the dash: at least we hadn’t lost too much time.

  “So tell us again what we’re doing?” Brandy asked.

  I wiped sweat from my brow. “Where did you get all that hutzpah?”

  “My dad.”

  “I’ve seen your mother in action. She has a little something to do with it.”

  Brandy agreed, an amazing step for her. When we first met, she and her mother were mourning the recent death of C. Mitchell Liam, extraordinary father and husband, and mother and daughter were having a hard time of it. Mostly they took it out on each other. I pictured the Brandy I’d first met, scrawny, but with the same rabid eyes and mouth, and stole a quick glance at the teen of today, watching her check her messages. I’d seen her grow into a young woman.

  I slowed, for once watching the speed limit in town, and passed large wooden houses lining the drive, their lawns perfectly trimmed. I parked on the main drag. It was a little before nine, and most of the stores hadn’t opened yet, but there was a coffee shop on the corner with a neon sign in the window, Cal’s Diner, and a few cars and a designer tractor parked in front.

  “I didn’t have breakfast,” Billy said.

  “Stuff it,” Brandy said, crossing her arms and shooting me a look.

  “But I get dizzy if I don’t eat.”

  “Me, too.” Johnny.

  So I jerked to a stop in front of the diner, and they piled out of the car, not listening as I told them to make it snappy.

  While they were gone, I studied Google Maps and planned my attack. It looked like the gallery was seven or eight blocks away to the north, but first I wanted to drive around Rhinebeck and get my bearings. I waited a few more minutes, beginning to get nervous. Realizing I should have asked Brandy to bring me a coffee, I locked the car and followed them into the diner and ordered a plain Danish and a light.

  “Do you know who runs the Henry Hudson gallery?” I asked the cashier after paying top dollar for a load of takeaway for three hungry teens. If the bill was any indication of what feeding a teen was like, Denny and I had better salt away more savings.

  The man said he was new in town, but that I might get more answers if I talked to the owner of the Army and Navy store on the corner. He gestured toward a shop across the street. “She knows everything.”

  I opened the car for Brandy’s crew, watching them slump inside, telling them if they were gone when I returned, they were on their own.

  Brandy rolled her eyes and continued stuffing her mouth with a chocolate Danish.

  I locked them in the car and headed across a street, Danish in one hand, coffee in another as I ran in and out of thin morning traffic. Spring was in full bloom, the trees sporting light green leaves, the sky turning into a perfect lapis blue. A few pedestrians strolled down the sidewalk. I waited while a woman lowered an awning on the Army Navy Outfitters before introducing myself and telling her I was investigating a murder.

  She put a hand to her chest. “No one I know, I hope.” She went on to say she was the owner of Rhinebeck’s only Army Navy store, saying she’d inherited it from her father. Brushing off her hands, she asked to see my credentials, which she examined for several minutes. A tall woman with piercing blue eyes and blonde hair beginning to gray at the temples, she was dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, her feet clad in screaming pink clogs.

  “Deirdre Maccabee was found dead in front of a gallery in Manhattan.”

  She stood on the sidewalk, lost for a second, and I noticed a tear rolling down one cheek. She brushed it away, shaking her head. “But that’s horrible! I wonder why no one told me. There was nothing in the news or in any of the papers.”

  “It happened yesterday morning. To your knowledge, she was the sole owner of the Henry Hudson?”

  The woman nodded. “I think she’d been searching for a business partner. We’re friends, but not best friends, more like business acquaintances, but we’ve known each other for a long time—ten, fifteen years at least. We see each other whenever the chamber of commerce meets, sit together during the meetings and have lunch afterward, that sort of thing. I just saw her last week, too.”

  “Does she have a husband? Children?”

  The woman seemed lost, one hand covering her mouth. I waited for her to respond.

  She continued. “Next of kin? I don’t think so. Whenever I talked about my daughter, she said she envied me, but that’s where the conversation ended. I don’t know if
she ever married or had children. No, I got the impression she was quite alone. Most of us still have someone, an uncle, a brother or sister, at the very least a cousin or two, but Deirdre just had her dead. We all have them, you know.”

  She stood for a while longer, squinting down the street, as if she could fathom what lay ahead. “Excuse me, won’t you come inside? I’ve had a bit of a shock, and I need to tell you about Deirdre and what she said to me the last time we met. At the time I thought it was strange, but you know how things are, life gets in the way—my husband is battling leukemia and the grandkids have their needs. It slipped my mind until just now. It all makes sense, though, in a chilling sort of way.”

  I took a quick look across the street at the steamed windows of my BMW. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m pressed for time.”

  The woman looked left and right and lowered her voice. “Deirdre was worried about something. She said someone was trying to take over her gallery, someone whom she had once trusted, someone who had turned ugly—and she used that very word. Seems he had a business partner, and that partner was making demands.”

  “He was up to no good?”

  She nodded. “I could tell Deirdre was worried. But then, you know how you do, in the next breath, she made light of it.”

  “When did she tell you this?”

  “Last time we met. Tuesday, I guess it was.”

  “Did she fear for her life?”

  My Army Navy woman gave me an elaborate shrug. “As I say, we weren’t best friends. When she told me someone was trying to wrestle the gallery from her—those were the words she used—I didn’t know what to say. It was almost as if she were taking our, what would you call it, our association to a different level.”

  “Would you have her address?”

  “I think it’s somewhere. Are you sure you won’t come inside?”

  I looked at the antique clock suspended from the wall of a store down the block. Almost thirty minutes had passed since we’d arrived. While I was playing a losing game with time, Cookie and Clancy were in trouble, or at least unavailable. But something told me obtaining the address might be important. I glanced at the BMW. Brandy was standing outside, leaning against the car, her arms folded, and I gave her an elaborate gesture, which she read correctly and, shrugging, got back inside and slammed the door.

  The woman opened the door to her store and led me through a large space with an old hardwood floor. The room smelled slightly musty, like all Army Navy stores. It was crammed with racks of clothing, gas masks, gloves, uniforms, jumpsuits. Any other time I’d have a feast ferreting through every hanging object while Denny looked on. She opened a door to her office and I sat, sipping the last of my coffee, while she rummaged through bits of paper and a Rolodex on her desk.

  She shook her head. “One of these days I’ll get organized. Haven’t gone electronic yet, either.”

  I was getting nervous.

  She opened the middle drawer, and I heard pencils rattling as she stuck her hand inside. “I knew I’d find it,” she said, handing me a slip of paper. It held Deirdre Maccabee’s address and phone number.

  In Rhinebeck

  “Finally,” Brandy said as I started the motor.

  We drove to a commons on one side of town, a green little park surrounded by a bunch of stores catering to the taste of New Yorkers with country homes. Apple trees lined the block; a huge tree stood in the middle of the park, a wooden swing tied to one of its branches. A few people were out walking dogs, one older woman peering inside a store window. Birds sang. No tourists in sight.

  “Cute,” Brandy said, breaking the silence. “I mean, look at all those blossoms.”

  She was right. A splinter of midmorning sun hit my eyes and I waited for my head to right itself. I looked around. My nervous stomach told me we were getting closer, or we’d better be getting closer, to our destination.

  “Ice cream,” one of Brandy’s friends said. “I could go for a cone.”

  “Not open yet,” I said, and watched as a figure emerged from the store, setting up tables and chairs in front.

  “It’s open. There’s even a customer inside.”

  Sure enough, a man emerged carrying two cardboard cups steaming in the cool air. The smell was delicious.

  “I could go for some coffee,” one of the guys said.

  “You just finished breakfast.”

  They looked at me like I didn’t have a clue, and I didn’t. Before we stopped, however, I wanted to get my bearings, so I drove around the block, passing slowly in front of a row of stores. They were all closed.

  “Where are you going?” Brandy asked. She was seated in the middle of her companions, and I watched movement in the back as she stole some French fries from the guy on her right. I swerved the car to avoid a squirrel who had decided to run across the street in front of me.

  As they fell to one side and I righted myself, I almost missed seeing Clancy’s van. It was the lone vehicle in an outdoor public parking area. I drove up to the guard shack and asked the attendant if he knew anything about the van.

  “Beats me, lady,” he said, tobacco juice or something running down one side of his mouth. He smiled. “But the driver’s going to love the ticket I just shoved on his window. Been here over twenty-four hours.”

  “Did you see that guy’s teeth?” someone asked.

  “Shut up, Patrick,” Brandy said.

  “Gross,” the other guy said. “Do you think he’s the killer?”

  I felt a spike, something crawl up my back.

  “That’s the place for you,” I said. “You can all wait for me. Order to your heart’s delight and watch. Perfect view of the gallery. I’m going over there.”

  “Which one?”

  I pointed across the green to a store with a red awning. Henry Hudson Fine Arts was printed on the window. Closed, I was sure. There was a gift shop next door, a bookstore on the other side. No cars in front. Matter of fact, except for Clancy’s van, there were no cars anywhere that I could see, but maybe there was an alley in back of the gallery. I wondered what it would be like to live in a place where there were homes with garages and, as if that wasn’t enough, no noise at night and plenty of fresh air and street parking.

  “I’m going with you,” Brandy said.

  We argued and I won. “And if I’m not back in twenty minutes, call 9-1-1.” I told them that police backup should arrive any minute.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. “One problem. No money.”

  I rooted in my purse and gave them a couple of twenties, then decided I could use another cup of joe myself, and besides, it would give me an opportunity to talk to the owner and see if he remembered a couple sitting in his store yesterday.

  Inside, there was a woman behind the glass display cases, wiping down the counters, and I described Clancy and Cookie and asked if she’d seen them yesterday.

  She smiled. “It’s spring, in case you hadn’t noticed. No school for some stupid reason, and I had to make arrangements for my kids, like all the other parents. Besides, my business was wall to wall yesterday.”

  “Maybe they were here when there were no other customers? Think—it’s important. They’ve been missing for almost twenty-four hours. The man has a crew cut. Woman has blonde hair. Sunglasses? Sort of pregnant?”

  Brandy elbowed me on that one.

  “Sort of pregnant?” the woman asked. “You mean, not like you?” She gave me an appraising look, and I was glad Jane wasn’t there. “I don’t remember seeing a pregnant woman.” She thought a moment. “Only one I remember is a woman sitting for at least an hour, reading Emma and taking notes. Reason I remember, I like Jane Austen, too. She’d look up from her book every once in a while like she was some kind of, I don’t know, student or maybe she fancied herself a writer. We get those types all the time. Rhinebeck draws them. Something about the atmosphere here, the dreaminess of the landscape, is conducive to creation. Take your Hudson River Valley school of painters, you know the ones I mean.”


  I nodded as if I knew what she was talking about.

  “Trust me, there was no one with her.”

  A man emerged from the back. “Was too.”

  “Was too, what?” the woman asked.

  “There was a man with her, but he left.”

  “I don’t remember him,” she said.

  “That’s because you were in the back, having yourself a break, when they arrived.”

  “Was not.”

  “There were two of them,” he insisted. “The man left; she ordered. Polite young woman. Said she was six months along, but it didn’t seem like it.” He eyed my stomach. “They weren’t New Yorkers, not by the looks of them, unless they were wearing some kind of artsy costume—we get those kind, too. Lots of them.”

  “Did you see where her companion went?” I asked.

  The man shrugged.

  “I watched the woman, though,” his co-worker said, and she jerked her thumb in the direction of Henry Hudson Fine Arts. “Might have known. They’re quite a draw, especially on the weekends.”

  “Do you know the owner?” I asked.

  “Deirdre something. A little snooty, but pleasant enough,” the man said.

  “I don’t think she’s pleasant at all,” the woman said. “Nose in the air, if you ask me. And quite a beak, too. Looks like she stepped out of a Renaissance painting. Been around for years, long before we opened. They say she lives on one of those gentleman farms outside of town.”

  After thanking them for the information, I asked Brandy to wait for the police.

  Casing the Gallery

  I drove around the neighborhood until I located the alley in back of the gallery. Unlike Brooklyn alleys, there were no garbage cans or oil slicks, no debris. And unlike Brooklyn alleys, it was deserted. No sound except for a slight rustle of leaves and the heady smell of lilacs coming from a neighbor’s yard. I stopped the car, blocking the door to a large garage bearing the words “Henry Hudson Fine Arts” in block print. No wind stirred. I sat in the car for a few minutes, trying to control my breathing and rehearsing my approach. Shouldering my bag, I drew out my pepper blaster, my finger lightly on the trigger, and got out of the car, shutting the door as quietly as I could.