A hot stab. I turned, blood pouring from somewhere. My eyes felt so heavy.
I saw the knife in Lake’s hand.
I saw her raise the blade, her muscles taut.
I grabbed her arm, but it slipped from my grasp. She was too good. Squads approaching. Sirens blaring. Jane’s voice loud over the horn.
I dodged.
Lake tripped.
I lost my balance and fell against the floorboards.
Trying to get up, I hit the wood of the rail, felt again a burning sting, the thick wet pulsing spurt.
I saw Lake’s face as if from far away. It was a clownish, desperate face, the face of a mind gone feral.
With an effort I watched as in slow motion she climbed over the railing. Like a dancer pirouetting down the roof’s shingles, she moved toward the edge, arms extended. She stood for a second, wobbling before lifting her hands like a great bird.
I heard the gutter give way. With a shriek, Lake Cojok flew into the air.
Her scream, long and thin, died with a thud.
For an instant, there was silence; no one moved.
Then pandemonium, shouting, crying.
As I scrambled for purchase, my world went dark.
In the Light
Somewhere in the white land I’d find my mother, I was sure of it. There was no noise. That was a good sign—she wouldn’t be where there was noise.
Maybe she was in the back, but when I ran through the silver door, she wasn’t there.
I hadn’t found the right road. But I would. I knew she’d be here somewhere; otherwise I wouldn’t have found the book.
Faces floated past, and I felt rather than heard voices. Something clung to my arm. If only I could find her. I wouldn’t leave until I’d seen her face.
I ran by a stream. Trees. The smell of pine. Mist. A voice, my mother’s, telling me to go back, but I chased her down a long corridor into the attenuated light. The smell of clouds filled me with peace.
Somewhere voices singing, the sound of a bell. Wheels. “Wake up,” my mother said.
I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t.
“Try harder. Go back. For the sake of your unborn.”
I felt Denny’s hand in mine. He called me. If only I could open my eyes.
The Greatest Mistake
“Fina?” Denny’s eyes were wet.
“She’s awake.” Lorraine.
I tried to sit. “The baby?”
“Don’t move—you’re wired.” Jane stood at the foot of the bed, blowing her nose. Willoughby, by her side, flapped a hand my way. Cookie and Clancy were seated on the couch, thighs touching.
“Only one visitor at a time,” a nurse tut-tutted.
No one moved.
I looked long at Denny, smiling, and then it all came back, the house, the roof, Lake, the ride to the hospital.
Brandy poked her head in the door. I saw a nurse pulling her back.
Jane turned to the nurse. “We need her here.”
“But—”
“Lake jumped?” Brandy asked.
Jane nodded.
I asked about the others—suspects, Jane called them—Ina O’Neill, Jake Thompson, Moses Longfellow, the fat bodyguard in the gallery.
“No one’s talking yet, but we think Moses Longfellow will crack. We found a stash of heroin and cocaine in the crates. OCDE estimated the street price at over two hundred million dollars.”
“I thought they were dealing in missing art?”
“They were until they fell in with a Mexican drug cartel and found an easier substance to push—it’s hard to find buyers for stolen art, the market’s much smaller.”
“The Sinaloa cartel,” Clancy said.
Jane nodded.
“And Deirdre Maccabee?”
“She was Longfellow’s partner. They’d been in the business together for years. We’ll have to examine the computer files in both galleries and in her house, but my hunch is she had no part of it—didn’t know about the drugs, not even about the stolen artworks.”
“An innocent, so she had to be eliminated. Just like Benny Stanhope?”
We were silent while the nurse came in and gave me some pills. She wrote down something on my chart, checked my levels, and disappeared.
“Lake’s gang took over Deirdre’s house, which they could do since she had no relatives chomping at the bit.”
Jane shrugged. “I understand she put her whole estate into trust for three different charities. Sooner or later, they’d discover the theft of her house.”
“Unless Lake or her mother had clever lawyers.”
“At this point we know they were involved in a Mexican drug cartel. Lake knew all about her husband’s work. She’s the one who got him the delivery job.”
This was the part I couldn’t understand. “Hard for me to buy her involvement with the cartel. Lake was a painter. She lived for her art.”
We were silent for a while.
“Lake fell for the lure of fame and unlimited funds,” Jane said. “Her mother was involved, and we all know the influence mothers have.”
“So Ina O’Neill was the eminence grise?” Lorraine asked.
Willoughby looked the same question rolling in my head. Eminence what? But he knew enough to ask the important questions. “And who killed Stephen? Deirdre Maccabee? Benny Stanhope? Who broke into Karen Cojok’s apartment and roughed her up?”
“When Clancy and I walked into the dining room of that huge house, Lake was sitting at the head of the table. That tells me she was the leader. She had a way with a knife, I’ll grant her that. I can see her plunging it into Deirdre Maccabee and Benny Stanhope, but I just cannot imagine her killing her own husband.”
“Who cares who did what? They’ll all be charged with drug trafficking and murder.”
We were silent for a while. I might have dozed.
“And her landlord?”
“We don’t yet know what Jake Thompson knew or how he was involved,” Jane said, “but he became hysterical, wouldn’t leave Lake Cojok’s body. He was in love with her.”
I remembered seeing Lake’s paintings in his office.
“We don’t know how she got involved in the trafficking. We don’t know yet what Moses Longfellow promised her.”
“Or what she promised him.”
“Remember, she didn’t tell us about her painting in Augustus Gallery,” Cookie said. “She played out a big charade, remember, finding Moses Longfellow’s business card underneath her worktable. She disappeared along with her furniture only to appear in her studio the next day all innocent. We should have known something was up.”
I had to agree.
“She turned a blind eye to her husband’s addiction?” Clancy asked.
“Maybe encouraged it,” Jane said.
All I’d learned had been a big zero. Misjudging Lake Cojok had been my greatest mistake, followed up, or perhaps caused by my not searching her apartment when I’d interviewed her on the day of her husband’s death. I understood why Deirdre Maccabee had to be eliminated, maybe even Stephen. Because they knew too much. But why Benny Stanhope? Why the attempt to kill Stephen’s mother? I felt my lids growing heavy, heard Jane and Willoughby arguing over who knew what. I closed my eyes for a minute, pondering the unknowns. The last thing I remembered was Lorraine talking about the importance of the past.
Epilogue
A few weeks later, we were sitting around the table in Lorraine’s back porch, enjoying one of her famous Saturday morning breakfasts. Cookie and Clancy were there; so were Jane and Willoughby. Frank, eyeing a basket filled with bagels, scones, and toast, sat next to Lorraine.
Denny, who’d been seeing a shrink, kept staring at Frank. “You enjoyed the concert so much last night that you got up several times and left at the intermission?”
Frank helped himself to a bagel. “I didn’t leave. I went out for a breath of fresh air.”
I gave Denny the elbow. “He likes Brahms as much as I do. Eat your food.”
Frank rubbed his chin. “Shaving, I suppose.”
Denny mumbled something unintelligible and shoveled some scrambled into his mouth.
At least he was talking to Frank. I shot a look at Lorraine.
She shrugged. “I’ve been doing some research.”
“No shop talk,” Willoughby said. “We’re celebrating today.”
Cookie put down her fork. “I’d like to hear about your research.”
Lorraine said she’d been riffling through issues of Gallery Guide from the 1970s and ’80s when she came across an article about Deirdre Maccabee, a well-respected art dealer in the Hudson River Valley. In one of the photos she was standing next to Moses Longfellow. “They must have had a business relationship for years.” Who knows how Lake Cojok, considered at best an emerging artist, became involved with Moses Longfellow, but she wormed her way into his world. “According to Longfellow, she’s the one who got Stephen Cojok the delivery job.”
I wasn’t buying it. “So now everyone’s innocent except for Lake, because she’s no longer around to tell her side of the story?”
Denny gave me a slobbery kiss. Everyone stopped talking for a few minutes and busied themselves with breakfast.
“Not exactly,” Jane said. “At the arraignment, Moses Longfellow pled guilty to both charges of trafficking in drugs and in stolen art.”
“And murder?”
“Not guilty. Claims he was nowhere near the gallery when Deirdre Maccabee was stabbed.”
“So who killed Deirdre?”
“Who’s Deirdre?” Frank asked.
“You remember—the woman who disappeared from Augustus Gallery, the one we later found dead in the DeSoto?”
“What DeSoto?” Willoughby asked.
“Oh, that woman.” Frank looked at Denny. “You ever go to a gallery?”
Denny shook his head.
“Don’t. Weird things happen there.” And he and Lorraine told us about their brief encounter with Deirdre Maccabee inside the Augustus.
“Now you see her; now you don’t; now you do.” Frank bit into another bagel.
“Frank!”
“Lake killed her,” Jane said.
“But why?”
“Deirdre wasn’t going along with the drugging, I suppose.”
“And they needed her gallery and house. Or at least, Lake wanted them.”
“And the stolen art?” I asked.
“According to Moses Longfellow himself, Deirdre didn’t know anything about the stolen art. Claims he had a mafia contact in Philadelphia who helped him push the stuff.”
“Stuff?” Lorraine asked. “No, precious art objects, some of which had been missing for years.”
“According to Moses, it was all his operation. We have yet to locate the money.”
So Deirdre Maccabee was an innocent.
Jane wiped crumbs from her mouth. “They found Lake’s DNA all over Maccabee’s car. And Fina’s tail with the ears claims he can prove Lake hired him.”
“What about the fat man in the gallery?”
“Lake’s hire,” we said in unison.
Jane shook her head. “He worked for Moses Longfellow, just like Stephen did. And so did Lake’s bodyguards, at one time.”
“And how did Moses and Lake hook up?”
“He claims Lake came to him, wormed her way into the operation. He says getting into drugs was all her idea.”
“Lake was chummy with the Mexican cartel?” Cookie asked. “I doubt it.”
“She’s the one who put the tail on Fina?” Clancy asked.
Jane shrugged. “We think so. She was the one calling all the shots.”
“Wasn’t Fina’s tail the same guy who roughed up Karen Cojok?” Cookie asked.
“You mean tried to kill her.”
“That reminds me, whatever happened to the dead woman’s DeSoto?” Frank asked. “I’d love to get my hands on it.”
Denny, Clancy, and Willoughby perked up.
“More coffee?” Jane asked. “I’ll get it.”
After she poured, I asked her about Jake Thompson and Ina O’Neill and said I’d mistakenly pegged Lake’s mother as the real mastermind, the one who’d arranged for Stephen’s death and the disappearance of her daughter’s furniture, the one who played up to Lake’s landlord, whom she’d consider the perfect son-in-law.
“A total mistake,” Jane said. “She claims she knew nothing about Lake’s apartment, although she must have known something of her daughter’s involvement with Moses Longfellow.”
“Not necessarily,” I said, then remembered seeing all the artwork in Ina O’Neill’s apartment above Blue Door Ceramics—it could have been her daughter’s interior decoration.
“How much do you think it’s worth?” I heard one of the men ask.
Jane rolled her eyes. “They’re still talking cars?”
The men rearranged themselves, sitting at one end of the table while we talked about things that mattered.
Denny got up to help Lorraine clear, motioning Frank to stay seated.
“Admittedly, Ina O’Neill was not unhappy at her son-in-law’s death,” Jane said. “Long before Stephen’s murder, she tried to fix up her daughter with Jake Thompson.”
There was a lull in the conversation, and I heard water running from the kitchen tap, the clink of china on glass.
“Sounds like Ina O’Neill,” Cookie said.
Jane and I shot her a look.
“Don’t act so surprised—I’m the one who kept up with Lake. I’m the one who had to listen to her mother all these years.”
“I’m not sure how much Ina O’Neill knew about her daughter’s involvement with the drug running,” Jane said. “She claims she knew nothing, didn’t even have a suspicion.”
“I don’t buy that,” Cookie said. “I heard her talking when they were tying me to the chair on the roof. Ina O’Neill was the one who greeted me in the gallery, the one who shoved me down, patted the tape over my eyes, made sure I couldn’t see.”
“If you couldn’t see, how could you know for sure?”
“I smelled her perfume. Sickening.”
“She wore expensive stuff,” I said. “French, probably.”
“Whatever. I felt her bony fingers on my forehead as she pressed the tape into my mouth.”
“Won’t hold up in court.”
We were silent for a moment, and I heard Frank and Denny arguing with Willoughby about the best place to buy car paint.
“What we do know is that the wounds on all three victims were made by the same knife.”
“So it was Lake and not one of Moses Longfellow’s men who stabbed Stephen Cojok?”
Cookie shook her head. “She killed her own husband?”
I was having a hard time with that one, remembering how she was all head over heels in high school for the man, remembering all Lake’s tears for Stephen. She had me totally fooled.
“He knew too much,” Jane said. “He found out about her involvement with the operation.”
I thought I was going to be sick.
Denny looked up from where he was sitting, and all conversation stopped. “The way I see it, there are four victims, three of them murdered—Stephen Cojok, Deirdre Maccabee, and Benny Stanhope. The fourth survives—my beautiful wife, the mother of my children.”
He walked over, gave me a kiss, and patted my stomach. I had my old Denny back, at least for the day.
Lorraine went to the kitchen and came back with a fresh pot of coffee and more scones. “There are five victims in this story—Stephen, Deirdre, Benny, and Karen.”
“Karen?”
She nodded. “A victim of her own making.”
I had to think about that one. “And while we’re on victims, don’t forget about Lake’s cat. Poor Blue, I wonder whatever happened to him.”
“I don’t know about a blue cat,” Jane said, “but we found a cream and white
job in Ina O’Neill’s apartment.”
“And?”
“It’s with my niece,” Jane said. “Don’t look at me like that. We couldn’t just leave him, could we?”
We were silent for a moment. I could tell Denny was still counting casualties.
“Put that way, we are all victims, especially Lake,” Denny said.
“Get real,” Willoughby said.
Although I wasn’t buying the Lake as victim idea, I was proud of Denny, even if he was sounding too much like his shrink.
“Raspberry jam?” he asked.
“You’ve got two legs,” Lorraine said.
“I’ll get it,” Frank said.
When our cups were refilled and Willoughby was on his third scone, Lorraine announced she’d gone to Stephen Cojok’s funeral. “I saw his father and mother seated together. He was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.”
It didn’t surprise me. If there was a saint living in Bay Ridge, it was Henry Cojok.
The room was silent. Outside, birds chirped. There were distant sounds of traffic coming from Court Street.
“They walked out of the funeral together?” I asked.
Lorraine nodded.
“Maybe they had no other choice.”
“They looked amicable. At one point, he put his arm around her.”
I pondered birth and death and disappearance and how everything else was inconsequential by comparison, including war, peace, treaties, alliances, elections, and thirty-year-knock-down-drag-outs.
“Better the devil you know?” Willoughby said.
Jane got up to leave. “That’s it. End of story. You’ll just keep on missing the point.”
“We’re not done,” I said. “So I understand why Deirdre Maccabee and Stephen had to die, but why Benny Stanhope?”
“I found a copy of Benny’s birth certificate,” Lorraine said. “Father unknown; mother, Deirdre Stanhope, née Maccabee.”
Jane sat down again. Even the guys stopped talking.
I put down my coffee cup. “Lake must have known Deirdre was Benny’s mother.” I remembered Benny saying he was expecting his mother that afternoon and how important she was to him, so he understood Stephen’s need to find his mother. I wondered if he’d still be alive had we discovered the connection sooner.
Death and Disappearance (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 5) Page 25