“So your dad saved you?”
I didn’t answer, but stroked the hair on his arm. Our touch was like fire, but what can you do in the ICU? We talked and held hands through the night, him dozing mid-sentence, and I think toward the early hours, I might have done the same.
I got up to pee and went over to the window, watching dawn break over Brooklyn, not a glorious sunrise but a kind of dirty rose hue slinging off that glass monstrosity on Bridge Street. After I told him what he asked to hear again, the part about two larger-than-life figures, my father confronting Liese Goncourt, we ran through subjects we’d never touched on before, like self-assisted suicide and growing old together, the constant invasion of our privacy, how brains wither in old age, although that seemed like something so remote it wasn’t even scary. We managed to agree a few times, the subject of fathers not included. Not the most romantic place, the smell of hospital permeating my clothes, but one of the better times we’d shared.
As morning light filled the room, his words were slurred, but I think he said,
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,/ and nodding by the fire …
“You made that up.”
“Did not.” He closed his eyes and recited like an actor declaiming on a broken stage. “But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face.” He breathed quietly for a while, his sleep striding who knew what airy realms before telling me the lines were from a poem by William Butler Yeats.
Tears coursed down my cheeks. “Who?”
Not That Simple
It took a few days, but after Denny was settled, I moved back into our townhouse. Mr. Baggins ran up and down the stairs, in and out of rooms, rubbing against walls, jumping on chairs, spreading his fur around. Despite his wound, Denny and I spent the next twenty-four hours tumbling in bed, and afterward we hung out, talking, disagreeing some, laughing a lot, learning a little, making up for the silent times.
The next day, I got a call from my father telling me they’d arraigned Liese Goncourt, charging her with murder and kidnapping in the first degree to which she pled not guilty. How he’d arranged it, I don’t know and he wouldn’t say, but Liese Goncourt had agreed to see me as long as Lorraine came, too.
He insisted on being present.
“Not necessary,” I said.
“Then the deal is off.” He waited for my response, and when there was none, he said, “If you can’t call me Dad, call me Paddy.”
“Fat chance.”
There is a unique prison smell, and Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, while not technically a prison, shares the same scent. Cold and rancid and lowdown, the odor is an elephant in the room. It flowed from the cement to my shoes, seeping into my soul as we waited for clearance. This was Lorraine’s first visit, and I watched her, as wide-eyed, she went through the pat down and sign in. Finally we were ushered through a maze of hallways leading to elevators and more narrow passageways, heavy bars clanking behind us as we trudged to the lower level.
The space was nothing special. It had a long table, some chairs, and two steel doors leading to who knew where. As we waited for Liese Goncourt to appear, my father reminded me to button up while he did the talking.
I brushed lint from my sleeve and turned to Lorraine, saying we needed to go over what we hoped to get out of the meeting. For my part, I wanted to know who murdered Phyllida, abducted Kat, the roles Rip, Kirsten, Abe, and Garth played in Goncourts’ human trafficking operation, and who blew up the home in Victorian Flatbush. “For starters, what caused the Oxley plane crash, who gave Phyllida the date-rape drugs, hit her over the head, who gave her the potassium chloride.”
Lorraine shook her head. “I want to get at the truth underneath Liese Goncourt’s skin.”
“Good luck with all of that,” my father said. “You’re going to hear a sad story, not the truth.”
“Mind your own business … Paddy.”
Lorraine shot me a look. “I want to discover how a woman could do what she seems to have done—kill her own daughter, plan if not carry out the murder of her son-in-law’s mother, kidnap and practically push her own granddaughter out of a plane.”
“Don’t forget the murder of Terris,” I said.
“Impossible to prove. And almost kill and kill are two different things,” my father said.
“Not helpful,” Lorraine said. “She was Phyllida’s friend; at least they were in-laws. She is a mother, a grandmother. How could she kill her own flesh and blood?”
My father closed his eyes.
Seated in such a small room so close to him, I was having control issues. My heart didn’t help—it was pounding around somewhere far below my chest, reverberating off my bones, pulsing in my eardrums. One day I’d be like Lorraine, who’d said her piece and now sat unmoving, her face immobile, her hands folded. And so, the wait seemed like hours instead of minutes before the prisoner appeared.
Shackled and clothed in an orange jumpsuit, Liese Goncourt shuffled toward us, flanked by two female guards, who led her to the table, locked the door, and undid her cuffs.
I thought they’d delivered the wrong prisoner. She seemed to have shrunk a good three inches. Furrows etched her sallow face. Her hair had been cut shorter, but tangled strands like red worms hung to her shoulders, the roots turning white. Then I gazed into her flat eyes and recognized her.
Lorraine brought out a box of Godiva chocolates and slid it to the prisoner.
She eyed Lorraine, sending her a demented smile while she untied the ribbon. “I’m so glad to see you. Tell them. If it weren’t for that no-good-bastard son of mine and his drama queen of a wife, this never would have happened. They’ve locked up the wrong person, don’t you see? After everything I went through to help him out, Abe ruined Oxley Paper. Then he destroyed the operation my mother set up, everything. I had to take steps, don’t you see? To save our life. You’ve no idea what poverty is like. Believe me, it’s worse than a prison. Do you realize what we went through, my mother and I? Bless her. You knew her, didn’t you?”
Lorraine shook her head.
“You would have loved her. I want to see Garth, such a good boy. Tell him to visit.”
“He was clever with Terris, but with the airplane, he made a mistake, didn’t he?” Lorraine asked.
The question jolted the prisoner. “You know about that?”
Lorraine nodded. “He picked the wrong time.”
There was silence for a few minutes while Liese Goncourt’s eyes darted around the room. “You’re right, of course. You can always see the truth in any situation, Lorraine. Garth made a mistake. Oh, I forgave him, so sweet, my boy. He tried, but now my baby is dead.” She began to cry.
I looked at Lorraine.
“Tell me how Garth engineered the crash,” I said.
Liese Goncourt worked her mouth, staring at me.
“It had to do with the mechanics of flight?” Lorraine asked.
Liese Goncourt shrugged. “Something like that. Garth cut a connection bar, he told me. I didn’t understand all the technicalities. Such a good boy, Garth. Excelled in school. Longed to be a pilot, but they wouldn’t take him, something about his eyesight. But he fooled them.”
She picked out a chocolate, squeezed it between finger and thumb, and returned the crushed sweet to the box. “So good with his hands. A darling, unlike his older brother. Garth is so adept at running the product. The girls adore him. But later, much later, when we needed the money, Garth had an idea. Terris wouldn’t feel a thing, he assured me. Abe could take over Oxley Paper. But he didn’t check like I told him to do. He wasn’t careful. I tried to warn Henriette, told her she never had to fly with that husband of hers. A horrible, horrible mistake. A nightmare. I cannot think of it. I cannot talk anymore.” She swiveled to the guards. “Take me away.”
“Wait, Liese,” Lorraine said. “You have more to tell me, I know you do. You don’t want to take responsibility for everything, do you?”
My fa
ther and I knew better than to say anything.
“Blood brothers, Abe, Garth, Rip?” Lorraine asked.
“Brothers?” She turned to us, a sly smile on her craven face. “Lorraine makes a mistake.” She shook her head. “All adopted. Even my little girl, my sweet Henriette.”
“Ameline?” I asked, then held my breath.
My father frowned.
The prisoner said nothing.
“Yes, Ameline.” Lorraine took up my thread. “When did she die?”
Liese Goncourt stared into space. She spoke to Lorraine, as if we weren’t in the room. “A born actor, Rip. So clever. When he isn’t keeping an eye on Kirsten whenever Abe is away, he dresses as Ameline. Don’t you see? No one must know he’s a part of my household. He’ll take over when I get rid of that moron and his wife. He’ll be such a help to Garth and Kat, if she ever comes around.”
“Rip is Ameline?”
But Liese Goncourt didn’t answer. She didn’t need to, because I knew she, too, was Ameline whenever she needed a disguise—after the explosion, holding the bird cage in wig and fur coat; and later that night in the Princeton guesthouse, feigning sleep underneath bedcovers with only a few strands of white hair visible.
“Whose idea was the explosion?” I asked.
It was taking Liese Goncourt longer and longer to answer. She kept muttering about the blaze and how she’d lost everything, speaking in low tones to herself. “We were so much in debt. Ameline was a way for Rip to be present, a way for me to disappear.”
“So you took turns being Ameline,” I said. “Until the airplane ride, which would set you free. Free forever.”
“No!”
I continued. “You were going to disappear after dumping your own granddaughter—”
“No!”
“The last of the Oxleys. Throwing her to her death when she refused to work for you, collecting the Oxley fortune when there were no more heirs.”
She rose, pointing a bony finger at me. “You! Out!”
The policewomen surrounded her.
But Lorraine reached out and spoke soothingly, touching Liese’s hands. “Sit, my dear. We know things are never that simple, don’t we?”
“I knew you’d understand.” Slowly Liese returned to her chair, her eyes haunted. “That’s what you do, don’t you see, when they won’t work. They must be destroyed.”
“Like your mother taught you,” Lorraine said.
In a world of her own, Liese Goncourt spoke as if to herself. “My mother had to get rid of him, don’t you see?”
“Your brother,” Lorraine said.
She pursed her lips. “He was no good. He wouldn’t work. He threatened to tell. She had to do it, don’t you remember?”
Slowly Lorraine nodded.
“I knew you’d see things clearly. That’s why you’re here.” Liese Goncourt’s eyes were fixed on something far beyond my ken as she sat and stroked Lorraine’s hand.
Vinegar Hill House
In the spring we celebrated at Vinegar Hill House, a restaurant in our neighborhood. There were so many in our group we reserved a private room with an open bar and tables filled with antipasti. As an innovative touch, I asked Willoughby to be in charge of the menu, mostly to get him out of my hair, because he’d been calling me every week, asking about the party. We’d worked together long enough for him to know it was my thing at the end of a major case. Besides, I think he was looking forward to hearing me and Jane going at it.
Guests included everyone who’d helped—Lorraine and Robert, Cookie and Clancy, Jane and Willoughby, Trisha Liam and her daughter, Brandy, who I discovered knew Charlotte and Kat, even though they went to different schools. After giving me a cursory kiss on the cheek, the three teens sat in the garden most of the evening, probably talking about boys, school, teachers, college.
When Denny and I arrived, our guests were waiting for us, and I watched Willoughby stuffing his mouth with antipasti. Jane looked harried but elegant in pearls and a flowing skirt. Cookie, obviously pregnant and flashing a diamond, draped herself on Clancy’s arm. I wore something unusual for me, a long dress and a string of Mom’s turquoise beads. We entered to applause and raised glasses to our impending marriage in six months.
Tig and my father appeared. The odd couple.
“Don’t look at me, I didn’t invite him,” Denny said.
“I did,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. “Not because we’re close or anything.”
“He’s your father, don’t forget,” Robert said.
Lorraine glared at him, and he actually apologized.
“He’s here because he knows the most about the Goncourt family, and I want the truth of their story,” I said.
“Me, too,” Willoughby said. “Take it from the top.” He caught the eye of our waiter, who brought in more trays of antipasti and refilled our flutes.
After we were seated, Robert rose and clinked his glass and toasted the memory of Phyllida Oxley. He rumbled on about how he hadn’t known the woman all that much, but she seemed like a good friend to Lorraine. That drew a long pause before some of us clapped.
And speaking of Phyllida, Lorraine and I had a steep talk several weeks back about her friend’s death. All my fault, I insisted in the end, and would never admit to anything less. “It just proves my point: the longer you stay in the hospital, the riskier it gets.”
“I hope you’re not banking on me to tell the whole story,” Paddy said, taking a swig of his beer.
I didn’t reply.
“Rip is talking big time,” Jane said.
Lorraine dipped bread into oil. “Did someone say talking?” she asked, her smile not unlike the Mona Lisa’s.
Someone dimmed the lights, and the candles in the middle of our table cast a glow over us. I could hear distant sounds coming from the kitchen, pans clanging, the occasional bark of laughter from one of the chefs.
“So tell us Rip’s version of events,” I said to Jane, “starting with Phyllida meeting Kirsten in Frankies Spuntino on the night of the drugs.”
“According to Rip,” the detective said, helping herself to a plateful of fennel and pear salad, “they met up with Liese Goncourt and Rip in drag on Court Street.”
“In drag?”
“Rip dressed as Ameline,” Paddy supplied. “The shapeshifter.”
“Hard to believe Phyllida didn’t recognize the disguise—a man dressed as a woman?”
“Didn’t you see Mrs. Doubtfire?” Denny asked.
“Remember, Rip is an actor,” Jane said.
“You can’t trust any of them to tell the truth,” Willoughby said, “so this whole account might be a fantasy.”
Jane put down her fork. “Eat your chicken liver and be quiet. It was dark; Phyllida hadn’t seen Ameline in a while. Whatever, she invited the three of them, Liese, Ameline, and Kirsten, to her house for coffee. That’s when Rip slipped her the drugs.”
“What was Kirsten’s role in all of this?” Denny asked.
Tig cleared his throat. “Kirsten didn’t actually work for the massage parlor, but she knew what was going on. Don’t forget, she kept her Studebaker in their garage. Beyond that, she knew about the operation, knew her husband and the rest of his family were involved, knew things weren’t going well financially for Liese Goncourt, who claimed it was all Abe’s fault. So Kirsten did odd jobs for her mother-in-law, like running into Phyllida in Frankies and keeping close to Kat. Remember, Kirsten was the person most tolerated by the teen.”
I looked out the window into the garden, where strands of Italian lights pricked new leaves with their glow. Kat sat in between Charlotte and Brandy Liam, the three of them more interested in texting and talking than in their food. I leaned over to Trisha Liam and asked what was going to happen to Kat, and she told me Charlotte’s parents had been awarded guardianship, reminding me there were no relatives left to contest.
All eyes were on me because of the interruption, so I had to prove I was still listening to the main conversati
on. “Liese and Kirsten didn’t really hate each other?”
Tig shrugged. “Tell me who Liese admired, other than her son Garth?”
No one answered, and we left the story for a while, concentrating on the food until I asked if the lab found evidence of Rohypnol in the coffee cup we’d found on Phyllida’s dining room table.
Jane nodded. “And the chemists tell me the residue matches the meds found in the Studebaker.”
“Back up,” Denny said. “How come they left Phyllida’s cup on the dining room table?”
“A stupid mistake, according to Rip,” Jane said. “He was supposed to dump the coffee and take the cups, but he must have forgotten to take Phyllida’s.”
“Maybe Phyllida began to stir,” Lorraine suggested. “Don’t forget, she had enough life left in her to call me.”
“She didn’t have to die,” I said, gazing into the room, which suddenly went quiet.
I was silent while the waiter refilled our glasses, half-listening to Denny, Robert, and Willoughby carry on a guy conversation about sports, cars, baseball, stopping when the waiter brought our entrees.
“I want to know if Phyllida fell out of the hospital bed or was pushed,” Lorraine said.
Jane wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin, acting like the queen of information. But no matter, I figured she could have the floor. “According to Rip, who’d learned from Liese Goncourt’s sources that Phyllida had been rushed to the hospital, he arrives at Brooklyn General in the middle of the night, carrying flowers in one hand and in the other, a backpack loaded with rocks and a change of clothes. He gets into the freight elevator, and seeing a camera, smashes it, stops the elevator on the floor below Phyllida’s room, and changes into a suit.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Willoughby said.
The Brooklyn Drop (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 4) Page 24