Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) (12 page)

“What call?” I asked, taking a bite and squishing blueberries.

“The call telling the school Brandy would be absent for three days, returning on Monday. It had an unfamiliar voiceprint, according to the office.”

“If the voiceprint was unfamiliar, why didn’t they contact Trisha Liam?”

“They did, on the home phone. They requested identification, and Mrs. Liam—or whoever was pretending to be her—gave them the last four digits of her social, even though she said it was an invasion of her privacy.”

“Sounds like my client, but why didn’t she tell me that? Do they have a record of the conversation?”

Cookie nodded, taking another bite of pancake and swilling what was left of her orange juice.

“So why didn’t they call her cell?”

“They did, on five separate occasions, and they have the dates and recordings. Besides, Betty told me, they keep requesting more contact information and mailing out forms. Parents should be updating their information online, but not Trisha Liam. Betty told me they’ve had meetings on security and how to work the parents’ portal, but no one in the Liam household has ever bothered to set up an account. Get this, the emergency contact they have for Brandy is Mr. Liam’s office number.”

“And he died two years ago,” I said, twirling my spoon on the table. It clattered to the floor.

“The principal spoke with Trisha Liam six months ago at the school’s open house.”

Knowing the lawyer as I thought I did, I was surprised she attended a school function. “Borders on negligence, if you ask me, but she must have legal reasons, far-fetched though they may seem to us mortals.”

“Doesn’t surprise me—such great people hire you.”

Cookie’s dig was a reference to a client in a previous case who’d disappeared for days, then showed up in the middle of the night demanding an update. After that experience, I took more care in prepping clients, I’ll tell you, and last night when I talked to her, I had Trisha Liam fill out and sign a form with every bit of information I might need—her cell phone, office address and number, driver’s license, tags. Being a lawyer, however, she refused to give me her social.

I dialed Trisha Liam’s cell and listened to it ring while Cookie brought out her mirror again and began repairing her face. Me? I don’t bother with makeup unless I’m going to Denny’s folks for dinner, especially when the buxom Zizi Carmalucci will also be supping with us.

And speaking of Denny, I sent him a text to let him know I’d gotten his reminder about tonight. His parents’ house was not my favorite place to dine, but since I’d gotten to know and appreciate his mother, Lorraine, I didn’t mind as much as I used to. His father, on the other hand … Put it this way, he’s Archie Bunker on a double dose of testosterone.

My phone conversation with Trisha Liam was predictable. She was in a limo on her way to work at, get this, Liam, Trueblood & Wolsey, her law firm in Lower Manhattan. As she talked, I could hear papers shuffling. Trisha’s ear canals must have had a thick coating of wax, because I had to repeat my questions several times. In sum, she vaguely remembered a recent call from the school.

“They’d hounded me for my cell phone number for weeks. Giving it to them was a mistake—throw them one piece of information, and they want more. God knew what they wanted this time. An invasion of privacy. I pay a lot of money for them to care for my daughter, and all they do is try to cover themselves. They don’t need all my phone numbers. My home phone will do.”

Cookie was right about my clients. This one had a listening issue. I explained that someone claiming to be her, Trisha Liam, had authorized Brandy’s absence from school. As proof of identity, because their security system did not recognize the voiceprint, whoever they were speaking to gave them the last four digits of her social. I asked her who could have answered her home phone. Dead silence for a second but I could feel fear crackling through the airwaves.

“It had to be me giving them the last four digits of my social. No one else knows it, not unless …” She hesitated. “No, no one else knows it.”

“You were about to say?”

More sounds of paper rustling.

“They’d have to have gone through my purse. I keep a social security card in my wallet, just in case, but no one goes through my bag, ever. It’s never out of my sight.”

I held my tongue.

“They ask for too much. It’s an invasion of privacy. I may have gotten a call from Brandy’s school the other day. You have to understand, I was preparing for an important appearance in court. When I heard who was calling, I might have given them what they wanted just to get them off my back.”

So the woman herself excused her daughter from three days of school. Hard to believe this was an adult I was talking to.

Switching the subject with prosecutorial grace, she wondered if I’d heard anything more on the slipper, and I told her the lab hadn’t gotten back to me yet.

As if God had been listening in, call waiting started flashing across the screen. It was Jane. I told Trisha I’d call her back the minute I had any news.

“Where have you been?” Jane asked.

“Trying to eat pancakes at Teresa’s.”

Chapter 21

Brandy. In Chains

I can smell the mean guy’s breath. Dad, protect me, please. I don’t want to die.

It’s only Goblin,
Dad tells me.
You remember him?

I do. The biggest, the worst monster in my nightmares when I was a little kid.

Lie still and he’ll disappear, like he always does,
Dad tells me.

So I do, I lie still and listen to my breathing. This is for boring barf.

I hear the nice one calling Mr. Mean. His shoes scrape the landing, the door opens, and I feel brightness through the tape. It slams against my lids.

“Ben, this is the last time I’m telling you. Leave her alone. Next time I’ll use this.”

“Take it easy. I was only going to give her a shot.”

“No more shots. Get out or I shoot, I swear it.”

“Think you’re so good, don’t you? What if the lawyer doesn’t pay, then what?”

The air doesn’t move. They’re talking about Mom. Pay up, Mom, please pay.

Finally, I feel the room shift.

“You win. C’mon, smile, I didn’t mean it. I’m hungry. We haven’t eaten all day.”

The door closes behind them. I hear a switch in the hall, and now it’s totally black. Still, I’m so still until I hear them going down the stairs. I hold my breath and listen. They’re talking low. The sound of keys. A car starts. They’re leaving me. I might not make it, Dad. I might die here all alone.

Chapter 22

Fina. Morning Two, In Teresa’s, Continued

The connection died, and a few bites later, I looked up to see an unmarked car wedge itself into the hydrant space across the street. Detective First Grade Jane Templeton unfolded herself out of the driver’s seat. The tall blonde waited while her partner stood at the curb, a Dunkin’ Donuts bag in his hand. His ass was bumped out, and it looked like he was swiping at a glob of custard and smearing it over the length of his tie.

“It’s Brandy’s slipper,” Jane said after they were seated in our booth. She unfolded a printout and handed it to me. “Preliminary, but this is what the lab found.”

While they ordered, I skimmed the list of forensics, including the mention of blood from a superficial wound thought to be that of the victim’s, follicles of hair, probably from a male between thirty and forty-five, along with carpet fibers, a few threads from a tarpaulin, spider eggs, dry grass. But what screamed out at me was the line, “foliage, insect eggs, and ground cover consistent with plant life found west of the Hudson, prevalent in Central New Jersey.”

I quirked my lip and watched Jane’s sweet genes light up. No dummy, she knew she needed me to feed her information from afar, and what better way to light a fire under the collective rears of fellow police officers and sheriff departments than to sic a private investigator on their tails, preferably one with a New Jersey PI license. In a word, me.

“I feel a trip to New Jersey coming on,” Cookie said.

“I can’t go looking for bugs in Central New Jersey. Do you have any credible leads from the public?”

Jane shook her head.

“I have more to report,” Cookie said. “Do you want to hear it?”

After we wagged our tails long enough, Cookie began. “This morning I decided to talk to the guy who owns the mom and pop on Joralemon down the street from Packer Collegiate. I asked him if he’d seen anything strange yesterday morning. At first I had a hard time making myself understood, so I laid it on about how I loved his coffee, that I’m in there all the time, and—”

“Blah, blah, blah. Just get on with it.” Jane drummed her fingers on the table.

I looked at Cookie. “Excuse some of us, please.”

“So the man smiled and started listening, actually stopped what he was doing.”

“And?”

“He hadn’t seen anything, he told me, but his wife may have. Only trouble, she doesn’t speak English and hadn’t come in yet. Then I lost him—he had to change the coffee. That’s where he makes his money, and his customers depend on him.”

“And?”

“But it got me thinking about surveillance cameras. I’m sure he must have one. It’s a little store, customers walk down a few steps.”

“We get the picture.”

I wondered why Jane was being so nice to me and so nasty to Cookie. By this time Willoughby was fingering his spotted tie, his head lowered while the waitress explained the bill to me.

“Hold on, I’m not finished,” Cookie said. “Just then the owner’s wife came in.” Cookie looked at Jane. “She told me she’d seen two guys shoving what looked like a rolled-up tarpaulin into the back of a greenish van yesterday morning, right before the first bell rings and the kids disappear into school.”

“Where?”

Cookie looked confused. “I forgot to ask her,” she said. “I assumed she meant on Joralemon close to Packer Collegiate, but I didn’t actually repeat what she said or pin her down.” She fished out a notebook from her bag and began flipping through the pages, shaking her head, her cheeks getting red. “I didn’t ask her. I wrote, ‘Woman sees tarpaulin shoved into van.’ But we were talking in a store on Joralemon.”

“So?” Jane asked. “There are people carrying parcels and pieces of furniture and rugs on and around Joralemon all the time.” She stopped mid-sentence, forefinger in the air.

Here it comes, I thought, a sure sign she’s going to contradict herself.

“No matter, it’s a great headline,” the detective said. “Make sure the
Eagle
gets it first.”

“And the
Times
?” Willoughby asked.

“They’ll have someone scanning the
Eagle
to pick up Brooklyn news,” Cookie said.

“But what if there’s no van, and we’re throwing them bad info?” he asked.

“At this point, we have squat. But we need to keep the story alive. Nothing like a great image to galvanize the public. Do they have Brandy’s picture?” Jane asked.

Cookie nodded while she texted her friend at the paper.

“Could be anything or nothing, could be anywhere,” Willoughby said, swishing a piece of toast into the leftover butter and syrup on Jane’s plate.

I looked at Cookie. She didn’t say anything—she’s too polite. But her face was the color of beets. If I could have taken away her pain, I would have, believe me, but at least I could try. “And speaking of Cookie, who’s the only one feeding information into this case? She is, except for your piddling forensics report, which tells us zip. So let’s be a little more respectful of what she’s giving us.”

It was as if I’d said nothing. Willoughby flapped his tie, and Jane plowed on like a farmer with a scythe. “So let’s focus on this. God knows we’ve got little to show for ourselves.” She stopped for a full minute. I thought I saw a corner of eyeball cant to the left underneath her closed lids. “At least Cookie’s pulling in something.”

Well, I’ll be. I shot Cookie a look.

Jane continued. “So let’s look at the information she’s given us. What’s so unusual about two guys carrying a tarpaulin, maybe on Joralemon, but somewhere in the area of the Packer Collegiate?”

“My question exactly,” Cookie said. “Until the lady mentioned that the tarpaulin was wiggling.”

We stared at one another.

Willoughby asked, “What kind of tarpaulin?”

Jane shook her head, and I looked at Cookie.

One thing you should know about me. I’m not polite, not at all, and I would have made a few cutting remarks about Jane and her NYPD team, but for some reason, I decided to play nice. After all, Brandy’s life was at stake. “Your lab guys ought to be able to tell you that. They got some tarpaulin fibers off the slipper, didn’t they?”

There was silence for a couple of minutes.

What the grocer’s wife saw could have been a tarpaulin. Or maybe it wasn’t a tarpaulin at all, but a rug. Whatever it was, I knew deep down that Brandy had been rolled up inside. Hard to know what it is you see when you see it, let alone remember what you saw or where you were when you saw it, but something my bones felt for certain. Brandy hadn’t run away—she was taken. And I hoped it was by someone who wanted ransom.

While I was chewing on the image of a wriggling rug, Jane was on the phone with someone on her team, talking to them about the mom and pop on Joralemon. “It’s before Clinton. The guy does a business with coffee. Right, right, I’m sure I’ve been there, too. You got it, on the north side, you walk down a few steps. In that neighborhood you can’t avoid it. Especially on a weekday morning, there’ll be a line, but not as long as Starbucks. So find out if anyone uses surveillance cameras anywhere in the area, and get three bodies onto the other thing.”

“Onto our pilot program, you mean,” Willoughby said.

Jane’s eyes were knives boring into Willoughby’s bloated face. He picked up on it because he squirmed and started clearing his throat.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out this was something NYPD was doing, and we weren’t supposed to know about it, but it had to do with cameras. Naturally, I plunged right in. “Are you guys extending the ring of steel? Won’t be long before we’ll have police surveillance cameras in our bathtubs watching us while we—”