Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) (13 page)

“Next time, call me, no matter what, even if you’re not sure.”

“But is it Arthur?”

I told them I couldn’t be certain, not without seeing the man’s face, but I didn’t tell them what my bones knew—it was Arthur, all right. I felt his boozy spirit grabbing at me through the smart electrical mass in my hand, and a spike of fear went through me.

I texted Cookie and sent her the photo. I asked her to meet me at the bookstore on Court Street, then thanked Brandy’s crew, telling them they’d done enough for one day, saying they were on their way to making a great surveillance team. They weren’t exactly buying it, but I meant it. I told them I needed them and I did, but not at the expense of their lives.

“That’s how surveillance goes. You see one piece of the puzzle and you chew on it, maybe put it in your pocket before going back to your life. Later, you return to the same place and find nothing but disappointment. Or maybe you discover other pieces to the puzzle or, if you’re really lucky, the vital piece and you solve the mystery. Little by little, you put it all together. It’s a slow process. But don’t forget your life or you’ll be sucked into the mystery, obsessing over it, getting too tired and not seeing anything at all, and we won’t get anywhere.”

“You sound like Mrs. Coltran,” Brandy said.

Swell. Now I was like some fifty-year-old teacher to them. “Then let me get down and dirty. Surveillance is a dangerous business. You might not think so, but trust me. If you blow your cover, anything can happen, anything at all. Then you’re toast along with Whiskey and Maddie.”

Their eyes were wide and still.

“You guys did great. Thanks to you, we have something more than we did. But now it’s time to forget the surveillance. Think of it as an after-school one or two hour exercise, nothing more. Time to get into something else.”

“That’s it?”

“No, I’m going to use the information you gave me. I’m going to find out if the bartender at Cody’s knows this guy.”

* * *

I wanted to talk to Denny and get to the bottom of his call to Jane, but there was a missing woman and I had to find her. The easiest way was to dig up more about Whiskey’s past and hope I’d find a hook big enough to snag Arthur.

Cody’s turned out to be a dead end. The place was dim and packed and humming. Guys stared at TV screens or into their beer. When I showed the bartender Cookie’s sketch of Arthur, he studied it for a second and shook his head. He swore he’d never seen him. But a dude half in his cups and sitting at the bar grabbed it from me and said he’d seen him an hour ago. “Drank two beers faster than you can blink. Never sat.” The bartender continued swiping the top of his precious bar while looking at the screen of some game.

So Brandy’s crew had seen Arthur. They’d be proud of themselves when I told them.

I had to keep the momentum of my search going, I told myself as I made my way down Court Street and found a parking place a block or so away from the BookCourt, where if you can believe it, I saw Cookie peering into the display in the window.

“Clancy’s helping too. He’s still on Baltic pounding on doors. What the heck’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“So your teeth are chattering for nothing even though it’s like sixty-five degrees out and your eyes are red and what little makeup you wear is smeared all over your face. Are you that worried about Whiskey?”

“Whiskey’s gone, and I can’t focus enough to do my job. I keep seeing Denny with Zizi Carmalucci and I’m not sure why. I need to find Whiskey. My reputation depends on it.” Although why I said that last bit, I don’t know. “What am I saying?—I need to find Maddie’s mother.”

“So tell me what really happened,” she said, pulling out her mirror.

I told her about Denny’s call to Jane.

She put away her mirror. One thing about Cookie, she never sugarcoats, never, even though part of me would love her to do a smoothie once in a while. “How the hell did he know about Whiskey, and why would he call Jane without talking to you first?”

“I … I don’t know. I tried calling him, but there was no answer.”

“Which phone did you use to call him?”

She had a point. On my birthday Denny bought me a second smartphone because I don’t carry. My special phone, he calls it. It saved my tail once. Denny and Cookie are the only ones that have the number, and when I use it to call him, he picks up on the first ring. But—and it’s a big but—I don’t often take the special phone with me, and at the moment I didn’t know where it was. I shrugged. Worse, I don’t always answer, no matter which phone is ringing. I’m notorious for letting calls go to voice mail.

“I don’t believe it, the guy gets you a phone for those just-in-case times, and you don’t use it when you need to reach him? I’ll bet you’re not even wearing it.” She punched numbers on her cell. When her call went directly to my voice mail, she looked up at me, rolling her eyes. “I knew it.”

A bubble seemed to burst inside my throat, and there was that push-and-pull thing going on inside my mind. I wanted to talk about it, but I wasn’t sure what “it” was, and besides, it was too huge, whatever it was between me and Denny. The longer we stayed together, the bigger it got. Sometimes I felt like a stretched doll, and anyway, now wasn’t the time to get into it. I had to find a missing mom. So I asked Cookie about Clancy, the patrolman guy she met a few months ago, hoping to change the subject.

It worked. Her cheeks took on a glow. “Fine. Good, in fact. If we’re not discussing you and Denny—and I can tell we’re not by that look you’re giving me—don’t you want to know what we’ve found out about Whiskey?”

I looked inside the BookCourt and saw a line at the counter, so we’d have to wait anyway. Cookie had time to fill me in.

“It’s not much, but after we knocked on doors and came up with zip, we roamed Baltic from one end to the other, concentrating on moms with tots. You know the park close to Whiskey’s old building?”

I nodded, crossing my arms and breathing out. There were times when work was so relaxing.

“We found lots of women to talk to. Of course, seeing Clancy in his uniform helped. He’s so cute; I could see the envy in their faces.”

Cookie was in love. This was going to take a while.

“Women were just sitting there for the plucking, waiting for their kids, who were tearing up and down the wood chips, playing tag and supposedly watching their younger brothers and sisters. A lot of yelling and laughing going on. One told us that a bunch of them gather there after school so their older kids could blow off steam.”

She was giving me too much detail, but it felt good, this talking with my best friend like it was pre-Denny days, the simpler time. I didn’t want to interrupt her. Matter of fact, I didn’t want the conversation to end. I looked around at the people walking home from work or going into restaurants or having a quick one at Cody's before meeting their friends. Fall crisp was in their faces and they were smiling. It was the unloading time of day.

Cookie was going on. “One of the women remembered Whiskey, ‘the mother with the bald little kid.’ I didn’t want to question her too much in front of the others—you know how it is, I didn’t want to start a panic—but I said you’d probably want to talk to her. By this time, Clancy and I decided to split up. He took the other side of the street, and I took Whiskey’s old apartment building. I began pounding on doors. ‘Has she done something wrong?’ one of the women asked. So I told them, no, I wasn’t sure, but she might have come into some money, you know the drill we do when we’re trying to locate someone. She seemed like she wanted to talk. She said Whiskey lived across the hall and had her hands full with an old flame.”

“An old flame?”

“Her words.”

Cookie handed me the woman’s address and cell phone number. I called and made an appointment for us to meet her in half an hour. She lived two doors down from Whiskey’s old apartment.

I looked at my reflection raking the BookCourt’s window and blurring over the display, wondering why Denny would ever want to date the likes of me, let alone shack up with me. He’d asked me numerous times to marry him. My toes did their frozen waxed beans thing. But inside, the line at the cash register had disappeared, so we entered.

It smelled of paper and ink and the electricity of finding great books.

The clerk in back of BookCourt’s counter was an older woman. She had that sweet granny look, rimless glasses and strands of chestnut hair wafting around an angelic face. She remembered Whiskey after I showed her my ID and Whiskey’s photo.

“A single mom with the sweetest little girl?”

“Maddie,” I said.

“That’s right. I’m looking for her, actually,” she said, pushing up her glasses. “So give me your card and please, please let me know when you’ve found her.”

I dug into my bag and handed her my card.

“She used to read to the kids on Saturday mornings. Got a great voice and the children loved to listen. Matter of fact, it got so crowded in here, it was hard to move and we had to stop serving cookies and milk. One day she came in and apologized. Said she was getting too busy. She’d found a job on Wall Street, and her free time was eaten up, what with the extra demands and longer commute. We have a lot of readers, but she was special. Kids were spellbound whenever she read to them. We were sorry to lose her.”

“Do you remember if there was ever anyone else with them, a man with reddish brown hair, harmless enough but a bit unsteady on his feet?”

The woman thought for a moment before she shook her head. “Sometimes an older man came to pick them up.”

“Her father?”

The woman cracked a smile. “Old enough, but more like a sugar daddy.” She blushed and stared at the countertop. “I shouldn’t have said that. How do I know? But definitely not Whiskey’s father.”

You know the drill, I asked her to describe him and her description sounded a lot like Seymour Wolsey, who seemed to know a lot more about Whiskey Parnell than a named partner ought to know about a paralegal. I made a jot in my invisible notebook and told myself to get in touch with Trisha Liam and interview Seymour a little more aggressively. Put the screws to him, in other words.

As we left, she reminded us to have Whiskey call her.

Outside, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I smelled oversweet perfume, so I knew who it was before I turned around. Zizi Carmalucci, Denny’s old flame. You’ve seen her type before—raven hair, ruby lips, perfect everything in one package. She stood in front of the bookstore with a reporter’s notebook and pen.

“What do you know about Lorraine’s missing tenant?” she asked.

I shot Cookie a look and played it cool.

“What are you talking about?” Cookie asked.

Zizi folded her arms and looked at me. “She’s Liam, Trueblood & Wolsey’s office manager. I know she didn’t show for work this morning and Trisha Liam hired you to find her. What have you found out?”

Cookie tugged my elbow. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“You know I write for the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
? When they saw my credentials, they hired me on the spot and made me their assistant chief investigative journalist. And now this story’s going to make my reputation. How’s the daughter holding up?”

“Where did you get this information?” I asked, but shouldn’t have wasted my breath: Robert again. Or Denny. Denny? No, it couldn’t have been Denny, could it?

“I can’t reveal my sources.”

Cookie pulled out her mirror and checked her lipstick. “We’ve got a meeting, remember?”

“Listen, I just started last week. Can’t you help me out? I need a big story, one I can get my hooks into, show them the depth I’m famous for. Do the BookCourt folks know anything about her?”

We shook our heads in unison.

“I didn’t think so. I’ve already asked them—they know me, they would have said. Been up and down this block. One of the bartenders at Cody’s said he’d seen him in there a couple of times.”

“Who?”

“The prime suspect. I showed them his picture.”

“You have a photo of the prime suspect?” I asked.

“Arthur McGirdle’s his name, by the way. Bartender said he’s in there a lot.”

“Let’s see the picture,” Cookie said. Her arms were crossed and she muscled closer to Zizi.

Wouldn’t you know, Zizi changed the subject. “Don’t you see, this story was made for me. People will be sucked in. I’ve got to be the one to break it. Why would she leave her kid? How long has she been missing? Who called you? I need a picture of the kid holding a teddy bear or something, and you can help me get it. Listen, Fina, I know I’m being a little pushy here, but anything you can help me out with, I’d sure appreciate it. I mean, for everything we’ve been through.”

I shrugged and said I had no leads at this time, but as soon as I heard anything, I’d let her know.

“And by the way, you might want to check on your car. It’s that BMW, right?” she asked, pointing down Court Street. “Looks kind of funny, like there might be something wrong with the alignment or whatever they call it.”

Zizi had a quaint way of diverting my attention.

“Now we’re really late,” Cookie said, pulling me toward Baltic and Whiskey’s old neighborhood.

As we crossed the street, I called Lorraine, my source for all things real, and asked her when she’d last talked with Denny.

She hesitated a beat too long. “I guess it was the last time we had dinner together. When was that, two weeks ago? But I have news.” She segued into Jane and her team, telling me they’d arrived a while ago and were swarming through Whiskey’s apartment. “Wouldn’t you know, we’d just started dinner when there was a banging on the door. You should have heard Robbie.”

Poor Lorraine. I heard the sound of tramping feet on the other end of the ether and apologized, saying I’d given Jane explicit orders not to start until after the dinner hour.

“I’d better get up there and check on them. Maddie and Robbie will be all right while I’m gone—she’s showing him how to eat with one hand in his lap.”

The Phone Call

As we walked on Baltic Street, my cell vibrated. Thinking it might be from the woman we were supposed to be meeting, I forgot to look at the caller until it was too late. Blocked in big letters sat in the center of my screen.