Too Quiet in Brooklyn (3 page)

With that, Mr. Baggins stretched, sashayed from the back of my seat, plunked his considerable rear end onto my lap, and stared at Jane. He does this thing when he’s assessing a new situation—opens his mouth up a slit and flicks the tip of his tongue out a couple of times while his eyes bore into you, and that’s what he was doing to Jane.

She couldn’t help herself. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

Mr. B flicked his tongue again but otherwise was cat still and I could see his whiskers stirring in the fan’s breeze.

“I wouldn’t talk to that cat if I were you,” Jane’s partner said, brushing crumbs off his tie. “Liable to take a bite out of your thigh.”

“Who, Mr. Baggins?” Cookie asked. “He wouldn’t hurt a mouse, would you, Mr. B?”

His squat little body made a graceful arc into Cookie’s lap.

“He knows you,” Jane said to Cookie.

“We go way back, don’t we, boy,” Cookie said and nuzzled him.

“Should have the coroner’s report tomorrow morning,” Jane said.

I made a note to call my sources at the morgue.

“But one more thing,” Jane said, reverting to type. “This is my investigation. You might be a PI trying to make a name for yourself, but if I think for one moment you’ve been messing about and withholding information—”

“Not my style,” I assured her, getting up to go, my nostrils sucking in air. Keep calm, I told myself, motioning to Cookie. Mr. B hissed at Jane, jumped from Cookie’s lap, and disappeared under the front desk.

As Jane and her partner stood up to leave, she got in a parting shot, and it was a good one. “Coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

I froze. “Meaning?”

“The spot must be a draw for dead bodies. It’s like the sidewalk was just sitting there, waiting for another one.”

“I don’t do well with innuendoes. Spell it out.”

But she walked past me flicking her blonde locks as if my question was a breath of air pushing her out the door.

How did she know about my mother? Denny, of course. I leaned against the grill for a few minutes, looking up at the hot blue sky before shutting my eyes and sinking into myself.
Door to shell now closing, get out fast or step inside
.

Some kind of major force was drawing me into this. Maybe the image of the dead woman’s face shining bright in my memory. In my head I flashed to the corpse that used to be my mother, her body lying in almost the exact spot, now outlined in fresh paint, the old lines so faint they’d almost disappeared, but bright in my mind. I pinched my arm. Focus, I told myself, Jane’s snotty remark sealing it. I had to get involved. I had to find the truth for the sake of the dead and the living. Who was I kidding? For the sake of my sanity.

Jane returned. “Might as well send all the photos you’ve got,” she said.

I shot her another text attaching the pics of the dead woman’s face and hand, then called my friend at the Eagle.

“Thanks, Fina, but someone else phoned it in a second ago. Sending someone over.”

“Who called you?”

“Can’t divulge sources, you know that, even the tall blonde ones.”

Pushed by an Unseen Force

Back inside Lucy’s, I blinked at the quiet. It was business as usual, a world untouched by death. Mr. Baggins was in the middle of the floor staring up at me, an accusatory air about his muzzle. He gives great guilt. It occurred to me I hadn’t given him his treat, so I reached into a drawer of the spare desk—what are spare desks for, anyway—and fetched him a couple of Feline Greenies. He rubbed my hand, gobbled them up, and disappeared.

Minnie was about to leave for the day, so I filled her in on what the meeting was about, a dead woman on the sidewalk. Hard to believe that Minnie had no clue about the turmoil outside, but hot damn, the woman was focused.

After she took in my news, I asked her if she’d noticed anything unusual that morning or early afternoon. Shaking her black curls, she said she’d been the only one in the office all day. Lucy’s isn’t a small business, it’s a tiny business, and Minnie is the only full-timer.

She was wearing her orange print dress and heels, one of her only two outfits. In Brooklyn we build small closets.

“Good job I brought my lunch with me,” she said. “Course I get hungry around ten when I bag it, knowing food is inches away and all, I wish I didn’t obsess so on food but I do, giving myself a bite early on and vowing to wait for an hour and without realizing I gobble the whole thing down two minutes later. Course you don’t have that problem. Look at you, a hundred if you’re a pound!”

She took off her half-glasses, patted her stomach, and continued. “As it turns out, lucky I did, because right after I’d swallowed the last bite, the owner of Caputo’s Bakery called and for once praised our cleaning last night. He invited me over for cannoli, but I told him I was the only one here. So guess what, he had one of his guys deliver, two cannoli and a steaming latté!”

“He was the only visitor?”

She nodded.

“So you answered the door and opened the grill for him?”

“Course.”

“Do you remember the time?”

Minnie is nothing if not exact. “I glanced at the clock before I unlocked the grill. Eleven fifteen.”

“And you saw nothing else? How did the street seem?”

She cocked her head. “Only a flash, you understand. I saw the usual double parkers.”

It’s hard to find parking in the Heights. Cars are cheek to jowl with rarely room for delivery trucks, so they tend to double park or hug the No Parking Here To Corner zone. I asked her to describe the trucks she saw when she answered the door.

She canted her eyes to the side and thought for a sec, shaking her head. “It was so quick. I smiled at the delivery guy, think I glanced beyond the grill, you know, taking in the trees and that creepy guy who always sits on the stoop across the street.”

“You mean the owner?” I asked.

She shrugged and thought a bit. “I saw a maroon van illegally parked on the corner. Maybe it was maroon. For sure it was old and beat up. Yes, and I saw the mail truck or something in back of the van. That’s all I remember seeing, that and green leaves and blue sky. A few clouds. No, come to think of it, only the blue sky, no clouds, a wild cornflower blue. The kind that shouts spring.”

Spare me, I thought but smiled. I brought out my little black book, and jotted down what she’d said about time of day and the color of the van. “Thanks, Minnie. And this was?”

“Eleven fifteen, like I said.” She gave me a curious look.

I just wanted to be sure. “If you think of anything else, let me know.”

She beamed. While she cleaned up her desk and put on her coat, she told me about getting another call from someone who owned three buildings on John Street. He wanted estimates for cleaning twice a week.

“Here’s his name and number.” She handed me a pad with the information.

I thanked her for all her help, told her to call me if she remembered anything else, and was about to say goodbye when I remembered something.

“Minnie, this is a terrible imposition I know, but I wondered if you wouldn’t mind taking a look at some pictures of the dead woman’s face. They’re not pretty, and I wouldn’t ask, except we’re trying to find out who she is, and I wondered if you’d recognize her.”

“No problem at all. I understand.”

Gritting her teeth, she looked at the photos, but I could have kicked myself again for showing them to her. On top of it, I was probably making her late for her bus by asking her to look at some pretty awful pictures of someone she had only a slim chance of knowing. Minnie was a business associate, not really a friend. We probably wouldn’t say two words to each other if we hadn’t worked together. I shouldn’t have asked her.

She looked quickly at the photo and turned away.

“No. No, I can’t say as I’ve ever seen her. I don’t know anyone in the neighborhood, I just work here. I’d recognize the tenants in the building if you pointed them out to me and I’d say to myself, oh, yes, I’ve seen her at the mailbox, or I’ve seen her running up the stoop. And of course I know the super, but no, not this woman. Sorry.”

“I’m the one who owes you an apology, Minnie. That was a lousy thing for me to do. But I’m desperate.”

“Why don’t you get your friend Cookie to draw a likeness?”

“Great idea.” I hugged her. As an afterthought, I begged her to call me if she needed a filler for this evening, hoping that someone would call in sick so I’d have to work instead of sitting all evening with Denny’s folks.

After Minnie left, I located the super who was next door fixing the furnace, showed him my pictures and asked him if he recognized the woman, asked him if he’d seen anything fishy outside this morning, but he hadn’t. Little wonder, no one had, really. Hiding a body in broad daylight didn’t seem to be such a bad idea.

Before I left, I called the John Street number and spoke with the man who’d called Minnie earlier. I arranged to meet with him tomorrow morning at nine so I could see the buildings and give him an estimate, then made some schmooze calls to a few of our good customers. After zipping my jacket, I flung my bag over my shoulder and locked the door.

* * *

Cookie and I leaned on Denny’s cruiser, watching Jane and her sidekick talk to the CSU super. It looked like they were wrapping up for today, at least with this crime scene. The print guy had left, the body was on its way to the morgue, and some of the techs were taking off their white suits and packing up. One was bagging the black coat in paper and I could almost see moths flying away.

“Ought to be a wealth of forensics in that baby,” Denny said.

“Let’s go sit on my stoop, out of earshot,” I said.

We were silent a moment, taking in the day, until I said, “I recognized the dead woman, I think.”

Denny sat between me and Cookie, his thumbs hitched into his belt turning his head to whoever was talking as if he were watching a tennis match, his eyes narrowed, his mouth hitched up on one side. “Did you tell Jane?”

First words out of him, but I didn’t blame him. Poor Denny, he had two pipers to pay.

I twisted a button on my jacket. “Not yet. First I want to make sure my hunch is right. I wouldn’t want to mislead her.”

“Covering your bets?” Denny suppressed a grin.

I shrugged. “It’s been a couple of years now, but I used to see the woman hovering around the flower stall in the Clark Street Station.”

“She worked for Transit?” Denny asked. “Judging from her shoes and the clothes she was wearing, she looked more like Heights society to me.”

“Except for the coat and gloves,” Cookie said and thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, she does look familiar.” Despite her hard veneer, Cookie was somber, moved, interested, I could tell by the way she held her head. After all, we went through Packer Collegiate together, kindergarten through high school so I ought to know. There’s a lot to Cookie, but that’s a story for another day.

I tried to answer Denny’s question about the Transit. “Not really. I think the shop maybe belonged to her. Someone else was doing the selling, but I used to see her once in a while, usually when the crowds were really thick, like late afternoon on a Thursday or Friday. Seemed like lots of customers knew her. She’d be talking to them and a few would be gathered around her. She gave the late afternoon crowd a spark, a sense that they were home, and now that I think about it, they must have been discussing more than just flowers, but I still got the feeling that she was the neighborhood green thumb.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Not sure. I think I overheard her giving advice to someone about keeping cut flowers.”

“Must have had the concession,” Denny said. He stood, nodding to his partner who’d just given him the high sign.

“Gotta go, he said. “And don’t forget tonight. Seven o’clock.” He gave me a smooch and was off.

* * *

Sometimes I wonder what Denny sees in me. By now you’ve figured out we’re not just shacking up. We’re significants. Tall, handsome, a year older than me with a great future on the force, although he claims he loves his work and doesn’t want to move up. He doesn’t like sports except for baseball, football, and basketball. The only thing wrong with him are his parents, but he doesn’t seem to mind them too much. You’ll see what I mean soon because we’re going to their house for dinner, unless I can help it. I felt a rumble from someplace below my sternum as he waved goodbye and his cruiser disappeared.

After he left, Cookie and I sat for a few more minutes. “Nice lady.”

“Who?”

“The dead woman, of course. Couple of years ago when we started our book club at Teresa’s—remember, Cookie?—a few times she came in and sat at a table opposite us. I could tell she was listening in. You know how old people are. Struck me as being lonely. She’d listen in, sipping her coffee and flashing her rings and nodding at one of our comments or sat still staring at something only she could see, half listening to the conversation.”

“An all-together broad for an older chick,” Cookie said. “Are you sure our body was the same woman?”

I shook my head. The woman was no more. That’s what dead was, I kept telling myself. It was surreal, the body was still there, the face grotesque, familiar, but all the personality was drained away, so it was and it wasn’t the same person. Thoughts like that get me all weirded out, so I shut my eyes and dug my nails into my palm.

“Where are you?” Cookie asked. She hesitated for a sec, but knew me too well not to expect a reply, so she went on. “I remember her now. I asked her to join the club, too, but she said she wouldn’t fit in and anyways had a topsy-turvy schedule, something about frequent visits to someone, her daughter I think. I got the impression there was trouble on that front. No, what was it? She cared for her grandson a lot, that was it, and the daughter would appear out of the blue and he’d stay with her overnight so she had to drop everything. But maybe she just didn’t want to get involved, know what I mean?” Cookie was looking in the mirror, fixing a strand of hair, and the sun, now a late afternoon gold, was winking off it.

“I saw her a couple of times after that,” I said.

“After what?”