Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) (10 page)

“Don’t forget tonight,” Denny managed.

More food. “How could I?”

“And my parents, thanks to my dad, invited someone else too. Zizi Carmalucci.”

I could tell by the way he said the name I should be interested. The ice cream shifted as I turned. My eyelids opened.

“Do I know him?”

“Her,” he clarified.

A dark pause.

“And I don’t think you do, unless you went to Fontbonne Hall Academy.”

Something began buzzing in my head while I waited for him to elaborate, a sentence or two, perhaps. Let’s see, the name is Zizi Carmalucci, and she went to Fontbonne. Do we like her?

In a few minutes, I heard his steady breathing. I wouldn’t call it a snore, not even a rumble, just a Denny sound.

We met after graduation when he caught me speeding down Henry Street in the Heights. I lowered my window and smiled up at him. He stuck his hatless head in, and I looked at his blue eyes and light brown hair and wasn’t at all bothered by the thought of a ticket. They say good-looking guys are the worst to date, but I took a chance. I couldn’t help it. My hormones were raging.

Denny’s a charmer, easygoing, and I don’t know what he sees in me. A couple of years ago, we bought the house in Vinegar Hill, and with the exception of a hell of a fight two weeks ago that I’d rather not talk about except to say it was all my fault, we’ve been happy. I just have problems when I think of the future. See, there they go again—my feet. They get like ice cubes when I let thoughts of marriage and kids get into my head. He wants the full catastrophe, proposed more times than I like to think about, the ring all wrapped up, but I can’t go there. Not yet at any rate. Bad things happen when you tie down the future, especially when you say the forever word. Zizi Carmalucci, I thought, rubbing my feet together. Odd name for a woman.

Chapter 17

Fina. Morning Two, Heather

Armed with my thermos and not too much sleep, I rang the bell of a townhouse on Remsen Street close to the Promenade. I sipped my coffee and listened to approaching footsteps. In a few seconds, the door was opened by a girl with straight black hair, wearing a coat and backpack. Heather Chang, I figured. Sounds floated from the interior—running feet, kids laughing, older sounds scolding. A woman’s voice rang out, “Tell Brandy hello for me.”

“It’s not Brandy, Mom. It’s a lady.”

Soon a woman appeared, looking like an older version of her daughter, but not as tall. “May I help you?”

I flashed my ID and told them I had some questions about Brandy Liam. When I got no response, I said I was a Packer Collegiate alum and asked if I could have a word. They stared back at me for a moment until the woman introduced herself as Mrs. Chang and invited me inside.

“You can run along now, Heather.”

“But I’d like to speak with both of you.”

Mrs. Chang inclined her head. “As long as it won’t take more than five minutes or Heather will be late for school.”

I followed them down the hall, past jackets and hats suspended neatly from a mirrored coat tree, school books piled on what looked like an old piano bench, a row of boots lined up near the door, throw rugs over a scuffed but clean wooden floor. Everything shone, and there was a delicious scent coming from someplace inside.

When we were seated in the parlor, I told them that Brandy Liam had been missing since yesterday morning.

Mrs. Chang brought a hand to her mouth. Her complexion, which had at first reminded me of pink roses in a lemon cream vase, turned to alabaster.

We were silent for a few minutes. Heather looked at her mother and shook her head. “I didn’t see Brandy in Lit yesterday morning and wondered why. I thought maybe she got sick or something. A little later, one of my friends said she’d heard Brandy was on excused absence. I felt bad she hadn’t told me herself—we’re good friends. Then I guess I forgot about it, and after school I had my Chinese lesson, so I didn’t think about Brandy again until just now. She’s late. We always walk to school together.”

“And she walked to school with you yesterday morning?” I asked.

Heather nodded. She looked at her mother, and they exchanged wordless communication—disbelief, bafflement, and fear slid around them.

I asked Heather if she’d noticed anything unusual or strange about Brandy’s behavior—was she happy, sad, angry? Did she have a new boyfriend?

Heather shook her head. “No one special. We have boys in our group. But we’re all friends, that’s it.” She glanced at her mother. She said Brandy was the same and they’d talked about the usual things.

“Boys, you mean?”

Heather blushed. “And teachers, parents, normal stuff.”

“I know her father died a few years ago.”

“His death took the little girl away from her,” Mrs. Chang said. “She changed after that, not so happy about her … life at home. And before you ask Heather, let me say I don’t think Brandy and her mother are all that close, not like Brandy was with her father. Now that he’s gone, it’s become a problem for Mrs. Liam and Brandy, don’t you see? Not that she doesn’t love her mother or that Trisha doesn’t love her daughter. It’s not a question of that. It’s a matter of time. It’s so hard when you’re the only parent, and that’s what Mrs. Liam is, a single mom. Easy for us to judge—that’s what I tell Heather, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

Heather nodded.

“Did you see anything unusual outside school yesterday morning? Like a funny-looking car, a stranger, someone who shouldn’t have been there?”

Heather took her time before she shook her head. I could tell she wasn’t withholding, just trying to remember, so I said, “I’m investigating Brandy’s disappearance, along with the police and the FBI. We want her home safe and sound, no questions asked. If you can think of anything I should know, anything at all, please call or text me. Maybe something will come to you. You might think it’s silly, nothing at all, but just the same, I want to hear about it. Here’s my card with the number of my cell.”

I thanked them for their time and stood, but thought of something else to ask. “Just one more question for Heather, and I want you to think carefully before you answer me. Do you remember walking through the main door of the school together? Take your time and picture it. Was she on your right side or your left?”

Heather closed her eyes. “My left.”

“Sure?”

She nodded.

“Now, who opened the door, you or Brandy?”

Heather frowned and shook her head. “I remember crossing Court, and we started laughing at one of the street people who was standing on the other side of Joralemon. He had this funny hat on. It had a hole in it, and Brandy said she wondered how it kept the rain off.”

I saw Mrs. Chang stiffen.

“As we got closer to the door, we were surrounded by kids standing outside. I think she might have said she was going across the street to the deli—sometimes she does that to get a juice. Other than that, we usually walk inside school together, but now I remember something—I turned to say goodbye because we have different homerooms, and she wasn’t there. I assumed she ran to the deli or walked inside ahead of me or else was tied up with some of the other kids.”

Heather stopped talking, but she had a faraway look, like she was still wrapped up in the scene.

Mrs. Chang smiled. “If Heather thinks of something else you should know, I’ll make sure we call you.”

I took a deep breath, savoring the scent of spices. “I hope you don’t think me rude, but whatever you’re cooking smells fantastic.”

“My mother’s making our noon meal,” Mrs. Chang said. “Fish with five spice powder. It’s her secret, not even I know the recipe. In fact, I don’t think she’s ever written it down.”

“One more request—and I know you’re late, you can email it to me later if you like—but I’d like a list of your close friends, especially the kids who were outside with you yesterday morning. Maybe one of them saw something.”

“Of course we’ll do that, won’t we, Heather?”

Chapter 18

Fina. Morning Two, Lorraine

After talking with Heather and her mother, I decided to take a walk down Henry Street to see how my cleaning service, Lucy’s, was doing.

This part of the Heights is my old neighborhood, and I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach—the elevator, I call it. It rides up and down between my gut and the back of my throat. You see, Lucy’s occupies the ground floor where we used to live, Mom, Gran and I. It’s the cleaning service I started after Dad left us. I named it after a song Mom used to sing, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
.
”

In the early days, my business starred just me. I’d clean apartments and offices to make ends meet, some nights not getting home until almost midnight. I thought of all the weeks we had to eat stale bread warmed and softened in watered-down soup for dinner; I thought of Mom and her last years plagued by money worries and nasty rumors before she met her untimely death. Lately my business had been good, at least the cleaning side of it, too late for Mom to enjoy the financial ease it would have given us. It would have lengthened her life. Gran’s, too. And with that thought, I slammed a fist into my thigh before running down the steps and opening Lucy’s door.

Minnie, my office manager, was wearing one of her usual work outfits, a green print dress with black heels and pearl necklace. Not that I expected her to dress up, far from it, but she told me once she wanted to look nice just in case a client was passing by or we got a walk-in. In one hand she had a bag of baked potato chips, and in the other, her phone. She crunched chips as she talked with one of our regulars. Her half glasses balanced on the tip of her nose and wobbled a little, like an unsteady skater pirouetting on ice.

With smiles and florid gestures, Minnie conversed as if the caller could see through the wires. “Thank you. I’ll pass it on. I’m sure the boss would love to hear it.” There was a pause as Minnie waved me in and crunched a bite out of her chip. “Please. We’d be happy to help.” Another pause. Minnie nodded. “Check came last week, thanks. We appreciate it.” Click.

She brought me up to date on Lucy’s, and I was about to leave when she handed me a packet of mail, all addressed to me. “A lot of it’s junk, I think.”

I went through it in a jiff, tossing most of it unopened into the garbage, but there was one envelope containing a glossy job from a stone carver on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan, where Mom’s ancestors lived when they first came here. I’d been thinking of buying one of his angels for Mom’s grave, so I shoved the brochure into my bag, waved goodbye to Minnie, who was deep into another phone call, glanced at the pile of Trisha Liam’s briefs, and closed the door.

I walked down Joralemon, thinking I’d hang out in front of Brandy’s school to see what I could pick up from the wind, when who should I meet but Denny’s mom, Lorraine, running down the steps of a church on Sidney Place.

My first impression of Lorraine, I must admit, was in the basement. I blush to say it, but I’m a moron when it comes to understanding older women. I tend to write them off. Let’s face it, I misjudge right and left. On my last case, my prejudices died as I watched Lorraine handle a client who’d clammed up when I tried interviewing her. In a few minutes, Lorraine relaxed her, made her momentarily happy for the first time in about seven or eight years, and we’d learned far more than I thought we would.

“How come you’re here and not fixing Robert his breakfast?” I asked, surprised to see her in Brooklyn Heights and not in her Carroll Gardens neighborhood.

“Even slaves have time off.” She laughed and then frowned. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

I nodded. Lorraine was a master sandwich builder.

“Did you hear about the Liam child?” she asked, pushing up her glasses. “She’s gone missing. Last seen in front of school, and then she wasn’t there.” She snapped her fingers. “Vanished like that.”

My mouth opened, and when I recovered, I said, “Her mother’s hired me to investigate. How did you hear about Brandy’s disappearance so fast?”

“Got a call last night from my friend who runs the prayer circle at Mary Star. We’ve begun a novena at Charlie B’s.”

When Lorraine started slinging around all that Catholic jargon, I was lost, but I pretended to understand.

She picked up on my ignorance. “St. Charles Borromeo around the corner. Brandy’s grandmother belongs, so we decided to do our praying at the church closest to Packer Collegiate where the girl was last seen.” She paused a beat. “It must be so hard for the mother, especially after the father’s death.”

Lorraine knew almost as much as I did about the case, so I didn’t say anything, just let her talk.

“I know a little about the Liam family—large, prominent, and Irish. I don’t mean the present generation, what’s left of it. I’m talking about Mitch’s parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Madeleine—that would be Brandy’s grandmother—must be in her eighties by now. Mitch died quite suddenly, and his sister, Caroline, is at least fifteen or twenty years older than Denny.”

“Sounds like the same family to me.”

There was a certain finality to Lorraine’s nod, a definite set to her mouth. The best part of her story was yet to come, I figured, so I let her talk.

“Well, there’s some that will always have, but God knows how they got it. Rumor has it the patriarch of the family, old Morse Liam, didn’t come by it fairly. He migrated during the potato famine in the 1840s. Arrived here with a bunch of young men who got into New York politics early on. Ever hear of Tweed?”

My mouth was open again. I could feel it shut as I listened to the rest of the story.

“Morse Liam was in thick with Tweed and his gang. Although he stayed on the fringes of the mighty man, he was an oily thief himself. But he contributed to the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and to other causes of the day and came out smelling. At least he wasn’t taken down in the final Tweed scandal when most of them were caught with their knickers around their knees.”

Lorraine had that faraway look about her. “I remember meeting Madeleine and her husband—what was his name, I’ll think of it in a minute. Robbie and I had to go to some political fundraiser or other, and we sat near their table—you know how it is.”