SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY (16 page)

Except for a curious golden retriever with a good nose, the scheme might’ve worked. At first the police believed that a drunken Rossi had careened into the water and gotten himself washed out with the tide.

She closed her notebook and shook her head. Not nearly enough data to go on, especially in the first murder. The young woman seen at Otter Creek had money to take care of herself. Why then did she seem nervous, even before she met the unknown driver? Why would she insist on going to Cedar Key in spite of the threatening hurricane? If some outside person was involved, why was Rossi killed when he came to Cedar Key to find her? One fact stood out that frightened her. Cara might’ve taken a photograph that would identify the murderer, and everyone at the hotel knew about it.

Between clouds she looked down at the fleeting patches of forests and towns far below. They were like the scattered elements of the murders, she thought. She just couldn’t see all the pieces that made up the landscape.

* * * *

Once out of the milling crowds at JFK, Brandy hurried to curb side and joined another woman who had snagged a cab into Manhattan. In an accent Brandy couldn’t identify, their unshaven driver chatted with the other passenger about the New York Yankees’ current success. Brandy stared into the crisp afternoon sunlight at the Manhattan skyline as it soared into view, at empty factories, empty warehouses, and finally at a monumental traffic jam approaching the mid-town tunnel. Brandy and the other passenger supplied the toll. The cab then darted down FDR Drive, let the baseball fan out at Tudor City, and swung west. After they passed into the northeast corner of Greenwich Village, they drew up at a four story red brick building with columns beside the portico, a hood above the door, and windows bristling with bars.

Brandy mounted the stone steps and rang Thea’s buzzer twice, ready to announce herself into the speaker to Thea’s roommate. No response. Perhaps the woman was still asleep. A sign pointed down outside steps to the superintendent’s basement apartment where a door opened below a wrought iron fence. She had turned toward this lower entrance when she heard an answering buzz.

“Brandy O’Bannon,” she said, shoving open the ornamented door. Once in the hallway, she rapped at a first floor apartment door with Thea’s number that fronted the street. There was another pause. Then someone rattled a lock, she heard two bolts drawn back, the door opened a crack against the chain, and a voice like sandpaper called, “Go away, bad boy!”

Startled, Brandy stepped back. Somebody giggled and the chain clattered aside. “You must be freakin’ out,” another voice said. The door opened into a darkened room where a young woman in a tousled dressing gown stood aside to let her in. Brandy could see an unmade bed against the nearest wall, clothing strewn across the floor, and in the corner by a window, a tall metal cage. Below it lay a scattering of birdseed. From behind the curved bars came a murmurous, “Awk.”

“Sonata,” said the young woman, giggling again. Her dark hair was rolled around huge tubular curlers. Below them she batted long black lashes, eyes dancing. “Sonata and Allegro.”

Brandy couldn’t identify the sour smell that permeated the small apartment. Perhaps it came from the bird cage. She stood, suitcase in hand, and tried to focus on what Thea’s strange but friendly roommate was saying.

“Park your stuff over there. Thea’s tidier.” The young woman jerked up the window shade, kicked a pair of jeans out of the walkway, plopped down on the disheveled sheets on the daybed, and motioned toward a couch at the opposite end of the long room. Brandy recognized Thea’s favorite Spy prints on the wall behind a neatly spread couch cover, and an art deco chair. Beside it stood a desk, a bookcase, and a dresser that held a colorful arrangement of silk flowers. The odd couple, Brandy thought.

“Roommate Round-up,” said the young woman. “Flat fee of $195. Smoke?” She pulled a cigarette and lighter out of the commodious folds of her robe. “Works fine for us. Thea slaves away all day, comes home to sleep at night.” She bent plump white cheeks forward and dragged on the cigarette. An ember glowed and a tiny plume of smoke rose toward the ceiling. She jumped up, trotted over the discarded jeans, and tugged open the window above the basement entrance and the sidewalk.

“Gotta get the smoke out, like before Thea makes it home. I’m outta here about five, work my tail off in a spaghetti joint ‘til ten. Most nights then we do a gig someplace near the village, ‘til about three. Tonight it’s an entertainment bar on East 27th. Show business, my partner and me. Allegro.” She waved the cigarette toward the cage.

“I wanna be me,” rasped the voice from the corner.

Brandy spotted a large parrot teetering on its perch by the window. She dragged her suitcase beside Thea’s dresser. “I need to stash my things for now and get some directions. Then you can go back to bed. Sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”

“Sonata. Sonata Snow.” The young woman repeated the name distinctly, as if she doubted Brandy’s intelligence. She was finding Thea’s guest a slow study.

Brandy threaded her way across the floor to the cage. “This is your accompanist?” She had finally made a connection between Sonata and Allegro.

“Yo. Talks like an angel. Fooled you, didn’t he?” Sonata tittered again. “African Gray.” She moved to Brandy’s side. The soft gray parrot was perhaps a foot in length, with light-colored eyes ringed by bare skin. These were now studying Brandy. Under his tail and wings ran a fringe of scarlet. He did not move as Sonata approached. “Go away, bad boy,” he repeated. Sonata unlocked the steel cage and dumped seed into the feeder.

“Experts say they don’t know what they’re sayin’. Like, they just memorize sounds. I’m not so sure.”

Brandy pulled a map of Manhattan from her tote bag, along with Rossi’s address. “I haven’t got much time in New York. I’m looking for an investigative agency on East Tenth Street. I need to find it this afternoon. A murder case may depend on it, and a friend’s future.”

Not looking impressed, Sonata stubbed a finger in the right grid on the map. “Man, you can walk from here. Go coupla blocks east until 8th Street becomes St. Marks, then two blocks north on 2nd Avenue. Watch your wallet, kid.” She frowned at Allego, who was inching away on his wooden perch, a glittering eye on her cigarette. Apparently, he didn’t approve of smoke.

“Awk. “Remember Who You Are,” he added morosely.

“Title of a recording.” Sonata tilted her head, one hand on the curve of her hip, mimicking the tilt of the parrot’s head. “He cracks me up.” She had wrapped her robe tighter around her waist, and below its tattered hem Brandy could see a pair of shapely ankles.

“You’ve heard part of his repertoire,” she said. “I sing a number, he reacts. Brings down the house. Sometimes.” She reached for a tape player on a shelf beside a stack of sheet music. “No back to bed for me.

We both gotta practice.”

* * * *

“Discreet Investigations” read the small sign in the store front window. “Anthony P. Rossi, Licensed Private Investigator.” In smaller letters it announced “Financial Background Checks, Employee Reports, Skip Tracing, Missing Persons, Matrimonial Surveillance.” In some ways, a rather ugly practice, Brandy thought. Not exactly the glamorous job depicted in detective novels.

Past the corner, traffic rumbled along Second Avenue. A horn blared. Brandy stepped back from the flow of pedestrians along the sidewalk and remembered a sturdy Anthony Rossi, standing bewildered in a quiet side street of Cedar Key. The memory saddened her.

She had not believed that he was a bad guy. But what did she know of New York City?

Rossi’s office was in a white brick building with a green fire escape angling down the front, green trim above the hooded windows, and a matching door. Customers had to buzz for admittance. On these littered streets Brandy had passed some shabbily dressed New Yorkers and one derelict sleeping in a doorway. According to Detective Strong, she was only a few blocks from a drug infested area. Maybe a handy location for Rossi. She hated to accept that scenario. Brandy remembered Thea had warned her, the 1992 East Village was badly in need of renovation.

Through the plate glass she could see someone moving around inside. Although a New York City Police Department notice hung on the doorknob, she pushed against the door and it opened.

“Hey, you!” A head of bouffant hair jerked up behind a wooden desk near the window, and a swivel chair rounded on Brandy. “Whatcha’ doing? Nobody’s to come in here, know what I’m saying?”

Brandy faced an indignant woman of perhaps forty in a black sweater and red skirt. She had been collecting personal items from the lower right hand drawer of the desk and stacking them on the desk top, a mirror, a brush, three lipsticks, a comb, a box of tissues. Under the box lay a page of want ads. “Hey, I got permission from the cops to be here, pick up my things.” The woman waved a dismissive hand at Rossi’s sign. “Guy’s dead. Beat it.”

Brandy sat down in a straight chair against the wall and pulled a pen and a ragged memo pad out of her bag. “I know. I’ve come up from Florida. I’m a reporter and I’m looking for some information about Rossi’s last case. Name’s Brandy O’Bannon. Yours?”

The other woman paused and drummed red fingernails on the desk. Her eyes turned cagey. “You oughta talk to the cops, not me. I don’t know squat about Rossi’s business. His investigations were
private
.” She came down hard on the last word.

“You were his secretary?”

“I guess you could call me that. I took messages. Typed up the notes he gave me. Only got the job two months ago. Fat chance I’ve got to find another, conditions like they are.” She glanced down at the want ads, a few highlighted in yellow.

Inconsiderate of Rossi, Brandy thought, to get himself murdered and deprive his secretary of employment. She spoke in a voice she hoped was non-threatening. “Did he give you any notes about his search for a missing woman in Cedar Key, Florida?”

“Cops here took his records, holding them for the Florida cops. But I didn’t see nothing from Florida. Anyway, if you type stuff, you know you don’t read what it says.”

“He must’ve made an electronic search for the woman before he left New York.”

“Yeah, sure. Used a data base. Didn’t turn up nothing, know what I’m saying? That’s why he hung a plane outta here.”

“And you didn’t talk to him again?”

Her tone became more affable. “You’re freakin’ nosy, lady.” She considered the question, her forehead crinkling below the tall, stiff hair. “Yeah, I guess he called once from Florida. I gave him the bad news the next night. His client died the day after he left. She was an old lady, died of cancer. Her husband called, told me to tell Rossi, said he’d send the final check for Rossi’s expenses and time.”

Brandy’s pulse quickened. “Did you get the husband’s name?”

The secretary reached into her handbag, extracted a package of gum, thought about offering some to Brandy, decided not to, and popped a stick in her mouth.

“Yeah, at the time. I don’t remember it now. I gave everything to the cops.”

“Why do you suppose he took such a case—I mean agree to go so far away—when he knew his client was fatally ill?”

The woman snapped her gum. She still hadn’t given Brandy her name, and Brandy thought she didn’t plan to. “That I wouldn’t know, lady. None of my business.”

“I didn’t catch your name?”

The secretary cocked her head and gave Brandy a shrewd look. Working for a private eye had made her suspicious. Apparently, she couldn’t see the harm. “Polenski.”

“He was still working on the case after his client’s death, Miss Polenski. He said someone else might be interested. You have any idea who that might be?”

The gum popped again. “I told you, lady. I don’t know squat about his business.”

Brandy leaned forward and looked directly into her eyes. “There’s talk about a drug connection between the town where Mr. Rossi was killed and New York City. You have any thoughts about that?”

The red nails tapped the desk again. Brandy waited. “Rossi had a kid brother into drugs,” she said finally. “Family couldn’t do a thing with the kid. Got sent to some tough school somewheres.” She shrugged. “Rossi said he hated drugs.”

Brandy remembered Strong had notified someone of Rossi’s death. “Isn’t there a wife or a family member I could talk to?”

“Poor sucker had an ex-wife in the Bronx. She’ll get whatever’s left.” With a twisted smile, Miss Polenski nodded at the battered desk, a couple of metal files, an off-brand computer, and an electronic typewriter. “Guess she’ll be sorry to see her alimony end. She knows less about his work than I do, and that’s, like, zippo.”

Miss Polenski stood and Brandy was surprised to see she was wearing jogging shoes. She dropped the desk items one by one into a plastic bag, picked up a sack with her dress shoes, and stuffed the want ads into her purse. “I’m done here. Gotta lock up. Gotta hit the ads.” She shook the towering hair again. “Fat chance of finding something, know what I’m saying?”

Brandy felt sudden panic. She’d come all this way. Cara counted on her, not to mention her editor, but she was striking out in the first interview. As she rose she could see a postman through the plate glass at the top of the door, striding toward the letter box in the entrance foyer.

“Thanks for your help,” Brandy said without a trace of irony, opened the door, and intercepted the envelopes the postman had begun shoving into the box. “I’ll just hand in the mail,” she added. “Might be something of interest.”

“Hey!” The secretary stretched out her hand, but with rapid motions Brandy was already sorting through the letters. Bills mostly, electric, telephone, computer data base, and one legal sized envelope from an individual. The return address on a printed label read “Mr. and Mrs. Irving Grosmiller.” Brandy jotted down a west side, 23rd Street address and thrust the mail at the reproachful Miss Polenski.

Maybe, Brandy thought, as the secretary threw the letters on the desk behind them and locked the door, just maybe that was the payment from Anthony Rossi’s last client.

* * * *

Thea Ridge arrived at the studio apartment as tall and angular and svelte as Brandy remembered. She gave Brandy a quick hug at the door and rolled her eyes at the scene. On the floor, birdseed over-sprinkled the jeans and the crumpled robe. On the foyer table the contents of a cereal bowl sat congealing beside a half glass of milk. Allegro’s cage stood empty.