Murder at the 42nd Street Library: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Book) (25 page)

“I could ask her about it,” Adele said when they were seated at her tiny table in the space between the kitchen and the living room drinking tea.

“You could.”

“But she might not want to tell me.”

Ambler sipped his tea.

*   *   *

An hour and a half later, Adele returned from Emily’s apartment. Ambler stopped reading and looked up. Her expression was ashen. “The papers in the briefcase—” Her eyes met his. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew and didn’t tell me.” Her voice, shrill and shaking, rose. “What if I hadn’t looked? I almost didn’t. I almost didn’t look. If she hadn’t been crying, hadn’t gone to the bathroom, I wouldn’t have.”

Ambler stood and reached toward Adele, a message of peace, an apology. “I didn’t know what was in the briefcase. I had a suspicion. I hoped I was wrong. I didn’t want to alarm you if I was wrong.”

“But now you know you’re right, and what does it mean?”

“I have to tell Mike.”

*   *   *

Cosgrove double-parked his car and burst into his house, going immediately to his daughter’s room. As he passed, Sarah pressed herself against the wall across from the stairs as far from him as she could get, her face tear-streaked and blotchy. She put up a front of false bravado anyway. “Well, well, the hero’s home. Big Officer Mike. He’ll take care of everything! That’s why she has no respect for me. You—” Her voice wavered. Something cold and scared lurked beneath the angry words.

A quick search of Denise’s room turned up enough to get started. In her rush to leave, she hadn’t turned off her computer or logged out of Facebook. She had dozens of friends, photos of her and her friends, school pictures, group shots, gag photos, and hundreds of photos of celebrities and rock bands. Almost all of her friends were girls her own age, a couple of boys, a couple of bands, nothing alarming. He went through the photos quickly to find girls he recognized and matched those to names in her friends list. He came up with four who he’d guess were her closest friends.

“Where are you going?” Sarah’s voice was quieter now, the challenge gone.

“To look for Denise.”

“Can I come?”

Her plaintive, contrite tone stopped him; he felt sorry for her, a deeper sympathy than he thought he could muster. “I’ll do the first run myself. If you get some sleep and get yourself ready, I’ll come back for you in a couple of hours.”

She nodded and reached a hand out to touch his arm. There was a time it might have meant something, but that time had passed. He left her standing in the doorway.

Denise’s friends would lie to cover for her. But they wouldn’t be very good at it. He’d met most of them—giggles and too much dark eyeliner, tight jeans or short skirts and skinny legs, brash and secretive. Everything they talked about was at the Oh My God level. They were polite enough, called him Mr. Cosgrove, but leery of him; a dad was bad enough; a cop way too much. With luck, he’d scare the truth out of one of them. His first stop was Jenny. She lived closest, and Denise talked about her more than the others.

If Jenny didn’t work out, he had an ace in the hole. Anne’s daughter was on the list. The kids weren’t close but they had the same circle of friends. Cosgrove didn’t encourage closeness between the families because of how things were between him and Anne. They tried not to see one another more often than every couple of months when they could spend a night together, Anne pretending she visited her sister in Connecticut, Cosgrove taking sick leave when he was on the overnight shift.

Jenny was scared to death, as was her mother, who begged her to tell him what she knew about Denise, probably thinking he’d throw the whole family in jail if she didn’t. Jenny didn’t make eye contact, mumbled monosyllabic answers, and insisted she knew nothing. With her mother standing beside her, he couldn’t grill her. If she’d lifted her gaze from the doorstep for more than a fraction of a second, she’d have seen how poorly her act was going over. When he ran out of polite questions, he told her to look at him. He spoke so sharply she jumped—as did her mother—and did look at him.

“If you think of anything, Jenny, you call me any time of the day or night—and I mean any time.” He handed her his card and turned to her mother. “Maybe you could help her remember. Same goes for you; call me any time with any tiny piece of information you come up with.”

He sat in his car for a few minutes watching clouds closing in, followed by rain pelting against his windshield. Talking to the other girls on the list was probably a waste of time. Going to Anne on this was risky; talking to her daughter without asking the girl’s father wasn’t how one cop approached another cop’s family. But he didn’t have time for explanations. He wouldn’t have to explain to Anne. She’d know the risks, too. And she’d help him anyway.

When he took out his cell phone to call her, he saw Ray Ambler had called twice. Something was breaking with him, too. Wouldn’t you know it would all come down at once?

*   *   *

Ambler closed his cell phone after getting Mike Cosgrove’s voice mail a second time.

“Are you sure we can’t ask Emily about the briefcase?”

He looked at Adele’s wrinkled face, like a child’s who was about to cry. “I’m sorry. It’s almost certain she knows who killed James Donnelly.”

“Her friend Dominic?”

“We have to tell Mike what we found.”

Adele’s voice rose dangerously. “What about Johnny? What’s going to happen to him when you take his mother away?” Tears trickled down her cheeks; sobs mangled her words. “How can you do that? How can you take his mother away? You have to talk to Emily.”

He wasn’t taking Johnny’s mother away. Emily did it to herself. No sense trying to tell Adele that, no sense reminding her of what she knew. The outcome of this would be misery for a lot of people. Didn’t a murder always do that? Cast a pall far and wide over everyone connected to it.

Chapter 21

She should’ve listened to Dominic. You couldn’t trust anyone; you took care of yourself; no one else would. She trusted Adele; look what that got her. Something was going on the way she acted, sneaky, like she was up to something—like she’d been caught snooping when Emily came back from the bathroom. That’s what it was; she was snooping. What could she find that would tell her anything?

The briefcase! She rushed to open it. What an idiot she was! Jim Donnelly’s manuscript! Did Adele look in the bag and find his name? She dug through the briefcase. Everything had his name on it. Adele could’ve taken anything. Her father’s letters! They seemed to all be there. Maybe Adele didn’t know what was in the bag. Maybe she didn’t take anything. But she knew too much. Dominic would go nuts when she told him what happened. He was already freaked out. They’d argued about Max again. Dominic thought Max was so smart because he had a Ph.D., even though Max treated him like dirt. Laura Lee made excuses. That was bullshit, too. Max didn’t want anything to do with Dominic.

Max was the first one, a filthy liar like the rest of them. She was a little girl. What did she know? A couple of years ago when one of his books came out, she heard him on the radio and almost threw up. His voice made her sick, his pompous tone, like he was born an aristocrat, instead of the son of a two-bit hoodlum from the Bronx. At least Dominic owned up to where he came from. If people knew what Max was really like—how he’d been with her when she was thirteen—he’d stop being a big shot pretty quick.

What she needed to do was show Dominic what a bastard his brother was, so Dominic would hate him too. He was already sleeping with his wife. Laura Lee had been with him, for sure. Women were a sucker for Dominic. She was herself when she was young. At least Dominic didn’t tell her he loved her. Dominic didn’t love anyone but Dominic. That’s what Laura Lee was like, too. Poor Arthur said that a long time ago. Little did he know how right he was. Boy, that was a trip. Sitting on his lap one minute, the next minute out of the woods comes Dominic and over the wall goes Arthur. She’d have been right behind him, too, if she hadn’t already opened her blouse and taken off her bra, so Dominic got distracted by her tits. Turned out he wasn’t any worse than the rest of them. Better. He took care of her. She was an idiot. She loved them, all of them; she really did. None of them loved her back. So look what happened. Because of them!

The librarians knew who she was now. There it was. Adele wasn’t her friend, after all. At first, she was mad but now she was sad. She didn’t remember ever having a friend like that. And Johnny loved Adele; you could see that. She wasn’t jealous; she knew Johnny loved his mother more than anyone, despite how horrible she’d been sometimes. She’d thought about telling him to go to Adele if anything happened to her. She might still do that. If she got killed or was in jail, the state might try to find her mother—the mother who wouldn’t take care of her own daughter. Despite everything, Adele might be best.

Maybe nothing would happen to her. If they could get by this thing about Max, when it was over Dominic still might want to take her away. The thing was, he didn’t like kids. He’d never laid a hand on Johnny. He knew what would happen if he did. But he might. As Johnny got older, a teenager, he’d be harder to handle; who knew what Dominic might do? She wondered if she should talk to Adele again now that the truth was out … not all of the truth. No way she’d handle all the truth.

*   *   *

Cosgrove put off the call to Ray and reached Anne Gannon on the first try.

“I was so happy to hear from you, and now I’m so sorry,” she said.

“I shouldn’t have called you. I’m desperate—”

“Of course, you should call.” Listening to her calmed him, always had since they were kids. Even when she told him she couldn’t be with him anymore, he knew it was right because she said it. “I’ll talk to Kate. You know the coffeehouse on Greenpoint Avenue? Meet me there in an hour.”

“Are you sure? It’s too close to your neighborhood.”

“We can’t worry about that, Mike. It’s raining. I can’t think of anywhere else. Gary will know I’ve seen you anyway. Kate will tell him. He’ll have to live with it.”

“I don’t know, Anne—”

“In a half hour.”

He’d ordered his second cup of espresso when he saw Anne on the street walking toward him, wearing a tan trench coat and dark slacks, wrestling with her umbrella. Her dark hair was shorter than the last time. Over the years, she’d filled out—not the wisp of a girl with long black hair she’d been as a kid—still gorgeous to him. He felt a kind of joy watching her come toward him. He signaled the waitress and ordered a tea for her.

When she came through the door, he stood but didn’t know what to do. What he wanted was to take her in his arms, kiss her, and hold her. She came close to him and seemed uncertain, too. For a second, they looked into each other’s eyes. She kissed him quickly on the lips and put her arms around him. He hugged her tightly, and gently pulled her head back to kiss her again, knowing anyone watching would guess they were lovers not merely friends. He couldn’t help it.

“Sit down, Mike.” Her tone was gentle. “Denise went to the city. She went by herself, but Kate thinks she knows people there—guys in a band from Sunnyside. They’re older and have an apartment on the Lower East Side.”

A sharp, shooting, painful sadness gripped Cosgrove’s solar plexus.

Anne bit her lip. “Guys in their twenties, Kate said. They played at a couple of the kids’ parties last summer. All the girls are crazy about them—Facebook fans and all that. Denise and some of the girls began following the band, going to the clubs where they played.”

“Does Kate know where they live?”

“Not the address. Danny O’Neil is one of them. He’s a nice boy, Mike. His father was a fireman, died in 9/11. Gary and Danny’s father were friends. He tried to look out for the boy after his dad passed but not much came of it.… Gary isn’t much of a touchy-feely guy.”

“And Denise? Did something go on between her and this Danny?”

Anne measured her words. “Denise is wilder than some of the other girls, more adventurous.” Her eyes filled with sympathy. “She looks older than the others, acts older.”

Cosgrove stared at her. “She’s thirteen.”

She reached out across the table for his hand. “She won’t say it, Mike. She may not even know it. But she wants you to find her. Danny O’Neil, Lower East Side.”

Cosgrove stood; he bent to kiss Anne one last time, until he noticed from the corner of his eye Gary Gannon standing outside the window watching them.

*   *   *

Adele told him Emily would be singing that night at a bar on 23rd Street. She’d convinced him he had to talk to her. Ambler knew the place. It wasn’t far from his apartment, across from Madison Square Park, in a block of storefronts that had been there forever. He’d walked by it plenty of times, the music loud and raucous pouring out into the street. One night a week, a string of motorcycles—Harleys—lined up out front. With smoke-clouded storefront windows, a neon sign above the door, it was the sort of place where the only thing you’d want to order would be a beer, and from a bottle at that.

There was a chance Emily wouldn’t talk to him. Yet the couple of times he’d seen her, he’d had a feeling she wanted to. Everyone, at some point, wants someone to know her side of the story. He peeked through the door, past the rowdy crowd, to the small stage at the back. The music and the mob of young people shouting over it was deafening, the cacophony attacking him as soon as he opened the door, bringing painful memories of suffering through CBGB back when he was trying to hang on to wild and wanton Liz.

He took a step inside, shook off the rain, looked up, and there she was. Tiny and pretty in a short jeans skirt and low-cut blouse, she looked like a child in the glaring, colored spotlight, against the bandstand’s garish background—the massive set of drums, the guitars and amplifiers, and the bare-chested, longhaired men gyrating across the stage. The music was grating and angry, her voice low and thick, an old-time whiskey voice, but melodious and sweet. Sipping a beer, he worked his way slowly to the front. If she saw him, she gave no indication.

After the set, the last for her band, which had opened for a better-known group waiting in the wings, he blended back into the crowd and watched the band gather up its instruments and pack up its equipment. Emily sat by herself in a booth near the stage, taking sips from a longneck beer bottle. When she walked to the bar to get another beer, he approached.