Too Quiet in Brooklyn (2 page)

I took out my phone and snapped a few more photos of the woman’s face, her neck, and several of her gloveless hand, getting a close up of the ring, a square-cut sapphire surrounded by diamonds.

“Whoever killed her didn’t bump her off for the money, that’s for sure.”

A mom pushing a stroller filled with groceries and a couple of toddlers sideswiped us but didn’t stop or look down. The kids waved flags and smiled. I noticed a stream of pedestrians on the other side of the street, probably a late afternoon discharge from the subway up the street. They passed us without a blink, their minds fixed on home. A biker team sped by, not even giving us a downward glance. But why should they? Normal people were focused on their lives. It explained why a dead body could lie in the middle of a busy block for who knows how long and go unnoticed. Thinking of the passersby, a stab of envy shot through me—I could use a bagful of normal about now.

Despite Cookie’s bear claws yanking me by the shoulders, I kept gazing at the dead woman’s face trying to place it I squeezed my eyes shut. Pictures of another death steamrolled my mind—the deep jade sucked out of Mom’s eyes. Then I remembered where I’d seen this woman.

I called 911. “We’ve found a woman lying on the sidewalk. Henry Street between Joralemon and State. She’s not responding. Looks like she’s been strangled.” I texted Denny: “Need u here asap, dead body dumped in front of Lucy’s.”

I dropped to my knees again beside the battered form and stared at the woman’s face. When I closed my eyes, the shape of her head was etched against the void. “I won’t forget you, I promise. I’ll find your killer, I swear I will.”

In a moment, Cookie straightened and waved to Denny and his partner as their cruiser pulled up across the street and the sirens died.

* * *

Denny sprang out and slammed the door. “Not another one,” he said, grabbing me and hugging me tight.

I buried my head in his shoulders, the tears beginning to well. But I breathed in deep, smiled at his partner, a black guy two or three years older than Denny.

Cookie fumbled in her bag for a comb, swiped it through her blond locks, and applied more lipstick. She’s ever the fashion plate around men. She knew Denny was already taken, at least for now, but I watched as she checked out the gold band on his partner’s finger and stowed her mirror.

I stood back while Denny peered at the dead woman.

“Touched her, didn’t you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I moved her, but only a little bit so I could see her face. Don’t worry, I snapped photos before I did, and this time I wore gloves.” I introduced his partner to Cookie. He grinned, excused himself, and went back to the car for tape.

“Miss Priss on duty?” I asked.

Denny took off his hat and ran a hand through his light brown waves. “Yup. Just got a promotion, too. Detective First Grade, so watch it. But don’t worry, we could use someone like you and the good ones know it. If Jane’s smart, she’ll listen to what you have to say.”

“She’ll have to this time. Cookie and I discovered the body.”

Denny and his partner began taping off the area. I could see a few people watching from the other side of the street, but when a guy appeared inches from my face, it surprised the bejeezus out of me. He had a beery breath and his clothes smelled like they’d been sprayed with body odor.

“Happening, do you know?”

“She must have fallen,” I said.

“Can I see?”

I shook my head. “Better stay across the street. Paramedics should be here any minute.” I shot Cookie a look, waiting for the guy to go. Cookie cupped a hand to her nose.

The guy didn’t budge. Instead he stayed right behind us, so close I began to gag from his stench. I whirled around and gave him my ferocious stare. He was taller than Denny—and Denny’s about six feet. His grizzled face was puffy and he wore an old Yankee cap backwards. His boots were caked with paint and bits of grass, and he had on a T-shirt and a pair of baggy chinos fraying at the knees. His arms were hairy, his fingers thick and dirty. There’s lots of guys in Brooklyn Heights offering to do a little plastering and painting or soffit cleaning, promising heaven for a lowball price. Cash of course. But this one was weird. Something not right about his eyes.

An ambulance wailed and flashed, stopping a few feet from us, and the guy disappeared. Out of the corner of my eye I looked for him in the crowd swelling across the street, but he’d vanished.

The mood of the crowd was somber, expectant. A few suits turned their heads as they walked past, folded newspapers snugged under their arms. Traffic cops were now on the job, directing pedestrians and cars away from the scene. Denny’s partner went over to brief the EMTs while they unhitched the gurney.

“Here come the bunnies,” Denny said, pointing to a police van lumbering into view. At the same time, an unmarked car pulled in front of the fireplug across from us, and two detectives got out, Jane Templeton’s head rising high above the car roof. My adrenaline hitched up a notch.

I gave Denny the high sign. “Before I get sucked into a conversation with Jane, what time are we expected for dinner tonight?”

He cocked his head and sort of smirked. “Seven. Don’t be late. Mom’s doing a roast with all the sides.”

I blew him a kiss and braced myself.

Detective Jane Templeton

Detective Jane Templeton was a brick wall puffing out air and blocking my way. She slid her phone into her breast pocket, stood smirking in four inch heels and wearing an Armani pantsuit that accentuated her curves, hugging them smooth and tight. She might have put on a few pounds since the last time I saw her, but if so, the weight had gone right to her boobs. I could see the faint bulge of standard issue underneath her jacket. A white blouse with pleated collar lent her a few soft lines, but to me she looked like one of Cinderella’s mean sisters in spikes.

“You again? What did you mess with this time?”

My stomach took a dive, but I swallowed, vowing not to get sucked into this woman’s head problem, whatever it was.

“Who’s been assigned to the case, do you know, because I need to talk …” My words were swallowed by the grin on her face showing a set of teeth that reminded me of jail bars, so I changed tack. “I’ll be glad to give you my statement now and any other help you’d like.”

“If what you mean by help is mucking up my crime scene, I’ll do without it.”

I grabbed a set of latex gloves from my pocket. Snapping the fingers, I felt the blood boil my cheeks and had to talk to myself real fast. It’s not like me to hold back, but I told myself to cool it for Denny’s sake, not that I wouldn’t want to yank her down by that dirty blonde mop of hers. I pictured her, a giant beauty queen slammed to the ground by me, a five-foot-four-and-a-fraction curly redhead, one sandal-clad foot resting on the top of her torso in triumph while she begged for mercy as her crew looked on. Oh, and don’t think I couldn’t either, even though she’s six feet two or more and weighs close to, what, two hundred pounds of solid muscle.

“What’s it going to take to get you out of my way—arresting you for tampering with the evidence? You destroyed the scene.”

“Not really. I was minding my own business when I saw this bundle on the sidewalk practically in front of my brownstone. In case you hadn’t noticed, I run a business right here. It’s in a high traffic area, and I can’t have clients stepping around foreign objects. So when I saw this … blob, I needed to determine what it was—garbage, laundry, or a person—and if the latter, was she bleeding, breathing, and could I identify her. Called 911 as soon as I knew she was stone cold, then texted Denny.” That stopped her.

“You have a point. Tell me what you touched this time.”

“First, I wore gloves, and second, I snapped some photos before I touched anything.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Let me see what you got,” she said, grabbing my phone and swiping through the pics. “Send them to me.”

She gave me her number and I did. By now her videographer had taped the scene, and the crew, who had been waiting for the high sign from Jane, got to work lifting prints and gathering trace.

I suggested we go inside where we’d have some privacy. While she went to grab her partner, I fetched Cookie, warning her to let me do most of the talking.

When we’d walked down the few steps into Lucy’s, I went over to Minnie, my office manager. I apologized for the commotion, telling her we wouldn’t take long and asking her to please speak up if we made too much noise. I gave her the eye and motioned to Jane, saying, “Things can get loud.”

And before we get too far into this story, there’s something about me you should know: sometimes I feel like I’m pulled in different directions. You know, stressed. Four years ago when the recession hit and my cleaning business took a dive, I got a job at Brown’s Detective Agency, a large firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. I’d do the grunt work wherever they needed me, sometimes in their Manhattan office, other times in Fort Lee or in Stamford. I specialized in finding skips. When the commuting got too much for me last year, I got my own PI licenses in all three states, figuring on using my snoop talents and striking out for myself. But truth to tell, I haven’t done much with them. Denny encourages me—even Cookie does—telling me I’m a natural, but there’s something in me that’s reluctant to go solo. Just my luck I’d get a lot of men looking to nab their cheating wives and that’s not what I want to do. And by the way, I’ll never give up my cleaning service now that’s it’s bounced back a little and so many hard-working women depend on me for their income.

Out of nowhere Mr. Baggins, Mom’s cat and Lucy’s mascot appeared. He had a way of popping up out of nowhere, like he did the first time one spring day nine years ago, sitting in the garden like Alice’s cheshire cat and smiling up at Mom. Now he was smiling up at me, rubbing against my jeans and Cookie’s legs and just about every other surface he could manage. Except, of course, for Jane and her partner. He blinked up at the detectives, his neck stretched, his cheeks puffed out like he was part frog, his grey plush body on red alert. Then he slinked back over to me, his stomach almost touching the ground, stealing a backward glance at Jane as he ran and doing his Hold Me purr. I scooped him up and started to walk toward the front, but he jumped out of my arms and made a beeline for my chair.

The four of us gathered around the receptionist’s desk, me with a window view so I could watch the crime scene, and Jane in the captain’s chair. I saw her glance up at my licenses hanging on the opposite wall. When she did a double take, I expected a snide remark, and sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed.

“So you’re a cleaner or an investigator?” She flashed her teeth at me again.

“Both,” I said, surprising myself. “But they’re similar, wouldn’t you say?”

The room was stuffy so I turned on a couple of fans. Cookie and I wrote out our statements and I began answering their questions. While I was talking, Cookie nodded or looked down at her fingernails. Mr. Baggins made himself comfortable on three-quarters of my chair, surreptitiously taking up more and more of the surface and kneading his thick paws into my back. Somewhere, a siren wailed.

As if they hadn’t read one word of our statements, they asked me about the position of the corpse, the approximate time we’d found it, and what I’d moved or touched. Jane referred to the photos I’d sent her of the body in situ as I was talking. Her partner asked a bunch of questions, most of them repetitive or irrelevant, having me describe again the where, when, and how, the amount of foot traffic at the time we discovered the dead woman, whether we’d seen anyone acting suspicious.

“I called 9-1-1 as soon as I could.” I emphasized that I’d used latex gloves and mentioned the sapphire ring, making sure Jane’s partner wrote it into his notes, but forgot to mention I thought I’d recognized the victim. Cookie confirmed she’d seen the ring, too, and to her credit, answered all questions thrown at her with a yes or a no. They asked more unnecessary questions, Jane looking bored toward the end and thrumming her fingers on the arm of her chair until I asked if she’d found any ID on the corpse, reminding her that we hadn’t.

She tossed her wavy mane, saying she’d already alerted Missing Persons and they were on it. “These cases in the Heights, something’ll turn up quick.”

Picking up the drift, I said, “Funny. I haven’t seen the press around, have you?” My radar was alive to any giveaways that might fly across Jane’s face and I thought I saw a momentary uplift hover for a brief second around one corner of her mouth.

“As I say, I expect to hear something any minute,” she said. “A body found on Henry Street on a slow news day? They’ll be on it, trust me. And the staff at the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
seem to know stuff before it happens.”

By this time I was on one small edge of the seat and Mr. Baggins was sprawled. Truth to tell, Jane didn’t look worried at all. Matter of fact, she looked a little too smug to me. A minute ago, I’d seen one of the techs wearing orange goggles and shining his magic lantern around the victim’s neck.

“I snapped some photos of the face and right hand, but I suppose you wouldn’t want smart phone stuff since you’ve got the latest equipment and probably were able to lift fingerprints.”

She tried to stifle a smile, folding in her lower lip. “Got lucky.”

Which meant they’d have a name of the perp in a couple of days or less if he was in AFIS. Not soon enough, though. Considering she’d be assigned to investigate a few other major crimes, to say nothing of the pressure on her to gather forensics, I thought I’d have a slight advantage in the time department.

“Who doesn’t wear gloves these days?” I asked, making small talk now that she’d simmered down and hoping she’d spill more info if I could just keep her talking. “It’s clear the woman was murdered.”

Jane’s smile was brief. “You know better than to say that, but obviously we’re treating it as a homicide,” she said, talking to me as if I was in grade school. She flicked her eyes up at my licenses again and looked at me like I’d fallen off the dark side of the moon.