Brooklyn Graves (21 page)

“What's the matter? Did you start drinking without me? You sound strange.”

“It's a long story. I'll overwhelm you over dinner. “

“I'm looking forward to it. I'll be there in ten.”

She was ringing my bell in eight, laden with shopping bags. She claims to be tired of cooking, after raising four children, but she sure knows how to buy a banquet.

I had to force the rusty bolt on my door, with a lot of noise, so she came in saying, “What the hell was that? And this?” She pointed at the hammer in my hand. “And you look like hell, too. What is going on?” She held up a hand, palm open, the universal “stop” gesture. “Let's wait, I don't want food leaking though these bags. “

I cleared space on my overloaded dining table, and we set up the dinner—fancy crackers and cheeses so exotic I did not know their names, lemon-roasted chicken, three containers of salads made with rice and chickpeas and herbs and dried fruit, with not a leaf of iceberg lettuce in sight. Two bottles of wine. A plate of tiny cupcakes in many colors.

She shook her head when she had it all spread out and said, “I still think I'm shopping for a family. Good, you'll have a couple of decent meals this week. Have you eaten anything lately?”

“Uh, no. I guess not.” I think I whispered it.

“I believe it. You look like hell. Dig in and no heart-to-heart until you have fueled up. I will do the conversing for now.” She was heaping up a plate for me as she spoke.

She chatted away about her successful appearance at an industry convention, the weirdness of Las Vegas, the beauty of Seattle, the likelihood that she had brought in a big new client for her firm, and how she liked business travel less now that it no longer meant escape from a house of teenagers.

She is a vice-president for a company that sells advertising time. I don't exactly understand what she does—our friendship began at a PTA cupcake sale—but it seems somewhat glamorous. She often assures me that it isn't. As she spoke, she refilled my wine glass and added food to my plate.

“Now,” she said at last. “Now tell me what is going on with you. I got a message about Chris. Do you want to start there?”

“Yes. No. I don't know. So many things are going on I don't know what I want to say first.”

“I have all night. Start anywhere. Start with why in the world you are banging your door lock with a hammer.”

“Oh.” I rubbed my forehead, where the headache was not leaving even after a good meal. I reached for a second cupcake, and told her the whole story.

She was appropriately shocked and sympathetic. She argued with me about reporting this to the cops immediately. Funny, I did not resent it from her as I would have from my father. I admitted, with unusual meekness, that maybe it could have been handled more wisely.

“So, you see,” I concluded, “that's why I feel safer with the old rusty bolt locked, but I can't budge it with just my hands.”

She looked at me as if I had suddenly become mentally defective. “You know there are these guys. They are called locksmiths. They will come and…”

“Charge me a lot of money.”

She reached for her phone, punched in just one button and started with, “Hey, Ernie. This is Darcy. No, no, everything is fine but I have someone, a very dear friend, very dear, who has an emergency need for better locks. Probably change a cylinder in one, and add another? Yes, what she has is pathetic. And I know you can manage a good price for her right? A very, very good price? Yes, she's right in the neighborhood.” She gave him my address. “Yes, yes. Of course, yes. You're a hero, as always.”

She turned back to me with a smug smile. “All fixed.”

“You have a locksmith on speed dial?” I was flabbergasted.

“Helps if your husband owns a few office buildings. I'm sure we put Ernie's oldest through dental school. He'll have someone here crack of dawn tomorrow. What's next? Chris?”

So that was another monologue, embellished with a few tears and one or two expressions of fury, complete with inappropriate language.

Darcy sort of laughed, even while she was giving me a hug.

“Listen up. Lily spent her preschool years threatening to move in with Grandma. Sally did move in with her college student cousin for a while when she was in high school. Tommy went to college and didn't come home for three years. Only Katy never pulled that. Guess what? They all survived and we are all even on speaking terms now.”

I knew that. I had been at her home for holidays. She had four normal, affectionate, successful, grown children.

I put my head on the dining room table. I might have thumped it a couple of times.

“The key is not to take it so much to heart.”

“I don't know how to do that!”

“I'm not saying it was easy. Hell, no. I really thought we had lost Tom for a while there. But your Chris? Did she hitchhike across country? Run away with a biker gang? Disappear into some cult? No. She hopped right into Grandpa's arms. On a rebellion scale of one to ten, that would be maybe a two.”

She just looked at me, steadily, with, I suspected, a smile lurking underneath.

“Just remember, they do grow up eventually. If you don't kill them first, of course. Right?”

Then we did laugh. Just a little.

She said, “Does that cover it? Should I open the second bottle?

“I'm also in a mess at work.”

“Hand me the corkscrew.”

She filled our glasses again. “I'm even better at office crap than parenting. Are you in school now, too?”

I shook my head. “I'm on independent study this term. That's why this has to work out. The job is my project and I have to make it work or I lose a whole semester. I just can't, can't afford that. “

“Tell all.”

It took me a long time.

“Good God, why didn't you call me? You found that poor boy dead!“

“You were away. It was a business trip.”

“Oh, yes, and you no longer have my cell phone number?”

She saw my eyes fill with whatever it was—exhaustion, wine, stress—and quickly said, “Oh, honey, I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I'm really trying to give you some support.” She gripped my hand for a second. “My kids are good for the moment, Kevin and I are okay, job is okay. So turn to me if you need me and stop being Wonder Woman! Honestly, though, it does sound like you are working your way through this work crisis. Apart from these deaths, which is not your job, anyway.”

She stood and began clearing the table. “Your eyes are going to close in about a minute. I'll clean up and head home, while you, my friend, head upstairs to bed.”

“Leave the dishes. You've done enough—way, way more than enough—and you're right, I'm crashing, too. Tomorrow.”

She was already stacking leftovers in the refrigerator and loading the dishwasher. As I let her out, struggling again with the extra lock, she stopped.

“I just thought of something that may actually be helpful. Do you want to meet a charming old man named Konick?”

“What? Are you kidding me? Of course I would. “

“I don't know him very well, but we occasionally play bridge with him at the club. I can call him. Maybe he can fill in some pieces for you. Would that be useful for impressing your bosses?”

“Yes. A hundred times yes.” I shook my head, trying to take it in. “Do you know everyone? You've found me a pediatric eye doctor and a seamstress and I always thought you could find a performing seal if I needed one.”

“Of course I could. And yes, I know everyone. Including the
crazy boyfriend I introduced you to. I'm still trying to make up for that.”

I hugged her. “Completely forgiven, especially if you know a Konick.”

“Go sleep. Maybe that will sweeten up your dreams.”

Chapter Twenty

I woke up with a monster headache. It must have been that second bottle of wine. Damn Darcy. She had a tolerance for alcohol developed over years of business cocktail parties and after-tennis drinks, I guess. She was a bad influence on me. Not that I wasn't grateful. My head might hurt but something inside was better after the evening with her.

Overnight a photo had landed on my screen, courtesy of
Brownstone Bytes
. I had somehow signed up for one of their threads. How did that happen?

It was bad and blurry—I was pretty sure that was the photo and not my eyes. I went to splash water into my eyes and on my face. When I looked again, I stopped breathing. It was labeled, “Green-Wood Cemetery entrance at night.” The date was the night of the robbery. The night Dima was killed, somewhere if not there. There was a car. A van really. It was far too dim to see the make or license but it was inside the gate in the wee hours of the night.

“What happened at historic Green-Wood Cemetery Monday night? Sources tell us that all was normal on Monday at closing time, suitably, ‘as quiet as the grave.' That night this car was seen, parked there after-hours. On Tuesday morning, visitors were told that there had been an accident. Really? During the night? Because the graves opened up, releasing zombies? Or what?”

That woke me up pretty damn fast. There were two things I could do right now.

First, I sent it to my new friend, Detective Henderson. I wrote in caps, DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS PHOTO? Then I had a second thought, just in time as my cursor was already pointing to Send. I rewrote it without caps and said—without the multiple question marks I had in my head—“Could it be real? Could it have something to do with Dima?”

And then I added a cordial hello and good-bye. I read it again and hit Send. Twice, just to make sure. Then I took a deep breath, went downstairs to find coffee and my purse and scrounged around, increasingly frantic, until I unearthed the card of the blogger. I had told him I would toss it into the garbage, but I was pretty sure in my heart that I had not.

His name was Kent. Just Kent without the Clark. I had to laugh at that. No one could say he lacked self-esteem.

I gulped coffee, burned my mouth, thought hard. I wanted to know where that photo came from. I thought Henderson would have tools to get that information, not physical tools, but threats of subpoena and so on, but I didn't know if he would share it. And though my scattered knowledge did not make enough sense, not yet, to bring to him, I felt somehow that I was closer to snapping the important puzzle pieces into place.

Or maybe I just wanted to know because I am a nosy person and was fed up with none of this making sense.

Leary had told me that everything newspeople know doesn't get published. Sometimes it's not an important enough story, or a more important one bumps it. Sometimes the information remained incomplete. Sometimes it just wasn't ready in time. If the blogger knew more, it was worth it to me to deal with him. I could shower the slime off after.

I gulped and thought some more. This Kent fancied himself a newsman. Even if he was actually just a gossip hound, inside information was his life's blood. And I had some, even if I couldn't put it to work. Maybe I had something to trade.

“
Brownstone Bytes
, Brooklyn's real news just for you. Talk to me.”

“This is Erica Donato. We met at Green-Wood Cemetery a few times and you wanted to talk. I'm the…”

“Ms. Donato. Of course! I remember you. This is Kent. Lucky you got me. I was just about to go into the field.”

That meant snooping around, I thought, but I did not say it.

“You have something for me today?”

“Maybe. But I want something from you.”

“Yah? What would that be?”

“That photo of Green-Wood gate at night?”

“You liked that? It was quite a find, if I do say so. They're stonewalling over there but we know something happened.”

“Where did it come from?”

“I'm sorry?” He didn't sound sorry. He sounded like this was making his day. “Did I hear right? You're asking for a source? Sure thing! That and my bank account password and my right arm. I wouldn't tell cops, let alone some random civilian.”

“So the cops have asked?”

“I didn't say that! And wouldn't.”

I remembered his smart-ass expression overlaid on a soft baby face, and thought he would probably give a determined cop his bank account and his right arm in no time. I hoped Henderson would share whatever he learned, but I wasn't counting on it.

“Mmm. What if I had something to share back? “

“One hand helping the other? I might consider it. What ya' got?”

“What would you say to a hate group, with guns, in Brooklyn? It might be small, I don't know, but…”

“I'd be interested in learning more.” His cautious words did not quite disguise the excited tremor in his voice. “Who are they after?”

“Does your news focus go as far out as Brighton Beach?”

“Hell, our focus goes wherever we say it goes. Who are they after?”

“Honest? You go past the gentry in the brownstone belt? Into the real Brooklyn?” Now I was having fun.

“Come on! News is news. What is the story there? I have to know if there might be a story.”

“Let's say not everyone is happy with the way Brighton Beach became Little Odessa. You haven't heard about this?”

“Lady, that's common knowledge but a hate group is a whole different thing. As we speak I am scanning the other local news sources. I don't think anyone has heard of this. What would it take to get your details?”

I smiled.

“Everything you have on that night at Green-Wood, published, reporter's notes, the original of the photo, all of it.”

“I'm not just sending it off without something from you. My mom didn't raise stupid kids.”

We worked out the exchange. It was only slightly harder than a U.N. peace treaty. A little from me—easy, I sent him the address of Dima's angry neighbor—and a little from him. He forwarded the original photo, a little bigger and clearer. Then I sent him a note. “Get this guy off-guard and talk to him about Russians in Brighton Beach. You will find it interesting.” And he told me, “Here's the sender's e-mail, plus this—look at the photo real well. Where is he standing?”

So I looked. Damn. He must have been right there. Right next to the car. I could only think of one way that could have happened. He was involved. Who the hell would it have been? Could it have been Dima himself? Or maybe it was a security camera? I had to find out if they had one there.

Okay, so the guy was good for his word.

A following e-mail. “I did some looking. He's not unknown to the police. Going out now to pay a visit. Thanx, thanx, thanx. Want a job on my news team???”

No, I didn't. And I was pretty sure his news team was a group of young unpaid nerds, sitting at a computer all day with fantasies of some kind of digital-age
Front Page
life.

Another e-mail to Henderson, with everything I had been sent and explaining what I had been up to. True, Dima's murder was his job, not the Green-Wood robbery, but if I could wonder whether they were related after all, so he could he. And he would know how to get it to the cops on the Green-Wood robbery. At least I hoped he would.

I wanted to start my real day now. I wanted to not talk to anymore crazy people or even any moderately weird ones.

I began again with my most normal routines. I got as far as food and shower and typing up my plans for learning Maude's last secrets, before my phone rang.

“I wonder…”

It was Bright Skye. I almost dropped the phone.

I waited, so she went on.

“I've thought it over. Maybe I was too quick on the trigger?” I guess she heard my little gasp of surprise. “That's kind of an Arizona expression. Maybe I could use your help after all.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper but this time it sounded deliberate. “I don't want her to know about this though. Amanda. She would be hurt and, I mean, I've known her since I was little Louise Maude.”

“What did you say?”

“She's known me since I was little.”

“No, I mean your actual, that is, your old name. It was Maude?” That could not have been an accident. Could not have been. “Why did you never tell me?”

“I never think of it. It's not my name now and hasn't been since I was twenty but sometimes Amanda forgets and calls me that.”

“So you were suggesting?”

“Yes. I guess you could come over and look around. There are more boxes of papers in the attic, quite a lot more in fact.”

“Yes! You bet. Anytime at all. But I am surprised. I don't understand.”

“Amanda has been helping but I am a little worried. She knows antiques…she even had her own shop, but I don't think she knows about letters and you know, professory things like that. Why shouldn't you look? I sure don't want them.”

So it fell into my lap. Maybe there was something to this putting it out in the universe after all.

“She has an appointment tonight, so that would be good. How does seven sound?”

It sounded like Christmas morning. Or, as in our house, the first night of Hanukah. Or more fall-season appropriate, an unusually great score from trick or treating. True, Ms. Skye was extremely strange but she was finally, sensibly, helpfully, offering what I had needed all along and what she didn't even want.

Between the material that was already coming in from Illinois and Skye's unexpected offer, I thought I was pulling the threads, as Leary had said, very well today. I couldn't fail to find something that would matter, that would help me at work or open up the mystery of Ryan's death.

In a burst of optimistic energy, I cleaned my kitchen, washed my hair, and knocked out half a chapter of my dissertation.

***

On my way to Skye's house that evening, I took a short detour past the cemetery. I had
Brownstone Bytes
' photo of the gate and car with me. Of course the cemetery was closed, but I drove up to the gate and moved around until I was viewing the same angle. I couldn't have said why. I just wanted to see it for myself.

The thieves went into a deserted cemetery at night to commit a crime. I am not remotely superstitious. I have seen parts of long-dead bodies in a long-ago archaeology class. I have seen the bodies of two people I loved, just after they died, and knew the body was an empty shell, just like the carcass of a crab on the beach and the person was gone. I knew without a tremor of a doubt that a cemetery is just a piece of land with various kinds of stones and statues scattered around. Or in this case, a masterfully landscaped park with art and architecture. It once rivaled Niagara Falls as the most-visited tourist attraction in the country. I am a hard-headed Brooklyn girl and I know there are no ghosts.

But still, cemeteries are considered sacred ground. This is the place where we can see and touch something concrete and remember what is gone. My young husband and my mother are lying under granite stones but they don't live there. They live in my heart.

But still. What kind of person goes into a cemetery at night, disturbing that peace, to steal something? Obviously, that would be someone who is not afraid of ghosts, someone without nerves whose vision only registers things as valuable and vulnerable.

So they broke into the cemetery. How? Not at the front gate, but maybe somewhere in the back, a weak spot in the fence? Unless, of course, someone let them in. Someone who hid there at closing time. Or someone who worked there. Damn.

They came in late at night, in full dark, no moon. I imagined Green-Wood as I was seeing it now, but later. Dark and deeply quiet. So late, even the surrounding city streets were quiet.

They carried powerful flashlights, I assumed. Their leader was the guy with no nerves, but was any of them uncomfortable with what they were doing? Scared? Superstitious?

They trudged through the dark lanes. No, they must have driven in a van or a panel truck, something large enough for the window. That's what was in the photograph. And someone let them in.

Did they have camping lanterns, easier than flashlights, to put down while they worked? Did one person hold the light while the other worked? Or did they use the vehicle headlights? It was a difficult job to remove something so large and fragile in the dark. They needed equipment, too, a large ladder and movers' blankets to wrap up the prize. Maybe they even came with packing materials to crate it up right there.

I felt as if I were there, nervous and twitchy, trying not to mess up the job and let the others down. Trying not to get caught. I wasn't looking at the beauty of the windows, that's for sure, and neither was anyone else. Fearfully looking over my shoulder in case someone was coming. Did someone come? Did Dima?

I shuddered and shook my head to clear my thoughts. It takes some imagination to do the kind of history I do. It is what makes dead facts breathe, but my imagination was heading into overdrive tonight. I was not there with them. I was here now, all alone, outside the cemetery, in my own cluttered economy-size car. I turned on the engine and the radio and left, but the feeling stayed with me.

Before I headed off to Bright Skye's I saw there had been a call from Henderson. Damn. The message only said he'd tried to reach me and would try later. I tried calling back, did not reach him and did leave a message. So much for the convenience of gadgets.

It would have to wait. For now, I was prepared for whatever Bright Skye was going to show me.