Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2)
Read Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) Online
Authors: Susan Russo Anderson
Tags: #Kidnapping
Missing Brandy
A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery
by
Susan Russo Anderson
Copyright © 2014 Susan Russo Anderson
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Missing Brandy
is a work of fiction.
Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead
is purely coincidental.
Cover design:
Avalon Graphics
Copy Editing & Proofreading:
Pauline Nolet
Author’s Website
Email
For Denise, Sumie, Brittany, Tyler & Zach
Summary:
Thirteen-year-old Brandy Liam is missing. Attorney Trisha Liam hires private investigator Fina Fitzgibbons to find her daughter.
Prologue
Brandy. Morning One, Before School
Brandy rang the doorbell.
“You’re late.” Heather slid into her jacket.
“So what if we’re a little late. I’ve got this humungous History test. Didn’t study last night. Crap.” Brandy zipped her hoodie, the lime one she’d gotten last week at American Eagle. “My mom’s going to kill me if I flunk this test.”
“You always say that. Then you ace them. Mom says you complain a lot ’cause you miss your dad.”
Barf on that. What did Heather’s mom know, anyway. She was nice and all, for a grown-up. They always have trouble knowing what’s what.
Brandy’s stomach was doing its crappy churning again. If he were here, her dad would be smiling at her right now and her stomach would go all quiet. She could feel his hand in hers, but when she tried to picture him, she just couldn’t do it. His bow tie, maybe, but the rest was a blur. What he’d seen in her mom, she couldn’t understand. Brandy didn’t think they’d spent too much time together, but that was a long time ago when he was still here, and now Brandy couldn’t even remember his face, let alone him talking to her mom. But who’d want to talk to her? God.
They turned onto Joralemon, and Brandy slowed, avoiding the inevitable. She could see a bunch of kids crowding the door in front of school.
“There’s the runner,” Heather said as they stopped for the stupid crossing guard. Heather pointed to the seedy-looking creep they’d seen running up and down Court Street. He ran all the time—in the rain, in the snow, even. And Brandy had seen him on the Promenade, too. Sometimes he wore different outfits. All dopey looking. The boys laughed at him, especially Patrick Sweeney, but he’d laugh at anything. What Julia saw in Patrick was beyond her. Gloria too. Johnny Fulcrum was way better than Patrick any day, zits and all.
Brandy squeezed a new one on her chin and could hear her mother telling her to stop. “Don’t touch it, for Christ’s sake. What would your father say if he could see you now?” That was just it—he couldn’t see her now, and he’d never see her again. Sylvia said the runner made her throat all scratchy, and Frankie—she’s a girl with a boy’s name—thinks he’s weird, but not worth wasting time on talking about it and getting all scared. Heather said it was because his eyes are too close together; that’s what creeped her out. He stared at her once, Heather told them. “That’s what makes people look weird,” that’s what her mom said. Heather’s mom makes sense sometimes. “Look up and down the street long enough and you’re bound to see a spook or two.” Gloria said her mom told the police about him, but they made like he was harmless, like he was just another runner. Basically they said they’d keep their eyes on him, but she never saw them watching the creep, so Brandy doubted they ever did anything.
And she’d never tell her mom about him. God, what a mistake that would be. Her stomach started to do its barfy thing. Her mom would say something dumb like it was a free country and you—meaning Brandy—better know what to do in all situations. Whatever they were. But Brandy had to admit it, for once the witch was right, Brandy knew what to do if a stranger ever talked to her. Trouble is, she wouldn’t be caught dead doing it, like, “Don’t look at different people, Brandy, I’ve always told you that. But if somebody grabs you, you know what to do—bite him, scratch his eyes out, yell and run like hell.” God, what would everyone say if she did that? She needed a soda because of her stomach and all, so she hopped over to the deli across the street, and that’s when it happened.
* * *
“I don’t know you, I don’t want to know you, now go away. Go do your running or biking or whatever it is you’ve been doing around here—go do it someplace else. You’re weird, you know that, don’t you, I mean, like, totally weird. With your spooky nose and all. We don’t like you, so go away. Let go of my arm. You’re hurting me. Help!” At least I think I yelled help, didn’t I? If my friends were here, they’d rip you off me, but where are they? Inside already? If …
Henry. Morning One, The Take
Henry signaled. Ben shot the stuff into her arm, and she went limp. They placed the tarpaulin over her, and except for a kick or two, which Ben said was involuntary, she was still. No more of her incessant chatter. They shoved her into the back of the van.
The only hitch? Henry had to struggle closing the doors because there was something caught somewhere. Might be a piece of cloth, something he couldn’t quite see. He told himself to be patient and it wouldn’t be a problem. Nothing was ever a problem, not with his mind, not if he remained focused. Damn, a corner of the tarpaulin or some of the fringe from the label stuck in the jamb, but quickly he figured it out and brushed it inside. He heard the faint scrape of his latex glove over the metal and something else. It sounded like a plop to the ground, a clod of grass from the girl’s shoe, maybe, but he’d been careful. He looked to the cement beneath and around his feet. Nothing, it was nothing, perhaps his imagination. He slammed the door shut, hopped in, and eased away from the curb, just the way they’d rehearsed it a hundred times. Now the only difficulty would be Ben.
Chapter 1
Fina. Evening One, Meeting Trisha Liam
On misty nights in late spring, my world smelled of fish, oregano, and funeral parlors. Whenever I whiffed it, I knew something was about to happen, and it wouldn’t be altogether good. Sure enough, minutes after Denny and I left the restaurant, Lucy’s answering service called me with a message from a distraught woman. Her thirteen-year-old daughter was missing, and she needed an investigator.
“She wants a call back right away, and she wasn’t polite,” the service operator said. “But with a mother like that, who can blame the girl for leaving?”
I yelled out to Jane, NYPD detective, my on-again-off-again enemy, but our dinner companion tonight, so she’d been working my good side. Wanted something, I figured.
She walked faster than I did, thanks to having legs a foot longer than mine. Earlier, over coffee and one of Vinegar Hill House’s gargantuan desserts, she’d told me about Brandy Liam’s possible abduction and said she’d given the Liam woman my number. Jane had warned me, saying, “The woman is a real bitch.” Swell. But now the blonde detective was single-tracking it. From a block away, I could feel her mind moving in a straight line. As I watched her disappearing form, she sashayed, head down, feet splayed, probably ignoring the gulls overhead and the foghorns from somewhere on the watery belly beyond Brooklyn. I texted her, but she ignored her cell, got into her car, and drove away.
Then I kissed Denny good night and told him I’d see him later. You might think our kiss was lascivious if you were peeking, but you’d be wrong. It was chaste compared to our usual ten-minute prequels.
* * *
Foggy trails were making snakes around my ankles when I rang Trisha Liam’s bell. She lived in one of those High Greek Revival townhouses on Columbia Heights, the retooled kind you see in architectural design magazines, all bright and shiny. While I was waiting, I ran fingers through my knotted curls. I wiped my shoes on the coir doormat and wondered whether there was a ransom note in Mrs. Liam’s future.
When there was no answer, I grabbed the brass knocker and banged on the black lacquered door as hard as I could. I guess I should have called her beforehand, but that’s not my style. Best to surprise clients, I remembered from my years working at Brown’s Detective Agency, where I learned the art of the snoop as practiced in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
“Mrs. Liam?”
“Don’t you believe in calling first?” She hiked up her slacks, which had little chance of purchase around such a stick-like frame. It’s not often I meet someone shorter than me, but she had to lift her head to look me in the face.
“No, ma’am, I appear.” I flashed my ID. “You must be—”
“Trisha Liam.” She stood like a stick in the doorway, her arms crossed.
“Fina Fitzgibbons.” We shook hands. “You left a message to call me? I understand your daughter is missing.”
She gave me a curt nod and motioned me inside.
“You’ll have to excuse the house,” she said as she led me down a long hall. “My housekeeper left early, and I’ve had the FBI and the police to deal with this evening. Messed up everything, including the brief I have to prepare for tomorrow.”
I ran a hand through my hair again and followed her, taking in the high ceilings, the crown molding, the rock crystal chandeliers probably revamped from the age of gas jets, and looked at myself in an antique mirror with a gilded frame that probably cost more than our house in Vinegar Hill. She led me into the conservatory, as she called it, a plush study facing the Promenade. It had one of those Louis the Something desks, gilded and inlaid and polished, surrounded by ferns, potted palms, and exotic-looking flowers with unpronounceable names. And the ceiling had trails of bas-relief roses. As I sat next to a clinging vine and took out my notebook, I peered into the darkness seeping in from the bay window. When my eyes adjusted, I saw the lights of Manhattan reflected off the black waters of the East River. A single torch shone in the distance, and I whispered a quick prayer to the green lady to help me find Trisha Liam’s daughter.
“How old is your daughter, and what’s her name?” I asked.
“Brandy Liam and she’s thirteen. She’s a student at Packer Collegiate. Am I going to have to explain this all over again?”
“Yes, ma’am, if you want me to find your daughter.”
“I’ve told the story twice. Don’t you people ever talk to one another? And don’t call me ‘ma’am.’”
The woman who carped before me squinted through rose-colored transitional lenses that gave off a Dracula glow. She wore no makeup, her hair could have been styled by a runaway lawn mower, and she looked like she was hugging forty-five.
“It used to be when you asked for service, you got it. I called the police—what, five hours ago now—when Brandy didn’t come home from school, and they’ve done nothing except ask me questions. Same with the FBI, although I will say both agents they sent out were polite and looked like carbon copies of Special Agent What’s His Name on
Bones
. So this’ll make the third time I’ve told my story.”