Too Quiet in Brooklyn (21 page)

“Worth a try, I suppose.”

But she sounded hesitant, so I gave her the most frequent number called by Arrowsmith’s mobile. “It’s got a New Jersey area code.”

“How did you get this information?”

“Long story. See if it’s a line to the horse farm.”

“Dream on.” Jane cupped the phone, but I figured she was talking to Willoughby.

When she came back on, hot damn if she wasn’t excited. “The phone number’s blocked, so we have to jump through more hoops. We’re still searching for Connors’ address. Call you as soon as we get it. We’re going to Barbara’s now. I want to whip up a press conference, got to do it fast, sorry you won’t be here, call you as soon as I can with info.”

“What are you going to say?”

“We’re pursuing a person of interest, but we still need all the leads we can get from the public,” she said and the connection ended.

Fifteen minutes later, Jane called again. “Where the hell is your client? She’s not home, not replying to texts, not answering her cell.”

Sure enough my calls went to voice mail. Strange, unless she was trying to get some sleep.

“Or trying to get something else,” Cookie suggested.

Denny looked at me and smiled.

“I asked Barbara to call as soon as she got the message. We’ll see how long it takes.”

We were silent for a moment until Cookie announced she was going to take a walk around and see if she could find some popcorn or stale bread.

“Huh?”

“To feed the ducks.”

In a while she was back, waving, a bag in her hand. I watched her walk to the pier and throw bread crumbs on the water.

“The country air’s gotten to Cookie,” I said. “She might never be the same.”

The traffic was picking up in the little parking area. Cars were coming in and going out.

“Let’s stick around for a while,” Cookie said, getting back in the car. “Remember the guy I saw near the Woman’s?”

“You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “He was sitting over there, but when he saw me walking toward the pier, he left.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

I felt something prickly on the back of my neck, but just then my phone chimed.

It was Jane with the address of the farm about five miles away on Emly’s Hill Road. “Still no luck on the phone number, but I’ve called the Feds for help.”

I felt a bolt go from my stomach down to my toes. In my gut I knew whose number it was.

“No word from Barbara?” she asked.

When I replied in the negative, she said they’d hold the press conference with or without her. “Seven this evening, same place. If she calls you, let her know. We’ll be brief, flash the picture of Charlie, and if she doesn’t show, say that his mother is too distraught to appear.”

I texted Barbara, asking her to call and gave her the time of the press conference. The world was beginning to still, but not my heart. Was I crazy? Would this search for Connors’ horse farm help us find Charlie? He’d been missing for thirty-two hours. I took out my phone and swiped the photos until his picture came up and looked long and hard at it in the waning light.

“Do you think Charlie’s still alive?”

No one answered.

* * *

We’d driven up and down a two-lane highway several times looking for Emly’s Hill Road, but for some reason the GPS on Denny’s Jeep and my phone were useless, so it was way past eight by the time we found the sign, Blue Eagle Farm, the painted eagle menacing, half hidden by a huge apple tree.

There was a feeling about the place you don’t get in Brooklyn, not even when you’re all alone on the promenade after a soft snow. Here I heard crickets, frogs, an occasional whinny, mostly silence. And another thing, in the country they don’t believe in streetlights or signs, at least not on their narrow two-lane roads, and the light was fading fast.

We pulled onto the only shoulder we could find, across from the farm and about fifty feet from the entrance. I got a feeling hard to describe. It was a jagged line that went from my toes to my nose, a flashing pulsating sensation and the hair stood straight on the nape of my neck. The god of whatever was sending me a signal. Denny and Cookie weren’t saying much.

Cookie broke the silence. “This place gives me the spooks.” She’d forgotten about her mirror, a sure bet she was in sync and into the scene.

“And how about the name, Blue Eagle?” Denny asked.

“Get a load of that bird,” Cookie said. “Talk about evil eye.”

I used another app and entered the address requesting directions from the current location, but my phone was about to run out of juice.

“Now what? I’m having trouble seeing anything. I suggest we come back tomorrow,” I said.

Denny shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Me either,” Cookie said. “Got an exam in the afternoon and I have to study.”

“So why don’t we get the Feds involved?”

I called Tig, my FBI contact. I told him about my hunch and gave him the address. “But please no suits knocking on doors.”

“No problem, we’d need probable cause. I was about to text you to let you know we’re trolling the Meadowlands because the infrared in the helicopter found something a little ways off the turnpike. Looks like a body.”

That’s when the lump in my throat almost choked me. I told Denny and Cookie.

My heart skipped and I was silent a beat. “That’s not exactly in the area of this farm.”

“Roughly speaking.”

“What made you look in the Meadowlands?”

“On an abduction like this, first thing the pilots do while they’re waiting for credible leads is do a helicopter infrared of all the no-mans in the area. Unlike most other law enforcement, we cross state lines. And by the way, what are you doing in New Jersey?”

I reminded him that I was licensed in three states for that very reason, and asked him about the body. “Big or little?”

“Don’t know yet, but they would have said if they’d thought they’d found a child. We’ve got his face plastered all the hell over everywhere.”

“Anything yet?”

“A woman claims she saw him in a restaurant in Central New Jersey.”

“That was?” The battery on my phone was an angry red.

“Last evening about six or seven, and before you ask, she thinks he was with a man, seemed like his father, they were holding hands. The man seemed loving toward the boy, that’s what threw her off, but the boy pointed to a picture on the front page of a paper in the lobby newsstand and said, ‘Boy,’ and the man shrugged him off and yanked him forward in the line. That’s when she called.”

“Did she get a description of the car, the license plates, anything?”

“Nada. We’ve sent bulletins to all law enforcement in the area.”

“Name of the restaurant?”

“La Piazza on Church in Allentown. Got surveillance to see if he returns.”

I told him about my interview with Arrowsmith’s mother a few blocks from there.

“What? Can’t hear you. Fading …”

Damn, I’d brought the power cord for the laptop but forgotten to bring the one for my phone. I’m just an idiot.

“Can you hear me?”

“You’re fading in and out.”

I gave him the blocked phone number and asked him for information.”

Tig’s voice was taking a powder. I heard a few words, but mostly crackle and pop. “Can’t hear you … the number is …”

“Crap, my phone is dead,” I said.

“So now what?” Denny asked.

“Let’s go home. I’ll tell you on the way. I can’t see anything and my phone’s dead.”

“Use mine.”

“Do you know Jane’s number?”

“It’s in your phone and I don’t have my gear with me.”

Swell.

We pulled onto the road heading for home.

The sky was freckled with a million stars but the rest of the world was black. I opened the window and smelled hay and horse and air so fresh I thought I was hallucinating. There wasn’t another car on the road. I turned on my flashlight and was looking at my notes, trying to see if I’d written Jane’s number or Tig’s but couldn’t find either. So much for my list of important stuff. I bad-mouthed myself right and left for not thinking when all of a sudden headlights approached from the rear.

“Guy’s got his brights on.” A light bar strobed at us from the top of his cab. I turned to look but he was too far back and the beams were blinding my good eye.

The truck kept coming at us.

“Fasten your belts,” Denny said, and his voice was low.

“Mine’s on,” I said, and Cookie answered in the affirm.

The jeep took off, Denny gripping the wheel and sitting totem pole straight. I watched the speedometer creep up to 80, 85, 90, and the truck, blaring its horn, kept right on our tail. I saw a three-way stop sign up ahead and beyond it, an empty field, fenced, but no lights in either direction.

“He’s gonna go into this field.”

“Ditch too deep, fence too new,” I yelled.

“Betting he’ll get caught.” And Denny stomped on the pedal. “Hang on! Right side, stay on right side, Fina!”

My groin felt like I’d just looked straight down from the top of the Empire State. Last thing I saw was Cookie, her form rigid in the front, her fingers splayed on the inside roof. I felt the wheels grind and spin, saw a cloud of dust, heard a horn blare and fade as the truck whooshed past us, just missing us as we careened left, sending up shoulder grit into the truck’s windshield, Denny at the edge of my vision inching the wheel, coughing. “Made it, made it!”

Blood thundered in my ear. Cookie said something, but the words were a jumble.

“Get the plates.”

We stopped and the cloud we created engulfed us and slowly dissipated. Coughing I looked back into the field and saw the truck sitting upright and still in the high grass. From where we sat, it looked like it was listing to one side, but my good eye might have been playing tricks. I saw the driver get out, coughing, yelling.

“Looks like he’s got a—”

A shot rang out.

Denny slammed on the gas and we sped away.

In a moment, after we’d calmed down, Denny called the precinct and asked them to have Jane Templeton call him. “Urgent,” he said.

In less than five minutes she called his phone and I heard, “What the hell happened to you?” coming from the speaker.

Denny parked his phone on the dash and all of us talked at once, giving Jane the rundown of the truck incident and what we’d learned in New Jersey and from the FBI. It must have seemed like a puzzle with some of the pieces out of order, but she got the picture.

She was most interested in what the Feds had to say, and she was hopping mad that I was the one giving her the information. “Who the hell do they think is in charge of this investigation, anyway?”

“You tell ‘em, girl,” we heard Willoughby’s voice in the background.

“Isn’t the FBI in charge of an investigation involving an abduction?” I asked, all innocent.

There was silence for a while as Jane sat on her coiled tail. “Of course they are, but I’m in charge of the investigation into the death of Mary Ward Simon, the precipitating event, so they better come to me first, and if you talk to whoever is your agent friend, you better tell him that their asses are all in slings.”

Denny sent me a wink through the rear view mirror. He was pumped, I could tell. I said we’d be home in about an hour and Denny told them to meet us at Henry’s End at nine. “Got to tell Willoughby about my hairpin turn. I’m buying.”

Henry’s End

When we got home, I plugged in my phone. Besides the texts and messages from Jane, I got messages from Barbara and a message from Frank Alvarez returning my call. He sounded like a nice guy and gave me a number where he could be reached. Barbara apologized, saying she’d misplaced her phone—she always had an excuse—and another ten minutes after that she’d called again, wondering if I’d heard anything about Charlie. She sounded frantic enough, and I hit my arm for doubting her suffering. I called her cell. No answer, so left a message. I called her home phone and also left a message.

Henry’s End was one of our haunts. Like the name implies, it’s at the end of Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights, where the sidewalk slopes way down. The glaciers must have carved it up pretty bad. I suppose it was underwater millions of years ago, but I’m glad it’s not now. It’s where I met Denny a couple of years ago and we’re major users. Well, not so much anymore, now that we moved to Vinegar Hill and the prices have gotten a little too steep for our budget. But give us a special occasion, and we’ll be there.

“Did you make reservations?” I asked.

“While you were doing your phone thing.”

In the nick of time. That’s Denny.

“They found Arrowsmith’s body,” Willoughby announced when he and Jane found us in the back room.

A few heads turned at some of the tables and Jane let out a Shhh! loud enough to stop all conversation in the restaurant.

I thought of Nanette Arrowsmith and what the news would do to her, and my heart did a squeeze.

“No other bodies?” I looked up at the waiter smiling down at me. He retrieved a leather-bound book wedged in his waist and took the pen out from behind his ear. Without waiting for us to stop talking, he began reciting the specials.

“Some of us know what we want,” Denny said.

“We do?” Jane asked.

“I said some of us. We’ve been discussing the menu all the way from New Jersey.”

“For starters, the three of us here,” Denny held up a hand, his forefinger making a small halo above himself, me and Cookie, “we’ll have the corn crab cakes and a glass of whatever wine goes with them.”

“We have a nice California chardonnay we sell by the glass,” the waiter said.

I’m a beer girl myself, not particular as long as it’s cold with little bubbles and some foam, even nicer when the glass sweats, but the wine sounded fine to me. Why wasn’t I surprised when Willoughby and Jane both ordered a shrimp appetizer and a bottle of Blanc de Blanc. Since we all chose the same entrée, the blackened shell steak, a favorite from way back, the waiter suggested a Cabernet Sauvignon.

When our appetizers came, I watched Denny digging into his crab cake like he hadn’t eaten in a year. He took a huge forkful and shoved it into his mighty yaw, crunching it big time. The juice made his stubble glisten. Without skipping a beat, he swilled some wine and ordered another glass.