Too Quiet in Brooklyn by Susan Russo Anderson Page B

glass-top table and chairs. It looked unused.
    “She didn’t sit out here much,” Barbara said.
    “Did your mother garden, too?”
    “Only the roof garden.”
    “So she must hire gardeners for this?”
    She nodded. “But she has trouble keeping them.”
    Someone had turned on a porch light across the way and a piece of metal on the ground glinted its presence. I walked over to the far end of the beds. I smelled the evening and newly mown grass and got a whiff of cordite again or maybe it was gasoline, I couldn’t tell which—the two seemed to go together. I saw that someone had been cultivating and pulling weeds and shone my flashlight on some garden tools and evidence of work. I walked over examining the edging. Not a good job, not at all. There were dead weeds in a barrow, garden implements with the dirt encrusted on them, pansies mixed in with dandelion weeds. “Whoever does her yard doesn’t know what he’s doing.” I crouched down smelling the pungent order of dying dandelions. Barbara was crying again and a big red flag was in my head. I remembered the boozy-breathed man this afternoon with bits of mown grass on his shoes. I thought of the sweater and the torn piece of book cover on the floor of the car and felt my skin prickle.
    “Trust me, that’s not the way I’d go through the house if we had enough time.”
    Barbara nodded and the doorbell rang. “Police!” someone yelled, as if I didn’t know.
    At the moment, I still had a million questions to ask Barbara, but I sat with her in her mother’s living room, speaking in low tones and giving her a rundown of what I thought law enforcement had done so far and what to expect them to do here. When Denny saw me, he dropped his jaws and I got up and walked over to him.
    “What the hell happened to you?”
    “That’s Cookie’s line, you can’t have it.”
    He wasn’t amused.
    “It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later.”
    “You weren’t watching where you were going?”
    “Not exactly.” I cocked my head in Barbara’s direction, pulled him closer and whispered, “Charlie’s mother.”
    “Oh my God.”
    We walked over to Barbara and I introduced her to Denny and to Jane Templeton.
    “Denny and I are lovers, Jane and I are not.”
    Barbara started crying and laughing at the same time while they expressed their condolences and gave me sharp looks.
    Afterward the tall detective took me aside and poured out a little of her venom. “You again? Let me guess, you’ve been traipsing all over this crime scene, you and the daughter, am I right?”
    I hung my head and switched tunes. “Hold on. Who’s the only one feeding you information for all your huge AFIS and expensive forensic labs and help from the FBI and every single whoop-de-do law enforcement agency giving you a big fat squat nothing—no missing persons, no names, no nothing?”
    In response to my hissy, she raised her voice good this time and that turned out to be a mistake. “This is a crime scene, missy, and you have no business here, none at all. I want you out of here, you and your raccoon eye, while I question the family, you hear me?”
    “Excuse me,” Barbara said, coming over to where we stood. “I’m the family, all that’s left of it, and I’ve hired Ms. Fitzgibbons as my private investigator. I’m in corporate law, but many of my friends are criminal lawyers and if I understand the law correctly, my PI stays. I want her to have full access to this investigation, and that means all related documents and all crime sites. And if I don’t get my way, I know who to call. I’m the one who wanted to go through the house and she’s the one who’s wearing gloves and told me not to touch things, so she’s been helping you, but apparently you don’t know it. Furthermore, as a representative of the family, I expect all of you to respect my grief and refrain from raising your voices. And I expect full cooperation between all agencies. As a private citizen, Fina