Free Too Quiet in Brooklyn by Susan Russo Anderson

said.
    She wasn’t about to let him hold the door for her. No sir. So she stopped. “Fina’s mother was up to her eyeballs in it. Carmela Fitzgibbons. Well-liked. Respected. Some kind of executive vice-president. Course they’re all VPs if they work long enough at a bank, but she really was one, she was up there—you know, nose bleed territory. The bank got involved in some shady deals at the height of the real estate market Cooper told me, allowed them or instigated them, whatever. Auditors all over the place. I’ve got to read up on their findings, and I’ll need toothpicks for my lids on that one. I don’t understand the whole thing, not yet at any rate, but I’m going to have to.”
    “I want in on that one. I’d like to talk to Carmela, and I studied accounting before switching to criminal justice.”
    Well float my boat. Jane smiled her special smile. “Willoughby, you got a deal. The financials are all yours. You can give me one-sentence briefings from time to time, but no detail, please. Only you can’t talk to Carmela. She’s dead. Her body was found on the sidewalk in front of their brownstone, wrists slashed to make like it was a suicide. Only it stank to high heaven—no hesitation marks, no note, no blood. Perp never found. And wouldn’t you know, insurance called it a possible suicide.”
    “They would. Funny suicide if you ask me. Find a body like that outside? In the bathtub, sure, but outside?”
    “It was never solved.”
    “How old?” he asked.
    “Her body was found October 1, 2006. Fina was in high school. Father long gone.”
    “Poor kid. No wonder she’s so …”
    “So what? Finish your sentence. ‘No wonder she’s so snotty’?”
    “I was thinking more like intense. No wonder she’s so intense. The body of her mother found in the same spot as the woman was today?”
    Jane looked at Willoughby and at the door. He was still holding it open. “Almost. If she’d just be half-way decent, I’d sympathize, but she comes across like a Russian tank. Gotta get there before everybody else. Rolling, rolling, rolls right over you.”
    Her phone buzzed. So let him wait a little bit longer with the door and all. She read the text, read it again and felt her tits tighten.
    “Holy Be-F’in’ J”
    “What?”
    “Fina’s got the vic’s ID. Lived in the mews behind Henry.”
    Willoughby rolled his eyes. “So she’s real Heights.”
    “As opposed to?”
    “Yuppie Heights.”
    “That’s not the worst. The four-year-old grandson’s missing.” Jane told him about Charlie and felt her skin prickle. “Ready or not, get the team together. My office in five minutes. Got to call the chief first. You can brief the captain. After that, we’ve got time for a two-minute team huddle, that’s it, before we roll. I want to hear what the lab’s got.”
    “Probably nothing yet.”
    “So stick a wick up their ass, then you and me gotta get over to College Place.”
    “But Sally’s cooked my favorite—lasagna with meat balls and sausage, steamed onions in olive oil and pecorino. And no comments. Gonna get laid afterward, I can feel it stirring already.”
    She shook her head. “Feds going to be breathing down our backsides something fierce, and I need you in on this one.”
    He was still holding the door for her, his mouth open.
    Oh, what the hell. She entered, looking down at the bald spot on top of his head and straightening her jacket, her head down like a charging bull. Feet splayed, she made for her office.

College Place

    Barbara’s eyes locked onto mine. I saw tears of desperation.
    “Will you help me? Please say yes. It’s not that I don’t trust the police, but I know how it is. One crew begins this case and there are two more deaths the next day, four or five more by the end of the week—to say nothing about the cases they were working on before my mother’s death. I’m afraid they’ll get sidetracked up one street and down the next. I want to find my boy. I want to