Free Too Quiet in Brooklyn by Susan Russo Anderson Page A

find him now. I hope whoever took him is after money, oh God, I hope that’s what it’s about. And whoever killed my mother, I want him put in jail. I want him to rot there forever.”
    She was a junior partner in a downtown law firm, successful because she made gutsy decisions grounded on what she believed. She never doubted her instincts, she told me, and her gut screamed at her to hire me.
    “I’ll pay you anything.” She began weeping again. Suddenly she sat. “All alone. My father’s dead. Now my mother’s … dead. Husband is God knows where. My boy is all I have. Please find him. Say you will. Please.”
    “Of course I’ll help and we’ll find him.”
    I felt so sorry for her. She was steeped in pain and there was nothing I could do or say to lift it from her. I honestly don’t know how she was managing to function. She’d gotten the double whammy—her mother’s murder and a missing son. Her whole world had crumbled in one day—no, in one minute—and I was the one who had given her the bad news. If it had been me, I’d have been a mess, screaming, biting, and kicking the messenger.
    I stood in the living room of her mother’s home, texting Cookie with what I’d discovered and asking her to give me a call while Barbara wrote a check and gave it to me. Pretty efficient for a woman who’s just lost her mother and son. In a second, my phone buzzed.
    It was Cookie. I told her that I’d found the dead woman’s daughter and had broken the news to her. “Barbara’s little boy is missing. Seems he was staying with his gran today. We’ve got to find him.”
    That elicited shrieks from Cookie and a bunch of questions, mostly about the child so I told her what I knew about Charlie. I gave her Mary Ward Simon’s address and asked her to troll around the neighborhood to see what she could find out. “You know the drill, anyone see anything this morning, no matter if it seems unimportant. Take down the particulars—their name, number, time of day.”
    The call gave Barbara a few minutes to herself, exactly what she didn’t need right now. I told her that the lead investigator will want her to identify her mother and asked if there was anyone who could go with her to the morgue.
    She blew her nose, shook her head. “Like I said, I’m it.”
    “If you change your mind, let me know. Would you like to make a call to a close friend, a college roommate, a cousin, someone you’re close to?”
    She nodded. “I’ll call him later.”
    There was very little time. I expected Jane to march through the door any minute, so I continued. “When the police arrive, there’ll be a lot of them, detectives whose job it is to work a crime scene—that’s what your mother’s home is right now. Trust me, I know the personalities involved, and at first it’s going to be overwhelming. There won’t be any privacy, nowhere to sit nowhere to think, no peace. So before they get here, I want to go through the house with you, unless you’d rather sit here and wait for them.”
    “No, no, please no.”
    “We’ll start at the top, go down to the garage and basement and outside,” I said, snapping on latex gloves.
    I discovered a lot about Mary Ward Simon’s life going through her house with her daughter, but nothing about her death, not directly, that is. There was nothing out of place, and believe me, I know a clean house when I see it. Nothing obsessive, mind, just immaculate.
    The formal dining room, complete with crystal chandelier, held table and six chairs, not my taste but polished to a high luster. The living room had pillows on the sofas and chairs, no notes like I was hoping to find—like, “gone to the grocers” or “be back in a couple of hours” or “help, I’m being strangled”—not a dust ball anywhere. Not a dirty dish or an empty coffee cup in the kitchen. The stainless steel sink and appliances shone. Food in the refrigerator and freezer was arranged, like with like, in some cases into