Free Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) by Susan Russo Anderson

to dare himself, but it was too much. Even in the trying, he’d known it was wrong. He could hear his father’s voice: “Don’t you ever disrespect me like that.”
    Denny knew his dad wouldn’t have called him unless it had been important. Something might have happened to Fina. He hadn’t been able to reach her. Had she let her battery discharge again? And she hadn’t been wearing the additional cell he’d given her for her birthday. An expensive gift, too. It had saved her life once, so she should jump at the chance to use it. But his calls to both her phones slid into voice mail.
    Another thing: the old man hadn’t bothered him before this, and he’d been going up to Brian’s cabin since he was sixteen, deep in the Maine woods with no TV, no radio, and—something unspoken between him and his parents and the precinct—no calls. On this trip, though, because Fina’s job was getting dangerous, he’d kept his cell on and fully charged.
    So when he’d felt his phone vibrate, he was surprised. Surprised to be getting a signal, surprised anyone would call him. Fina, maybe. Damn, it was the old man. Without thinking, Denny answered. He’d never ignored his father. Never, except for that month after the fight.
    It had been about Fina, who else. His old man the meddler didn’t like her, tried to get Denny to find someone else. “A looker and a cooker, that’s what you need, son.” They’d had words, big time. Denny stormed into the hall but took a backward glance, his undoing. Because he saw the old man sitting in his chair in the living room, rubbing his shirt collar between thumb and forefinger, folded into himself like a piece of wallpaper curling away from the molding.
    He had to get out of the Maine woods and fast. Something about the light and the mood made him too dreamy. So he started to pack, moving fast so his mind wouldn’t bite him in the behind.
    Denny’s first mistake had been answering the call. His second mistake had been listening, but his father was talking to him in that gravelly, hurried way of his, something about the female tenant who was missing. How long? A handful of hours. What was all the fuss? She could have had a hot date and overslept in some guy’s bed, or run to the store for milk in the middle of the night and slipped.
    His dad knew better than to bother him about this, and Denny should have said something. At the very least, he should have faked a disconnect. But the guy was his father, after all, he owed him everything. And not for nothing, his father thought he, Denny, walked on water. Pretty amazing, considering his dad. He remembered him that one time talking tough to a bunch of punks on the corner, and in a second they’d scrammed. He had that strong-arm way about him, the kind of cop that vanished in the fifties, but the old guy never got the message about the world changing. Easy when you didn’t step out of Carroll Gardens.
    The call was the problem, the fact that he’d answered it, had to answer it, really; the fact that he’d acted on it, intruding into Fina’s investigation. The fact of Fina and what she’d say. Her fury. God, he couldn’t blame her. She’d been through so much. He knew he was a lucky guy to have both parents alive. Take Fina, for instance. No parents, that was the trouble with her, his dad never tired of saying. She didn’t deserve Denny’s fickleness. But he had to, he had to.
    He tied up his pack and stormed into the kitchen, splashing cold water over his head. Squeezing his eyes shut, he wiped off his face with the dishrag. He wished he could take back the day. Because answering the call wasn’t the worst mistake he’d made. No, his mortal sin of the morning had been doing what his father commanded: he had reached out to Jane.
    You see, his dad had reminded him he’d never asked for much, and he wouldn’t be asking him this time, but Fina needed help. “You know how women are.”
    He knew Fina was involved in the hunt for the