Read Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) for Free Online Page A

blocked Cookie’s exit. “He seems like someone she’d not want to keep in touch with. Matter of fact, she strikes me as the kind of woman who’d be running from a creep like that.”
    “He’s Maddie’s father, I’ll bet anything. He wants to bond with his daughter. You heard him. The little girl loves him.” Cookie stood next to the desk, flipping pages in a book. Color flooded her face. “By the way, I found this in the desk.” She tossed it to me, a small, black notebook, its pages red-edged, faded, splotched with who knew what—Whiskey’s tears, maybe.
    I opened it and smelled the binding as if by doing so I could decipher the mystery of Whiskey’s disappearance. Water ran in rivers on the panes. But the rain had ended. As Lorraine closed the door to Whiskey’s apartment, I saw a sliver of sun peeking through dissolving clouds. Perfect weather for kinking my curls.

Pressed Against the Sill

    Time and place were fluid as Cookie and I stood by the bay window in Whiskey’s apartment while Lorraine opened the window to let out “the Arthur air,” as she put it. The sounds of Court Street attacked us.
    I stared at the words on the first page of the missing woman’s diary. She wasn’t one for following rules of punctuation or grammar, but I felt her enter the room as I read.

    Dedication: To Brighton Beach
    A windswept day in November
    Our apartment is on the top floor. Looking out my window, I can see the whole neighborhood, as if I am a fish eye lens attached to a very fine camera, a camera capable of recording the pastness of the present. The landlady, Mrs. Ovesky, wears a scarf and keens into her handkerchief while she rocks on the front porch of her four-flat. If you don’t count seagulls, birds don’t sing in Brighton Beach, but neighbors shout to one another, and fat ladies sweat bullets. We are the only Irish family on the block. Outliers.
    I’m leaning out my window, elbows pressed against the sill. The wind contains everything, garbage smells, a lovers’ kiss, honking horns, laughter, the first chill of winter, bright signs, yellow, blue, red. I smell salted cod. I can almost touch fluffy clouds tinged with pink while the Wonder Wheel whirls in the distance like a promise and subway cars sway on rickety tracks. I see an old man sitting on the boardwalk. He stands and points up at me. Scowling, he says, “Someday you’ll grow up and you’ll leave. They all do.” Gulls attack loaded bins. Beyond it’s hot dogs and egg cream, Brighton Beach gives me something. After I die, I’ll know what it is. Maybe a sense of being outside and looking in, the right, the duty to question on the edge of the world, and a certain melancholy. The brain has more neurons than stars in the Milky Way. I read that somewhere. But what about the mystery of the mind? The soul? I can get maudlin. That’s the Celtic in me, I guess.

    I swallowed the lump in my throat. “It’s her journal,” I said, turning the book over in my hand.
    Cookie nodded. “But she’s not a writer, not like me.”
    Lorraine shot me a look. What was it with Cookie?
    “Months go by and she doesn’t write a word.”
    “So?”
    “Too interested in meeting some dude with a name and having a good time.”
    “She’s a good mother, believe me,” Lorraine said. “Takes her daughter to the park after school. I see the two of them holding hands as they walk down the street.”
    “Not everyone is compulsive about writing,” I said. “Doesn’t mean she can’t sling words.”
    “Check out the dates,” Cookie said, hands on her hips. “On the top of the first page, it’s November. Two short paragraphs of drivel, and it’s January. Worse, there’s nothing about her daughter, only herself. What kind of a mother is that?”
    Lorraine threw up her hands. I said nothing. What I’d read gave me a glimpse into Whiskey’s soul, but what I was hoping for was some clue as to why she went missing.
    “You should keep an open mind about this