Murder on Lenox Hill (6 page)

But how could they bring the man responsible to justice? Grace could never testify in a court of law. Even if she'd been capable of understanding the legal process, her parents would never allow it. No parents would put their daughter through such a humiliating ordeal. Sarah was beginning to understand why the police sometimes took justice into their own hands.

As she stepped into her house, she heard the patter of Aggie's small feet running in from the kitchen.

“Be careful, dear! You shouldn't run in the house!” a familiar voice called, and Sarah smiled even before Aggie appeared from the hallway and flew into her arms. Sarah hoisted her up onto her hip.

“Is Mrs. Ellsworth helping you cook supper again?” she asked the child, who nodded vigorously.

“Mrs. Ellsworth is really showing us how to bake a cake,” Maeve reported, having arrived at a more ladylike pace. “I didn't tell her that I already learned how at the mission,” she added in a whisper.

“That's very nice of you,” Sarah whispered back.

“I never knew how much fun it could be to have girls,” Mrs. Ellsworth said as she emerged from the hallway into the front room. “My son never wanted to learn to cook or sew, of course, but
these
girls are so very clever, it's a joy to teach them.”

“You're very kind to spend so much time with them,” Sarah told her elderly next-door neighbor. Before Maeve and Aggie had moved in, Mrs. Ellsworth could most frequently be found sweeping her front stoop so she could keep track of everything that happened on Bank Street. Nowadays, however, she spent much of her time with Aggie and Maeve.

“I'm not a bit kind,” Mrs. Ellsworth assured her. “It's my pleasure, although you were very right to bring Maeve to look after Aggie. I never could've kept up with her.”

When Sarah had first considered bringing Aggie to live with her, Mrs. Ellsworth had volunteered to care for the child when Sarah had to work. Sarah could never have asked her to do such a thing, and she'd been relieved when a volunteer at the mission had suggested that one of the older girls would be an excellent nanny for Aggie. That decision had allowed Mrs. Ellsworth to play grandmother to the girls whenever she liked, a situation that suited all of them perfectly.

“What kind of a cake are you making?” she asked Aggie, as she set the girl back on the floor.

“Come and show Mrs. Brandt,” Mrs. Ellsworth suggested, taking Aggie's hand to lead her back to the kitchen. Maeve followed, and Sarah did, too, after pausing a minute to remove her cape and boots.

“Oh, it's so warm in here,” Sarah exulted, rubbing her stiff fingers and holding them over the comforting heat of the kitchen stove. “And something smells wonderful.”

“It's just a simple, one-egg cake,” Mrs. Ellsworth explained. “Do you want to finish mixing it, Aggie?”

The girl picked up the spoon that lay on the table, but she didn't get a good grip on it, and it fell from her hand, clattering back onto the tabletop.

“Oh, my, looks like we'll be having a visitor,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

“Is that what it means when you drop a spoon?” Maeve asked with great interest. In the weeks she'd been acquainted with Mrs. Ellsworth, she'd learned that the old woman knew a superstition for practically everything that happened.

“Only if the spoon falls on the table. If it falls on the floor, then it depends on how it lands. If the bowl is up, that means good fortune. If the bowl is down, that means disappointment.”

“The bowl is up. Does that mean our visitor will bring us good fortune?” Maeve asked. Even Aggie was waiting eagerly for the answer.

Sarah wanted to groan. She didn't want the girls to become superstitious, but she also didn't want to hurt Mrs. Ellsworth's feelings. “We'll bring disappointment to our visitor if the cake isn't ready when she—or he—gets here,” she said to distract them. “And as soon as you put the cake in the oven, you can lick the bowl.”

That was enough to motivate Aggie to finish beating the batter. In another few minutes, they'd poured it into the pans and slipped them into the oven. The four of them made sure every drop of remaining batter was scraped clean from the mixing bowl and spoons. When they'd finished with that and had cleaned up the kitchen, Mrs. Ellsworth showed Aggie how to make the boiled icing while the layers cooled. When the cake was finally finished, they all had a piece, just to make sure it was suitable for the expected visitor. Then Mrs. Ellsworth went home to fix supper for her son Nelson, who would be home soon from his job at the bank, and the girls went upstairs to play.

Sarah took advantage of her solitude to savor the exquisite sensation of warmth and comfort in the peace of her own kitchen. Her life was very different from the one she had imagined when she and Tom were married almost seven years ago. She'd expected to raise a family and grow old with him, but Tom had died young, and now her family consisted of two misfit girls. Maeve would eventually be ready to take a job with someone who could pay her, and Sarah would select another girl from the mission to come live with them and train as a nanny.

Sarah wanted to legally adopt Aggie, so the girl would truly be hers, but her parents had convinced her to wait a while, to make sure Aggie could adjust to living with her. Perhaps they'd also hoped she would find having a child too much work and change her mind, although they hadn't actually tried to talk her out of it. In any case, having Aggie here had only served to convince her that she wanted the girl permanently. Soon she'd have to start the legal process.

Sarah sat for a few more minutes, savoring the thought of finally becoming a mother and feeling remarkably content and slightly drowsy when the sound of someone ringing her doorbell startled her back to the present. With a smile, Sarah rose from her chair, thinking it was probably Mrs. Ellsworth, returning to fulfill her own prophecy. Or perhaps it was a frantic father-to-be, summoning her to attend his wife. But the silhouette she saw through the frosted glass of her door wasn't Mrs. Ellsworth's, although it was familiar, and Sarah's smile broadened.

She was still smiling when she opened the door. “Malloy,” she said by way of greeting. “Do you need some help on a case?”

Malloy's expression had been carefully neutral, but her question surprised him into almost smiling. She saw the flicker of it in his dark eyes before he caught himself. “No, I thought I'd stop by to see if you needed any help delivering babies,” he replied, deadpan, delighting her.

“Then come inside so I can start your instructions,” she said, more pleased than she cared to admit to see him on her doorstep. She'd forgotten how much she enjoyed his company.

Before he had even cleared the doorway, Aggie and Maeve were coming down the stairs to greet him. Both had fond memories of him from the mission.

“We knew you were coming, Mr. Malloy,” Maeve announced. “Aggie dropped a spoon.”

“A
spoon
?” Malloy repeated, giving Sarah a puzzled glance.

“Mrs. Ellsworth,” she offered in explanation.

Malloy nodded in perfect understanding.

“Didn't you bring Brian?” Maeve asked. Sarah had once taken the girls to visit Malloy's son, which they had all enjoyed.

“Not today,” Malloy said, and something in his tone warned Sarah he wasn't making a social call. Since he would probably cut off his own foot before willingly involving her in another murder investigation, what other business could have brought him here? She felt a small frisson of alarm.

Malloy was picking Aggie up in response to her silent demands. “How do you like living here with Mrs. Brandt, Aggie?” he asked.

Aggie didn't answer, of course, but she smiled hugely.

“Is Maeve taking good care of you?”

Aggie nodded.

“Maeve is an excellent helper,” Sarah reported, making the girl blush.

She shrugged modestly. “I like it here. Would you like a piece of cake, Mr. Malloy? We made it just for you.”

Malloy raised his eyebrows skeptically. “You shouldn't tell fibs,” he teased her. “You didn't know I was coming.”

“Yes, we did, because Aggie dropped the spoon,” she reminded him smugly.

The girls induced Malloy to accompany them to the kitchen and sample the cake, which he declared delicious, and Sarah made some coffee. He wasn't used to socializing with young girls, but he managed to keep them amused. Sarah watched him in growing admiration. He truly was a remarkable man.

When everyone had eaten and thoroughly spoiled their suppers, Sarah sent the girls back upstairs so she could talk to Malloy in private. Or rather, so he could talk to her and tell her why he'd come.

When they were alone, neither spoke for several minutes. Sarah was surprised at this awkwardness between them, after all they'd been through together, but suddenly, his presence seemed somehow too real in the close confines of her kitchen. She couldn't stop herself from recalling some of the more intimate moments of their relationship, moments when it seemed they might pass that invisible barrier from friendship to something more. Yet here they sat, still friends and not even comfortable with that, if Sarah's tingling nerves and Malloy's unease were any indication.

“How have you been?” she said to break the silence.

“Fine,” he said automatically.

“How is Brian doing in school?”

“He likes it a lot. My mother goes with him every day. She's learning sign language, too.”

“She is?” Sarah exclaimed in surprise. “I thought she was against the whole idea.”

“She was, but then she realized that if he learned sign language, nobody at home would be able to talk to him. She knew I wasn't going to learn it, so I guess she figured she'd have one up on me if she did.”

“That's wonderful,” Sarah said.

“Don't let her know you think so,” Malloy warned. “She might stop, just for spite.” Mrs. Malloy didn't approve of Sarah's friendship with her son, which reminded them both of the many barriers to any other kind of relationship.

The awkward silence fell again.

“I—”

“What did—” They both spoke at once, then stopped in embarrassment.

“You first,” he said.

“I . . . I was just going to ask what brought you here today,” she said. “Unless you saw some omen that told you we'd made you a cake.”

His lips curved in a quick smile that vanished instantly. “I was wondering if you'd let me look at your husband's files again.”

Now she was really surprised, and a knot of dread formed in her stomach, as it usually did when she thought of Tom's death. “I thought you hadn't found anything useful there.” He'd spent quite a few hours examining all of Tom's medical files a few months back, when he'd thought he might find a clue to who had killed him.

“I came across an old investigator's report on his case, and it had some names in it. If those people were his patients, they might know something. It isn't much,” he added hastily. “They might not even have been his patients, and if they were, they probably don't know who killed him. But I thought it was worth a look.”

“Then you don't really have any new information about Tom's death?”

“Nothing important, like I said. Just a few names.”

“Then certainly, you may check his files.” Memories of her dead husband thankfully served to stifle her awareness of Malloy as a man. She led him into the front-room office where Tom's files were still located. “Do you need any help?”

“No, it shouldn't take more than a couple minutes.” He pulled a folded paper out of his pocket and consulted it before opening a file drawer.

“I'll clean up the kitchen then,” she said, for some reason not wanting to watch.

Clearing away the plates and cups took only a few minutes. She really should get started on supper, although she and the girls wouldn't be hungry for a while after eating all that cake. Sarah couldn't even begin to think of anything as mundane as supper while Malloy was in her front room, though. As if drawn by a magnet, she returned to the front office.

He was adding a file to a small pile of them on her desk. “That's all of them,” he said.

“Then they
were
his patients,” she said, not sure if she should be pleased or not. She wanted Tom's killer caught and punished. She'd wanted that for years, so why did she suddenly feel apprehensive? Maybe it was Malloy's manner. He didn't look the way he usually did when he was working on a case. He had no sense of eagerness or excitement, no feral gleam in his eye from the thrill of the hunt. Instead he seemed weary, almost sad.

“Don't get your hopes up,” he warned gently. “It's probably nothing important. And don't even
offer
to help me,” he added with a glimmer of his old spirit.

“I thought you were here to help
me,
” she reminded him, feeling a glimmer of spirit herself. “Are you ready to begin your midwife training?”

“I don't think I'd be as good at it as you are at detective work,” he said with a small smile. She loved that smile. “But if you ever have a crime with one of your babies, just let me know.”

“Oh, my,” Sarah said in surprise, “I
do
have a crime to deal with. How could I have forgotten?”

Malloy's face creased into a frown. She didn't love that frown. “It better not be a murder.”

“Don't be silly, of course it's not a murder,” she said. “If it was, you'd probably already know about it. But I could use your advice. Do you have a few more minutes?”

He was still frowning, but he followed her to the two overstuffed chairs that sat by the front window.