Murder on Mulberry Bend (28 page)

“You make it sound like a lovers’ quarrel,” he scoffed.

“It’s more like a large family, with a mother who loves some of her children more than others. Mrs. Wells chooses one favorite girl. That girl is entrusted with big responsibilities, mainly being in charge of all the other girls. She also gets material rewards. Emilia got the clothes I donated. And she got special attention from Mrs. Wells, too. All that made the other girls hate her.”

“How do you know?”

“They told me, or at least two of them did. One of them is the current favorite. She actually said she’s glad Emilia died, and that others are, too.”

“That’s not surprising. Most brothers and sisters wish the others would die so they’d be the only child. That doesn’t mean she stuck a knife in Emilia’s neck.” She was making this entirely too easy.

She got up. He thought maybe she was going to get him another piece of pie, but instead she picked up something wrapped in wrinkled paper that had been lying on top of her ice box and slapped it down on the table in front of him.

“What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

“Open it.”

Gingerly, he peeled back the paper and saw ... a hat pin.

“I told you,” she said. “I found the murder weapon.”

He looked up in surprise, but she seemed perfectly serious. He looked at the pin again. “How could this be the murder weapon?”

“Because,” she said, sitting down again, “this is the hat pin that Emilia was wearing the morning she was killed. It was in the bag with the rest of her clothing at the morgue.”

The
morgue?
Frank got a very uneasy feeling. “How did you get it?”

“I went down to the morgue to make arrangements to have her buried,” she said, as if that was the most natural thing in the world for her to do.

“What?”
he shouted again.

She didn’t blink again. “Her family certainly can’t afford to do it. You know that as well as I do. I even asked her priest if the church would pay for it, but he refused. Did you know that the Irish priests don’t even allow the Italians to worship in the sanctuary? They make them go to the basement!”

Frank hadn’t been in a church since Kathleen died, but he wouldn’t doubt this was true. Nobody liked the Italians. He had to run a hand over his face to clear his mind. “Let me understand this. You went to a priest and asked him to pay to have Emilia buried?”

“Yes, and when he wouldn’t, I decided I’d pay for it myself. I went down to the morgue to tell them so they wouldn’t put her in a pauper’s grave before I could make the arrangements.”

He had to run a hand over his face again and take a deep breath so that he wouldn’t raise his voice. Yelling at her for going to the morgue now wouldn’t make any difference, since she’d already done it. “Now tell me again what this hat pin has to do with anything.”

“The attendant at the morgue — and by the way, that horrible man wasn’t there anymore — told me I could take the hat and the shoes Emilia was wearing, because they don’t bury people in hats and shoes. I thought someone at the mission might want them, so I took them, and the hat pin, too. When I looked at it, I thought it must be rusty, because it was brown. But when I gave it to Gina, I realized it wasn’t rusty at all.”

“Who’s Gina?”

“One of the girls at the mission. Look at the pin, Malloy,” she said impatiently. “What do you see?”

Frank picked up the pin, holding it by the end that was shaped like a flower. He saw the brown residue near the base. He rubbed it with a finger and realized she was right. It wasn’t rust.

“Remember we thought Emilia was stabbed with a stiletto because that was the thinnest blade we could think of?” she asked. “But she wasn’t stabbed with a knife at all. Someone came up behind her, pulled the pin out of her hat, and used that to kill her.”

Frank stared at the pin, easily picturing what must have happened. The sharp end of the sturdy pin would have gone in easily and neatly, and the shaft was more than long enough to do terrible damage once inside the girl’s head. As much as he hated to admit it, Sarah was probably right. “Her hat was off when we found her,” Frank murmured. “I thought it must’ve gotten knocked off when she fell.”

“But it came off because someone took the pin out,” Sarah said. He knew that tone. She was excited because she was right.

“Then the killer wiped the worst of the blood off of it on her back and dropped it,” he said. “We found the pin in the leaves beside her body. Nobody even noticed the blood.” He hated making a mistake like that.

“Nobody knew she’d been stabbed then,” she reminded him, trying to make him feel better, he knew. “Besides, a man would never even consider a hat pin a weapon.”

A man would never consider a hat pin a weapon.
The truth of the words seemed to echo in his head. He certainly wouldn’t have.

“Would a woman consider it a weapon?” he asked.

“Of course! I’ve used it myself on the train, when some masher thinks he can take advantage of a crowded car to press a little too close. A woman with a hat pin is never defenseless.”

Frank laid the pin down carefully on the paper while he considered what she’d told him.

“Malloy, do you know what this means?” she asked when he didn’t say anything.

He looked up. “Yeah, it means we were looking in the wrong direction.”

“That’s right. We figured Emilia had been stabbed by one of the men she’d been involved with.”

“Because they’re Italians and because we thought she’d been stabbed with a stiletto,” he said.

“But it wasn’t a stiletto, which means it probably also wasn’t a man.”

He hated being wrong, but he hated her being right more. At least she wasn’t gloating yet.

“The girls also told me they’re sure Emilia wouldn’t have gone to meet a man that morning,” she continued. “They said Emilia hated men, especially Ugo, for what he did to her.”

“Not only wouldn’t a man have thought of stabbing someone with a hat pin, he also wouldn’t have bothered to wipe off the blood.”

Her eyes widened. “I hadn’t thought of that! It seemed such a natural thing to do, or at least I thought it was natural.”

“Because you’re a woman.” He stared at her for a moment. “So what woman wanted her dead?”

She didn’t want to say the words, even though she knew they were true. “It had to be one of the girls at the mission.”

“Do you have any idea which one?”

“No, but I know how to find out.”

“No!”
he said, slamming his fist onto the table and making her jump. “You’re not going to confront somebody who might be a killer.”

Her smile was sad. “I don’t have to confront anybody. All I have to do is ask Mrs. Wells which one of the girls said Emilia wanted Ugo to see her new dress. She’s the one who was creating an alibi for herself because she’s the one who killed Emilia.”

 

Frank had to resist the urge to storm the Prodigal Son Mission as he walked down Mulberry Street on his way back to Police Headquarters. It was only a few more blocks away, and he knew Emilia Donato’s killer was inside. The problem was that he couldn’t just go barging into the mission asking questions, and certainly not this late in the evening. Mrs. Wells wouldn’t like being disturbed by the police, and she especially wouldn’t like him accusing her little angels of murder. She’d complain to his superiors, and Frank would draw their wrath for that and for continuing to investigate the case when he’d been ordered to stop. Besides, he couldn’t possibly expect to get the kind of cooperation from Mrs. Wells that he’d need to identify the killer. As much as he hated to admit it, only Sarah Brandt could do that.

So Frank had reluctantly agreed to let her ask her questions and then notify Frank of what she learned. At least she had sense enough to agree with him that she shouldn’t try confronting the killer herself — especially not a killer who could turn a harmless hat pin into an instrument of death. A girl who killed just for the opportunity to get a new dress or a little additional attention was dangerous indeed.

Trying not to think about that, Frank climbed the narrow steps to Headquarters. He had a prisoner to question.

Twenty-four hours in the cellar cells had softened Danny considerably. He wasn’t completely broken yet, but Frank hoped he was smart enough to realize he soon would be if he didn’t tell Frank what he wanted to know.

He had the guards bring the boy into an interrogation room. Frank pulled a small loaf of stale braided bread he had bought from an old Italian woman on the corner out of his pocket and laid it on the table in front of the boy. Danny looked up warily, afraid to trust an apparent act of kindness.

“Go ahead, eat it,” Frank said, taking the chair opposite him.

The boy hesitated another second, then grabbed it up and tore into it like a starving dog. Frank let him finish it, waiting patiently. He noticed the boy had a few new bruises on his face since yesterday. Probably, he’d gotten them fighting to keep his ration of food from the other prisoners. That happened a lot. Judging from the way he ate the bread, he’d lost those fights, too.

When he’d swallowed the last of the bread, the boy looked up at Frank again. His expression was cocky — probably out of habit — but his eyes held the haunted fear of despair.

“Just tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let you go,” Frank said reasonably.

“He’ll kill me,” the boy argued, but Frank could see he now feared Frank as much as the other man.

“Maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t, but I can kill you for sure,” Frank said with a smile. “All I have to do is put you back down in that hole and forget you’re there. You saw your friend Billy, and he’d only been down there a couple days.”

“Oh, God,” he moaned, covering his face with his hands.

Frank waited, giving him time to decide.

At last the boy looked up. “I don’t know much,” he said, his voice a pleading whine. “Not enough to be any help.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” Frank said. “And don’t annoy me. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. If I have to start slapping you around, I’m going to get very angry.”

The boy swallowed. “He was a swell.”

“Yeah, I know, a rich man. You told me that before,” Frank reminded him sternly.

“He didn’t tell me his name. He just said he wanted me to fetch this doctor. Tell him somebody was sick and needed him right away.”

“Where were you supposed to take him?”

“Down by the river. I can show you the place,” he added hopefully.

“Maybe later,” Frank said. “Then what were you supposed to do?”

“I was supposed to leave him there and run.”

“But you didn’t, did you, Danny? A bright boy like you, you would’ve stayed around to listen. Never miss a trick, do you? Maybe you’ll hear something useful, something that’ll get you more money out of the rich swell.”

Danny was shaking his head frantically, but Frank could see from his eyes that he was right.

“What did you hear, Danny?” he asked in the tone that usually got him the correct answer.

“Nothing that made any sense,” he insisted.

“Tell me anyway,” Frank suggested.

The boy swallowed again, his fear palpable. “I took him down this alley. It was dark, so he didn’t see the swell at first. The swell just says, ‘Hello, Tom,’ and the doc stops and says, ‘What’re you doing here?’ Then the swell tells me to go, so I do.”

“But you don’t go far, do you? You wait to see what’s going to happen.”

“I knew about the doc,” he said in an effort to justify himself. “He never turned anybody away, even if they couldn’t pay. I thought maybe he’d need help or something, so I waited, just in case.”

Frank wasn’t fooled, but he let Danny get away with the lie. “What did you hear?”

“Not much at first, until they started shouting. The swell, he says something about what the doc did to his daughter. The doc says he saved her or something like that. Then I hears a noise, like somebody getting hit. After a bit, the swell comes out of the alley. I’m sure he’s gonna see me, but he’s going too fast, and I’m in a doorway, hiding, and it’s dark. I wait, but the doc don’t come out, so I goes in to see, and he’s just laying there, his head all smashed in. The swell, he had this cane with a big silver knob. I figure he hit the doc with it.”

“Why didn’t you call for help?”

Danny looked at him like he was crazy. “They’d think I done it! Besides, the doc is dead. Anybody can see that. Nothing’s gonna help him now. So I run.”

“You didn’t tell me everything, Danny,” Frank prodded.

“Yes, I did. I swear to God!” His voice was shrill with the terror of being thrown back into the cellar.

“The swell called the doc by name. What did the doc call him?”

“Nothing, I swear! He just called him ‘you.’ ”

“I need a name, Danny,” Frank said. “You must’ve heard Dr. Brandt say a name.”

“Just one, when they was shouting. That’s all.”

“And what was the name?”

Danny’s face blanched. “Decker.”

 

Sarah heard the city clocks chiming two the next afternoon as she hurried down Mulberry Street toward the mission. She’d spent her morning dealing with the twins she’d delivered several days ago. She’d been summoned early that morning because the mother was ill, and she’d died only a few hours later. The babies were literally starving, and the father had thrust them on her, begging her to take them away. He couldn’t even begin to care for the five children he already had, and he didn’t want to watch the babies die.

Sarah couldn’t help thinking of the midwife who had taken the baby who grew up to be Emilia Donato. She must have believed she had done a good deed and ensured the child would have a good life with a loving family. As Sarah had arranged for these two babies to be placed in an orphanage, she only hoped they would fare better than Emilia had.