Murder on Waverly Place (13 page)

He found him in one of the bedrooms with Donatelli. Nicola was sitting on the neatly made bed, and Donatelli was perched on a straight-backed chair, blocking the door.

“What have you found out?” Frank asked Donatelli.

“His name is Nicola DiLoreto. He’s known Serafina Straface since they were kids,” he reported, not taking his eyes from the prisoner, who stared back with defiance. “They met on the ship coming over from Italy, and their families settled in the same neighborhood. Neither one has any family left, to speak of, so they looked after each other. He worked odd jobs, and she told people’s fortunes on street corners for a few cents until this Mrs. Gittings came along. She’s the dead woman, isn’t she?”

“That’s right.” Frank was looking at the prisoner, too. A bruise was darkening on his cheek where somebody had socked him.

“The Gittings woman said she could set Serafina up in a first-class place, and people would pay lots of money to see her.”

“And that’s just what she did, isn’t it, Nicola?” Frank said conversationally. “So what was the problem?”

“We have no problems,” Nicola said. “Everything is fine.”

At Frank’s nod, Donatelli got up and let Frank have the chair. He moved it closer to the bed where Nicola was sitting, turned it around, and straddled it, resting his forearms on the back of it as he glowered at the boy.

“That’s not what the Professor says,” Frank told him.

“He is lying!” Nicola cried.

“Why would he lie?”

“Because he hates me.”

“Did you give him any reason to hate you?”

“No!”

“How about threatening to take Serafina away?”

“That is not true,” he claimed. “I would never do that.”

“Why not?” Frank asked curiously. “Now that you know how it works, you two could set up on your own. You didn’t need Mrs. Gittings and the Professor anymore.”

“We could never get a house like this,” Nicola pointed out. “You need a nice place if you want to get rich people to come.”

Frank glanced around the bedroom. The bed Nicola sat on had a cheap, iron frame. The only other furnishings were a washstand and a clothespress that looked like somebody had salvaged from the dump.

Seeing his expression, Nicola said, “They never come up here, the people who come. We kept the downstairs nice for them, though.”

Frank nodded. Why waste money on what the customers would never see? “Where were you during the séance, Nicola?”

The boy went rigid and his expression grew wary. “I was upstairs,” he tried. “Mrs. Gittings, she didn’t like the customers to see me.”

That made sense. She could pass Serafina off as a gypsy or something exotic, but people wouldn’t expect to see an Italian boy in a nice neighborhood like this. “I thought you were hiding someplace,” Frank said.

“I was hiding up here.”

“Not downstairs?”

“No, why would I do that?” He had started to fidget.

“I don’t know. Maybe you need to be in the séance room for some reason.”

“I was not in there,” he insisted. “Ask anybody. They will tell you I was not in there.”

“They wouldn’t have seen you,” Frank said. “Because you were in that big cabinet.”

His eyes widened in alarm. “No, I was not!”

“I think you were,” Frank said mildly, remembering the music that almost everyone in the séance room had said they’d heard. “I think you were in there to help make the noises during the sitting.”

“I did not make any noises!”

Frank smiled slightly. An innocent man would have said, “What noises?”

“Somebody made the noises,” Frank said.

“The spirits make them,” Nicola said. “They sing and they play music.”

“How do you know if you weren’t there?”

“Serafina told me.” He seemed proud of that answer.

“You’re in love with Serafina, aren’t you?”

“We are going to get married,” he said, even prouder of this answer.

“When?”

That stopped him. “When . . . when we have saved up enough money.”

“Didn’t Serafina make a lot of money doing the séances?”

“Yes, but . . . Mrs. Gittings was holding it for her.”

Ah, another reason for Nicola to want to get rid of the woman. “And she wouldn’t give it to Serafina if the two of you left here,” Frank guessed.

“We did not want to leave,” Nicola said, not very convincingly.

“I think you did,” Frank said. “I think you wanted to run away with Serafina so you could run your own operation, but Mrs. Gittings wouldn’t give you the money if you left, so Serafina convinced you to stay.”

“No,” Nicola insisted.

“And when you realized that Mrs. Gittings wasn’t ever going to give you the money, you knew there was only one way to get it.”

“No, that is not true!”

“So you hid in the cabinet, just like you did every time—”

“No, it is not true, I tell you!”

“And when things got really noisy . . . Maybe Serafina made sure things got really noisy—”

“She did not have anything to do with it!”

“And when things got really noisy, you climbed out of the cabinet and—”

“No, I did not!”

“—and you found Mrs. Gittings—”

“No, I swear!”

“—and you stuck your knife between her ribs—”

“Stop it!”

“—and then you climbed back in the cabinet—”

“No, I tell you!”

“—and waited until everybody figured out what happened and ran out of the room—”

“No!”

“—and then you climbed out of the cabinet again—”

“I never!”

“—and hid someplace until you saw your chance to sneak out of the house and get away.”

“No, no, I did not! It was not like that at all!”

“How was it then?” Frank asked with great interest.

The boy’s dark eyes were large with terror, but he just shook his head. “I did not kill her.”

“You know what she was stabbed with?” Frank asked.

Nicola shook his head again, probably not trusting his voice.

“A stiletto.”

Nicola swallowed loudly.

“That’s an Italian knife, isn’t it?” Frank asked.

“I . . . I do not know,” the boy claimed.

“Yes, you do. You knew it would be quick and quiet. You knew just where to stick it, too, so she’d die without making a sound.”

He was shaking his head, but he was terrified now. He was well and truly caught.

“I can’t blame you, Nicola. She was probably a mean old bitch who deserved to die, but it’s still against the law to kill her, so I’ve got to take you in.”

“I did not kill her! Please, you must believe me!”

“You’ll get your chance to tell it in court,” Frank said, pushing himself up out of the chair. He looked at Donatelli. “Take him downstairs and send for a wagon.”

“No, please, I did not do it!” Nicola was protesting as Donatelli, grim-faced, grabbed the boy by the arm and dragged him to his feet. He started babbling something in Italian to Donatelli, who remained unmoved.

Frank waited in the hall while Donatelli dragged him out of the bedroom and followed as they stumbled down the stairway together. Nicola was still protesting in Italian, obviously having decided Donatelli was the only one who might believe him.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Frank saw the parlor door open and Madame Serafina appeared, looking as wild-eyed as her lover. Sarah and her mother were right behind her.

“What is happening?” Serafina demanded. “Where are you taking him?”

Donatelli said something to her that Frank didn’t hear, and she started screaming.

“No! You cannot take him! He did not do anything!”

The Professor had come out of the dining room, and he stood there, stone-faced, watching the scene unfold.

Donatelli was saying something to the girl, and Frank realized he was speaking Italian, and she was still screaming. She’d grabbed hold of Nicola, throwing her arms around his neck in an attempt to rescue him from Donatelli. One of the other cops hurried over to pry her off.

Meanwhile, Sarah Brandt had escaped from the parlor and ran to where Frank stood at the bottom of the steps. “You said you weren’t going to arrest him!” she cried.

“No, I didn’t,” he said wearily. “He killed her.”

“He wasn’t even there!” she tried.

“He was hiding in that cabinet. He sneaked out in the confusion and stabbed her, then he got back in before the lights came on again. He’s the only one who was in the room who even knew her besides Serafina, and he’s the only one who had a reason to want her dead.”

The cop had pried Serafina’s arms from Nicola’s neck and was trying to drag her away from him when she heard Frank’s last words. She ceased struggling instantly and turned to Frank. “No, he is not!” she cried. “He is not the only one who wanted her dead. They all did,
all
of them! Every single one of them wanted her to die!”

7

S
ERAFINA BROKE FREE OF THE COP WHO WAS HOLDING HER and ran to where Frank and Sarah stood in the hallway. “They
all
wanted her dead, I tell you! She was taking money from all of them!”

Before Frank could make sense of this, the cop who’d released Serafina opened the front door to the orderlies from the coroner’s office who had come for the body. Nobody saw exactly what happened next, but in that one instant of distraction, Nicola slipped out of Donatelli’s grasp and ran out the front door.

Someone swore and all the uniformed cops, including Donatelli, ran after him, but the orderlies were in the way, and they all got tangled up, and in those precious few seconds while they got untangled, Nicola disappeared, as Frank learned a few minutes later when they returned empty-handed.

“I swear, I don’t know how he got loose,” Donatelli said for at least the hundredth time. The other cops were sure he’d let the fellow Italian go. They were all gathered in the office, glaring at him and hoping he’d get all the blame.

O’Toole snorted in disgust, but Frank said, “I know you didn’t.” Donatelli would have been the last one to let him go, just because if he did, everyone would suspect him of doing it on purpose. “Go down to Little Italy and see what you can find out about him. He probably has friends there who would hide him. Drop some hints about a reward and see if they’ll give him up.”

Donatelli nodded and left, determined to find the boy if he had to search every tenement in New York City, Frank knew.

He looked at O’Toole, who plainly thought Frank had made a botch of this whole thing. “Have your men search the neighborhood again. Maybe somebody saw where he went,” Frank told the other detective.

“Now that your suspect is gone, do you need anybody to stay here to help?” O’Toole asked, sarcasm thick in his voice.

“Leave somebody on the front door in case the press show up,” Frank said sharply enough to remind O’Toole who was in charge. “But you can go.”

O’Toole sniffed derisively and left, barking orders to his men out in the hallway. After a few minutes, the front door opened and closed, and the house fell eerily silent. Frank rose wearily and made his way across the hall to the parlor, where Sarah and her mother still waited with Madame Serafina.

When he stepped through the door, the girl rose from where she’d been sitting on the sofa between Sarah and her mother. “Did they find him?” she asked anxiously.

“Not yet,” Frank said, giving nothing away. “Do you have any idea where he’d go?”

Her expression told him clearly she had no intention of saying so, if she did. “He did not kill her,” she said instead.

“Then who did?” Frank challenged.

“I told you, all of them wanted her dead,” she insisted.

“All of them?” Frank echoed. “You mean all the people at the séance?”

She lifted her chin in defiance. “Yes.”

Frank glanced meaningfully at Mrs. Decker.

“Not Mrs. Decker,” she amended quickly. “She was new, and Mrs. Gittings had not started trying to get money from her yet.”

“Mrs. Brandt,” Frank said. “You and Mrs. Decker should leave. The press will be getting wind of this any minute now, and when they do . . . Well, you know what will happen.”

Sarah knew only too well. “Mother,” she began, but Madame Serafina interrupted her.

“Please, do not go,” Serafina begged Sarah. She seemed genuinely frightened.

“Mr. Malloy won’t hurt you, child,” Mrs. Decker assured her.

“He has to arrest someone for this,” Serafina pointed out, “and Nicola is gone. Please, stay with me!”

Sarah shrugged helplessly, and Frank sighed in defeat. He turned one of the armchairs to face the sofa and sat down, wishing he could put his feet up. “All right, tell me why you think these other people wanted to kill Mrs. Gittings.”

The girl sat back down, her expression wary. She was a pretty little thing, he noticed, and those eyes, they could look right through you. She was trying to look through him right now. He gave her no encouragement.

“Mrs. Gittings charged a lot of money for the séances, but she said . . .” She glanced at Mrs. Decker uneasily and then went on. “She said that was just the beginning. She said these people had so much money that they would not miss a little bit more, so she figured out ways to get more.”

“How did she do that?” Frank asked with interest. He’d known the séance was a confidence game, but he hadn’t imagined there was more to it than just taking money to let people talk to their dead relatives.

“She would do different things for different people. She would find out things about them and then figure out the best way to get their money.”

“Was she getting money from all the other people who were here today?” Sarah asked.

Frank gave her a glare designed to silence her, but she didn’t even notice.

“Yes, she had a plan for each of them.”