Murder on Mulberry Bend (27 page)

“I mean nobody heard her say that. I asked everybody, even Aggie.”

“I thought Aggie doesn’t speak.”

“She don’t, but she can hear. I asked her did she hear Emilia say that, and she shook her head no. Nobody heard her say nothing about Ugo. All she said was she wanted to get a job.”

This was just what Sarah had feared. One of the girls had lied to Mrs. Wells, hoping to throw suspicion onto Ugo. All Sarah needed to do now was find out which girl had invented the lie. She would have to ask Mrs. Wells.

“What’s that?” Gina asked, pointing at the parcel.

Sarah glanced at it. “I brought back the shoes and the hat Emilia was wearing when she died.”

Gina looked at it longingly. “What are you going to do with them?”

Sarah realized that Gina would probably appreciate having Emilia’s things. Perhaps she should consult with Mrs. Wells before making a gift of them, but she remembered what Gina had said last night about Emilia getting all the nice things when she’d been the girl in charge. Maeve would probably receive them now, if Mrs. Wells were making the choice, but Gina had earned a reward for trying to help Sarah.

“Would you like to have them?” she asked Gina.

The girl looked almost reluctant to admit that she did. Finally, she nodded tentatively.

With a smile, Sarah handed the package to her.

Gina glanced apprehensively in the direction of the door, as if afraid someone might come in and stop her, but seeing no one, she quickly tore open the package. Almost reverently, she picked up the hat that Sarah had considered throwing away and set it on her head. Her dark eyes shone with happiness and gratitude. “Maeve’ll be so jealous!” she whispered with glee. Then she kicked off the worn slippers she wore and sat down to put the almost-new boots on her feet.

She was laughing with pleasure now, and when the hat slipped off and fell onto the floor, Sarah laughed, too.

“There’s a hat pin in there, too. Do you know how to use it?”

“Oh, yes,” Gina assured her happily. “All well-bred young ladies know how to use a hat pin!”

She picked up the hat with one hand and located the hat pin with the other. “No wonder Emilia wanted her mother to see her wearing this,” she said as she stuck the hat on her head.

Sarah wasn’t sure she’d heard her correctly. “Her mother?” she asked, but Gina wasn’t paying attention.

She was staring at the pin. “What’s all over it?”

“It’s rusty,” Sarah said. “It will come off if you — ”

“That’s not rust,” Gina said, peering more closely. She ran a finger along the shaft and it came off brown and smooth, not gritty like rust.

Sarah looked more closely, too. In the dim light of the morgue, she hadn’t paid much attention. She’d simply made an assumption, but now, seeing it in the light ...

She had a vision of the brown stains on the back of Emilia’s jacket — Sarah’s old jacket. Malloy had said her killer had wiped the blood off his knife — a long, thin-bladed knife — and walked away.

Sarah felt as if the room were tilting, but she forced her hand to move. She snatched the pin out of Gina’s hand. “I’ll get you another one,” she said. Her voice sounded as if it were coming from very far away. Gorge rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down.

“What is it?” Gina asked in alarm. “Your face is all white!”

“Nothing, I’m fine,” Sarah insisted. She snatched up the discarded wrapping paper and quickly wrapped it around the pin.

They could hear Mrs. Wells and Opal coming down the stairs. Gina glanced in that direction and jerked the hat from her head. “Thank you,” she whispered, gathering her discarded slippers, and darted out of the room. Sarah realized she was afraid Mrs. Wells would take away her gifts if she saw them, and once again she felt a niggling unease at the way the woman showed favoritism among the girls.

By the time Opal and Mrs. Wells entered the parlor, Sarah had drawn a couple deep breaths and managed to regain most of her composure. She tried not to think about the fact that she was holding in her hand the weapon that had killed Emilia.

“Mrs. Brandt, is something wrong?” Mrs. Wells asked the instant they came in.

Sarah tried to smile. “No, why do you ask?”

“You look quite pale,” Opal said, echoing Gina.

“Do I?” Sarah decided to take advantage of their concern. “I was feeling a bit light-headed. Perhaps I should go home. I know you were planning tea, but — ”

“Don’t be silly,” Opal said. “Of course you should go if you’re not feeling well. I have my carriage outside, and I’ll be happy to see you safely home. Mrs. Wells, I’m sorry to cut our visit short, but — ”

“Of course, you’re absolutely right,” Mrs. Wells said. “Mrs. Brandt should go right home. Please feel free to return at any time, Mrs. Graves, and thank you for your support.”

Sarah managed to say the correct things and allow Opal to escort her out of the mission. When her driver had handed them into the carriage, and they were settled, Opal noticed the package Sarah carried.

“What have you got there?” she asked.

Sarah looked down at the paper-wrapped hat pin. “I’m not sure you’ll want to know.”

“N
OW YOU
MUST
TELL ME,” OPAL INSISTED. “DOES IT have something to do with why you were suddenly taken ill?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, laying the object on the seat beside her so she no longer had to touch it. “It gave me a bit of a shock.”

“More than a bit of one,” Opal said. “I thought you were going to faint.”

Sarah sighed, grateful for the privacy of the carriage, even though Opal had been ostentatious to bring it into the neighborhood. “I didn’t tell you the real reason I became interested in the mission,” she began, and explained to her about Emilia and how she came to be wearing Sarah’s clothes when she was killed in the park. “They didn’t have any idea who the girl was and probably never would have found out, but one of the police detectives recognized the clothes. He asked me to identify the body, if I could.”

“How horrible!” Opal exclaimed. “And how on earth would a
policeman
recognize your clothes?”

Sarah managed not to feel defensive. “I had met him several months ago when he was investigating another murder. I helped him solve the case.”

Opal wasn’t the least bit satisfied with this explanation. “Are you telling me this policeman remembered your clothes for several months and then recognized them on the dead girl?”

“I think it was the hat he remembered, and no, he didn’t remember it for several months. He’d seen it recently. We ... I’ve helped him with several other murder cases since then as well.”

Sarah had expected to see disapproval or even disdain, but Opal simply looked intrigued. “You must tell me all about this policeman and how you got involved in solving murders,” she insisted. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of anything so interesting!”

Sarah supposed it was interesting, but just then she realized they were passing Police Headquarters. “Could you ask your driver to stop here for a moment?” she asked anxiously. “I need to leave Detective Sergeant Malloy a message while we’re here.”

Opal looked out the window at the imposing four-story, marble-fronted building with the fanlight over the arched doorway that read NEW YORK POLICE HEADQUARTERS.

“Oh, my,” she said with a smile, signaling her driver to stop. “I really will have something amazing to tell Charles tonight when he asks me how my day was.”

Frank tried to remember back to the time before he’d met Sarah Brandt. Surely, he hadn’t been angry all the time then. He would’ve had apoplexy long before now if he had been. No, he was sure he had never been this angry for this long in his entire life. And he was definitely going to have to forbid her to leave him any more messages at Mulberry Street, or he’d have to quit the force and become a street cleaner. As it was, nobody there could look at him without smirking.

Could a man be henpecked when he wasn’t married? Frank didn’t think he wanted to know.

As if things weren’t bad enough, Mrs. Ellsworth was out on her porch as he came down Bank Street. She waved to get his attention, just in case he hadn’t noticed her there. He waved back.

“Good evening, Mrs. Ellsworth. I hope you’re keeping well,” he said as pleasantly as he could considering how furious he was with Sarah Brandt.

“I’m fine, thank you, Mr. Malloy. I knew you’d be calling tonight — either you or Mr. Dennis. I dropped a knife at dinner. Knife falls, gentleman calls, or at least that’s what they say.”

Frank didn’t ask who “they” were. He was too busy gritting his teeth at the thought of Richard Dennis calling on Sarah. “Is Mrs. Brandt at home?”

“Oh, my, yes. She arrived in a fancy carriage a few hours ago. We’ve seen a lot of carriages calling for her lately. Much different from the people who usually come running down the street to fetch her for a birth, I must say.”

A fancy carriage. She’d probably been out somewhere with Dennis again. He tried reminding himself it was none of his concern, but he still felt like somebody had cut out a large chunk of his insides with a dull knife. “How is Nelson getting on?” he asked to change the subject. Mrs. Ellsworth’s son had recently been accused of murder, and Frank and Sarah had helped exonerate him.

“He’s working very hard, even harder than he did before,” she said proudly. “I expect he wants to prove to Mr. Dennis that he made the right decision not to dismiss him.”

“Knowing Nelson, he’ll have Dennis’s job before the year is out,” Frank said, making Mrs. Ellsworth smile. Since Dennis owned the bank, they both knew that was unlikely.

“He’ll be satisfied to become a vice president.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Frank teased her. He climbed the steps to Sarah’s door and knocked more loudly than he’d intended.

Mrs. Ellsworth bade him good night as the door opened.

“Malloy,” Sarah said with the welcoming smile she hadn’t given him the last few times he’d come here. “You must’ve gotten my message very quickly.”

He refused to return that smile and went inside at her silent invitation. “You’ve got to stop leaving me messages at Headquarters,” he said sternly, determined to get this settled.

She didn’t seem the least bit intimidated. “Are you worried about my reputation or your own?” she asked in amusement.

“It’s not funny. You should hear what they say about you.”

“Why don’t you tell them Commissioner Roosevelt has made me an honorary detective?” she suggested. “Then you’d have an excuse to consult with me.”

“Maybe I’ll ask him to do that,” Frank said, reluctantly allowing his anger to cool a bit. She always had that effect on him. Until the next time she made him angry.

Which would probably be in about sixty seconds.

“Come into the kitchen. I’ve got a lot of things to tell you,” she said.

Frank followed obediently, leaving his hat hanging in the hallway, as usual.

She’d already made coffee, and a pie sat on the table.

“Did Mrs. Ellsworth make the pie?” he asked.

“Of course. She said she knew you were coming. Something about a knife falling on the floor.” She began to cut the pie.

“She told me she wasn’t sure if it was me or Richard Dennis,” he said, unable to keep the edge out of his voice as he took his seat at the table.

“She only said that to make you jealous,” she said, setting a piece of apple pie in front of him. Apple was his favorite.

He decided not to reply to that. “Does this have something to do with that Italian girl’s death?” he asked instead, neatly cutting off the point of his pie and raising it to his mouth.

“Yes, I’ve found out a lot of important things since I saw you last. I even found the murder weapon.”

Frank nearly choked on his pie. She quickly poured him a cup of coffee, but it was too hot and burned his tongue. By the time he’d stopped coughing, he was good and mad again. “Didn’t I tell you not to get involved with this?” he growled.

“You told me not to get involved with the Black Hand, and then you told me the Black Hand didn’t have anything to do with Emilia’s death. Besides,” she added quickly, when he would have started shouting, “I wasn’t investigating the murder. I just went down to the Mission to volunteer to help.”

“What do you mean,
volunteer?”
He did shout this time.

She didn’t even blink. “I decided they could use some help, so I offered it.”

“Do they need a lot of babies delivered down there?”

She just ignored his sarcasm. “I’m teaching the girls how to avoid disease,” she said self-righteously. “And last night my mother had a party to help Mrs. Wells raise money for the mission. I already told you about that.”

Frank had to take a deep breath so he wouldn’t shout again. “I thought Dennis was giving the party.” He couldn’t understand why he insisted on mentioning Dennis. It was like rubbing salt in an open wound.

“He helped us host it and invited some of his wife’s friends,” she said, setting her own coffee down on the table beside her piece of the pie and taking a seat opposite him. “I got to talk to two of the girls from the mission last night. I’ve noticed some strange things going on in that house.”

“Like what?” Frank asked skeptically, knowing she’d tell him anyway but willing to do his part. He did enjoy pointing out the holes in her theories, and after what she’d done, she deserved it.

“First of all, Mrs. Wells tends to play favorites among the girls. Emilia was her latest favorite, and that made the other girls very jealous.”

“You think one of them stabbed her to death because she was jealous?” he asked. The pie — now that he finally got to swallow some of it — was delicious, as usual.

“Don’t make fun, Malloy,” she warned him. “And don’t forget where these girls came from. Some of them have lived on the streets. All of them have seen violence firsthand, and they know life is cheap. The mission is the best place they’ve ever been. They have food and clothes and a clean, safe place to sleep. They’re treated with respect, and they want Mrs. Wells to love them. I think if one of them felt threatened, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill a rival.”