Murder On Mulberry Bend

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.”

“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.