“Yes,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, nodding wisely. “The Ruocco case, I suppose. We were reading about it in the newspapers this morning.”
“Did Roosevelt put you in charge of it?” Sarah asked.
“Yes,” was all he said, but his look told her that he held her personally responsible for getting him into this mess.
She tried to look apologetic, but he seemed unmoved.
“I’ll take the girls upstairs while you two talk,” Mrs.
Ellsworth said generously. Sarah knew she’d cut off her arm to be allowed to sit in on the conversation, but she’d have to be content to hear about it second hand. “So nice to see you, Mr. Malloy. Maybe you’ll bring Brian back this evening for some pudding,” she added, referring to his son.
“We’ll see,” he said politely.
Sarah and Malloy waited until the three of them had disappeared up the stairs.
“Would you like some coffee?” Sarah asked as Malloy removed his coat and hat and hung them up in the hallway.
“I could use some,” he said, and followed her into the kitchen.
“I’m sorry, Malloy,” Sarah said as she took cups down from the cabinet. “I never imagined anything like this would happen.”
He took a seat at the table. “Did you hear about the riot?”
he asked, not bothering to hide his annoyance.
“It was in the papers this morning. Was anyone seriously hurt?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again. I imagine Ugo Ruocco’s got some of his thugs posted down there now, and they’ll do some real damage if anybody starts another fight.”
Sarah filled the cups and set them on the table. “At least Theodore managed to get the real story into the news today.”
“Yeah, but the penny press is still talking about kidnapping and stolen babies,” he said. “They don’t care about the truth. They just want to sell newspapers.”
“And now Theodore has promised everyone you’ll solve the case,” she said sympathetically, taking a seat opposite him at the table. “What can I do to help?”
“You can’t do anything, so don’t even think about getting involved in this investigation,” he warned.
“Of course not,” she said innocently. “Why would I?”
She didn’t fool him. “I mean it, Sarah. Ugo Ruocco would kill his own mother if she got in his way, and he sure wouldn’t hesitate to kill you.”
“I’m not in his way,” she pointed out. “And I’m not likely to be. Now tell me why you’re here. You said you had some questions for me.”
He sighed with resignation. “I want you to tell me everything that happened from the time you got to the Ruocco house until you left the night Nainsi was killed.”
She’d already told him everything yesterday, but that had been under far different circumstances. She went through the entire sequence of events again, trying to remember every detail.
“You’re sure Antonio wasn’t the baby’s father?” he asked.
“It doesn’t seem possible. He didn’t even know Nainsi when the baby would have been conceived.”
“Wasn’t she scared of what they’d do to her when they found out?”
“That was so odd. I thought she would be. I was afraid for her, especially when her mother said she couldn’t take her and the baby in if the Ruoccos threw her out, but Nainsi wasn’t even worried. She told her mother they’d let her stay.
She seemed almost . . .” She searched for the right word.
“Smug. That’s it. She was very confident that Mrs. Ruocco wouldn’t throw her out.”
“She was stupid then,” Malloy observed.
Sarah had to agree. “Someone in the family must have killed her,” she pointed out. “But I just can’t see why any of them would.”
“Why not?” he asked, genuinely curious. She felt a small sense of pride that he valued her opinion.
“Well, because killing someone is so dangerous. What if you get caught? And they didn’t need to kill Nainsi to get rid of her. Mrs. Ruocco had already said she’d throw her out as soon as I said it was safe for her to leave.”
“But she was married to Antonio in the church,” Malloy argued. “He’d never be able to divorce her.”
“Antonio is a big baby. I can’t imagine he was that interested in getting married in the first place. He might even be glad for an excuse to avoid that responsibility for the rest of his life.”
“So you don’t think he was outraged enough to have killed her for tricking him?” Malloy asked.
“He wasn’t even very angry. He just seemed embarrassed.
Besides, he and Joe went out and got drunk that night. They weren’t even in the house when she was killed.”
“We don’t know that for sure yet. We don’t really know when they got home or exactly when she died. What about the rest of the family?”
Sarah pictured them in her mind. “Let’s see, Mrs. Ruocco had already decided what she was going to do. Why would she change her mind and murder the girl instead?”
“You’re right. It doesn’t seem likely. What about the others?”
“Joe, Lorenzo, Maria, and Valentina. Why would Joe or Lorenzo or Valentina care that much? And Maria was the only one in the house who was kind to Nainsi. They might have been angry at what Nainsi had done, but why take the chance of killing her? I can’t imagine any of them being outraged enough on Antonio’s behalf to hold a pillow over Nainsi’s face while she fought them with all her strength for however long it took her to die.”
“I can’t picture it either,” he admitted.
“But it had to be someone in the family, didn’t it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“What do you mean? It was the middle of the night.
Who else could’ve been in the house?”
“Anybody. There’s a back staircase that goes right up to the floor where she was killed. That’s how they took her body out yesterday.”
“Wasn’t the door locked?” Sarah asked.
“Wouldn’t matter if it was. Even Aggie could’ve jimmied it.”
“But why would someone outside the family want to kill her? Surely, her death had something to do with the baby and the fact that it wasn’t Antonio’s. Who else would care anything about her?”
“Ugo Ruocco might care.”
“Did he even know?” Sarah asked in surprise.
“From what he said yesterday, Joe and Antonio must’ve gone straight to him that night. He knew the baby wasn’t Antonio’s, and he didn’t seem too upset that the girl was dead, did he?”
“He wouldn’t have killed her himself, would he?”
“Not a chance, but he has plenty of men who’d do it for him.”
“That would be more understandable if it was someone outside the family,” Sarah said.
“But even harder to prove. Nobody in Ruocco’s crew is going to say a word, and the family wouldn’t tell, even if they knew about it, which they probably didn’t. Ruocco wouldn’t trust them with a secret like that.”
They sipped their coffee in silence for a few moments, each considering various possibilities.
“If one of Ruocco’s men could have gone up those stairs, anyone could have,” Sarah mused.
“Yeah, but who else even knew she’d had the baby, much less that they’d figured out Antonio wasn’t the father?”
“Nainsi’s mother, but she wouldn’t have killed her.” A memory stirred. “Wait a minute, one of Nainsi’s friends knew, too,” Sarah recalled. “Or at least she told her mother to deliver a message to her. What was her name? Brigit, I think.”
“Brigit who?”
“She didn’t say, but Mrs. O’Hara would know. Nainsi wanted all of her friends to hear the news, too, and I guess this Brigit would tell them.”
Malloy considered. “I wonder if one of her ‘friends’ was the baby’s father.”
