“That’s a lie, Antonio,” Frank moving toward him. “I don’t like people who lie to me.”
“It’s the truth, I swear,” Antonio cried, his voice shrill and his eyes wide with fright. He flinched and tried to cover his face when Frank raised his hand, but he only used it to push the boy down onto a chair.
“Then why did Nainsi tell her friends she met you in the spring?”
“I don’t know,” he claimed, looking up at Frank in desperation. “She couldn’t have told them that. I didn’t even know who she was back then.”
“It’s true,” a voice said from the doorway behind them.
They all turned to see Maria Ruocco standing there. Frank had thought Patrizia was the matriarch of this family, the formidable one they’d have to outsmart, but seeing Maria right now, he reconsidered. For such a small, plain woman, she radiated an amazing amount of authority.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Ruocco,” Frank said politely, in deference to the power he sensed in her. “But how would you know such a thing?”
“Because Antonio never went to the dance houses before that. Mama wouldn’t allow it until . . . until Joe said it was time he started acting like a man.”
“When was Valentina’s birthday?” Frank asked her.
“August fifteenth.”
This didn’t make sense. Nainsi’s friends knew about Antonio months before that. “Maybe he was sneaking out so his mama didn’t know,” Frank suggested, giving Antonio another glare.
“No, I swear! Maria, tell them. I never went out at night before that.”
“He would not have dared disobey Mama,” Maria confirmed. “What does it matter now, anyway?”
“Because,” Frank said, still respectful to her, “if Antonio wasn’t the baby’s father, he had a good reason for killing Nainsi.”
“I wasn’t even here when she died,” Antonio reminded him. “Joe took me to see Uncle Ugo and then . . . We were with him all night!”
“Why did you go see Ugo?” Frank asked. “Did you want him to get rid of your wife for you?”
“No! I mean . . . I don’t know why we went. It was Joe’s idea. He said Ugo would know what to do.”
“Antonio,” Maria snapped.
“Thank you for your help, Mrs. Ruocco,” Frank said, moving toward her in a slightly menacing manner that forced her to step back until she was out in the hallway.
“We’ll send for you if we need you again.” He closed the door in her surprised face. Then he motioned for Gino to come over to guard the door and turned his attention back to Antonio.
“What did Joe want Uncle Ugo to do?” he asked when he was standing over the boy again.
“He didn’t want him to do anything,” he claimed. “Joe just told him that Nainsi had the baby and I wasn’t the father.”
“What did Ugo say?”
Antonio winced at the memory. “He said I was stupid to trust a whore, and I got what I deserved. He said a lot of things like that. I don’t remember all of it. He gave me some whiskey to drink, and we sat there for a long time, drinking. He and Joe were talking, but I was just drinking.
I don’t remember much after that. Next thing I know, I wake up right there.” He pointed at the sofa.
“That’s convenient,” Frank observed. “You don’t remember what you did for the rest of the night?”
“No, I don’t!”
“Then for all you know, you came home, went up to your bedroom, and put a pillow over Nainsi’s face and smothered her.”
“I didn’t! Why would I?” he cried.
“A lot of reasons. Because you didn’t like being made a fool of by a cheap little mickey bitch. Because you didn’t like being stuck raising somebody else’s bastard. Because you didn’t want a wife who’d lift her skirts for any man who gave her a smile or bought her a drink.”
The boy lunged to his feet with a roar of outrage, but Frank grabbed his shoulders and slammed him back down into the chair.
“Isn’t that what happened?” Frank challenged. “Did she do it for just a smile, or did she make you buy her a drink first?”
Antonio’s eyes glowed with loathing, and his handsome face twisted with rage. “It wasn’t like that!”
“Wasn’t it?” Frank demanded. “Did she even tell you her name first?”
“I knew her name!”
“Did you know she was carrying somebody else’s baby?”
That stopped him cold. Frank watched the rage drain out of him, and he was a boy again. “She said . . . she said it was her first time.”
“Of course she did.”
“She said she liked me,” he remembered sadly.
“Maybe she did,” Frank allowed. “She was looking for a husband, so she would have wanted somebody she could live with.”
Antonio grimaced. “She didn’t like me after we got married though. She didn’t even want me in her bed. She said she was sick from the baby, and didn’t want me to touch her. She was mean to everybody else, too. Mama hated her.
Lorenzo said I never should’ve married her.”
“No one would blame you for killing a woman like that, Antonio,” Frank said reasonably. “They’d probably throw you a parade.”
The boy’s eyes filled with tears. “I wish I had killed her.
Nobody would laugh at me then. They wouldn’t say I was stupid and weak for getting tricked like that.”
His shoulders started to shake and the tears ran down his cheeks. Frank had to look away. At least he could be pretty sure Antonio hadn’t killed Nainsi. He was too young and still too innocent to hide such a grievous sin.
He might’ve been too drunk to remember, but if he’d been that drunk, he wouldn’t have been able to overpower the girl.
“Go back downstairs and tell your brother Joe to come up to see me,” Frank said in disgust.
Antonio looked at him in surprise, scrubbing the tears from his face with his palms. “Joe? Why do you want to see Joe?”
“Because I do. Now go get him before I decide to take the easy way out and lock you up.”
Antonio sprang to his feet and rushed out, practically shoving Gino aside as he jerked open the door and ducked through it. Maria Ruocco still stood in the hallway outside.
She watched Antonio race away, then turned back and came to the doorway again.
“He didn’t kill the girl,” she said urgently. “He doesn’t have it in him.”
“Then he doesn’t have anything to worry about,” Frank said. “Mrs. Ruocco, would you answer a few questions for me?”
She stiffened in silent resistance, but she lifted her chin and said, “I don’t know what I can tell you.”
“You and your husband sleep upstairs in the room across from where Nainsi died, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She folded her hands tightly at her waist, offering nothing more.
“Did you sleep there the night Nainsi died?”
“Of course. I always sleep there.”
“When was the last time you saw Nainsi?”
She frowned, her heavy brows knitting as she considered the question. “I’m not sure. I . . . helped her with the baby for a while . . . after Mrs. Brandt left. Mama said Nainsi could stay until she was recovered.”
“I guess Nainsi must have been upset about having to leave with her baby,” Frank suggested.
She took a moment before answering this question, too.
“No, she wasn’t. She . . . she thought Mama would let her stay. She was married to Antonio, and she thought we would have to let her stay.”
“Even after your mother-in-law told her she’d have to leave?”
Maria shrugged. “She was a foolish girl, and young. She did not know anything.”
“About what time did you leave her?”
“I went down to help Mama with dinner. That is our busy time.”
