“He . . . he feels sorry for Maria. He tries to help her.”
Something stirred in Frank’s memory. Sarah had remarked on how unnaturally helpful Lorenzo had been with the baby.
Antonio cleared his throat. “Is Mrs. O’Hara really dead?”
“Yes, she is,” Frank assured him. “And if you know anything about it, you’d better tell me now.”
“I don’t, I swear. I just . . . Are you sure somebody killed her? Maybe it was an accident or something.”
“People don’t get their throats cut by accident,” Frank said.
“Somebody cut her throat?” Antonio asked, horrified. He instinctively lifted a hand to his own throat. “Who would do a thing like that?”
“I sort of thought you and Joe did it,” Frank said, and the boy’s eyes widened. “Somebody took her by the hair, pulled her head back, and sliced her ear to ear,” Frank explained, demonstrating on himself the way the medical examiner had done for him. “Her blood squirted all over the wall and—”
He stopped because Antonio had gone pale, clapped both hands over his mouth, and started retching.
Frank jumped to his feet and backed away as the boy vomited on the floor. With a weary sigh, he opened the door and left. He’d send someone down to clean up the mess, and then he’d let Antonio go. If one of the Ruoccos had killed Mrs. O’Hara, Antonio wasn’t the one, and he still didn’t know who was.
Sarah had disposed of the whisky bottle, thoroughly cleaned the cup, and aired out the kitchen. Then she’d cleaned her teeth with baking soda paste and rinsed her mouth with salt water. When Maeve assured her all trace of the odor was gone, she brought Aggie down, and they had a cold supper. Aggie kept looking around, as if still searching for the bottle, but her terror seemed to have dissipated.
Maeve got the child ready for bed, and Sarah went up to tuck her in as usual. Aggie lay under the covers, clutching her beloved doll. Her eyes were wary as Sarah approached, and Sarah tried a reassuring smile.
“I’m sorry you were scared this afternoon,” she said, sitting down on the bed beside the girl. “I threw the whisky—
that bad stuff that scared you—away, and we won’t have any in the house anymore, I promise.”
She leaned down and kissed Aggie’s soft forehead. “I would never have had it here if I knew you didn’t like it. I love you, and I don’t want you to ever be scared, Aggie. Do you believe that?”
Aggie nodded.
Sarah smiled with relief, and Aggie smiled back. Sarah swooped in and tickled her, making her giggle and breaking the tension of the moment. After a few playful minutes, Sarah kissed her again. “Time to go to sleep now, sweetheart.”
Aggie pretended to pout, and Sarah tickled her again, making the pout vanish. On impulse, Sarah said the words she’d been practicing for weeks, ever since she’d overheard Aggie speaking to Malloy’s son Brian when she thought no one could hear. “I was wondering if I could call you by a different name,” she began hesitantly.
Aggie frowned in confusion.
Sarah took a deep breath and continued. “I know Aggie isn’t your real name. It’s the one they gave you at the mission. I’ve been thinking about giving you a better one. I’ve always liked the name Catherine. It’s a pretty name, don’t you think?”
Aggie’s confusion faded into amazement, and she nodded.
“Would it be all right if I called you Catherine instead of Aggie?”
The girl’s face lit up, and she nodded vigorously.
“Thank you, Catherine,” Sarah said in relief, taking the girl in her arms and giving her a hug. “Thank you for everything.”
Frank was sitting at his desk at Headquarters, still trying to make sense of what he’d learned from Antonio, when Gino returned.
“The guy at the dance house door remembered the Ruoccos from last night,” he reported. “He knows them both. I also saw a few girls they danced with, and from all accounts they stayed until closing.”
“I figured,” Frank sighed.
“They still could’ve gone over to Mrs. O’Hara’s and killed her after that,” Gino tried.
“Except that Antonio would’ve fainted if they did. He didn’t have anything to do with killing the old woman.”
“Then maybe Joe went by himself.”
“They were together all night, and he said they went home after that. He said Maria and Lorenzo were up with the baby when they got home, so we can check on that—if we can trust them to tell the truth.”
“Lorenzo was up with the baby?” Gino echoed. “Why would he do that?”
“Antonio says he feels sorry for Maria.”
“I feel sorry for her, too, but I’d never sit up with a screaming baby.”
“Neither would I. I’m starting to think Lorenzo might have more than a passing interest in that baby.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we know that Lorenzo and Antonio used to go to the dance houses together starting in August, so there’s a good chance Lorenzo used to go without him before that.
We know that somebody knocked Nainsi up several months before Antonio met her. I found out tonight that Nainsi seduced Antonio just a few days after she met him. She already knew about the baby by then, and she must’ve decided the first time she met Antonio that he was the one she was going to trick into marrying her. But why would she pick him, out of all the men she could meet at the dance houses?”
Gino considered. “Because he’s young and innocent. He probably wouldn’t know he wasn’t her first lover, and he’d feel guilty enough to go along with her scheme.”
“Or maybe because he was her lover’s brother, and she wanted revenge or something, because her lover refused to marry her.”
“You think Lorenzo is the father?”
“Somebody is, and it would explain why she chose Antonio,” Frank said.
“Sounds pretty far-fetched. How could she know she’d even meet Lorenzo’s brother?”
“She probably couldn’t, but she did. We also know she tried to trick at least one other fellow into thinking he might be the father.”
“Keith,” Gino remembered.
“Yes, why else would Nainsi make sure he did her proper? She already knew about the baby, so she must’ve been trying to make Keith think he was the father.”
“But he’s married.”
“Yeah, but he’d have to give her money to keep her from going to his wife. The wife’s pretty sickly, so he would’ve paid to protect her.”
Gino nodded. “She was looking for somebody to support her if she couldn’t find a husband.”
“That’s what I’m guessing. By the time she met Antonio, she must’ve been pretty desperate.”
“So the question is, why did she pick Antonio? If Lorenzo was the baby’s father, why didn’t she just try to get him to marry her?”
“Maybe she did, and he refused. Antonio says Lorenzo doesn’t want to get married at all.”
“Is he going to become a priest or something?” Gino asked in disgust.
“That’s what I asked,” Frank said with a grin. “Apparently, he just isn’t ready to settle down. So if he was the baby’s father, he didn’t want to be stuck with it or her.”
“And when Lorenzo showed up at the dance house with his little brother in tow, she latched onto him.”
“It’s a nice theory,” Frank agreed. “It still doesn’t tell us who killed Mrs. O’Hara and Nainsi, though.”
“But it gives Lorenzo a pretty good reason to do it,” Gino pointed out. “When his mother figured out that Antonio wasn’t the baby’s father, she was going to throw Nainsi and the baby out. Lorenzo didn’t have any use for Nainsi, but maybe he wanted to keep his son.”
Frank nodded his approval at Gino’s reasoning. “He must’ve figured once the girl was dead, Maria would take care of the baby and everything would be fine. Then Mrs.
O’Hara starts fighting to get the baby away from them.”
“So he has to kill her, too. Did our men notice anybody else leaving the Ruoccos’ house last night?”
“We only had two men on the place last night, so one could go for help if a mob showed up. When one went off to follow Joe and Antonio, the other might’ve missed Lorenzo leaving.” Frank frowned. “Now we’re back to
