having to get information from the Ruocco family. They’re going to lie to protect him, even if he did go out and kill Mrs. O’Hara.”
Gino swore. “So what can we do?”
“There’s still one person in the Ruocco house we haven’t questioned yet who would probably tell us the truth.”
“Mrs. Ruocco?”
“No, she’d lie for sure. I’m talking about Valentina.”
Gino reared back in horror. “You can’t bring a girl into the police station to question her. She’d be ruined!”
“I know, I know. Everyone would assume she’d been raped, and nobody would ever marry her. We can’t go to her house, either, because her mother would never let us talk to her at all. So I need you to figure out how we can question her with nobody finding out.”
Gino’s distress made Frank smile grimly.
“See,” he told the younger man. “I told you this job wasn’t fun.”
Sarah gaped at Malloy across her kitchen table.
“You want me to kidnap Valentina Ruocco?”
“Not kidnap her,” he said impatiently. “Just help me get her away from her house to someplace where I can question her.”
Sarah was hoping that this early Saturday morning visit from Malloy was only a bad dream, and she’d wake up any second. Unfortunately, she knew it wasn’t.
“She’s the only one I can be sure will tell the truth,” Malloy argued. “You know her family won’t let me talk to her if I go there. If I take her into Headquarters, her life will be ruined, and Ugo Ruocco would probably take his revenge in a very messy way. Think about Nainsi, Sarah. We need to find out who killed her, but we need to protect Valentina, too.”
“They won’t let me back into their house, either,” Sarah reminded him. “Not after I tried to convince them to help find Nainsi’s killer . . . Oh, no, I just realized . . .”
“Realized what?”
Sarah groaned and covered her face with both hands.
“That was probably why someone killed Mrs. O’Hara. It’s all my fault!”
“They would’ve thought of it sooner or later,” Malloy said, as if that settled it. “And it’s nobody’s fault Mrs.
O’Hara is dead except the person who killed her. If you want to find out who that was and punish him, then I have to talk to Valentina.”
Sarah groaned again. “What do you need me to do?”
Sarah and Malloy sat in the dank room in the basement of Our Lady of Pompeii Catholic Church. Sarah was certain God would strike them both dead for using the church as the location for their plot. At best He would be very angry, and if a priest or anyone else found them hiding here . . .
“Shhh,” Malloy said, rising to his feet and putting a finger to his lips. They could both hear the sound of footsteps and a young girl’s voice asking a question. Malloy moved toward the door and opened it just as the footsteps came up beside it. In the next instant, Valentina Ruocco stumbled through it, followed by Gino Donatelli. Malloy closed the door quickly behind them.
Valentina looked startled and then confused. “What are you doing here?” she asked Sarah and then turned to Malloy.
“And you?” She whirled on Gino. “You lied to me! My mother isn’t sick at all!” Gino had summoned her from the line at the confessional upstairs on that pretext.
“No, she isn’t,” Malloy confirmed. “We needed to ask you a few questions, Valentina. We need your help to figure out who killed Nainsi.”
“I don’t care who killed Nainsi,” she said petulantly. “I’m glad she’s gone. I wish her mother wasn’t dead, though. I wanted her to take that awful baby away. He cries all night long!”
“Just sit down and answer a few questions, and we’ll let you go back and to confession,” Malloy said wearily.
She glared at Gino again. “I thought it was funny that they’d send you,” she said venomously. “Wait till I tell my Zio Ugo what you did. He’ll kill you!”
Gino flinched slightly, but he managed an apologetic grin.
“Valentina,” Sarah said quickly. “I know you’re upset, but if you’d like for your life to get back to normal, the best thing you can do is help Mr. Malloy and Officer Donatelli by answering their questions.”
Valentina frowned. “Why are you here?”
Sarah smiled sadly. “To chaperone.”
She straightened as a new idea occurred to her. “I could start screaming,” she informed them haughtily.
“Then people would want to know why you left the line at the confessional booth and went off alone with me,” Gino said.
Valentina rolled her eyes, but she plunked down in the chair Malloy had vacated. “What do you want to know?”
she asked with a sigh of defeat.
“Tell me what happened last night, after you closed the restaurant.”
Plainly, she thought this a silly request. “We cleaned up like we always do, even though we hardly had any customers.
We went upstairs. Maria started picking on Antonio. She’s so mean since that baby came. She yells at everybody.”
“What do you mean, picking on him?”
“She didn’t like the way he was cracking his knuckles, and then she said he was breathing too loud. Everything we do makes her nervous. I think she’s going crazy. So she starts yelling at him and tells Joe to take him out someplace away from her.”
“So he did?”
“Not until they had a big fight with Mama. She said they shouldn’t leave us to be killed in our beds by the Irish. She tried to make them feel guilty, but then they went out anyway, because Maria wanted them gone.”
“What about Lorenzo?”
“What about him?” she asked, pretending to be bored.
“Did he go out, too?”
“Lorenzo?” she scoffed. “All he ever does is sit with Maria and moon over that stupid baby.”
“Did he leave the house at all yesterday?”
“How would I know? I don’t pay any attention to him.”
“Valentina,” Gino said in warning.
She glared at him, but she said, “I didn’t see him go any-place. He was cleaning the kitchen, or helping Maria all day.
Oh, I almost forgot, he did go to the market with Mama in the morning.”
Since Mrs. O’Hara was still alive then, Sarah knew that wasn’t any help.
“What about the rest of the family?” Malloy asked. “Did any of them go out during the afternoon?”
“No, how could they? We have to serve lunch and get ready for dinner, and since Maria doesn’t help us anymore, we all have a lot more work to do. It isn’t fair!”
“What does Maria do now?” Malloy asked.
Valentina made a sour face. “She takes care of the baby,”
she said bitterly. “She hardly even comes downstairs except to fix his bottles. I don’t see why she’s got to be with him all the time like that.”
“Babies need a lot of care, Valentina,” Sarah said. Malloy shot her a look, and she bit her lip in contrition.
“Just one more thing, Valentina, and then you can go,” Malloy said. “Did you hear Joe and Antonio come home last night?”
“No. They come home late, after I’m asleep. Can I go now?” she asked irritably.
