confidence of that behind his words. But Antonio had said . . .
He’d said that his brother took him to the dance house!
That’s it. He’d said his brother, and they’d assumed he meant his bachelor brother, Lorenzo.
Frank leaned back in his chair, sizing him up. “Are you saying Joe was the one who took Antonio to the dance houses?” he asked with interest.
Lorenzo sobered instantly. “I’m not saying anything except that it wasn’t me.”
Frank nodded sagely. “I see that. But my theory is still right. An Italian man got Nainsi pregnant, and then she tricked his brother into marrying her.”
Lorenzo flushed. “Joe would never do a thing like that.”
“Why not?” Frank asked curiously.
“Because . . . he’s married,” Lorenzo said uncertainly.
Frank nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, he is. He’s married to Maria, but that didn’t stop him from going to dance houses with Antonio, did it? And it didn’t stop him from going to them by himself before that, either.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know anything about it. I only know my brother wouldn’t do what you say.”
“I guess he wouldn’t kill Nainsi either, because he wouldn’t care if she told his mother—and Maria—the truth about the baby.”
Frank watched Lorenzo putting the pieces together in his mind. Frank had been certain the killer would have kept his secret from the rest of the family, no matter who the killer was. If Lorenzo wasn’t the killer, he wouldn’t have known, but now he had to face the truth.
“Joe couldn’t kill anyone,” he said, but without much conviction.
“Were you awake when Joe and Antonio got home from the dance house the night Mrs. O’Hara was killed?”
“Night before last?” he asked.
Frank nodded.
“Yeah, I . . . I was awake. The baby was crying and woke me up. I saw my brothers come home.”
“I don’t suppose you noticed if either one of them had any blood on him?”
Lorenzo just glared back.
“Or if Joe went out again later?”
He crossed his arms over his chest in silent refusal to reply.
“Are you going to lock me up?”
Frank considered it. “No, I don’t think so. I think I’ll let you go home, Lorenzo. For now.”
“And Joe?”
Frank smiled. “No, I’m going to keep Joe for a while longer.”
“ Will the medicine make him better?” Maria asked when Sarah had put the baby down in his cradle.
“It should stop the diarrhea. Then we have to figure out what caused it and keep it from happening again.”
“I’ll make sure the milk is from a goat,” Maria promised fervently. “I will keep the bottles clean and boil them. I will do everything you say.”
Sarah’s heart ached for her. Maria was like a string that had been stretched too tightly, and Sarah feared the slightest little thing could make her snap. “Do you have any wine up here?” she asked conversationally.
“Wine? What for?”
“I want you to drink some. You need to calm down and rest, Maria. You must take care of yourself, or you won’t be any help to the baby.”
Maria absently brushed back a stray tendril of hair. “That is what Lorenzo says.”
“He’s right. Maria, I can’t promise you that the baby will get better. I warned you from the beginning that babies sometimes don’t do well when they’re fed from a bottle.”
“But I’ll be very careful!”
“I know you will, but sometimes even that isn’t enough.
I still think it would be a good idea to find a woman to give him milk, to make sure he does as well as he can.”
She could actually feel Maria’s resistance to the idea of involving another woman in the care of the baby she’d come to love as her own. “Just tell me what to do to make him better,” she pleaded.
Sarah took Maria into the parlor and made her sit down on the sofa. Then she found some paper and a pencil and sat down beside her to write down instructions so Maria wouldn’t forget them. Maria sat perfectly still with her hands folded in her lap, but even so, the very air around her seemed to vibrate with tension. Mrs. Ellsworth would have said she was wound tighter than an eight-day clock.
“I’m adding some instructions for you, too, Maria,” Sarah said. “I want you to drink a glass of wine with each meal and one at bedtime.”
Maria managed a small smile. “I will be drunk. I’ll drop the baby.”
“I’ve seen women in your condition before, Maria,” Sarah said very seriously. “If you don’t get some rest and some relief, you’ll collapse. Then the family will have to take care of you and the baby. I know you don’t want to put a burden like that on them. They’re already short-handed without you helping in the restaurant.”
Tears formed in Maria’s dark eyes. “I didn’t want it to be like this. I thought having the baby would be so . . . so happy.”
Sarah took one of her hands. “When a baby is born, the father gives out cigars and drinks toasts and celebrates.
That’s because he doesn’t have to walk the floor all night with a screaming infant.”
Maria wiped a tear with her free hand. “I never thought of that.”
“And you also never expected Nainsi to die or mobs of angry men to come beating at your door or Mrs. O’Hara to be murdered or your husband to be dragged off to jail,” Sarah reminded her gently. “Any one of those things would be difficult to bear, and you’re bearing all of them, in addition to taking care of a demanding infant. You need to get some help.”
“Lorenzo helps,” she said defensively.
Sarah remembered their theory about Lorenzo’s unusual concern for the baby. “That’s strange, isn’t it? For a man to take such an interest in a baby, I mean.”
“Lorenzo is a good man.”
Sarah didn’t wince. “He must be to give up his evenings out to stay with you and the baby.”
Maria looked puzzled. “Lorenzo doesn’t go out in the evenings.”
Sarah had already opened her mouth to contradict her when she realized that Maria would know Lorenzo’s habits far better than she. “But I thought . . . I mean, he’s a bachelor and . . .” She hesitated, trying to find the right way to frame her question so it wouldn’t seem she knew more than she should. “I know Antonio met Nainsi at a dance house. I guess I just assumed that he and Lorenzo went out together.”
Maria shook her head. “Not Lorenzo. He doesn’t approve of places like that.”
“Oh,” Sarah said lamely, wondering if Malloy had found out this valuable piece of information yet. She realized that everything they had concluded about Lorenzo having seduced Nainsi might be wrong.
And if he hadn’t seduced Nainsi, then he wasn’t the baby’s father. But if he wasn’t, why was he so interested in the baby’s welfare?
“Are you finished with the instructions?” Maria asked.
“Uh, yes, I am,” Sarah said. She had just begun to explain them to her when they heard someone coming in from the outside stairway.
“ Why did you let him go?” Gino demanded when Lorenzo had left the interrogation room.
“Because he’s not our killer,” Frank said wearily.
“How can you be sure?”
“After you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ll be able to tell when most people are lying. There’s some who can fool you, but not many. People like the Ruoccos, who are ba-sically honest, can’t.”
“He didn’t tell you everything he knows, though,” Gino pointed out quite correctly.
