“Well, she didn’t kill me, so there’s no sense in getting upset now.”
Malloy looked like he might explode, but he managed to swallow down his frustration. After a few moments of struggle, he asked, “Is she going to live?”
“She didn’t seem to be too seriously hurt, but she might have internal injuries that don’t show up right away.”
The doctor had arrived and was with her.
“Why would she try to kill you, though?” Malloy asked.
“I’ve been trying to figure that out, too.”
“Did you say anything about knowing who killed Nainsi?”
“No! When she as much as told me Joe was the baby’s father, I was pretty sure he must have done it, but I didn’t say a word. I was only trying to get away from her so I could tell you what I’d found out.”
Malloy rubbed both hands over his face. “All right, let’s go see what she has to say for herself.”
“The doctor probably isn’t finished with her yet.”
“Good, then she won’t be expecting us.”
Donatelli was in the second floor parlor with Lorenzo, Antonio, and Valentina. They all looked up when Frank and Sarah appeared.
“The doc is still in there,” Donatelli reported.
“Maria said she pushed her down the stairs,” Lorenzo informed Frank angrily, pointing at Sarah.
“Use your head, Lorenzo,” Frank said irritably. “Why would Mrs. Brandt do a thing like that?”
“Why would Maria say it if it wasn’t true?” Lorenzo challenged right back.
“I don’t know. Let’s go find out,” Frank suggested and went across the hall to the closed bedroom door.
“You can’t go in there!” Lorenzo protested, but Frank pushed the door open without knocking.
Mrs. Ruocco cried out in protest, and the doctor looked up in surprise. He was tying off the wrapping around Maria’s broken arm. Maria glared at him but didn’t say a word.
“What you come in here for?” Mrs. Ruocco demanded.
“Get out!”
“I need to ask Maria a few questions first,” Frank said.
“She is hurt!” Mrs. Ruocco reminded him.
“How bad?” Frank asked the doctor.
“Broken arm and lots of bumps and bruises. She’ll recover.”
“Good, then I guess she can talk,” Frank replied coldly, stepping into the room. Sarah came in behind him, and the others crowded around the open doorway.
“I think I’ll step out and leave you to your business,” the doctor said, hastily gathering up his medical supplies and stuffing them into his bag. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” He worked his way through the gathering in the doorway and disappeared.
When he was gone, Frank said, “Maria, you said Mrs.
Brandt pushed you down the stairs. Can you tell me why she did a thing like that?”
Fear flickered in Maria’s eyes as she stared at Sarah.
“She . . . she said she would take the baby away.”
Mrs. Ruocco made an outraged noise, but Sarah said,
“You know that isn’t true, Maria. I suggested you find a nurse for him, that’s all.”
“If she wanted to take the baby away from you,” Frank said, “why would that make her push you down the stairs?”
Maria looked around nervously, as if trying to find an ally. “I . . . I don’t know. She just did.”
“That’s funny, because Mrs. Brandt says you tried to push her, but she managed to duck out of the way,” Frank said. “If you were afraid she wanted to take the baby away, that would give you a good reason to want to hurt her, not the other way around.”
“She hates me,” Maria tried. “She doesn’t want me to have the baby.”
“And you’d do anything to keep him, wouldn’t you?”
Frank asked. “You’d even kill someone.”
“No!” Maria insisted, and Mrs. Ruocco gasped in shock.
“What are you saying?” Lorenzo cried from the hallway outside. “Leave her alone!” He started into the room, but Donatelli grabbed him and held him back.
“Do you want to know how much Maria wanted to keep the baby?” Frank asked of everyone present. “I’ll tell you.”
“Don’t listen to him!” Maria begged. “He’s lying!”
“It’s too late, Maria,” Frank said with a trace of sympathy. “Joe told us everything.”
“No, he’s lying. It isn’t true!”
“What is not true?” Patrizia Ruocco demanded, her dark eyes narrowed in suspicion at her daughter-in- law.
“That Joe is the baby’s real father,” Frank said.
Maria cried out in anguish, and Sarah watched the blood drain from Mrs. Ruocco’s face.
“That can’t be true,” Lorenzo insisted furiously. “Joe wouldn’t do that!”
“He admitted it to me today,” Frank said. “Nainsi didn’t know he was married, and she came looking for him here at the restaurant. Maria saw her, didn’t you, Maria?”
Maria didn’t reply. Her face looked as if it were carved from stone.
“And when Maria found out, she wanted the baby for herself, so she made the plan to trick Antonio into believing the baby was his.”
Antonio made a strangled sound in his throat, and Lorenzo roared in outrage.
“Liar!” Maria cried.
“You can ask Joe,” Frank told Mrs. Ruocco, although he could see she was beginning to believe him. The story simply explained too much. “He’s the one who told me all of this.
It was a good plan, too, but then you figured out Antonio couldn’t be the baby’s father, Mrs. Ruocco. You were going to put Nainsi and her baby out. To keep that from happening, Nainsi would’ve told you the baby was Joe’s. Maria couldn’t let you find out the truth, couldn’t let you know what kind of a man Joe was, and what kind of a woman she was, what the two of them had done to Antonio. So she killed Nainsi.”
“Maria?” Mrs. Ruocco pleaded, wanting her to deny it but knowing it was true.
“I didn’t! Mama, don’t listen to them!”
“And then, when Mrs. O’Hara wanted the baby, Maria had to kill her, too. How did you manage to sneak out of the house without anybody seeing you, Maria?”
Maria pressed her lips into a bloodless line, but Valentina said, “I know!”
Everyone turned to where she stood in the hallway behind her brothers.
“I saw her! We were all downstairs for lunch, even though hardly anybody came that day. I went upstairs because Mama was yelling at me, and I got tired of it. When I got upstairs, I heard the baby crying. I called for Maria, but she didn’t answer, so I started looking for her because I didn’t know how to make him stop. Then she came in from the outside stairs. She said she’d been to the privy, but . . . she looked so strange and . . . I didn’t think of it before, but she had her hat on! Why would she wear her hat out to the privy?”
Everyone turned back to Maria, who hissed something at Valentina in Italian.
“I don’t suppose you noticed if she had blood on her,” Frank said quite casually. “There wouldn’t have been much, though, because she cut Mrs. O’Hara’s throat from behind. Did you use one of the knives from the kitchen downstairs, Maria?”
Mrs. Ruocco caught her breath, and Frank looked at her sharply.
“You know something,” he said. “What is it?”
She wasn’t looking at Frank, though. She was looking at Maria with horror in her eyes. “I could not find knife at lunch,” she said.
“That’s right!” Valentina remembered with satisfaction.
“It was your favorite knife, the one you keep really sharp.
That’s why you were yelling at me. You said I lost it, and I told you I didn’t do it!”
Her mother didn’t spare her a glance. She kept staring at Maria. “I look and look. Then I find at dinner. You
