Murder Knocks Twice

by Susanna Calkins

  * * *

  Gina stood regarding Hull House, a bit put off by the looming exterior of the Italianate mansion. The brown-brick settlement house was enormous and stretched the entire length of the block. Since her conversation with Zosia the day before, she’d been thinking she’d like to learn more about Dorrie, and talking to her mother might be a good place to start. Maybe Mrs. Edwards would be there with the other reformers, or she might be able to sniff out an address for her home.

  The plan had seemed so reasonable when she woke up that morning. Now she was having second thoughts and began to turn away.

  Just then someone called out to her from the porch. “Miss! Wait!” An older woman dressed in an old-style white dress hurried down the walkway. “Is there something we can help you with?” She glanced at Gina’s stomach in a knowing way. “A place we can send you?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. Not that,” Gina said, speaking quickly. “I mean, yes, you can help me. I was wondering if Mrs. Edwards might be here. I know that she volunteers here.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Edwards? I believe she’s in the back, sorting old clothes for the poor. Why don’t you come into the parlor and I’ll fetch her?”

  The woman ushered Gina inside the house, and she found herself alone in a very grand parlor filled with overstuffed Victorian-era sofas. She didn’t feel comfortable sitting down, so instead she positioned herself by the window, looking out onto the street.

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Edwards came into the room. She stopped short when she saw Gina, but then extended her hand in greeting. She did not have the same wild look in her eyes as when Gina had first seen her in the tea shop, but there was great sorrow and despair etched into her cheeks. “You,” she said. “I know you. From the tea shop.” There was a tinge of sarcasm to her voice. “Who sent you? The Signora?”

  “No, Mrs. Edwards. No one sent me,” she said. Deciding to be straightforward she added, “I do work at the Third Door, though.”

  The woman gestured to the sofa. “Pray, sit.” When Gina had settled herself uncomfortably next to her, Mrs. Edwards asked, “Did you know Dorrie?” Her hopeful look was hard to bear.

  Gina fiddled her hands in her lap. “No, I didn’t. I just started, after New Year’s Eve.”

  “You replaced her.”

  “Yes.” There didn’t seem any point in denying that fact.

  “Oh. She was my only daughter. Did you know that?”

  Gina shook her head.

  Mrs. Edwards brushed a tear away. “Tell me. Why are you here? I don’t know you. And you didn’t know my daughter. Why did you ask to see me?” Though she struggled to remain composed, Gina detected a note of agitation in her voice.

  “Mrs. Edwards,” Gina said, trying to keep her tone soothing, “what do you think happened to your daughter? To Dorrie?”

  She saw the muscles in the woman’s cheek tighten. “It was the alcohol and working in that place that ruined her, you know. I never wanted her to work there. Those owners lack souls, and they don’t care who they are corrupting.”

  “Oh,” Gina said, not sure what else to say. The woman had looked calm, but now she was taking on that crazed look she’d had the day she’d lambasted the Signora at the tea room. Mad, Ned had said.

  “Her daddy came home drunk every night of the week, did you know that? Especially on Saturdays. Thought it was his right to drink up all my hard-earned washing money. Said it was a man’s right to enjoy the fruits of his labor. What about my labor? He did whatever he wanted when he came home.” She gave Gina a fierce look. “I mean anything.” She grimaced. “I thought Dorrie understood the dangers of drink. Thought I raised her better than that. Then she turned around and betrayed me to the quick when she ran off to work at that den of iniquity.” She spat out the last three words.

  Gathering her nerve, Gina posed the question she’d been rehearsing in her mind. “Mrs. Edwards, that day at the tea shop, you said something to the Signora. You said you knew she had asked Dorrie to do something that ended up with her being killed. What did you mean by that?”

  The woman brushed a tear from her cheek. “The police tried to tell me that she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pshaw. I know she was being asked to deliver messages.”

  “Messages? What sort of messages?”

  “She never told me exactly. I know she spent a lot of time with gents, too. I didn’t like that. She wasn’t raised that way.”

  “Gents? Was there someone in particular?”

  Pulling out a handkerchief, she blew her nose heartily into the bleached white square. “Well, there was that piano man, of course. Ned. Not a serious man at all.” Her disapproval was complete. “Only after a good time with my daughter.”

  Gina swallowed. “Do you think Ned might have—”

  “Killed Dorrie?” Grimacing, Mrs. Edwards finished the thought. “Nah. He doesn’t have it in him. I’m telling you—it has something to do with those messages she was running for those Castallazzos. Someone killed the messenger. My darling girl.” Her eyes flooded with tears.

  Gina looked around the parlor, searching for something to say. “I heard she had a beautiful voice.”

  “Dorrie used to sing the sweetest little songs here, before the devil found her,” she said, pointing at the piano. “Guess that’s how she got connected with that ‘Neddy’ in the first place. Him a crooner, her with tunes and kicks. Lord knows I loved my daughter, but there wasn’t any calming her down. Hot to trot she was, and the Castallazzos knew that. Took advantage of her, they did.” She stared down at Gina. “That place is the devil’s lounge—best you remember that, girl, or you’ll follow the same sad path of my daughter.”

  Gina edged toward the door. “I’ll be going now.”

  The woman’s eyes had taken on that unfocused look they’d had when Gina first saw her. “The Castallazzos will get theirs, though, I promise you that.”

  A chill went down Gina’s spine. “What do you mean?” she asked, backing up another step.

  “Well, I’m not going to take a pineapple to the place. I’ll leave the bombings to others.” Her laugh was bitter. “There will be a reckoning for their sins, mark my words. In the hereafter, I have no doubt, but here on this temporal plane, too. They will cross the wrong person and it will all come crashing down.”

  * * *

  On her way out the door, Gina nearly ran into two women entering Hull House. One was an elderly but spry-looking woman, perhaps in her early eighties, and the other was a smartly dressed, athletic young woman.

  “Slowly, child, slowly,” the older woman admonished her. Gina recognized Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, having seen her around the neighborhood her entire life. “We are busy, but not so much that we should run into each other.”

  The other, more stylishly dressed woman smiled down at Gina. With a sense of shock, Gina recognized her as well. This was none other than Amelia Earhart, the famed aviator. “Pray, tell us. Are you here for one of Miss Addams’s fine programs? I should like to hear all about it. We’re looking to do more at our sister settlement house in New York City.”

  Gina didn’t know what to say, her tongue having escaped her.

  Miss Addams sounded stern. “Speak up, girl. I was just telling Miss Earhart about the progress so many of the young women have been making. Do not make a liar of me.”

  “Now, now, Jane,” Miss Earhart soothed her. “You’ve scared the girl out of her wits.”

  “She works at one of those moonshine parlors,” Mrs. Edwards said from behind them. “Same one that killed my daughter.”

  Miss Addams and Miss Earhart looked her over. Gina braced herself for an angry harangue, but none came. Instead, Miss Addams touched her arm. “There’s always time, child,” she said. “We do not seek to condemn.”

  “Just to educate,” Miss Earhart added, her blue eyes appraising. “Those places do kill.”

  “Indeed they do,” Mrs. Edwards said pointedly. “Pray heed what I told you.”

  �
�I’d best be off,” Gina said, before turning and practically running down the path, away from Hull House.

  CHAPTER 16

  As luck would have it, Gina had to wait almost a full day before she was able to return to Marty’s flat with a third roll of film, full of pictures she’d taken on her way. Though the weather had been a balmy forty-three degrees the day before, winds blowing in from Canada off Lake Michigan had plunged Chicago into another freezing cold spell. Everywhere the streets were frozen, even iced over in patches, making it perilous to get around.

  When she arrived at Marty’s flat, she began to develop the new roll of practice film in the darkroom. This time, everything proceeded at a much quicker pace, and she soon was pleased to see more details emerge in the negatives as they developed in the bath. Feeling more confident that this time she had exposed and developed the film properly, she mentally applauded herself.

  While the negatives hung to dry, she went back into Marty’s flat and put on a kettle for tea. As she waited for the water to boil, she idly looked through some of the stacks of photographs again, this time examining their composition and form with a more critical eye. She looked at the images of people as well, many taken out on the street. He’d taken a few of Mrs. Lesky, too, one catching a poignant expression on the woman’s face as she gazed at a framed picture of her husband. A wonderful image, to be sure, and Gina thought she might give it to Mrs. Lesky.

  After a while, she began to notice something surprising about the photographs. Not a single one had been taken at the Third Door. They’d been taken, for the most part, outside in the open, far away from the place.

  Why was that? After all, she’d seen Marty taking photographs in the speakeasy on numerous occasions, and she was sure that those photographs were the main source of his employment—not to mention income. So where were all the images from the speakeasy?

  He had obviously put them somewhere or given them to someone, as they were nowhere to be found. Or had someone stolen them? She remembered how the apartment had looked like it had been rifled through. Or was it possible that he had kept them hidden?

  She added a dollop of whiskey to her tea. “Oh, Marty,” she said, taking a deep gulp of the fire-burning stuff. “What a mystery you were.”

  Setting down her cup, she went into his bedroom and lay on the floor next to his bed so that she could see if anything was underneath. Unfortunately, there was nothing under the bed except for great amounts of dust that wafted up and tickled her nose, causing her to have a fit of violent sneezing.

  After she recovered, she lay on the floor again, tracing the patterns on the floorboards beneath her. Her mind flashed to the spot under the floorboard at her own home where she had hidden the camera. Her mother was the one who had shown her that spot, long ago. What if this was a family trait? Perhaps Marty, like his cousin, used similar spaces to hide his secrets.

  As she began to tap around on the floor, she found a loose board that made a rather hollow sound when knocked. “Applesauce!” she exclaimed, growing even more excited when she saw that several nails had already been removed. That had to be on purpose.

  Sure enough, it was pretty easy to lift up two floorboards, exposing a small chest about two feet long by one foot wide. Her heart began to beat faster when she saw that the chest had a small lock. Just the right size for a small key to open.

  Pulling out the key around her neck, she inserted it into the lock. Carefully she turned the key and opened the lid of the chest, scarcely daring to breathe. Inside were clear sleeves containing film negatives, and a small stack of photographs bound together with a leather string.

  There was also an album covered in fancy but yellowed lace—a family album, she quickly discovered. Her family. As she paged through, she came to a picture of her mother, and her eyes started to fill with tears.

  Gina set the album aside, resolving to examine it in greater detail later. Instead, she focused on looking through the loose photographs, hoping that the secrets Marty was hiding beneath the floorboard would not be too much for her to bear.

  Glancing through them, she could see that most of these images had been taken at the Third Door. Movie stars, baseball players, famous boxers. Babe Ruth. Benny Goodman. Lulu hadn’t been lying about their visits. Such images might fetch a pretty penny from Variety or some other entertainment rag. There were others of hot-to-trot women, hanging on the arms of men dressed in immaculate pinstripe suits. Gang members with their molls, if she had to guess.

  Thankfully, none were indecent. They were mostly of couples kissing, holding hands, dancing closely, clinking cocktail glasses, or in other intimate moments. In a few, the couples appeared dismayed or angry, and Gina assumed that they were unaware that Marty was taking their picture.

  A few she lingered over and set aside. The first was a picture of four women with Ned. Faye, Jade, and Lulu were all smiling, while a fourth woman, wearing a black dress and headpiece, wore a pouting look. She thought it might be Dorrie, especially after she found another picture of the same girl, this time carrying a cigarette tray and looking slyly up at Roark. Gina found herself staring at that one before setting it aside.

  She also discovered that Marty had taken a picture of her, that first night she worked at the Third Door, just as she had suspected at the time. Feeling a bit vain, Gina glanced at the photograph more closely. The camera had caught her wide smile, as well as the gap between her front teeth. It had also caught the quirk of her eyebrows, which she knew was the expression she adopted when someone was handing her a line.

  Flipping the photographs over, she realized that all of them had numbers penned on the back, and they appeared to be numbered sequentially. Intrigued, she pulled out Marty’s small notebook, which she had removed from the camera case that morning, to see if she could make sense now of how Marty kept track of his images.

  Slowly, she systematically compared the numbers on the photographs with the notations in Marty’s notebook, working to decipher his code. The number seemed to be the date, the roll number, and the position of the image on the roll. Then he would include a code name, followed by something that appeared to note payment. A few of the entries were starred or underlined. The photos with Dorrie had been taken on December 15, 1928, just a week before the cigarette girl had been murdered.

  * * *

  After pouring herself some more whiskey, Gina seated herself on Marty’s green sofa and picked up her family’s photograph album, handling the crumbling black leather cover and yellowed pages with care. Inside there were pictures of her father as a boxer, and some of her mother and her parents and her Doyle grandparents. She recognized Eddie, as well as Marty and Nancy.

  She sighed, once again wishing she had known more about this side of the family. Her mother’s familiar handwriting had labeled most of these images at the bottom. She must have still been in contact with Marty until just before she died, even though Gina was sure she had never met him as a child. On the last few pages, a new, unfamiliar handwriting appeared.

  Dear Molly’s wedding, it said, underneath a picture of her parents standing under a bough of flowers. Then another picture, clearly taken at a distance, of her brother, Aidan, maybe around six, holding on to her hand, when she was about one. The caption read Darling Molly’s children.

  A lump formed in her throat as she thought about her brother, laughing and joking around, so full of life before the Great War took away everything that mattered. She continued to turn pages carefully. She stopped when she came across another picture of her parents, when they were still quite young, alongside a second man. The three were standing in front of a Ferris wheel. The writing underneath read Lincoln Park. 1898.

  Studying the photograph more closely, she realized that the other man was none other than Big Mike, owner of the Third Door. Judging by their close stance, the three had once been friends. Her mother and father were turned toward the photographer, with stiff smiles on their faces, while Big Mike’s face was turned so that he was smiling
at her mother. There was a fondness in his expression that caught her attention. Could Big Mike have had feelings for her mother, all those years ago? That might explain the occasional animus she felt from the Signora. But on the other hand, maybe it didn’t.

  A clattering at the window caused her to start, pulling her out of her reverie. Seeing the window rattling, she went and got the little tool kit she had found among Marty’s things and began to examine the window frame. She could see that there was a loose chain, so she tightened it. It was always good to have something to fix when the world around her seemed like it was falling apart.

  * * *

  “Papa,” she said to her father the next morning, softly so that she would not startle him. He was trying unsuccessfully to fix a clock that a neighbor had brought by the other day. From behind the doorframe, she watched him struggle to even open the base of the clock, where the gears and springs could be found. When he looked up at her, she continued. “I was wondering if I could show you something.” She held up the lace-covered photograph album that she had retrieved from underneath the floorboards in Marty’s flat.

  He winced when he saw the album, as if he knew it would hold painful memories of their family’s past. When he didn’t take it from her, she opened it to the photograph of her and Aidan.

  “My dear boy,” he said, tracing his finger over his late son’s face.

  Not wishing to deepen her father’s melancholy, Gina quickly flipped several pages. “Do you remember any of these people?” she asked, pointing to her mother with Marty and some individuals who looked like younger versions of the people she’d met at the funeral.

  “Gina, sweetheart, I don’t really remember your mother’s family.” He looked deeply sad and ashamed. “I should have asked her more about them, but she was just so intent on getting away from her home. Then Aidan was born, and I suppose the questions never seemed to really matter. Your mother was so deeply happy, and so was I.”