“He’s dying,” Maria cried, nearly hysterical. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. “You must save him!”
Sarah hazarded a glance at Mrs. Ruocco, who glared back. Her gaze could have cut glass, but Sarah managed not to flinch. “I’m sorry for what happened with Valentina, Mrs.
Ruocco, but the police said they were going to question her no matter what. I thought at least I could make sure nothing improper happened.”
Mrs. Ruocco rose from the chair and strode toward her.
As she passed, she handed Sarah the baby and kept going.
Plainly, she wasn’t willing to forgive or even to remain in the same room with her. But at least she hadn’t thrown her out.
“What’s wrong with him?” Maria pleaded. “Will he die?”
Sarah quickly felt the baby’s head and limbs. He was slightly warm, but that could just be because he’d been crying for so long. He did seem to be uncomfortable. He was pulling his knees to his chest, and the cry was distinctively one of pain. “Can I see one of his dirty diapers?”
Maria ran to fetch one, and Sarah laid the baby down on the couch and unwrapped him from his blanket to examine him, poking and prodding. When she’d finished and examined the diaper, she knew as much as it was possible to know about a patient who couldn’t even tell you where it hurt.
“Is he eating?” Sarah asked over the baby’s cries.
“Not since early this morning. He was fussy all morning after that and wouldn’t nap. Then he started crying and wouldn’t stop no matter what I did. Is it the milk again?”
That would have been Sarah’s first guess. “Goat’s milk rarely disagrees with a baby, but you can never be sure if what you get at the market is really goat’s milk or how fresh it is or what else they might have mixed with it,” Sarah explained. “Keeping the bottles clean is another problem, although I’m sure you’ve been doing a good job of that.”
“Oh, yes, I boil them every time,” Maria assured her, wringing her hands. The circles under her eyes were so dark, they almost looked like bruises, and her normally glowing complexion was chalky.
“Have you thought about finding a wet nurse for him?”
Sarah asked, picking up the baby again and instinctively trying to rock him to soothe his cries.
Maria’s expression changed from despair to terror. “I want to take care of him myself!”
“Of course you do, but perhaps one of the women in the neighborhood would sell you some breast milk. Even if it was only for a few weeks, until he’s stronger. Then we can try the goat’s milk again.”
Maria looked too overwhelmed to even begin to consider such a prospect. Sarah decided to speak to Mrs. Ruocco about it, even if Mrs. Ruocco wouldn’t speak to her. But first things first.
She opened her medical bag with her free hand and found the bottle she wanted. Using an eye dropper, she placed a drop on the baby’s tongue. He made a face at the taste, then started to cry again.
“What did you give him?”
“Paregoric,” Sarah said. “To stop the diarrhea.” She didn’t explain that paregoric was a tincture of opium, because she knew that would frighten Maria. Sarah hated giving it to him, but it was the only way she knew to treat the diarrhea quickly. If she didn’t, the baby would die of dehydration.
“Please sit down, Maria. Pacing the floor won’t help, and you’re just exhausting yourself.”
Maria sat, but she didn’t relax. Her haunted eyes watched every step as Sarah walked the baby back and forth until the drug took hold and his cries quieted and finally ceased.
Instantly, Maria was on her feet. “Is he . . . ?”
“Sleeping,” Sarah said. “Now we need to talk.”
Frank couldn’t remember ever having a suspect start laughing in the middle of an interrogation—at least not one in his right mind.
“What’s so funny?” Frank growled.
Lorenzo wiped a tear from his eye and fought to get himself under control again. “You are. You think I did those things. I have never been to a dance house in my life.”
Frank felt the anger roiling in his chest. “Liar,” he snapped. “Antonio told us all about it.”
“Maybe, but he didn’t tell you I took him to the dance house,” Lorenzo assured him, still grinning. “And he didn’t tell you I knew Nainsi, because I didn’t. I never even saw her before Antonio brought her to our house after he married her.”
Frank wouldn’t call him a liar again. He knew when someone was telling the truth, and Lorenzo had the 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.
“No, but he wasn’t going to say anything else voluntar-ily, and I didn’t see any point in roughing him up. If I need to ask him more questions, I know where to find him. He’s not going anywhere. Now let’s see what brother Joe has to say for himself.” Frank pushed himself out of the chair.
“Did Joe do it, then?” Gino asked hesitantly.
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“But if Lorenzo didn’t, it has to be Joe, doesn’t it?”
Frank couldn’t help smiling. “Don’t forget Mrs. Ruocco.
Ugo is sure she did it.”
“But she’s a female,” the young man said dismissively.
Frank just shook his head in dismay.
Gino followed him next door to the room where Joe waited. He wasn’t as calm as Lorenzo had been or as panicked as Antonio. He did, however, look guilty as hell.
“We just had a nice little visit with your brother,” Frank reported, taking a seat opposite Joe.
“Did you lock him up?” Joe asked with concern.
“No, we let him go home.”
“Then you know we didn’t cause any trouble. Those two men came into our place and started fighting. We had to throw them out before they broke something or hurt somebody.”
“I told you, Joe. Those men are cops. We sent them in there to get you outside so we could bring you into the station for questioning.”
Joe frowned. He didn’t know what to make of it. “But we didn’t do anything wrong,” he insisted again.
“Someone did, though,” Frank pointed out. “Or Nainsi and her mother would still be alive.”
His confusion cleared instantly. “Why are you asking me about this? I already told you, I don’t know who killed Nainsi, and I don’t know who killed Mrs. O’Hara, either.”
“Where were you the other night, Joe?”
“I . . . I was out with Antonio,” he admitted reluctantly.
“Oh, yes, at a dance house,” Frank remembered. “At least that’s what Antonio said. That’s kind of funny, isn’t it? A married man going to dance houses?”
“I went along to make sure he didn’t get into trouble,”
he said defensively.
“Oh, that’s right,” Frank said. “Antonio said Maria ordered him out of the house because he was making her nervous.”
Joe nodded gratefully. “That’s right. She’s been very nervous since the baby came. She . . . Mama says she’s tired.”
“Joe, I found out some disturbing news about you.”
He stiffened. “What?”
“It’s about those dance houses,” Frank said as if he re-gretted having to bring up the subject. “We found out that even though you’re a married man, you were the one who started taking Antonio to them in the first place.”
Joe rubbed his hand over his face. “I . . . Well, we couldn’t let him go alone, could we? He’s too young. He might get into trouble.”
“So your mama decided you should go with him?” Frank asked skeptically.
“Oh, no . . . I mean, it was my duty. I’m the oldest son.”
“You’re also the married son,” Frank reminded him.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for Lorenzo to go with him?”
Joe made a helpless gesture, as if he were trying to snatch the correct response out of the air. “Lorenzo doesn’t like to go to places like that,” he finally said.
“So you decided you’d do your duty to help your innocent little brother go out and meet girls who are no better than they should be and get him drunk and see how many of these girls he could poke.”
“No!” Joe protested, although Frank knew he had described the situation accurately.
“Are you saying that’s not what happened?”
“Antonio is just a boy,” Joe tried. “He . . . he wants to have a good time.”
/> “What about you, Joe? Do you want to have a good time, too?”
“I . . . I guess.”
“What does Maria think about that?”
Joe felt on firmer ground here. “She knows her place. She doesn’t tell me what to do.”
“So she didn’t mind when you went out to the dance houses by yourself, either,” Frank said.
“By myself?” he echoed, as if he didn’t know what Frank was talking about.
“Yeah, you remember. You used to go out to the dance houses long before Antonio decided he wanted to start going along. That’s where you met Nainsi, wasn’t it?”
“I . . . I never met Nainsi there,” he said, but even Gino could see he was lying. The color was seeping from his face and his eyes were starting to look a little desperate.
“That’s not what her friends told us,” Frank lied. “They said she was seeing you way back in the spring.”
“They didn’t know that,” Joe insisted.
Frank frowned thoughtfully. “Why not?”
“Because . . . because they couldn’t,” he replied lamely.
“Now let me get this straight. Are you saying they didn’t know that you were seeing her?”
“Yes . . . No . . . I mean, I wasn’t seeing her at all.” Joe was starting to sweat.
“But you were, Joe. Don’t lie to us. You were seeing her on the sly. You told her not to tell her friends, but she did.
She couldn’t help bragging about the rich Italian man she was going to marry.”
“But I’m not rich!” Joe pointed out.
“Nainsi thought you were. She also thought you were single, so when she turned up pregnant, she was sure you’d marry her.”
“You’re wrong!” Joe tried.
“About what, Joe? Are you telling me Nainsi knew you were married?”
“No!”
“So you lied to her.”
“No! I didn’t lie. I . . . I didn’t even know her,” he said, but with less conviction than before.
Frank slapped the table as he had with Lorenzo. Joe yelped in surprise.
“Stop lying, Joe. You’re making me angry. You knew Nainsi, didn’t you?”
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