“Listen, even if you had managed to keep your cool, I don’t think it would have made a single bit of difference. Should you have thrown rivets back at Hansen? Maybe not. But if you hadn’t stuck up for yourself, the next batch of rivets he threw at you could have gotten you right in the face or, worse, caused you to fall off that scaffold. No, lamb, the problem isn’t with you, it’s with them.”
“As much as I agree with your sentiments,” Rosie said, “part of me thinks I should have tried to tough it out a little longer, especially knowing what that shipyard paycheck would mean to our bank account.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be entirely on your shoulders,” Katie declared. “In fact, from this point on, I’m going to do my share.”
“Katie,” Rosie admonished, “we already discussed this and we both agreed that your most important job right now is taking care of Charlie.”
“And I will take care of him. I’ll just have some help doing it.”
“We can’t afford to pay someone to watch him,” Rosie pointed out. “Besides, he’s just a baby. I don’t like the idea of some stranger helping to raise him.”
“It wouldn’t be a stranger. Ma would watch him.”
“Ma isn’t going to take the train from Greenpoint and back everyday.”
“No, you’re right, she wouldn’t want to do that ... but ... um ... well ... what if she didn’t have to?” Katie suggested.
Rosie’s eyes grew wide. “Oh no, Katie, you only just got here and I like having you around. Please say you’re not moving back with Ma!”
“Okay, I’m not moving back with Ma,” Katie reassured.
“Good. That’s better.”
“All three of us are.”
“What?” Rosie put her bowl of soup on the coffee table and threw her head against the back of the sofa.
“Come on, Rosie,” Katie coaxed. “Just think about it. Ma has that great big house sitting empty. We could each have our own room—that means no more sleeping on the sofa for you.”
Rosie closed her eyes and sighed.
“And,” Katie continued, “Ma’s house is paid for. If she continues to take in mending, I get a part-time job, and you get a job at another shipyard—”
“I don’t know if I can,” Rosie interrupted. “Finch has probably bad-mouthed me to every other yard in Brooklyn.”
“Then you check the yards here in Manhattan. Or the airplane factories in Queens,” Katie said resolutely. “The point is, if the three of us pool our money, we’d have more than enough to make ends meet.”
“You’re overlooking two very important things: First, Ma drives me crazy.”
“Ma drives me crazy, too.” Katie shrugged. “She drives everyone crazy. But she loves us and means well. Besides, there’s strength in numbers; so long as you and I stick together Ma doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Second,” Rosie went on, “I’m a married woman. I can’t just call my landlord and move out.”
“Why can’t you? Billy packed up his stuff and went off to war without giving you a second thought.” Katie added under her breath, “If, in fact, he’s even at war.”
Rosie sighed noisily. Everything Katie said about Billy made perfect sense, but it still didn’t make it any easier for her to let go. “It seems strange, taking off and not telling him.”
“Leave a forwarding address. If and when Billy ever sees fit to write you, you can tell him then. If he makes a big stink about it, tell him you would have said something sooner but you had no way of getting in touch with him.”
“You’re right,” Rosie relented. “It’s silly to stay here in this tiny apartment struggling until Billy comes home or sends along a paycheck. Moving to Greenpoint would give us more room and more money, and it’d be healthier for Charlie in the long run, what with that big backyard. Still, it’s a big decision, Katie, and today has been ... Just do me a favor and let me sleep on it before you say anything to Ma.”
Katie’s face flushed bright scarlet.
“Oh no.” Rosie bolted upright. “Katie? What did you do?”
“Hmm?” The blond sister feigned innocence.
“You already called Ma, didn’t you?”
“Nooo,” she sang. “Ma called me. Delaney flapped his gums to his mother about you being fired and Mrs. Delaney called Ma, who, in turn, called me.”
“So this was all Ma’s idea?”
“Nooo,” Katie sang again. “Well, maybe some of it. The rest was mine, though. But no matter who thought of it, I still think it’s a good idea.”
“And maybe it is,” Rosie admitted. “But you know how Ma gets when she’s excited. And nothing could be more exciting to her than the thought of both of us and her only grandchild moving back home.”
There was a loud knock on the apartment door. “Good grief! That’s probably her now.”
“It’s too late for Ma.” Katie dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand.
“Are you kidding? She’d come here in the middle of the night, strap the furniture to her back, and walk it to Brooklyn, if she thought it would get us there faster.” Rosie got up and opened the door just wide enough to poke her head through and just narrow enough to obscure Katie’s view. She gave a wink to the tall man on the other side of the door and put a finger to her lips in order to ensure he didn’t give the game away. “Oh, hi, Ma. We were just talking about you.”
“Stop it! I know it’s not Ma,” Katie shouted from the sofa.
Meanwhile the tall man in the gray tweed overcoat and gray fedora narrowed his blue eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’m sorry,” Rosie quickly apologized. “I was playing a joke on my sister.”
It was a bit late in the evening for vacuum salesmen, but then again, this man, with medium brown hair that was slightly gray at the temples, finely chiseled features, and a five-o’clock shadow that was four hours past due, didn’t look like the type who sold household appliances. “May I help you?” she asked.
“Rose Keefe?”
“Yes.”
The man extracted a badge from the top pocket of his overcoat. “Lieutenant Jack Riordan, NYPD. You’re wanted for questioning in the murder of Robert Finch.”
Chapter Three
Lieutenant Jack Riordan sat in the austere, gray interrogation room and stared across the white enamel tabletop at his suspect. The practice of silently studying individuals prior to questioning them was a process Riordan had learned as a young cadet, and it had served him well in his twenty-five years with the police department.
The purpose behind the exercise was twofold. First, the period of extended silence tended to catch wary suspects off guard, thus setting them off balance and making them far likelier to trip up during questioning. Second, by quietly watching a subject, Riordan often observed body language that might suggest that a person was guilty: lack of eye contact, a lowered head, or fidgeting. If these signals occurred more frequently during the questioning process, it was a clear indication that Riordan was on the right track.
Rose Doyle Keefe, however, demonstrated none of Riordan’s “tells.” Having changed from her chenille bathrobe and pajamas into a long-sleeved printed gray rayon dress that hugged her narrow waist perfectly, she sat, legs uncrossed, feet together, hands resting openly on the table in front of her. Her peaches-and-cream complexion remained constant and her wide hazel eyes boldly met his unflinching gaze.
Riordan endeavored to continue the exercise a few moments longer, but it was he, not Rosie, who was struck by the overwhelming urge to look away. As a clean-shaven young man came into the room, Riordan cleared his throat awkwardly. “Mrs. Keefe, this is Detective Lynch. He’ll be taking notes on our conversation.”
Rosie murmured a quiet “hello” to the detective, then returned her eyes to Riordan’s.
“Please be advised, Mrs. Keefe,” the lieutenant continued, “that if, at any time, you wish to stop the questioning and contact an attorney, you have the right to do so.”
Rosie nodded.
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br /> “Do you know why you’re here, Mrs. Keefe?” Riordan asked.
“Yes. Mr. Finch is dead.”
“Not just dead—murdered. At approximately five o’clock this evening, his body was discovered beneath an abandoned pier a short distance from the Pushey Shipyard. His skull was bashed in.”
The color drained from Rose’s face—an indication of surprise, not guilt. “I didn’t do it,” she averred.
“No one is suggesting you did, Mrs. Keefe, but excuse me if it doesn’t seem to be outside the realm of possibility. We know what happened at the shipyard this morning. After he caught you assaulting a coworker with hot rivets, Finch called you into his office and fired you. Witnesses say he was bleeding after you left.”
“That was just so I could get out of there! I never—!”
“No one’s saying you do this sort of thing all the time, Mrs. Keefe. Finch assaulted you and you snapped. It’s a very natural reaction. So, here’s how I imagined it happened: you became angry and lashed out. You hit him on the side of the head with the heaviest object you could find ... a telephone, for instance. But then you quickly realized that you couldn’t kill him then and there—too many people around. So you came back at the end of the shift, lured Finch beneath the pier, and finished the job.”
Rosie felt her face grow hot. “Why do you need me here, then? It’s obvious you have the whole thing figured out.”
“Because we need to hear it from you.”
“You want me to tell you what happened? Fine. I’ll tell you what happened. First, I didn’t assault anyone—Hansen threw the hot rivets at me first. I simply retaliated. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the holes burned into my coat sleeves.” She lifted her coat from the back of her chair and held the sleeves aloft. As promised, the cuffs were singed with holes.
“Second”—she resumed as she replaced the coat—“I didn’t lose my temper when Finch fired me. On the contrary, I begged for a second chance. Finch used my desperation as an opportunity to force his attentions on me. I hit him on the head—with a stapler, not a telephone—as a means to escape.”
“Why didn’t you scream?” Riordan countered.
“I don’t know,” Rosie stated blankly. “I honestly don’t know. Perhaps I didn’t think I’d be heard or, given the welcome I had received, I didn’t think anyone would care.”
“Where did you go after that?”
“I ran from Finch’s office and bumped into a friend of mine, Michael Delaney, on my way out of the shipyard.”
“Did you tell this friend what had happened?”
“No, but he knew something was wrong.”
“And after leaving the shipyard, what did you do?”
“I sat by the water. Wandered around town. Rode the train for hours.”
“What time did you get home?”
“Thirty, maybe forty minutes before you showed up.”
“Did you speak to anyone or run into anyone you knew during this time?”
Rosie shook her head. “No one other than my sister. She was waiting for me when I got back home.”
Riordan sat back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
“It looks awfully black against me,” she acknowledged.
“You have to admit you had the means, and Finch’s advances give you an even stronger motive than we previously thought.”
Rosie’s eyes grew steely. “A stronger motive? Lieutenant Riordan, if I lured every man who’s yelled at me, made a pass at me, or otherwise treated me badly, down to the docks and murdered them, you’d be able to walk across Gowanus Bay on the bodies.”
Riordan leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. “Has life been as bad as that?”
“It’s had its moments—most of them today,” she replied with a sardonic grin. “I suppose you’re going to keep me here, being the main suspect and all.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary. The detective here will give you a ride home. Just promise me you’ll stay put. No wandering to Jersey, huh?”
With an earnest nod of the head, Rosie stood up and donned her coat.
“Oh, and another thing.” Riordan’s face softened. “Next time you need to hit someone with a piece of office equipment, use a telephone. It will knock him out instead of just making him angry.”
Rosie cast Riordan a puzzled glance before leaving with Detective Lynch.
Riordan sank back in his chair and, once again, placed his hands behind his head. To the casual passerby, it was a stance of confidence, perhaps even arrogance, but for Jack Riordan, it was a means of dealing with frustration.
The door of the interrogation room swung open.
“Good evening, Captain,” Riordan greeted without looking up.
Short, stocky, and with a ruddy complexion, Captain Richard Kinney always appeared to be one step away from an apoplectic fit. Tonight, however, he seemed to be in its very throes. “Was that the Keefe woman I just saw leaving?”
“It was,” Riordan confirmed.
Kinney ran a hand through his thinning hair and inhaled deeply. “Why? Why did you let her go?”
“Because she didn’t do it.”
“Oh?” Kinney broke into laughter. “So she swivels her hips and lets a tear run down that pretty white face of hers and suddenly she’s a saint.”
“She’s not a saint.” Riordan smiled, all the while staring at the chair Rosie had occupied. “But she’s far from being a murderer.”
“Says who? Need I remind you that this precinct is still facing public ridicule for your public crusade against Frank Costello?”
“You needn’t remind me. The people you need to remind are the citizens and politicians of this city. Just because Costello has more manners than his predecessor, Lucky Luciano, it doesn’t mean he’s any less dangerous. If anything, his nice-guy image makes him even more powerful. But of course, that’s exactly why my crusade is so unpopular, isn’t it? Because it ruffles the feathers of those he has in his pocket.”
“Quit it, Jack. This has nothing to do with the Mafia, and you know it. The Pushey family—as in the owners of Pushey Shipyard—contacted me as soon as they heard about Finch’s murder. They want this thing wrapped up, quickly and quietly, before their name gets dragged through the papers.”
Riordan withdrew a cigarette from the inside pocket of his jacket, lit it, and took a long drag. “Five days. Considering the press has, or should have, lots of other news to report, it’s not unreasonable.”
Kinney was nonplussed. “Five days? For what?”
Riordan snuffed his cigarette and rose from his seat. “Five days to follow Keefe and to investigate the case,” he stated as he stared down at his captain. “At the end of five days, if I don’t have an arrest that will survive a jury, you can have my badge.”
“I don’t want your badge, Riordan. You’re the best I have.”
“Then don’t hold the Costello case over my head. Had you given me the time I requested, we could have gotten Costello and his henchmen, but you and your friends couldn’t wait and the charges bounced.” Riordan shook his head. “I won’t be rushed on this one. I won’t send an innocent woman to the gallows just because you and your friends are ‘antsy.’”
“No, five days sounds ... fair, Riordan” Kinney said. “Unless ...”
Riordan raised an eyebrow in warning. “No stipulations.” With that, he strode out of the interrogation room.
Chapter Four
Rosie shut the door of the squad car and watched as it drove away before ascending the wooden brownstone stairs to the second floor. As she had done earlier that night, Katie stood on the other side of the apartment door, awaiting her sister’s arrival. Only this time, Rosie didn’t feel like chatting.
“There you are!” Katie exclaimed. “What happened? Why did they need to speak to you?”
“Finch was murdered,” she replied as she hung her coat on the row of hooks attached to the back of the apartment door.
“I know.
I heard Lieutenant what’s-his-name. But how? When?”
“Sometime this afternoon. They found him under the docks.” Rosie, not wanting to worry her sister, lied about the means of death. “He was stabbed.”
“Oh! And you argued with him today—oh! They don’t think you did it, do they?”
“No,” she lied. “They know I wouldn’t have used a knife. They had to question me because I had a motive, but it’s okay. Lieutenant Riordan assured me that it would be fine.” Rosie pulled the lieutenant’s business card from the pocket of her dress and glanced at it. Even in the most serene of moments, she was terrible at remembering names, but for some reason the lieutenant’s rolled off her tongue with ease.
“Are you sure? I mean, having a cop come to your door—”
“I’m positive.” She embraced Katie tightly. Rosie’s need to protect her younger sister had only gotten stronger since Jimmy’s death. “It’s almost midnight. You should get some sleep. Charlie will be awake before you know it.”
Katie relinquished her hold on Rosie’s waist and emitted a loud yawn. “It has been a heck of a day, hasn’t it?”
“It has,” Rosie agreed with a vague smile. “And tomorrow’s going to be just as difficult once you tell Ma that we’re moving back home.”
Katie’s lovely face stretched into a wide grin. “You’ve decided, then?”
Rosie nodded slowly. If she was going to go to jail, she wanted to make sure that Katie and Charlie were settled in and cared for. “Yes. I’ll give the landlord notice and try to sell off some of this stuff before I leave, but you and Charlie should go as soon as you can.”
“Oh no. We should move together. I can stay and help you pack and—”
“Don’t be silly, Katie. We can barely move in this place as it is. It will be a lot easier for me to pack with your stuff over at Ma’s. Besides, the weather’s getting nicer. Charlie should be out in the fresh air instead of breathing in the city dust and dirt.”
“I guess ... but what about you? Will you be okay here on your own? I feel like I should be helping.”
“You will be helping. Once Ma knows for sure we’re all moving in, she’ll be breathing down our necks nonstop until every stick of furniture is back in Greenpoint. But if you and Charlie move first, you can keep her occupied while I tie up loose ends here.”
Don't Die Under the Apple Tree Page 3
