Katie stared at Charlie, who was sleeping in his carriage. She had to admit the lieutenant made sense, yet she was somewhat irked by the fact that he let her do the legwork while he sat by idly.
“So,” he continued. “Who is she and what’s her story?”
Katie shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. “First you steal the note that I found—”
“Stole,” Riordan corrected.
“—and now this. Why should I tell you anything? You’ll just use it to put my sister in jail.”
“Is that what you think? This is an investigation, Mrs. Williams, not a frame-up.”
“Then you’re not trying to pin Finch’s murder on Rosie?”
“I’m trying to find the truth. If evidence bears out that your sister killed Finch and should go to jail, then ...”
“But that’s not how it happened. She didn’t do it!”
“Then the quicker I uncover the truth and find the real killer, the better. And you, Mrs. Williams, can help me do that.”
“By telling you about Lois,” Katie presumed.
“If that’s the name of the woman you were speaking to, then yes.”
“Oh, all right.” She recounted Lois’s tale, using words that were as close to the woman’s own as possible.
When she had finished, Riordan asked: “And this ‘Lois,’ did she have a last name?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“That’s not a problem. If she lives two doors down from the Finches it should be easy to find her. Now, is that all the information you have?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
Katie nodded her head in earnest. “I already told you about Simonetti and Mrs. Finch. That’s it.”
“Okay. What about your sister?”
“What about her?”
“Last I saw her, she was trying to get her job back at Pushey Shipyard.”
“Yes, what of it?”
“Well, given everything that happened, it struck me as odd that she’d even entertain the idea of going back there.”
“My sister insists that I stay home with Charlie, yet we need money, so I suppose she figured going back was the most logical thing to do.” Katie shrugged. “A paycheck is a paycheck, she always says.”
“Sometimes it is, but not always. Sometimes a paycheck is supplemented with other ... benefits.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“When I ran into your sister at the yard, I got the distinct impression that she had requested to be rehired in order to investigate Finch’s murder. That feeling was confirmed when I walked into the church and saw you.”
Katie looked away.
“She wouldn’t have sent you out sleuthing without doing some detective work herself. So,” Riordan continued, “what has she dug up?”
“I don’t think she’d want me to tell you.”
“Of course not. She doesn’t know if she should trust me, does she?”
“No.”
“But you do. You trust me now, don’t you?”
She looked up at Riordan, her blue eyes almost pleading. “I ... I think we need to trust someone.”
“My dear Mrs. Williams, I couldn’t agree with you more.” He reached beneath the back of his suit jacket and removed his wallet from his rear pants pocket. From there, he extracted two crisp dollar bills and handed them to Katie. “Here, go get yourself and Charlie some lunch.”
“That ... that’s very nice of you, but I couldn’t—”
“Yes, you can and you will. There’s a luncheonette around the corner that makes great chocolate malteds. Have a sandwich, a malted, head home, and don’t come back.”
“Don’t come back? But I need to investigate. Rosie needs my help!”
“And you have helped. Tremendously. You’ve uncovered two separate leads and three new suspects. Now that your work here is done, I think it’s time for you to put sleuthing aside and focus on taking care of that boy of yours. You’re the only parent he has left.”
“I know, but—”
“No buts. I don’t want you mingling with potential murderers any longer. I’m sure your sister feels the same way I do.”
“She didn’t even want me to go this far,” Katie acknowledged. “But what about Marie and Simonetti? And Lois? Who’s going to find out whether one of them killed Finch?”
“I will. Not only is it my job, but I’ll make it my personal promise to you. So long as you promise to stay home and keep safe. Deal?”
Katie nodded with a faint smile. “Deal.”
“Okay then, get going and enjoy your lunch. And if John’s behind the counter, tell him Riordan said not to skimp on the ice cream.”
“Will do.” She giggled as she swiveled the carriage so that it faced down Montague Street. “Oh, wait! You wanted to know what Rosie discovered.”
“I do, but I think I’d rather hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, so don’t expect her home for supper tonight.”
“You mean ... ?” Katie drew a hand to her mouth.
“No, I’m not taking her down to the station.” He laughed. “I’m going to talk to her, that’s all. And it’s not that I don’t trust you, either, but your sister might have, um ...”
“Sugarcoated things to protect me?”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah, she does that a lot. Come to think of it, most people do. I’m not sure why.”
It was Riordan’s turn to smile. As Katie pushed Charlie’s carriage past the church and turned toward the bumpy sidewalks of Clinton Street, he tipped his hat and uttered his usual, “Uh-huh.”
Chapter Eleven
Rosie stood on the scaffold of Pier Number One and, like the day before, dashed from planking edge to hull, catching rivets in her cone and then placing them in predrilled holes. Today, however, the process, although still exerting, seemed to require slightly less effort, most likely because she knew what to expect.
With Kilbride on the other side of the steel, humming a cheerful air as he lost himself in his riveting duties, Rosie decided to ask Dewitt for his perspective on Finch. Up until this moment, the two had only chatted about the job or the weather. Rosie hoped that posing some pointed questions didn’t cause the man to retreat into silence.
“You know, I haven’t seen Jackson since I’ve been back,” she prefaced as she loaded the first of three rivets into place. “What happened to her? Was she fired?”
Dewitt put the bucking bar over the rivet and held on tightly while Kilbride flattened the other side with a pop of his pneumatic gun. “Don’t think so. Would’ve heard ’bout it.”
Dewitt removed the bar, allowing Rosie to load the next rivet. “Maybe she’s sick. There are a few bugs going around, what with the weather being so changeable.”
He shook his head and bucked the second rivet. “She don’t have a phone, most folks workin’ here don’t, but she woulda sent her son to tell me ’bout it.”
“You? Oh, you live nearby?”
“Close ’nough. But she woulda told me cause that’s how it’s done round here. Mr. Finch didn’t want no Negroes sendin’ their friends and family to him sayin’ someone wasn’t showin’ up for work, so he made ’em report to me.”
She placed the third rivet in the predrilled hole and then went to fetch more. “You’re a foreman, then?” she asked upon her return, bending to place the first of the new set of rivets into a predrilled hole.
Dewitt laughed and applied the bucking bar. “A Negro foreman? No, ma’am. Ain’t such a thing. I just do their talkin’ for ’em.”
“Like a spokesperson? Hmm,” she mused and placed the second rivet. “So if Jackson had decided to quit her job, she’d tell you that, too.”
“Sure would. Don’t see how she could quit, though. Can’t afford it. Not with a boy to raise and no daddy around.”
“I didn’t know she was alone. No wonder she was in such a panic when Finch reassigned her from the hull of the ship.” Rosie
placed the third rivet and then retrieved more.
“Yup, her boy’s sick a lot, too.” Dewitt waited until she had returned from the scaffold’s edge to continue the conversation. “That kinda pay cut woulda hit her hard. Real hard.”
“Did she calm down any as the day went on?” She picked a rivet up with her tongs and placed it in the first of the next line of holes.
“Don’t know. Didn’t talk to her ’cept to say good night.” While Kilbride, on the other side of the hull, shouted for more pressure, Dewitt pushed hard against the bucking bar.
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“Not since the day you ...” He caught himself. “Not since the day Finch changed her assignment. I stopped by her house twice now, but no one answers the door.”
Rosie inserted the next rivet. “Is that normal for her?”
Dewitt shook his head and braced the bar with the full weight of his body. “Nope. Shelby—em, Miss Jackson—is always havin’ visitors in. She likes it when friends come round. Not like her at all to turn folks away.”
“Maybe she’s afraid to come back to the docks after what happened to Finch, but she’s too ashamed to admit it.” She reached her tongs into the cone for another rivet.
“No way she coulda known ’bout Finch that fast, ma’am. I didn’t know ’til I got here the next mornin’.”
She placed the rivet into the drilled hole. “Very strange. Are you sure she’s okay? I mean, have you seen her son to ask about her?”
“Haven’t seen either of them.” He bucked the bar against the red-hot metal. “Jackson since that evenin’, like I said, and her son the day before.”
Rosie scuttled across the planks and caught the next batch of rivets; this time she returned to the hull with four glowing fasteners instead of the customary three. “Aren’t you worried? You said this isn’t like her. Maybe you should call the police.”
“Police ain’t gonna care about some missing Negro woman.”
Rosie pushed the rivet into the predrilled hole, this time more forcefully. “And you?”
“I’m worried. I’m plenty worried,” he confessed and pushed the bucking bar with all his might.
“Take me by there tonight,” she suggested.
“Huh? No. Oh no, ma’am. I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not? Because I’m white?”
“Well, that for a start. But ... really, Mrs. Keefe. You don’t want to be getting yourself involved in this. You’d best look out for yourself.”
“I am. That’s why I want to go to Shelby’s place after work tonight.”
“I dunno ...”
“Please?” she said, her eyes wide and beseeching.
“All right, I’ll take you. But if she doesn’t open the door—”
“I’ll walk away without a word,” Rosie promised. With that, Kilbride rose above the top of the hull. “No words, my dear? Why, that’s the best bargain I’ve heard all day. The past half hour, all it’s been is yap, yap, yap.”
Rosie and Dewitt both stood upright.
“We’ve still kept pace, haven’t we?” Rosie challenged.
“You have. But your attention should be on the metal and not some darkie who’s abandoned her job.”
“What does it matter, so long as we get our work done?”
“It matters a great deal, Rosaleen. When you stop thinking about what you’re doing, my dear, and start nosing about in things that don’t concern you, people are apt to get hurt.”
Rosie narrowed her eyes. Something in the Irishman’s tone made the statement sound more like a warning. Before she could reply, the noon whistle sounded and Kilbride, without further eye contact, dismounted from his hanging bench, shoved past Rosie, and climbed down the scaffold to the yard below.
With a hangdog expression, a silent Dewitt followed Kilbride to ground level and made his way to the outdoor toilet reserved for Negroes. Rosie, meanwhile, grabbed her lunch pail from the end of the plank and made her way to the back of the bomb shelter.
There, she found her female coworkers occupying similar locations as the day before.
“Hey, Rosie,” Nelson greeted as she leaned against the brick wall of the shelter, puffing on a cigarette. “How are you making out in the gang of ghouls?”
“Oh, fine, I guess.” She plunked her lunch pail onto the asphalt. “How are you ladies doing?”
“It’s only just gotten warm and my feet are already burning,” Scarlatti stated as she stripped off her boots and socks. “It’s going to be a loooong summer.”
“Your feet aren’t the worst part of it. I can’t imagine how hot those scaffolds are gonna be. The sun reflecting off that metal and no shade?” Mildred Mason whistled as she unwrapped her sandwich. “I’m telling you, brother!”
“My! I didn’t even think of that.” Scarlatti rubbed her feet feverishly. “And down in that hull? With no air to be had ... oh, that will be awful.”
Wolfe, meanwhile, stood against the bomb shelter wall and stared into the distance.
“Say,” Mildred ventured. “What’s with you?”
“Huh?” The blonde was startled from her reverie.
“I said, what’s eating you?”
“I ... well, I was thinking. Since Nelson came clean yesterday, I want to come clean, too.”
“Come clean?” Nelson questioned.
“Yeah, about Finch. About what ... what he did to you.”
The brunette let her cigarette fall from between her lips. “You mean he did the same thing to you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he did. Only ... only I gave in.”
“Of course you did,” Mason quipped.
“It’s not funny, Mildred.”
“She’s right,” Nelson agreed. “It’s not funny. Go on, Jeannie.”
“Well ... he—I mean, Finch—called me into his office one day and made me an offer.” Wolfe suddenly fell silent.
“What kind of offer?” Rosie prompted.
“If I ...” She drew a deep breath. “If I performed certain favors, I’d get a promotion.”
Mason clicked her tongue.
“I don’t need your comments or your condemnation, Mildred! I’ve been working on a riveting gang four months now. I’m capable of doing a lot more than catching molten metal in a bucket, or welding in cramped, dark quarters where no grown man can fit, or sweeping up the garbage that they leave behind. We all are.”
The four other women in the group looked off in the distance and nodded silently.
“And no, I’m not proud of it, but I have slept with bosses before. Sometimes to get ahead. Other times so that I wouldn’t be lonely for a night.” She gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “The thing is, the bosses I’ve slept with in the past were ... different. They were courteous, gentle.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Wolfe continued. “It was still a business transaction. And they made sure you knew it. But at least, between the steak dinner, the private car, and the room at the Ritz, you could imagine it was something more. And at the end of the night, when the car would drop you off at your apartment alone, you knew that the very next morning you’d receive what had been promised to you.”
“But not with Finch,” Rosie ventured.
“No.” Jeannie bit her upper lip. “Not with Finch. The moment I said yes, that was it. The next thing I knew, I was pinned on his desk and he was ...”
Mildred, who hadn’t taken a bite of her sandwich since Wolfe’s story had started, was instantly on her feet. “Oh, Jeannie,” she exclaimed as she placed a comforting arm around her friend. “I’m so sorry, sweetie, for saying what I did.”
Wolfe embraced her and began to sob. “No ... no ... I don’t blame you. I didn’t argue with Finch, either. I know full well what I am. He did, too.”
“Yeah, so, you’re easy. That’s still no reason for Finch to—” Nelson shivered slightly. “To do what he did.”
The group fell silent, during which time Mason quieted Wolfe and Rosie consoled Nelson with a thermos
of water and a steady hand on her shoulder
Two minutes elapsed before Scarlatti broke the silence. “I’m confused.”
It was just the mood breaker needed. The quartet immediately broke into raucous laughter.
“God love ya, bug,” Mason exclaimed between giggles.
“Bug?”
“Yeah, cute, small, and very annoying.”
Scarlatti pulled a pout.
“Oh, come on now, that was a compliment,” Mason cajoled. “Go on and tell us why you’re so confused.”
Helen Scarlatti sighed. “I’m confused because Jeannie said Finch offered her a promotion, but all the riveters are men and none of them have been fired recently. So, whose job were you going to get?”
Wolfe, her eyes red from crying, looked blankly at Scarlatti and replied: “Yours, dear. Yours.”
Having spent the remainder of the lunch break in awkward silence, Keefe broke away from the company of Nelson, Scarlatti, Mason, and Wolfe and climbed the scaffold to complete the remainder of the day’s work.
When she reached the platform, Kilbride was waiting for her. “Have a nice lunch?”
“Yes, I did. Thank you. I hope you did as well.” She hastened to the end of the platform to deposit her lunch pail, but before she get far, Kilbride grabbed her by the wrist. “And just where do think you’re going, missy?”
“Setting my pail down and getting back to work. Isn’t that what you want, Kilbride? Production is the name of the game.”
“That’s not all I want, Rosaleen,” he leered.
“You’re drunk,” she declared. “And where’s Dewitt?”
“I told him to take another ten minutes while I spoke with you ... in private.”
“Go ahead and talk,” she stated coolly. Internally, however, all she could think about was the repulsive feeling of Finch’s hands upon her.
“Well, now, aren’t you the bold one?”
“My husband has taught me a great many things,” she replied, all the while fighting the urge to scream. “None of them more important than the fact that reason and politeness don’t work with drunkards. So, what is it you want?”
“First, I’ll thank you very much to put down that lunch bucket.”
Don't Die Under the Apple Tree Page 11
