by Liz Freeland
“Mm . . . and this apartment is revolting,” I agreed, distracted. Muldoon was in my head again—insinuating that Callie might have had something to do with that stolen money.
“Dora and Abel will be here soon,” Callie reminded me. “For the funeral. I can’t let them see that mess up there.”
The task of cleaning up our place had been hanging over our heads all weekend. Neither one of us had wanted to face it.
“Where did you find the money for a new bed?” I asked.
“I sold the bracelet Sawyer gave me.” Before I could say anything, her eyes flashed as if I’d accused her of something—and not the thing that had actually been plaguing my thoughts. “He wouldn’t take back the jewelry. What else could I do? I didn’t want to keep it, so I sold it.” A little red appeared in her cheeks. “All but my brooch.”
The brooch, an amber butterfly with diamond eyes, was her favorite.
I breathed out, expelling the last of my suspicions. Of course she hadn’t used Ethel’s money. How could she? She’d never had it. “I understand.”
Even though I’d been living through them right alongside Callie, I kept forgetting how awful these days were for her. And here was I, her best friend, letting people who didn’t know her plant doubts in my head. I gave her a hug, and I thought she might break down. But she stepped back and straightened.
“That miser at the jewelry store only gave me eleven dollars for the bracelet.”
She’d been swindled, of course. That was how those places operated. I doubted Callie had been in a bargaining mood.
“The man said they’ll deliver the mattress tomorrow morning,” she said.
So she’d have that to tend to, plus funeral arrangements to manage, and Dora and Abel’s arrival to prepare for. It didn’t seem fair for her to be trapped doing all the grim tasks. “After supper I’ll go upstairs and clean a little,” I said. “I haven’t stepped foot in that room since . . .”
She worried a nail. “Neither have I, except to gather some of my clothes that first night.”
Later, a mournful Lucia came to fetch the children. Max hadn’t wanted the little ones exposed to what had happened, and Callie and I had both tried to avoid any mention of jail around them. But Lucia exhibited no such worry. Luckily, the children had fallen asleep on the pallets on the floor after their meal.
Dressed all in black, Lucia sank onto one of the wobbly chairs and buried her head in her hands. “What I will do?” she wailed.
I had no answer. With Max gone, even his meager income wouldn’t be available to her. I doubted the family had any savings. “Does Max have any paintings you could sell?” Callie asked. “I mean, besides the ones . . .”
Tears streamed down Lucia’s face. “I don’t think so. There’s not hope. Nessuna speranza. Nessuna speranza.”
We bucked her up the best we knew how, giving her the last of the bread and soup and mouthing optimistic platitudes to counter her nessuna speranzas. I doubted she believed us, but as she mopped up the last of the soup with her bread, her tears had dried, or maybe she’d just finally run out of them. She frowned at the bowl. “Your soup is not so good.”
Callie nodded. “I made it.”
“How you burn soup?” Lucia asked. “Is mostly water.”
“Oh, we burn everything,” I said cheerfully.
We helped her carry the little ones up to the fourth floor. Lucia thanked us. “Soon I will not bother you no more.”
“You don’t bother us,” I assured her.
Callie hugged her. “Come down anytime you need to talk. Or if the children need minding.”
When she added that last, I knew she must have been as alarmed as I was by Lucia’s ominous words. Soon I will not bother you no more. What was she planning?
Both worried, we went down to our own apartment. I set Callie to dusting the parlor while I filled a bucket with soapy water and tackled the dreaded bedroom. Three days—three warm summer days—had not improved the room’s condition. Nor had time dulled the shock of seeing that dried, rust-colored stain blooming across the bedclothes. I stripped the linens, which had dried stiff, bundled them, and then doubled the mattress over so I wouldn’t have to stare at the equally large stain on it. Hopefully the delivery-men could be convinced to haul it away tomorrow when they brought the new mattress.
As for the sheets, there wasn’t enough bleach in all of Manhattan to clean those stains. And would we really want to use them again? I bundled them for the incinerator. Maybe Aunt Irene had an old set of bedding she could spare. If not, I would simply have to buy some new.
I surveyed the floor for other items in need of cleaning. The night of the murder I’d been appalled at the state of the room. When we’d found Ethel, clothes had been lying on the floor, along with her stockings and a pair of blood-spattered gloves. Some of the clothes were still there—moved by the police, I assumed, who’d dropped them on the stool in front of Callie’s bureau, which was now dominated by Queen of Sheba cold cream. I went through the clothes. Everything I remembered was there except for the gloves.
Curious, I rummaged through the bureau’s drawers. Although Callie had several pairs of gloves—at least one without a match—I couldn’t find the ones I was looking for. Probably the police had taken them as evidence.
I spent the next hour cleaning everything I could—every surface got wiped down with soapy water, bloodstained or not. But blood seemed to be everywhere. I discovered drips on the floor, the woodwork, the wallpaper. It all got scrubbed. When I was done, I emptied my pail, refilled it, and went over the room once more. When I emerged from the room the second time, Callie was asleep on the sofa. I woke her up and we returned downstairs, unpinned our hair, changed into nightgowns, and prepared the beds. It was Callie’s turn for the real bed, so I took one of the lumpy mattresses on the floor.
Ford’s envelope lay nearby where I’d dropped it when I came in. A hazy memory of wanting to spend the evening reading came back to me, but I was too bushed to keep my eyes open. One Ford Fitzsimmons work per day was enough. I turned over the envelope and saw a note he’d scrawled to me.
Louise—I hope you meant what you said this evening.
“Night, Louise,” Callie called out, snapping off the light.
“Good night.” I was smiling. Even the prospect of a stiff back in the morning didn’t put me out of humor now. I didn’t entirely trust Ford’s flirtation, but the memory of his blue eyes buoyed me, and I settled onto my thin pallet as if I were sinking into half a foot of goose down. I went over our conversation at his apartment again, word by word, gesture by gesture, glance by glance. I could almost feel his lips on my cheek.
I hope you meant what you said . . .
My eyes popped open. I sat up, knees to my chest, frowning. A moment later I was kneeling by the window, examining the handwriting on the envelope in the scant light coming through the dirty panes. Louise—I hope you meant what you said this evening.
Ford hadn’t written anything on that envelope while I was with him this evening, and he hadn’t been out of my sight the whole time I was in his room. And of course he’d had no way of knowing in advance that I’d visit him. Which meant that the note had been scrawled on the previous evening we’d met. The night of Ethel’s murder.
My hands shook, and I put the envelope down. My stomach gnawed, reminding me that I’d skipped dinner. There was no more food, but food would have just made me queasier anyway. I wasn’t sick to my stomach. I was sick at heart.
But why should I be? This was what I’d suspected all along. Wally hadn’t seen Otto on the stairs the night of the murder—he’d seen Ford. Ford had been carrying that manila envelope with its message to me. I could imagine it all clearly. He’d left Aunt Irene’s, gone home, dug up his story, and then, deciding to strike while the iron was hot, walked the several blocks to leave it at my door. But then . . . what had happened? Had he happened upon the murder scene . . . or was he the murderer?
The contempt with which
he’d stared at Callie last Thursday night chilled my blood now. Could Ford have killed Ethel?
It didn’t take much for my ghoulish imagination to gallop away with me. I gulped in a deep breath and thought again, more logically. Contempt wasn’t murderous rage. And he’d taken a long look at Callie at the party. He wouldn’t have confused her with Ethel . . . if Ethel had come to the door. Especially since he would have assumed that Callie and I were still at Aunt Irene’s. He’d probably written the note on the envelope before he’d left his flat, knowing I wouldn’t be in.
And what about the money? He certainly didn’t live like a man who’d just stolen a bundle. Besides, he wouldn’t have known to look for it, and wouldn’t have reason to suspect that there was money hidden to begin with. The apartment hadn’t been ransacked. So unless he tormented Ethel with that knife until she handed over anything she had of value . . .
That was another thing—the envelope had no bloodstains on it. If Ford had killed Ethel and then left with the envelope, chances were it would have a bloody mark on it somewhere. He clearly hadn’t been the one to knife Ethel. So what had happened?
All I knew for certain was that Ford hadn’t left the envelope at the flat. Ethel must not have come to the door. If she had, he probably would have handed her the envelope and gone on his way. Most likely, she was already dead, and he’d given up when his knock wasn’t answered. And so he’d walked away, and when he saw the news the next morning, he’d decided not to mention the incident.
It made sense that he didn’t want to place himself at the murder scene. I remembered his neighbor, Mug, the one with whom he’d spent an evening in jail. Like Max, Ford had apparently had run-ins with the police. And look how Max had ended up, beaten and bloodied.
For a long time, I lay on my pallet flat on my back, gravity pulling my spine into the floorboards. It was amazing what a difference the lack of a bedstead made. I blinked at the ceiling, unable to shake the sinister sensation of being tugged down, down. It’s all in your mind, I assured myself. I only hoped that my fears about Ford were unreal, as well.
CHAPTER 9
The next day, Ethel’s murder was blasted off the front page by a grain elevator explosion in Buffalo that killed sixteen and sent sixty men to the hospital “burned and blackened.” The dramatic stories of those poor men filled column after column. The journalists have a new tragedy to chase, I thought, and yet I was as drawn in by the Buffalo drama as anyone else. Every newspaper featured acts of heroism—from the firemen, policemen, and also fellow workers, many of whom were suffering from burns and injuries themselves but pitched in to help rush their friends to safety.
The preoccupation with the Buffalo story provided me with a distraction from the dilemma of Ford’s envelope, which I’d slipped into my satchel. I debated whether to show it to Muldoon. I knew I should. Ford had been Wally’s man on the stairs, I was ninety-nine percent certain of that now. Though Muldoon had warned me not to play detective, even he would admit I’d uncovered a vital clue about the events of the night of Ethel’s murder.
But what would he do with that clue? The specter of Max’s face never left me—the purple flesh and the matted blood. I would hate to see Ford’s face end up a ruin. I believed he was guilty of Ethel’s murder even less than I believed Max was. And it wasn’t just naïveté or starry-eyed admiration that convinced me of his innocence. It was the envelope. Closer inspection by daylight had verified that the envelope had not a drop of blood on it. Except for the scribbled note to me, it was clean as a whistle.
Ford hadn’t killed Ethel. Perhaps he’d seen something, but if he had, wouldn’t he have spoken up? He wasn’t a monster. My guess was he’d gone to the apartment, knocked, and found no one home. So he’d left. End of story. Just because Wally had seen him didn’t mean Ford witnessed anything. One thing was certain, however. If I convinced Muldoon of the envelope’s significance, the police would descend on Ford’s flat like flies on horse flop. How long would it take them to discover he had a police record, like Max?
Ford’s hurt look on Saturday morning when he realized I’d suspected him of murder haunted me. He’d forgiven me that. I doubted he’d forgive me if I sent the police after him. I needed to speak to him first. I resolved to do just that after work.
Having settled on that course, I fidgeted through the rest of the day, watching the clock, barely able to concentrate on whatever I was doing. It took me nearly half an hour to type a letter to an old man who had resubmitted his autobiography, Fifty Years a Barber, this time with a revised and expanded section covering his childhood. Later, Mr. McChesney dictated a few peevish letters to suppliers about costs. When I stood to leave, he waylaid me.
“How are you, Louise?”
“Just fine, sir.” I should have asked how he was. His eyes had bags beneath them like a bloodhound’s.
“When will the funeral be?”
“Thursday, we hope.”
His lips turned down. “You must take the whole day.”
“Thank you.”
His face sank into a deeper frown. “Don’t let yourself get run down with worries, that’s the important thing. I envy you young ladies sometimes—you don’t have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Enjoy youth and the bloom of health.”
Did he not realize that my roommate had been murdered in my apartment, and that the police were looking at practically everyone I knew, and that my childhood friend had fallen under suspicion? I was fairly certain he did. He still had dinner or at least tea with Aunt Irene once a week, and she wasn’t exactly close-lipped when it came to gossip. “Just this week, it’s hard to believe I’m in the bloom of anything,” I said.
“Well, don’t brood,” he counseled. “Once you start brooding about life, you’re closing the blinds against fresh air and sunshine.”
He wasn’t a man who took his own advice, evidently.
“Has Guy come in today?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Worthless young ne’er-do-well.” He drummed his fingers. “How many days does that make?”
“Twenty-six.”
He raised a brow. “Did you wager anything?”
I shook my head. “I’m not a gambler.”
He sagged. “Me neither, more’s the pity. Probably was my best chance to come out ahead this month.”
I left him with his mental blinds closed against the sunshine and quickly typed up the letters so I could get them in the last post.
That evening as I entered Ford’s building, I was almost knocked over by two miniature tough guys barreling down the stairs, screaming like Rough Riders storming San Juan Hill. I recognized one of them as the boy with the matches. I called out a greeting, but he banged out the front door without answering.
Nearby, an eye peeked out at me through a partially opened door. Squinting, I stared back, and the door slammed shut. I continued my climb up the protesting stairs to the top floor. A child’s wails echoed down the stairwell, and on the third floor a door stood open, revealing a woman inside an unkempt room, slumped in a chair over her nursing baby. I glanced away and hurried up to the next floor. A series of squeaks and moanings coming from Mug’s apartment made me move quickly to Ford’s and knock. Perspiration trickled down my back, and I fanned my hand in front of my face in the vain hope of stirring the hot, stinky air.
When there was no answer, I knocked again. No sound came from within, but the carnal noises next door grew louder and more vigorous. I could hear a woman crying now, and Mug’s grunts. Tasting bile in my throat, I gave up waiting and fled down the stairs.
“Some likes it rough,” the nursing woman said to me as I flew past.
I didn’t stop until I was a full block down from the apartment house; then I leaned against the side of a building, sucking in deep breaths. What was the matter with me? A year had gone by. A year, yet it still took only a few overheard grunts to send me reeling back to the worst moment of my life.
I gathered my breath again, stood stra
ighter, and hiked my satchel more firmly on my shoulder. The sidewalk jostled with people on their way home from work. A couple of young boys with pails whizzed past me toward the corner tavern, rushing the growler for their father’s supper. Another boy, alone, played a solitary game of kick the can. Nearby, an organ grinder churned out a tinny version of “The Sidewalks of New York,” while a tiny monkey in a fez begged passersby for tips. It was impossible not to smile.
Even in my lowest moments, I gathered perverse comfort in New York’s chaos and bustle—the immigrants fresh from who-knows-where, the fresh kids who’d only stepped off the train from Iowa or Oklahoma, old tramps, loose women, housewives calling their kids in from the street, the kings of capital in their carriages and automobiles. Everyone on this ten-mile stretch of island and all its boroughs beyond, working, struggling, and somehow surviving, whatever their troubles. I fed off this spirit. My struggles were real, but my past was my own business and the future was what I could make of it.
I considered going back and leaving a note for Ford, but my footsteps turned toward home. I would seek him out later. Right now I needed rest and a little dinner. A note asking, Were you a witness to a murder? might have seemed odd to Ford anyway.
At home, Callie heard me on the stairs and called down from the third floor. “Louise? Finally! Keep your hat on—we’re going out.”
“Where?”
“Downtown. I’m craving chop suey.”
I never made it to the landing before I was swept back out again—not only by Callie, but also by Otto, who was with her.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” I said.
Callie put a hand on his arm. “He’s helping me.”
He ducked his head modestly as we ambled toward Sixth Avenue to catch the train downtown. “I didn’t do much.”
She laughed and took his arm and mine. “Not much—just saved me. I never knew how hard it was to deal with these mortuary men. You wouldn’t believe how much they were going to charge for Ethel’s funeral.”
