by Liz Freeland
Who besides Callie or myself would have known where to find the gloves in Callie’s drawers?
I froze. Was this why Callie had been so quick to condemn Dora? Perhaps Dora had borrowed the gloves when she’d visited Ethel earlier in the month. And then knew where to find them when she sneaked into the apartment to murder her sister.
Whether or not Dora was guilty, the gloves changed everything.
Otto looked at me. “What is it?” he asked, sensing my shift in thought.
“A woman killed Ethel.”
“Who?”
“I can’t be sure,” I said. “But I think I know someone who can tell me.”
CHAPTER 11
At Ford’s apartment I knocked and received no answer, but his neighbor, Mug, jerked his door open. “Whaddaya want?”
I wish I could claim I didn’t tremble a little to see him hulking there like a gorilla in a stained undershirt. “Do you know if Mr. Fitzsimmons is in?”
“This about money?” He swaggered closer. “If so, hand it over. He owes me.”
I eyed the calloused outstretched palm in disgust and clutched my satchel a little tighter. “I’m not here for money. I only need to speak to him.”
The door at my back yanked open suddenly. I pivoted toward it, and there was Ford, grinning at me. “It’s okay, Mug. Remember? She’s a friend.” He took my arm and pulled me inside as his goon of a neighbor continued to give me the cold eye.
“What was that about?” Annoyance spiked in my voice.
“Mug and I have an arrangement. When someone knocks at my door, he asks if they’ve come for money. If they have, I’m not at home and Mug can get rid of them in any way he sees fit. If the person doesn’t want money, then I’m able to hear their voice through the door and know if I really do want to speak to them.”
“Should I feel honored?”
“A man needs a stratagem to keep the wolves at bay,” he said.
“I’m not a wolf. I just came for some information.” His smile faded as he sensed my change in demeanor from the last visit. I hadn’t come to flatter or to be flirted with. I put my hand into my bag and pulled out the gloves. “About these.”
Ford eyed them curiously and then, realizing what the stains were, recoiled. “Good God! How’d you wind up with those gruesome things?”
“They’re Callie’s gloves,” I said. “They were found at the scene of the murder.”
“Well, put them away. I don’t want them.”
I stowed the gloves back in my satchel and snapped the clasp shut. “I just wanted to be sure you didn’t notice them last Thursday night.”
“I never went inside—” Whatever he was about to say, he doubled back and started over, more carefully. “Do you mean at your aunt’s party? Was Callie wearing those gloves there?”
He wasn’t fooling me. I shook my head, crossed to the cane-backed chair at his typing desk, and sat.
“Oh yes,” he mumbled with a dollop of sarcasm, “please make yourself at home.”
“I may as well, since this is obviously going to take a while.” I eyed him closely. “I know you were at our flat that night, Ford.”
“How could you, when I was never there?”
“You were. The last time we talked, you gave me an envelope with a note scrawled to me on it, expressing your hope that I’d meant what I said that evening when we talked.”
“So?”
“You wrote it the evening of my aunt’s party, not the night you gave it to me. You never wrote anything on the envelope the evening you gave it to me, and you were never out of my sight when I visited you here.”
Heat flamed in his face, but he continued to stonewall. “Bunk.”
“I doubt the police would think it was bunk if I showed the envelope to them.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“For the same reason I didn’t the moment I realized you were Wally’s mysterious man on the stairs. I don’t think you’re a murderer, and I don’t want to get you involved with the police.”
“Thank God for that.”
“If I don’t have to,” I added.
He glared at me. Then, sighing, he threw himself onto his bed. “All right. I was there. What of it? I didn’t kill your roommate.”
The legs of my chair shrieked across the floorboards as I scooted toward him. “But you might have seen who did.”
“Don’t you think if I’d seen a murder taking place I’d have said something? Your opinion of me must be pretty low if you think I’d let a woman be killed before my very eyes.”
“Just tell me what did happen.”
He sucked in a deep breath. “Well, as you’ll recall, I was drunk, so I staggered home from your aunt’s, never really intending to go back out. But then I saw a freshly typed story sitting there on the table and thought it would be a fine trick to have it waiting for you before you got home from your aunt’s. So I scribbled the damned note and set out to the address you’d given me. As I said, I was the worse for drink. I was fairly certain you’d mentioned the third floor, so I went straight up and knocked. Of course I wasn’t expecting an answer—not unless you’d sprouted wings and flown home from Fifty-third Street. I was just about to slide the envelope under your door when it swung open and a woman appeared. I’m afraid I made a fool of myself—I yelped in surprise like a girl. The woman seemed startled, too.”
“What did she look like?”
“I hardly noticed, except that she wasn’t you. Or Callie.”
“Was she blond or brunette?”
“Impossible to tell. She was wearing some kind of scarf on her head—you know, like ladies do sometimes when they’re out. She had light eyes, I think, but it was dark. The lights were off in the hall and if there was a light on in the apartment, it was dim, and behind her.”
A scarf? “What was she wearing?”
He gestured vaguely at my attire. “Some kind of dress.”
“Not a nightgown—ivory, rather sheer, and low-cut?”
He exhaled a silent laugh. “Even in the state I was in, I think I’d have noticed if the woman at the door had been wearing something like that. But to be frank, there wasn’t time to take in much. I started backing away almost immediately, believing I’d blundered into the wrong apartment, maybe even the wrong house. You never told me there was another woman living with you.”
“She was only supposed to be visiting.”
“Well, visiting or not, there she was, glaring at me as though I were a burglar or worse. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. I said I’d only meant to drop something off, and she asked who it was for. ‘For Louise,’ I said, ‘but I think I’ve made a mistake.’ ‘Yes, you have,’ she said. And then she slammed the door in my face.”
“Did this woman look like Callie?”
He frowned. “I’ve only seen Callie once, but this woman was older.”
“How much older?”
“Mid-thirties?” he guessed.
It wasn’t out of character for Ethel to have chased off a stranger bringing me a package instead of telling him to leave it. But this would have been so close to the time of the murder. She would have been wearing the nightgown, surely. “You’re sure she was alone?”
“Not sure at all,” he answered honestly. “She blocked the doorway, and I can’t see through walls. You have to understand, I was only there for a matter of seconds. It was late and the woman didn’t know me from Adam, so I skedaddled. I didn’t give the encounter another thought till the next day, when I saw the papers.”
I was now fairly certain it was the killer he’d seen, not Ethel. “Why didn’t you say something about this earlier?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t see how my account added to the story. And when the papers reported that they were looking for me after your landlord saw me . . . well, I decided to stay out of it.”
“So you lied to me.”
He lifted his shoulders in negligent dismissal. “No harm done.”
No harm? “My friend
Otto spent a day in jail because the police mistook him for you.”
“A day?” A laugh sputtered out of him. “I’ve survived worse than that.”
“Now one of my neighbors, Max, is in custody. He has a family. His wife is frantic.”
“Well, if he didn’t do it, I’m sure they won’t keep him locked up forever.”
His blasé attitude about other people’s misfortunes bore a stark contrast to his lingering resentment of having been arrested once himself. I felt incensed, but I was also preoccupied with trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Ford’s woman at the door confirmed my hunch—the killer hadn’t been a man. Had Ford seen Dora? Maybe Callie had been right. Dora could have come to New York, killed Ethel, and left before we got back from Aunt Irene’s. If she’d caught a night train, she might have traveled back to Little Falls in time to intercept Callie’s call the next morning. Or perhaps she’d had Abel drive her, as Callie had hinted.
I now understood why Callie had been so quick to attack Dora. Knowing about the bloody gloves, she’d probably been mulling over the possibility of her cousin’s death for days, and she didn’t even have the information Ford had just given me. That was the trouble. All of us were missing pieces.
I wondered if Callie had a picture of Dora that I could show to Ford. I doubted it. The only one I recalled seeing was ancient, from when she and Ethel were girls. That would be no help.
I remembered Muldoon urging me not to play detective. Maybe he was right.
“I need you to come with me,” I told Ford.
“Where?”
“To the police.”
“Like hell I will.”
“You must. Don’t you see? Either Ethel was alive when you arrived, or there was someone else in our apartment who shouldn’t have been there. Either way, what you saw puts Callie in the clear.”
“Bully for her.” Ford lifted his chin in defiance. “But if you think I’m going to the police to prove your roommate didn’t commit a crime—which I can’t see that anyone even thinks she did commit—only to put my own head in a noose, you’ve got another think coming.”
His selfishness astounded me. “They might not suspect Callie now, but after Max clears himself—if he clears himself—they’ll start hunting for other suspects.”
“Precisely. Leave me out of it.”
“But if they discover the bloodstained gloves, which Callie has taken pains to conceal . . .”
“So burn them.”
Everyone wanted to destroy the gloves, apparently, except Callie and me. “I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can. It’s easy enough—a little kerosene and a match will take care of the problem. The police will have no reason to suspect Callie, and you’ll have no reason to run to the police. Perfect.”
But they were evidence. Evidence that pointed to a woman—certainly not Max—having committed the crime. Just the thought of destroying evidence rubbed my fur the wrong way. The gloves might even prove important in some way I couldn’t perceive now. Those disgusting scraps of once-beautiful leather in my purse were as sacrosanct in their own way as a famous historical document.
“I would no more burn them than I would put a match to the Magna Carta,” I declared.
Ford looked at me as if I should be carted off to an asylum. “The Magna Carta? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Something important that shouldn’t be destroyed.”
“Then keep the damn things hidden and tell your friend to relax. Surely she’s got plenty of witnesses to say she couldn’t have murdered her cousin. If what I saw at your aunt’s party was any indication, Callie’s hardly inconspicuous. She’s got nothing to worry about.”
“We all have something to worry about,” I said. “Have you forgotten? There’s a murderer prowling around Manhattan.”
His lips twisted in a sneer. “Oh, more than one, I’d be willing to bet.”
“But it’s only in our power to help the police catch this particular one. Wouldn’t that be worthwhile?”
“It’d be peachy if I didn’t risk the police turning their attention to me.”
I slapped my hands against my knees in frustration. “You act as if you’ve got something to hide.”
“Everyone has something to hide.” He tilted a speculative glance at me. “What if detectives started poking around in your history. I wonder what they’d discover.”
“Nothing like murder.”
“But a few details you don’t want them to find out, I bet. You’ve got spirit, sister, but that’s the kind of thing that gets people in trouble. You’d be better off keeping your head down and minding your own business.”
“I never would have pegged you for such a coward.”
His gaze darkened. “I’m not. But I’ve had my share of hard knocks and I’m ready for something better. Something easier. You read my book and liked it. But what publisher’s going to buy a book by a fellow suspected of being the Village Butcher?”
“Notoriety hasn’t hurt Otto.”
“Songwriting.” He stretched out the word like taffy, pulling as much disdain as possible from each syllable. “Entertainment in this town’s practically run by gangsters, but publishing’s as much a gentleman’s game as the Harvard-Yale football match. You think the patrician types who publish your aunt’s verbal swill would take on a book by a murder suspect?”
“Verbal swill!” I stood.
His eyebrow crooked. “Don’t pretend a similar thought hasn’t crossed your mind.”
“What’s crossing my mind is to go to the police and tell them what you said about the night of the murder. And then to head straight back to the office and tear up the recommendation I wrote for your stupid book. That’s one piece of evidence I wouldn’t mind destroying.”
He shot to his feet and grabbed my forearm. “I wouldn’t do either of those things if I were you.”
The pressure of his grip made me wince, although I tried my damnedest not to show it. Shame filled me that I’d ever considered this person to be appealing. A diamond in the rough. How could someone create beautiful works like his novels and yet be so malevolent? It was like discovering a bluebird was a vulture in disguise.
I yanked away from him. “Don’t worry. I’m too busy at the moment to sabotage your career.”
“Good girl,” he said.
But for once I celebrated the fact that projects proceeded through our office with the headlong speed of a molasses spill in an ice storm. The first chance I had alone at the office, I would make a beeline to Guy Van Hooten’s office and rip that recommendation into little bits. Petty and vindictive? Oh yes. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be the least bit of use to this bully.
That secret vow gave me satisfaction enough to lift my head. “If you should change your mind about going to the police and you need someone to hold your hand, you can find me at my aunt’s.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” he said.
I didn’t intend to. Instead of going straight to Aunt Irene’s, I stopped by our building to talk to Callie and then give Lucia a word of encouragement. These gloves, plus what Ford said he saw that night, surely would convince the police that Max hadn’t been the murderer. If only I could convince Callie to talk to Muldoon, and Muldoon to talk to Ford.
I took the stairs two at a time but stopped cold on the third-floor landing when I saw a woman standing in my doorway. She was stout, dressed in dark clothing, and wore a scarf over her head. The woman who answered the door Thursday night was wearing a scarf, Ford had said. My mouth went dry. Then the woman turned, and I exhaled a sigh. It was only Mrs. Grimes. Our landlady was old and as deaf as day-old cod, as Uncle Luddie used to say, and her brown wrinkly skin made her look like a walnut. What was she doing up here? Wally handled most day-to-day matters in the building.
She saw me and her frown deepened. When she spoke, it was practically a bellow. “Son—one of ’em’s here!”
Wally was in the apartment? I rushed forward. �
��What’s going on?”
Mrs. Grimes had a disarming way of looking at you while you were talking. She couldn’t understand much, but her beady brown eyes widened to show their whites, as if she were trying to make her eyeballs absorb the sound her ears couldn’t. Meanwhile her wrinkly lipless slash of a mouth tightened. “What?” she yelled.
Wally lumbered out from the hallway that led to our bedrooms.
By now I was practically vibrating with impatience. “Why are you in my apartment?”
Mrs. Grimes turned to her son. “Is this one the nude model?”
“No, Ma,” he said. “This is Miss Faulk.”
“Oh!” She pivoted back to me and foghorned, “The police have been in. I wanted to make sure someone was left up here.”
“What?” No matter how loud she spoke, none of her words made sense to me. The police? “I don’t—”
“What?” she hollered back.
The two of us might have stood in the hallway yelling “What?” at each other all evening if Wally hadn’t interceded. “Lucia’s gone,” he said.
“Gone where?” I asked. “When?”
“The police came by after noon, and she wasn’t there. Just took her kids and”—he snapped his fingers—“twenty-three skidoo. Up and disappeared. Left all her stuff excepting her clothes.”
“Owed two weeks’ rent!” the old lady thundered.
I wasn’t about to cry for the Grimeses’ lost income. They’d make a profit selling Lucia and Max’s belongings. “Why were the police here?”
“Didn’t you hear?” Wally’s face perspired with excitement. “He escaped.”
The hallway seemed to spin. I grabbed on to the banister behind me. “Max escaped the police?”
“From the jail.” He scratched the bristle of his five o’clock shadow. “I guess he figured it was either bust out or be sent to the chair.”
But he wouldn’t have been sent to the chair. If only the police had known about the gloves earlier . . .
