Murder in Greenwich Village

by Liz Freeland

  “On payday I do. Maybe the robber thought Friday was my payday.”

  Muldoon frowned.

  “Also, I wasn’t alert to my surroundings,” I said. “That’s part of a thief’s strategy, isn’t it? They probably seek out people who seem preoccupied.”

  “What was bothering you?”

  “Why would anything have to be bothering me? I probably just looked absentminded. It was the end of the day and I was tired.”

  “I don’t know you very well, Miss Faulk, but I’m familiar enough with you to say you’re not a scatterbrain. And your words usually mean something.”

  “So it’s Miss Faulk again, is it?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  “You said preoccupied.”

  I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have run the moment I saw Muldoon standing in the hospital, even if I’d had to duck into a broom closet or crawl out a window. But no. I’d thought I could outsmart him.

  Too soon, we were back in Muldoon’s stomping ground, and I was running out of steam. It had been a long day, I hadn’t eaten much, and I was worried about Callie. What would she say when she found out I’d lost the gloves? In retrospect, I should have left them with Otto, except Otto had become too involved already. And how was I to know that someone would steal my satchel?

  “All right,” Muldoon said, sitting opposite me, a hawk in human form. “Let’s go over this again. Where were you coming from when you were attacked?”

  “Aunt Irene’s.”

  “And you saw no one following you.”

  “No. Why would anyone follow me?” He kept returning to this point and I became more uneasy each time he voiced it. Who had been following? I could think of only one person—Ford—and that possibility sickened me.

  “Where were you before your aunt Irene’s?”

  “I visited . . . friends.”

  “Which friends?”

  “A writer I know.”

  “Who?”

  “A novelist. He’s a realist, and yet his books are filled with wild adventure and heartbreak. If he ever finds a publisher, I’m sure he’ll do well.” If he found a publisher. I renewed my vow that it wouldn’t be Van Hooten and McChesney.

  “I just wanted a straight answer, not a literary critique,” Muldoon said. “Would it be asking too much for you to supply this man’s name?”

  “I was only at his apartment for a half hour.”

  “Fine.” His expression darkened. “Where were you before you visited James Fenimore Cooper?”

  “At Otto’s. He recently moved into a flat right by Union Square.”

  Muldoon tapped his pencil against the tabletop. “Are you in the habit of visiting several men in their apartments every time you have a free evening?”

  I stiffened. “You don’t have to make it sound immoral.”

  “I’ve been dealing with the vice in this city for ten years. I’ve seen people get up to things I never would’ve dreamed of before I joined the force. The bad, the corrupt, the degenerate. It’s a different world from what most people are used to. So forgive me for being disturbed when nice girls start romping around the city as if visiting a man in his flat is no different than attending a tea party.”

  I supposed I should feel grateful that he still categorized me as a nice girl.

  “Sometimes there is no difference,” I said.

  “Suppose I ask one of the officers here to find Otto and bring him in,” he said. “Would he tell me the same story—that the two of you just chatted?”

  I swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Of course,” he continued, “I’d have to tell him that I’d been talking to you. And that you’d been attacked. What do you think he’d say to that?”

  Otto would go wild. He’d spill everything he knew about the gloves—probably in the way most likely to incriminate himself.

  “You’re a fiend,” I said.

  “What was in your purse, Louise?”

  I told him. Everything. About the gloves, and Otto, and my conversation with Ford. I told him Ford had been the man on the stairs. I even told him about the dogs chewing the gloves . . . before they were stolen. And as I spilled all this information, I consoled myself with the fact that the story of the bloodstained gloves really exonerated Callie. Her gloves had been in my purse since May, so the bloody ones couldn’t have been hers. To truly bring that point home, I reminded Muldoon that Ford had seen either Ethel alive or Ethel’s killer at the time Callie and I were still on our way home from Aunt Irene’s.

  While I spoke, Muldoon jotted notes down on a sheet of paper before him, tapped his pencil in irritation, and asked just enough curt questions to elicit specific information—times, addresses, basic descriptions. Then, before I was quite finished, he got up and stepped just outside the door, whispering to a policeman.

  All this time, I’d expected to see my aunt’s lawyer, Abe Faber, waltz into the interrogation room to rescue me. Perhaps Ed Blainey hadn’t made it to Aunt Irene’s house—or she was out. In which case, I was on my own.

  As Muldoon came back in, I concluded, “So you see, Callie is wholly innocent. She only thought the gloves incriminated her. But since I had her gloves in my purse all along, the bloody ones must have come from the killer.”

  I assumed Muldoon would at least give me a little credit for piecing this all together. It had been a long, exhausting day, and I could have used a little validation that my running around town and almost being killed hadn’t been in vain.

  Instead, he gazed at me with a disturbing level of calm. Almost a minute ticked by before it dawned on me that what I was looking at was actually barely suppressed fury. “Do you want to help us find out who killed Ethel Gail?” he asked in a tight rasp.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “You could’ve fooled me. You should have come to me the moment you saw that glove. And as for hiding the identity of a witness for an entire week—”

  “Ford wasn’t a witness, exactly—that is, I didn’t know he was. I wasn’t certain he’d seen anything at all until this evening.”

  “But if you’d told the police of his existence as the man Wally Grimes had seen on the staircase, maybe we could have found out that information earlier.”

  “But you were so unreasonable about Otto, and then Max had been beaten.”

  “Injured during the course of an arrest,” he corrected.

  “So you say.”

  His fury grew. “Look, if we had this writer’s evidence earlier, we might have easily deduced, as you have, that the killer was a woman. Max Freeman would not have been held at all.” The man’s whole demeanor was spitting righteous outrage. He looked like a Roman candle about to pop off. I expected him to blow his stack or order me carried off to a cold, dark cell somewhere, but instead he fisted his hands in front of him and eyed me grimly. “What other information are you sitting on? How far would you go to shield your friends, and your roommate?”

  My roommate? “You’re not listening,” I said. “The things I found out are all evidence that Callie is innocent.”

  He took a deep breath and held it a moment before exhaling. “I asked you before to leave the detective work to us. You can also leave the misconstruing of evidence to us, if you don’t mind. Your so-called non-incriminating evidence doesn’t exonerate your roommate as thoroughly as you’d have us believe. Or at all, in my opinion.”

  “I knew you’d say that. You see? You’re making my argument for me.”

  “Louise, you have no argument. We’re the police, you’re not. You shouldn’t be hiding things from us. When you do, it leaves us with an incomplete picture and puts you at risk. You do realize that someone tried to kill you tonight—and that it was probably the man whose identity you were protecting.”

  “Actually, I suspect it was his friend in the next apartment. His name is Mug. I believe that’s a nickname, not a surname.”

  Muldoon looked up from his paper, his face a blank wall of disbelief. “This writer, this paragon of l
iterary genius, has a friend named Mug?”

  “You’ll have to let Ford explain it.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  I shook my head. “But this is all beside the point. I had Callie’s gloves, so the bloody ones couldn’t have been Callie’s.”

  “She could’ve had two pairs of the same make of gloves. It’s only practical, isn’t it? A woman likes a pair of gloves, so she buys two pairs. My sister does that all the time.”

  “You have a sister?” It was the first time he’d offered up any personal information.

  “Don’t look so shocked. I have all sorts of family.”

  I leaned forward. “Is she older or younger?”

  “Nothing could matter less to this case,” he said wearily.

  “I’ll bet older—practical and frugal.”

  “As a matter of fact, she’s younger, practical and frugal.”

  “Well, Callie’s not that way. What’s more, the gloves were a gift, and good quality. Buying a duplicate pair would have struck her as throwing money away.”

  “Who was the man who gave them to her?”

  “I shouldn’t say without asking her permission first.”

  “Dollars to donuts it was Sawyer Attinger.”

  My silence was all the affirmation he needed.

  He clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. “Louise, I need your solemn vow that you will stay out of this investigation from now on. Otherwise, I’ll have no other choice than to lock you up.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Anything I can come up with. How about obstructing justice?”

  “But I just told you everything I know.” Nearly everything. I whisked the information about Ethel’s abortion to the back of my mind.

  He shook his head. “I’ve got a hunch that the minute you leave here you’ll be up to your same shenanigans again.”

  “What shenanigans?” I asked, offended.

  We were interrupted by the entrance of an officer in uniform. “MacNamara telephoned, sir,” he announced. “The girl wasn’t at home.”

  Girl? Fear pierced my heart. “Callie? Does he mean Callie?”

  “The landlady’s son says she hadn’t been around all day and didn’t come home this evening, either.”

  Muldoon eyed me skeptically. “Where has she gone, Louise? Did she know anything about Max’s escape?”

  I could tell which direction his thoughts were racing toward now. Max had escaped. Now Callie was gone. The old artist-and-model collusion theory was percolating afresh in his fevered brain. I might have been suspicious myself, except that Lucia had also disappeared. And the children. Two might be company, but six was definitely a crowd. Callie considered herself a modern woman, but she wasn’t that modern.

  I stood. “I haven’t seen her since this morning. For all I know, she had a date with someone. Her not being at the apartment isn’t necessarily connected with the murder, you know. And certainly not Max’s escape.” But where was she?

  “Not necessarily,” he agreed, in a tone that made it clear he didn’t agree.

  “I’d like to go home now,” I said. “I’m tired, and hungry.” And I needed to track down my friend.

  Muldoon’s expression softened. “All right. O’Malley, escort Miss Faulk home.”

  “That’s not—”

  He cut me off. “Yes, it is. Someone tried to kill you and now your roommate’s gone missing. I’ll feel better if a policeman sees you to your door.”

  O’Malley saw me to my building without incident. In spite of the many troubles I had jostling for space in my head, I was able to keep up a conversation with the police officer, who was interested in my work at Van Hooten and McChesney.

  “I’ve often thought I should write a book,” he said.

  “I’m sure you could.”

  “Twenty Years on the Beat, I’d call it. Of course, the brass downtown might not appreciate the unvarnished truth, and I wouldn’t want to tell it any other way,” he confided. “We aren’t always heroes, I’m afraid.”

  Whether or not they were heroes, I was beginning to envy these men their jobs. It had to be interesting, if not always rewarding, to deal with the nitty-gritty bits of life. With problems that mattered. With life and death, right and wrong. This past week had been horrible, but I couldn’t remember feeling so deeply immersed in anything in my whole life.

  At my doorstep, “You Made Me Love You” floated down from the second floor. The Bleecker Blowers were back from their upstate tour.

  “Nice band,” O’Malley said. “Must be a treat having them right here.”

  “Oh yes, it’s like having a dance band in your living room.” Whether you wanted them there or not. “Good night,” I told him, and he tipped his hat back at me and backed away from the door. Thank heavens.

  I whisked up the stairs briskly and entered my apartment, hoping against hope to find Callie there, lounging on the lumpy sofa. But the place was empty. Or so I assumed. When I peeked into her room—which I was trying not to think of as the murder room—a hand darted out from behind the door and covered my mouth. My heart stopped.

  “Don’t scream,” a voice whispered.

  CHAPTER 13

  After I recovered from my heart attack, I knocked Otto’s hand away and spun toward him. “What are you doing?”

  “Keep your voice down, will you?” he said in an urgent whisper.

  I did, without quite understanding why. “I wouldn’t have made a peep if you hadn’t been stalking around here like—well, like the Village Butcher.”

  “Don’t say that, even in fun.” He gaped at my arm in its sling. “What happened to you?”

  “A near miss and an exuberant rescuer.”

  His hand tapped impatiently against the door frame. “This evening’s been confusing enough without you speaking in riddles.”

  “I had a little accident. I’m fine. But what are you doing here? Have you seen Callie?”

  “Not exactly. I had to find you, and I was hiding in case more police came in.”

  “More?” I asked.

  He proceeded to dart around the apartment, peeking out windows before flicking curtains closed. Only then did he turn on two lamps so that we weren’t talking at each other in the dark. “There was one here before.”

  Of course. Muldoon had sent someone to look for Callie. “And where were you?”

  “Across the street, in a doorway, waiting for you.”

  Another evening I might have laughed at the two of us crisscrossing the city on our various missions. But nothing about this evening seemed humorous anymore. Where was Callie?

  “You could have waited here,” I said. He obviously didn’t have any compunction about coming in uninvited.

  “Your aunt told me to keep out of sight. She said you’d come back here eventually.”

  “You talked to Aunt Irene? When?”

  “I went to her house this evening, looking for you. You said you were going to give your aunt the gloves. When I got there, she was in a state. She said two men had come by—”

  “Ed Blainey and a policeman?”

  He nodded. “That’s right. She was trying to get in touch with Mr. Faber, and sent Walter to fetch him after she couldn’t reach him on the telephone. But Walter came back and said that Mr. Faber was fishing at Lake Placid.”

  “Good thing I managed without him.”

  “Your aunt figured you’d talk your way out.” He smiled. “She’s so fond of you. She was telling me how clever you are—as if I didn’t know.”

  I didn’t feel clever, although at least I’d wriggled away from Muldoon. I blew out a breath. “Well, all’s well that ends well, I suppose.” Except that nothing had ended. “Where’s Callie?”

  “Oh! That’s why I was at your aunt’s. I was trying to find you, because I had a note from Callie.”

  “What did it say?”

  He pulled a small envelope from his vest pocket, then hesitantly handed it over. “You’re not going to like it.”
<
br />   The sheet of paper I removed from the envelope had been folded several times into a square. Callie’s tiny cursive filled the light pink paper.

  Dear Otto,

  When you receive this, I’ll be in Little Falls. I didn’t tell Louise because I didn’t want to be talked out of going. You know how she can be. She would either have stopped me, or insisted on coming with me. Louise might be good at nosing around, but nobody knows Little Yawns like I do. We need to find out whether Dora and Abel were truly there the night Ethel was killed, and I know the people to ask.

  If Louise corners you, tell her the truth—I know you hate to lie—but make it clear that I don’t want her to follow me. I’m only writing you because I don’t want anyone to think I’ve disappeared, or worse. And frankly it feels better having people know what I’m up to, just in case. I don’t expect anything bad to happen to me, but I never expected anything bad to happen to poor Ethel, either. Try not to worry, Otto. I’ll be back in a day or two.

  Sincerely yours,

  Callie

  Sneaky Callie. I should have known she wouldn’t accept Dora and Abel’s word concerning their whereabouts the night of the murder. For that matter, maybe I shouldn’t have, either.

  As I reread the note, Otto’s face hovered so close I could smell the wintergreen of the Teaberry gum he favored. “What should we do?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “But she’s up there all alone.”

  That worried me, too. On the other hand, I was almost certain Callie wouldn’t be tangling with a murderer in Little Falls. If Dora had felt homicidal against her sister, surely she would have killed her before Ethel got rid of the baby. For that matter, if she was prone to murderous rages, she would have killed Ethel when she’d first discovered the pregnancy.

  “Callie’s safer where she is.” I prayed I was right about that. “Muldoon’s on the warpath,” I explained. “My fault. He winkled the information about the gloves out of me, and now he wants to talk to Callie. And you, too, I assume. I’m sure that’s why Aunt Irene told you to stay out of sight.”

  My aunt surprised me. Even without knowing what happened at the police station between Muldoon and me, she grasped enough to send Otto after me here, not at the police station. She was a step ahead.