Murder on St. Nicholas Avenue

by Victoria Thompson

  “I think it’s a record of the people who gave him the money. I added up all the entries, and it comes to a little over forty-five thousand. He probably spent some of it, so that would explain why there’s only thirty-seven thousand left.”

  “Thirty-seven thousand two-hundred and thirty-six.”

  “Seventy-six,” she said.

  “I was just testing you,” he said with a grin. She refused to notice his grin. “What are these other numbers?”

  “I think the first column is dates. I don’t know what the last column could be.”

  “But who are these people, and why would they give Pollock money?”

  “I don’t know, but Mrs. Decker thinks her husband might be able to figure it out.”

  “Mr. Decker?”

  “He’s helped us before,” she reminded him. “Besides, Mrs. Decker says he’s much nicer than we think he is.”

  “Did she actually say that?”

  “Not exactly, but she could see I was afraid to ask him, so she was trying to encourage me.”

  “She thought you were afraid of something?” he said with mock amazement.

  “You wouldn’t want to talk to him either, if you didn’t have to.”

  He didn’t even bother to deny it. “But don’t you know him pretty well? You’ve stayed at their house, haven’t you?”

  “That doesn’t mean I know him. He’s not real friendly.”

  Gino considered this a moment. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go to their house this evening and show it to him.”

  “You shouldn’t be out alone at night.”

  “I’ll take a cab.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Do you think I need help?” she said, managing to sound offended even though she wasn’t.

  “With Mr. Decker? Of course not, but a young woman isn’t safe alone in the streets after dark.”

  She wasn’t afraid to be out after dark, and he probably knew that. Still, his concern was gratifying. “Well, if you don’t have anything else to do, that would be fine. You just have to remember that we can’t tell Mr. Decker that his wife went with me today.”

  “I’m not going to tell him anything at all. I’m just going along to protect you.”

  * * *

  The maid who answered the door at the Deckers’ house knew Maeve well and admitted them at once. After only a few minutes, Mrs. Decker sent word to bring them right in, and they were escorted to the rear parlor, which was the informal room the family used. Mr. and Mrs. Decker had obviously been relaxing after supper, and they greeted Maeve and Gino warmly.

  “I hope nothing’s wrong,” Mrs. Decker said when they were all seated.

  “Oh no, at least not with us. Everything is just fine at home,” Maeve said.

  “Then what brings you out so late on this chilly evening?” Mr. Decker asked. Even when he was being nice, Mr. Decker couldn’t help being intimidating. Everything about his tall, slender frame was elegant, from his silvered hair to his well-tended hands, and his piercing blue eyes seemed to see right through a person. Fortunately, Maeve was only lying by omission today, so she had nothing to hide.

  “It all started yesterday when a lady who had been a neighbor to the Malloys came to the house, looking for Mr. Malloy.” As briefly as possible, Maeve told them about Mrs. O’Neill’s visit.

  “How awful,” Mrs. Decker said, as if she were hearing this for the first time. She could have used a little practice with her lying, in Maeve’s opinion, but it was probably good enough to fool her husband.

  “That is an unfortunate situation,” Mr. Decker agreed. “Are you by any chance involved in this investigation, Officer Donatelli?”

  Gino sat up a little straighter. “Oh no, sir. Not at all. It happened up in Harlem.”

  “Then why are you here with Maeve?”

  “I . . . When I found out she was coming here tonight, I didn’t think she should be out alone, so I came with her.”

  “That was very gentlemanly of you,” Mrs. Decker said. “I’m sure Maeve appreciates it.”

  Gino gave Maeve a questioning look that she refused to acknowledge.

  “Yes, that was thoughtful of you, Officer Donatelli,” Mr. Decker said, except he looked more amused than anything. “And since Officer Donatelli isn’t involved in the investigation and Mr. Malloy is out of the country, I hope you told this woman you couldn’t help her.”

  Maeve didn’t have to pretend to be uncomfortable. She actually had to consciously not squirm under Mr. Decker’s penetrating gaze. “I, uh, well, I did give her some advice. I told her she should hire an attorney for her daughter.”

  “That was excellent advice. Between him and the police, I’m sure they’ll be able to sort this out.”

  “I’m sure they will,” Maeve lied, “but Mrs. O’Neill didn’t have any money to hire an attorney.”

  “Oh dear, of course she wouldn’t,” Mrs. Decker said. “Being a widow, she’s probably very poor.”

  Mr. Decker gave her a curious glance, so Maeve hurried on before Mrs. Decker could say anything else to earn her husband’s attention.

  “I thought maybe Una’s husband kept some money at his house, and since Una was his wife, it would be hers as much as his, so I offered to go to the house with Mrs. O’Neill to look. Mrs. O’Neill wanted to get some clothes for Una anyway, so we went there this afternoon.”

  “Isn’t Mrs. O’Neill capable of looking around her own daughter’s house by herself?” Mr. Decker asked.

  “This Pollock fellow had told her she wasn’t welcome there anymore after he and Una got married, so she was afraid the servants wouldn’t let her in.”

  “But you thought they’d let you in,” Mr. Decker guessed with a brief glance at his wife, who was trying to look as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

  “And they did,” Maeve hurried on. “While Mrs. O’Neill was upstairs packing things for her daughter, I looked around downstairs and found a safe, and it did have money in it.”

  “Was the safe unlocked?” he asked.

  “No, but Pollock had written the combination in his appointment diary, so I was able to open it without any trouble.”

  “How very careless of him,” Mr. Decker said with a small smile.

  “And how very lucky for Maeve,” Mrs. Decker said.

  This time Mr. Decker didn’t even glance at her. “And did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Like I said, I found some money, yes,” Maeve said, “but it was a lot more than I was expecting. And I also found this.” She got up and handed Mr. Decker the ledger book. “I know it’s a ledger, but I don’t know what it means. I thought you might.”

  He opened it and flipped through. Most of the pages were blank, so he turned back to the first page, and they all waited while he scanned the entries. At last he looked up and said, “How much money did you find in the safe?”

  “Thirty-seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-six dollars.”

  “Good heavens,” Mrs. Decker cried, and this time she sounded genuinely surprised, probably because she was.

  “And it was all in cash?” Mr. Decker asked.

  “Yes, stacked very neatly and banded, the way they do at the bank, only with handmade bands.”

  “The ledger amounts come to about forty-five thousand three hundred,” Mr. Decker said, impressing them all with his ability to total them in his head.

  “Do you have any idea what it means?” Maeve asked.

  “It’s not a genuine accounting of anything. This isn’t the format that a bookkeeper would use. It appears to be nothing more than a list that he kept for his own information.”

  “I thought the first column looked like dates,” Maeve said.

  “That would be my guess as well,” he said, still studying the ent
ries. “He only used surnames, probably because he knew who these people are, but it would be difficult for anyone else to identify them with any certainty.”

  “What do you think the numbers in the last column are?” Gino asked. He was leaning forward now, as interested as Maeve in the answers.

  “There’s no way to tell from this. As I said, it’s not standard accounting, so it could mean anything, but . . .” They waited while he studied the numbers again. “They seem to total about half of the amount of the difference between the total of the one column and the amount you found in the safe.”

  “But you think the people listed there gave Pollock money?” Gino asked.

  “That could be one interpretation, yes.”

  “But why would they give him money, especially so much?” Maeve said.

  Mr. Decker carefully closed the ledger. “I doubt they gave him money. I suspect they would have expected something in return.”

  “You mean they were buying something?” Gino asked.

  “More probably they thought they were investing in something.”

  “Like a business,” Maeve said.

  “What did this Pollock do for a living?” Mr. Decker asked.

  “Mrs. O’Neill didn’t know,” Maeve said. “All she knew was that he lived in a nice house, so she thought he was rich.”

  “If he was spending this money, he would have given that impression, but judging from the amount you found in the safe, it appears he wasn’t using it for anything other than his own expenses. He probably bought the house in Harlem, but he hasn’t been squandering his money on much else.” Mr. Decker tapped the ledger. “When they find out Pollock is dead, these men will be looking for their money. Did you give it to this Mrs. O’Neill?”

  “No. I gave her five hundred dollars to pay for Una’s lawyer and bail, but I didn’t even tell her about the rest.”

  “That’s good, because she’s the first person the investors will go after if they find out she was in the house. Who else knows about the money?”

  “Just us.”

  “And you left it where you found it?”

  “Uh, no. I . . . I took it home. It’s in Mr. Malloy’s safe.”

  Maeve braced herself for his wrath, but Mr. Decker simply raised his eyebrows in surprise. “So long as no one thinks you stole it, that will be fine for the moment, and it’s probably much safer there until we can get this all sorted out. Officer Donatelli, are you going to involve yourself in this matter?”

  “I . . . I think I already am involved, although it’s not official.”

  “At the very least, you can vouch for Maeve’s intent to protect the money.”

  “And what should we do in the meantime?” Maeve asked.

  “What were you planning to do?” he replied, raising his eyebrows again. She realized she wouldn’t be able to fool him very easily.

  “I was hoping we could help Mrs. O’Neill and her daughter.”

  “I think you’ve done everything you can for them, Maeve,” he said. “Officer Donatelli doesn’t have the authority that Mr. Malloy did as a detective sergeant, and you can’t ask him to risk his job by getting more involved.”

  “But I did agree to go back to the house tomorrow and pack up the rest of Una’s things,” Maeve said, stretching the truth a bit, since Mrs. Decker had only promised to send her maid.

  “I wouldn’t want you to be there alone if someone came looking for this money,” Mr. Decker said, tapping the ledger again.

  He had a point. Maeve glanced at Gino, wondering if she dared ask him to accompany her.

  “I could go with you after work tomorrow,” he said.

  “Or I could go with you in the morning,” Mrs. Decker said, surprising everyone.

  Her husband smiled at that. “And then we’d have two helpless females to worry about.”

  Maeve didn’t like being thought of as helpless, but she wasn’t going to contradict Mr. Decker. Men like him always had to believe they were right.

  “And I know Maeve is anxious to get this taken care of,” he went on, “and she can be impulsive, so she might not wait until you’re available, Officer Donatelli. So why don’t I go with her tomorrow morning instead?”

  3

  Felix Decker had never considered his life boring, at least not until his daughter Sarah had become acquainted with Frank Malloy. Even for some time after that, he had not been aware of her involvement with his work as a police detective. When he did become aware of it, he’d been furious and determined to remove her from the dangers of such involvement.

  Seldom had he been quite so unsuccessful at something he’d set his mind to. Instead of removing Sarah from Malloy’s influence, he’d seen his wife drawn into it—although she still believed he had no knowledge of her participation. And now here he was, serving as a bodyguard to his daughter’s nanny while she visited a home where a murder had taken place.

  Without a doubt, his life used to be extremely boring.

  “Is something wrong?” Maeve asked.

  “Of course not,” he said, squinting to see her expression in the shadowed interior of the carriage. He had insisted on traveling to Harlem in his carriage, even though she’d pointed out they could travel faster on the elevated train. He had won the argument when his wife reminded her they would be bringing back a trunk full of Una Pollock’s belongings. “What could be wrong?”

  She smiled with what he thought was sympathy. “I know this is an unusual situation for you.”

  “But not for you?”

  “I’ve helped Mrs. Brandt before. I mean Mrs. Malloy. I keep forgetting her new name.”

  Felix did, too, but he saw no need to mention this to Maeve. “Mrs. Decker told me you played an important role when they discovered the identity of the man who killed Sarah’s first husband.”

  “I was happy to help,” she said with appropriate modesty. She was, except for his own daughters, the most self-possessed young woman he had ever met. Even still, she managed to maintain an air of femininity that compelled a man to offer his assistance. Which probably explained why he was on this fool’s errand.

  “Do you have family, Maeve?” he asked, realizing how little he knew of her.

  “Not anymore. I lost my parents when I was little. My grandfather raised me, but he died a few years ago.”

  “Was that how you came to the Mission?” he asked, remembering now that Sarah had first met her at the Daughters of Hope Mission.

  “Yes. I was lucky they took me in.”

  How true, he thought. The streets of New York were a dangerous place for a girl alone. “Are you happy working for Mrs. Malloy?” he asked, glad he had remembered to use her new name.

  She looked surprised at the question. “Of course.”

  But he hadn’t asked the right question, he realized, because that really wasn’t what he wanted to know. “What I mean is, will being a nanny satisfy you?”

  Some girls her age would have lied and said yes, just because he would expect that answer. Others would have coyly replied that they hoped to marry someday and raise their own children. Still others would have been dismayed by this question, knowing the world did not approve of girls having ambitions. Maeve simply said, “No, sir, it won’t.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He studied her for a moment as the carriage rattled through the streets. She met his gaze unflinchingly, something even some of his longtime employees could not do. “Do you have any idea what you’d like to do?”

  “You mean besides helping Mr. and Mrs. Malloy in their new detective agency?” she asked with a sly grin.

  Outrage stung him. “Do they have a detective agency?” And why had no one told him?

  “Not yet.” Her sly grin widened. “But they’ll have to, won’t they? I mean, people aren’t going to stop needing help that the police won’t give them, and the Mallo
ys won’t be able to refuse to help, especially now that they’re rich and don’t even have to worry if people can pay them or not.”

  “But Malloy will be too busy for that kind of thing,” he protested.

  “Busy doing what?” Her dark eyes were wide and apparently innocent, so why did he feel she was challenging him? Girls like her didn’t challenge men like him.

  “He’ll have . . . other interests,” he tried.

  “Like what? Going to his club? Even you have your business, Mr. Decker. Mr. Malloy is used to working and feeling useful, too. And how is he going to refuse when somebody asks him for help?”

  “Or more to the point, when someone asks Sarah for help,” he said, seeing it very clearly now. “He might be able to refuse, but she’d never allow it.”

  “Besides, helping people is fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Oh, not fun like going to Coney Island, but it’s . . . I don’t know, interesting, I guess.”

  “Are you serious?” he asked, incredulously.

  “Of course I am. That’s why you’re going with me today, isn’t it?”

  “I’m going to protect you,” he protested.

  She seemed unconvinced. “You could’ve sent one of your servants with me. In fact, the coachman would probably do just fine.”

  He tried frowning at her, which usually worked beautifully when he wanted to silence an annoying subordinate, but she just smiled knowingly. Yes, his life truly was no longer boring.

  And Harlem was no longer farmland, Decker observed as the carriage delivered them to St. Nicholas Avenue. New houses had sprung up here like some modern crop of bricks growing in neat rows along freshly paved streets. Who lived here, he wondered, besides men like Pollock who had needed a respectable home from which to operate?

  He helped Maeve down when the carriage stopped in front of a turreted stone house. It was, he saw, a double house, and he caught the twitch of a curtain on the front window of the house next door. The neighbors must surely be wondering who was driving up to a house where the master had been murdered and the mistress was in jail. At least no one here was likely to recognize him.

  Maeve preceded him up the front steps, and he took a moment to glance around the neighborhood. Although he felt they were being watched, he saw no one on the street and no visible faces pressed to window glass to observe them. He actually heard a bird singing somewhere, reminding him of how far they were from the heart of the city.