Murder In Chinatown

by Victoria Thompson

  “No,” she said quickly. “He never mentioned it.”

  “Do you remember if he had any visitors on the day before he died?”

  She frowned, and for a moment Sarah thought she wouldn’t even answer. “I already told you, my ma came to see him. And that policeman of yours,” she said after a moment. “Nobody else. He was with me the rest of the time.”

  “But no one else?” Sarah pressed her.

  “Not that I know of,” she said crossly. “Don’t forget I was sleeping. Somebody could’ve come then, and I wouldn’t know, would I?”

  “Are you sure he didn’t say anything about Angel’s death? Anything at all?”

  “No,” she said with certainty, but then she seemed to reconsider. “I mean, now that I think about it, maybe the reason I don’t remember is because he was giving me something the whole time I was there, something that made me feel funny.”

  “The whole time?” Sarah asked in surprise.

  “Maybe,” she hedged. “But I don’t remember much of what happened, like it was a dream or something.”

  Sarah had the oddest feeling that she was lying about this, but she couldn’t imagine why. Maybe Keely was starting to feel guilty about her liaison with John Wong and was trying to find an excuse for her wanton behavior. “So you don’t remember anything that might help us figure out who killed Angel?”

  “No, I don’t remember nothing.” Keely fiddled with her bun again. Obviously, she wasn’t used to wearing her hair up, and she finally started pulling out the pins in disgust and shook her head to let the hair fall free. It was braided, one long braid that fell down her back almost to her waist. Sarah was struck again by how young she was—young but toughened by experience.

  15

  KEELY FIDGETED UNDER SARAH’S GAZE, TUGGING ON the braid. She started wrapping it back into a bun again. “I ain’t used to wearing it like this yet,” she said, sticking the pins in with extra force, as if that would make it stay. “Mrs. Keller says it’s more ladylike.”

  “It’s hard to get used to wearing it up,” Sarah said, remembering.

  “Do you live around here?” Keely asked, smoothing back a few stray hairs.

  “No,” Sarah said. “I don’t.”

  “You must live close. The other girls said you come around all the time,” she said.

  “I live over on Bank Street. It’s a few miles from here, in Greenwich Village.”

  “You married?”

  “My husband died a few years ago,” Sarah replied.

  “I figured you wasn’t married. No husband would let you run all over town with a policeman,” Keely said with satisfaction. “You got any kids?”

  “No,” Sarah said, telling a half-lie in her discomfort at the prying questions. She didn’t feel like sharing Catherine’s story with Keely just now. “Keely, I know you’re wondering what will become of you, but you really don’t have to worry about anything just now. You’re safe here, and you can stay as long as you want.”

  “I don’t like it here,” she said flatly.

  “I’m sure it’s very different than the life you’re used to, but at least give it a chance.”

  “The other girls don’t like me,” she said. “And I don’t like them, neither. Maybe I could be like you. Mrs. Keller said you was a midwife.”

  “You need special training to be a midwife,” Sarah said, seeing an opening to encourage her to remain at the Mission and work on her education.

  “Do you have an office or something? Like a doctor?”

  “My office is in the front room of my house. I’d be happy to talk to you about it some more, but you’ll have to do well in your classes here before you could even consider it.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll think about it,” she said and rose abruptly. “I better get back to my class then.”

  “I’ll ask Mrs. Keller about getting you some clothes,” Sarah said, but Keely was already gone.

  What on earth was all that talk about becoming a midwife? Sarah wondered. Maybe Keely recognized that Sarah was a possible source of good things and was trying to get on her good side? She felt a bit guilty, attributing such a selfish motive to the girl’s actions. Of course, it was too easy to judge her. Sarah had no idea what it was like to grow up as Keely had done, with no hope that her future would be any better than her past.

  Maybe Maeve could give her some insights into how to reach Keely. Maybe she’d even bring Maeve down here to talk with her. Anything was worth trying.

  FRANK FOUND AH WOH LOOKING BETTER THAN HE HAD the last time he’d seen him. The shock of losing his uncle had passed. His color was good, and his eyes had lost that vacant stare.

  “You get killer?” he asked hopefully as he ushered Frank into the house.

  “Not yet, I’m afraid,” Frank said. “But I need to ask you a few more questions.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, nodding vigorously. He motioned toward the parlor where Wong had died, and Frank was surprised to see that every trace of the murder had disappeared. The blood-soaked rug was gone, and there was a suspiciously light spot on the floor where extra cleaning had bleached away some of the color along with the bloodstain. Otherwise the room looked perfectly normal.

  Frank chose to sit on a chair as far from where Wong had been sitting as possible. Ah Woh perched on a chair nearby, eager to help.

  “Did your uncle have any visitors after I left on the day before he died until he sent you to find me the next morning?”

  “I tell you, Keely mother,” he reminded Frank uncertainly.

  Frank doubted Mrs. O’Neal could have helped Wong figure out who killed Angel. “Anybody else? Anybody Chinese?” Frank pressed.

  “No,” Ah Woh said, shaking his head for emphasis. “I know. No one come.”

  “Did he go out anyplace?” Frank tried.

  “No go out,” Ah Woh insisted. “Stay here. With girl.”

  That didn’t make any sense. How could he have figured out who killed Angel if he’d just stayed home with no visitors?

  “Are you sure he didn’t say anything to you about who he thought had killed Angel?”

  Ah Woh scratched his head. “No talk. Tell me find you. That all.”

  Frank swallowed down his frustration. Snapping at Ah Woh wouldn’t help. He tried one more question. “Do you know anybody in Chinatown who wears a red shirt?”

  “Red?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Yeah, red.” Frank looked around the room and found a red vase on the mantle. He pointed to it.

  “Ah,” Ah Woh said, nodding with understanding. “Uncle have red shirt.”

  Frank felt his blood quicken. This wasn’t what he had expected, but for all he knew, every Chinaman in the city had one. “Can I see it?”

  Ah Woh took him upstairs to the bedroom. This room had been cleaned, too. The bedclothes had been stripped, along with all traces of Keely’s presence. Ah Woh went to the large chest of drawers and opened the second one from the top. He stared for a long moment, and then started moving the garments in the drawer around when he didn’t find what he wanted. When he’d examined everything, he drew back, a puzzled frown on his face.

  “Maybe it’s in another drawer,” Frank suggested.

  Ah Woh gave him an uncertain glance, as if such a thing were impossible, but he closed that drawer and opened the top one, searching that one unsuccessfully as well. Frank watched him search the remaining drawers in the chest, then move to the wardrobe and even look under the bed and in the bathroom, growing more and more agitated until he was almost frantic.

  “It not here!” he exclaimed in despair.

  “Maybe your uncle threw it away or something,” Frank suggested.

  “No, no,” Ah Woh insisted. “It new.”

  “It was a new shirt?”

  “Yes, new. For wedding.”

  “The red shirt was for a wedding?” Frank asked, sure he must not be understanding correctly.

  “Yes, yes. Chinese wear red for wedding.”

  “A
re you saying Wong hadn’t worn the shirt because it was for his wedding to Angel?” If the Chinese only wore red for a wedding, that would explain why Frank had never seen any of them wearing a red shirt.

  “Yes! He not wear. Only her.”

  Now Frank really was confused. “Angel wore the shirt?”

  “No, no.” Ah Woh shook his head vigorously. “Girl wear.”

  “Keely wore it?” Frank asked in surprise.

  Ah Woh’s young face twisted in disgust. “She wear. Dance around.”

  “Keely put on the red shirt?”

  He nodded. “Fix hair,” he said, grabbing his queue and waving it. “Wear shirt.”

  “She braided her hair and put on the red shirt?” Frank asked in amazement.

  He nodded again. “She laugh. Run down stairs. Uncle chase.” He made a face again. “She want me see.”

  Yeah, Frank thought. She was the kind of girl who’d want to show herself to a man who couldn’t have her. “Did she know the shirt was for his wedding to Angel?”

  “Yes. She say…” His eyes clouded at the memory.

  “What did she say?”

  “She say she be Uncle houseboy. I go away,” he said bitterly.

  Keely also would have thought it was funny to threaten poor Ah Woh. No wonder the boy hated her.

  Something stirred in Frank’s memory. What had Keely said about dressing up? She’d dressed up the day Angel died. Now he knew she’d dressed up like a Chinese man and that she’d been wearing the same color shirt as the killer, a shirt a real Chinese man would only wear on a special day. And her hair had been braided into a pigtail.

  “Ah Woh,” Frank said, fighting hard not to let his excitement show. “Do you remember what happened the day Angel died?”

  He nodded uncertainly.

  “You told me your uncle was here all afternoon that day.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, nodding again. “He sleep.”

  That’s what he had claimed the last time Frank asked him, but he’d thought then that he was lying. “He slept all afternoon?”

  “Yes!”

  “How do you know?”

  “He in room with girl. No come out, long time. Very quiet. I look in. He sleep.”

  “What about her? Did you see her, too?”

  The thought about this, trying to remember. “I think…I think she with him in bed,” he said uncertainly.

  “But did you see her?”

  “No,” he finally decided. “Not see. Look in room, very quick. Not see.”

  “How long do you think your uncle was asleep?”

  “Long time,” he repeated. Then his eyes grew wide with realization. “Too long!”

  Frank had been trying to find out where Wong was that day, and Ah Woh and the girl had given him an alibi. Both said he’d been there all afternoon. He’d never thought to ask where the girl had been, because she was the one giving the alibi! He remembered Sarah waking Keely up from her drugged sleep.

  “Does your uncle have any drugs here?”

  Ah Woh didn’t understand the question.

  “Something to make a person sleep? Opium maybe,” Frank explained.

  “No opium,” the boy insisted, offended by the question.

  “What does he have?”

  When Ah Woh shrugged helplessly, Frank started pulling open the drawers in the chest and rummaging through them. He finally found it, a bottle of laudanum, tucked in the back of the bottom drawer. That wasn’t unusual. Practically every home in New York would have a supply for treating a variety of ailments. Had Wong used it on Keely yesterday? Or had she been faking? Could she have drugged Wong the day before so he wouldn’t know she went out? Could she have been the one who killed Angel?

  Frank didn’t even have to think about the answer. Suddenly, it was crystal clear to him. Keely had wanted to marry Wong so she’d be rich and comfortable. She’d claimed him after Angel had abandoned him, but then Angel’s father had come to promise Wong he could marry Angel after all. Keely wouldn’t have understood that was an empty promise, based on the remote possibility that Angel could get a divorce or annulment from her marriage to Keely’s brother. All Keely knew was that Angel was a threat to her.

  How easy it would have been to drug Wong, dress in his clothes, braid her hair into a queue, put on a wide-brimmed hat to conceal her features, and travel through the city virtually unnoticed. Angel would have recognized her anyway, even in her disguise, and she would have run to speak with her, just as the old woman had described seeing from her window far above. And Keely was strong enough and angry enough to have wrapped her hands around Angel’s throat and squeezed the life out of her.

  And that meant she was the one who’d bashed Wong’s head in, too. He must have figured it out somehow. He would have remembered how Keely dressed up in his clothes and how he’d lain in a drugged sleep all that afternoon. Keely couldn’t let him betray her, so she’d come up behind him and struck the fatal blow. Then she’d pretended she was drugged and didn’t hear anything.

  Frank realized Ah Woh was staring at him, his eyes full of terror.

  “It’s all right,” Frank assured him. “I think I know who killed your uncle.”

  FRANK STOPPED OFF AT POLICE HEADQUARTERS TO PICK up a few patrolmen to guard the back door of the Mission. He didn’t want to take a chance on Keely slipping away and disappearing into the streets of the city.

  Mrs. Keller was surprised to see him but not alarmed. She knew he’d helped Sarah save the Mission. “What brings you here, Detective Sergeant?” she asked pleasantly.

  “I need to see Keely O’Neal,” he told her.

  “She’s popular today,” Mrs. Keller remarked. “Mrs. Brandt was here earlier to visit her.”

  Thank heaven Sarah was long gone, Frank thought as he waited in the front parlor for Mrs. Keller to return with the girl. He wondered what lies Keely had told in answer to Sarah’s questions.

  Frank wasn’t sure exactly when he realized something was wrong. Maybe it was because Mrs. Keller had been gone a bit too long. Maybe it was the sound of people moving around in the hallway and someone running upstairs when the house had been so quiet before. He stepped out into the hall and saw Mrs. Keller hurrying back toward him.

  “We can’t find her,” she reported with a worried frown.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find her?”

  “She never went back to her class after Mrs. Brandt left,” Mrs. Keller said. “No one has seen her since then.”

  “She’s not upstairs!” a girl called down from the second floor.

  “Did you look everywhere?” Mrs. Keller called back.

  Frank didn’t wait for the answer. He already knew she was gone. Sarah’s questions must have spooked her, and she’d decided to disappear. He ran down the hallway to the rear of the house and out the back door. The officers he’d posted there looked at him in surprise.

  “Did anybody come out?” he asked.

  “Not a soul.”

  “The girl’s missing. Search the yard.”

  He didn’t think they’d find her, but it was foolish not to at least try. Maybe she was still hiding, waiting for dark to escape. Frank went inside and found Mrs. Keller still helping the rest of the girls search the house.

  “How long has Mrs. Brandt been gone?” he asked her.

  “An hour or so, I’d say. She talked with Keely, and when they were finished and Keely went back to class—or at least I thought she went back to class—Mrs. Brandt asked me about finding some clothes for her. Keely had come with a bundle, and she hadn’t said anything about needing clothes, so I didn’t think—”

  “Detective Sergeant!”

  Frank looked up to see one of the officers coming down the hallway toward him. “We found this in the privy,” he said, holding up an article of clothing.

  “That’s the dress Keely was wearing,” Mrs. Keller said in surprise. “Why would she have taken it off?”

  “So she could dress up,” Frank said furiously
.

  “Dress up as what?” Mrs. Keller asked in surprise.

  “As a Chinese man,” Frank said, certain he knew exactly what she was wearing. She’d carried her disguise with her in that bundle Mrs. Keller had noticed. That’s why Ah Woh hadn’t been able to find the red shirt. “She’ll be wearing a red silk shirt, one of those fancy ones, and probably black trousers and a wide-brimmed hat.” He turned to Mrs. Keller. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  “None at all.”

  Frank turned to the patrolman still holding the discarded dress. “Go back to Headquarters and round up as many men as you can find. Give them that description and turn them loose in the neighborhood to find out if anybody saw her.”

  The patrolman’s expression mirrored Frank’s own lack of confidence in such a search. They’d probably never see Keely O’Neal again. But he hurried to carry out Frank’s orders anyway.

  SARAH DECIDED TO WALK HOME INSTEAD OF TAKING THE Elevated Train. Even if she took the train, she’d have to walk quite a ways, and the day was lovely, too lovely to spend squashed into a car with a hundred strangers. Besides, walking gave her time to think.

  Malloy was right. They were overlooking something important. She hoped he’d had more luck with his witness than she’d had with Keely. All they had to do was figure out which of the Chinese men Angel knew had killed her and then would have been able to sneak into John Wong’s house and kill him, too. If Wong could figure it out, so could they. Or so she thought. By the time she got home to Bank Street, her head hurt from trying.

  Catherine came running to meet her, as usual, and jumped up into her arms for a hug. Maeve wasn’t far behind her.

  “I’ve been that worried about you, Mrs. Brandt. You’ve been gone so long!” Maeve exclaimed.

  “Have you been worried about me, or have you been wondering what happened?” Sarah teased her, knowing she hadn’t been gone all that long. It wasn’t even noon yet.

  “Well, both,” Maeve allowed, blushing slightly. “You can’t blame me, though, after the way you and Mrs. Lee left this morning.”

  “I don’t suppose I can,” Sarah said, setting Catherine back on her feet.