Murder In Chinatown

by Victoria Thompson

  “I was just making some sandwiches,” Maeve said. “Are you hungry?”

  Sarah was starving, so they adjourned to the kitchen.

  “What happened with that boy Harry and his father?” Maeve asked as she set about preparing an extra sandwich for Sarah.

  Sarah looked at Catherine, judging whether she should speak in front of the child. Catherine seemed more interested in helping Maeve than in what they were discussing, and besides, her news wasn’t particularly shocking.

  “Mr. Malloy questioned them both and then let them go home,” Sarah said.

  “Then Mrs. Lee was all upset for nothing,” Maeve said.

  “Not for nothing,” Sarah disagreed. “Having the police come to your house at the crack of dawn and haul away your husband and son is pretty terrifying.”

  “Why did Mr. Malloy let them go then?”

  “Because he didn’t think either of them had done anything wrong.” Sarah looked at Catherine again. The child seemed engrossed in eating her sandwich, but Sarah knew that she was listening to every word. How could she not? Sarah decided to change the subject. “I stopped by the Mission on my way home to see Keely O’Neal.”

  “Is she still there?” Maeve asked slyly.

  Sarah smiled back. “Yes, but you were right. She doesn’t like it very much. She’s not used to following so many rules, and she said the other girls don’t like her.”

  “They’re always suspicious of a new girl,” Maeve said. “Aren’t they, Catherine?”

  The child nodded solemnly.

  “Why is that?” Sarah asked.

  “Because you never know what she’s really like,” Maeve explained, setting a sandwich down in front of Sarah and then taking a seat herself. “Most girls will be scared when they first come, so they keep quiet and keep to themselves until they figure things out.”

  “How long does that take?”

  “A few days, usually. Sometimes longer. That’s when you find out what the new girl is really like.”

  Sarah knew that not every girl who came to the Mission stayed. Some ran away and a very few were asked to leave. “So we still have some time until we know what Keely will do?”

  “Yes, but with her, I wouldn’t hold out much hope. A girl like that, I’d expect that they’ll wake up one morning and she’ll have stolen everything she can carry and disappeared.”

  “Oh, my!” Ordinarily, Sarah would have defended any girl against such an unpleasant prediction, but for some reason, she didn’t feel charitable toward Keely.

  “That’s why the other girls don’t act real friendly at first,” Maeve continued. “They wait to see if the new girl will turn on them or if she really wants help.”

  “I’m afraid Keely doesn’t really want help,” Sarah said with a sigh. “And she can’t go home again. You were right about that, too. Her family doesn’t want her back after she’s been with a Chinese man. The Mission is really the best place for her, so I was hoping you could help me figure out how to reach her.”

  But Maeve was shaking her head. “She’s got to make up her own mind first.”

  “But couldn’t you talk some sense to her?” Sarah argued. “Convince her that her best chance is to stay where she’s safe?”

  Maeve looked at her in surprise. “You want me to go see her? To try to change her mind?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said. “You’re a perfect example of how a girl can make a success of her life if she tries.”

  This time Maeve’s blush was from pride. “Thank you, Mrs. Brandt.”

  “I’m only saying what’s true,” Sarah assured her. “Would you be willing to talk to Keely?”

  “I…I guess so,” Maeve said, “but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t do any good.”

  They ate for a few minutes in silence, and then Maeve asked, “If Mr. Malloy let Mr. Lee and his boy go, who’s he going after next?”

  “He was going to question his witness again, the old lady who saw Angel…” Sarah glanced at Catherine, who was listening avidly. “Who saw Angel with the man who hurt her, and get a better description of the clothes the man was wearing. Then he’s going to see if Mr. Wong’s nephew has remembered anything else.”

  “It doesn’t sound very promising,” Maeve observed.

  Someone knocked on the back door.

  “That’ll be Mrs. Ellsworth,” Maeve said, jumping up. “She said she’d be over after lunch.”

  Maeve threw open the back door, and her exclamation of surprise caused Sarah to look up just in time to see a Chinese man lunging for her.

  FRANK WAS STANDING ON THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF the Mission, directing the search for Keely, when Officer Donatelli wheeled up on a bicycle.

  “What are you doing on that thing?” Frank asked, eyeing the cycle with suspicion. The department had started a bicycle squad to patrol the streets, but Donatelli wasn’t a member of it.

  “It’s a good way to get around the city,” Donatelli informed him. “It’s faster than walking, and you can go between wagons and even up on the sidewalk if you need to, so you never get stuck in traffic. What do you want me to do?”

  Frank had pretty much covered all the possibilities. He had every available man questioning people on the six blocks surrounding the Mission. So far, nobody had seen a Chinese man in a red shirt. Probably, Frank thought, they’d just ignored Keely, the way they did all the Chinese they saw. Either way, he was no closer to finding her. He’d even sent someone over to the O’Neal flat, in case she’d taken a chance that her family would hide her, but Keely wasn’t there either. He had one last hope.

  “Mrs. Brandt was the last person with Keely before she disappeared,” Frank told him. “Drive that contraption over to her house and find out what they talked about. Maybe she’ll have an idea of where to look for the girl.”

  Donatelli nodded and took off, pedaling furiously. Frank watched him go with a frown. It might be fast, but only a fool would get on one of those things.

  “Mr. Malloy?”

  Frank looked up to find Mrs. Keller coming down the front steps of the Mission. An older woman wearing a shabby dress and an enormous apron was with her. They both looked very worried, and the older woman was actually wringing her hands.

  “Mr. Malloy, this is Mrs. O’Dell. She’s our cook. Tell him what you noticed, Mary.”

  The older woman’s red face grew even redder. “I don’t know if it means anything,” she wailed.

  “Tell him,” Mrs. Keller urged.

  “Well, just now,” she began anxiously, “I went into the kitchen. I figured the girls would be hungry, even with all this excitement, but when I goes to slice the cheese to make them some sandwiches, I can’t find my knife.”

  Frank felt a chill. “Are you sure you didn’t misplace it?”

  “Oh, no, I looked all over before I ever said a word to Mrs. Keller, I did. It ain’t nowhere in the kitchen. I’d swear to that.”

  “What kind of a knife is it?”

  “It’s big and sharp,” she said a little testily, as if he should have figured that out for himself. “Blade about this long.”

  Frank managed not to wince when she indicated a blade of about eight inches.

  “She probably took it for protection,” Mrs. Keller offered.

  Frank was sure of it, but Keely’s idea of protection was to kill anyone who posed a threat to her. The question was, did she have anyone else on her list of people she wanted to kill?

  FOR A MOMENT, TIME SEEMED TO STOP. SARAH HAD looked up and seen not Mrs. Ellsworth but a Chinese man standing on her back porch. His hand was raised and holding something, and he’d started to lunge toward Maeve, but he’d caught himself suddenly when Maeve cried out.

  In that split second, when they were all frozen, Sarah looked at his face beneath the brim of his hat, and that’s when she understood everything.

  “Keely!” Sarah cried.

  Keely’s confused gaze darted from Maeve to Sarah, and her face twisted with hatred. The thing in her hand was a
knife, Sarah realized in horror, and when she saw Sarah, she drew it back to lunge again. In the same instant, Maeve slammed the door shut with all her strength.

  The door caught Keely’s arm at the wrist. Keely howled in pain, and the knife went flying. Maeve pulled the door open again, and Keely slumped forward into the opening, grabbing her injured wrist. Merciless, Maeve slammed the door again, this time catching Keely’s head and sending her hat flying. The edge of the door split her temple, and when Maeve opened it again, blood began to stream down Keely’s face.

  Part of Sarah’s mind registered that Catherine had fled, leaving her free to worry only about Maeve and Keely. Before she had even formed a coherent thought, she was on her feet and across the room. She grabbed the edge of the door when Maeve would have slammed it again.

  “That’s enough!” she cried and grabbed Keely by the arm to keep her from slumping to the floor. “Help me get her inside.”

  “She tried to kill me!” Maeve protested.

  “I think she meant to kill me,” Sarah corrected her. “In any case, she’s not going to kill anyone now. Where’s the knife?”

  Maeve looked around while Sarah helped the dazed girl into the kitchen and down onto a chair.

  “I don’t see it,” Maeve said. “You can’t just bring her into the house when she tried to kill us!” she added when she saw what Sarah was doing. “And why is she dressed like that?”

  Keely was looking at Maeve in wonder, still clutching her wrist, which Sarah could see now was probably broken. “Who are you?” she asked. Then she looked up at Sarah accusingly. “You said you didn’t have any kids.”

  “We have to tell Mr. Malloy,” Maeve informed Sarah. “And you can’t leave her here. What if she tries to kill us again?”

  “Her wrist is broken,” Sarah said, “and I’m not sure she isn’t going to pass out from that blow to her head, but if it will make you feel any better, we can tie her up. Go get my mending basket. There’s some stockings in it that will do.”

  Maeve ran out.

  “It’s broken?” Keely asked, bewildered, staring at her wrist as if she’d never seen it before.

  “Maybe,” Sarah lied to keep her from panicking. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it against the cut on Keely’s head to stanch the bleeding. “Keely, why did you come here?”

  She looked up at Sarah, still dazed. “You saw my braid,” she said, as if that was the most obvious reason in the world. “I couldn’t let you tell that policeman.”

  It seemed so logical now. Why hadn’t she realized the truth the instant she’d seen Keely’s braided hair? The irony was that if Keely hadn’t shown up here to kill her, she might never have made the connection. “But how in the world did you find me?”

  “You told me the street where you lived,” she replied simply. “And then I saw your sign out front.”

  She was right, of course. Sarah stared at her, taking in the silk shirt and baggy pants that more than adequately concealed her feminine curves. Her dark hair hung down her back in a single pigtail just like the Chinese men wore, and the broad-brimmed hat she’d been wearing would have concealed her features if she kept her head bowed and spoke to no one.

  Keely had been the Chinese man that Malloy’s witness had seen from so far away. They’d guessed from the way the witness had described Angel’s reaction to the man that she’d known him. Of course she had. She would have recognized Keely in her disguise and gone to see what on earth she was up to. Then they’d quarreled, probably over Wong. Angel wouldn’t have wanted Keely to marry him. And Keely, in her anger or in fear of losing Wong to Angel, had strangled her. Wong had figured it out somehow, and she’d killed him. Then she’d imagined that Sarah was a threat to her, and she’d come here to kill Sarah, too.

  But she hadn’t succeeded. Sarah lifted the handkerchief to see if the bleeding had stopped and that’s when she noticed the knot in one corner. The knot Mrs. Ellsworth had tied there to protect her. Sarah prided herself in not being superstitious, but she had to admit that this time, at least, it had worked.

  Sarah was vaguely aware of someone ringing her front doorbell. She hoped it wasn’t a delivery. She couldn’t possibly go. Then she heard a familiar voice calling, “Mrs. Brandt! Mrs. Brandt!”

  Gino Donatelli burst into her kitchen with Maeve on his heels, and he stopped dead when he saw Keely O’Neal sitting in her kitchen chair with the bloody handkerchief pressed to her face.

  “I couldn’t believe it when she told me,” he said in amazement, gesturing toward Maeve. “Every cop in town is looking for her. She’s the one killed the Chinese girl and John Wong, too.”

  “Mama! Mama!”

  The words were soft, almost a whisper, and when Sarah looked down to find the source, she saw Catherine squeezing past Donatelli, who was nearly blocking the doorway into the kitchen.

  “Mama,” Catherine repeated urgently, looking up at Sarah solemnly. “She won’t hurt you now. I hided the knife.”

  Catherine’s sweet face blurred as tears filled Sarah’s eyes, and she scooped the child into her arms.

  Epilogue

  FRANK NO LONGER FELT INTIMIDATED WALKING INTO Felix Decker’s office. He might be one of the richest and most powerful men in the city, but he was also Sarah’s father. That made him as vulnerable as Frank.

  “I didn’t get your message until late Saturday night,” Frank said by way of excuse for not coming sooner than Monday morning.

  “I’ve been reading about you in the papers,” Decker said. Frank imagined he heard disapproval in his tone, but he couldn’t be sure. “The press loved the story about the murdered Chinese girl.”

  Frank could have told him they would have loved to know about Sarah’s involvement, too, but he didn’t.

  “Sit down, Mr. Malloy,” Decker said when Frank didn’t comment.

  Frank took one of the comfortable leather chairs that stood in front of Decker’s desk. As always, he marveled at how ordinary Decker’s office looked, as if he felt no need to display his wealth or influence with fancy furnishings.

  “Your message said you had some information for me,” Frank said.

  “That’s right. I’ll admit I didn’t believe you when you said you didn’t have the time or resources to trace these women yourself. I was afraid you were just trying to delay the investigation.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Decker considered the question carefully. “I don’t pretend to understand your motives, Mr. Malloy. We both know you’ve already lied about your reasons for wanting to find Dr. Brandt’s killer.”

  “I didn’t lie,” Frank lied.

  Decker smiled slightly. “There are lies of omission.”

  Frank didn’t bother to respond to that. He’d once thought that solving Tom Brandt’s murder would give Sarah some peace, but he was no longer certain of that. Decker wanted Sarah to find out her husband wasn’t the saintly young doctor she believed him to be so she’d give up her devotion to his memory…and his work. Frank just wanted to keep her from being hurt.

  “Did you hire Pinkertons to find out about the women?” Frank asked, referring to the detectives employed by Allan Pinkerton’s detective agency.

  “Yes, but even they had as much difficulty as you predicted you would have. It has taken them all this time to gather the necessary information.” Decker pushed a file folder across the desk to him.

  Frank picked it up and opened it. Inside he found neatly typed pages of reports on each of three women.

  After skimming the reports, he said, “All of them had fathers living at the time Dr. Brandt was murdered.”

  “Yes, and since your witness claims he heard Dr. Brandt’s killer accuse him of ruining his daughter, that means any of the three men could have done it.”

  Or maybe none of them, Frank thought, but at least it gave them a place to start looking. He closed the folder.

  “I have to admit that I might have done the same,” Decker said, “if s
omeone had seduced my daughter and driven her insane.”

  The lack of passion in his voice told Frank he was testing him. “Dr. Brandt didn’t seduce any of these women,” Frank said, trying not to sound annoyed. “I told you before, they imagined the whole thing. That woman I met, Edna White, she thinks he’s still alive and that she meets him at a flat in Chinatown.”

  “He must have done something to encourage her,” Decker argued. “Why else would she remain so devoted to him?”

  “All he did was treat her when she was sick and be nice to her.”

  “And what about these three?” Decker challenged, gesturing toward the folder Frank still held. “One crazy woman could be an accident, but four?”

  “These women weren’t his patients. But they had the same kind of delusions.”

  “You told me you found out about them when you were going through Brandt’s patient files,” Decker reminded him.

  Frank was having a difficult time holding his temper. “But he wasn’t their doctor, and he didn’t treat them.”

  “No, he just sought them out, women who were known to imagine themselves in love with men they hardly knew. Women who believed they had a carnal relationship with these men. I find that strange, don’t you, Mr. Malloy?”

  Frank tried not to snap at him. “He wanted to find out more about this ‘old maid’s disease’ so he could figure out how to cure Edna White.”

  “Even if that’s true, he managed to make one of these women’s fathers angry enough to kill him,” Decker pointed out.

  “It looks that way,” Frank grudgingly agreed.

  Decker sat back in his chair and studied Frank for a moment. “What are you going to do now that you have this information?”

  Frank wasn’t sure. “Commissioner Roosevelt gave me permission to work on the case,” he reminded Decker. “So I will.”

  “One of the families lives outside the city,” Decker pointed out. “You have no authority there.”

  “They might not know that.” Frank had lied many times to get the information he wanted. Once more wouldn’t bother him.

  Decker nodded. “There’s something you need to know, Mr. Malloy, but you can’t reveal this information to anyone, not even my daughter. Do I have your word?”