Don't Die Under the Apple Tree

by Amy Patricia Meade

  “How long will that be?”

  “Not long at all. I have a monthly lease. So two more weeks maybe?”

  Katie nodded. “I’m glad you decided to move, Rosie. Things’ll work out fine. You’ll see.”

  “And if not, at least I’ll be with you and Charlie.” She smiled wanly. “Now hurry off to bed. You have a busy next few days in store and we can talk more in the morning.”

  “Okay. Do you need anything before I go?”

  “No, my pajamas and robe are there on the couch where I left them.”

  “Okay. Good night, Rosie.”

  “Good night, sweetie.”

  Rosie waited until Katie had shut the bedroom door before changing out of her gray dress and last pair of good stockings and back into her cotton pajamas. Forgoing her robe, she crept to the narrow coat closet and extracted a men’s navy blue sports coat from a wire hanger. Burying her face in the soft wool fabric, she was overcome by the familiar scent of Courtlay Cologne.

  Oh, Billy, if only you were here, none of this would be happening.

  Silent tears streamed down her pink cheeks and plopped softly onto the collar of her floral printed pajamas.

  If only you’d come home, she wished. But it didn’t take long before she realized the futility of such yearning. The truth was that in their thirteen years of marriage, Billy Keefe had never been there when she needed him. When they couldn’t make rent, it was Rosie who spoke to the landlord and then worked to make up the difference. On the few occasions when Billy drank the grocery money, it was Rosie’s good name that obtained them a small line of credit. And when Rosie’s father died suddenly, of a massive heart attack, Billy was unavailable—until a uniformed policeman found him passed out in an alley and brought him home.

  Still, Rosie might overlook all those moments if Billy was here now. She knew that he would be of little help in getting her out of the present situation, but at least he might hold her and try to assuage her sense of fear and loneliness.

  Rosie folded the jacket tenderly and, wiping away her tears, placed it on the top shelf of the closet beside her meager collection of hats and gloves. There was no point in waiting for Billy to return, no time to waste waiting for someone to rescue her. She had to rely upon herself to find a way out of this mess and, after having considered her options during the ride from the police station, she decided there was only one way in which she could both pay the bills and clear her name.

  She had to get back her job at Pushey Shipyard.

  Lieutenant Jack Riordan made the lonely, late-night drive back to the Brooklyn row house owned by Mrs. Anne Marie Accurso. Accurso, a sixty-two-year-old widow and mother of two sons, put the third floor of her house up for rent shortly after her husband, Genarro, passed away three years earlier. Featuring a small hot plate, an icebox, and a full, private bathroom, the space also included use of the house’s driveway, all for the price of fifteen dollars a month—a steal for such a safe, quiet, well-established neighborhood.

  Riordan, ever mindful that scores of other tenants would be willing to pay twenty dollars and more to live in the Carroll Gardens area, made a point to occasionally slip his landlady a few extra dollars or, when he was in the Little Italy neighborhood, purchase a box of her favorite pignoli cookies. Since the marriage of Mrs. Accurso’s elder son, Vincent, and the deployment of her younger son, Bruno, into the army, Riordan had even taken to helping with the traditionally male chores of mowing the lawn, changing lightbulbs, taking out the trash, and, as he had done the past weekend, tilling the soil of Mrs. Accurso’s prized rose garden.

  Such deeds did not go unnoticed by the widow. And therefore, when Mrs. Accurso saw that her tenant was working late, she would sneak upstairs and leave a foil-covered plate of meatballs, lasagna, braciole, or some other Italian delicacy in his icebox and then, mindful of his privacy, hasten back downstairs again.

  And so the pair coexisted peacefully, each performing a certain function in the other’s life, but never quite fulfilling the void created by absent family and loved ones. With her scant knowledge of English, Mrs. Accurso didn’t provide much in the way of company or conversation, but, after spending his days chasing down mobsters, murderers, and thugs, Riordan found that he seldom felt like talking anyway. Mrs. Accurso, for her part, knew only that her tenant was a policeman who had been in the newspapers, a fact that served to make her feel safe but failed to impress her old world sensibilities. Her focus was on home, hearth, and family; she had no desire to hear, read, or involve herself in the ugliness of the masculine universe.

  Likewise, Anne Marie Accurso found Riordan’s bachelor status quite confusing. Although no match for her Genarro, God rest his soul, the lieutenant was certainly handsome enough and possessed a strong build that many young women would find appealing. Yet she had never seen him with a lady friend. If the man had no interest in women, then why did he not pursue a career in the priesthood?

  Tiptoeing up the red-carpeted stairs to the third floor, Riordan arrived in the space that served as living room, bedroom, and kitchenette. After switching on the light, he flung his hat onto the trundle bed and, with his coat still on, reached into the icebox for a beer. Finding Mrs. Accurso’s food parcel instead, he lifted out the plate and peeked under the aluminum foil to find a pair of stuffed green peppers smothered in tomato sauce.

  With a sigh, Riordan turned on the hot plate and put the peppers on the burner. As much as he enjoyed Mrs. Accurso’s cooking and appreciated her meal deliveries, every now and then he hoped to look beneath the wrapper and find a T-bone steak and a baked potato.

  With dinner heating, Riordan removed his overcoat, threw it onto the bed with his hat, and returned to the icebox to retrieve his beer. Using the edge of the counter, he popped the cap from the brown bottle and took a long swig before moving to the set of double windows that looked out onto the front garden and, a few feet beyond it, the street.

  The clouds that had cast a pall over the day had finally released their burden, covering the earth below in a fine mist. Riordan, however, had other things on his mind besides the weather. Ever since their interview, he could not stop thinking of Rose Doyle Keefe. There was her beauty, of course—dark red hair set against alabaster skin and a set of pink lips that hypnotized as they moved—but there was something else to that face, a sense of defiance, determination, and quiet strength that he had never before witnessed in a woman.

  Riordan took another swig from the bottle and undid his tie. Colleagues had always accused him of being a sucker for damsels in distress and, for the most part, they were right. Abandoned by her husband shortly after their son was born, Riordan’s mother had taken any odd job she could find in order to support herself and her child. As soon as Jack was old enough, he contributed to household expenses by selling newspapers and working as a clerk at the corner market. His efforts, however, came too late. Weakened by years of hard labor and poor nutrition, Riordan’s mother became ill with pulmonary tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium. She died there, two years later, at the age of forty-eight. Her son, Jack, was just seventeen.

  Be it due to guilt over his mother’s life of struggle and sacrifice or frustration over his inability to save her, Riordan grew to become a man who revered women. Their ability to endure the physical pain of childbirth and to consistently put their children’s needs ahead of their own made them, in Riordan’s opinion, not just the fairer but the psychologically stronger of the sexes.

  And yet, despite their strength, they were socially vulnerable. From birth to marriage to childrearing, it seemed that woman’s fate lay perpetually in the hands of men. The good fortune of having a kind father and a loving husband made the difference between a happy life and one of constant toil and heartache.

  Riordan’s job with the police department had put him in contact with many women who had entrusted their physical and financial well-being to rogues, rapists, and abusers. As always, he followed the letter of the law to ensure that justice was done, but if he
appeared to devote a bit more time to their cases, go a bit softer on their interviews and interrogations, or even act as an advocate to ensure their voices were heard, it was because he felt that these women were truly deserving of the extra time and care.

  Occasionally, a nefarious female would take advantage of Riordan’s kindness, leaving him to doubt the wisdom of his ways. At other times, his desire to protect compromised the other relationships in his life, such as ten years ago when his then-fiancée, citing that Riordan was putting too much time into finding a woman’s lost child, cancelled their trip to the altar. Sometimes, as was the case now, defending a female suspect had even put him on the wrong side of the captain’s good graces.

  Defending Rose Keefe, however, felt different to Riordan. It felt, for lack of a better word, “right.” Her reaction in the interrogation room was not the usual display of tears and hysterics. She made no ploy for sympathy nor did she beg for clemency. Other policemen might have taken this as an indication that she was coldly detached from the situation or perhaps even the world around her. Riordan, however, understood it to mean that, whatever hardships she had endured, Rose Keefe was the type of woman who was determined to stand on her own feet.

  Riordan polished off the remainder of his beer and wandered back to the hot plate. Lifting off the aluminum-foil cover, he shifted the contents of the plate with the help of a kitchen fork and then re-covered them to continue the reheating process. Depositing the dirty fork on top of the icebox with a frown, he ambled to the trundle bed and perched beside his coat and hat.

  Rose Keefe might not have asked, nor even have wanted, Riordan’s assistance, but that was probably because she wasn’t aware of just how much she needed it. Although, so far, all the evidence in the Finch case was circumstantial, Rose’s outburst paired with the assault with the stapler painted a very dark picture for the redhead.

  Riordan’s men would be at the shipyard and nearby docks until the wee hours, collecting evidence. The problem was, with the shipyard closed until morning, evidence was all they would find. In order to clear Keefe’s name, one had to identify other possible suspects.

  And that required questioning the employees of Pushey Shipyard.

  Chapter Five

  Subconsciously aware of the sound of whispers emanating from a space somewhere above her head, Rosie awoke with a start. As she blinked the sleep out of her eyes, the concerned faces of her mother and Katie crystallized through the fog.

  “Ma? What are you doing here?” Rosie sat up and ran her hands over her face.

  Standing just over five feet tall and weighing in at one hundred and thirty pounds, sixty-two-year-old Evelyn Mary Doyle was, despite her petite size, formidable. Like a small dog who assumes a larger-than-life attitude in order to intimidate larger foes, Evelyn had learned early on that speaking loudly, gazing directly, and standing straight, with hands on hips and nose in the air, went a long way toward making both enemies and strong-minded daughters cry “uncle.”

  Standing at Rosie’s feet, Evelyn combined the hands-on-hips pose with a defiant forward thrust of the chest. “I’m here to take care of my eldest daughter. Where else would I be?”

  With a loud yawn, Rosie swung her feet over the side of the couch and onto the tufted floral area rug. She was in no mood to field what would, inevitably, turn into a never-ending stream of questions. “There’s nothing to take care of, Ma. I’m fine. Really.”

  “Fine? Is that why Margaret Delaney called me yesterday? To tell me that everything was fine? Still, at least Michael talks to his mother.”

  “Ma, please ...”

  “And I suppose that’s why you were asleep all morning, eh? Because you’re ‘fine’?”

  Rosie leaped from the sofa in horror. “I’ve been asleep all morning? What time is it?”

  “A little before noon. Katie and I tried to wake you, but you were delirious. Talking in your sleep about things that made no sense. At one point you even shouted at us not to touch you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rosie muttered as she frantically folded her blankets. She had hoped to get to Pushey before the morning shift started. But if she hurried, she might at least be able to get to Red Hook in time to put in a half-day’s work. That is, if Finch’s replacement agreed to take her back.

  “That’s all you have to say for yourself, is it? ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I’m fine.’”

  “For now, yes. Say, why don’t you stay here with Katie and Charlie this afternoon? And then, tonight at supper, I’ll answer all your questions. I promise.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t have time to talk right now, Ma. I should have been at the shipyard hours ago!” Rosie realized her mistake too late, but on the off chance that her mother hadn’t caught the name of her intended destination, she turned on one heel and hastened toward the bedroom.

  Rosie should have known better. Her father had frequently joked that Evelyn’s hearing was so acute that she would complain at night about the neighbor’s dog barking, even though it had been six years since both neighbor and dog had moved to Westchester County.

  “Rosaleen Elizabeth!” Evelyn exploded, sending wisps of graying auburn hair tumbling from the bun atop her head.

  Evelyn had always called her daughters by their Christian names, but combining them with their middle, or Saint’s, names meant business. Rosie froze in her tracks.

  “Did I just hear you say that you’re going back to that ... that place?”

  Rosie turned around slowly and mirrored her mother’s hands-on-hips pose. “Yes, you did.”

  Katie, flaxen haired and even-tempered like her father, had witnessed several of these power plays as a child and, therefore, knew that it was only a matter of time before she was drawn into the middle of the argument. Hoping to escape the apartment unseen, she grabbed an amused Charlie from his blanket on the floor and inched toward the door.

  “Katherine Brigid! And just where do you think you’re going?” Evelyn boomed.

  “I ... I was just taking Charlie for a walk.”

  “You’re not taking my grandson anywhere. Not until you talk some sense into your sister.” Evelyn met her younger daughter at the door and took the baby from her arms.

  “Oh, but Ma,” Katie whined.

  “Don’t ‘but Ma’ me. You’ve been every bit as worried as I have.”

  “Ma, leave her out of this,” Rosie ordered.

  “No,” Katie spoke up. “Ma’s right. I was sick after Delaney’s call yesterday. And then, this morning, with you thrashing around so, I didn’t know what to think. That’s why I asked Ma to come by.”

  Rosie recalled Katie’s promise from the night before. “Nice job sticking together, sis.”

  “I’ll stick by you when you start making sense. You know Ma and I would be devastated if something were to happen to you. And yet, you want to go back to the shipyard, with all those men. After ... after what happened.”

  “I don’t like the idea any more than you do, but I have to get my job back.”

  “There’s no need, Rosaleen,” Evelyn argued. “You and your sister are moving back home with me. It’s already been settled.”

  “I know, Ma, but I still need the job.”

  “Why? With the three of us sharing expenses, you can take it easier. I hear the bakery shop over on Bedford is looking for a counter clerk. The hours are good and it’s right around the corner. That’ll save you money on the train.”

  “I can’t, Ma. Not right now.”

  “But you can go back to a job you were fired from? Where someone was murdered?”

  Rosie shook her head. “You don’t understand. I have to.”

  “Here we go again. That’s exactly what you said when your father and I objected to you marrying William.” Again Evelyn Doyle ignored the existence of nicknames. “‘You don’t understand, Ma, I’ll just die if I don’t marry him!’ Your father and I thought you were in trouble, but no. You were just so in love you couldn’t see straight. You went off and elop
ed, and look where it got you. No children, no money, and a husband who’s God only knows where.”

  Rosie glared at her sister.

  “Katherine didn’t tell me,” Evelyn announced. “Mrs. Delaney did. But it didn’t take a phone call from her to tell me that you’re unhappy. Too late now, though. You made your decision to marry and it can’t be undone. Still, you’d think you might have learned something, but now here you are again, not listening to reason, running off to get back a job that might kill you.”

  Rosie blinked back her tears. “This is a different situation, Ma,” she said quietly. “Someday I hope to explain it to you, but right now, there’s somewhere I need to be. Will I see you at supper?”

  Evelyn folded her arms across her chest and turned her nose up. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”

  “Well, then, have a good afternoon.” With that, Rosie marched off to the bedroom and slammed the door.

  Rosie changed into a pale green shirtdress and a cardigan sweater and, with a pair of cotton workcloth coveralls stuffed into her oversized handbag, caught the 12:25 train to Brooklyn. After checking in at Pushey’s front gate, she stepped from the unseasonably warm April air and through the heavy metal doors of the main building. The dreary, windowless holding area, typically resonating with laughter and chatter as employees awaited the start of their shift, was now vacant and eerily quiet.

  Less than twenty-four hours had elapsed since she’d last stood in this room, and yet it felt like it had been months. In that brief period of time, her marriage, her job, and her freedom had all been compromised. At the moment, Rosie could do nothing to save nor improve her marriage, but she could work on preserving the other two.

  She sighed heavily and exited through the heavy steel door to the shipyard, which was abuzz with coverall-clad employees working furiously to make up for the previous day’s cancelled night shift. It was not long, however, before attention switched away from production and to the redheaded visitor standing outside the holding area doors.