“Thanks, Doc.”
Frank remembered the cabinet. He walked over and opened the double doors. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but what he saw was an empty cabinet, just like O’Toole had said.
“You finished in here?” O’Toole asked from the doorway.
“I’m finished,” Doc Haynes said, getting up wearily.
Frank turned to look at the other detective. “You checked this cabinet when you got here to make sure it was empty?”
“Yeah, like I told you,” O’Toole said with some irritation. “We searched this place, top to bottom. I’m telling you, the wop kid wasn’t here.”
“That Professor fellow says he was hiding in the cabinet during the séance, and he must’ve sneaked out and stabbed the woman.”
“I figured it was something like that,” O’Toole said. “But where did he go after that, I’d like to know.”
“So would I,” Frank said. “Guess I could ask him.” He closed the cabinet.
“Mr. Malloy?”
Frank nearly jumped at the sound of Sarah’s voice, but he managed to keep his composure. He turned to see her standing behind O’Toole in the doorway.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but may I speak with you a moment?” she asked.
O’Toole was looking at her like he’d never seen a female before. Frank somehow managed not to punch him, but he did have to use a little force to get him out of the doorway. Frank paused in the hallway, trying to remember which room might be empty. Mrs. Decker wasn’t in the office anymore. He pointed toward the door and followed Sarah inside.
He closed the door behind them and turned to face her. For a moment, just one moment, he thought of all they’d been through together and how she was unlike any other woman he’d ever known. He owed her more than he could ever repay, for what she had done for his son and for helping him solve cases he could never have hoped to solve without the knowledge she had of the rich and the world they lived in. Once he’d planned to repay her by finding the man who had killed her husband and bringing him to justice. Now that he’d done so, he knew nothing could ever repay what he owed her, just as nothing would ever bridge the gap that separated an Irish Catholic policeman and the daughter of one of the oldest families in New York.
Before he could surrender to the despair that thought caused him, she said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Madame Serafina is worried about that boy, Nicola.”
“She should be,” Frank said, forcing himself to forget what he could not change and concentrate on the case at hand. “It looks like he’s the killer.”
“Oh, no,” she protested. “What proof do you have?”
“The Professor said he was hiding in that big cabinet in the séance room and sneaked out during the séance to stab her.”
“Madame Serafina is sure he didn’t do it,” she said with a little frown that made him want to grind his teeth. She frowned like that when she was setting her mind to something.
“Of course she is,” Frank pointed out reasonably. “They’re lovers. Even if she knew he did it, she’d be defending him.”
“Are you sure he was in the cabinet?” she tried.
“Not yet,” he had to admit. “I haven’t had a chance to question him, but I was going to do that next. Besides,” he added quickly, wanting to convince her before she got too involved in all this, “nobody else who was here even knew who Mrs. Gittings was, so why would they want to kill her? Turns out, she’s the one who ran this whole show.”
“I know. Madame Serafina just told us.”
“Why do they call her Madame Serafina?” Frank asked, strangely annoyed to hear her saying the odd name over and over.
“I have no idea. She’s not even married. It’s probably something they made up to make her sound more impressive.”
“That makes sense,” he agreed. “Anyway, this Mrs. Gittings ran everything and showed up at every séance, probably to keep an eye on Serafina. Everybody else thought she was just another . . . uh, client,” he said, catching himself. He was going to say sucker, but he’d remembered just in time that Sarah’s mother was among them. “So none of them had any reason to kill her.”
“What reason did Nicola have?”
“From what they said, he was trying to convince the girl to leave here and go off with him. Maybe he was tired of this Gittings woman taking all the money and figured they could do just as well on their own. Whatever it was, they had a big fight about it yesterday.”
“If Serafina was going to run away with him, why would he have killed Mrs. Gittings?”
“She wasn’t. She’d promised to stay if Nicola could stay, too, but maybe Nicola wasn’t happy about that.”
She frowned again, but this time she was just disappointed. “I can see why you’d suspect him. But what about the Professor? He knew her. Couldn’t he have been the killer?”
“He said he was in the kitchen during the séance. Apparently, he doesn’t go into the room with them, and nobody saw him there. Besides, he was partners with the Gittings woman.”
Her face lighted up. “Maybe he was tired of sharing the profits with her,” she said. “That would be a reason to kill her.”
“If you can figure out how he got into the room, I’ll be happy to consider it,” Frank told her dryly.
She sighed. “So it looks like Nicola and Serafina are the only ones with a good reason to want her dead, then.”
“Yes, it does,” he told her with relief. He couldn’t believe she’d accepted it so easily. “So why don’t you take your mother home and let me sort this out.”
She gave him an apologetic smile that was just as beautiful as the regular smiles she gave him. “I know you want us out of here, but we can’t leave Serafina. And if you arrest Nicola, she’s going to be hysterical. You’ll be happy we’re here if that happens.”
“Nothing could make me happy you’re here,” he informed her, making her smile again. She was making him forget why he was here, though. He needed to get away from her and back to work.
“We’ll wait with Serafina until you decide if you’re going to arrest Nicola or not,” she said. “And maybe I’ll be able to find out something helpful from her.”
Defeated, Frank opened the door and motioned for her to proceed him out of the room. “Just don’t think you’re going to get involved in this,” he told her in a whisper as she passed.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she assured him without the slightest hint of sincerity.
Frank gritted his teeth to keep from saying anything else. He waited until she was safely back in the parlor again. Then he went upstairs to find Nicola.
He found him in one of the bedrooms with Donatelli. Nicola was sitting on the neatly made bed, and Donatelli was perched on a straight-backed chair, blocking the door.
“What have you found out?” Frank asked Donatelli.
“His name is Nicola DiLoreto. He’s known Serafina Straface since they were kids,” he reported, not taking his eyes from the prisoner, who stared back with defiance. “They met on the ship coming over from Italy, and their families settled in the same neighborhood. Neither one has any family left, to speak of, so they looked after each other. He worked odd jobs, and she told people’s fortunes on street corners for a few cents until this Mrs. Gittings came along. She’s the dead woman, isn’t she?”
“That’s right.” Frank was looking at the prisoner, too. A bruise was darkening on his cheek where somebody had socked him.
“The Gittings woman said she could set Serafina up in a first-class place, and people would pay lots of money to see her.”
“And that’s just what she did, isn’t it, Nicola?” Frank said conversationally. “So what was the problem?”
“We have no problems,” Nicola said. “Everything is fine.”
At Frank’s nod, Donatelli got up and let Frank have the chair. He moved it closer to the bed where Nicola was sitting, turned it around, and straddled it, resting his forearms on the back of it as he glowered at th
e boy.
“That’s not what the Professor says,” Frank told him.
“He is lying!” Nicola cried.
“Why would he lie?”
“Because he hates me.”
“Did you give him any reason to hate you?”
“No!”
“How about threatening to take Serafina away?”
“That is not true,” he claimed. “I would never do that.”
“Why not?” Frank asked curiously. “Now that you know how it works, you two could set up on your own. You didn’t need Mrs. Gittings and the Professor anymore.”
“We could never get a house like this,” Nicola pointed out. “You need a nice place if you want to get rich people to come.”
Frank glanced around the bedroom. The bed Nicola sat on had a cheap, iron frame. The only other furnishings were a washstand and a clothespress that looked like somebody had salvaged from the dump.
Seeing his expression, Nicola said, “They never come up here, the people who come. We kept the downstairs nice for them, though.”
Frank nodded. Why waste money on what the customers would never see? “Where were you during the séance, Nicola?”
The boy went rigid and his expression grew wary. “I was upstairs,” he tried. “Mrs. Gittings, she didn’t like the customers to see me.”
That made sense. She could pass Serafina off as a gypsy or something exotic, but people wouldn’t expect to see an Italian boy in a nice neighborhood like this. “I thought you were hiding someplace,” Frank said.
“I was hiding up here.”
“Not downstairs?”
“No, why would I do that?” He had started to fidget.
“I don’t know. Maybe you need to be in the séance room for some reason.”
“I was not in there,” he insisted. “Ask anybody. They will tell you I was not in there.”
“They wouldn’t have seen you,” Frank said. “Because you were in that big cabinet.”
His eyes widened in alarm. “No, I was not!”
“I think you were,” Frank said mildly, remembering the music that almost everyone in the séance room had said they’d heard. “I think you were in there to help make the noises during the sitting.”
“I did not make any noises!”
Frank smiled slightly. An innocent man would have said, “What noises?”
“Somebody made the noises,” Frank said.
“The spirits make them,” Nicola said. “They sing and they play music.”
“How do you know if you weren’t there?”
“Serafina told me.” He seemed proud of that answer.
“You’re in love with Serafina, aren’t you?”
“We are going to get married,” he said, even prouder of this answer.
“When?”
That stopped him. “When . . . when we have saved up enough money.”
“Didn’t Serafina make a lot of money doing the séances?”
“Yes, but . . . Mrs. Gittings was holding it for her.”
Ah, another reason for Nicola to want to get rid of the woman. “And she wouldn’t give it to Serafina if the two of you left here,” Frank guessed.
“We did not want to leave,” Nicola said, not very convincingly.
“I think you did,” Frank said. “I think you wanted to run away with Serafina so you could run your own operation, but Mrs. Gittings wouldn’t give you the money if you left, so Serafina convinced you to stay.”
“No,” Nicola insisted.
“And when you realized that Mrs. Gittings wasn’t ever going to give you the money, you knew there was only one way to get it.”
“No, that is not true!”
“So you hid in the cabinet, just like you did every time—”
“No, it is not true, I tell you!”
“And when things got really noisy . . . Maybe Serafina made sure things got really noisy—”
“She did not have anything to do with it!”
“And when things got really noisy, you climbed out of the cabinet and—”
“No, I did not!”
“—and you found Mrs. Gittings—”
“No, I swear!”
“—and you stuck your knife between her ribs—”
“Stop it!”
“—and then you climbed back in the cabinet—”
“No, I tell you!”
“—and waited until everybody figured out what happened and ran out of the room—”
“No!”
“—and then you climbed out of the cabinet again—”
“I never!”
“—and hid someplace until you saw your chance to sneak out of the house and get away.”
“No, no, I did not! It was not like that at all!”
“How was it then?” Frank asked with great interest.
The boy’s dark eyes were large with terror, but he just shook his head. “I did not kill her.”
“You know what she was stabbed with?” Frank asked.
Nicola shook his head again, probably not trusting his voice.
“A stiletto.”
Nicola swallowed loudly.
“That’s an Italian knife, isn’t it?” Frank asked.
“I . . . I do not know,” the boy claimed.
“Yes, you do. You knew it would be quick and quiet. You knew just where to stick it, too, so she’d die without making a sound.”
He was shaking his head, but he was terrified now. He was well and truly caught.
“I can’t blame you, Nicola. She was probably a mean old bitch who deserved to die, but it’s still against the law to kill her, so I’ve got to take you in.”
“I did not kill her! Please, you must believe me!”
“You’ll get your chance to tell it in court,” Frank said, pushing himself up out of the chair. He looked at Donatelli. “Take him downstairs and send for a wagon.”
“No, please, I did not do it!” Nicola was protesting as Donatelli, grim-faced, grabbed the boy by the arm and dragged him to his feet. He started babbling something in Italian to Donatelli, who remained unmoved.
Frank waited in the hall while Donatelli dragged him out of the bedroom and followed as they stumbled down the stairway together. Nicola was still protesting in Italian, obviously having decided Donatelli was the only one who might believe him.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Frank saw the parlor door open and Madame Serafina appeared, looking as wild-eyed as her lover. Sarah and her mother were right behind her.
“What is happening?” Serafina demanded. “Where are you taking him?”
Donatelli said something to her that Frank didn’t hear, and she started screaming.
“No! You cannot take him! He did not do anything!”
The Professor had come out of the dining room, and he stood there, stone-faced, watching the scene unfold.
Donatelli was saying something to the girl, and Frank realized he was speaking Italian, and she was still screaming. She’d grabbed hold of Nicola, throwing her arms around his neck in an attempt to rescue him from Donatelli. One of the other cops hurried over to pry her off.
Meanwhile, Sarah Brandt had escaped from the parlor and ran to where Frank stood at the bottom of the steps. “You said you weren’t going to arrest him!” she cried.
“No, I didn’t,” he said wearily. “He killed her.”
“He wasn’t even there!” she tried.
“He was hiding in that cabinet. He sneaked out in the confusion and stabbed her, then he got back in before the lights came on again. He’s the only one who was in the room who even knew her besides Serafina, and he’s the only one who had a reason to want her dead.”
The cop had pried Serafina’s arms from Nicola’s neck and was trying to drag her away from him when she heard Frank’s last words. She ceased struggling instantly and turned to Frank. “No, he is not!” she cried. “He is not the only one who wanted her dead. They all did, all of them! Every single one of them wanted her to die!�
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7
SERAFINA BROKE FREE OF THE COP WHO WAS HOLDING HER and ran to where Frank and Sarah stood in the hallway. “They all wanted her dead, I tell you! She was taking money from all of them!”
Before Frank could make sense of this, the cop who’d released Serafina opened the front door to the orderlies from the coroner’s office who had come for the body. Nobody saw exactly what happened next, but in that one instant of distraction, Nicola slipped out of Donatelli’s grasp and ran out the front door.
Someone swore and all the uniformed cops, including Donatelli, ran after him, but the orderlies were in the way, and they all got tangled up, and in those precious few seconds while they got untangled, Nicola disappeared, as Frank learned a few minutes later when they returned empty-handed.
“I swear, I don’t know how he got loose,” Donatelli said for at least the hundredth time. The other cops were sure he’d let the fellow Italian go. They were all gathered in the office, glaring at him and hoping he’d get all the blame.
O’Toole snorted in disgust, but Frank said, “I know you didn’t.” Donatelli would have been the last one to let him go, just because if he did, everyone would suspect him of doing it on purpose. “Go down to Little Italy and see what you can find out about him. He probably has friends there who would hide him. Drop some hints about a reward and see if they’ll give him up.”
Donatelli nodded and left, determined to find the boy if he had to search every tenement in New York City, Frank knew.
He looked at O’Toole, who plainly thought Frank had made a botch of this whole thing. “Have your men search the neighborhood again. Maybe somebody saw where he went,” Frank told the other detective.
“Now that your suspect is gone, do you need anybody to stay here to help?” O’Toole asked, sarcasm thick in his voice.
“Leave somebody on the front door in case the press show up,” Frank said sharply enough to remind O’Toole who was in charge. “But you can go.”
O’Toole sniffed derisively and left, barking orders to his men out in the hallway. After a few minutes, the front door opened and closed, and the house fell eerily silent. Frank rose wearily and made his way across the hall to the parlor, where Sarah and her mother still waited with Madame Serafina.
Murder on Waverly Place Page 10