An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen

by Liz Freeland

  But what about that letter I’d sent to Nebraska? “I have to tell you something.”

  “You look as if someone’s died. What is it?”

  “You know Walter and I went back to Ruthie Jones’s apartment, looking for evidence that she’d been murdered . . .”

  “Yes.”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, while I was there I found a picture of a couple on her bureau. It had a photographer’s stamp on the back. I wrote to the photographer to ask if he remembered who the couple was, and if they were any relation to Ruthie Jones.”

  Her rouged lips pursed. “I see.”

  “It will probably come to nothing. For all I know, the photographer has gone out of business, or died, or has no recollection of the couple at all.”

  Aunt Irene looked thoughtful. “Of course, you did what you had to. Due diligence, isn’t that what they call it in legal circles?”

  “Everyone I’ve told so far seems to think it was a hopeless effort.”

  “Yes. I suspect it was, too. But quite proper.”

  “If I had known your feelings . . .”

  She let out a mirthless laugh. “What? You wouldn’t have tried to locate the baby’s true family? That wouldn’t have been right.”

  “But . . .” I lifted my shoulders. “Well, what will you do?”

  She petted Dickens absently, thinking. Then she shook her head, as if sloughing off negativity. “I’ll do what I intended all along. I’ll see about giving the child a home for as long as I’m able. At the very least, he won’t spend his first Christmas in a cold orphanage.”

  “That’s generous of you.”

  “Nonsense—it’s selfish. You wouldn’t believe how much pleasure it’s given me to do even as little as I have so far.”

  “Eddie’s lucky to have run into such a wonderful benefactress.”

  “It was through you, don’t forget.”

  And what if it’s also through me that he loses his benefactress? I tried to push the vision of the dour-looking couple in the photograph out of my mind. A few days ago I’d thought any family would be better than no family at all. But that’s when I’d thought he’d had little hope of finding a good home. I’d had Detective Stevens’s words echoing in my brain.

  “Have you come any closer to understanding what really happened to Eddie’s poor mother?” she asked.

  “Not really.” I explained all I’d learned so far, including information about the passports. It seemed woefully little. “And my feeling that her death wasn’t a suicide at all is still just a hunch.”

  “Your hunches are usually reliable.”

  “Muldoon always tells me that gut feelings are weak notions to base an investigation on.”

  My aunt sniffed. “Detective Muldoon can say what he likes. Who is the better crime solver, you or he?”

  I laughed. “Don’t let him overhear you ask that question.”

  “Well, perhaps I’m a tad biased. And yet I do remember being present when you solved cases that had stumped the good detective.”

  I stood. “I should go.”

  “You aren’t staying for supper?”

  “I can’t. In fact, I was hoping to get home before Callie and prepare a supper for her. She’s been working so hard, what with movies and knitting bundles for Belgium.”

  Aunt Irene hopped up from the couch so quickly, Trollope woke up and let out a yip. Both dogs followed her across the room, where she rang a bell. In a few moments, Walter was at the door, eyeing the dogs sternly.

  “Again? They just went out.”

  “The boys are fine. I just remembered that I had a bag of old clothes to send Callie. Do you remember where I put it?”

  “Oh yes. I’ll bring it right away.”

  I went back to the kitchen, where Bernice had prepared a box for me. “You’re a soft touch,” I said. “What would I do without you?”

  “Ham,” she said sternly.

  By the time I circled back around to the foyer, Walter was standing next to a large carry sack. That wasn’t going to be easy to lug home, especially with my bounty from Bernice’s kitchen. Still, I was doing little enough for the Belgians. The memory of that German newspaper made the idea of hauling a bag on a streetcar downtown more palatable.

  “Callie will be ecstatic,” I said, hefting the bag.

  “It’s just a few cast-off items.”

  It felt like an entire wardrobe.

  Forty-five minutes later, after taking the slowest streetcar in Christendom, I slogged home over wet sidewalks to our apartment. I was relieved to be home . . . right up to the moment I climbed the last stair of the two flights leading to our apartment’s floor. I was practically wheezing with the effort, although the wheezing turned to an appreciative sniff as a heavenly, savory scent hit my nostrils. It couldn’t be coming from our apartment. Callie never attempted anything more challenging than boiled eggs.

  As I stopped and struggled to shift the bag, the box, and my satchel to reach for the doorknob, the door flew open. Instead of my roommate, Anna Muldoon greeted me at the door.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Oh my goodness—let me help you!” Anna lunged forward to take the box containing the bounty from Bernice’s kitchen. Then she twisted back toward the apartment’s interior. “Callie, look who’s here—it’s Louise!”

  Who did she expect to come home to my apartment?

  Callie darted out of the kitchen holding up a wooden spoon, with one hand cupped beneath it to catch possible drips. Seeing me, she stopped short. “Oh!” she said, as if surprised, too. “You’re home.”

  Before I could answer, Anna peeked into the bag she’d taken from me. “And look—she’s brought more food with her.”

  “More food?” I said, dropping the sack of clothes at my feet.

  “Anna’s making me—us—Irish stew.”

  That accounted for the heavenly smell. The dish seemed to be her specialty.

  “Or as my people call it,” Anna said, “stew.” She laughed a little too boisterously at her own joke. She was wearing a long flour-sack tea towel pinned over a confection of a dress that looked suspiciously like one of Callie’s. I glanced down. Sure enough, the hem was being kept off the floor by scores of pins.

  Callie swept forward. “I invited Anna to stay the night, so she offered to cook for us. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Wonderful.” I tried to muster up enthusiasm for the altered evening ahead, but my attention was focused on the large evergreen tree now taking up a corner of our parlor. Callie followed my gaze.

  “Anna and I saw it this evening and couldn’t resist—the first Christmas tree of the season. Remember?”

  Last year, not long after I’d survived an attack on my life, Callie and I had dragged home a tree from the first vendor we saw on Sheridan Square. The labor to get that tree up to the third floor had caused much blue language and fits of hysteria. It had been our first Christmas together in our own apartment, and life had seemed golden.

  “We’ll have to find some decorations,” Anna said. “Or better yet, make some.”

  I fixed a smile on my face, trying to tamp down a foolish spike of jealousy. It was just a tree. Callie and I would have wanted one anyway. Their going out to get one had saved me trouble.

  I tried not to think of Wally’s warnings that Anna was going to be moving in.

  “The dress looks nice on you,” I said to Anna.

  “I’ve been telling her so this past hour, but she wouldn’t take my word for it.” Callie surveyed her handiwork-in-progress with a critical eye. She was a deft hand at quick alterations, or the fortunate placement of a sash or other ornament to hide a flaw. “Anna needed something smarter to wear around the movie set.”

  “Something less dowdy, she means,” Anna said, fluttering at the attention.

  “Alfred thinks Anna’s my assistant.” The two of them exchanged a look and then broke up laughing. “I’ve been getting the royal treatment for the past two days,” Callie said. “It’s amazing ho
w much better people treat you when you have an entourage.”

  “Even if it’s just an entourage of one,” Anna said.

  “You were at the studio today, too?” I knew she’d been there the day before.

  “I’ve been enjoying myself so much! I wish I really could be Callie’s assistant, but even so, it’s fun just to watch.”

  We slowly made our way into the flat’s main room. Callie took the sack from Anna and peered inside. “Is this from Bernice?”

  “Soup and a wedge of pie.” I’d intended it to be our dinner.

  “The pie will be good,” Callie said, “and the soup will keep on the fire escape.”

  “What kind of pie?” Anna asked.

  “Pear-apple.”

  “Oh, I can make a terrific pear-apple pie.” She practically clapped her hands as an idea occurred to her. “I could make one and we could do a side-by-side comparison.”

  Callie laughed. “Let’s not get too ambitious.”

  “Right,” I said, “this isn’t the state fair.”

  I’d intended the comment as a light jest, but the two of them turned to me as if I’d thrown a bucket of water at them.

  “It was just a thought.” Anna took the foodstuffs off to the kitchen. “Anyway, you two relax. I’ll have supper ready in two shakes.”

  After she disappeared, Callie threw me a questioning glance.

  “I was just joking,” I said.

  A constrained atmosphere pervaded the apartment. Callie and I made a desultory stab at chatting, but it felt rude to exclude Anna, who was slaving in our small kitchen ten feet away. Yet including her when there was a wall between us was also a problem. I went to see if I could help, but Anna shooed me away. Expelled from my own kitchen.

  Perhaps I was the only one who felt the awkwardness—Callie seemed perfectly serene. She’d put on her favorite kimono wrap and treated herself to a cigarette. We both ended up staring at the Christmas tree, and I felt that odd tingling of jealousy again.

  I got up to freshen up for dinner. When I came back out of my room ten minutes later, Callie had shifted to the drop-leaf table, and Anna was bringing out the last bowl of stew. When we were all seated and Callie lifted her spoon to her mouth, she was in raptures. “This is splendid! What on earth did you do? It’s so good.”

  “Secret ingredient.” Anna winked at me. “Paprika.”

  “Not secret anymore,” I said.

  Callie swung a curious gaze at me. “Are you feeling all right? You seem grouchy.”

  What was the matter with me? Why did it matter that Anna stopped here for an evening? She’d even made us dinner, for heaven’s sake. Callie and I had been living together for two years. It wasn’t as if we’d never had an unexpected visitor.

  “I’ve been so absorbed in what’s going on with this case I’m working on, I’m forgetting my manners.” I smiled at Anna. “Excuse me. This really is delicious.”

  “Gracious—no need to apologize to me,” she said. “Besides, now I feel right at home. You’re just like Frank—he’s always in a mood when he’s on a tough case. He gets all silent and grumbles that he doesn’t want to talk about it, until I finally force him to tell me what the case is about. And half the time I’ll listen and tell him something he’s never thought of before! I bet I’ve solved a case or two for the NYPD just by listening and blurting out some idea that occurs off the top of my head. So feel free to tell me what’s bothering you—I just might help.”

  I nearly grumbled that I didn’t want to talk about it. Why should I seek the opinion of a woman who seemed to misjudge just about everything?

  Callie prompted me, “Is it still the orphan case?”

  I nodded, and then, for Anna’s sake, I roughed out the facts of what had happened—Ruthie’s death, the drowned child, the surviving one, my suspicions, my lack of any proof to support my suspicions so far.

  Anna frowned. “It’s the passports that make the thing funny, isn’t it? If it weren’t for them, you’d probably be looking at different people entirely.”

  “Or not at all,” Callie said.

  “Exactly.” Anna gestured at me with her soup spoon. “You might believe it was a suicide. But even if she did kill herself, I’d bet my last nickel that a man was behind it all. A very bad man. Why do women commit suicide in books? Men! I’ve read a dozen books where some poor heroine throws herself in front of a train or walks into a raging river.”

  “That’s fiction,” I said.

  Anna dimpled and turned to Callie. “See? She does sound like my brother. Frank is always telling me fiction isn’t reality. As if I didn’t know that!”

  Her mention of fiction sent my mind down the path Jenks had opened up this afternoon. If Ruthie couldn’t read, the chances that she was at the heart of some passport-forging scheme were very small. Perhaps her death was less complicated than I’d been thinking. A very bad man. Ruthie had encountered her share of those, certainly. Hell’s Kitchen was crawling with toughs, thieves, desperate men, and louses. Enough to keep the precinct cells at capacity most nights. In which case, finding the specific one who’d killed Ruthie would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Unless he was a regular . . .

  “You said that the woman who lived downstairs from poor Ruthie Jones had a husband,” Anna said. “Maybe he would have more idea than his wife about the men who Ruthie knew.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because he might have known men who went to see her—or even told them about her.”

  Or he might have been one of Ruthie’s clients himself. I remembered the way he’d cut Eileen off when she’d been talking to me. I hadn’t thought that much of it at the time. A lot of people don’t want to talk to the police—especially men who might have been in trouble with the law once or twice themselves. Could there have been something more sinister in his impulse to keep his wife from talking to me?

  “You’ve put Louise into a blue funk,” Callie said.

  Anna laughed. “That’s a policeman’s cogitating look. Frank gets it all the time. That’s why he and Louise would be so perfect together.”

  Not this again.

  “Leave Muldoon out of this,” I said. “He doesn’t approve of me or what I’m doing.”

  “Oh, he never approves of anything at first,” Anna said breezily. “Takes him forever to get used to new things. You wouldn’t believe how long it took him to start using a safety razor! For years he held on to this cutthroat-looking razor our father gave him. Surprising he didn’t end up with lockjaw, or whatever it is people get from rusty metal.”

  “You see?” Callie’s eyes were bright as she looked at me across the table. “You’ll wear him down, just like Mr. Gillette did.”

  “Hopefully sooner,” Anna said.

  “I’m not trying to wear anyone down,” I insisted. “I just want to catch a killer.”

  “Then you should follow Anna’s advice and look at the men around Ruthie.” Callie glanced around at our empty plates. “Is it time for pie?”

  “I’ll get it!” Anna said.

  Callie and I overruled her this time. We weren’t going to let our guest do all the work. Any more than I was going to let Anna dictate my investigation. Except she had given me a good idea.

  “Where is Anna going to sleep?” I asked Callie when I could snatch a private moment with her as we made tea in the kitchen.

  “On the sofa, I guess.”

  Anna poked her head into the kitchen. “If that’s all right with you, of course.”

  Well, I’d thought it was a private moment.

  “Of course it’s all right,” my roommate assured her. “We’re old hands at having three people living in this flat, aren’t we, Louise?”

  “Mm.”

  “Oh! Did you have another roommate?” Anna asked.

  “A houseguest,” I corrected. “Callie’s cousin. She was murdered.”

  The moment the words were out of my mouth, I could have kicked myself. I couldn’t seem to say anything
right tonight. Callie’s face paled at the memory of what had happened a year and a half ago to Ethel, her cousin. Anna was staring at me as if I were a ghoul to have blurted it out so matter-of-factly. The truth was, I was becoming inured to the city’s horrors. Which wasn’t to say certain things—like Ruthie’s death—still didn’t shock me. The grisliness of that curdled my blood. But I was used to processing the awful scenes and moving on to the next problem.

  Maybe I was becoming ghoulish. Belatedly I added, “It was terrible.”

  “Well, I have no intention of being murdered,” Anna declared. “Besides, who’d want to kill me?”

  How long do you intend to stay? lollopped on the tip of my tongue, but by the grace of God I managed to keep it there.

  “Does Detective Muldoon know where you are?” I asked.

  “Detective Muldoon?” Anna flicked a smile at Callie. “Doesn’t she ever call him Frank?”

  “Never,” Callie said.

  Anna sighed. “Don’t worry, I left word that I’d be staying the night here.”

  “You left a note at his precinct?” I asked.

  “At home. He’ll see it when he gets in tonight.”

  There was something odd about that, but Callie was sending me the evil eye, so I let the subject drop. And to make up for any lack of hospitality I might have been guilty of showing, I washed the dessert dishes while the two of them made up the sofa for Anna. Callie called a good-night to me and I heard the door to her room close.

  “Good night, Louise,” Anna said a few minutes later as I went to my own room to turn in. She was sitting up on the sofa, knees tucked up to her chin under her sheet and blanket. Only one small table lamp next to her illuminated the parlor. “Sweet dreams.”

  “You too,” I said.

  “We’ll be quiet as mice in the morning so as not to disturb you.”