A Fatal Fondness

by Richard Audry

  “I’m sorry about our kerfuffle,” he said. “I didn’t mean to belittle your work. I shouldn’t have said it. It just popped out. I was hoping we could see eye to eye on this whole California business.”

  “I’m sorry, too. Seems like we both got a little wound up.” She put her arm through his. “Come along, now, Mr. Roy. I could use a nice cup of something warm and I expect you could, too.”

  She sent Edmond out the kitchen door at about ten-thirty, after hot cider and mostly innocuous conversation. But at the end of their chat, she reiterated—as gently as possible—that she could not go to Monterey. And, as she anticipated, neither of them was happy with the outcome, despite their long parting embrace.

  * * *

  As Mary headed up to her bedroom, she turned her thoughts away from Edmond to something else. Tomorrow she would have to confront Father Petrescu. Spying the brown paper-wrapped box up on her dresser, she wondered again if Mrs. Petrescu had been part of the conspiracy. She earnestly hoped not.

  She grabbed the scissors from her dressing table, snipped the string, ripped the brown paper open, and lifted the box top. The first handkerchief showed her monogram in lovely blue silk script. She held it up for a closer look.

  “Handsome work,” she muttered. “Most handsome.”

  Then she noticed a folded piece of white paper that had been hidden beneath the first hankie.

  She unfolded it and read aloud what was written on it in a spidery hand.

  “A cup of cocoa put him to sleep, easing him to his rest.”

  She pondered the words for a few long seconds, before they sank in.

  “Oh my goodness,” she gasped. “Oh my goodness!”

  Chapter XXVIII

  As she rode the streetcar west that Saturday morning, Mary had no idea what might happen. She was heading for terra incognita. If she were being perfectly honest, she would have to admit that the undertaking challenged the very limits of her courage. What she intended to do could be dangerous—more dangerous, perhaps, even than her encounters with the Ostovian thug. If it went badly, it could go very badly indeed.

  Truth be told, Mary wouldn’t have minded having Detective Sauer with her. But greater powers had declared the matter off limits, tying the detective’s hands.

  It was up to Mary and Mary alone to face the murderer. This time, though, she brought the .38 in her bag—a more serious sort of caliber, a caliber that left no doubt.

  The streetcar rattled through a bustling downtown and made its way into the West End. On Third Street Mary hopped off and crossed over to the other side. Half a block down, she paused in front of the Petrescus’ shop. Peering through the window, she caught the eye of Mrs. Petrescu, who was tidying up a display table full of embroidered items. The woman’s eyes widened and she stared back. Mary gave her a curt nod.

  Mrs. Petrescu was complicit in the murder, on some level. She had to be. But at least she had decided to come clean. Unless, of course, the whole thing was a trap.

  Mary took two deep breaths and marched into the bakery.

  Two women were waiting in front of the counter, with no one in sight behind it. But a moment later, Mrs. Luca came limping out of the back room with two loaves of dark brown bread. It wasn’t until she handed them to the taller woman and took several coins in payment that she noticed Mary standing there. She gave her a friendly nod, then turned to the second customer.

  “I am happy to see you again, Miss MacDougall,” she said when they were finally alone.

  “You may not be, when you hear what I have to say,” Mary replied evenly. “I know what you did and why you did it. And before I leave, I expect to have your written confession.”

  The baker’s face underwent a transformation, turning from welcoming to wary. “I do not know what you mean.” She came around the counter toward Mary.

  “No. No closer, ma’am,” Mary said, pulling her gun out of her bag.

  The older woman gasped at the sight of it. “Have you gone mad?”

  Mary made a pointing gesture with the gun. “I suggest we go somewhere out of sight, perhaps back in your kitchen.”

  Mrs. Luca stared at the Smith & Wesson, then gave a shrug. “As you wish. Am I allowed to close up the shop?”

  Mary kept the gun pointed at Mrs. Luca as she walked over to the front door, pulled down the shade, and clicked the lock shut. Mary followed her into the back room, past the shelves and worktables full of battered pans and trays and bowls, past two ovens and stacked bags of flour. The room smelled like the MacDougall kitchen after the morning’s bread was baked—warm and welcoming. But Mary could think only of the atrocity that had been committed there.

  A door in the back opened into a vestibule, which gave access to an alleyway and a narrow staircase. Mrs. Luca stopped and regarded Mary with a tight smile. Her face was a mask now, hiding whatever gears were turning in her head. She looked tired, but Mary knew there had to be plenty of strength left in those arms and hands. Arms and hands that hefted heavy bags of flour. Arms and hands that kneaded dough. Arms and hands that had killed.

  “What is it you think I have done?” Mrs. Luca asked in a dead monotone.

  “You killed Beansie MacKenzie,” Mary replied, her heart pounding. “To protect Nicolae Floria. I want you to tell me the whole story.”

  Mrs. Luca tut-tutted. “Perhaps someone is feeding you lies, Miss MacDougall.”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence,” Mary spat. “I know you drugged Beansie’s cocoa. I know you threw him in the bay.”

  In fact, Mary didn’t know any of this to a certainty. She was bluffing. But Mrs. Petrescu’s message, “A cup of cocoa put him to sleep, easing him to his rest,” pointed her in the logical direction. Who else was famous in the West End for her cocoa? Hadn’t Mrs. Luca herself said that? “I use only Van Houten’s finest powder,” Mary recalled her saying.

  After Mary had read Mrs. Petrescu’s note, she started piecing things together. Jiggs said Beansie liked to find odd jobs in restaurants, where he might be able to cadge free meals. Why couldn’t he have come into Mrs. Luca’s bakery looking for work?

  Detective Sauer had left no doubt that Beansie had drowned, there being bay water in his lungs. Mrs. Purcell had recalled that the boy was deathly afraid of the water and wouldn’t have willingly gone near it. There were no marks or signs of a struggle on his body. Someone had to have slipped him a narcotic.

  And then there was Mrs. Luca herself. Mary had enjoyed talking to the woman, who seemed quite literate and cultured. She had mentioned attending the same ballet as Nicolae and his father—an elevated interest for a mere baker, if, indeed, that was what she had been. Heaven only knew that immigrants often needed to do work below their former stations in the old country. But Mrs. Luca clearly was something more than an ordinary working woman.

  “Let us go upstairs to my room,” Mrs. Luca said. “We can talk there. I am quite worn out and my leg aches. I want to sit in my chair.”

  Mary worried that Mrs. Luca’s knife man might be waiting upstairs. But she had her revolver firmly gripped in her hand and she was confident she couldn’t miss in such close quarters. And the woman did indeed look exhausted.

  “Just go up the stairs,” Mrs. Luca instructed. “I will be right behind you.”

  “I don’t think so. After you. I insist.”

  “As you wish.”

  Mrs. Luca led the way up the narrow, shadowy steps slowly, favoring her gammy left leg, with Mary a safe distance behind. The dingy hallway they came into—illuminated by a dim, gas-lit sconce—had four doors. Mrs. Luca went down and unlocked the second one on the right. Mary followed her in, eyeing the other three doors for any sign of movement.

  Mrs. Luca headed toward a battered dresser. With a sharp intake of breath, Mary spied a pistol sitting on top of it.

  “Stop right there!” she barked. “Touch that gun and I’ll shoot.”

  Giving an exaggerated sigh, Mrs. Luca backed away from the dresser. “The gun is unloaded. Have a loo
k.”

  Mary stepped over and confirmed it. All five chambers were empty.

  “I merely wanted to get my heroin tablets, for my pain. They are in the top drawer. Would you mind?”

  Opening the drawer, Mary found a cardboard pillbox labeled Bayer Heroin, nestled among some socks. She handed it to Mrs. Luca, who took a white tablet from the box and quickly gulped it down.

  Mary scanned the small room, with its spartan furnishings. A narrow, swayback bed in the corner. A washstand under a mirror on the wall. A faded chair next to a small table with a lamp. The flowered wallpaper was darkened and stained. A single dusty window overlooked Third Street. The only sign of indulgence was the bookshelf displaying twenty or so volumes. The Last of the Mohicans was lying on the table.

  Mrs. Luca hobbled over to her chair and collapsed into it. She gave Mary a dismal look of resignation. “After your encounter last night with Teodor, I knew it was hopeless. We could not control the situation. If others knew about the details of our actions, as you told him, it was pointless to kill you.” There was no apology in her voice, only regret.

  Mary, feeling safer, put the revolver back in her purse. “What do you mean?”

  Mrs. Luca’s eyes went to the window. “Adrian Dimitriu and Teodor Bogdan—the man I sent to deal with you—have left Duluth with Nicolae.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “I have no idea. Vladislav employs torturers, you know. It is best that I have nothing to reveal.”

  “But why didn’t you go with them?”

  Mrs. Luca shut her eyes and sighed. “Because I can go no farther. I am old and tired and sick. I would only slow them down. Nicolae begged for me to come. But no, not this time.”

  Mary felt a momentary flash of sympathy for the woman. She was in a horrible, horrible pickle—but very much of her own making.

  “You know, Mrs. Luca, that the truth has to come out. People have to learn that Beansie MacKenzie—”

  “Please call him by his proper name. Tavish. Let us afford him some dignity.”

  Mary nodded. Quite right. All that was left now for the poor youngster was dignity. And justice. “People have to know that he didn’t wander near the bay and accidentally drown. They have to know that he became an unwitting pawn in a deadly gambit to protect your prince. They have to know that he was murdered. That’s what I’ve promised myself. That’s what I owe him.”

  Then she remembered Father Petrescu’s overwrought anger—threats, even—when she probed him about the prince’s supposed death. His reaction had seemed out of proportion, for someone who was uninvolved. “Did Father Petrescu help you?”

  The woman looked dismayed. “Good heavens, no. Father Petrescu is no murderer. He is sometimes gruff, but he is a good man. He and Larisa were very angry with me, when they found out. But fortunately they kept quiet and played their roles.”

  “Did Nicolae know what you were planning?”

  “There was no reason to tell him.” She gestured toward the bed. “Please do sit down. And thank you for putting away your gun.”

  Mary perched on the edge of the mattress, which squeaked painfully as it sagged.

  “You should know that I took no pleasure in what I had to do. In fact, I liked Tavish. He was a funny boy.”

  Mary wasn’t about to give the woman any satisfaction on that count, and kept silent.

  “Let me explain how it happened.”

  Mary nodded.

  “At the time when Nicolae, Prince Anton’s son, was born, I worked as a governess in Paris. You see, I was an Ostovian girl who loved to dance, and I became quite good at it. After much hard work, I won a place in the corps de ballet of the Paris Opera. I was one of les petits rats. The little rats, they called us. It was glamorous, sometimes. But many suffered at the hands of wicked men. I was lucky. I was not among the pretty ones. So I just danced and danced and danced.” Her voice faded and she took on the far-away look of someone remembering a magical past. Then she sighed, returning to grim reality. “But that ended when a carriage accident ruined my left leg. I became a maid, then a governess for well-to-do families in Paris. The prince heard about me and asked me to come home to care for Nicolae. I could not refuse my prince.”

  From the drawer in the table next to her chair, she pulled out a photograph of a plump, adorable infant in a gilded frame and showed it to Mary. “I fell in love with the little boy. He was such a good child. So when it became clear that Vladislav had poisoned Anton, and became regent to the young prince, we knew something terrible was fated for my precious Nikkie. We could not allow that, we loyalists.”

  “And you went on the run.”

  Tears glistened in Mrs. Luca’s eyes. “Vienna. Zurich. Marseilles. Lisbon. With Vladislav’s agents pursuing us every inch of the way. The killers very nearly got to Nikkie in New York City. Teodor’s brother held them off, giving us time to escape, but sacrificed his life. Then to Buffalo and Cleveland and finally here. Father Petrescu was certain he could conceal us, at least for a time. He had me run his bakery and gave Nicolae the disguise of a cobbler’s apprentice. We have been here over a year now.”

  “But you knew Vladislav’s assassins were still hunting you,” Mary said. “And suddenly, like a gift from heaven, a look-alike appears in your shop.”

  Mrs. Luca squared her shoulders. “We had to try,” she huffed. “Vladislav has not seen his nephew for over two years, and boys grow and change so quickly at that age. Even though Tavish was about the same age, he was smaller than my Nikkie.”

  “Of course he was,” Mary snapped. “He didn’t grow up in a palace. A child can’t thrive without enough food, without a good home.”

  Mrs. Luca looked irritated at being interrupted. “As I was saying, if you had not seen Nikkie in two years, you might well think that Tavish was him. Perhaps if Vladislav believed his nephew was truly dead, he would call off his hounds.”

  “And you sacrificed Nicolae’s signet ring to make the ruse seem more real.”

  “A pity to lose it, but it is just a piece of jewelry.”

  Mary steeled herself to ask the next question, dreading the answer. “How did you kill Tavish?”

  “I asked him to help clean up the bakery,” Mrs. Luca answered in a flat tone, avoiding Mary’s eyes. “He would work for a few hours, and I would give him a quarter and a meal with my hot cocoa. I told him not to tell anyone—I said I did not want other boys pestering me. I was kindly to him. I made him feel special.”

  “But you killed him nonetheless.”

  Mrs. Luca nodded in a hang-dog sort of way. “In the end he felt no pain. He did not suffer.”

  Mary suddenly felt flushed and breathless, as if the full weight of the crime had come down on her shoulders. This had been a real boy who had lived a hard life. This had been a real boy who would never have the chance to grow and make a success of himself, who would never fall in love. It broke Mary’s heart to think of him being snuffed out for the sake of another boy who had no more right to live than he did.

  She needed some air. She stood and went over to the window, pulling up the sash. Turning back to Mrs. Luca, she said, “The details, please.”

  “He came six or seven times. I wanted to be sure no one would miss him, no one would bother to look for him. I had to wait for the right moment. The last time, I drugged the cocoa and he fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. That boy, he had such a fondness for my cocoa. I really think that is why he kept returning—for the cocoa, not for the money.”

  For a few savage seconds Mary wanted to pull the gun out again and shoot the woman where she sat. A monster. She was a monster.

  “But that’s not how you killed him.”

  Mrs. Luca shook her head. “I sewed the ring into his jacket, then we took him to the bay. Poor Teodor, he could not do it, could not drown the boy. So I did what had to be done.”

  The woman clasped those murdering hands, as if in prayer. It revolted Mary.

  “Please do not let Tavish’s death be in vain.
Please keep the secret, Miss MacDougall. I know I may burn in hell, but it was all for the good of Ostovia. I had to try to keep my Nikkie safe.” She looked at Mary with a pleading expression.

  Mary stared at the woman for a few long, terrible seconds. “There has to be an accounting in this world, too, Mrs. Luca. There has to be justice for Tavish MacKenzie. Someone has to pay. Until that happens, I won’t rest.” She reached into her purse, and pulled out two folded sheets of stationery and a fountain pen.

  “Now, if you please, write down what you’ve just told me, and sign and date it. Then I’ll be on my way.”

  She stepped over, laying the paper and pen on top of The Last of the Mohicans.

  Mrs. Luca shook her head. “Let me rest, please. Come back in a couple of hours.”

  Mary wished it was that simple, but she didn’t trust the woman. She might not write down anything or she might report Mary to the police for holding her at gunpoint. There was no telling what she was capable of. No, Mary had to have the confession in hand when she walked out of this room.

  “I’ll wait, then, while you catch a few winks. Then the written confession.”

  Mrs. Luca laughed. “You can shoot me, if you wish, Miss MacDougall. But do you really think I would endanger my Nikkie’s life by giving you a written confession? How long would it take before it ends up in the hands of some newspaper reporter and the whole world knows that he is still alive?”

  So, thought Mary, we’re at loggerheads. She could pull out the pistol again, but clearly it wouldn’t make any difference. She couldn’t force the woman to do anything. She was stymied and needed to regroup.

  “I’m not done with you, Mrs. Luca,” she vowed. “Not by a long shot.”

  “Goodbye, Miss MacDougall,” the murderer said, shutting her eyes.

  Mary turned and left the room. She went slowly down the dingy, dim stairs, through the bakery, and out onto the street. Mrs. Petrescu, who was standing in front of her shop, arms tightly crossed, eyed her, as if to ask what happened?

  All Mary knew was that this affair, as she told Mrs. Luca, was not over. Justice would be served, one way or another.