Murder on St. Nicholas Avenue (26 page)

“No!” she said, exasperated. “Well, yes, I mean burying someone in the rose garden is awful, but threatening your wife like that is awful, too.”

“I'll try to remember that,” he said quite solemnly, which made her realize he was teasing her.

“Felix, you're liable to end up in the rose garden if you're not careful.”

“I'll try to remember that, too.”

Maeve had to cover her smile by jumping up to get the coffeepot. She refilled everyone's cup.

When she sat down again, Mrs. Decker said, “I suppose I should be the one to take Mrs. O'Neill to visit Una.”

“Oh no,” Maeve said. “You can't let the reporters see you. They'll find out who you are and your picture will be in the newspapers, too.”

“And you'll probably look fat,” Gino said with a perfectly straight face.

“And old, too,” Mr. Decker added.

Mrs. Decker was glaring at them, so Maeve hurried to their rescue. “Besides, they'd want to know why a society matron is involved with a murder. They'd probably make up some scandal about Mr. Decker.”

“No one who knows Felix would believe that for a second,” she said with a twinkle, her good humor restored by the thought of her husband involved in a scandal, “but I am concerned about myself. A lady should only have her name in the newspapers three times during her life.”

“And what are those three times?” Gino asked with genuine curiosity.

“When she's born, when she marries, and when she dies,” Mrs. Decker said. “I've already used up two of my three, so I suppose I shouldn't expose myself at the Pollock house.”

“And you certainly shouldn't die,” Mr. Decker said. “I don't think I should escort Mrs. O'Neill either, for all the same reasons, so that leaves Gino and Maeve.”

“I'll do it,” Maeve said. “I feel sorry for the poor woman, and I don't think for a minute that Una wants to see her because she misses her. She's got something up her sleeve, I'm sure, and she wants to take advantage of her mother somehow.”

“That's not very charitable, Maeve,” Mrs. Decker said. “But I'm afraid you're right. So please let me know if you need any assistance.”

“I know Mr. Decker isn't going to start returning the money until tomorrow,” Gino said, “but I think I should try to find Yorke today.”

“I agree,” Mr. Decker said. “The sooner the better.”

“I think I should go see Mrs. O'Neill today, too, to tell her Una wants to see her,” Maeve said. “And she'll probably want to visit her daughter right away.”

“I would, I know,” Mrs. Decker said. “There may be fewer reporters at the house because it's Sunday, too.”

Maeve wasn't counting on that, but it would certainly be nice.

“Do you want to take our carriage?” Mr. Decker asked her.

“I think Mrs. O'Neill would be happier if we just took the El, and there's no sense in attracting the attention of the reporters with the carriage again. Besides, it's faster.”

Mrs. Decker sighed. “That leaves me with nothing to do except play with the children this afternoon while Felix counts out the money.” She rose from her chair, smiling broadly. “I think I'll get started.”

*   *   *

G
ino was glad he'd worn his best suit today. His mother hadn't been happy when he left the house this morning. She was worried about him quitting the police and not having a real job, but he suspected she was even more worried about him getting dressed up and going to see some Irish girl she'd never met. Gino only wished she had something to worry about. He had, as yet, no reason to believe Maeve was the least bit interested in him that way.

But a man could hope.

Adam Yorke was staying in a modest hotel near Washington Square. The desk clerk told him, after receiving a small tip, that Mr. Yorke was in the lounge. Gino found him sitting in an armchair with a pile of newspapers beside him, reading his way through the latest Pollock stories.

“Mr. Yorke?”

He looked up in surprise, then glanced around as if to make sure Gino was alone. “Who are you?”

“Mr. Decker sent me to see you.”

Yorke practically jumped to his feet. “Do you have word about Cecelia?”

Gino hated to disappoint him. “No, but I do have some information that might help. Can I sit down?”

“Oh yes, certainly,” he said, motioning to the empty chair near his. “May I get you something? A drink?”

Gino had learned from Frank Malloy that he shouldn't drink alcohol when he was working on a case. “No, thanks. By the way, I'm Gino Donatelli. I'm a private investigator working on the Pollock case.”

“Why is there a private investigation going on? I thought his wife killed him, and I certainly don't blame her at all.”

“His wife's mother hired us. She doesn't believe her daughter is guilty.”

“I'm sure she doesn't. I wouldn't blame her if she'd killed him, of course, but I wish she hadn't. Randolph Pollock was an evil son of a bitch, but he was also the only person who knows what happened to Cecelia.”

“Mr. Decker told me that Pollock claimed she died.”

“Yes, in childbirth, but we could find no record of it anywhere. We also checked every cemetery in Chicago and the surrounding counties. None of them had buried her. But you said you had some information for me.”

The man looked like he'd been to hell and back, except for the spark of hope now lighting his brown eyes. Gino hated to extinguish it.

“We've learned some things about Pollock that you might not know. One thing we learned is that he made a habit of hitting his wife.”

“Hitting? You mean he beat this woman . . .” He snatched up one of the newspapers and found the picture he wanted. “This Una?”

“Yes. When she was arrested, she was covered with
bruises, and the servants told me that he hit her whenever he got mad at her.”

“No wonder she killed him,” Yorke said.

Gino didn't want to argue with him, so he just ignored that. “If Pollock was the kind of man who beat one wife, he probably would beat another.”

Yorke needed a minute to digest this. “Do you think he beat Cecelia, too?”

“We think it's possible. Maybe even probable. You said Pollock wouldn't let you see your sister after they married. The same thing happened when he married Una O'Neill. Her mother wasn't allowed to visit her or even contact her.”

“I knew there was something,” Yorke said. “She'd send us a note from time to time. She kept insisting she was fine, but I knew something was wrong, because if she were fine, she would have come to see us.”

“We don't know what happened with your sister, but we thought you should know what we found out about Pollock.”

“That's why she didn't come back to us when she left him,” Yorke said. “She would've been too ashamed. Now she's out there all alone.”

Gino had seen it before, the family who refused to even consider the possibility that their loved one might be dead. “I guess she could be.”

Yorke stared at him, his eyes registering the silent message but refusing to accept it. Now was the time to move on to an even more sensitive topic. “You visited Pollock the day he was murdered, Mr. Yorke.”

“Yes, I guess I did, although I didn't know it was the same day until later. He was surprised I'd found him. He thought he'd escaped us.”

“What happened that morning?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what did you talk about? How did you leave things between you?”

Yorke stared at Gino again, and this time his eyes were angry. “What are you asking me?”

“Just what I said.”

“No, you're not. You want to know if I killed Pollock, don't you?”

“You had a good reason to.”

Color surged into Yorke's face. “No, I did not! I wanted Pollock alive. I wanted him to tell me what happened to Cecelia.”

“But what if he told you that she was dead? What if he said he'd only meant to teach her a lesson and accidentally killed her? You would have been enraged. You might have wanted to bash his head in and beat him until he died, just like he'd done to Cecelia.”

“
No!
” he cried, surging to his feet, fists clenched and eyes wide with fury.

Gino jumped up, too, ready to defend himself if necessary. But Yorke made no move to strike him or anything else. He just stood there, chest heaving with his silent anger. Then his anger died, leaving him trembling. He lifted a hand to his head. “Dear God, she's dead, isn't she? He killed her.” He met Gino's gaze again, and this time Gino saw only despair. “That's what you came here to tell me, isn't it?”

It wasn't, of course. He'd come here to accuse Yorke of murder and see how he reacted. “I don't know what happened to her, not for certain,” he said. “Sit down, Mr. Yorke.”

He obeyed. He was shaking now and weak as a kitten. His eyes filled with tears. “I guess I knew it already, but . . .”

“Nobody knows for sure except Pollock,” Gino insisted. “And it's too late to ask him. But if your sister needed help, she'd come to you, wouldn't she? No matter how embarrassed she was?”

“Yes, I think she would. She knew we loved her no matter what,” he said, tears running down his face.

“She'd come to you if she could,” Gino said.

Yorke nodded, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his tears. Gino saw the bartender watching them and signaled for a whiskey for Yorke. By the time he brought it, Yorke was calmer and drank it gratefully.

Gino waited patiently, knowing Yorke would eventually come to terms with his grief and be able to answer questions again. Finally, Yorke turned to him. “Is that why you came here, to make me accept that my sister is dead?”

“No, it isn't. I'm sorry that was part of it. I wish I could tell you something different, but Pollock was an evil man, like you said.”

“Why did you come, then?”

“I wanted to ask about your meeting with Pollock the day he died.”

“You want to know if I killed him,” he said bitterly. “Now I wish I had, but no, I didn't. If I had, do you think I would have stayed in New York? Would I have gone back to his house a second time? Would I have met with the Deckers so they knew my name and how to find me?”

Gino didn't think that was likely. Yorke seemed far too intelligent to do something so foolish, but it wasn't impossible. “Tell me exactly what happened when you saw Pollock that day.”

Yorke sighed. “I told you, he was surprised to see me. I told him I wanted to know where Cecelia was, and he told me the same story about how she died in childbirth. I asked him where she was buried and he said he didn't remember. Same old lies he'd told us before.”

“Were you shouting?”

“I don't know. I suppose I was, at the end. I wanted to
choke him, but I couldn't, not until he told us the truth about my sister, so I left.”

“And Pollock was alive when you left.”

“Of course.” He gave another weary sigh.

Gino needed to think of a question that would prove Yorke's innocence . . . or guilt. Una Pollock might have seen him leave and know her husband was still alive then, but that wouldn't help her case any, so she wouldn't vouch for him. “Is there any way you can prove Pollock was alive when you left him?”

Yorke frowned, wrinkling his forehead as he tried to recall that day. “Oh, wait! I just remembered. Someone did see me leaving! A colored boy. He was just going in the basement door when I left.”

*   *   *

M
aeve walked across town to the East Side because the elevated train only ran north and south. She found Mrs. O'Neill's tenement easily, since she lived in the same building the Malloys had once occupied. The children playing outside were happy to tell her which flat belonged to the “murderess's poor, widowed mother,” as the newspapers called her.

“Who is it?” Mrs. O'Neill called when Maeve knocked.

Maeve identified herself, and she heard a bolt being thrown. The door opened just a crack at first, as Mrs. O'Neill peered out. When she was satisfied Maeve was alone, she opened the door and pulled her guest into her kitchen before slamming and locking the door behind her.

“Those awful reporters,” she explained. “They bother me day and night. I thought if I told my story to that nice lady reporter, the rest of them would leave me alone.”

“That was a lovely drawing of Una. How did they know what she looked like?”

“Oh, she had this photograph taken right after she started working for Mr. Winter at the cigar shop.” She moved into the front room and picked up a framed picture from a table. “One of the gentlemen who came into the shop had a photography studio, and he offered to make her photograph for free. He put a copy of it in the window of his studio for advertising, and he gave her one for me.”

“It's very nice,” Maeve said, thinking this was another example of how pretty girls got things no one else did. She set it back on the table. “How are you keeping, Mrs. O'Neill?”

“Oh, I'm doing all right. I miss my girl, though. Have you seen her? Is she well?”

“I saw her just last night, as a matter of fact.”

Mrs. O'Neill's eyes lit up. “How is she? Is she all right?”

“She's doing as well as you can expect. She has reporters camped outside her house day and night.”

“Oh dear!”

“Yes, but she misses you, too,” Maeve said, hoping she wasn't lying too much. “She told me she would like to see you.”

“She would?” To Maeve's dismay, the old woman teared up. “Do you think it would be all right if I went to her place now? I've never gone to visit her before, but with Mr. Pollock dead, that is, would anybody else mind?”

“No one would mind at all, but I have to warn you about the reporters.”