Murder In Chinatown (8 page)

“Ma!” Harry called, waving to someone on the porch.

A woman turned, and Sarah could see it was Minnie. She waved back when she saw Sarah was with him and came forward to meet her. Sarah was almost to the porch steps when one of the men in the group stepped in front of Minnie and stopped at the head of the steps to look down at Sarah. He didn’t look at all happy to see her, either.

“Malloy!” she said in surprise.

“Mrs. Brandt,” he replied grimly. “What brings you out on a fine day like this?”

She heard the sarcasm in his voice, but she doubted anyone else would notice. “Mrs. Lee sent for me,” she replied with a rebellious smile. “What brings
you
out?”

“Oh, Mrs. Brandt,” Minnie cried, brushing Malloy aside to take his place at the top of the steps. “We found Angel, and somebody’s killed her!”

Sarah instantly turned her attention to Minnie. “I’m so sorry! I could hardly believe it when Harry told me,” Sarah said, hurrying up the steps and past Malloy to comfort her.

Minnie had the blank look of someone in shock. Plainly, she hadn’t really registered the full horror of her loss yet. “I sent Harry for you so you could get your friend here, but the officer knew who we wanted, soon as we said your name. He sent for Mr. Malloy right off.”

Sarah hazarded a glance at Malloy. His eyes had narrowed dangerously, so she decided to stop looking at him. “I’m so glad,” she said sincerely. “What happened to poor Angel?”

Minnie shuddered slightly at the mention of her daughter’s name, and her eyes grew round with the blank stare of one who has been thoroughly beaten. “She was married, Mrs. Brandt. She married that boy she’d been sneaking out with.” Minnie laid a hand over her heart, as if to still it. “I was that relieved, I was. I was thinking such horrible things that could’ve happened to her, and here she was, really eloped.”

“Harry told me that your husband found her.”

“Oh, yes, just the other day. Took him a while, but once we knew the boy’s name, it was only a matter of time. Charlie found him, and there she was with him. They lived in this building,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the tenement behind her. “With his people.”

“You must have been so happy to find her safe,” Sarah said.

Minnie nodded, but her eyes filled with tears. “She wasn’t safe at all, though, was she? Somebody up and killed her!”

Sarah could see the reality of it finally sinking in as her blank stare dissolved into naked pain. “Maybe you should have Harry take you home,” Sarah suggested gently.

“I ain’t leaving my girl!” Minnie protested tearfully. “They don’t care nothing about her here. How do I know what they’ll do with her if I leave?”

Sarah glanced at Malloy again, this time with a silent question.

“The coroner will be here soon, Mrs. Lee,” he said gruffly. “He’ll take the body away.”

Minnie made an agonized sound, and Sarah instinctively clutched at her arm. “Can someone get her a chair?”

Numerous chairs were stacked on the porch, and Malloy grabbed the nearest one and brought it to her. Sarah eased Minnie down into it. Then she looked around at the others gathered on the porch. She saw no familiar faces and noted that they were all hanging back, as if they wanted no part of Minnie’s grief. Minnie had no friends in this bunch.

“Is your husband here?” Sarah asked Minnie.

She shook her head. “He don’t know yet. He was at the laundry when they came to get me, and I didn’t…I couldn’t hardly believe it myself when I heard. I had to make sure it was true before I sent for him.”

Sarah glanced around again and easily found Minnie’s son standing off by himself in the yard. His bright yellow shirt made him easily visible. “Harry, could you go fetch your father now, please?” Sarah asked the boy.

“Ma?” he asked uncertainly.

“Yes, go get him,” Minnie agreed wearily. “No use putting it off anymore.”

Harry took off again. Sarah patted Minnie on the shoulder and wondered what else she could do to offer comfort.

“Can I have a word with you, Mrs. Brandt?” Malloy asked with exaggerated courtesy. She knew how furious he was with her, and she couldn’t really blame him. Hadn’t she promised him she wouldn’t get involved in any more murders?

“Of course, Mr. Malloy,” she replied just as politely.

He took her elbow in a grip that wasn’t as gentle as it probably looked to the bystanders and led her over to the end of the porch, where they could speak in private.

“I guess this is your missing Chinese girl,” he said.

“Yes, it is, unfortunately,” she said. “I’d told the mother that I knew a police detective who could help her locate her daughter.”

“So when her mother starts talking about getting her friend Mrs. Brandt to help, the beat cop figures he should send for me.”

Sarah smiled apologetically. “If I’d known they’d already sent for you, I wouldn’t have come down here,” she told him honestly. “I’m not going to get involved, Malloy. I only wanted to make sure you were assigned to the case.”

“Good. You can go back home now.”

“Can’t you at least tell me what happened to poor Angel before I go?”

He sighed in resignation. “You know as much as I do. The girl ran off with this O’Neal fellow, and they got married. Her father, the Chinaman, he found out where she was living, but she wouldn’t go home with him. Wanted to stay with her husband, which isn’t too surprising. A little while ago, somebody finds her out here in the yard, dead. Looks like she was strangled, but the coroner will tell us for sure.”

“Where did they find her?” Sarah asked, looking around. “If she was killed out here in broad daylight, someone surely saw something,” she added, looking up at all the windows that faced the yard.

“I don’t know exactly where they found her because her husband carried her inside, or at least that’s what he claims,” he said, not bothering to hide his frustration. “She was inside the flat where the whole family lives, all covered up with a blanket, when the beat cop got here. They all claim they don’t know anything about it and didn’t hear or see anything at all.”

Plainly, he didn’t believe this for an instant, but it would take some time and hard work to unravel the mystery. She knew that only too well from her past experiences working with him in murder investigations.

“I could ask a few questions—”

“No!” he snapped. “You aren’t going to ask anybody anything. You’re going to leave right now. You’re going to forget you ever heard of these people.”

Sarah couldn’t possibly forget any of this, but she nodded obediently. “I can’t leave Mrs. Lee alone, though. I’ll just wait until her husband comes to take her home. Then I’ll go.”

He wasn’t pleased, but he knew better than to insist. She’d just dig her heels in and refuse. “Don’t talk to anybody else, though. I don’t need your help with this case, Sarah, and I don’t want you involved in any more murders.”

“All right,” she said as meekly as she could manage.

He blinked in surprise and then leaned in to look at her more closely, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you really mean that?”

“Of course I do!” she said indignantly.

He didn’t look convinced, but he nodded. “Until the husband gets here, and then you leave,” he reminded her. “I’ve got to talk to these people in the yard before they get bored and disappear, see if they know anything useful.”

“Go right ahead. Don’t worry about me, Malloy. I’ll be fine.”

She thought she heard him grumbling something under his breath when he turned away, and she bit back a smile. She really was going to keep her word not to get involved. But of course, if she accidentally learned anything important, she’d certainly let him know.

F
RANK WISHED HE HAD THE AUTHORITY TO ORDER
Sarah Brandt away. He didn’t think
anybody
had that kind of authority, though. She’d do what she always did, which was whatever she wanted, regardless of what anybody else thought or what was in her own best interest or even what was safe.

With a weary sigh, he went down the porch steps and into the yard where the crowd of neighbors still stood. He figured they were waiting to see the body being carried out. That meant he had a few minutes to ask them some questions. “Did any of you see what happened to the girl?”

Many heads shook, and a few voices muttered denials.

“I was the one found her,” a voice said. Frank looked down at a middle-aged woman with a lined face and hollow eyes. She clutched a moth-eaten shawl around her emaciated body. Her unnaturally pale face and bluish lips indicated that her frailty was caused by disease, not by starvation.

“Can you show me exactly where she was and what you saw?” he asked as gently as he could. He judged that she’d respond better to kindness than to bullying, and he was right. She didn’t look happy about it, but she walked over to where the alley ended at the yard.

“She was right there,” she said, pointing to a spot on the ground right beside the building.

“How was she laying?”

The woman considered for a moment. “On her side. Her hands up like this.” She pulled her arms into her chest so her hands were beneath her chin. “Her head was toward the alley, and her feet toward the yard.”

“Were her clothes disturbed at all?”

“You mean did somebody try to interfere with her?” the woman asked scornfully. “Didn’t look like it. Her skirt was down, and everything fastened up tight, like it should be. Nothing seemed wrong with her at all until I saw her eyes was staring at nothing. Then I let out a howl to wake the dead.”

“What happened then?”

“People started looking out the windows, and then they come running to see what was wrong.”

“Who moved her?”

“The O’Neal boy. Somebody said she was his wife, though she didn’t look old enough to me. Looked like a child, she did.”

“She
was
a child,” Frank said. “How did he act when he saw her?”

“Like his heart was gonna break. He starts to crying and carrying on. Then he picks her up—she wasn’t any bigger than a flea—and takes her into the building.”

“Mary, what’re you doing?” a man’s voice called angrily.

They looked up to see an unshaven lout in his longjohn top and threadbare trousers, his suspenders hanging around his hips. He was striding toward them, his bloodshot eyes furious.

“I’m telling him what I saw,” the woman replied tartly.

“You know better than to get mixed up with the police. He’ll have you in the Tombs for killing the girl yourself!”

Frank gave him a look that stopped him in his tracks. His face turned scarlet, but he didn’t back off. Frank turned back to the woman. “Did you hear anything earlier? Or see anybody around?”

“I didn’t hear nothing. I live upstairs. I just come down to empty the slop jar and saw her foot where it was sticking out past the end of the porch. I thought maybe she fell or took a fit or something, so I went over to see was she all right.”

“Thank you for your help,” he said, more politely than he ordinarily would have because her husband was watching. He wanted to shame the man for falsely accusing him.

The woman shrugged. “Can I go now?”

Frank got her name and the number of her flat and wrote it in his notebook before letting her go. Then he looked around carefully, trying to judge which windows might have afforded a view of the girl’s last moments. The spot was oddly sheltered. The porch roof extended far enough to shield the area where she’d lain from most of the vantage points in the yard. Only a few windows in one building would have had a clear view. What were the chances someone had been looking out one of those windows at the right time? And if they had, what were the chances they’d be willing to talk to the police?

A
FTER HER CONVERSATION WITH
M
ALLOY
, S
ARAH WENT
back to where Minnie was sitting. The poor woman looked shattered, although she had yet to shed a tear. That would come later, when she was alone, without distractions, and with nothing to think about except her awful loss.

“Did you have a chance to see Angel after your husband found her?” she asked Minnie.

Minnie nodded. “Charlie was that mad at her when she wouldn’t come home with him. He was ready to wash his hands of her, he said, so I decided I’d see if I could change her mind. I didn’t really think I could, but even if she’d just say she was sorry for scaring us like that…Charlie didn’t want to see her again, he said. The Chinese can be real stubborn, or at least Charlie can. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not when he said he didn’t want anything to do with her, but the only hope was for Angel to apologize to him.”

“So you went to see her?” Sarah prodded when she fell silent.

“I didn’t know what to expect. About her husband, I mean. What kind of a man steals a girl away from her family like that? He did marry her legal and all, but I just didn’t know.”

“Angel loved him,” Sarah reminded her. “He must have some good qualities.”

Minnie made a disgusted face. “He’s handsome. That’s all the Irish boys have to recommend them. Besides that, they’re just lazy drunkards. Why do you think I married a Chinaman?”