Murder In Chinatown Read online

  “She came over alone?” Sarah asked in surprise.

  “Sure, lots of girls did. Their families died, and everybody else was starving. In America they could find work and maybe even a husband, so they came over here.”

  “Is that what you did?” Sarah asked.

  Cora smiled slightly. “Didn’t have much choice, did I?” She rubbed her head absently, as if it ached.

  “You should get some rest,” Sarah suggested. “The baby will probably be awake most of the night. While he’s asleep, you should at least try to take a nap.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Cora protested, “not with Angel out there someplace, all alone.”

  “You can’t help her by staying awake. You’ve got to think of your baby,” Sarah argued. “And Minnie will need your support, too, especially if they can’t find Angel.”

  More tears leaked out, spilling down her cheeks. Sarah went to her and helped rearrange the pillows so she could lie down. “What if the baby wakes up?” she asked as Sarah tucked her in.

  “You’ll hear him, I promise,” Sarah said.

  “But—”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  “I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes then.”

  Within seconds, exhaustion claimed her. Sarah turned down the gas jets in the bedroom and went out into the parlor to wait.

  The baby woke up a little later, and Cora fed him again. Sarah convinced Cora the waiting would go much more quickly if she slept, so she consented again. Sarah had dozed off herself when Minnie returned to the flat.

  Sarah started awake at the sound of the door opening, and one look at Minnie’s face told her they hadn’t found the missing girl.

  “Cora?” Minnie asked.

  “Asleep,” Sarah reported. “They’re both doing fine. Did you find out anything at all?”

  Minnie shook her head as she sank wearily onto Cora’s comfortable sofa. “Someone saw her walking down the street. She was carrying a bundle, but no one thought anything about it. Figured it was laundry or something. Nobody noticed where she went.”

  “You checked with her friends?”

  “She didn’t go to any of them, and they all swear they don’t know where she did go.” Minnie seemed to have aged a decade since this afternoon. “Charlie and George and everybody we know is still out searching, in case she tried to hide in an alley or something.”

  “Have you called in the police?” Sarah asked.

  Minnie looked at her as if she’d suddenly gone insane. “The police?” she echoed in amazement. “Why would we call in the police?”

  “They…they could help look for her,” she tried.

  Minnie made a rude noise. “The police don’t come to Chinatown unless they want to arrest somebody. They won’t care a lick that Angel is missing unless she stole something or killed somebody. Even then, they won’t care unless she stole from a white person.”

  “Maybe if you offered a reward,” Sarah said, hating herself for having to say it. The police seldom investigated a crime unless a “reward” was offered. In their defense, they could hardly survive on the salary the city paid them. On the other hand, the poor had little hope of justice if it had to be purchased.

  Minnie rubbed her forehead wearily. “Charlie won’t offer no reward to the police. He hates them like the devil.”

  Sarah had no answer for that. “I’ll stay with Cora for the rest of the night. You should probably try to get some rest yourself.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, not with my girl out there someplace all alone. I just came back to see if she’d changed her mind and come home. I’m going right out again.”

  Sarah tried unsuccessfully to get her to eat something, then wished her good luck as she left again. She found herself wishing for Frank Malloy. He’d know what to do. He’d know how to search for Angel. Or so she told herself. The truth was, no one would be able to find Angel if she didn’t want to be found—or if someone else didn’t want her to be found. Girls disappeared in New York every day. Sometimes their bodies floated up in the harbor, but most times they simply vanished.

  Time was when Sarah could only imagine the heartbreak of losing a child. Now she had a child of her own. She’d found little Catherine at the Prodigal Son Mission. She’d simply appeared on the Mission’s doorstep one morning, and she either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak, so no one knew where she’d come from.

  Did a mother somewhere weep for the child she’d lost? The child Sarah had found? Sarah could easily imagine that mother’s pain and Minnie’s, too. Losing Catherine would be like having her heart ripped from her chest. She whispered a prayer for Angel’s safety and settled in for the rest of the night to wait.

  SARAH ACHED IN EVERY MUSCLE AS SHE APPROACHED her home on Bank Street late the next afternoon. No one had found any sign of Angel, and Minnie had finally returned home. She’d insisted she could look after Cora and the baby herself. It would keep her mind off her own troubles, she’d said, and sent Sarah home for some much-needed rest.

  She automatically glanced over at her neighbor’s front porch. Years of experience had taught her that Mrs. Ellsworth would be out, sweeping her front steps while she kept an eye on everything that happened on Bank Street. But Mrs. Ellsworth’s steps had gone unswept most days in the months since Sarah had brought Catherine home from the Mission. Mrs. Ellsworth now had better ways to spend her time.

  The moment Sarah pushed open her front door, she heard the sound of running feet. Catherine appeared almost instantly, running full tilt from the back of the house, through the front room that Sarah used as her office, and straight into Sarah’s arms. Hugging Catherine’s small body tightly, Sarah once again understood Minnie’s desperate fear. She inhaled the sweet scent of the child’s hair and brushed her lips across the satiny cheek. How could a mother bear the pain of losing a child? Surely, nothing else could be so terrible.

  “We were about to give you up,” Mrs. Ellsworth said good-naturedly.

  Sarah looked up to see that her neighbor had followed Catherine at a more sedate pace. Maeve, the girl who served as Catherine’s nursemaid, was behind her, smiling a greeting. They had most likely been working on something in the kitchen. Mrs. Ellsworth was teaching them the fine art of homemaking.

  “Is everything all right?” Mrs. Ellsworth added. Sarah saw the unspoken question in the older woman’s eyes. When Sarah was gone for a long time on a delivery, it usually meant something had gone wrong.

  “Oh, yes,” Sarah assured her, still holding on to Catherine’s hands as she straightened. “A healthy baby boy. I stayed because there was some trouble in the family. A young girl went missing, and they all went to look for her, so there was no one to take care of the new mother.”

  “They found the girl then?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked.

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Was she a little girl?” Maeve asked, her young face clouded. She, too, had been a resident of the Prodigal Son Mission when Sarah recruited her. Her parents had put her out on the streets when they’d deemed her able to fend for herself. Sarah had never asked what she’d been forced to do to stay alive until she’d found the safety of the Mission.

  Catherine squeezed Sarah’s hands, and Sarah looked down to see the concern in her eyes, too. Catherine was no more than five years old herself, but she’d also known the terror of being alone. It had made her mute.

  “The girl is almost your age, Maeve,” Sarah said. “She’ll be sixteen next month.”

  “Well, now, you can tell us all about it in a minute,” Mrs. Ellsworth said brusquely. “But first, come on into the kitchen where we can get some food into you. You look wrung out.”

  “I am,” Sarah agreed and allowed Catherine to take her by the hand and lead her back the way they’d come, into the warm comfort of the kitchen.

  They’d been making pastry. Several empty pie shells awaited filling, and flour and sticky dough covered the entire tabletop. Maeve quickly cleaned a spot at the table, and Catherine brushed flo
ur off one of the chairs for Sarah to sit.

  “I can scramble up some eggs, if that’s all right,” Mrs. Ellsworth was saying. “Not fancy, but it’s quick.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t know how much longer I can stay awake,” Sarah said, sinking down into the chair Catherine had prepared for her. Catherine climbed up into her lap and laid her head against Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah held her close, reveling in the feel of her small body.

  Mrs. Ellsworth started preparing the eggs while Maeve continued to clean off the table. She scrubbed a little harder than necessary, Sarah noted, and her face was fixed in a troubled frown.

  “What is it, Maeve?” she asked.

  The girl looked up, stopping her work for just a moment before returning to it with a vengeance. “I was just thinking about that girl. Why’d she run off, anyway? Did they beat her or something?”

  “No, they didn’t beat her,” Sarah said. She couldn’t be sure, of course, but she remembered the way Minnie had held her daughter. She cherished the child. “It seemed like they treated her very well, in fact.”

  “Then why’d she leave?” Maeve seemed actually angry at this unknown girl.

  “Probably because her father wanted her to marry an older man,” Sarah said.

  “Why? Did he owe him money or something?”

  “Not that I know of, although he could have, I guess. Her mother seemed to think it was a good idea, though, and she loves the girl very much. The man makes a good living. She probably thought he’d be a good husband for her.”

  Maeve’s frown deepened as she continued to concentrate on scrubbing the last bits of dough off the table.

  What was she thinking? Sarah wondered. And why was she so angry?

  Maeve muttered something under her breath.

  “What was that?” Sarah asked.

  Maeve looked up in surprise. “What?”

  “You said something,” Sarah said, even though she knew Maeve hadn’t intended for her to hear. “I didn’t hear it.”

  “I just…I said she was stupid,” she admitted reluctantly.

  Sarah nodded. “Running away was a foolish thing to do. Dangerous, too.”

  “You said her family was looking for her,” Maeve said.

  “Yes, everyone was out, even the neighbors.”

  Maeve shook her head. “They didn’t want her to leave. It don’t make sense.”

  “Doesn’t,” Sarah corrected her.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Maeve repeated obediently. “She’s got a family what loves her and wants her, and she runs away because she don’t…doesn’t want to get married to some rich man? That’s just crazy.”

  Sarah figured Maeve would have loved to find herself in a position like that. “I know. She isn’t the kind of girl who would know how to survive on her own, either. That’s why her parents are so frightened.”

  Now Maeve’s frown turned thoughtful. “A girl like that…”

  Sarah waited, but she didn’t go on. “What about a girl like that?” she prodded.

  “She ain’t likely to go off alone, is she? I mean, really run away. She’s used to somebody taking care of her. She’d be too scared to be on her own.”

  “That’s what her parents thought, too, but they checked with all her friends. She isn’t staying with any of them.”

  “Girl friends,” Maeve said dismissively.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean her girl friends are probably just like her. They’d be afraid to hide her. She’d never go to them.”

  Sarah was beginning to understand. “You’re right, her friends aren’t hiding her, and she’d be too scared to go off alone. You think she’s found someone else to take care of her, don’t you?”

  “A man,” Maeve said with certainty. “You’ll see. She’s with some man.”

  This was what Sarah had feared, of course, but perhaps it wasn’t quite as bad as she’d imagined. “Do you think it’s a man who cares about her?”

  Maeve shrugged. “They always say that, don’t they?”

  Sarah’s heart sank. Of course they did. Angel Lee might have run off with a man she loved, a man she thought loved her in return, but that didn’t mean he really did. He could still have sold her to a brothel or even to a rich man whose perversion ran to violating the innocent. Many young men in the city made a living doing just that. They were called “cadets.” “I wonder if her parents have considered the fact that she might have had an admirer.”

  “Maybe you should suggest it to them, Mrs. Brandt,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, looking up from her cooking.

  Catherine raised her head, turned Sarah’s face toward her own, and nodded vigorously.

  “Can you hurry with those eggs, Mrs. Ellsworth?” Sarah asked wryly. “I’ll be needing some coffee, too, since it looks like I’ll be heading back to Chinatown.”

  SARAH HAD BEEN HOPING THAT ANGEL HAD RETURNED or been found, but she was disappointed. The neighbors were still clustered in the street outside, discussing the sad situation. Sarah made her way through them with a heavy heart.

  “Oh, Mrs. Brandt, did you forget something?” Minnie Lee asked when she opened the door to find Sarah in the hallway outside Cora’s flat. She looked haggard and haunted.

  “No, I just happened to think of something, so I came back to tell you.”

  “Something about Cora?” Minnie asked, stepping aside to silently invite Sarah in. “Or the baby?”

  “No, about Angel.”

  “Have you seen her?” Minnie asked eagerly. Her hope was painful to witness.

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Sarah said quickly. She tried not to watch the hope dying in Minnie’s eyes. “But I was telling my daughter’s nursemaid about Angel, and she said…Well, maybe you’ve already thought of it, but she thought that Angel would have been too scared to run away all by herself, and—”

  “I know, we thought that, too,” Minnie said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “But nobody’s seen her. We already asked all her friends. That was the first thing we thought of.”

  “Mrs. Lee, I don’t know if you’ve considered this or not, but maybe Angel had another friend, one you didn’t know about.”

  “We know everybody she knows,” Minnie insisted.

  Sarah took a deep breath, knowing how defensive Minnie would be and how protective of her daughter. “You might not know if she had a friend who was a man.”

  Minnie’s eyes widened. “A man? She never…How could she? She doesn’t even know any men.”

  “She’d keep it a secret, wouldn’t she?” Sarah said. “She wouldn’t want you to know, because you wouldn’t approve.”

  Minnie reached up and rubbed her temple. “I don’t know…” Tears welled in her eyes, and she swayed slightly. Sarah caught her arm and led her over to sit on Cora’s comfortable sofa.

  “Have you eaten anything at all?” Sarah asked.

  Minnie waved away her question. “How could Angel have met a man? A man who would steal her away from her family?”

  “I don’t know that she did,” Sarah said. “But it would explain why none of her friends know where she is. It would explain why she was brave enough to run away. She’d believe he would take care of her. How else would she know where to go or how to hide from you?”

  Minnie knuckled tears from her eyes. “I almost hope you’re right,” she admitted. “As bad as that would be, it’s better than what I’ve been imagining.”

  “Minnie!” Cora called from the bedroom. “Who’s out there? Did they find Angel?”

  Minnie pushed herself off the sofa and hurried into the bedroom, with Sarah following closely behind. “It’s Mrs. Brandt,” she said. “She came to…She was asking about Angel.”

  “How are you doing, Cora?” Sarah asked.

  Cora smiled sadly. “I’d be fine if Angel was home safe. Little Danny, he’s the sweetest thing.” She nodded to where the baby slept peacefully in his cradle. “I’m so lucky.”

  “You are that,” Minnie said softly. />
  “You didn’t come all the way back here just to ask me how I am, did you, Mrs. Brandt?” Cora asked.

  “No, I…” She glanced at Minnie, but she offered no objection. “I was telling Mrs. Lee that my daughter’s nurse-maid thought perhaps Angel had been lured away by a man.”

  “A man? How would Angel meet a man?” Cora asked, much as Minnie had. “She’s still a child. She never goes anyplace except to school and church. Minnie watches her real close.”

  “Harry looks after her, too,” Minnie added. “He don’t let nobody even speak to his sister unless he approves.”

  “He’s the best chaperone a girl ever had,” Cora agreed.

  “Maybe he let down his guard for someone he didn’t think was particularly threatening,” Sarah suggested. “Someone charming and kind.”

  “I don’t know,” Minnie said, rubbing her head again. “Why would he?”

  “I don’t know, either,” Cora said, “but it’s something to think about at least. It’s something you haven’t thought of before, too. Why don’t you ask Harry if he can think of anybody who maybe paid attention to Angel or got a little too friendly.”

  “Angel wouldn’t just go off with somebody,” Minnie insisted. “She’s a good girl.”

  “Of course she is,” Sarah said. “But innocent girls are also easy to fool. A man who was handsome and nice—she would never suspect him of having evil intentions. You’ve probably protected her from evil all of her life. That’s what loving parents do, but it would make her easy prey.”

  Minnie moaned in despair, but Cora nodded vigorously. “She’s right, Minnie. At least I hope she is. It would mean we have a chance of finding her.”

  “Mother of God,” Minnie said. Her face was ashen, and Sarah took her by the arm and led her to a chair in the corner of the bedroom.

  “You’re going to drop over if you don’t get some rest,” Cora scolded her in exasperation. “Tell her, Mrs. Brandt.”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t need me to tell her,” Sarah said. “Sit right here. I’m going to make some tea, and you’re going to drink it.”

  “I don’t know what’s in the kitchen, but get her something to eat, too. She hasn’t had a thing all day,” Cora called after her.