“We’ll send for you if we need you again.” He closed the door in her surprised face. Then he motioned for Gino to come over to guard the door and turned his attention back to Antonio.
“What did Joe want Uncle Ugo to do?” he asked when he was standing over the boy again.
“He didn’t want him to do anything,” he claimed. “Joe just told him that Nainsi had the baby and I wasn’t the father.”
“What did Ugo say?”
Antonio winced at the memory. “He said I was stupid to trust a whore, and I got what I deserved. He said a lot of things like that. I don’t remember all of it. He gave me some whiskey to drink, and we sat there for a long time, drinking. He and Joe were talking, but I was just drinking.
I don’t remember much after that. Next thing I know, I wake up right there.” He pointed at the sofa.
“That’s convenient,” Frank observed. “You don’t remember what you did for the rest of the night?”
“No, I don’t!”
“Then for all you know, you came home, went up to your bedroom, and put a pillow over Nainsi’s face and smothered her.”
“I didn’t! Why would I?” he cried.
“A lot of reasons. Because you didn’t like being made a fool of by a cheap little mickey bitch. Because you didn’t like being stuck raising somebody else’s bastard. Because you didn’t want a wife who’d lift her skirts for any man who gave her a smile or bought her a drink.”
The boy lunged to his feet with a roar of outrage, but Frank grabbed his shoulders and slammed him back down into the chair.
“Isn’t that what happened?” Frank challenged. “Did she do it for just a smile, or did she make you buy her a drink first?”
Antonio’s eyes glowed with loathing, and his handsome face twisted with rage. “It wasn’t like that!”
“Wasn’t it?” Frank demanded. “Did she even tell you her name first?”
“I knew her name!”
“Did you know she was carrying somebody else’s baby?”
That stopped him cold. Frank watched the rage drain out of him, and he was a boy again. “She said . . . she said it was her first time.”
“Of course she did.”
“She said she liked me,” he remembered sadly.
“Maybe she did,” Frank allowed. “She was looking for a husband, so she would have wanted somebody she could live with.”
Antonio grimaced. “She didn’t like me after we got married though. She didn’t even want me in her bed. She said she was sick from the baby, and didn’t want me to touch her. She was mean to everybody else, too. Mama hated her.
Lorenzo said I never should’ve married her.”
“No one would blame you for killing a woman like that, Antonio,” Frank said reasonably. “They’d probably throw you a parade.”
The boy’s eyes filled with tears. “I wish I had killed her.
Nobody would laugh at me then. They wouldn’t say I was stupid and weak for getting tricked like that.”
His shoulders started to shake and the tears ran down his cheeks. Frank had to look away. At least he could be pretty sure Antonio hadn’t killed Nainsi. He was too young and still too innocent to hide such a grievous sin.
He might’ve been too drunk to remember, but if he’d been that drunk, he wouldn’t have been able to overpower the girl.
“Go back downstairs and tell your brother Joe to come up to see me,” Frank said in disgust.
Antonio looked at him in surprise, scrubbing the tears from his face with his palms. “Joe? Why do you want to see Joe?”
“Because I do. Now go get him before I decide to take the easy way out and lock you up.”
Antonio sprang to his feet and rushed out, practically shoving Gino aside as he jerked open the door and ducked through it. Maria Ruocco still stood in the hallway outside.
She watched Antonio race away, then turned back and came to the doorway again.
“He didn’t kill the girl,” she said urgently. “He doesn’t have it in him.”
“Then he doesn’t have anything to worry about,” Frank said. “Mrs. Ruocco, would you answer a few questions for me?”
She stiffened in silent resistance, but she lifted her chin and said, “I don’t know what I can tell you.”
“You and your husband sleep upstairs in the room across from where Nainsi died, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She folded her hands tightly at her waist, offering nothing more.
“Did you sleep there the night Nainsi died?”
“Of course. I always sleep there.”
“When was the last time you saw Nainsi?”
She frowned, her heavy brows knitting as she considered the question. “I’m not sure. I . . . helped her with the baby for a while . . . after Mrs. Brandt left. Mama said Nainsi could stay until she was recovered.”
“I guess Nainsi must have been upset about having to leave with her baby,” Frank suggested.
She took a moment before answering this question, too.
“No, she wasn’t. She . . . she thought Mama would let her stay. She was married to Antonio, and she thought we would have to let her stay.”
“Even after your mother-in-law told her she’d have to leave?”
Maria shrugged. “She was a foolish girl, and young. She did not know anything.”
“About what time did you leave her?”
“I went down to help Mama with dinner. That is our busy time.”
“Who else helped?”
“Everyone. We always do.”
“You’re sure? Everyone was there?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Antonio said he and Joe went to see their uncle.”
Maria nodded. “They did. After dinner was over and we closed.”
“What did everyone else do?”
“We . . . we cleaned up. Mama was angry because Joe and Antonio didn’t stay to help. After that, we came up here, like always.”
“To this room?”
“Yes.”
“Did anybody go to check on Nainsi?”
“Valentina took some supper up to her earlier.”
“Do you know when that was?”
“I’m not sure. Probably near seven o’clock. The crowd was thinning out, and that’s usually when it happens.”
“What about after everyone came up here? Did you or anybody else go up to see how she was?”
Maria looked down at her clasped hands. “I . . . I wanted to, but Mama . . . She said we should do nothing for her.”
“But when you went up to bed, you couldn’t resist checking on the baby, could you?” Frank guessed.
Maria’s head snapped up. For a moment, he thought she would deny it, but then she sighed. “I looked in. I just opened the door a little. I could see the baby was asleep in his cradle. Nainsi was . . . She was asleep, too.”
“Did you actually see her?”
Some emotion flickered across her face and then was gone. “The room was dark, and I thought she was . . .
asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her.”
“So she might’ve been dead by then?”
For a second she looked frightened, and Frank knew she was wondering who she might have implicated. Then she remembered something, and her shoulders sagged in relief.
“No, she was alive. I remember now. When Joe came in later, he tripped on something and almost fell. He was . . .
drunk,” she explained in embarrassment. “He made a loud noise, and Nainsi called out to him to be quiet.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. I was asleep, and the noise woke me, too.
I helped him get into bed, and then we both went to sleep.”
“Did you hear anything else that night?”
“No, nothing that woke me up. And Joe, he was with me all night. I would know if he got up,” she added in anticipation of Frank’s impending question.
She turned at the sound of footsteps in the hall. Joe appeared in the doorway. “Maria? Why are you talking to this man?” he demanded.