Actually, she had. A “cadet” was a young man who used his charms to seduce naive or desperate young women into prostitution. The laws of supply and demand required a constant supply of fresh, young females to satisfy the enormous demand of a profession that used them up at an alarming rate. Young men supplemented their meager incomes by working as cadets and helping the pimps fill their need for replacements in the brothels and on the streets.
A girl as lovely and alone as Alicia VanDamm would have seemed a logical target. Maybe Fisher had grown frustrated with his failure to attract her attentions and gone to her room and been a little more forceful than he’d intended in trying to recruit her.
Not wanting to admit he’d missed all the clues, Frank said, “We’re already looking for Mr. Fisher.”
She didn’t seem cheered by that information. Maybe she guessed that Frank hadn’t exactly made Hamilton Fisher a priority in this investigation. “Perhaps now you’ll be looking for him in some different places.”
He probably would, but he didn’t want to admit it to Mrs. Brandt. “Do you think the VanDamms will offer a reward for the missing jewelry?”
“Mina seemed very anxious to get it back. Is it absolutely necessary to have a reward, though?”
Oh, yes, Frank wanted to say, but instead he said, “Without it, I doubt we’ll see the jewelry again. If it was pawned, the pawnbroker will want his investment back. Even though it’s illegal to buy stolen goods, I won’t be able to prove he did unless he tells me. Since he’s not likely to do that, I can’t arrest him for it.”
“So if he’s not afraid of being arrested, your only leverage is to bribe him,” she guessed. She didn’t approve, but Frank couldn’t help that. That’s the way the world worked. Sarah Brandt could reform it on someone else’s time.
“I do what I have to do.” He only hoped she didn’t know that the customary arrangement was for the pawnbroker to split the reward with the police, too. Which, of course, gave the police an incentive for finding missing property in the first place. In fact, some thieves didn’t bother with fences at all. They just held onto the stolen goods until the reward was offered, then turned it in and split the proceeds with the cops. Easy work, but a little too uncertain for Frank’s taste.
“Has Mr. VanDamm offered a reward for the murderer?” she asked.
“I haven’t actually approached him about it yet,” Frank admitted. He didn’t like to rush into something so delicate. If you asked too soon, people thought you were unfeeling, and the VanDamms seemed like just the kind of folks who could get offended.
“I suggested he offer one,” she said, thoroughly shocking him. “I saw him when I called on Mina, and I tried to explain to him why it’s necessary. You won’t find her killer without one, will you?”
Frank didn’t think the answer to that question would do him credit, so he ignored it. “A man like that, with plenty of money, I guess he’ll do whatever it takes to catch the killer.”
To Frank’s surprise, she frowned as if she didn’t agree.
“You don’t think so?”
“He didn’t say anything, one way or the other, when I mentioned it to him,” she admitted, “and I didn’t want to press him. He was still very upset.”
“How could you tell?” Frank asked, honestly wanting to know.
She shrugged one shoulder, a distinctively feminine gesture that Frank found far more appealing than he should have. “He’s very reserved by nature. Most men are, I think, but men in his position must be even more so. Cornelius VanDamm probably wouldn’t shout if his house was on fire, but when I saw him the other day, he looked as if he hadn’t been sleeping at all, and his eyes were… well, they were haunted. There’s no other word for it.”
“Then he’ll pay whatever it takes to find the man responsible.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Why?” Frank challenged, not liking her theories at all. “You can’t think he doesn’t want the killer found.”
To his surprise, she didn’t protest. “It’s not that so much as… He might be afraid of the scandal.”
“How much more scandal could there be? His kid was murdered.”
“Does anyone know that? Anyone except you and I and the police, I mean? I haven’t seen anything about it in the papers, have you?”
Frank really hadn’t had time to look. “So?”
“So he’s been able to keep the circumstances of her death a secret. He probably has a story he’s been telling to explain her death, a tragic accident perhaps, since the truth would be too awful to admit. The funeral will be private and no one will ever know the truth… unless the killer is caught.”
This made absolutely no sense to Frank. “What’s the shame in getting murdered?”
“The shame is in the circumstances. She had run away from her home, which is bad enough, but the reason she ran away is even worse. I’m assuming that she really was with child.”
Frank nodded grudgingly. The medical examiner had confirmed that at once.
“How far gone was she?”
Frank shifted uneasily in his chair. He’d never get used to discussing such topics with a female he hardly knew. “Almost six months, they said.”
“Then her family must have known. That’s why they sent her to Long Island, to keep her out of sight since her condition would soon be obvious.”
“But they wouldn’t’ve been able to keep it a secret once she had the baby,” Frank pointed out.
“Of course they would. They’d simply spirit the child away someplace and return Alicia to society as if nothing had happened.”
“Their own grandchild?” Frank scoffed. Nobody could be that heartless. “What would become of it?”
“Maybe a servant would adopt it, or maybe they would give out some story about a distant relative who died and left her child in their care. Who knows? The important thing is that no one would ever know the truth. Alicia’s reputation would be safe so she’d still be able to marry well, and the family wouldn’t lose their place in society. But with her running away, they’d have a much more difficult time making up a story. They’d have to invent excuses for her disappearance, which would be hard to explain, and now with her death, the situation is even more delicate. If the truth came out, that she was pregnant and living in a boardinghouse alone and her parents didn’t even know where she was, they’d become a laughingstock. I’m very much afraid they might think that was too high a price to pay for justice.”
“Are you saying they’d let their daughter’s killer go free just to protect their reputation?” She must be exaggerating, he thought. “I know rich people are a little strange, but that’s not human.”
For a long moment, she didn’t speak, and Frank thought his skepticism must have shown her how ridiculous her theories were, but then she said, “In some ways, rich people aren’t human, at least some of them aren’t.”
“You know this for a fact?” He very much doubted it, but she nodded.
“From my own personal experience. With my own father. He’s a close friend of Cornelius VanDamm.”
Well, he’d known she came from money. He’d known she and Mina VanDamm were friends. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but still, he had a difficult time believing she’d come from the same stock as the VanDamms. “What’s his name?”
“Felix Decker.”
Frank tried not to show his surprise. Felix Decker was definitely one of the Four Hundred socially elite in the city. His family had been here since before the flood, and he was probably richer than God. Was it possible Decker’s daughter could be sitting here with him in a filthy room in the basement of police headquarters? “Felix Decker’s daughter is a midwife?” he asked in disbelief. Surely, that alone proved the lie.
She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him. It was a bitter smile, full of pain and wisdom dearly earned, and suddenly, Frank knew things about Sarah Brandt he had no desire to know.