Murder on Lexington Avenue (3 page)

“How did this girl, Electra, meet somebody from that school?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Higginbotham said. “All I can tell you is that Mr. Wooten did not intend to allow his daughter to marry a deaf man. Not just this deaf man in particular, you understand. He objected to the very idea that any two deaf people should marry. This is why he sent Electra to our school, so she would learn to speak and to understand the spoken word. Hearing people can understand her, and she can understand them. She can make her way in the world, Mr. Malloy. That was Mr. Wooten’s wish.”

Frank understood that very well. He’d had the same wish for Brian.

“Malloy?”

Frank looked up to see Sullivan in the doorway. “Doc Haynes is ready to take the body. You want to talk to him before he goes?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there in just a minute.”

“May I go now?” Higginbotham asked. “I’m really feeling rather ill and—”

“Just give me your address, in case I need to speak to you again.” Frank took the information and sent the man on his way just before the orderlies carried Wooten’s body out on a stretcher. Frank was glad Higginbotham didn’t have to see that.

“Did you find out anything?” Frank asked the medical examiner.

“Somebody bashed his head in with a loving cup,” Haynes said. “I guess you already knew that, though. I’ll let you know if I find out anything else, but I didn’t see any other injuries, so that’s probably what killed him.”

“Did he die right away?”

“The blow would have knocked him unconscious. From the amount of blood on the floor, he lived awhile, but not more than half an hour and probably a lot less. He never moved once he hit the floor.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

Frank watched as Doc and his orderlies took the body out and loaded it into an ambulance. The crowd around the front steps parted for the procession and gawked curiously at the shrouded body, asking questions that the orderlies ignored.

“Do any of those bums work here?” Frank asked Sullivan.

“No, but I managed to find the name of Wooten’s partner. Terrance Young. Here’s his address.” He handed a page ripped from a notebook similar to Frank’s with an address scrawled on it. Or rather two addresses. “The other one is Wooten’s. Somebody needs to notify the widow.”

“I’ll do that,” Frank said. “And the partner, too.”

Frank thought Sullivan looked relieved. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll clear everybody out of the building and lock up. I found Wooten’s keys in his pocket.”

“I’ll tell this Young fellow you have them,” Frank said by way of warning. If anything went missing from the building, Sullivan would get the blame. “Make sure they get back here to him on Monday morning.”

“I will,” Sullivan promised.

Frank took his leave, wondering grimly if he might have ended up a drunken sot like Sullivan after his wife died if he hadn’t had Brian to take care of. At the time, grief-stricken over his loss, he’d certainly been tempted to abandon the boy, who’d been born with a crippled foot. He hadn’t even known then that Brian was deaf. If he had, would that have made a difference? Would that have made the burden of caring for his son too much to bear? Frank was glad he didn’t know the answer to that question. He headed uptown to the address he had for the Wooten family.

 

 

T
HE WOOTENS LIVED IN A COMFORTABLY LARGE HOUSE on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The maid looked frightened when she saw who was at the door. Although Frank wore the same kind of dark suit every other businessman in the city wore and the same kind of derby hat that every other man wore, something about him always told people he was the police. He’d often thought it was his Irish face. For decades, the police force had been the only source of steady employment for the Irish. But deep down he knew it was probably the way years on the police force had hardened that Irish face.

Frank gave the maid his card. “I need to see Mrs. Wooten. It’s about her husband.”

Now the girl looked terrified. Her blue eyes widened, and she darted away, disappearing into the house and leaving the front door hanging open. She hadn’t invited Frank inside, but he took the liberty of admitting himself, if only to close the front door and keep out the flies. He could have made himself at home, but he waited politely until the girl came scurrying back down the stairs and invited him to meet her mistress in the sitting room.

Mrs. Wooten was what Frank’s mother would have called a fine- looking woman. Not beautiful or even pretty, but everything about her spoke of quality, from her carefully styled hair to the toes of her kid leather shoes. Her impressively buxom figure was encased in a dark blue gown. She was standing when he entered the room, barely waiting for the maid to announce him.

“That’s all, Annie,” Mrs. Wooten said. Her voice was low and oddly sensual. Frank felt the effect of it in the pit of his stomach. As the door clicked shut behind the girl, Mrs. Wooten visibly gathered herself, straightening ever so slightly, as if preparing to receive a blow. “What has happened to my husband?”

“You should sit down, Mrs. Wooten,” Frank said.

“He’s dead then,” she replied flatly. To Frank’s surprise, the stiffness relaxed, almost as if . . . Frank could hardly credit it, but she seemed almost
relieved
. “I should have known when he didn’t come home. He said he’d be here by four.” She sighed, but she didn’t seem the least bit grief-stricken.

“Should I call your maid?”

“That idiot girl? Certainly not.” Her hands were clasped at her waist, and Frank noticed the knuckles were white. At least she wasn’t quite as unmoved as she appeared. “Tell me what happened. An accident, I suppose.”

“Mrs. Wooten, you should sit down,” Frank tried again.

Her eyes might have been attractive at another time. They were a startling shade of blue, but at the moment they were glacial. “Just tell me and get it over with.”

“He was murdered,” Frank said.

At least she had the grace to look surprised. If he could call the brief widening of her eyes true surprise. “Murdered?” she echoed as if the word left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Yes, murdered. Someone killed him.”

Frank watched her carefully, but she betrayed nothing else.

“Who did it?” she asked after a moment, and once again she looked as if she were bracing herself for a blow.

This was very strange. Family members always wanted to know the details, how did it happen and all that. Mrs. Wooten was oddly uncurious. “We don’t know yet.”

And once again she looked almost relieved. She drew a breath. “This is all very . . . unpleasant, Mr. . . . What was your name again?”

“Malloy,” Frank supplied. “Murder usually is, Mrs. Wooten. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“What could you possibly want to ask me?” Now she was alarmed, or almost. She’d been trained very well to hide her true feelings, so maybe Frank was just misreading her.

“Well, for one thing, do you know anyone who might’ve wanted to kill your husband?”

“Certainly not,” she assured him. “Men like my husband simply do not get themselves murdered. It’s unthinkable!”

“But not impossible,” Frank pointed out. “And I’m sure you want us to find out who did it and see that he’s punished.”

Frank might have been sure, but Mrs. Wooten didn’t look sure at all. In fact, she looked extremely doubtful. “Perhaps I will sit down after all,” she decided.

She moved over to one of the sofas and lowered herself onto it very carefully, as if afraid the slightest jar might shatter her. She did not invite Frank to be seated, however. She wouldn’t want him to think he could stay.

Frank figured he’d better ask a few more questions while he had the chance. She could dismiss him at any moment, and he wouldn’t dare refuse to leave. A complaint about him from someone like Mrs. Wooten could mean the end of his career. “Do you know who your husband was meeting with today?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, Mr. Malloy,” she said coldly.

“It is if that person killed him,” Frank said, hoping to shock her into cooperation. He’d never seen anyone react like this to news of a spouse’s death.

She gave him a look that could have cut glass, but she said, “He was meeting with an official from our daughter’s school, but he couldn’t possibly be—”

“Mr. Higginbotham,” Frank supplied. “Yes, I know. He’s the one who found the . . . found your husband. But he didn’t kill him. Do you know if he was planning to meet with anybody else?”

“No, I do not. My husband didn’t bother me with details of his business affairs.”

“And do you know if he was having any kind of trouble with anybody? Maybe somebody had threatened him.”

“If so, he said nothing of it to me. I told you, I have no idea who might have done this terrible thing. I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, Mr. Malloy. I’m very upset by your news, as you can imagine.”

She didn’t exactly look upset to Frank, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. Even if she knew something, she wasn’t going to tell him, at least not right now.

He was just about to take his leave when the door flew open. They both looked up in surprise to see a young woman burst into the room. Frank’s first impression was of singular beauty—creamy, white skin and raven black hair and a face that looked as if it had been carved by the hand of a master. Her appearance was all the more stunning because her braided hair and her youthful clothes indicated she was a mere schoolgirl.

“Mother, what’s happened?” she demanded in a startlingly odd voice, not at all the refined accent he had expected from Mrs. Wooten’s daughter. The words were strained, the inflection uneven. “Annie is crying because the police are here.” She gave Frank a scathing glance before turning back to her mother.

Mrs. Wooten had risen to her feet, and Frank saw that the girl’s appearance had shattered her calm. Suddenly, she looked almost frightened. “Electra, go to your room. I’ll explain later.”

Electra. The deaf girl. That explained her odd-sounding voice.

“Annie said something happened to Father,” she was saying. “Tell me!”

“Electra,” Mrs. Wooten said, shaking her head in some kind of warning.

But the girl ignored it. She turned to Frank instead. “What happened to him?” she demanded.

Frank knew that the students at the Lexington Avenue School could speech-read. He wasn’t sure how difficult it was for them to do, so he spoke slowly and distinctly, just in case. “Your father was murdered.”

She frowned, her lovely brow wrinkling in confusion. She turned back to her mother. “Murdered?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mrs. Wooten said with great reluctance. “Your father is dead.”

Electra absorbed the news for a second. Frank waited, expecting an explosion of tears, but none of the emotions playing across her beautiful face was grief. The one she finally settled on looked very much like satisfaction, and then she lifted her pert little chin and said, “Good.”

“E
LECTRA!” HER MOTHER TRIED, BUT THE GIRL WASN’T looking at her, so she did not know she’d been reprimanded.

“Why is it good?” Frank asked, curious.

“Because he won’t torment me anymore,” the girl said in the instant before her mother reached her.

Mrs. Wooten grabbed her arm and wrenched the girl around to face her. “Electra, go to your room!” she commanded when she had the girl’s attention. Then Mrs. Wooten looked over at Frank. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She probably didn’t even understand what you told her. She’s deaf, you see, and—”

“I understood!” Electra cried, fury staining her porcelain cheeks crimson. “I’m deaf, not stupid!”

Frank silently cursed Mrs. Wooten. Without her there, he could probably learn some very interesting facts about the dead man from his ungrateful child. The mother wasn’t going to let him find out anything, though.

“I know this is a shock,” he said when the girl turned her angry gaze on him again. “I’m sorry about your father.”

“
I’m
not!” the girl informed him defiantly.

For a second, Frank thought Mrs. Wooten would slap her, but she must have decided she didn’t want Frank to see her lose control. She settled for giving Electra’s arm another violent shake, drawing the girl’s attention back to her face.

“Go to your room at once,” she said, her own cheeks scarlet with fury.

Electra jerked her arm free of her mother’s grasp, and with one last rebellious glare, she turned and strode out without bothering to close the door behind her. Being deaf, she probably didn’t realize the dramatic effect of a loudly slammed door. Before Frank or Mrs. Wooten could think of what to do next, the red-eyed maid appeared in the doorway, looking terrified.

“Show Mr. . . .” Mrs. Wooten had forgotten Frank’s name again. “Show this gentleman out, Annie.”

“If you think of anyone who might have wished Mr. Wooten harm,” Frank said, offering her his card, “let me know.”

Mrs. Wooten ignored the card, and she ignored him, gazing at something only she could see as he followed the maid out. On a table by the front door sat a silver salver, and Frank tossed his card onto it, along with all the other cards from the society people who came to visit the Wootens.

“Is it true?” the maid whispered as she handed Frank his hat. “Is Mr. Wooten dead?”

“Yes, he is,” Frank assured her. “Somebody bashed his skull in.”

The blood drained from the girl’s face, and for an awful moment Frank thought she might faint. This was the reaction he’d expected from Electra Wooten. She crossed herself quickly, but she didn’t faint, thank God.

“Did you like working for Mr. Wooten?” he asked kindly.

“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” the girl said tentatively.

Which meant she didn’t, of course. “His daughter didn’t like him much,” he observed.