“No,” he said, still looking at her strangely. “No, just… just sit down here where I can see you.”
Now Sarah really was worried. She did as he’d instructed her, taking the other chair. “It’s not Brian, is it? Nothing’s happened to him?”
“He’s fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine now. It’s just… a little while ago, I thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” she repeated incredulously. “What made you think I was dead?”
He drew a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh as he rubbed a large hand over his face. Then he gave her a crooked smile. “Because I saw your dead body.”
“Malloy, stop this!” she cried. “You’re frightening me.”
“Then we’re even. I had a few bad minutes myself when I saw you lying dead in City Hall Park this morning.”
“I haven’t been near City Hall in weeks,” she insisted.
“Well, someone was near there. A woman with blond hair who was wearing your clothes and your hat, and she was dead.”
“That’s impossible! What made you think they were my clothes?”
“I recognized them. How could anybody forget that hat? It’s the ugliest thing any woman ever put on her head. There couldn’t be two like it in the city.”
“There’s absolutely nothing ugly about my hat,” she informed him indignantly, “and there’s also no way anyone else could be wearing it or…”
“Or what?” he prodded when her voice trailed off on that thought.
“Oh, dear,” she said, remembering. “Someone else could have been wearing my hat. I gave it away!”
“Who did you give it to?”
“I took it to the mission. The Prodigal Son Mission. I took a whole bundle of clothes down there on Sunday afternoon.”
He looked askance at the shabby dress she was wearing. “Did you take a vow of poverty or something?”
“This is a housedress, Malloy,” she said, indignant again. “I was cleaning when you came. I gave my other clothes away because I got some new ones. From my mother.”
“Did your mother take a vow of poverty?”
Sarah almost smiled. This was the old Malloy. Whatever had been wrong with him, he was feeling better now. “I needed something to wear to the opera last Saturday, so I went to my parents’ house to borrow a dress.”
At the mention of the opera, he frowned, confirming Sarah’s opinion that he was jealous of Richard Dennis. She pretended not to notice.
“While I was there, she insisted that I take several other things as well. My mother has excellent taste, and my new clothes are so much more fashionable than the old ones, I decided I didn’t need them anymore.”
“So you took them to this mission,” Malloy guessed. “The Prodigal Son? Isn’t that the one on Mulberry Street, down by Police Headquarters?”
“Yes, do you know anything about it?”
He shrugged, which either meant that he didn’t know anything or that he didn’t want to say. “So who did you give the clothes to at the mission?”
She opened her mouth to say she’d given them to Mrs. Wells, when the real meaning of his question hit her. “The dead woman must be someone from the mission!”
“Or at least they’ll know who they gave your clothes to,” he said.
Sarah felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach. “Did you say the dead woman had blond hair?”
He winced a little, reminding her that he’d thought the body was hers at first. “Yes. She had brown eyes. Younger than you, but about the same size.”
Sarah groaned and closed her eyes.
“Do you know who it is?” he asked.
“I think… I’d have to see her, of course, but one of the girls at the mission fits that description. An Italian girl.”
“This girl was blond,” he reminded her.
“She must have been from Northern Italy. Her name was Emilia.”
“Emilia what?”
“I don’t know. They’ll know her at the mission, I suppose. If it really is her. They might have given the clothes to someone else,” she added hopefully. Maybe it would turn out to be someone she didn’t know at all.
Malloy sighed again. “I’ll get someone from the mission to identify the body then.”
Sarah remembered the girl she’d met who’d been so full of life and hope. She was learning to sew so she could make an honest living and overcome her unfortunate past.
“I could identify her,” she offered. “If it is Emilia, that would save someone who really knew her from having to go.”
“The city morgue isn’t a very pleasant place,” he warned her.
“That’s why I’d like to save someone else from making the trip. I only met her once, so seeing her in a place like that won’t be as painful for me as it would for someone who cared about her.”
Malloy didn’t want to take her there. She could see it in every line of his face.
“I can go without you,” she reminded him.
“And what if it isn’t her?”
“Then we can go to the mission and tell them what happened. They’ll send someone to find out who it really is.”
This was a perfectly logical plan, but Malloy didn’t like it at all. She wasn’t sure what part of it bothered him until he said, “I guess you won’t want me to go with you.”
“Why not?” she asked without thinking. He didn’t reply, giving her a chance to figure it out for herself. “Oh,” she said after a moment. “Because you were so rude to me yesterday.”
He didn’t confirm or deny it. He just sat there, stubborn as always.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” she said. “Were you angry at me for being late?”
His lips tightened. “I told you, you didn’t have to come. I didn’t really expect you’d come at all.”
She suspected that wasn’t true, but she said, “Then you must be mad because I did come.”
He sighed. “I’m not mad about anything.”
She wanted to ask if he was jealous, but she decided that would be a waste of time. He’d deny it, and she’d look silly. She decided on another tactic. “Then are you going to explain why you were so rude to me?”
He gave her one of the looks he reserved for uncooperative criminals. “I wasn’t being rude, Mrs. Brandt. I was just stating a fact.”
His look didn’t bother her one bit. “Then I won’t expect an apology,” she retorted pleasantly.
She thought he might be grinding his teeth. “Do you want me to go with you to the morgue or not?” he asked finally.
She wasn’t going to fall into that trap. “You’ll need to know if I recognize the dead woman, so you might as well go with me,” she said, trumping him. “I’ll need to change my clothes first. I won’t be long.”
Sarah took her time changing and redoing her hair. Perversely, she wanted to look her best for this awful task. She distracted herself from thinking about what lay ahead by thinking about the way Malloy had embraced her when he came into the house. The act in itself was shocking. Even more shocking was the fact that he hadn’t apologized for taking such a liberty. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she wasn’t going to ask him about it. The mood he was in, she couldn’t imagine what he’d have to say on the matter, and she thought perhaps they were both better off pretending it hadn’t happened.
Until she was ready to mention it again, of course.
One thing was certain, however: he’d been very happy to find her alive and well, happier than he felt he had a right to be.
The question was, did Sarah think he had a right to be? She remembered how he’d kissed her that night last week when he’d thought she wouldn’t remember. She remembered how she’d felt in his arms a short while ago. She remembered how her parents had warned her about Malloy. And she remembered how Malloy had warned her about Malloy. Too many things to remember, she decided as she slid her foot-long hat pin carefully into her new hat. The sturdy pin would hold it in place through the force of a hurricane.