“Oh. Oh dear,” she said, giving the poor man a little shove and staring dejectedly at her torn hem.
Malone took a step and plucked his hat from a cubbyhole just above the attendant’s head. The man flinched.
“Lucky for you, I got it.” Malone dropped the fedora on his head and drew his claim ticket from his pocket. He held it out to the attendant like he was serving a warrant, though there was nothing but the ticket in his hand and the flattest gaze Dani had ever seen on his face. The man’s hand shook as he accepted it.
“Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll let you apologize to Mrs. Sweeney,” he sneered, taking Dani’s hand, and moving around the attendant.
“Ma’am,” he said sweetly, touching the brim of his hat as he passed the congressman’s wife.
“What in the blazes is going on back there?” Congressman Sweeney bellowed, punching the bell with the flat of his hand as they approached the counter.
Malone didn’t vault it this time. He simply opened the door to the left of the counter and escorted her out, the way Marie Sweeney had been let in.
“I enjoyed your speech, sir,” he said to the congressman, slowing slightly. “Very powerful. My people are from Mayo too.” He added something in Gaelic and winked, like they had a secret.
Sweeney cleared his throat. “Yes, yes. Well. Thank you.”
“Your people aren’t from County Mayo, Michael,” Dani whispered as they walked away. “You said your father was from Belfast and your mother was from Dublin. That’s not Mayo.”
“I was tweaking him, Dani. Mayo is a bit of a rallying cry here among Cleveland’s Irish. He uses his heritage when he needs the votes.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Imigh leat, amadán.”
“Yes. That.”
“I called him an idiot and told him to, uh . . .” He cleared his throat. “Sod off.”
“But he said thank you,” she said.
“Proof that he is, indeed, an idiot. He’s made Eliot’s life hell.”
“Ih-mig lath oh-mah-don,” she murmured, trying it out. “I like that.”
He groaned like he’d taught a child how to curse, like she’d just given him another example of his “bad influence,” and she frowned at him.
“That reminds me. I thought if we got caught, we were going to fake a tryst,” she scolded him. “I feel swindled.”
Malone laughed out loud.
23
It was laundry day, Margaret had reminded him at breakfast, and he’d dutifully put his hamper in the hall. The house was muggy and too warm, and he’d thrown open his bedroom windows to combat it.
The same thing had been done in the rest of the house, for the sounds reached him differently, both from within and without—chatter from the shop, whirring from the sewing room, and the clank and sizzle of Margaret’s iron. The hum of a busy house mixed with birdsong from the trees and noise from the street was a strange symphony, and the sounds of life soothed him as he reexamined the dead.
He heard Dani walk down the hall from the shop, and his attention instantly strayed. He knew it was Dani from the light tread and the click of her low heels. It was lunchtime, but she didn’t go upstairs. He considered taking a break himself, but he didn’t think he could eat. He pushed back from his desk and stood, popping a peppermint into his mouth from the candy dish Dani had given him. Since he’d confessed to having a sweet tooth, she’d kept him well stocked.
The peppermint soothed him too.
He’d spent the morning poring over a copy of the coroner’s report released late last night, making a new list for the Butcher’s latest victim. Official cause of death was still “undetermined,” but probable laceration of the neck with severe blood loss—hemorrhage—was likely. In other words, decapitation.
On Monday, a burlap sack had been found in the river, snagged under the West Third Street Bridge. The sack claimed itself to be Wheel Brand potatoes from Bangor, Maine. One hundred pounds of them, but the sack lied. It wasn’t one hundred pounds, and the contents weren’t potatoes. Both halves of a woman’s bisected torso, a thigh, and a left foot, which matched the calf found in April, were turned over to police.
A thought had occurred to him. One he’d not considered before. Many of the victims—or pieces of them—were found in burlap sacks. Dani had never examined the sacks. If she could pull pictures from leather, surely she could draw impressions from burlap, though the time in the water might destroy that possibility for some of the bags. The sacks wouldn’t tell them anything about the victims, but they might tell them something about the killer.