It took Evie a few seconds to understand his meaning, and then she was furious. “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” she said, with radio star crispness. “I know I’m not a famous detective, like you, Mr. Malloy, but did you try going to their homes?” She was baiting the bull, but she didn’t care.
Malloy squinted at her. “Yeah. We did, matter of fact. Funny thing is, the three of them are suddenly missing. Not a trace of ’em anywhere.”
Now Evie didn’t know what to think. Hadn’t Theta said she’d not heard from Memphis and was worried? What if the Shadow Men had gotten to them, too?
“Maybe somebody took them,” Evie said.
“Took them where?” Malloy asked.
“Well, if you want to investigate another disappearance, Sam Lloyd has gone missing.” Evie squared her shoulders. “I have reason to believe he was kidnapped.”
Malloy’s eyebrows shot up. “Sam Lloyd. Kidnapped. Okay.”
Evie couldn’t miss the snickering of the other officers.
“With all due respect, Miss O’Neill, when Sam Lloyd’s around, it’s usually people’s wallets that go missing.”
“But he was kidnapped!”
“How do you know this?”
“I read his hat. Swell, you can all have a laugh, har-de-har-har,” Evie said to the cops chortling in the corner. “But I saw! I know! He was taken by two men in suits.”
Even Malloy seemed amused. “Men in suits, huh? Haberdashers? Tailors?”
Evie wanted to kick every one of these men. Why couldn’t they take her seriously? “Shadow Men,” she said, trying to hide how small they were making her feel. As if her intuition wasn’t reliable and she was some lunatic.
“Shadow what?” Malloy said.
“That’s just what we call them. They wear gray suits—”
“So do lots of fellas.”
“And they have these lapel pins, an eye surrounded by the rays of the sun… you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Detective Malloy’s expression hardened. “Listen, Miss O’Neill, I don’t know anything about Shadow Men or object readings or ghosts. What I know is that your uncle is dead—murdered—and you want me to chase after Sam Lloyd, who probably ran off with some chorus girl and is now grifting his way back to Chicago. That seems a bit odd, you ask me.”
Evie’s eyes welled up. “He didn’t run off. He’s in trouble. I know it.”
Malloy offered his handkerchief. Evie declined it.
“Miss O’Neill,” Malloy said in a softer tone. “Memphis Campbell came to see your uncle last night. Did you know that?”
Evie felt a buzzing in her head. “I… n-no.”
“And Margaret Walker was seen leaving here not too long afterward. The same Margaret Walker who worked with your uncle—and with all of youse. The same Margaret Walker who once did jail time for sedition during the war.”
“Are you saying you suspect Memphis and Miss Walker of murdering Uncle Will? Why? What possible motive would they have?”
“Money, maybe.”
“Will didn’t have any money! He owed the city a fortune in back taxes.”
“Or maybe your uncle had something on ’em both.”
“Like what?”
“That’s the question I’d like to ask ’em.”
The photographer’s flash went off. Evie was reminded of the first murder she and Will had investigated, the body of Ruta Badowski. How could Will be dead? And where were Memphis and Sister Walker?
“Wait a minute. Detective Malloy, you said someone saw Memphis and Sister Walker here last night?”
“Correct.”
“But nobody comes to the museum. It was headed for the auction block. So who was watching it so closely last night? And why did they think to call you?”
“A concerned citizen happened to see.”
“That’s banana oil!”
One of the other cops whistled. “Temper, temper.”
Malloy pointed a finger at the cops. “Pipe down or you’re outta here.”
The cops quieted quickly. The detective looked down his chin at Evie. He pushed his gum to his back molars with his tongue. “You were friends with Mabel Rose, weren’t you, Miss O’Neill?”
“Yes, but I don’t see what—”
“Mabel Rose was a member of the Secret Six. When we searched Miss Rose’s room after the bombing, we found evidence that she’d been talking to someone we believe might be an accomplice, a Diviner named Maria Provenza.”
“Maria wasn’t a Diviner—it was her sister, Anna! And those creepy Shadow Men took Anna, too!”
Malloy narrowed his eyes. “And you know this how?”
She’d walked right into his trap like a Dumb Dora.
“See, I’ve got my own theory about what happened here. I know your uncle from way back. He was… eccentric. But trusting. Innocent. Maybe he knew something about the bombing. About a link between these anarchists and Diviners. Maybe he was gonna spill it and somebody didn’t like that.”
Detective Malloy had concocted his own fairy tale about Will, Evie could see now. To him, Will was an odd but brilliant ghost chaser in a musty museum who probably had trouble finding matching socks. He was not the man who’d gotten his own nephew killed and unwittingly opened a door for a great evil to come into this world. Will and his friends had been idealistic but reckless, and their recklessness had come at great cost.
“You didn’t know my uncle at all.”
Malloy’s eyes were steely. “Maybe not. I sure didn’t know Mabel Rose. Then again, maybe I don’t know you so well, either, Miss O’Neill. I heard you refused to sign a loyalty pledge at WGI, and that’s why they dismissed you. Maybe I shouldn’t just be looking at Memphis Campbell.” There was no mistaking the threat in Detective Malloy’s words.
“Am I free to go?” Evie challenged.
“Sure. But don’t leave town. None of youse.”
Evie stormed out and down the front steps, for once ignoring the reporters waving their notebooks in the air, clamoring for a quote.
Woody sidled up to her. “Sheba, hey, Sheba! You okay? Aw, gee, Evie. I’m awfully sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Listen. I know that must’ve been rough.” He lowered his voice. “Can you tell your old friend Woody what you saw in there? Is it true there was a five-pointed star drawn on the floor like in the Pentacle Murders?”
Evie didn’t know whether to admire the reporter’s moxie or spit in his face. “There was a message left, Mr. Woodhouse,” she said coolly.
Woody poised his pen above the page. “What’d it say, kid?”
“It said, ‘No matter what happens to me, T. S. Woodhouse will always be a rat!’”
“Was that nice?” Woody yelled after her.
And it was all Evie could do not to give him a very not-nice gesture she’d seen some fellas on the Bowery do.
“Evie! Evie!” Henry waved to her from the corner.
Evie ran and linked arms with her friends, practically dragging them back toward the Bennington.
“Hey, don’t pull my arm outta the socket. I got plans for it later,” Theta said.