I left the house and started toward police headquarters on Mulberry Street. As I walked, I thought through what I was going to say to Daniel and I realized that I wasn’t ready to face him yet. I had too many unanswered questions and I wanted to speak to Bo Kei first. I changed course and continued toward the Broadway trolley. Even if I was going to incur Daniel’s displeasure, I didn’t want to give up on this investigation now when I could sense that I was onto something. I had no idea what I was onto, but it had been my experience that if a second murder happens, it is usually linked to the first. I already had potential links—Annie had been in Bo Kei’s position once as Mr. Lee’s concubine. She had been cast out and sent to the ultimate disgrace and degradation of working in a brothel. But that was five years ago. She had already been punished for not having a son, and cast out—so why would somebody want to kill her now?
And yet Bo Kei had feared for her. I remembered how pitifully she had begged me to take Annie with her. She must have suspected that Annie’s life was in danger. Which might indicate that she hadn’t killed Lee Sing Tai herself. She certainly couldn’t have killed Annie since she was helping me clear up the debris of the party when Annie died. It was all quite baffling and I just hoped I might be able to persuade Bo Kei to tell me the truth. At least I’d be able to observe her reaction when I told her that Annie had not died of natural means.
I strode out with determination after I alighted from the trolley. I suppose also at the back of my mind was the desire to present Daniel with a case that I had solved and thus to justify my actions. I entered the house and took Sid and Gus aside to tell them what I had discovered. Then I went upstairs to confront Bo Kei. She was standing at the top of the second flight peering down to see what was going on.
“You saw her, Missie Molly?” she called, her voice quivering with distress. “She is really dead?”
“Yes, I did and—” I stopped short. I was staring at her bare feet.
“Bo Kei,” I blurted out, “you have big feet.”
“I know.” She sounded surprised at this observation. “Big disgrace to my family. Small feet are good. Many girls in China have bound feet, but the missionaries say to my family this is wrong and bad. So my feet were not bound, and they are extra big. My mother say no man want to marry me.”
Then whose footprints had made those little indentations at the edge of the roof?
“Bo Kei,” I said severely, “it’s about time you told me everything that you know. You have lied to me and kept things from me, and if you don’t tell me the truth, I’ll have the police take you to an American jail.”
“But I tell you truth,” she wailed. “I say that I do not kill Lee Sing Tai and I do not know who kills him. This is truth.”
“Not the whole truth, obviously. You didn’t want to leave Annie behind at the house. You were frightened for her—why?”
“She is family and she is sick. I no want to leave her alone among strangers.”
“No, it was more than that,” I said. A strange idea was forming in my head—a picture of the two girls dancing around together, Annie looking livelier than I’d ever have believed possible. “You thought she might be in danger. Well, it turned out she was in danger. Somebody killed her, Bo Kei.”
“Kill her?”
“Put a pillow over her face and suffocated her. Made her stop breathing.” I stepped closer, staring her right in the eye, hoping that my greater height would be intimidating. “Why do you think that was? Do you want to tell me the truth now, or are you going to let Annie’s killer walk free?”
She looked at me with frightened eyes. “I do not know who might have killed her,” she said.
“Then let me ask you this—why do you think someone killed her? Was it someone from the brothel who came after her? Someone who worked for Lee Sing Tai or Bobby Lee? Was someone afraid she would divulge something she knew?”
She shook her head.
“She’s dead, Bo. There’s nothing you can do to bring her back, but you can help us find her killer. So let me ask you this—I saw small footprints on the roof. A tiny, dainty foot. Were they possibly Annie’s footprints? Was she on that roof? Did she go to kill Lee Sing Tai?”
She hung her head. “She make me promise I never tell anyone,” she said.
“But she’s dead now. Tell me. In this country we punish people for being an accessory to a crime.”
“What does this mean?”
“That you knew about a crime and you helped the criminal in some way, even if you didn’t commit the crime yourself. Did she kill Lee Sing Tai? Did she?”
“No!” She yelled out the word. “No, she did not kill him.” Then she sank onto the top stair and put her head in her hands. “She wanted to. She went to the rooftop with that purpose.”
“She was well and strong enough to climb up to a rooftop and then leap from one roof to the next?”
She nodded. “She was not as sick as she acted. She knew if she was sick they would throw her out of the bad-women house—not want her to make their customers sick.”
“You’re saying she was only acting? She didn’t have consumption?”
“Yes, she knew that she had this disease, but not as bad as she wanted everyone to think. She knew she would die from it one day, but right now she was strong enough to climb up and jump across from one roof to the next. It is not such a big leap if one has no fear. And she had no fear, only anger. She said to me, ‘This man must not be allowed to put more girls through shame and misery. He must be stopped now.’ And when I tried to tell her not to go, she said, ‘My life is over. I will die some day soon. But I make sure this man pays before I die.’”
“She went to kill him—but she didn’t go through with it?”
“No,” she said. “Because of the ghost.”