“Anything?” she asked him.
“Yes!”
“What?” Katie asked.
Bartholomew looked at her. “I found my lady in white. Look-look at the picture. That’s her! You can see the picture has her in the same white dress we’ve seen her in. She’s Lucinda-Lucy-Wellington. Her parents died of a fever, and she and her brother were left in penury. The brother earned command of a ship. She watched every day for him to return from a voyage to Boston. Captain Wellington was caught in a storm just off the south side of the island. Lucy’s house was near O’Hara’s, and she spent the storm atop the widow’s walk, praying the ship would come home safely. The wreckers discovered the ship, but not the body of Captain Wellington. Some say that Lucy cast herself to her death from the same widow’s walk she had paced, and others say that she fell, trying to get a better view down to the shore when they were bringing in the flotsam and jetsam-and the bodies that washed up.”
“You were here then,” Katie reminded him.
He nodded. “Yes, I wasn’t hanged until a few years later.”
“But you didn’t know Lucy?”
He shook his head. “She might have been broke, but she was descended from…a better quality of people. I was a gentleman-surely you know that! But back then, social strata were strict. No matter what my demeanor, manners and riches, I wasn’t easily accepted.” He stared hard at Katie. “You have to talk to her for me.”
“Bartholomew, I will try,” she said firmly.
He smiled. “Look, Katie, I’ve turned another page.”
“That’s great. Can we keep reading then?”
“Aha! I just found a reference to your house, Katie. It was sold to Shamus O’Hara in eighteen twenty-nine. He purchased it from a John Moreland, who had bought it from John Whitehead. Am I ever glad I was named Bartholomew! They were all John in those days. Thank the Lord.” He looked up at her suddenly. “Imagine that, Katie. Your ancestors would have watched me on the day that I was hanged. And they certainly didn’t lift a finger to stop the injustice of my execution.”
11
It wasn’t difficult in the least to find Lewis Agaro.
David simply went from bar to bar, and found him in a small but rustic place near Mallory Square.
He sat down on a bar stool next to the slim young man. Lewis Agaro turned, took one look at him and started to bolt.
David set a hand on the kid’s on the bar.
“I’m not here to take you down,” he said.
Lewis looked around. He was looking for his older brother, David thought. But the brother didn’t appear to be here.
Lewis sat. A barmaid came up, and David ordered a beer.
“You’d be a blind and deaf man not to know about the murder,” David said, his tone conversational. “And I’m wondering how it feels. You were the last one with her. She might have been a prostitute and a stripper, but she was a human being and you’d definitely been attracted to her. Even though the cops were trying to bust you for something that she did.”
The kid let out a breath, picked up his drink and swallowed down the remainder. A pulse was ticking at his throat. “She was cool,” he said. “She-she had balls. She ripped me off, and I knew that when I woke up, but she didn’t take all my money-she left me enough to get around. I would have gone back to the club. I would have called her out on it, but I swear, I wouldn’t have hurt her.” He turned to David then, and he did look tortured.
“I don’t think that you killed her, kid,” David said.
Lewis Agaro let out a long breath. “I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. I had a night with her like no other. I woke up and my wallet had been rifled and she was gone. I went back to the club, but she wasn’t there. Then-they found her body.”
“Did you see anyone that night? Did she talk to you about anyone?”
Agaro frowned, shaking his head. He was thoughtful. “She-well, we talked about the fact that I had almost been arrested for a pocket she had picked! She thought it was funny, and she wasn’t afraid-even when I told her the cops thought it was her. She said she knew her way around town, and she knew her away around the law, real well. You-you don’t understand. She wasn’t a bad person. She was cool. She was like one of those folks on that TV show-Survivor! She wasn’t like all-sex. She was affectionate, she had feelings.”
“I’m sure she did.”