The Unknown Beloved(49)

She put the receiver back in its cradle and turned to find her aunts looking at her with matching befuddlement. They had entered the sewing room without her even being aware.

“Mr. Ness?” Lenka gasped.

“Why were you talking to Eliot Ness, Daniela?” Zuzana pressed.

“I thought he might know where Mr. Malone is.”

“So you contacted the safety director?” Zuzana asked, dumbfounded.

“Yes. I did. And he was very nice. He says he is certain Mr. Malone is fine, but he will make some inquiries and ring me back tomorrow.”

“Oh my,” Lenka exclaimed. “How exciting.”

“When he rings again, I want to talk to him,” Zuzana insisted. “If he can locate one ugly boarder, he can certainly find the man who’s chopping people up in my backyard.”

“Don’t say that, Zuzana,” Lenka said, shuddering. “Can you imagine if we actually found a body in our yard?”

The old women tottered back down the hallway and climbed the stairs to their interrupted supper. Dani followed them, but she was too nervous to eat.



The next morning, she found herself hovering near the phone again, neglecting the shop, her errands, and the visit she needed to make to the morgue. But Mr. Ness did not call. She finally left Lenka stationed in the sewing room and set out for the medical office to return the Peterkas’ mending.

Over the years, Dr. Peterka and his family had been by the shop dozens of times for fittings and alterations, but since moving to Shaker Heights and converting his house on Broadway into his medical practice, the visits were much less frequent. Dani was grateful Dr. Peterka continued his patronage at all. Margaret had even secured a small income washing the doctors’ white coats, which she did along with all the other wash in the Kos laundry room.

Margaret picked up the wash from the practice on Fridays and dropped it off on Mondays, but because Dani had the mending to return to Libbie Peterka, she loaded the laundered white coats into her wagon and delivered them to save Margaret a trip.

Dr. Peterka’s office manager was a woman named Sybil who never remembered Daniela’s name, even though she’d been working at the medical practice, two houses down from the Koses, since it had opened in 1930.

“Will you take them around to the back, Donna?” Sybil said, waving a hand at her from behind the counter where she sat. Dani didn’t correct her but exited the small waiting area; she pulled her wagon around to the back door and let herself into the lounge where the doctors donned their white coats, drank their coffee, and read the newspaper between patients.

She left the mending in the tote it’d been delivered in and trudged back toward her house, certain that Ness had called the moment she left. Her head was aching from loss of sleep, and the sun was bright in her face. She shielded her eyes with one hand as she pulled her wagon with the other and noticed a man—a boy on further study—had stopped in front of her house.

He had come from the opposite direction, his too big overcoat and black fedora making him look like a child in a school production.

He pulled a bit of paper from his pocket before studying the place once more. She didn’t think he’d come to buy a Kos original.

“Can I help you?” she called, continuing toward him.

He glanced at her, uncomfortable, and tugged at the lapels of his coat, pulling it more firmly onto his narrow shoulders.

“I’m looking for Mike,” he said cautiously, when she stopped beside him.

“Mike?”

“Yeah. Uh. Dark eyes. Kinda dark skin too, I guess. Looks tough but not mean.”

“Are you Steve?” she asked. The hat gave him away. She suspected he would look far better in the checkered cap he’d traded Malone, though that hat wasn’t his either.

“You know who I am?” he gasped.

“You’re wearing . . . Mike’s . . . hat. He mentioned you. He isn’t here right now, but you’ve got the right place. Can I relay a message for you when he returns?” If he returned. Her stomach twisted with three-day-old worry.

“Are you his old lady?” Steve asked. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and he had noticed her eyes. He avoided her gaze as if he didn’t trust himself not to stare.

“No. No. But I . . . I live here too.”

“Will you give him a message for me?”

“Of course. Would you like to come inside, maybe write something down?”

“I’m not much of a writer,” he said. “Maybe I could just tell you?”

“All right.”

“Tell him . . . Steve Jeziorski came by, just like he said I should do. And tell him I have some information he might want. He told me he’d pay me for information.”

She dug into her coat pocket and pulled out a dime. “I don’t know what he pays, but this is all I’ve got. You’ll have to wait and tell him yourself if it’s not enough.”

He chewed on his lip, taking her measure. Whatever his qualms were, he took the coin and began to talk.

“You hear about Pete Kostura?”

The name was familiar, but she shook her head. “I’m not sure who he is.”

“He and James Wagner found that first victim by Jackass Hill.”

Ah. That was it. The poor boys had been front page news for weeks. “I remember now.”