“Dead?” she repeated as if she wasn’t sure what the word meant. “Guasto?”

“Yeah, guasto,” he replied, nodding so she’d understand.

“Emilia?” Was she trying to deny it, as most mothers would, or was she just trying to make sure?

“She had yellow hair,” Frank said. “She’d been living at the mission. She had a lover named Ugo.”

“Sì, Emilia,” she confirmed with a sigh, sinking down into one of the mismatched chairs. She set her elbow on the table and rested her forehead on her clenched fist.

“I’m sorry,” Frank said, interpreting the gesture as grief.

But when she looked up, her dark eyes were blazing with fury. “She trouble, all a time, trouble. Is good she dead. No more trouble.”

Frank had seen reactions like this before, but usually it was because the deceased was a son who’d gone bad. Rarely did a mother react this way to the death of a daughter. Of course, he’d never had to inform a prostitute’s mother that she was dead. With women like that, nobody even knew who their mothers were.

Frank heard the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs. It could have been anyone, but Mrs. Donato must have recognized them. She jumped to her feet. “You go now,” she said urgently. “I have no daughter. You go.”

But Frank hadn’t quite finished his business here. He wanted to get a look at Emilia’s father, just to satisfy his curiosity. He stepped out onto the landing and waited. Mrs. Donato hovered anxiously in the doorway. Frank figured her husband might not be as glad as she was that the girl was dead. He wondered why.

The man who emerged from the gloom of the stairway was a little shorter than average height, his body stocky and muscular from heavy labor. His swarthy face had been darkened even further by the sun, and beneath his workman’s cap, his hair was as black as his wife’s. He stopped in alarm when he saw Frank standing there and glanced at his wife with a silent question.