Chapter 15

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

Thursday Afternoon – 4:00 PM

 

As soon as school was over Mosby hurried over to Lilly’s place. When he got there the tattoo parlor was closed, the door was locked and there was no sign of Lilly. He banged on the door for a while before deciding she must have closed up early to go talk to the cops. Or maybe she had panicked and run away. He had figured it would be tough for her to go to the police. Lilly was a Romani – a Gypsy. She kept to herself and had a deep distrust of authority. Mosby learned quite a bit about Lilly’s past, from the stories she had told him to distract him while she was painting the Garden of Eden with her needle.

 

“You know, Mosby, that the greatest tragedy to befall the European Romani population, - even greater than the five and a half centuries of slavery in Romania, was the attempt to eradicate it as part of the Nazis’ plan to have a ‘Gypsy-free’ land.   Did you know Romanies were the only other population besides the Jews who were targeted for extermination? Sadly, my good friend, not much has changed. Most people still consider us vermin and criminals.”

 

Yes, it would be very difficult for Lilly to ignore everything she believed to be true – everything that the history of the Romani people had proved to be true – and go to the police. Mosby wouldn’t have pushed her so hard if he weren’t positive that Lilly’s information would help the authorities identify the killer. He knew in his gut that the murder was in some way connected to Senator Stuart Jaffe.