Read The Boric Acid Murder Online

Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #Revere Beach (Mass.), #Police Procedural, #Mystery & Detective, #Boric acid, #General, #Boston (Mass.), #Lamerino; Gloria (Fictitious character), #Women Sleuths, #Fiction, #Women physicists, #Detective and mystery stories; American, #Massachusetts

The Boric Acid Murder (14 page)

BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
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“TOO LATE FOR ME to come over?” Matt asked, talking cell phone to cell phone.
Never, I thought. I was negotiating a STOP sign on my way home from a long afternoon and evening at the Galiganis’. I’d just about readjusted my driving patterns to accommodate the habits of Boston drivers. In California, drivers took turns, for the most part, politely—only one car at a time from each direction passed through a STOP sign; in Revere, as many as three or four vehicles would trail along after the first car in line came to a stop. Or merely slowed down.
California drivers saved their aggression for the open road and I didn’t miss the freeway rage, nor the high stakes of accidents that occurred at seventy-five to eighty miles an hour.
“Not too late,” I told Matt.
“Anything new?”
“I talked to John. I have a little more information, but not much. How about you?”
“Some nuggets from Parker and Berger. Not much either. Dying to see you, Gloria.”
“Me, too.” But I still couldn’t be the first one to say it.
MY LATE-NIGHT APARTMENT smell was more like lunchtime at Russo’s. I’d prepared espresso; Matt had brought Italian snack food—garlic bread sticks and almond biscotti.
“I couldn’t decide,” he said, waving one bag in each hand, as if he were weighing the items on an analytic balance. “What do you think? Which of the two staples of life? A, bread, or
B, biscotti?” When I hesitated, he dropped the bags, came over to me, and added a third choice. “Or maybe C?”
We chose C, and saved the food for later.
MUCH LATER, when we were ready for serious police work, I summarized my interview with John, focusing on the last bit of information I’d gleaned—that Yolanda was doing research that required access to old newspapers.
“What could Yolanda have been looking for?” Matt asked. “Your boron controversy?”
My
boron controversy? I supposed it was mine. “That was my first thought. But that would be pretty early—although there was research in the field, the first commercial reactor didn’t come on line until 1954. And, besides, why would anyone look at
Journal
files when the lab library is one of the best resources in the country for technical information?”
“Maybe there was some other upset involving boron? And maybe she wasn’t looking for scientific data, but some sort of community angle—you know, the-city-is-in-danger-from-the-lab kind of thing. The
Journal
would be more likely to report it than the lab.”
“But why would John keep something about boron from me? He probably thinks I know every scientific blip in history anyway.”
“True. But you’re still convinced he knows what she was investigating?”
I nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
We’d moved from the kitchen to my blue-gray corduroy sofa, farther from the temptation to continue snacking on bread sticks and biscotti, but closer to the box of Sees candy on my coffee table. Elaine had taken it as her personal responsibility to make sure I always had California chocolates on hand. I bit into a bordeaux.
“So, it could be something that would incriminate him.” Matt held up his hand to stave off my negative reaction. “Even though he’s not guilty.”
“Or something that would hurt the memory of Yolanda.”
“What about the library expansion? Could that have figured in a motive?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “We need to talk to the church lawyer. Frances Worthen.”
Matt gave me a sidelong look. “We? You mean we can recommend it to Parker and Berger, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Speaking of whom …I did learn a few things from them, mostly alibis of people she worked with. All pretty solid.”
“How about her boss, Tony Taruffi? Do you remember his alibi?” I’d told Matt about the alleged Taruffi-Fiore affair. I was hoping for “Tony was home alone and no one saw him.” No such luck.
“He was at some gala at the Warner Center, with an out-of-town business associate from Washington.” I tried to form a picture of Tony Taruffi and Garth Allen among Boston’s elite at a lavish event. It didn’t quite gel, but I supposed it was easily verifiable.
“We’ll have to keep digging,” Matt said.
Digging. As in burying Yolanda. I thought about the disposition of her body, which I’d learned from Frank before I left the Galiganis.
“It’s out of my hands,” he’d said. “A national mortuary service contracted with Cavallo’s to prepare her for transportation to Detroit. Because of John’s—John’s interests, I couldn’t even do the embalming.”
I’d tried to pay only half attention as Frank described the rules for sending decedents out of state. In a plain cardboard box it turns out, with the body packed in tightly enough and tied down with a couple of straps so it doesn’t slip around.
“It makes shipping less expensive. Some families want a casket on this end, and it costs a fortune. It’s the difference between about six hundred dollars, and twenty-five hundred dollars.”
Once Frank got started on business talk, it was hard to stop him—at least this conversation was bloodless. I imagined Yolanda in a plain brown wrapper, being handled like any other
package on a commercial airliner. More exactly, I pictured a corpse next to my new green luggage on my last trip across country.
“They have to arrive a couple of hours before the regular baggage is loaded, and it’s usually stored separately if there’s room,” Frank said, as if I’d expressed my squeamish thoughts out loud.
“Are you OK?” Matt’s voice and light touch brought me back to my living room. “This is all going to work out, Gloria.”
I smiled. “Thanks, and I’m much better than I would be if you weren’t here.”
I thought how lucky I was that, without saying it in so many words, Matt was with me on this mission to find the real murderer of Yolanda Fiore. He knew what the Galigani family meant to me, and he’d known Frank since he started at the Revere Police Department in the early sixties.
“I still remember Frank forcing me to witness an autopsy in the ME’s lab when I was a rookie,” Matt had told me on an early date. “He said I’d be a better detective later, and he was right.”
We were about finished information sharing when my phone rang. “Elaine,” I said, knowing the call could only be from someone who lived where it was three hours earlier.
Since Rose had more important things on her mind than my love life, I’d left a message on Elaine’s machine, a vague reference to a dilemma about my relationship with Matt. Not urgent, I’d said, but Elaine was likely to respond as if it were. Elaine’s relationship history was rocky—more like a series of avalanches—but she had insights beyond the scope of my experience.
She didn’t waste time. “What’s the scoop with Matt? He proposed, right? And you’re all upset? I knew there was something going on the last time we talked. Tell me, tell me.”
I didn’t have many friends, but the two I had knew me very well. “It’s nice to hear from you.” I used a tone that said I wasn’t able to talk freely. At least not about that topic.
“Is everything all right?”
“Of course. Matt’s here, and we’re working on this case I told you about.”
I pictured Elaine, a technical editor at the Berkeley lab, in her home-from-a-date clothes. The best dresser in our circle at the lab, she’d be wearing an eye-catching summer ensemble that set off her blond-gray hair. The rest of us, whose wardrobes were more like Marie Curie’s lab/wedding outfit, called her “Radcliffe” or “Smith,” to tease her about her debutante look.
“So, you can’t talk. I’m dying here, Gloria. Am I right? Did he propose? Just say yes or no, or scream or something.”
I laughed. “I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?” Elaine laughed as hard as I’d ever heard her.
“Fine, Elaine, I’ll call you later.” I didn’t do much better at a serious tone, and by the time we hung up, I figured Elaine was as frustrated as I was.
But at least she didn’t have to deal with what came next.
Matt’s response.
“I suppose you told Elaine about my clumsy proposal the other night,” he said. I felt my face redden. Molecules from my last Sees nougat took over my mouth, leaving me unable to swallow. My distress was not lost on Matt. “I’m not trying to rush anything, Gloria.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
“A decision by the Fourth of July will be fine.” A wide grin. “Just kidding.”
His disarming smile nearly prompted me to make an immediate decision. Jump on his lap and yell, YES, I told myself. But in the next moment, I panicked—he reached into his back pants pocket and pulled out a small box. A ring-sized box.
He handed me the box. “Now might be a good time to give you this.”
My eyes widened, my eyebrows went up without my specific instructions. My stomach muscles tightened.
“Matt …”
“Just open it.”
I lifted the muted blue velvet cover. Inside, on a bed of ivory silk, was a beautiful piece of jewelry—a pin, about three centimeters square, a replica of an element of the periodic table. The background was pale green, the border gold, the letter B in the center, in gold.
B, the chemical symbol for boron.
“Where in the world did you find this?” I stared at the details—in the upper left corner, the atomic number, 5; in the upper right, the atomic weight, 10.81.
“I have my sources,” Matt said, obviously pleased at my reaction. He moved closer, held me.
My head was full of questions, all of them addressed to myself. Why can’t I make this decision? Why am I afraid of this? And the big question: What is wrong with me?
I don’t know how long we sat on the couch, but when I woke up at four in the morning, Matt was gone. He’d propped my head on a pillow and covered me with a light afghan. A note, written in red felt tip, was on the coffee table. I read Matt’s neat printing:
GLORIA, I GOT BEEPED. GLAD IT DIDN’T WAKE YOU. TAKE YOUR TIME. YOU’RE WORTH WAITING FOR. I LOVE YOU.
I smiled, pulled the cover over me, and went back to sleep.
I CLEARED MY HEAD on Wednesday morning by taking a long walk. Down Revere Street, past St. Anthony’s Church, all the way to Revere Beach Boulevard—about a mile, and then another mile along the water’s edge. At one time the one-block-wide strip of land between Ocean Avenue and the Boulevard was crammed with rides, food stands, nightclubs. And arcades where you could put a penny in a slot and a fine Oak cabinet-cum-vending machine would feed you a sepia-tone photo of Rock Hudson or Joan Crawford.
Now high-rise apartment buildings and a smattering of tiny parks took their place. Although it had been decades since I or anyone else had bitten into a candied apple from Uncle Eddie’s Apple Dandy stand, the smell of warm caramel and the sounds of creaking machinery and tinny music stayed in my head. I had the beach to myself this early morning, except for a few other lone walkers who were no more in the mood to chat than I was.
But the mild surf, bright sun, and long memories were not conducive to the work I’d cut out for myself, and I finally headed home.
IN MY ROCKER, with a second cup of coffee, I reviewed the motives I’d concocted for Yolanda’s murder. The classic reason for murder—the jealousy of a lover—fit both Tony Taruffi, if Councilman Byrne was right about an affair, and Derek Byrne. And, unfortunately, John Galigani. Moreover, if Yolanda were as promiscuous as it appeared, there could be countless
other lovers I had no way of knowing about. Matt had promised to bring up this matter with Parker and Berger.
Another possibility was that the motive was connected to the library expansion documents. I imagined Yolanda checking old newspaper files, investigating land claims, and thereby posing a threat to one side or the other. That notion generated a list of suspects, including Frances Worthen, attorney for the Church, and Derek Byrne again. But the most passionate about the project seemed to be Director Leonard
pro
and Councilman Byrne
con.
Finally, if a boron controversy figured into Yolanda’s death, Taruffi was a candidate, giving him two reasons to dispense with her.
Three murder theories—love, territory, and science—as far apart as they could be. My head ached.
When the phone rang, I snatched it up quickly, happy to leave my confused mental charts and lists. Councilman Byrne’s deep, lilting voice surprised me.
“Gloria, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed our lunch yesterday. Delightful.”
Surely he didn’t mean the chicken, or the tense repartee about the library.
“Yes, it was a nice event” was all I could put together on such short notice.
“You know, I was thinking about our conversation, about this and that, and I know you didn’t ask, but—” The councilman paused for a laugh, of the heh-heh type. “It occurred to me you might want to know more about me.”
I shook my head in confusion, happy we weren’t face-to-face. Was this an old man wanting attention? I held my breath as I considered the possibility that he wanted to date me.
“I—uh.” I was doing worse and worse with this conversation, but fortunately the councilman didn’t need much feedback. He continued.
“I never gave you my alibi for the night poor Miss Fiore—I suppose it’s Ms. Fiore—was killed.”
“I—uh.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t ask, but I have great respect for what you’re trying to do, and I want to make the record complete.”
“Did the police—”
“No, no. The police didn’t question me. Why would they?” I heard a note of anxiety in the old man’s voice.
“No reason. I—”
“Well, here’s where I was. I belong to an informal club, over in Everett. We play cards, pinochle usually, every Thursday. And there I was last week, until well after midnight. Just a group of retired mayors, councilmen, judges, and the like.”
So, important alibi witnesses, was the message.
“I see.” I used my best play-along voice.
“Now of course, I don’t know exactly when the young lady died, but I know my boy left at eleven, so it had to be after that.”
Another plug for his son’s innocence. Maybe that’s what this phone call was about. “Of course.”
“And although I was alone from about one in the morning, I think if you check with the boys they’ll tell you I was in no condition to overpower a healthy young woman. In fact, I did overindulge myself.” Another heh-heh laugh, leading me to wonder if he was inebriated at this very moment. “I had to be driven home by old Rafftery. He’ll tell you as much. Not that I want this spread around, but, as I say, but for your own peace of mind.”
“I appreciate your telling me, Councilman.”
“You’re a godsend, Gloria. Good night.”
I hung up, confused, but happy I hadn’t been hit on. Not that I had anything against septuagenarians, but my love life was already complicated enough.
I NEEDED TO FOCUS on one line of inquiry at a time for this investigation. Boron would be the easiest road to take for now, and I’d be researching two things at once—a motive for murder, and my project with Erin Wong’s class. It never took long
for me to convince myself that the answer—any answer—lay in science.
The day had turned cloudy. Rain was in the forecast, a welcome change. I turned off my air-conditioning, opened windows, and went on-line to visit the commercial nuclear power industry. After only a short time, I realized the task of building a reactor, even a tiny one, would be daunting.
I called Erin Wong.
“What if we construct a model waste pool instead of a reactor?” I asked her.
“Oh, no,” she said, disappointment in her voice. “It sounds like a toilet. Oops, sorry, I’m becoming my students.”
I laughed. “It’s all right. I know how it sounds.”
“On the other hand, maybe the kids would rather work with garbage. Can we call it a nuclear garbage pool?”
I laughed again, amazed at how quickly she could translate into the language of her students. “Good idea. Why not? It is a kind of, uh, toilet.”
“Tell me more.”
Music to my ears. “As the fuel in the rods gets used up—it’s called
spent
—it’s not useful as a source of fission. But it’s still highly radioactive, so it has to be placed in an environment that will contain the radioactivity.”
“And this environment is the waste pool.”
“Right. I can forward some Web sites to you so you’ll see what they look like. A life-size spent fuel storage pool runs about twelve by twelve and forty feet deep,” I told Erin. I clicked on my calculator and keyed in the numbers. “If we use a scale of one inch to one foot, like a typical dollhouse, the thickness of the walls would have to be about five inches.”
I described the picture on the screen in front of me. I’d found a good photo of a hot cell technician maneuvering fuel assemblies—long, cylindrical containers—into the pool of liquid. According to the caption, in spite of her wearing an elaborate protective suit with two sets of gloves, the woman’s body was surveyed for radiation five times an hour.
“Wow. Fascinating. I think this will work.”
For the first time in days, I felt relaxed. Nothing like a little science talk and arithmetic to ease stress. I sat back and pictured the classroom activity. Erin’s high school students were probably too old to enjoy a purely construction project, but I didn’t think they’d mind a few such tasks, such as painting Styrofoam to look like concrete with a stainless-steel lining.
I went on, telling Erin about other components we’d have to model. Although I was determined to leave enough to the students’ imagination, I couldn’t resist having a store of backup ideas. An old milk crate might work for the rack at the bottom of the pool, the fuel rods could be fashioned from clay. Blue food coloring in the water would simulate boron and other moderating solutions.
“Some of my advanced students will want to know the physics of the waste problem,” Erin said.
“Nothing would please me more. We can place signs around the pool, with supplementary information. They can do the research themselves for the text.” I saw the placards already, with interesting icons and neat lines of type. THE TEMPERATURE OF THE POOL WATER IS ABOUT THIRTY-FIVE DEGREES CENTIGRADE, on one card. ONE-THIRD OF REACTOR FUEL IS REPLACED EACH YEAR, ADDING THAT MANY RODS TO THE WASTE POOL, on another.
“This all sounds terrific. I’m really grateful you’d give us your time. We’re on for next Wednesday, right?”
“I’ll be there around one.”
After I hung up with Erin, I continued to search nuclear sites, coming upon an Internet article on the Yucca Mountain waste disposal project—two hundred thirty square miles in the western part of Nevada, controlled by a number of federal agencies. It had been at least ten years since the site had been proposed as a feasible repository. I thought about having Erin’s students study the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which established the procedures for comparing and selecting potential sites. Waste from seventy-two commercial reactor sites and five Department of Energy sites had been waiting for safe burial for decades—the first commercial plant went on-line in Pennsylvania.
It was certainly time to move the waste from the pools around the country to safe, underground burial.
But that was my personal political opinion, which I would try not to insert into the classroom discussion.
Before I had a chance to become overly annoyed at the illogic of government policy, my phone rang.
“Are you alone?” Elaine asked.
“Yes, unfortunately.” It amazed me how quickly I’d gotten used to having someone around on a consistent basis. Over the course of a year—not very fast by the standards of Generation X, but supersonic speed for most of my peer group—Matt and I had gone from weekend-only dating, to once-in-the-middle-of-the-week, to almost every evening.
Elaine laughed. “That’s how I feel. I’m between men again. But at least that means we can talk. Spill it, Gloria.”
I let out a long, noisy breath. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Try focusing on feeling, not thinking.” Heresy, for a scientist. “Now, tell me everything. The exact words.” I could hear a sipping noise and pictured Elaine reclining on her floral chintz sofa, with a delicate china cup of peppermint tea. Under the spell of that image, I carried the phone to my espresso maker and switched it on.
“He gave me a pin,” I said.
“A pin?”
My new boron pin was on the counter, still in its ring box. I picked up the velvet case and snapped it open. “The pin is a little square. You know, the way the elements are displayed on a periodic table chart. And it has a gold B for boron in the middle. And …”
It was Elaine’s turn to sigh loudly. “Terrific, Gloria, more science jewelry. Just what you need. I think that means you’re engaged.”
I laughed, and gave Elaine a report on Matt’s invitation, or what seemed like an invitation.
“Not an invitation, a proposal. It’s called a proposal.”
“I need your help, Elaine. What’s wrong with me?” I poured a cup of espresso, preparing myself for her answer.
“He said he wants you to move all your clothes and furniture to his place, and you’re wondering if he’s ready to commit?”
“He said ‘maybe’ …”
“Gloria.” Her voice was firm, the voice you use when a child is being stubborn. “OK, let’s review. We know you love him. You’ve told me, and you’ve told him and he’s told you, right?”
“Right.” I gulped. The way Elaine put it, it sounded very serious, very final.
“So let’s run through the usual reasons people don’t jump at the chance to take that next step. Number one, fear of commitment. That’s obvious. Number two, you think you’re unworthy of him or you don’t deserve happiness. This could be a holdover from growing up with your mother telling you that. Number three, it might not work and one of you will get hurt.”
I felt like a case study assignment for Psych 101 students. I’d thought my fears were unique, but it turned out my first three were from a textbook list.
The fourth, I knew, was more unique, and I was ready to share it with Elaine. I’d barely articulated it to myself.
“I think it might be Al,” I told her, hesitation in my voice, nervousness throughout my body. I thought of my fiance as I knew him more than thirty years ago.
The last time I’d seen Al Gravese—short and dark, with a low hairline, like a younger version of Matt Gennaro—was on a Friday before Christmas, three months before our planned wedding. He’d dropped by the flat I shared with my father after my mother died.
“I’m not going to be able to take you to the show,” he’d said, in his gravelly voice, also not too different from Matt’s. He was wearing a dark blue tie I’d given him for his mid-November birthday. “I got some business.” In his uneducated pronunciation, it sounded like, “I gut some bidness.”
I never knew the nature of Al’s business, but I remembered being thrilled by his secret life, as if that gave me status I didn’t otherwise have. I was so proud of the way he lavished gifts on my father and me. My mother had died by then. Al showered
us with fine leather goods, silk robes, gold cuff links and earrings. “Go have a good time at the track,” he’d tell my father, peeling off bills from the roll he always carried.
BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
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