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 (19 page)

BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
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I loved it when science came to the aid of law.
We learned that while speakeasies earned a lot of press, most bootleggers lived in the communities where they made and sold alcohol, so they were not thought of as criminals but as “Uncle Sal,” the family friend, bringing the makings of a party. I wondered if the Byrne family of Revere had welcomed Sabatino Scotto as their deliveryman on a regular basis, like the milkman, the iceman, and the insurance man who came to collect the monthly premium.
Apparently, for people like Scotto and his customers, the convenience of backyard stills and homemade hootch was too strong to end with the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed Prohibition in 1933. I was surprised at the many references to the
current
cases of illicit liquor production and sale.
“Look at this,” Matt said. “If we want to, we can make moonshine ourselves, right from these recipes.”
I nodded. “There are at least as many as I have for lasagna.”
The first step in one recipe was
go to the woods and find a good place to hide your still, near a good source of water.
Quite a hobby.
Matt stood up to stretch. “Midnight,” he said, checking my clock on the living-room wall, one of the world’s most accurate, receiving its signal from Fort Collins, Colorado. “This stuff can keep you up all night.”
I nodded. I felt I would have made more progress if I’d done the Internet search alone, but I wouldn’t have had as much fun. But how did this help with the Fiore murder case? As a way of understanding the era, and perhaps Yolanda’s murderer, I decided. That is if they were related at all. Another complete
circle of reasoning that got me no further in helping John Galigani.
Before he left, Matt showed me tickets for “Cooling Off,” a jazz group he liked.
“Fourth of July weekend? Sounds wonderful,” I said.
I hoped by then John Galigani would be a free man. Maybe when that happened, I’d feel free to concentrate on my own future. As a permanent resident of Revere. As a police consultant.
As a police wife? Maybe Tony’s wife, the wedding coordinator, could help me plan the event.
I choked on a piece of almond from the biscotti Matt and I had been nibbling on.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
A CALL FROM ROSE GALIGANI on Tuesday morning saved me from going back to the Internet for doctoral-level research on moonshine. There wasn’t too much more I could do anyway, until I saw whether Matt had uncovered any useful information from the old department files.
“This police work is all-consuming, Gloria. I have so many things I want to look up and find out and interview.”
I smiled—I’d learned a long time ago to enjoy Rose’s unique syntax.
“I don’t know what to do next,” she said. “How can you tell which clue to follow? Now I see why you get into this.”
“And I’m so glad to have you as a partner,” I said. Police talk among girlfriends. “Did you come up with anything else since last night?”
“Just Miliotti’s first name—it’s Rose, if you can believe it. But I have an idea about those papers concerning the library property. If you can get a copy of the documents, I can have them checked out.”
“How?”
“I know people,” she said, her voice deep and serious before it erupted in a laugh. “There’s this guy in Chelsea—we use him when we have an issue about documents—death certificates, immigration papers, you’d be surprised what we have to deal with some”
“Rose, I meant
how
am I supposed to get a copy of the documents?”
“Well, I can’t do everything, Gloria.”

 

THERE WAS A POSSIBILITY that John, as a member of the press, would have easier access than I would to a copy of the ownership documents. But I remembered Derek Byrne’s saying the papers were recently discovered by the Historical Society and hadn’t even been filed with the city records office yet.

John was also the one who could get me into the
Journal
records on the Scotto trial, but he still hadn’t offered to help. It worried me that John was being very passive about his own case. I dared not ask Rose if she’d noticed or if she knew why. I needed a little more time—or John’s exoneration—before I’d feel on completely solid footing after our falling out. I made a note to ask John about it, after I figured out the right way to phrase it. I couldn’t remember when I’d had such trouble communicating with the Galigani family.
As I saw it, there were two ways I might acquire a copy of the land use documents—from either the pro- or the conexpansion side. Either way, I’d have to lead the person to believe I could help, perhaps by implying I had a way to prove the papers true or false, depending on whom I approached. Would it be Derek Byrne, Dorothy Leonard, or Frances Worthen? Or maybe I’ll interview the cardinal. I laughed at my own joke.
Of the three serious options, Derek seemed likely to be the most easily won over. I couldn’t say why, but I considered the two women impenetrable. I was willing to absorb some of the blame for that feeling, but I suspected also that women who reached high levels of power needed to cultivate a certain mettle that ate away at their approachability, perhaps more than men did.
And if I talked to Derek again, I might find out how much he knew about his grandparents’ tragedy, and about Yolanda Fiore, whose mother was née Scotto.
THE LIBRARY WAS becoming a familiar place, inside and out. This time I parked my car, with its two new tires, on a busier street, surveying the area before unbuckling my seat belt. Circling the building was an old stone wall, topped with a row of
gray stones that had been ground into sharp points. I was sure they were meant to form a decorative edge, but I saw them as a row of weapons, ready to impale their next victim. Perhaps my tires. Perhaps me.
In the hot morning sun, I shivered as I looked up and down the street. Silly. It was all clear.
I saw DEREK BYRNE immediately, at the circulation desk at the front of the main floor. His long, thin body was draped over the counter. In a light blue suit and a tie that matched the countertop, he looked cool and comfortable, at ease with his staff and surroundings. The small air-conditioning unit stuck in the window casing was working again.
Glancing around, I could see clearly that more space was needed. Bookcases were squeezed into every corner of the large, open area, some of them fine dark wood, others a lighter wood, others dull gray or bright blue metal. Rows of shelving blocked parts of the tall, narrow windows.
Derek seemed glad to see me. He pushed himself away from the counter and buttoned his jacket as he approached, as if out of respect for an older woman. I knew I’d been wise to choose him over Frances Worthen and Dorothy Leonard.
“I’m here on business. I hope you don’t mind,” I said after a few words of greeting. I didn’t want to mislead him about the purpose of my visit. “As you can imagine, I’m still working on Yolanda Fiore’s …case.”
His pleasant, lightly freckled smile collapsed. “I’ve been over this so many times, Dr. Lamerino. I don’t know what else I can tell you.” He seemed genuinely sorry not to be able to offer more. I had to nudge myself into remembering the strong motive he had for murdering Yolanda. Whatever Sergeant Matt Gennaro thought, Italians didn’t have the lock on revenge killing.
“You might be able to help me get to know Yolanda better. If you could just answer a few questions.” He gave the slightest nod. Not a wholehearted
yes
, but not a
no
either. “How did you meet, for example?”
Derek pointed to a set of round-back chairs tucked into a light-wood circular table, and we took seats about a third of a circumference away from each other. “We met at a Chamber of Commerce dinner last year—Yolanda wasn’t even supposed to be there. She was filling in for her boss, who was sick.”
“Anthony Taruffi?”
He nodded. “We ended up sitting next to each other, whispered through all the speeches, and then went dancing afterward.”
“And that was a year ago?”
“Yeah, about a year.” Right after she left John Galigani, I figured. Unless they overlapped. “Yolanda hated that kind of function, and I kept teasing her about it. I like those events, strangely enough. You get to meet people you might be working with later.”
I remembered Rose’s comment about how Dorothy Leonard was promoted over Derek. “Very politically astute of you. I’m sure that makes you a good director, uh, assistant director.”
Derek laughed. Even I knew immediately what a poor attempt that had been at subtlety. “And, if you’ll forgive me, you’re not very political, Dr. Lamerino. Yes, Dorothy was named director even though I’ve been here in one capacity or another for more than ten years. They pulled her from the City Council. But it’s all part of the game, and she’s a good manager. Dorothy’s wanted this for a long time, probably since Irv died.”
“Her husband.”
“Right. I worked under him for a short time. Good man, too.”
Back to Yolanda. I cleared my throat. “How long was it before you found out who Yolanda’s grandfather was?”
Derek raised his eyebrows. The muscles around his jaw tensed. I thought I saw an internal debate about whether or not to lie. After a moment, his face relaxed and I assumed truth won out. “That wasn’t common knowledge, believe it or not. But my father had her checked out. He automatically suspected everyone who moved here from anywhere in the Midwest, especially
Detroit. He always claimed the Scottos would be back.”
I smiled. “I guess Revere is a hard place to leave for good.”
“Apparently.” Derek seemed to understand the reference to my own return, and smiled back. “But Dad didn’t tell anyone about Yolanda, as far as I know, and I certainly didn’t.”
“How about vice versa? Did Yolanda talk to him about it—maybe apologize for the family in some way?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure. It was always tense between them, the few times we were all together. But I figured it was just that memory, no matter how long ago, my father couldn’t drop it. Yolanda and I never discussed it, except one time—when I told her my father knew who she was.” Derek looked around the nearly empty reading room, as if to keep Yolanda Fiore’s secret safe from the one or two older people reading newspapers in the corner. I noted that both of Yolanda’s men were of one mind in their attempts to protect her family’s reputation.
“He couldn’t have been happy about your relationship.” Here I was, going far beyond what was my business, but Derek didn’t seem to mind.
“Hardly. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. However …” Derek stopped, his countenance changing. I couldn’t tell if his thoughts brought him sadness, embarrassment, confusion, or a bit of all of them. “To tell you the truth, we wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway.”
“You were going to break up?”
“More than likely. And it had nothing to do with my father, although I think he suspected it was coming to an end. It was just … we were two different people with different ideas about commitment.”
I nodded and murmured a syllable of understanding, as if I knew exactly what he meant Sympathetic, worldly wise Aunt Gloria. “Well, I know about her affair with her boss.”
Another eyebrow-raising, correct guess. “For one,” DereK said.
My turn for raised eyebrows. A new picture of Yolanda
Fiore was forming in my mind. I wondered how much Detectives Gennaro, Parker, and Berger knew about Yolanda’s paramours. When a victim has had many intimate partners, that’s usually the starting point for the police investigation. I made a note to review this with Matt. Not only was it more appropriate for the police to pursue this line of questioning, but I was getting distracted from my primary mission.
“Derek, I’d like to have a copy of the documents you gave Frances Worthen, showing land ownership and use.”
He frowned. “I don’t know … as I told you last time, Yolanda wasn’t concerned about the expansion project, either way. I don’t see what it could have to do with her death.”
“You’re probably right, but I feel compelled to follow every possible lead, until we know exactly what she was working on when she, uh, was on the Internet downstairs.” I’d never had such a hard time saying the word “murder” or its derivatives. It might have been Derek’s ocean-blue eyes, looking so sad and vulnerable. I reminded myself how those eyes had looked when Frances Worthen was around—“flirty and available” came to mind. I pressed my case. “And I may be able to help. I have some contacts that might bolster your cause.”
So far he was not impressed, maintaining a dubious, uncooperative look. At the same moment, one of his staff—an older woman with upswept hair reminiscent of the fifties—left her spot behind the circulation desk and headed for us. I wondered if he’d planned the interruption as I did sometimes, prepping a secretary to call me out of a meeting after a certain span of time.
No time to fool around. “Derek, it’s probably better for you to give me a copy of those papers than be officially required to produce them at a later time.” I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I must have sounded convincing, because Derek gave the fifties woman instructions, and ten minutes later I walked out the door with the documents.
As I descended the steps to the sidewalk, I looked over my shoulder for Dorothy Leonard to come and snatch my briefcase from my hand. Or for the tire slasher. Seeing neither, I allowed myself a silent whoop of victory.
BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
12.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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