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 (21 page)

BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
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“Frank is the really calm one, of course. Who knows where we’d all be if it weren’t for him? You know that’s one of the reasons he wanted to go into mortuary science, besides for the chemistry and, you know, biology. He knew it was partly a counseling job. He’s so good at it.”
I’d let her ramble on, barely listening. I was busy trying to determine if the information we’d just learned had anything to do with Yolanda’s murder. I should be pleased about the result, since it seemed to narrow down the list of likely perpetrators. Why else had we chased a forgery? Just because it was there? Were we getting sidetracked?
Rather than pursue that depressing line of reasoning, I made a chart in the air over Cappie’s day lilies. Until this meeting, I’d have bet on either of the Byrnes as Yolanda’s killer, principally over the moonshine tragedy. I wrote
Brendan
and
Derek
Byrne
on my retina. With the new information from Cappie, the top candidates were
Derek
Byrne
and
Dorothy Leonard
, whose project was furthered with the fake documents. It wasn’t too hard to keep track. Derek’s name overlapped both lists. I wondered if real law enforcement personnel used pseudo-Venn diagrams to solve murders, and how often they worked.
Rose chattered on. I tuned in in time to hear, “ …and where would we be without you, Gloria?”
I squeezed her arm and blinked back a tear, happy to have my friend back.
“ANY PROGRESS?” Elaine asked. I’d rushed into my living room to take her call. Rose had dropped me off after a leisurely breakfast at our favorite bakery across from City Hall.
“We just came back from a meeting with a document specialist,” I said. “Those land ownership papers I told you about were definitely doctored. So it looks like—”
“Gloria, I’m not talking about the case.”
“Oh.” Matt and me. Not that I’d forgotten. I was nearly ready to tell Matt my decision. I thought of the hundreds of photographic plates I’d developed in my spectroscopy research. The thin glass plates needed to soak for a critical number of minutes in the developer fluid before they’d be ready to be lifted out and dropped into the fixer solution. I saw my answer through the murky liquid, the words taking shape, becoming more clear each second. “We’ve all been pretty busy,” I told Elaine.
A deep sigh from California. I pictured Elaine in her orangefabric cubicle at Berkeley University Laboratory—BUL, as we fondly referred to it. She’d be sitting in front of a monitor ringed with yellow adhesive notes, dressed in a classy summer outfit while engineers and scientists came and went all around her in cutoffs and T-shirts.
“I wish I were closer.”
“What would you do?” I asked her.
“Trick you two into a candlelight dinner with soft music and—”
“Neither of us likes candlelight. We can’t see well in low light and, besides, candles are a fire hazard.”
“OK, I give up. Tell me about the murder case.”
I briefed Elaine on the newest information, even before I’d had a chance to tell Matt, I realized.
“So, your victim could have uncovered this fraud, or she could have just been there in the library and overheard something about the forgery.”
“It looks that way.”
“Nothing to do with all that moonshine research you’ve been doing?”
“I guess not.”
Beep
. A call-waiting signal.
“That’s me,” Elaine said. “I’d better get back to work. Think romance!”
I laughed and hung up. And went back to thoughts of murder.
BY NOON, I’d outlined a plan of action. Step one—talk to Matt about Cappie’s analysis—was thwarted when I had to leave a message on his machine. Step two—confront Dorothy Leonard—met an impediment when my phone rang.
“Gloria!” The alarm in Rose’s voice sent ripples of panic through my body. “John …” was the next word I heard clearly.
“What’s happened to John?” I imagined her son in the hospital, having collapsed from tension, or in a coma after being attacked by Yolanda’s killer. Or …
“He’s gone.”
Gone, as in abducted? I had to remind myself John was no longer a child who could be scooped up in front of the post office while his mother did an errand. Gone, as in dead? I dared not ask, let alone think it for more than a moment.
To my relief, Frank’s slightly calmer voice came over the line. “John left the house, and probably the city, since his overnight bag is gone. There’s a note. I’ll read it to you. ‘Away for a while. Don’t worry. I have to do my job. It’s best if you
don’t know any more.’” Frank paused, then sighed heavily. “That’s it, Gloria. I can’t imagine where he’d go. Or why.”
I could, but I didn’t say so.
My HEAD WAS SPINNING with new thoughts, new information, new questions. I wanted to spend the rest of the day tracking John down. I had a pretty good idea where he’d headed. But I’d agreed to go to the high school to meet Erin Wong and Tony Taruffi to set up the model nuclear reactor. I had seriously neglected my reactor pool project in favor of document fraud and moonshine. At this point I’d be better off making a still with Erin’s students instead of a boron-laced waste pool.
I’d also committed to have dinner with Andrea to go over her presentation to Peter’s class. And I knew my cousin Mary Ann was sitting in her pristine Worcester living room, fingering the antimacassars, waiting for me to call. Meanwhile I mentally edited a long speech I couldn’t wait to give to Dorothy Leonard and Derek Byrne.
In retirement I was becoming better at multitasking than I’d ever been as a professional physicist. I took my cell phone from its charging base and set out to do at least two things at once—head for the high school and make some calls on the way. I’d read that some states were about to outlaw using handheld phones while driving—DWP, driving while phoning?—but so far I would be legal in Massachusetts.
I punched in my cousin’s number. I wasn’t proud of my reason for calling her first—I knew Mary Ann made the novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help every Wednesday afternoon, so she wouldn’t be home. At a little after one o’clock, she’d just be standing as the priest came in from the sacristy to lead the prayers. The perfect time to call and leave a message.
“This is cousin Gloria,” I said. “I just got back to Revere and wanted to say hello. I’ll call again and set a date to come and visit. Hope you’re well.”
A fine way to treat a seventy-something-year-old relative, I thought. But I was relieved that my tactic worked.
My next call was to Matt, who, happily, was not at a novena.
“The documents were doctored,” I said, negotiating a left from Broadway onto Mountain Avenue, toward Revere High. The new Revere High, I called it, though it was almost twenty years old.
“I heard,” Matt said.
“And John—”
“I heard.”
“Then I guess we’re all caught up.”
Matt laughed. “Frank called me a few minutes ago.”
“I think I know where John is.”
“Detroit.”
Why was I amazed that Matt would also be able to figure it out? John wasn’t playing games on his laptop all this time, apathetic to his own predicament. He was using white pages and search engines and the services of e-ticketing agencies. He was doing what reporters do. Investigating.
“The displaced Scotto family,” I said. “Especially the grandmother.”
“That’s what I think. She’d be, what, maybe early nineties now. Some chance she’s still alive, and that she’d remember something that would help John figure out who killed Yolanda.”
“And there’s the funeral. He’d want to go to Yolanda’s funeral.”
“Now you’re ahead of me on that one. How’d you think of that?”
“Think about where I live.”
He laughed. “Residential hazard.”
“John’s not in trouble, is he?” I asked. “It’s not illegal for him to leave the state since he hasn’t been charged with anything, right?”
I heard a sigh from Matt. I wondered which street he was on. For all we knew we were passing each other on Beach Street, on our cell phones, both guilty of DWP. I pulled up to the high school, still on the phone, waiting for Matt’s answer.
“No, it’s not against the law, but it does make him look more suspect.”
Not the answer I wanted, so I assumed the role of defense attorney. “If he were guilty, wouldn’t he go to Brazil or some beach in Bermuda? Why would he go to Detroit?”
“Of course, we don’t know where he is. He might be in Brazil. Or maybe he’s in Detroit to apologize to the family, or to eliminate them also.”
“Matt!”
“You asked. I don’t believe that, Gloria, but if you ask what might a cop think, I’m telling you.”
“Is that what Berger and Parker think?”
“I’m not sure they know. I’m giving John another hour or two lead time, which I shouldn’t, then I’ll call them. I’m hoping Frank will do it.”
“I can’t see Frank or Rose figuring out where he is. They’re not exactly tuned in to reason right now, and anyway, they wouldn’t be breaking the law if they don’t inform the police their innocent son has left their sight for a day.”
“Are we fighting?”
I took a breath and laughed, slightly. “We might be. My fault. I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight.”
“I don’t either. I love you, Gloria.”
That was enough to cause the phone to slip from my hand.
THE HIGH SCHOOL Rose Zarelli, Frank Galigani, and I attended, one of the many beautiful redbrick buildings in Revere, had burned down in the seventies, replaced with a modern structure a few blocks away on what used to be the Mountain Avenue quarry. With its straight lines and beige stucco exterior the new Revere High looked more like it belonged in a California valley town than among the established brick buildings of the East Coast.
One of my goals was to reach Erin’s second-floor office without running into Peter Mastrone who’d been teaching Italian and American history there since he graduated from college in the late fifties. It didn’t quite work out that way, but I was spared a long conversation by the arrival of the lab’s model
PWR in an enormous wooden crate, large enough for Patience, Fortitude, and a tiger or two.
“Erin told me you’d be coming this afternoon. You’re late, of course. And besides, if I’d known sooner we could have had lunch,” Peter said, following me and two men in black support belts who were pushing the crate, on a large dolly, down the hall. Only my cousin Mary Ann could rival Peter in his ability to make an invitation sound like a rebuke. Peter’s arms were full of student notebooks I recognized as containing his standard homework assignments.
Within a few minutes, Erin’s office was crowded with Peter, Tony Taruffi, me, and the two deliverymen, all waiting for further instructions. She dispatched everyone efficiently, getting rid of Peter without seeming to aggravate him as I usually did.
“Call me,” he said, picking a splinter from his button-down shirt. I was sorry I missed his brush with a PWR crate, and I wished Peter didn’t always bring out the petty side of my personality.
I’d talked on the phone to Erin Wong and E-mailed her often, but had never met her. I was surprised at how tall she was, for an Asian woman anyway, at least five four or five. She had the same brand of luxurious black hair as Officer Michelle Chan.
The unveiling of the PWR took place in the large science hall in the east wing of the building where four of Erin’s students met us. She’d invited two boys and two girls—one Asian, two Caucasians, and one African-American, a reflection of the new ethnic makeup of the city. My classmates had been primarily Italian or Jewish, both of Mediterranean origin, and therefore hard to distinguish. With similar hair color and nose profiles, Sol Finkelstein didn’t look that different from Sal Fanciulli.
There was no diversity in the students’ wardrobes, however—they all wore predominantly black, except for the girls’ pastel tank tops. The boys’ pants hung wide and low on their hips, the crotches around their knees. No tartan plaid skirts or
neat button-down shirts. I wondered what these students would think about the way my classmate, Johnny Pacioli, was ushered to the principal’s office for wearing “dungarees” to class one day.
Tony Taruffi, presiding over today’s event, didn’t miss the opportunity to make a little speech about the benevolence of the Charger Street lab, making this loan possible through its outreach program. His collar barely stretched around his thick neck, forcing his paisley tie to sit on his chest at an awkward angle.
When young Jamel asked him about the tritium leak reported in the
Journal
a week or so ago, Tony responded in true PR style.
“The situation was under the control of the scientists and engineers. At no time was there any threat to the laboratory employees, the public, or the environment,” he said, straightfaced.
I’d hoped Jamel and his friends would pursue the question, if only to make Tony squirm, but they seemed ready to play with the model reactor instead. They took turns pushing buttons and exclaiming over the verisimilitude of the steam and the lavender vapor from the heat exchanger. I’d specifically asked Tony not to bring the documentation on the various functions and systems so the students could do the research themselves.
I hadn’t done very much prep work for this meeting, counting on years of working in the field to carry me through until the first real class. But I had managed to collect photos of waste pools and reactor environments to get the students started in their construction project.
It didn’t take four bright, energetic teenagers long to figure out a way to put lights on extended, adjustable coils for lowering into the tank.
We ended the session with soft drinks in the faculty lounge where I’d met Peter several times during my visits to his classes. We treated the students to soft drinks from the vending machine, but Erin had the good sense to make real coffee for
the adults, using individual filter holders and ground-on-the-spot coffee beans.
“This is going to be very cool,” Jamel said.
Nods from Mi-Weh and David, and a yawn from Charlotte, the only blond in the room.
“Aren’t you excited about this project?” I asked Charlotte, immediately regretting that I’d embarrassed her.
She covered her mouth and drew in her breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Our band won the regional competition and the prize was a trip to the ice-skating show at Warner Center. We didn’t even get back to the parking lot until one this morning.”
BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
4.79Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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