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 (8 page)

BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
13.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
My eyelids drooped as my gaze and my fingers drifted off the pages.
Boron. Maybe Matt was right. Boron is boring.
An eruption of sound woke me. I couldn’t place it at first. An overlay of at least three excruciating tones—a clanging bell clapper, a loud, annoying buzz, a boisterous honking.
An alarm.
Something—someone?—had set off the Galigani Mortuary intrusion alarm.
I hurried to get myself out of bed, my reading matter spilling onto the floor, my ears ringing from the din. I went to the window—why not under the bed? I wondered later. The metal box, just under the roof overhang, seemed to be shaking from its own noise.
My heart pounded in my throat, nervous tingles raced through my body. I tiptoed to the threshold of my bedroom door, as if my footsteps could be heard over the clamor. I looked across my foyer to the front door, the only entrance to my apartment other than third-floor windows.
I saw the chain, still fastened across the frame, and let out a deep breath. No one was in my apartment. Unless he’d replaced the chain behind him.
The cacophony from the alarm box went on at the same level, hurting my ears.
No doubt a false alarm.
Maybe I’d forgotten to lock one of the downstairs doors and the wind blew it open. I tried to determine which mortuary door could have swung free on this warm, still night. Or maybe an animal pushed against it. Never mind that I hadn’t seen a stray animal big enough to do that since I’d left California.
I walked to the alarm pad, on the wall in my entryway. Even though my security chain was in place, it frightened me to be so close to where someone might crash in.
The building was divided into sectors, each one with its own
light on the pad. I had to determine which door corresponded to the light that was blinking red. Why hadn’t I memorized the correlation between the zones and the lights? I seemed to have left my good habits behind, in the pocket of my old lab coat.
The building layout ran through my mind like the video output of a camcorder. The whole first floor of Galigani Mortuary was wired to the alarm—the main front door, the back door, the parlor windows, the garage door, the door to the basement. Too many to guess which one had been violated, which little magnet in the system had sent a message to the sound box, commanding: SCREECH!
I found the security company pamphlet in my desk drawer, grateful I had at least some organizational skills left. The furiously blinking red light was from zone four, the prep room. A partially embalmed body crying for help? My thoughts ran as wild as my pulse.
Although I’d been expecting a response from the monitoring service, when it finally came—a telephone ring that wouldn’t startle me in other circumstances—I gasped and nearly lost my balance.
The question was what to tell the dispatcher.
Send someone immediately
, and risk aggravating my neighbors even further with police sirens? Or should I say,
Never mind
, and take a chance on a real intrusion?
I picked up the phone, ready with the password. Rose had let me choose it—GALILEO, whose birthday was February fifteenth, like mine. I reminded myself to remain calm.
“Pilgrim Alarm Company,” the dispatcher said. “Your password please?”
I took a breath, and composed myself. I thought I had myself under control.
Until, for no reason, I screamed.
“Help!”
THE ALARM OUTSIDE my window stopped clanging almost immediately, its clamor replaced by a patrol car siren. I supposed Pilgrim Alarm deactivated the signal once the police arrived. I wasn’t ready to admit the intrusion had been real, let alone related to my embryonic investigation into the Fiore murder. But I allowed that if I continued in this career, I should learn more about the inner workings of my safeguards system.
I watched the proceedings from my bedroom window. When two more police cars arrived and six uniformed officers fanned out around my building, I ventured into the living room and undid the chain on my door. I opened it slowly, half expecting a burst of gunfire to my chest, either from the intruder or from cops who might think I was the intruder.
My tension was relieved significantly by a familiar face. One of the officers climbing the stairs toward me was Michelle Chan, a petite Asian woman I’d met through Matt. She and her partner trained extra-long flashlights on their path even though they’d thrown the switch for the foyer lights.
“Gloria, what’s up?” Michelle’s tone was friendly but her posture and her partner’s expression told me they were on duty.
“I hoped you’d have the answer to that.”
“Nothing so far. We’d like to check inside your apartment.”
“My door was chained.”
“Even so,” said Michelle’s partner, a tall black man—J. Daniels, according to his ID. He waved his flashlight toward the ceiling. I pictured a burglar in black spandex hugging the
mortuary roof, ready to enter my flat through the attic. I nodded and stepped aside.
Michelle and Daniels swept through my rooms, tapping the furniture and walls periodically with their batons, as if they were testing for a trapdoor. Nothing sprang to life.
Fifteen minutes later I was serving coffee and biscotti to six guests, all in uniform. Party noise consisted of beeper signals, heavy footsteps, and radio static. I figured my small apartment was host to about twelve guns, six cans of pepper spray, and enough handcuffs for an X-rated flick. Some celebration. I wondered if Matt knew of the pseudo-gala and the alarm that provoked it. Outside his sphere of information, I hoped. With any luck he’d never know. He didn’t need another reason to worry about me.
The gist of my guests’ report to me—they’d found nothing suspicious on the grounds or in the building. The door between the main foyer and the stairs to the prep room was ajar, most likely not fully closed in the first place.
Conclusion: false alarm. Fallout: six of Revere’s finest on an unexpected coffee break.
I was curious about the size of the response force sent out to my building.
“Not exactly standard,” Michelle told me when I broached the subject. She’d begun what seemed a tricky process—stuffing her long dark hair back under her cap.
“Someone else would have gotten five cars instead of three?” I asked.
She laughed. “Hardly. I got the call and—given the circumstances, thought I’d ask for backup.”
“The circumstances being …?”
“It’s a business site.”
I raised my eyebrows and grunted my disbelief. “Is that all?”
“And you’re on our short list,” she admitted.
“Well, I’m grateful for the service.”
True to my Italian upbringing, I made sure everyone had enough to eat and encouraged the officers to wrap a few cookies
for later. As they prepared to leave, my tension returned. Had they missed anything? I was too embarrassed to ask if they’d checked inside the dryer in the laundry room, inconveniently located next to the prep room where Frank and Robert embalmed their clients. Although Rose ridiculed my choice, I was a frequent customer of the Laundromat on North Shore Road.
Michelle patted my shoulder on her way out. “I can hardly wait for retirement, Gloria. Your life is more exciting than mine.”
COMFORTABLE AND SAFE in my air-conditioned Cadillac the next morning, I talked myself out of worrying about the alarm incident. I’d spent my last waking moments planning my outfit for the trip to the library, starting with a costume jewelry pin Elaine had given me—a colorful ceramic stack of books she’d earned by tutoring in an ESL program in Berkeley.
As I drove, I reviewed the details of my eventful evening. Zone four, the one that was breached, was an inside door—a second wall of safeguard. Since there was no sign of break-in through any outside door or window, I reasoned, it was certainly a false alarm. I focused on how lucky I was to have so many police officers at my disposal.
One especially, I thought. Then reality kicked in and I realized it might be time for the first we-have-to-talk session for Matt and me. A session about our future. If we had one.
I approached the library for the third time in two days, surely a record for a noncardholder, and parked on Beach Street. My mission was to introduce myself to Yolanda’s last-known boyfriend, Assistant Director Derek Byrne.
I could hear the arguing as I walked to the circulation desk. A meeting seemed to be breaking up on the mezzanine above me, at the doorway of Director Dorothy Leonard’s office. I altered my strategic plan, deciding to remain anonymous for a few minutes.
A table in the adult reading section was close enough for me to eavesdrop. Only one other table was occupied, by teenagers
who seemed more interested in each other than the library holdings. A nearby pamphlet on the history of Revere provided cover as I pretended to read it. Over the edges of the colorful tri-fold, I watched two men and a woman come down the stairs to the first floor.
The first comment I heard, right after Dorothy Leonard slammed her door, was from the woman. Tall, navy-blue power suit, bulging Italian leather briefcase. A lawyer, I decided. “This is not a battle you want to fight, Derek. The expansion proposal is dead,” she said to the younger man. Derek Byrne, Yolanda’s boyfriend—tall and lean, with light brown hair. “You should listen to your father.”
“He never does,” the older man said. Councilman Brendan Byrne, according to Rose’s tutorial.
“Not since I was two.” Derek’s laugh came out more like a snort.
“You’re out of your league here,” the lawyerlike woman said. “I don’t care what documents you claim to have.”
Derek ignored her. “I’ll talk to you later, Dad.”
The repartee turned to whispering as the three entered the public area, but even without audible words, I sensed a heavy undercurrent of hostility in the banter. I lowered my eyes and skimmed a paragraph on the 1871 celebration when the town of North Chelsea became officially known as Revere.
Councilman Brendan Byrne stood a few inches over his son, and nearly a head over the woman, the slight round-shouldered bent to his posture the only sign of his age. Around seventy-five, Rose had guessed. It seemed the father-son disagreement I’d witnessed had to do with something more serious than a missed curfew. Something like the library expansion program, a major city project.
Derek returned to the circulation desk alone, after the other two left, and I made my move.
“Good morning,” I said, extending my hand. Derek glanced at me, then scanned the area, as if to locate a clerk to take care of me. “I’m Gloria Lamerino, Mr. Byrne. I’d like to talk to you if you have a few minutes.”
He gave me a distracted smile. “Oh, yes. I’ve heard about you.”
Hasn’t everybody? I said to myself.
“I’m so sorry about the loss of your friend.”
Derek ran his hand through thick hair, set back from a high forehead. His eyes wandered toward the stairway where Yolanda had been shoved to her death. “Thanks. It’s been tense around here.”
Derek’s smooth, fair skin and sad blue eyes made him look much younger than I knew him to be—like John Galigani, closing in on forty years old. “Would you like me to come back another time?”
“It’s OK. Sorry to appear rude. And please call me Derek.” He tilted his head in the direction of the front steps, as if his father and the woman I’d endowed with a law degree were still standing there, pointing fingers at him. “Sorry about that, too,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a small war.”
I nodded, surprised at my sympathetic feelings toward him. I was prepared not to like Derek Byrne, hoping to find in him a viable alternative to John Galigani, currently the principal murder suspect. My experience with the Revere Police Department to the contrary, part of my mind held on to the idea that murderers should look the part and evoke negative vibes.
I pointed to the model of the planned renovation and expansion. “Is the war over this?”
“Uh huh. The woman is Frances Worthen, an attorney for the Archdiocese.” I gave myself a point for a correct guess. That she had an ecclesiastical boss never crossed my mind, however. “The Church claims it owns the land surrounding the library. They say it’s sacred historical ground and we shouldn’t dig it up.”
“But that’s where the high school used to be. Immaculate Conception Church was across the street.” I hurried to verify the little bit of Revere history I knew. “And the Rumney Marsh cemetery is much farther down the street.”
“That’s right. After the high school burned, the city built a park that lasted sixteen or seventeen years. Then the parish and
the city did a land swap. The city got the old church site and the rectory, and the Church got some of the land surrounding this building. I’m sure you noticed that new church on the corner of Winthrop and Beach.”
“If they got the land that recently, how is it sacred and historically significant already?”
By now, two middle-aged women had taken over the business at the circulation desk and Derek and I had moved to the table from which I’d done my spying. He seemed eager to explain himself to someone who’d listen. I wondered if he’d be as forthcoming if he realized I was scrutinizing his smooth face for signs of malice, ready to turn him in at the least provocation.
“It’s not one particular congregation that’s opposed to the construction. There were a lot of churches along Beach Street in the old days. The Catholic Archdiocese is spearheading the resistance for all of them. They’re saying at one time the land could have held a number of cemeteries of many different denominations.”
“They want to stop the construction because it
might be
the sacred ground of some
possible
early churches?”
Derek nodded and raised his eyebrows, creating a pleasant pattern of wavy lines across his high forehead. He seemed to say he was equally confused by the logic. He stood and motioned me to the model of the library-to-be, moving a pen along the miniature landscape as he talked. “We’re only going out sixty feet from the back of our building. The chances of hitting graves are very slim. About as likely as digging anywhere in the city.” With every sentence, Derek became more animated. “Not only that, but this building was erected in 1902, so we know there haven’t been bodies buried out there at least since then.”
“And your father is on their side?”
“He is.” Derek sounded sad, as if he’d give anything not to have to go against his father. “He’s Catholic. But I never realized he was
that
Catholic, if you know what I mean.”
Naive as I was about political dealings, I’d have thought
something like expanding the public library would be welcomed by all. Who can be against literacy? Of course, if it came down to allocation of limited funds—more library space versus a new laboratory wing—I might think differently.
“Is there competition for the funds?” I asked, still seeking a logical explanation for the controversy.
“Technically, no. But all the old city buildings are in bad shape. The people at the police station are making the biggest fuss—the chief and the administrators. Their building’s in a state of decay, too. But our money’s coming through a state grant specifically designated for libraries. The cops can’t have the grant even if we don’t accept it.”
Interesting, and worth asking Matt about. I realized I’d gone astray of my motive for being in the library in the first place.
“I hate to bother you with this, Derek, but did Yolanda feel strongly about this issue, one way or the other?”
He shook his head. “She knew about it, but she had other things on her mind. She was caught up in causes at the lab.” His voice choked slightly and he turned away. I tended to believe him, but just in case, I made a mental note to put the Church/State dispute on my list of motives for Yolanda’s murder. Giving me all of two besides John’s.
Derek Byrne seemed to be what my father would have called “a nice young man.” I had to remind myself he was one of my murder suspects. It was to his advantage not to tell me if he and Yolanda had argued about the expansion proposal. I planned to check it out.
“I know you’ve only recently returned to Revere. Would you like a little tour of the building?” Derek asked, recovering his equilibrium.
I appreciated his allowing me a full year back to find the library again. I accepted and followed him up and down the stairs to the two unconnected mezzanines off the main floor. I’d already been, with Matt, to the one that held his office and Dorothy Leonard’s. Her door was still closed.
BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
13.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Betrayed by D. B. Reynolds
Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Taken by Barbara Freethy
Throwaway Girl by Kristine Scarrow
Casketball Capers by Peter Bently
The Battle Sylph by L. J. McDonald
Blue Desire by Sindra van Yssel