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Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths

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BOOK: The Carbon Murder
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I held the transparency between my shirt and my jacket, both soaking wet, but some protection from the now-pelting rain as I
walked back to my car. I found my keys on the floor of the backseat where Wayne had thrown them. I held them out the window to wash him off.
If the remote got scrambled from the rain, I’d resort to Matt’s old-fashioned method of unlocking doors.
M
C fished a couple of clean mugs and silverware out of the dishwasher. The smells of fresh coffee and the peppery Tex-Mex frittata brought back old memories, the good ones. She carried the mugs and forks to the small dining table between the kitchen and the living room, pleased she’d been able to find her favorite pale blue and white mats in her still mostly unpacked boxes of household goods.
“Smells terrific,” Jake said, pouring coffee for them. He ran his finger down the side of a small ceramic vase holding the purple and white icicle pansies MC had picked from her mother’s yard yesterday. “I miss all your nice little touches.”
MC smiled and sat across from him. He’d come by last evening, low-key and attentive, showing her his new, reformed self. He’d looked so great in a light denim shirt and the leather jacket she’d bought him last year—a cross between brown and red, a rusty, cowboy color, she thought. They’d laughed over the style, how it had no “Texas fringes.”
“I haven’t even had a beer since Sunday,” he’d told her last night.
He’d learned his lesson, he’d said. He’d go to therapy with her as she’d asked him to do in Houston. He’d do whatever it took to have her back in his life. Looking into his brown eyes, she really believed him.
But this morning Jake seemed different, jumpy and preoccupied. He’d gone to the window and peeked out several times while
he prepared the frittata. At one point he’d carried the mixing bowl with chilies, red peppers, and cheese to the window, stirring as he walked.
She looked at him across the table, breathed the smell of warm tortillas. His face was tense. He’d drawn in his lower lip, ready to break some news. But what? After all this, was he dumping her? Not after last night, she thought. Maybe his talk at the expo didn’t go well. She decided not to ask, in case it was a sore spot.
“Is something wrong?” she asked him instead.
He flexed his fingers, a tension-relieving gesture she’d seen often. “Nah, I’m just rehashing that Liverpool jump I didn’t make a couple of weeks ago.”
The stadium jump over a small pool of water, she remembered. MC knew Jake was evading the truth, but she wasn’t going to push him. “You got a second-place ribbon though, right?”
“Yeah. That has to do.”
MC knew how important winning was to Jake Powers, the only son of L. Edward Powers of big oil fame. The limos in MC’s childhood carried grieving families to and from Holy Family Cemetery; the limos in Jake’s young life were his regular transportation to school and riding lessons, to the airport for trips to Paris and London. He’d told MC how hard it was for his father to accept Jake’s decision to be “just a scientist.” He was still on Jake’s case, nagging him to use his science simply as a stepping stone to taking over the company one day.
“Want to hear a horse story?” Jake asked.
“Sure,” MC said. She loved watching Jake and Spartan Q perform, and had often videotaped the shows, but she’d made a personal vow never to get up on a horse. Too scary.
“Remember that old guy you met—Andy Hunter?”
“The one who owns all those European horses?”
“Right. He owns, maybe, ten Hannoverians. Well, he killed one of them for the insurance money. The horse was not performing to expectations, and these guys are ruthless. He gave the horse an electric shock, which looks like a heart attack.” Jack used his butter
knife to mime a stab in the heart. “Awful. The guy’s in jail, which is where people who hurt animals belong.”
“How did they find out about it?”
“Some kid who works for him was rolling around in the hay with his girlfriend and saw the whole thing.”
Jake’s eyes darted to the window all during the story, and he’d hardly touched his frittata.
“Jake, these horse stories are fascinating, but tell me what’s making you nervous.”
He breathed heavily. “I’m not sure. But something’s up, MC, something illegal or immoral or … something. I have to do a little more investigating before I start pointing fingers.”
MC put down her fork, which was filled with what would have been her first bite of potato and sour cream. “You must know more than that, Jake. And why do you keep looking out the window?”
MC hadn’t told Jake about either of the Wayne Gallen incidents, not the knocking on her basement window and certainly not the near-attack in the parking lot. She figured Wayne had been served the restraining order by now, and it was likely that he’d have headed back to Texas rather than be embarrassed by police action again.
Now she wondered if Jake’s nervousness had anything to do with whatever Wayne had warned her about. She thought about showing Jake the email from Alex Simpson.
“I’ve had this creepy feeling that someone’s following me ever since I started looking into this,” Jake said.
Now MC’s eyes darted toward the window. Was this all part of Wayne’s campaign of fear? Was he now harassing her boyfriend? “Have you by any chance seen Wayne Gallen around?” she asked.
Jake started, frowned. “Don’t tell me Gallen followed you to Revere?” He banged the table with his fist, startling MC. “He implied as much to me a week or so ago, you know. Said he’d heard a certain Massachusetts girl was now single again.” He pounded the table again, setting the plates rattling, and MC worried that the old Jake Powers was making a comeback.
MC played with her fork, twirling the stringy melted cheese around the tines. “Jake, don’t worry about Wayne. It’s not as if I’m the slightest bit attracted to him. Except for his mustache, of course.”
Jake smiled, gave her that intense look she couldn’t resist. He leaned toward her and they used their fingers to trace two long handlebar mustaches, curved at the ends, in the air between them. This was the Jake she loved, teasing, giving her adoring looks, abandoning entire meals to be with her.
 
Later, at the doorway, she kissed him. “Don’t go,” she whispered.
“I have to get this settled. When I come back, shall I bring my suitcase?” He gave her a sheepish look, as if to ask if he’d behaved well enough for her to take him back.
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s go slow, Jake.” He kissed her and she knew he could tell she didn’t mean it.
MC leaned against the open door, watching Jake skip down the stairs. All the old feelings had come back and this time she felt it could really work. No one was more a turn-on than Jake Powers at his peak of charm. Not that she had any intention of rushing back to Houston with Jake, at least not until he proved he could last more than four days without a beer.
“Y
ou did good,” Matt told me, using our traditional complimentary phrase from our first case together. “Berger says they were able to trace the tire tread to a low-end motorcycle made by Melrose Company and sold in only one shop in Revere. The owner ID’d Gallen based on the photo we took of him the night MC called in the nine-twenty-one.”
I was excited that I had at last contributed to an investigation, if only the one relating to the whereabouts of Wayne Gallen, which, now that I thought of it, wasn’t really an investigation in the eyes of the police. Matt had taken the report of my late-afternoon encounter with Wayne better than I thought he would, probably because I downplayed the fright I’d felt when he first entered my car.
“And the bike shop had an address for him?” I asked, with great hope.
He shook his head. “Not that lucky. But now we know how he’s traveling and the uniforms are checking local biker hangouts; it could be he’s trying to blend in that way.”
“If he really wanted to blend in, he’d wash up and shave off that mustache.”
I brushed out a jacket Matt would wear the next morning to his “modeling appointment,” as we were calling it. I was uneasy about their using Styrofoam in a serious medical diagnostic, and felt better reading the new paperwork we’d been given, which called it a thermoplastic mold.
“What about Alex Simpson?” I asked. I’d decided Simpson must be in Revere, too, since all the other Texans involved with MC were.
“Negative. It’s possible that Gallen is with Simpson in a motel, but if so Simpson’s using a different name.”
“I don’t think Gallen’s in a motel room. Why wouldn’t he clean himself up if he were? Gallen smells as though he’s been on the street half his life.”
“You were that close?”
“I … uh … heard MC say that.”
“Uh-huh. Because you made it sound no more intimidating than a guy just stopping to ask directions, and if he’d gotten close or threatened you, you’d have told me. Right?”
“Of course.”
 
Matt’s simulation was scheduled for Friday morning. This would take about an hour and would help pinpoint the tumor, according to Dr. Abeles. Matt’s pelvic area would be scanned, and a three-dimensional image would be generated. A technician would make marks on Matt’s skin to indicate the area to be radiated, a large area compared to what would be required with the new small-molecule medicine I’d been reading about.
“I’m supposed to leave the marks there, and not wash them off for the whole treatment cycle, just pat with water and then a dry towel,” Matt said. “That ought to look cute. A nice decoration, like a tattoo. Maybe I’ll get a navel ring to match.”
I laughed. “You’re doing a great job putting me at ease about this. How are
you
doing?”
“I’m nervous, but I’m feeling no pain,” he said. “I even have some pre-pre-premedication to help prevent nausea and diarrhea once the treatments start.”
He read through the booklet one last time, mumbling reminders to himself not to use moisturizers or powders, as if that were his habit.
Jean had been in and out the day before, visiting other friends and clients in Revere, and was now back so she could join Matt and
me for the trip to the clinic. Once Jean saw that her brother was fine, she’d head south to the Cape.
That was the arrangement, until Berger showed up at our door. The rain was in full swing again, and he stomped the water off his rubbers—the kind I hadn’t seen since I was a kid, requiring untold strength to overcome the friction as you pulled them on or off your regular shoes. “I’ll keep these on if you don’t mind,” he said, and we waved our approval.
“Sorry to bother you so early,” Berger said, accepting a cup of coffee. He leaned his elbows on our tile tabletop and held the mug with two hands as he drank, as if he were a very old man who’d slept outside in a storm. The image caused me to wonder whether Wayne Gallen had any protection from the nasty weather. Ugly as he was in all ways, I didn’t want him out of commission before I had some answers.
Matt introduced Jean, who’d entered the kitchen when she heard the doorbell. She’d gone for a run already, and had changed from one expensive-looking sweatsuit to another. They were the kind Rose might wear, I noted, and wondered why I didn’t resent the same look on Rose.
Jean shook Berger’s hand, her head half-turned to me. “Matt’s
real
partner? So glad to meet you, Detective Berger.”
Then I remembered why the fancy sweatsuits appeared pretentious on Jean, but classy on Rose.
Berger gave no indication that he caught her hostility to me, possibly recalling a period when he might have felt the same way. “Ah, this coffee’s good,” he said, reaching for a bagel to go with it. “I’m beat. I feel like I’ve been working two jobs.”
Matt sighed heavily, and Berger, flustered by his own remark, rushed in. “I don’t mean it that way, Matt. You take all the time you need. Cynthia and Rebecca both have bad colds, and I was up all night listening to them coughing. And—”
Matt held up his hand. “It’s okay. I know I’m slacking off here. What do you have?”
Berger put his mug down and flipped open his notebook, from
the same supply closet Matt used, apparently, and put it on the table in front of him. “Lorna Frederick called yesterday afternoon, late. She wants to talk to someone at the department, preferably you and Gloria.” He swung his mug at me. “Ms. Frederick … I guess it’s Dr. Frederick, said she may have been abrupt at the interview you had the other day, and she does not in any way want us to think she is not cooperative, blah blah blah.” Berger twirled his bagel in the air to indicate that the rest of Lorna’s words were not worth repeating exactly. He closed his notebook, which, as far as I could tell, he hadn’t glanced at while he talked.
My excitement that we didn’t have to wheedle Lorna into a second interview took a backseat to Matt’s needs. “Matt has a medical appointment this morning,” I said.
“He needs to have his simulation done.” From Jean, not to be outdone in mothering.
“I know,” Berger said. “So, I thought you might come with me, Gloria. We should move on this while she’s willing, and I could use a little, you know, technical assistance.”
Matt, who’d been a good sport about being talked about in the third person, now raised his eyebrows and gave me a quick wink. We both knew what a breakthrough this represented. Berger had gone from not wanting me around the department when I first signed on, to now wanting me as a partner on an interview. Very flattering, but bad timing, however. I wasn’t about to leave Matt’s side.
“Can’t this wait until later today, or tomorrow?”
“I don’t mind at all taking care of my brother,” Jean said, her delicate chin in the air. Matt gave her a look that I assumed was supposed to remind her of her recent promise to work on accepting me. I did my best not to look in her direction. It was hard, and even harder not to come back with the fourteen retorts on my lips, like “How sweet of you,” or “Maybe you could leave your Cape Cod estate and move in with us.”
“Gloria, I’d feel much better if you’d go with Berger,” Matt said.
“This simulating thing is nothing anyway. It’s just pretend, right? And this way, I’d feel like my job was being taken care of.”
I sighed. “If you put it that way …” I turned to Berger. “I’d love to come with you, though I’m sure you could handle it yourself.” One more shot at being let off the hook, without alienating my new partner.
“Well, it’s always nice to have someone else around, and since this lady is a scientist …”
I looked at Matt. He nodded. “What time?” I asked.
“Matt’s office, eleven o’clock.” He smiled at Matt. “Your office is bigger.”
I checked my watch. I had two hours to go over the reports Andrea had given me. Two hours to pull something useful out of my next interview with the scientist-cum-horsewoman Lorna Frederick. After Berger left, I kissed Matt, ignored Jean, and went to work.
 
I liked my newly arranged office, in the second floor guest room, facing the busy Fernwood Avenue. I worked better with worldly noises like traffic and neighborhood sounds around me, probably a holdover from having to share lab space all my professional life. Old Mr. Dorlando next door often obliged, using his power mower on his front lawn at all hours. This morning delivery trucks made a clamor on their way to and from a supermarket at the end of the street, their alternate route when there was construction work or repairs on Broadway, which seemed to occur frequently.
Too late I’d realized this was the room Jean had always used when she visited, and she was now relegated to the smaller downstairs bedroom at the back of the house. Another reason for her to resent me, I figured. Matt had shrugged and said, “It’s your house,” when I asked why he hadn’t advised me against the choice. My house—I wondered why that hadn’t immediately leapt to my mind.
I set a mug of fresh coffee on the little table next to a high-back
wooden rocker and piled the stack of papers on my lap. I’d started in the same way several times since Andrea had given me the reports, and each time I’d been distracted by one of Matt’s many brochures on his cancer. I slid easily from science to medicine lately. Last night he’d placed a new leaflet on my desk since I was the keeper of the files, and I glanced through a tri-fold on male sex hormones and a new agent, ketoconazole, that blocks their production. I tried to adjust my mind to the idea that blockage was a desirable outcome in this case—we did not want cells in a cancer patient to grow, but to be inhibited. It was a technology pharmaceutical companies were working on, but not quickly enough to suit me.
I filed the pamphlet, and focused on the nanotechnology group reports and grant proposals. I’d written my share of funding documents, and recognized the forms and summary charts. Project name, principal investigator, action items, delivery schedule, contacts. The government usually awarded researchers money based on a record of research and development activity and tangible signs of progress in a certain direction.
Trying to make sense of Wayne Gallen’s comment about a diversion of funds got me nowhere. I was hopeless at financial auditing; reports of income and spending were meaningless to me.
The Charger Street scientists were promoting their ongoing work in nanoropes, bundles of nanotubes that would be valuable in HIV studies. Nanoropes could be used as probes to explore the core structure of the HIV virus.
I enjoyed reviewing an image gallery of beautiful graphics that made up an appendix of one report. A small, bright green rope of buckytubes. Vials of buckytubes in colorful solutions, three shades of red. A green buckytube with four red peptide rings wrapped around it like a Christmas garland. Who needed a museum?
A half hour of my allotted two hours had passed and I had nothing that would be useful in the upcoming interview with Lorna Frederick. I realized the reason for my failure was that I had no clear idea what I was looking for; I knew only my primary mission—determine
why MC was being stalked, warned, and cajoled into leaving Revere.
I abandoned my star method of a few days before and went into a linear organizing mode, writing down what I had, what was missing.
Q.: Why was private investigator Nina Martin murdered in Revere?
A.: 1. She was on a job in Revere and her death was related to that job.
2. She happened to be in Revere when she was murdered, but the killing was random, or related to another assignment.
I wrote
NO
next to number two. No coincidences allowed at this point.
So, given that her murder was related to an assignment that took her to Revere, the surrounding facts must all be connected. I wrote them down.
The job Nina Martin was working on had something to do with:
1.
her enrollment in MC’s chemistry class.
2.
the Houston Poly buckyball team (since she used the class to instigate contact with them through a pretend term paper).
3.
the Charger Street lab buckyball team (since she was in Revere with Lorna Frederick’s card in her pocket).
4.
the FDA (since she had their card in her pocket also).
5.
(possibly) the email matter Wayne Gallen was keeping to himself, but which should force MC to run away with him, like some Romeo and Juliet escaping their feuding families.
Brilliant, I thought. I still had no clue what tied all these together.
From Matt, I knew that the Texas agencies had shared very little information. I assumed that was because Nina Martin’s murder was essentially solved and they might see no further need to investigate. Rusty shoots Nina; Nina shoots Rusty; both die.
I made a note to ask Matt if there were any chance Houston police would question Alex Simpson, based only on Wayne’s ravings and an admittedly innocuous, possibly misdelivered email. I doubted it.
Dejected, I straightened the papers and shoved them into my briefcase, catching them on the yellow-lined pad I kept in it. I pulled out the pad and scanned the notes I’d made while Andrea and I talked about the reports. I’d generated a checklist, and forgotten to follow through. Reading down the items, I saw that I’d done everything except check the contacts, to see if I recognized the names of any of the researchers on the payroll. I still had another ten minutes before I had to leave, so I pulled out the contact list and read down.
BOOK: The Carbon Murder
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