The Nitrogen Murder (28 page)

Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #California, #Lamerino; Gloria (Fictitious Character), #Missing Persons, #Security Classification (Government Documents), #Weddings, #Women Physicists, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Women Sleuths, #Reference

BOOK: The Nitrogen Murder

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CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

F
riday night, the wedding eve, at last. We gathered at the viewing patio at the top level of the Rose Garden. The sunset vista was perfect in all directions, from the hills of Marin County straight ahead of us to Richmond on one side and Oakland on the other.

Time for the rehearsal, the official start of the wedding celebration. We were so close to having this wedding come off with no more disasters, I thought I should be breathing easily, but instead I was tense as we walked down the stone steps. The tennis courts off to the side of the garden reminded me of Robin, and I half expected her to jump from behind a lovely bush and attack us all.

I scanned the sparse crowd of people in the garden, some paying attention to us, others wandering among the rows of shrubs, lost in their own conversations or meditations. No one was threatening the bridal party.
Relax
, I told myself, but I kept my shoulders stiff and my gaze alert.

Elaine provided corsages for Dana and me.

“Just for the rehearsal?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” Elaine said, nearly stabbing me with a weapon-length straight pin. “It’s only a little one. Tomorrow’s will be bigger.”

Of course
. I figured this two-corsage protocol was in a bride book authored by a florist, but I knew such thoughts were anathema at a time like this.

The minister was a friend of Phil’s from Dorman Industries. A nice enough man, but I suspected he’d been ordained online.

On the second run-through, my corsage came undone. I unpinned it before it fell off completely and laid it on top of a small bush next to the gazebolike area at the bottom of the garden, where we stood for the pretend vows. We made one more run-through, this one with music from a boom box Elaine had brought.

Though I couldn’t name the piece, I knew I’d heard it at about three out of every four weddings I’d attended in my life. It was designed to be meditative and tear-jerking and seemed to be working already, even before the final take. Both Elaine and Dana were dabbing at the corners of their eyes.

I was holding out for a full-fledged cry tomorrow.

Ten minutes later, back at the top of the garden, ready to carpool to dinner at Berkeley’s world-famous Chez Panisse, I realized I’d left my corsage behind.

“Elaine is bound to notice,” I told Matt.

“I’ll get it,” he said.

I pointed, trying to aim my finger at a spot six levels down, to where three peach tea roses nestled among dozens of adult roses in full bloom. “I think I’d better go. You’ll never find it, and I know exactly where I put it.”

I made my way down the steep pathway, using the same aisle I’d used as a rehearsing maid of honor. I found the corsage and started up the steps.

It had turned dark suddenly, as it always seemed to do when the sun made its way down those last few degrees above the horizon. The garden’s visitors had left also, as if the sunset had signaled the park’s closing, though I was sure a posted sign indicated that it was open until ten o’clock at night. I saw shadows where I hadn’t seen them on the way down. They moved in strange ways.

I strained my neck to see the wedding party above, at street
level, but it was a long way up, and there were many twists and turns and lattice overhangs between the garden levels and the opening at the street. The tennis players had left, and I felt an enormous distance between me and anyone else in the universe.

On the third level, a shadow materialized and a strong hand grasped my arm.

“I’m here to say good-bye.”

My throat went dry. I felt a shiver through my body.

I barely recognized Robin’s voice, hollow and menacing. With each word, she squeezed my arm more tightly. Her jacket was torn in several places; she looked and smelled like she hadn’t had a shower in days.

I thought I cried out, but I couldn’t be sure. I grabbed a branch and earned a few punctures from the thorns. My movie fantasy come true, but with the wrong leading actress.

Robin pulled me down, below the bushes. Even if my team missed me and looked down, they’d never see us. I tried to improve my odds—I screamed. But I’d never had a particularly loud voice, and I doubted anyone heard me.

Robin shoved me down next to her, still holding my left arm. I could hear her breathing, raspy and loud. It wasn’t the first time my retirement contracts had put me in the clutches of a killer.

This time seemed different.

Less frightening, as strange as that feeling was, even as Robin took a gun from the pocket of her windbreaker.

“My plan was to come tomorrow and ruin Phil’s wedding,” Robin said. She sounded drunk, but I smelled no alcohol on her breath. “Now I think this is even better, since you were the one who put all the pieces together.”

“Don’t do this, Robin,” I said. A weak command. “We can work things out. That’s your father’s gun, isn’t it?”

“I want a witness,” she said, her eyes glazed over. I knew she hadn’t heard a word I said. “My father had no witness when he did it, no one to share his burden.”

I knew what Robin meant by
it
—her father’s ignominious suicide. And I knew her plans for his gun.

I had one hand free. As it turned out, it was my right hand, the hand holding the corsage. And the long straight pin. I worked my fingers around and extricated the pin from the petals and leaves. I let the flowers fall to the ground and held on to the pin.

Robin raised the gun and trained it on her own head.

I closed my eyes as I always do when giving or receiving pain. I twisted my body and thrust the pin into Robin’s side, holding it close to the tip for leverage. The pin bent, too dull to penetrate the nylon jacket, but the movement rattled Robin enough for her to lose her grip on me, and on the gun.

By the time the wedding party reached us, Robin was in tears and the gun was in my hands. I had no clear memory of exactly how the weapon changed hands. Or whether the sound I’d heard had been a firecracker or a gunshot.

“I must be getting used to this,” I said to Matt. “I’m hardly shaking.”

Then I collapsed into the nearest bush.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

On Saturday, July third, Elaine Rita Cody and Philip Lawrence Chambers, both in cream-colored outfits, promised to share their lives and dreams, and one or two other parameters, in a nontraditional recitation of vows. I was happy not to hear anything about obedience on either side. Nor did I hear “forever,” but “for all my days.” I wondered if there was a difference.

I looked at my strong, beautiful friend and thought,
If Elaine can pull this off, no bride should ever complain about the stressful two weeks before a wedding
.

Firecrackers popped all over the neighborhood. Elaine had given me a flyer advertising a mammoth, all-day celebration at San Francisco’s Crissy Field in case Matt and I wanted to attend while she and Phil were honeymooning at an undisclosed vacation spot.

Looking at the events promised by the red-white-and-blue bulletin, I was ready to reevaluate my harsh criticism of the Bay Area’s patriotic spirit.

The Rose Garden was in full bloom; a poet might have said the roses were happy. No one seemed to notice a certain bush that was bent out of shape from an altercation the evening before. Even my fancy navy dress was reasonably comfortable.

Elaine’s shower guests were at the wedding, plus other BUL employees I recognized but couldn’t name. I estimated at least as many passersby attended as invited guests.

Dana and her EMT friends had decorated an ambulance and
parked it in front of the entrance to the garden. “In case you and Elaine need a little hideaway, Dad,” Dana had said. For the first time in my acquaintance with her, Dana behaved like a normal twenty-four-year-old having a good time. She’d shed her lost, spaced-out look. Whether for this occasion only, I didn’t know, but I hoped not.

The buzz at the reception went from those in the know about the events of the week to those listening in rapt attention.

“I don’t blame that ambulance company owner,” said a young woman. “It must be hard for a woman to make it in a male-dominated industry.”

“Aren’t they all?” her female companion said.

I wondered where they got their data.

“So the Dorman Industries guy did it.” I heard this from someone in line behind me as I chose an eclair from a platter of pre-cake desserts.

“No! He was completely innocent,” said a man next to him.

Not completely
, I thought. Though he hadn’t committed murder, Howard Christopher had known of and profited from Patel’s un-American activities and had been handed over to federal authorities. I didn’t respond, however, since I’d promised myself to engage only in happy wedding talk for the day.

“Did you catch the news this morning? It was all spearheaded by one of Dana’s roommates,” another eclair person said to her partner in line.

“Yeah, she had this grudge against America because her father couldn’t hack Vietnam.” (Not a Berkeley native, I decided.)

“She had a right to be ticked off. Her father never should have had to fight that war.”

“America, love it or leave it.”

I moved to a nonpolitical group.

“And she nearly attacked the maid of honor.”

Nearly,
indeed.

“This was definitely the most beautiful of Elaine’s weddings,” I said to Matt. He was looking handsome in the one suit he reserved for nonprofessional occasions, a deep brown, almost black, to match his eyes. He’d loosened his collar, letting his gold-and-beige-striped tie slip to the side.

“How about the fall?” he asked.

“Whose fall?”

“For us. We could get married in the fall. Say, on Fermi’s birthday?”

September 29. I’d become so used to my fiance, I was hardly surprised that Matt remembered the birthday of Enrico Fermi, one of my favorite scientists, the first to demonstrate a nuclear chain reaction.

“That would be perfect,” I said, feeling a flush of contentment.

Just like that, we’d set a wedding date.

In the next few seconds, the country club ballroom went from a comfortable temperature to seriously overheated. I fanned my face with the wedding program. Fermi’s birthday was less than three months away.

“Need some air?” Matt asked.

At that moment the bridegroom and his EMT daughter danced close to our table and smiled at us. I thought I heard an ambulance siren pass by outside.

I smiled at Matt. “Air? I could use a tank of oxygen.”

GLORIA LAMERINO MYSTERIES BY CAMILLE MINICHINO

THE CARBON MURDER
THE BORIC ACID MURDER
THE BERYLLIUM MURDER
THE LITHIUM MURDER
THE HELIUM MURDER
THE HYDROGEN MURDER

THE NITROGEN MURDER. Copyright © 2005 by Camille Minichino. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

eISBN 9780312333836

First eBook Edition : October 2011

EAN 978-0312-33383-6

First Edition: May 2005