The Oxygen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  Describing the rumbling and crashing noises I’d heard was harder than I expected. What exactly did it sound like, the police wanted to know.

  “A person? Or could it have been an animal?” Detective Glazer leaned into me, giving me the idea that I might be a suspect. My stomach clutched until I looked more carefully at his face. A gentle countenance, enough like Matt’s to relax me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. I felt helpless and dumb.

  “Or could it have been a breeze, knocking something over?”

  “I think it was a person, leaving by the fire escape,” I told him, “But I didn’t actually see anything or anyone.”

  I struggled to retrieve more information from my brain. This time I tried looking up and to the left, for an image of the scene. It didn’t help. No glimpsed patch of clothing, no hint of a body part, long or short, dark or light, flitting down to the street level. Trying to re-create the moment left me with the feeling that there might not have been a sound at all. Maybe my scared psyche made it up, as an excuse for not trying to help Amber.

  “Did it look like Amber had just walked in?” Glazer asked. “Did you see her coat, for example? Or keys? Maybe she’d done a little shopping?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. No shopping bags. Keys? I couldn’t remember.

  “Excuse me, but wouldn’t the police have seen these things when they got there?” I ventured.

  “If they were still there, yes.”

  I gave Glazer a questioning look. Then I realized he was asking me in a roundabout way if I’d removed anything from the scene. Clearly he didn’t know my stunning record of consulting service to my detective husband and the Revere Police Department. Or maybe he did.

  Nice as he was, Glazer had shared little with me. I learned simply that the call before mine from Lori’s loft to 911 had also come from a cell phone, and it would take a while to identify the owner. Or it would take a while to release that information, I guessed. Then I was sent to my room, so to speak, and advised not to leave town.

  “Did you tell them you’re married to a homicide cop?” Rose asked me, after I’d given her the briefing. “Not that I was witness to the union, of course.”

  Her last remark was accompanied by a deep frown. Rose had barely forgiven Matt and me for depriving her of the pleasure of a wedding. We’d gone off for the weekend to a B and B in Vermont and come back married. Rose claimed it was nothing short of eloping.

  “It’s what kids do,” she’d said. “When they have to.”

  We knew what she meant.

  Matt and I called our decision mature and efficient, a favor to our family and friends. We’d been part of an elaborate wedding in California over the summer, and neither of us could bear another round of fuss over flowers, caterers, and endless errands having to do with white lace.

  “We’re not in Revere anymore, Rose,” I said, skipping over the no-wedding issue. “Matt has no standing in Manhattan.”

  “Well, did you tell them you do police work yourself?”

  “You know I get called in only on science-related cases.”

  She sat back, smiled, and uttered a loud hmph. “You’ll find a way.”

  I didn’t contradict her.

  “Apparently, science is involved,” Matt said. “Lori and Amber were working on an environmental sciences documentary.” If he was surprised by the reaction—a burst of laughter from me, and an “I told you so” from a grinning Rose—he didn’t show it.

  Matt had arrived soaking wet from a late afternoon downpour. When he sneezed, I felt a rush of concern. I checked my husband’s face for signs of fatigue—in truth, for signs of a cancer that he seemed to have beaten but that never left my mind. He gave me a smile that told me not to worry. Only a sneeze, it said.

  He was wearing his blue suit, his Monday suit, on a Sunday. A weekend conference had thrown us off his wardrobe routine.

  Rose relinquished the chair to Matt and brought him a mug of hotel coffee. I hung his jacket on the shower rod and toweled his salt-and-pepper hair, a match to mine in color, if not in thickness.

  “This is nice,” he said, smiling.

  “It doesn’t come free,” Rose said. “You have to talk to us. Is there anything we can do to help Lori? What’s going on with the investigation?”

  “First, not right now, but Lori will be by later,” he said, grimacing after a sip of coffee that had been brewed in the bathroom. “Second, there’s not much to tell. Amber was Lori’s primary camerawoman. She was DOA, sadly. Cause of death, suffocation.”

  Lack of oxygen to the brain. Was one of those lovely pillows a murder weapon? Why the blood, then? Had Amber been hit first? I shook away the awful image and focused on Matt, who’d continued talking.

  “Lori’s not doing too well,” I heard him say, wondering what I’d missed. “I told her she should come here as soon as she finishes up at the precinct.”

  Rose and I sat on the swirly-patterned yellow bedspread, hands folded. And? we asked, with our posture, if not words. After one more swallow of questionable coffee, Matt took out a notebook and flipped a couple of pages. Just like home.

  “Buzz did tell me about a few leads they’ll be working. He’s not primary on the case, but he’s in the loop and he promised to brief me. First, Amber had just broken up with her boyfriend. Also, workwise, this documentary was not exactly welcomed by a couple of companies that are out of compliance with some environmental regs, and”—Matt closed his notebook and slapped it on his knee—“Amber had been moonlighting for a PI firm. She worked on the side for a Tina Miller Agency, staking out and photographing suspected adulterers, frauds, and other creeps.” He looked up. “Buzz’s term.”

  “We knew you wouldn’t use that term,” Rose said, with a wave of her hand. “So there were lots of people with a motive to kill her.” She folded her hands in her lap and took on a pensive look, as if she’d been entrusted to solve this crime but didn’t know where to begin.

  Were we really doing this in a Big Apple hotel room, on what was supposed to be a vacation? Why weren’t we at the Statue of Liberty or a Rockettes matinee, like normal people? Instead we were dealing with a crime scene, leads, and motives for murder. I’d already started a mental list of suspects: A. PERSONAL; B. WORK RELATED.

  Oh-oh. I gasped with a sudden realization. “If Amber was killed because of something in the documentary, that means—” I stopped when I realized I’d been expressing my thoughts out loud.

  Matt took a deep breath. “That Lori could be at risk. I know.”

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  A soft knock on our door. We opened to Lori Pizzano, her curls and her jacket dripping. It was hard to tell tears from raindrops on her face. She’d brought her own coffee, in a paper cup with a Timothy’s logo. Smart woman.

  Our fussing over her prompted a weak smile. “Thanks. I’m okay, considering my place is a crime scene.”

  “Are you finished with downtown?” her Uncle Matt asked. I found it interesting that we all knew what he meant.

  “Yeah, your friend, Detective Arnold, was very nice to me. He stayed with me until the others came to interview me. He said he knew you from rookie days?”

  “Yep, Buzz lived in Revere back in the day, then moved to New York about fifteen years ago. Good guy. I’m glad he treated you well. Did he give you a Yogi Berra quote?”

  Lori shook her head and shivered at the same time.

  “He will next time.” Matt scratched his head. “Funny I can’t think of one right now. Buzz has a million of them.”

  Rose took Lori’s shiver as a cue and trotted to the floor-mounted heating/cooling unit. “It’s chilly in here,” she said, bending to adjust the knobs. The gracious hostess, even in a hotel room, and one that wasn’t her own. The fan kicked on, and dusty air blew through the room.

  “They wanted to know where I was this morning. I told them ice-skating, like every Sunday morning in the winter, and of course Amber has a key, so she could get into the loft anytime.” Lori pat
ted her index finger absentmindedly on her lips, as if she were keeping time with a tune only she could hear. “I didn’t know whether to tell him everything, though,” Lori said, her voice softer, nearly drowned out by the fan.

  Matt’s eyebrows went up. He pulled one of his dry jackets from a hanger and placed it around Lori’s shoulders. “If there’s something that might help the investigation . . . ,” he said, in a gentle, casual, voice. Impressive, considering what he must have been thinking. How could you, my niece yet, not tell cops investigating a murder everything? Immediately.

  “I just can’t believe this, that Amber is actually dead. I mean, we weren’t that close, just work colleagues, you know, but . . . she’s dead.” Lori’s eyes filled up. Rose went to the bathroom, a few steps away, and came back with a wad of tissues. “I feel so guilty. I should have tried harder to talk some sense into her. I told her she was getting herself in too deep.”

  “Too deep in what, honey?”

  Honey? That was a new one. Matt wasn’t strong on terms of endearment. He had one other niece and a nephew, both teenagers, his sister Jean’s children. I’d never heard Matt call Peter and Allyse anything but their names. Of course, I’d never heard Matt interview them in a murder case, either. Maybe this was from his bag of interrogation tricks.

  Lori blew her nose, then reached for her coffee, which I coveted. The paper cup had been perched on top of my hard-sided suitcase, which was squeezed in between the bed and the chair.

  “Amber’s the best . . . was the best photographer Tina—she’s the PI—had, so she gave her all these big cases. Like, one time there was a guy with a huge claim against a brokerage on Seventh. Scaffolding fell on him or something, and Amber was supposed to follow him around and show that his limp was phony. Well, she was on the curb trying to sneak a picture of him getting into his SUV with his skis, and she ended up nearly getting run over by the guy. She broke her ankle rolling out of the way.”

  “So you were trying to talk her out of doing stuff that was too dangerous?” Matt walked around behind Lori. He adjusted his jacket, the Thursday gray, on her shoulders and rubbed her back.

  To me, it was better than watching the ballet Rose wanted me to attend. I loved seeing Matt at work.

  “Yeah, but not just physically dangerous like that. She’d been—” Lori jumped up, leaving Matt’s jacket behind. “Oh, God, I don’t want to talk about this. Amber’s dead, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” Lori’s voice was shrill. She leaned against the door to the corridor, one hand near the handle. I thought she was going to bolt out of the room.

  Matt pulled her back, put his jacket over her shoulders again, and hugged her.

  The interview was over. The rain slid down our window. Christmas lights on a nearby rooftop blinked on and off. For a moment everyone was in freeze-frame.

  Followed by bustling activity.

  Rose washed the coffee cups. I brushed off Matt’s wet suit coat. Matt got out one of our maps and had Lori point out the locations of her favorite restaurants.

  Lori didn’t feel up to joining us for dinner, she told us. She’d take the subway out to Queens and stay with a girlfriend until she could get into her loft again.

  “We’ll put you in a cab,” Matt said. “It’s too cold out there to be walking around. We can pick up some sandwiches downstairs first, for you and your friend.”

  “Whatever. Anything for a distraction,” she said.

  I moved in on an opportunity to provide a diversion.

  “Lori, I know this is not a great time, but if you have a few minutes more, I’d love to hear about the environmental project you’re working on.”

  Lori’s eyes widened slightly. “Yeah, well, it’s very exciting. At least it was until now.” She took a breath and swallowed, as if to prepare for a change of topic. “Okay, well, there’s nothing like a global issue to put things in perspective. I’ve been working with two companies in town, Blake Manufacturing and Curry Industries. Here’s my tag line. ‘Oxygen—like any good thing, too much or too little can ruin your health.’ ”

  “I like it,” I said.

  “Hmmm,” Rose said. “Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing is wonderful.’ Or maybe that was Groucho Marx.”

  I cleared my throat and Rose fell silent.

  Lori went on, becoming more animated, gesturing with her hands, Italian-American style. “See, ozone, which is a form of oxygen, can be bad for you. If you breathe in too much of it, like if you work in a refrigerator factory, it inflames your lungs and you can be asphyxiated.”

  I wondered if Lori realized Amber had died of suffocation, a close cousin to asphyxiation. I hoped she didn’t think of it at this moment.

  “But, the earth as a whole is starting to have too little ozone. The ozone layer around the earth”—here Lori swung her arms in a large circle—“is there to protect us from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun.”

  Rose and Matt shot me a look. Rose rolled her eyes, as she usually did during science lessons. I shrugged: It worked. Lori was temporarily distracted from the tragedy of Amber’s death.

  “So the first segment of the documentary would be on what’s called ozone depletion. Do you know there are people who actually smuggle CFCs into the country? Like, twenty thousand tons of CFCs—that’s short for chlorofluorocarbons, like Freon—they’re used in a lot of household materials, and eventually they end up where the ozone layer is and—” Lori stopped short and looked at me. “Oh my God, listen to me. A real scientist here and I’m going on and on.”

  I waved away her remark. “You’re doing very well, Lori. I’m sure by now you’re more well versed than I am in environmental issues.”

  “Well, I have done a lot of studying, but I’d love to have your input. I know the problems, but I don’t know how it happens, like, what are those CFCs doing to the ozone layer exactly? If we’re going to nail someone for violation—I know I’m sounding like 60 Minutes here—we have to know what we’re talking about.”

  “Is that what you’re going for? Nailing someone?” Matt asked.

  “Okay, bad choice of words. I’d like the video to explain what the issues are and point out that we’re not all as aware as we should be.”

  “Gloria, maybe you could help. You could be an informal consultant on Lori’s documentary,” Rose said.

  I frowned and shook my head. “No, no, I—”

  Rose tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. A subtle, wordless interruption, but a connection born of years of friendship told me she was way ahead of me. It was a simple equation: Consulting with Lori equals chance to investigate Amber Keenan’s murder, and a chance to make up in some way for my failure to respond when she lay dying at my feet.

  “Would you?” Lori asked, her tone hopeful.

  “Would you?” Matt asked, his tone just this side of threatening.

  I swallowed and weighed the advantages of keeping my distance from anything connected with the Amber Keenan case. Then I heard the loud wail of an emergency vehicle from outside our window.

  “I would,” I said.

  CHAPTER REE

  When Frank Galigani arrived, our little hotel room was at capacity. As much as we wanted to hear about his day—he’d spent the afternoon with a mortician who was part of an emergency response team—we decided to postpone the report until later, when we were comfortably seated at dinner.

  Rose and Frank left for their own room, three floors down. I knew they’d appear in the lobby at eight o’clock, even more sharply dressed and put-together than they were now. For us, on the other hand: Matt would straighten his tie and put on a dry jacket, and I would give some consideration to brushing my hair before rendezvousing at the concierge’s desk.

  Matt insisted on accompanying Lori to the street and seeing that she and a bag of food got into a taxi headed for Queens. He wrote down her friend’s phone number before they left the room. I was sure Matt’s solicitude stemmed from a number of things—ranging from the concern of a loving uncle t
o the precautionary outlook of a homicide detective who worried about her being a target.

  Matt had given me family background on the plane ride to New York: Lori’s mother died when she was barely nine years old, and her father moved a new wife into their home within three months.

  “Rita, the new stepmother, wasn’t the maternal kind,” Matt said. “So I sort of adopted Lori until she left Revere and came here to go to college at Columbia. She’s lived in New York ever since.”

  My heart went out to the young woman who’d done so well after such a tough start in life, effectively orphaned at nine. I also wondered what Lori had held back from the NYPD, and whether Matt had been able to coax it out of her.

  To think, until this morning, I had only a vacation to worry about.

  Now I had a murder.

  I also had an errand to do.

  It had stopped raining, but I shoved a fold-up umbrella into my tote, between a notebook and a copy of New Scientist, always handy in case I became bored with Gotham.

  I went out the side door of our hotel and headed up Eighth, knowing Matt would be with Lori, in front of the hotel on West Forty-fifth Street, either in the deli or on the street waiting for a taxi.

  The first block offered everything a person might need. Flowers, prizewinning produce, a falafel wagon, a check-cashing office, T-shirts, used books (on a sidewalk table, in spite of the low temperatures), Rolex watches displayed in an attaché case. I tried to pick out the natives on the crowded street. It was easier years ago, when most New Yorkers wore black, no matter what the season. Then, you could pick out the visitors simply by clothing color: White jeans and a pink sweatshirt in December signaled a tourist from Stockton, California, or Phoenix, Arizona. Now, pink was the new black, and I couldn’t tell the natives from the tourists.

  I felt at home myself. Rose and I had arranged annual extended weekend reunions in New York during the years I lived in California, many times coinciding with an American Physical Society conference I’d attend at the Sixth Avenue Hilton. She’d take a train from Boston to Penn Station, I’d fly into JFK, and we’d meet in a downtown hotel. Rose would choose one cultural event, like a drama on Broadway, to force me to, and I’d drag her to the Hayden Planetarium or to some abstruse exhibit of the notebooks of Sir Isaac Newton to peruse four-hundred-year-old prose, some of it in Latin.