The Oxygen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  I talked on and on, hoping to find the right phrase to relax the muscles in Matt’s arm.

  Matt squeezed my hand, his touch barely noticeable through two pairs of thick gloves, his and mine. “I know the buzzwords, no pun intended, and Lori’s already had her routine interview, on Sunday.” He blew out a breath against the cold air and seemed to watch carefully as the fog he created drifted away. “When a cop says ‘something’s turned up,’ he means the person has gone from being a witness to being a suspect.”

  “But not for murder,” I said.

  Matt shrugged and breathed heavily. “I don’t know.”

  “But what about that letter Buzz showed us, sent to Amber at the loft? Didn’t we agree that whoever killed Amber probably didn’t know where she lived? Why would Lori kill Amber in her own apartment?”

  No answer forthcoming.

  Blip blip blip. Blip blip blip.

  Rose, calling my cell phone. I found it under several layers of warm knit and clicked TALK, becoming part of the large fraction of pedestrians holding phones to their ears or talking into headsets.

  “Are we late?” I asked her. “I hope they didn’t run out of skates for us to rent.”

  Rose had gone to see Frank off at La Guardia for his trip home, and she was ready to skate, the next thing on her to-do list for this vacation. I was ready to take her picture doing it.

  “Funny, Gloria. I know you two have no intention of skating. Did it go all right with the NYPD Blue?” One of Rose’s favorite rerun shows on television. “Did you get to teach and draw pictures of little atoms?”

  “I might have helped a little, but . . .” The qualifier was out before I knew it, along with a little catch in my voice that I knew Rose would pick up.

  “What’s wrong?”

  It was hard to talk with the hubbub of shoppers and traffic on Sixth Avenue, so I kept it short.

  “Matt must be upset.” I heard the concern in her voice and in the clicking noises she made while she thought of a way to help. “Well, we’ll have to distract him. I’m already in a queue to get my skates. The line was long, long, long, so I decided to get in it right away before you came. I’m wearing my hat, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding me. I’ve been reading a magazine and also that hotel brochure while I’m standing here. Did you know the star on the tree this year is covered in twenty-five thousand crystals and has a diameter of nine and a half feet?”

  “Amazing. All that math.”

  “It’s the only math I like.”

  “I know.”

  In what other century, I thought, would we be bantering this way, cell phone to cell phone, in real time? I reverted to my soapbox, lecturing to myself, advancing my theory to an internal audience: If only the so-called sciences of psychology and the human spirit had advanced as much as technology, Amber wouldn’t be dead, there wouldn’t be war, and we wouldn’t need the NYPD Blue or any other army.

  Short as she was, we could pick out Rose in the long line for skate rental. She wore a bright red chenille hat she’d bought from a street vendor for five dollars, along with a Gucci-like wallet for ten dollars and a set of watches that was three for twenty dollars. So far, other than dinner and snack food, I’d bought only an Ellis Island Christmas ornament, in case Matt and I put up a tree when we got home to Revere.

  Without warning, the line of people waiting to enter the rink was halted, and the ice cleared of skaters. The music changed, and a figure skater in a green and red outfit and a Santa hat entertained us for a few minutes. I had a better shot of Rose without the crowd of amateurs in the way, so I snapped a picture of her in line. I hoped she’d see us and wave, but it was crowded at the street-level viewing area and I doubted she’d be able to locate us, especially since both our hats were black.

  Behind us, a group of impromptu carolers bravely started singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” It was hard to ignore their spirit, and Matt and I joined them. We were all a little shaky at the higher numbers, where about twenty weak voices sang, eleven mumbles a-mumbling, ten la la la-ing . . . and then belted out, five goooold-en rings . . .

  By the time we turned back, Rose in her fiery red hat was back on the ice and waving indiscriminately to the crowd. For a few minutes, I forgot about ozone, Amber, and a Pizzano in trouble.

  Not counting ourselves among those who skip meals when under stress, Matt and I talked Rose into stopping at a deli near our Times Square hotel. We sat in a booth and checked out the framed caricatures hung edge to edge on the red-painted walls. We called out the names of celebrities as we recognized them. Matt and I were good at the classics—Sammy Davis Jr., Barbra Streisand, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra at different ages. Rose had a better grasp of pop culture and was able to identify a couple of young actresses and singers whose names began with Jennifer or Jason or Ashley.

  “Do you have anything small?” Rose asked the waiter.

  The young man, a caricature himself with his facial hair landscaped in curlicues, shook his head. “Sorry. We’re known for our big.”

  When our sandwiches came, we understood what he meant: We were each served approximately a pound of meat between two slices of rye bread. I could hardly wait to see how big the cheesecake portions would be.

  Matt looked tired, a consequence of Lori’s plight, I knew.

  “You still haven’t told us about yesterday’s conference,” I said.

  Not to be too obvious. I might as well have asked, How can we get your mind off your niece? I was hoping that a Christmas miracle would happen back at the precinct and Lori would be free and clear before we finished our carnivore meal.

  “We heard all about smart guns,” Matt said, squeezing the last drop of mustard from the container onto his bread. I’d won the no-mayonnaise battle, an effort to get his weight down as his cancer doctor had ordered. Matt was too much a gentleman to suggest what I should do to achieve the same.

  “Like smart bombs?” I asked. “With sensors to guide them to their targets?”

  “Nope. It’s smart at the other end. The gun recognizes its owner from a thumbprint or some other pattern. It will function only in that person’s hand.”

  Rose dropped the small piece of turkey she’d pulled off the edge of her sandwich. “Amazing. Of course! So if the kids find a gun in the house, they can’t use it. I like it.”

  “The guy who breaks into your house can’t use it, either,” I said. “Brilliant concept.”

  Matt shook his head while he finished a large bite of pastrami. “Not as good as it sounds. Most of us didn’t like the idea.”

  I wondered if this were more of the Luddite syndrome, named in honor of those who reject new technology just because it’s unfamiliar and therefore, they reason, probably unnecessary and unsafe. Certainly unwelcome. I thought of my older cousin Mary Ann, who was convinced it was Matt’s cell phone that caused his prostate cancer.

  “How come you’re not thrilled with it?” I asked, in a neutral tone.

  “What’s not to like?” Rose asked, every day sounding more like her teenaged grandson. Oops. Karla Sasso Galigani’s son, I thought, before I could rein in my associative powers. I set up an instant dilemma, ridiculous beyond words, where I was a one-woman jury, having to choose between Karla and Lori—my best friend’s daughter-in-law and my husband’s niece—as Amber’s killer.

  “To me, it’s a computer, not a gun,” Matt said. “It’s got this little touch pad on the handle, like an alarm panel.”

  “Or the ATM machine,” Rose said. “There’s Milton Berle,” she added, pointing across the narrow aisle between the two rows of booths.

  “And Lucille Ball, two up from Uncle Milty,” Matt said. “You’re right about the keypads on the ATMs, in the department stores. I had to key in my Social Security number at Macy’s last week. Codes and PIN numbers are everywhere. I just don’t want them on my gun. Some of these new models store all this data about how strong your grip is and what angle you hold the gun at. It’s called a personal something
.”

  “Personalization technology,” I said. “That’s one of the new terms in consumer products.”

  “It’s nuts.”

  “You’re thinking the gun’s going to fail, like a computer, and you’ll be stuck there, essentially unarmed,” I said.

  Matt shrugged his shoulders, holding on to the second half of his sandwich. “Yeah, what do you say to the bad guy? Hold on a sec, I have to reboot?”

  I laughed in spite of myself, at his comment and at our different technology thresholds. Whenever possible financially, I was an early adopter. I wasn’t negatively affected by the obvious disadvantages of getting the first products on the market: My first cell phone was bigger than the land phones of the time and weighed my purse down more than my flashlight, and the purse-sized laser pointer I bought ten years ago had fewer features and cost ten times more than the one I carried now. As for Matt, he’d only reluctantly allowed me to introduce a microwave oven into our home.

  “You’d have loved that session, Gloria,” Matt said. “They were demonstrating all these new electronic weapons. There’s even a gun that gives you two choices. You can switch instantly between two barrels. One has beanbag rounds, the other has bullets. You can stun or kill.”

  “What will they think of next?” Rose asked. She took a small bite of meat. “I wish Frank were here to help with all this food.” She had a hopeless, overwhelmed look.

  Rose had eaten about one-half of the one-quarter sandwich she’d cut off. Matt and I had consumed a good portion of our meat, combining the leftovers into a single half sandwich that we’d take back to the hotel. We’d left room for dessert but decided to delay it until later in the evening.

  Chirp chirp. Chirp chirp. Chirp chirp.

  Matt’s distinctive cell phone ring. The one new technology he couldn’t do without. We were midway through pulling on vests, coats, scarves, and hats, but Matt had kept the phone handy through the meal.

  He looked at me, and I knew he was thinking Buzz, as I was.

  I would have been completely focused on Matt’s side of the phone call, except for Rose’s next maneuver. Under her coat was the magazine that had kept her company in the ice skating line: New York City Today. Now she put it on the table between us while she dressed for the outdoors.

  Staring up from the cover was Tina Miller.

  I leaned over for a closer look. The cover design was a collage of the year’s ten best, from clubs to galleries to books. There was no doubt—one of the little squares framed Tina’s face, more made up than when I’d seen her. Under her image was the caption: MEET NYC’S TOP SMALL BUSINESSWOMEN.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised to read a subcaption: LETTER STOLEN FROM LOCAL PI OFFICE. THIEF A TOURIST FROM REVERE, MASS. I surreptitiously fished around in my purse, as if Karla’s letter were still there and Rose could see through the black leather.

  At the same time, I heard Matt’s voice.

  “Are you charging her?”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say my dizzy feeling was from too much roast beef.

  CHAPTER FURTEEN

  It wasn’t easy for me to sit in our hotel room while Matt was at the precinct. He’d convinced me that it would be better if he went alone to deal with Buzz, Lori, and an assistant district attorney who was called in to talk about Lori’s case. Exactly what the case was, we still didn’t know, except that it involved a potential blackmail charge against Lori. Buzz had told Matt over the phone that Lori wasn’t yet free to go and that he’d called in a “friendly” ADA.

  Fortunately, I had the latest issue of New York City Today to peruse.

  Rose hadn’t given the magazine up right away.

  “You never read this kind of thing, Gloria,” she said. She fanned out the glossy pages of the periodical as if it were a children’s flip book, like the one I’d given her daughter when she was a little girl that pictured the spinning planets. “Look at this. The feature articles are on the hot new dance floors, the ten best places to buy wine—you didn’t even drink champagne at my wedding. Speaking of weddings . . . we’ll come back to that. Remember, you gave your toast with iced tea?” She turned a few more pages of the magazine. “Then we have Broadway show reviews, ten cheap tours you can take around the five New York City boroughs—” She slapped the pages closed. “This is not you.”

  I realized she was trying to spare me wasted time, lest I be searching the slick publication for news of the New York Academy of Sciences.

  “I need something light and distracting,” I’d told her, then felt guilty when she acquiesced. Under normal circumstances, I would have admitted what drew me to the magazine, but I didn’t want to call her attention to Tina Miller, someone I’d recently ripped off, nor to the nature of the stolen item.

  I was off the hook when Rose’s cell phone rang near the end of this negotiation. It was Frank, calling to say he’d arrived home safely, and by the time she was off the phone with him, the matter had faded to the background.

  “Okay, then, I’m going down to my room and make some calls. William has a cold, and I want to check on him. Also I need to talk to Karla because I forgot which one of us is supposed to get him the iPod for Christmas. MC had a teacher’s meeting, and I want to find out if they discussed a field trip to the mortuary—there’s a lot of chemistry to this business, you know.” Here Rose winked at me. “And John thought it was over with him and Joyce, so I’ll see how that’s going. Robert is swamped without Frank and me for a few days. He might need me for something. They’re helpless with the records in my office, since Martha’s on vacation, too. I’ll give Martha a call, to confirm the date she returns.”

  I was exhausted listening—that was more phone calls than I made in a week. I wished her well with the project as I locked the door behind her.

  I sat on the less-than-comfortable bed, more like a futon, wearing very fuzzy purple socks Rose had given me at dinner. A sale at Strawberry, which she happened to drop into, and they’d come in handy, she’d said. She was right. The room was chilly even with the thermostat as high as the forced stops would allow.

  I envied the ease with which Rose shopped, all year long, building up an inventory of gifts and merchandise that would be distributed as occasions arose. She always had something on hand for a birthday or anniversary, expected or unexpected, or for a host and hostess. For my part, I was having trouble figuring out a Christmas present for Matt and the fewer than half a dozen other people that made up my list.

  On my lap was the magazine with Tina Miller on the cover. I checked the table of contents and went right to page thirty-two, NEW YORK CITY’S SMALL BUSINESSWOMEN OF THE YEAR. I zipped past Katy the florist, Melinda the copy shop owner, and Leslie the veterinarian, each of whom had a page devoted to an interview and photos.

  Tina’s full-page spread was impressive. The graphics people had been creative. A PI agency didn’t have the allure of flower arrangements and cute puppies, but the photographer had managed to make Tina’s file cabinets and the certificates on her wall look interesting. Of course, unlike Judy the deli manager and Patricia the jeweler, Tina couldn’t parade her clients in front of the NYC Today camera. Instead, the shots of her and her office were taken at odd angles for artistic appeal, and close-ups emphasized a miniature car collection and other objects on her bookshelf, which I hadn’t noticed during the few minutes I’d been in her office. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the magazine had supplied the props.

  The article was written in Q-and-A style with questions about how Tina got started (her older brother asked her to spy on a younger sister to see if she was stealing his chewing gum) and what her goals were (to be the biggest and best in New York City, of course). Strains of if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere went through my head, linked to the caricature of Frank Sinatra on the deli wall.

  “I want to move people from the idea that the PI is the person slinking around in the bushes with binoculars and a telephoto lens trained on your bedroom window. Sure, we do some of
that, but really the business of private investigation these days is very sophisticated. It’s computer based and depends on intelligence and resources as much as canniness. We need to know about alarms and codes and remotely operated devices, not just lock picks.”

  Tina talked to the interviewer about her rise from being a one-woman enterprise to heading her current operation, with consultants and a worldwide network of data to tap into. In some ways, the story reminded me of the articles I wrote—and profiles written about me—during my short stint working with classified data at a government-funded lab. We could speak in general terms only, giving no particulars: “A device was tested,” we might write, or “Our theoretical predictions matched experimental data.” Photos would show the outside of a laboratory building against a clear California sky. No real information was given up.

  Here, the pictures displayed that Tina had rows of file drawers, but no names could be shown, no investigative techniques described meaningfully, no resources revealed. I guessed I was among the few who’d seen one of her files up close. I cringed at the memory.

  Blip blip blip.

  In my haste to find my cell phone, Tina Miller toppled to the floor.

  “We’re waiting for a decision from the ADA,” Matt said. “But it’s looking hopeful.”

  “Hopeful how?”

  “I’ll give you details in person.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll be there as soon as they make a final determination.”

  I hung up. Matt’s phone call had been another information-free zone.

  I barely had time to hide New York City Today under our mattress—you might call it an extreme way of avoiding Tina talk—when the little hotel room was crowded again, with Matt, Lori, Rose, and me.

  Matt’s look of relief told me what I needed to know. Lori was out of the woods—at least for now. I felt that until Amber’s killer was found, the reprieve was tenuous.

  “I’m so ashamed,” Lori said. “Believe me, nothing any of you say or do can make me feel worse.”