The Oxygen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  Karla’s own kitchen in Revere, on the other hand, was homey. You could tell a teenaged boy lived there, and she’d be likely to hand you a bottle of mineral water without a glass. She wasn’t what you’d call trim but fell somewhere between Rose and me on the BMI charts. Although her home wasn’t as perfect and orderly as that of her parents or parents-in-law, Karla herself always looked ready to appear as an officer of the court, as she did tonight in a navy blue three-piece suit.

  “It’s terrific having you here, Gloria and Matt,” Karla said, giving us each a spontaneous warm hug. “This is a great time of year to be in the city, isn’t it? And I always wanted you to come to Mom and Dad’s.”

  The tender, welcoming gesture caused me to wish I’d never heard of Fielding v. Fielding.

  Rose’s first order of business at dinner was to invite Karla and her parents to our wedding reception.

  “Can’t you just call it a party?” I whispered, not wanting to spoil the chicken with the sweet-smelling feta cheese and basil stuffing that Grace had served.

  Rose glared at me. Not a hard glare, but a glare nonetheless.

  “Gloria and Matt were married in September. Tell us about the ceremony, Gloria,” Rose said.

  My turn to glare.

  Matt took the floor, so to speak. “It was nice and simple, at a B and B in Vermont at the height of foliage season. We had a minister from a local church who came right to one of the parlors. They have weddings there all the time.”

  “You mean planned weddings?” Rose asked.

  Matt gave her a silent smile, then turned to me. “Gloria looked lovely.”

  How could I argue?

  “What did you wear, Gloria?” Grace asked.

  My first thought was Nothing as wonderful as you’re wearing tonight. Grace had on silk pants and a tunic top in many shades of burgundy and gold, complementing her short brown-red hair. I knew her garnet pendant was not from an unjuried crafts fair at the local church. Roland’s delicately knit beige sweater vest, worn under a brown sports coat, looked like silk also.

  “Good question, Grace. I have no idea what you wore, Gloria,” Rose said, clearly not uncomfortable sharing her distress with the Sassos.

  “A dress and jacket.”

  “Matching?” Karla asked, suppressing a laugh.

  “Yes, matching.” I didn’t mention that the sleeves of the jacket were too long and I’d pinned them up. I’d bought the outfit in a hurry at an outlet store on our drive north to Vermont.

  “And Matt?” Roland asked. The Sassos were into this joke.

  Matt looked down at his Wednesday suit.

  Rose lowered her head and put her hand over her eyes.

  “This,” he said, trying to look sheepish but ending with a broad grin that made even Rose laugh.

  Grace and Roland offered their guests the best east-facing view as we sat in the living room after dinner. Dessert was poached pear with ice cream and a delicious caramel biscotti sauce. Rose and I had brought truffles from a shop in Rockefeller Center, which nicely filled the chocolate gap.

  Our storytelling tradition, reminiscent of kindergarten sharing time, extended to the Sassos. I could hardly wait to hear Karla’s story, but Matt, excited from his police museum visit, started off.

  “Well worth the trip downtown, if you ever have the mind to. They’ve got photography exhibits and cases full of old uniforms and guns.” Matt looked around the circle, gauging, I knew, whether this was the right audience for a discussion of revolvers, double-breasted jackets, and batons. He switched to department history, giving us an account of the first law enforcement officer in New York City. “His name was Johann Lampo, and he patrolled the streets, well, the trails and paths, in 1625, settling disputes, warning the citizens if a fire broke out at night, and so on.”

  “We would still have been called New Amsterdam back then, right?” Roland said.

  “Yeah, and they called the residents ‘the colonists.’ ” Matt paused and took a deep breath. “There’s a 9/11 exhibit, too,” he said. Every-one’s head seemed to go down at the memory. “You really ought to see it.”

  “Kathleen Gustafson, the DMORT woman Frank and I met on Sunday, talked about 9/11 a lot,” Rose said, her voice somber. “Dr. Gustafson’s team was part of the emergency response in the days and weeks following. She said all told they processed more than fifteen thousand human specimens. Even after all this time, she remembers every detail of that day. I’m sure it will always be with her.”

  “It will always be with all of us,” Roland said.

  As if no other story could follow immediately after a reminder of the 9/11 attack, we all got up and refilled cups, visited the restroom, checked the view again, and came back to different seats in the living room.

  Grace chose not to follow the how-was-your-day format we usually used. She took us back in time to her mother, an Austrian immigrant, who was milliner to the stars.

  “Karla is named after my mother. She might have told you how her grandmother worked for Saks in the old days and did custom millinery for very famous and wealthy people,” Grace said.

  “I knew,” Rose said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever told Gloria.”

  Once I heard Grace’s tales—that Sophie Tucker ordered one of her mother’s designs in three colors; that Eleanor Roosevelt wore a special creation to one of FDR’s inaugurations; that she had a contract with nearly every first lady for twenty years—I was surprised Rose hadn’t told me.

  Much as I enjoyed hearing about celebrity hats, I was itching to hear Karla. When she finally took a turn, she began with her “jerk of the year, who shall go nameless here.” I had a feeling she adapted the title to substitute “jerk” for what was probably a stronger, more contemporary epithet, for the benefit of the elders in the room.

  “This guy, we’ll call him Joe, it’s his mother’s ninetieth birthday. So he plans a big party. Nice, huh? But he plans a ski trip. Now, the woman can barely walk.”

  “Tell them what he said, about how his mother could spend the time,” Grace prompted.

  “He said she could sit in the lodge and drink hot chocolate. So this poor old woman would be up in the mountains of New Hampshire, away from all her support system, all her doctors, sitting in a ski lodge while everyone else is having a good time. I ask you, who is this ski trip for?”

  “People can be thoughtless sometimes,” Rose said. This was about as harsh as Rose could be about another human being.

  “No wonder my client wants to be rid of him. She cares more about her mother-in-law than the woman’s own son does,” Karla said.

  Is your client’s name Fielding? I wanted to ask. In the back of my mind all evening had been the question of how—or whether—to bring up Amber Keenan or Tina Miller. I wanted desperately to clear Karla in my mind of any wrongdoing, victimless or otherwise.

  I saw my opportunity when Matt and Roland left the living room to look through Roland’s collection of jazz.

  Rose was the only one left who might mind my bringing up something work related to Karla, but Karla had already opened that door, as they say in the courtroom, by talking about “Joe.”

  I couldn’t think of a smooth segue, so I decided to go with a rough one. “By the way, did you hear about the young woman murdered in a loft downtown?” I asked Karla and Grace. “Amber Keenan. She was Matt’s niece Lori’s camerawoman.”

  Rose frowned, as if the mention of the crime had turned her French vanilla sour.

  I searched Karla’s face for a telltale response on hearing Amber’s name. I caught a nervous twitch but knew that I might have placed it there myself, like a Photoshop embellishment to a snapshot.

  “Mom told me,” Karla answered. “What an awful thing.”

  Now what? I hadn’t planned very far ahead, I realized. Might as well spell it out. “Amber also worked for a private investigator, Tina Miller, and some lawyers in town.” An exaggeration, but not my first. “So I thought you might have run into her.”

&nbs
p; “It’s a big city, Gloria,” Rose said. “And there must be a million lawyers.”

  “Almost,” Grace said. “Didn’t you tell me there were nearly thirty thousand attorneys in Manhattan alone, dear?” she asked Karla.

  “Something like that.” Karla’s tone said she’d rather talk about anything else.

  “Karla could make ten times more money in New York, but she can’t talk Robert into moving back here,” Grace said.

  Rose’s eyebrows went up higher than I’d ever seen them. “Of course, for Robert it wouldn’t be moving back,” Rose said, with a thin smile.

  Congratulations, Gloria, I told myself, you’ve managed to create tension in an otherwise ideal family gathering.

  I knew that the subject of long-distance families had come up before, with the Sassos often complaining how hard it was to be part of their grandson’s life when he lived so far away. By California standards, the distance between Boston and New York, about a four-hour drive, was trivial: If you could leave your home in the morning and be at your destination by lunchtime, you were almost neighbors.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said. “Of course there are tens of thousands of lawyers in New York City. Sorry.” Looking at Karla’s face, though, I was glad I’d raised the issue.

  My bumbling remarks were rewarded a half hour later in the kitchen. Matt and Roland were still back in the den. I could hear strains of a Cab Calloway album that I recognized from Matt’s collection at home.

  Rose and Grace were talking about fabric Grace had bought. I realized with astonishment that it was for a dress Grace would wear to my upcoming wedding party. I remembered Rose’s telling me that Grace was an accomplished seamstress and still did freelance dressmaking for many celebrities, whose names had all escaped me.

  Karla pulled me aside, leading me toward a corner of the kitchen where the noisy dishwasher provided cover for her voice.

  “What’s up, Gloria?” she whispered. “Are you trying to set me up in my own parents’ home?” Karla seemed to be struggling to walk a line between anger and the respect she’d always shown for me.

  “You tell me, Karla. Why did you deny knowing Tina Miller?”

  “I don’t see why it matters.”

  “It matters. Did you have dealings with Amber Keenan?”

  Karla took a deep breath and leaned on the marble counter, no longer facing me directly. “Not exactly.”

  “Does that mean approximately?”

  I saw part of a smile in her profile, in spite of the tension that had arisen between us.

  Karla picked up a colander and pretended to dry it when Rose’s and Grace’s voices seemed to grow louder.

  “False alarm,” I said, as the two women retreated again to Grace’s workroom. “Please tell me, Karla, or . . .” I’ll think the worst came to my mind, but I trailed off instead of admitting it.

  “I talked to her, okay? We met through Tina. You may not be aware of this, but Amber was a . . . not a nice person. She had access to every dirty deed filed away in Tina’s office. A lot of times a client or a client’s spouse will have a shady past, and it would be very bad for them if it came to light.”

  “Like Mr. Fielding?”

  Karla turned to face me, her eyes wide. She might have been looking at a witch with superpowers instead of just a nosy pseudo-aunt. “Gloria, do you know my client list now?”

  “Karla, I know about Amber’s schemes. Did she want something from you?”

  Karla nodded. “She needed a lawyer in her pocket, for referrals. Someone to tell her who was financially a good candidate. We never talked about a specific client, though now that I think of it, Fielding would have been a good candidate. I guess you could say she wanted to expand her business.”

  Maybe Amber should have been among New York’s most successful businesswomen of the year. Except it might have been her business that killed her, with one of the Fieldings, or any number of other so-called clients, involved. My head reeled as I considered the possibilities and how lacking I was in the information necessary to rout them out.

  I was also upset that I’d put my best friend’s daughter-in-law through an ordeal that served only to bring her distress and shed no light on the murder investigation.

  “I’m sorry, Karla. I—”

  “Gloria, believe me, I feel better talking to you. I swear to you, I never, ever helped Amber. I’m embarrassed to think I considered it for a split second. I have no doubt that she got to some of my clients another way. She had this way of making things sound so innocent and appealing.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Every time I bumped into her in the office after that, I felt guilty, even though I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Do you think Tina was involved in Amber’s business?”

  “Off the top of my head, I’d say no, though we never discussed it. It’s just that Tina’s a no-nonsense person, and I think she would have fired Amber on the spot if she knew. Many’s the time I thought of telling her, but then I decided, no, just keep out of it. It’s not that I could have proven anything. Just my word against hers. Now, of course, I wonder, if I had spoken up . . .”

  Lori and I weren’t the only ones wondering if we could have prevented Amber’s death, it seemed.

  “How about Dee Dee?”

  “Geesh, Gloria. Is there anyone you don’t know? I can see how you’d have connections in Revere, but I’m amazed that you were able to put all this together in Manhattan.”

  Karla’s smile told me she’d dropped her defenses, and I consoled myself with the thought that my nosiness might at least have relieved her of pent-up guilt or stress.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” I smiled, thinking of how Matt would have responded. That kind of question always drew his It’s what I do.

  “I’m not so sure about Dee Dee,” Karla said. “In a way she was a better link, with not so much to lose as Tina. She had all the files at her fingertips, but I can’t say for sure. Like I said, I just tried to keep my distance. When I heard Amber was murdered, I thought about how close I’d come. I mean, I could have been killed, Gloria.”

  “Did you think of going to the police then?” I asked.

  Karla shivered. When the dishwasher made a loud noise switching to its next cycle, she jumped. “Of course I did, but I had nothing. We never talked specifics. It was all this general Hypothetically, suppose a person had a past he was ashamed of . . .”

  Karla was struggling to keep her makeup intact, dabbing here and there at her face with a tissue. I looked at her straight on and knew I should believe her.

  As sorry as I was that I’d put her through a grilling, I was thrilled to be able to scratch Karla Sasso off my list.

  In the taxi on the way back to the hotel, I mulled over the events of the day and my next steps. An update on Karla Sasso and the Fielding nonconnection would have to wait until Matt and I were alone in our room.

  I’d decided not to tell Matt or Rose my elevator story. By now the event had faded, and I saw it for what it was: a brief glitch in a machine. Still, I couldn’t imagine ever stepping into an empty elevator again. Fortunately the number of elevators in Revere was limited; most of them were in the new high-rise apartment houses that had replaced the amusements on Revere Beach Boulevard.

  “You’re going off to work with Lori tomorrow, right?” Rose asked, as the cab ducked in and out of lines of traffic heading south.

  “Yes, we’re going to Curry Industries in the afternoon.”

  Oops. I shouldn’t have put limits on my time not available for shopping.

  “So we could do something in the morning,” Rose said.

  Too late. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Aren’t you all shopped out, Rose?” asked Matt, who should have known better.

  “I have everything but your present, Matt.”

  “Good one,” he said.

  I wondered if I could commission Rose to pick out Matt’s present from me. I’d co
me to New York thinking all the city’s energy and resources would give me an idea of what to get him for Christmas. So far the only thing that emerged as a possibility was a book of Yogi Berra quotes.

  Matt was half asleep as I finished up my Karla briefing, but I wanted to be rid of the issue once and for all, so I pushed forward on it from my side of the bed.

  “So Fielding was Karla’s client and Amber’s victim, but I really believe Karla had nothing to do with blackmailing him. Amber fished around in the files—with or without Dee Dee’s help—and approached all the lawyers Tina worked with, for fodder. I’m convinced Karla resisted the temptation.”

  Our usual pillow talk.

  “That’s a relief,” Matt said, wiping his brow. Not easy to do from his prone position, he had to hoist himself on his elbow to accomplish it.

  “I know you think I see nonexistent connections everywhere, whereas you never were worried about this.”

  “I’m just amazed that while I was listening to music with Roland, smoking a cigar, you were on the job.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Smoking?”

  “Gotcha. Now that I have your attention—have you given any thought to going home?”

  “Home? To Revere?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Goodnight, honey,” I said.

  CHAPTER TENTY-TWO

  Lori had cabin fever. She’d stayed cooped up in her apartment since Uncle Matt and Gloria left, missing a gorgeous afternoon. She picked at leftovers from lunch and paced the long wooden floor. She walked to the large window on the West Forty-eighth side, separated two adjacent slats on her old metal blinds, and checked the street. This time the unmarked was for her protection, at least, and not to drag her away.

  The breeze that wafted through a window facing east was cold and crisp, with a dryness that made the air crackle—her favorite walking weather. If it weren’t for her fears, she’d be out walking right now, soaking up the energy, getting inspired, meditating.

  That was exactly what she was going to do.