Boric Acid Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

  The Galigani children had also spent time with me separately. I loved each one equally, except for a slight bias toward Mary Catherine, the youngest and only girl. And the only one to enter a hard-science field, chemical engineering. Mary Catherine had been married to a lawyer for a short time. Her letter to me this week told of a new love, a petroleum chemist.

  “I know you love him already, Aunt Glo,” MC had written.

  Though only a year apart, Robert and John might as well have been separated by a generation. I remembered their college days—Robert, the conservative dresser, studying biology, headed for mortuary school; John, the sociology major with long hair, wishing he’d been born early enough to join the protests of the sixties.

  Nostalgia was getting me nowhere.

  I checked my watch. Ten after seven. Still on California time. I turned the hands three hours ahead—with older eyes, I found analog watch faces much easier to read than digital—as much to put an end to Saturday as to be in sync with the East Coast. On Sunday, John would be home, I was sure, and I’d be at the lab uncovering a boron motive.

  For now I should go to bed early, and be ready for a full day. I looked at the summer linens on my bed, an inviting white cotton knit spread and a soft pillow.

  I groaned and rubbed my eyes. Not yet.

  I changed the bandages on my feet and grabbed my cane. I had no idea what I hoped to accomplish by a visit to a public building locked up for the night, but I knew it was more than I’d get done sitting in my apartment.

  A half hour later, dressed in cotton pants and a new Cal Berkeley T-shirt with long sleeves, I parked my long black Cadillac—another perk from living in the Galigani Mortuary—in front of the Revere Public Library. The officer was gone. I assumed some time limit had been reached and there was no more to be gained from keeping the crime scene isolated.

  I limped around the property. The old redbrick structure was so beautiful, I felt almost inspired to read something literary. Years ago, Elaine had talked me into a card for the Berkeley Public Library—also a good-looking brick building—and I remembered taking out classics under her direction. I’d tried Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, George Sands, George Eliot.

  “They’re early feminists,” she’d told me. “You should love them.”

  I shook my head. “It’s hard to read a book without equations.”

  Eventually Elaine gave up her attempts to convert me to well-roundedness of the intellectual kind.

  Lights were on up and down Beach Street as I took a lame walk along the side of the building. I pictured the model I’d seen inside the library and found the area designated for the new extension, stretching about sixty feet in back.

  To the right of the building was the vacant lot where my old high school once stood, and just beyond that was the only cemetery in the city—the Rumney Marsh Burying Ground. I walked as far as the entrance and peered in through the wrought-iron gate.

  The headstone closest to me had a date of 1809, but I remembered from civics classes that there were even older graves, some from the 1600s. Isolated from the activity on the main street, I faced the musty overgrown gravestones, dim forms in the darkness. I felt light-headed thinking how likely it was that the fence had been moved many times during the city’s four-hundred-year history. I could be standing on the remains of pilgrims, Minutemen, patriots. I imagined the bulldozers unearthing the bones of doughboys. Or ordinary churchgoers and grandfathers.

  The mixture of gravel and broken glass under my feet reminded me of the reason for my copper-colored metal cane—my flight from a killer in a Berkeley waste pit. At the same time a shadow fell across my path, cutting through the moonlight, as if a soundless, invisible airplane had passed over my head. I spun a full three hundred sixty degrees and scanned the area for an attacker.

  The lot was empty.

  Before I lost my balance completely and summoned up a ghost from another century, I turned and hobbled toward Beach Street and my Cadillac.

  ON THE WAY HOME, I stopped at a supermarket on Broadway, grateful for the longer store hours of modern times. I picked up essentials for my empty larder—two flavors of ice cream and the makings of an eggplant parmigian. I made a special stop for Matt’s favorite kind of bagel—plain—a vote of confidence that he’d be having breakfast in my apartment some morning soon.

  My foresight was rewarded by the presence of a black unmarked Revere Police Department Ford in front of the mortuary. When I drove up, Matt got out of his car and stood near the shrubbery that lined the driveway. I knew he enjoyed watching me squeeze the Cadillac between a hearse and a limousine in the Galiganis’ specially designed garage. I’d gotten good at it, but still held my breath, waiting for a scraping sound, until I shifted to PARK.

  “Have you been here long?” I asked him.

  “About fifteen minutes. I took care of that call and came back for a cup of coffee. When you weren’t here, I figured you were breaking into the lab, reading boron documents.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Just doing some errands.” I handed him one of the grocery bags and preceded him through the mortuary foyer, giving slight nods toward Mr. McCabe, in cherry wood in Parlor A, and Mrs. Tucci, in walnut in Parlor B.

  Matt continued his guesswork as we climbed the stairs, past Rose’s office on the second floor, up to my apartment on the third. “Well, then, you have a meeting with Andrea tomorrow and she’s going to get you in on a weekend visitor pass. Or something like that.”

  I stopped midstep and looked down on him, still in his airport casuals.

  “How did you know that?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s what I do.” His grin made me want to skip coffee.

  We entered my apartment, both slightly out of breath. Matt put his nose near the top of the brown bag he was carrying. “Umm. Breakfast bagels. Is that an invitation?”

  I felt my face redden. My motives were entirely too transparent for comfort.

  We postponed our food and drink.

  FIVE

  AT MIDNIGHT, eastern daylight saving time, Matt and I sat across from each other, the remains of a snack on the coffee table between us. My piles of science magazines were dotted with cannoli crumbs and powdered sugar—not even her son’s legal predicament had prevented Rose from sending us off with a plate of treats earlier that day.

  Matt had managed to bring copies of the police report, but the additional pages didn’t add much to what I’d already learned at Berger’s. I needed to know more about Yolanda Fiore, her family and friends. I needed to get into her apartment, but couldn’t count on that with Matt off the case.

  While Matt cleared the dishes, I glanced toward the desk drawer where I’d stored the warning note left in my mail basket. For a moment I wondered whether I should contribute it to the police folder, at least figuratively, by showing it to Matt. I decided against mentioning it—an unnecessary complication that might spoil the evening. It wasn’t as if the note held a clue, I told myself. Besides, the threat might have nothing to do with the Fiore case.

  But I had to admit, the biggest reason I withheld the note had to do with Matt’s concern for my safety whenever I undertook police work without his supervision. The last thing I wanted was for him to try to curb my investigation into Yolanda Fiore’s murder.

  “Give me another installment on how Yolanda’s looking into boron might be connected to this,” Matt said. “Twenty-five words or less,” he amended, probably when he saw the excited gleam in my eyes.

  “Twenty-five words. I can do it.” I cleared my throat and made elaborate counting motions. “Boron is put in the cooling water system to keep the reactor core from overheating, plus in the pools where the waste is stored.” I smiled. “Twenty-four.”

  “Very good. You mean otherwise you could have a reaction take place in the pile of waste outside the reactor building?”

  I waved my hand in a sort-of gesture. “Yes, but not likely, even though the fuel assemblies that come out of the core are highl
y radioactive. It’s just a precaution.”

  “So what could be controversial?” Matt asked.

  I thought a moment. “The only safety issue I can conceive of is not enough boron in either the cooling or the disposal system. But it’s hard to imagine. Boron is not that expensive. And it’s certainly not new technology that anyone would be fighting over.”

  I was surprised when Matt stood to leave, gathering his jacket and files. “Too much science?” I asked.

  Matt smiled. “No, I just don’t think these clothes can take another on-off cycle. Can I have my bagel to go?”

  “Help yourself.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, apparently hearing the disappointment I’d tried to mask with a yawn. He bent down to kiss me. “Maybe I should leave a change of clothes here.”

  The statement came out like a true/false question on a math test.

  I smiled. “Good idea.”

  Ordinarily such a move forward—in my mind I bought a new toothbrush to leave at his Fernwood Avenue house—would have been enough to give me the sweetest of dreams. But Matt wasn’t finished.

  “Maybe I should bring all my clothes here. Or you could bring all of yours to my house. Your furniture, too.” He grinned and swept the room with his free arm.

  My body went rigid. My internal organs seemed to stop functioning. I stared at Matt, then my eyes drifted to the ceiling, to escape the reality of the moment.

  “I … I …”Not only couldn’t I finish my thought, I couldn’t even start it.

  Matt slapped his forehead. “Sorry. It must be the cannoli talking.” He gave me a big smile and kissed me good-bye.

  I sat in my chair for a long time after Matt left. How could such an important moment have come and gone so quickly? I wondered if I’d lost him by my unenthusiastic response to what might have been a proposal—to live together, or—I also considered that he might have been joking all along and I’d narrowly escaped making a fool of myself by shouting yes!

  I couldn’t decide which interpretation was less appealing.

  I’D SET MY ALARM for eight on Sunday morning, determined to call Rose before the day got out of hand. I took an espresso back to bed and punched her number—the first button on my speed-dial panel—from a barely upright position.

  Matt’s remark was at the front of my brain. Ordinarily, a heart-to-heart about my love life was among the top five of Rose’s favorite topics, coming right after her husband and children, and I desperately wanted to talk to her about it. But I knew it would have to wait. The only topic for a while would be the pending murder charge against her son.

  “John will be home at ten o’clock this morning,” she told me, sounding wide awake and more positive than the day before. “And I know you and Matt and the whole RPD force are behind us. John is innocent and that’s as clear as a rainbow in winter.” I smiled at Rose’s usual ineptitude at metaphors and analogies, relieved that her characteristic positive attitude had returned. “Can you come over around noon?”

  “Much as I’d like to, I have an appointment at the lab with Andrea Cabrini.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful. That’s more important.” I thought I heard Rose snap her fingers. “I’ll bet Yolanda’s murder is connected to her work at that lab.”

  I sensed Rose’s relief, as if the case had just been solved. In line with her optimism, I pictured a boron physicist already in custody.

  Then Rose took me in another direction. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. Yolanda was active in the group that’s always protesting the lab’s weapons research. They’re the ones that complain about bomb-making and radiation leaks and such.” She lowered her voice. “You remember when John went through that phase.”

  Not hearing a question, I chose not to pursue the reason for John’s arrests—his record!—especially after Matt’s warning that it could be used against him. It didn’t surprise me that Yolanda could be an activist and a lab employee at the same time. Perfectly legal, if not welcomed by lab management.

  “I’ll bet someone wanted to silence her. You know how the lab hates bad press and she was in the news a lot,” Rose continued.

  It was as good a theory as any, I had to admit, and it seemed a more likely motive than a boron cover-up. Of the many parts of nuclear power that people worried about, the boron in the temporary waste pool was not high on the list. Lower than meltdown, lower than the permanent disposal of waste, to name two.

  “I’ll check it out,” I said, as if I were the lead detective in the case. “While I have you on the phone, maybe you could help me with some basic information.” I took a few sips of espresso and sat up straighter, giving me a better view of the Tuttle Street trees in the morning sun.

  “Sure. What did you have in mind?”

  I pulled my notebook and pen onto my lap. “I don’t know exactly. But I’d like to get a better feel for John’s relationship to Yolanda and why it ended.”

  “Oh, well, I wouldn’t know exactly. Frank and I only met her a couple of times, but she was not right for John. Too—intense.”

  As if John were laid-back. I took another road. “Berger—remember Matt’s partner?—said her current boyfriend was Derek Byrne. Do you know if she went right from John to Derek? Things like that will help me get to know Yolanda better.”

  “Right. Well, Derek is the councilman’s son. Did you know that? Councilman Brendan Byrne. Must be in his seventies, but he still has a lot of sway at City Hall, and he’s a big shot in the VFW. Awful tragedy years ago when his parents—they would be Derek’s grandparents—drank a bad batch of moonshine liquor. Father died, I believe. Mother blinded. Or vice versa.”

  Rose, the unofficial historian of Revere, was back, with statistics tumbling out of her mouth.

  “What a disaster,” I said. “Did they find out who made the liquor?”

  “Oh, yes, they knew it was the Scottos. They had a still over on Malden Street, before the bend in front of the old St. Mary’s Church. One of them was arrested, but then he skipped to Italy while he was out on bail. Hasn’t been seen since, as far as I know. Of course he’d be in his nineties. And then the rest of the family moved out west somewhere. Chicago, I think.”

  I laughed. Only a native Bostonian like Rose thinks anything west of New England is out west. Rose had traveled to Europe and visited me in California, but she had no connection to the states in the middle of the country, mostly rectangles, she’d observed during her flights to the West Coast.

  “Very interesting.”

  “Oh, and I remember hearing that the councilman, young Brendan Byrne, who was about eighteen at that time, took off for the army right after all this happened.”

  “Terrific. That’s the kind of information I need.” Not really, I thought, but I didn’t mind stretching the truth now that Rose was back in her census mode. Anything to encourage normalcy. “Tell me more about Derek Byrne. Apparently he was the last one to see her alive, except for the killer.”

  “Unless he is the killer,” Rose said, with another snap of her fingers. I imagined her adding Derek to a list of suspects that didn’t include John.

  “Of course.”

  “Well, he’s Dorothy Leonard’s assistant at the library. You know that, but maybe you don’t know that Dorothy was promoted over him. Unpleasant situation for a while. But Derek’s a nice young man. In fact, you probably met him yourself, at the fund-raiser last Christmas.”

  I wrote “Derek upset—lost promotion” in my notebook, then closed my eyes and tried to picture him at the fund-raising punch bowl. It was hopeless. I paid little attention to people I met at social gatherings, while Rose probably remembered what color tie he was wearing, and whether he wore a matching hanky in his outside breast pocket. I’d agreed to attend the event only because Frank had the flu and Rose wanted company. Not my idea of a fun evening.

  “Do you remember anything from when John and Yolanda were together? How long did it last?”

  “Let’s see. I’d say they dated
close to a year. Kind of a big commitment for John. Not that he’s fickle or anything.”

  “No, no.”

  “Just hasn’t met the right one.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Although he’s pretty serious about Carolyn. You know he’s taking her to Bermuda?”

  I knew Rose was pacing as she talked, a habit when she was nervous. For my part, I sat up in bed making agitated doodles on my notepad. Not hard to figure which of us burned more calories.

  “You told me. The Dalassandros hired him to be the official reporter for a charter cruise.”

  “Right. Lots of Revere people going. It’ll be quite a spread in the Journal, and maybe even the Globe will pick it up. Big responsibility for John.” I heard a pause and a coffee-sipping sound. “I think he’ll stick with Carolyn.”

  The Galiganis always spoke of their children with pride, but today Rose sounded more like a confused character witness in a murder trial. To escape the sadness I felt, I’d scribbled a list of questions while she talked, some more sensitive than others. I was running out of nontouchy ones.

  “Why did Yolanda call it off with John?”

  I’d mumbled the question, half to myself, unaware that it would thunder across the phone line and strike at Rose’s heart.

  “What?” Rose’s voice was sharp, and up a notch or two. “Who told you she called it off? It was John’s idea. As I’ve been telling you, he doesn’t get into long-term relationships.” She sounded exasperated that her best friend didn’t get it.

  Her response, defensive and contradicting what I already knew about who had ended the relationship, provoked more frantic doodling. I made huge, wide Xs as if I could obliterate the last thirty seconds of conversation. I should have learned my lesson in California with Elaine Cody, when I investigated a case involving her boyfriend’s teenage son. I thought of lettering a sign for myself. NEVER INTERVIEW YOUR CLOSE FRIENDS.

  I also realized I was unequipped from a legal standpoint. What was the protocol? Could I tell her about the letters I’d seen in the police file—John’s angry words when Yolanda dumped him? Was I even supposed to know about the correspondence? Was I Rose’s friend or an investigator on her son’s behalf? I wished there were such a thing as an Amateur Sleuth Handbook, or better yet, that Matt were around.