Carbon Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

  Matt pulled at the neck of his gown. “Silly, huh?” he said.

  “You look fine, really. How do you feel?”

  What I meant was—What happened to you? Are you going to live? Please do not leave me. I felt as though my entire Texas dinner was at the edge of my throat, the taste of chili powder and bell peppers overwhelming my senses.

  “I’m not ready to run the Boston Marathon. But when was I ever?”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “A confluence of medications. Nice term, isn’t it? Apparently the two medicines I’ve been taking are incompatible, and I had a reaction.”

  A reaction. Good. Not an attack or a stroke, both of which had a finality to them. Reactions were temporary, fixable, like a harmless rash or an upset stomach. Or at least I hoped so. I held that thought as the door opened and a young woman with a dark ponytail and a clipboard entered—a candy-striper?

  “I’m Dr. Rosen,” she said. “How are we doing here?” She looked and sounded too much like a cheerleader to suit me, but I realized that professionals seemed younger and younger to me as my sixth decade was coming to an end. MC was a skilled chemist, I reminded myself, and probably no older than this woman.

  “We’re doing fine,” Matt said.

  Young Dr. Rosen looked at me. “Are you his wife?”

  “This is Gloria Lamerino,” Matt said quickly, introducing me politely even as he seemed to struggle for breath. “She’s my fiancée.”

  This night was full of surprises. It had begun with bute—I hardly remembered why the word mattered—and now I was pseudo-betrothed to a man in a hospital johnny.

  “Well, if it’s all the same to you, and even if it isn’t …” Dr. Rosen laughed. Perhaps lightheartedness was a new technique taught in medical school these days. “We’re going to keep you at least overnight. You can stay another five minutes, Ms. Marino, then lights out.”

  Marino, close enough for someone with a name as simple as Rosen. Ordinarily, I’d be tempted to call her Dr. Rose, but not tonight. I followed her to the door and asked if I could talk to her privately in the hallway. She looked at her watch and nodded.

  I went back to Matt’s bed and took his hand, ready to utter a soothing good night.

  He was asleep.

  All I was able to learn in my sixty-second consultation with the very busy Dr. Rosen was that Matt’s hormone treatment and the antinausea medicine he’d been given were incompatible, or that he’d had an allergic reaction to one of them.

  Dr. Rosen flipped through Matt’s folder, the way I’d seen Matt manipulate the pages of a felon’s record, dozens of times. “Hmm, it’s pretty big, isn’t it?” she said, clicking her tongue against her teeth.

  Not what I wanted to hear, tongue-clicking from a doctor. “What’s pretty big?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, the, uh, tumor. It’s a good size.”

  “Isn’t small a good size for a tumor?” Here I was, alienating one of Matt’s doctors with my smart mouth. “I’m nervous,” I told her.

  She put her hand on mine, gave me her bedside smile. “I’m sure his doctor has everything under control. Now, you go home and get some rest. I assure you, he’s not going to wake up very soon.” She turned from me and walked away briskly, her ponytail waving like a horse’s tail. So that’s where the name comes from, I thought.

  The Galiganis had stood discreetly back while I’d been with Dr. Rosen. My friends seemed very far away, down a long green corridor with side hallways shooting off, and color-coded footprints to take Hansel and Gretel to X-ray, to admissions, to surgery.

  Rose came up to me and gave me her best hug. “Is everything okay? What are they saying?”

  I told her about the “pretty big, isn’t it” remark. “Why didn’t Matt tell me the tumor was big?” I asked her, as if she’d have an idea that would put my mind at ease.

  “Probably it’s just big to her,” Rose said, tilting her head in the direction Dr. Rosen had gone.

  “What if something else is going on and it’s worse than we thought?”

  Rose shook her head, hooked her arm in mine as we walked to her car. “How old is she? Is she even twenty? This may be her first tumor. Like Frank with his first client. Shall I tell you about that?”

  I smiled and squeezed Rose’s arm. She was just what I needed but I shook my head no on the client story. Rose either didn’t notice, or decided I should hear it then and there.

  “Well, you know, when a client’s brought into the prep room from the hospital or wherever, it’s usually on a stretcher. You position the stretcher next to the embalming table and slide the body over.” Rose removed her arm from mine to demonstrate a sliding motion. “Many times the body will give out a gasp, like it’s moaning.”

  I gave out a gasp myself. “Rose …” I wanted to tell her Frank had told this story many times, but my voice has always been weaker than hers, and she was already into the sound-effects part.

  “It sounds like moooooooan. This is only air being expelled out of the lungs because of the movement, but when Frank heard it the first time, it was night and he was alone in the Sasso Brothers prep room where he worked as an intern, and he thought the person was still alive. He nearly dropped the client. Of course now he loves to be with a rookie when it happens, to see the reaction.”

  “Thanks, Rose. I feel so much better now.”

  At midnight I had Fernwood Avenue all to myself. The street was slick from a brief shower while I’d been in the hospital; the streetlights picked up the fine mist still in the air. I’d declined all of Rose’s offers—to drive me straight home and leave my car in their driveway, to come and stay with me, to have me sleep overnight at their house.

  “I need to be near the phone,” I’d said. “Remember that was my condition for agreeing to leave the hospital.” I’d assured her I’d be fine and promised to let her know if I heard anything.

  Now as I drove down the deserted street, I wished I’d said yes to one of the Galiganis’ suggestions. The dark brown, shingle house seemed enormous as I approached, too big for one person. Darkness surrounded it, though I could have sworn we’d left the porch light on. In fact, I knew I’d flicked the switch just before leaving for dinner. A burned-out bulb, I thought. One more household chore.

  I slowed down in front of the house, preparing to make the turn into the driveway, which was on the left side. A movement caught my eye, a shadowy form that seemed to hurl itself over the porch railing and into the bushes. A rush of fear came over me and I shivered in spite of the warm interior of the Caddie.

  I tried to talk myself into a rational state. It was probably Mr. Dorlando’s cat, a frequent visitor to our property. There was no need to feel uneasy, just because I’d be alone all night—I’d lived without a roommate of any kind nearly all my adult life. But I had quickly accustomed myself to cohabitation. I realized I’d never entered the Fernwood Avenue house this late without Matt’s being there. No wonder I’d imagined an eerie visitor at our front door.

  I pulled in and pressed the button to close the garage door immediately behind me, glad that an automatic system had been among our recent upgrades. From the driver’s seat, doors still locked, I peered into every garage corner I could see and listened for sounds. Finally, I got out of my car and entered the house through the kitchen door. Unlike my mortuary apartment, my new home did not have an alarm system. I was on my own.

  I switched on the light and blinked until my pupils adjusted. The espresso maker came into focus, the toaster, the small ceramic kettle Elaine had sent from a pottery shop in Berkeley. Everything looked normal, the way we’d left it only six or seven hours ago. I stood in place, scanning the room, my keys at the ready for a quick getaway. Two mugs on the drain board, pot holders on the counter, a clean saucepan on the back burner. Nothing out of place. I could move to the next room.

  RRRRRRRing!

  I dropped my keys. It’s only the phone. I was utterly annoyed with myself for reacting like a scared child. In the tim
e it took to put the receiver to my ear, I was able to imagine a too-solemn voice on the other end, a doctor summoning me back to Matt’s bedside.

  “Aunt G? Oh, good. I knew you couldn’t be sleeping already.” MC’s voice. I took a breath.

  “No, no, I just got in.” This is about bute, I thought. MC and I can finally talk about the emerging scoop on bute. I could get her to read Alex Simpson’s email to me over the phone, or better yet, forward it to me.

  “It’s awful, Aunt G. I got home and there was a note on my door.” I waited, unable for a moment to remember the name of the person who’d harassed both of us. “From Wayne Gallen.”

  “I thought he’d be halfway to Houston by now.”

  “No such luck.”

  MC read the note she’d found on her door: NO POLICE ORDERS WILL PROTECT YOU. IF IT WEREN’T FOR ME YOU’D ALREADY BE DEAD.

  I shivered, silently, I hoped, so that MC wouldn’t be even more upset. “How did he get far enough to put something on your front door?”

  “Martha, Mom’s assistant—well, of course, you’d know her.” MC uttered a frustrated sound, like a breath that lost its way from her throat. “Martha stayed late today, and he probably sweet-talked her into letting him go up for a minute. The note was in a regular, long, business-size envelope, so she wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Or he might have gotten her to put it there. I don’t know. I just know he’s freaking me out.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No. I’m not sure what good it would do, unless I could talk to Matt. Wayne didn’t even sign it, so how could I prove he violated the order?”

  “Well, Martha will remember a red handlebar mustache.”

  “True. But now I’m afraid to leave the house. First, he might be out there; and second, maybe he’s right that I’m in danger. Jake said something, too, about something funny going on.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Jake has a hunch something illegal is going on and he’s doing a little ‘investigating,’ he called it. Also, he’s had the feeling someone’s been following him. Sound familiar?”

  “It does. MC, I think we need to tackle bute.” I told her about the Dr. Schofield link. I now had two equestrians, an animal medication, and a veterinarian. Out of my field, with buckyballs far behind, but still I felt a rush that always accompanied making a connection, however tenuous. “Bute might be the key. Can you forward the email to me?”

  “Done. I sent it as soon as I got in.”

  “I’ll read it, and call you right back.”

  Except I had one more thing to do before going to my computer.

  I left the kitchen light on, but turned on no others as I made my way to the front door. I crossed the carpeted dining room where I took my shoes off, then walked barefoot on the hardwood and tiled entryway. I wished I’d turned on music or news to act as white noise over the normal creaks and groans of an old building. I felt my every step generated a seismic wave inside and outside the house.

  As I thought, the porch light switch, an old-fashioned up and down single-throw variety, was in the up position, indicating that I had indeed turned it on before leaving for dinner.

  Two tiny decorative strips of etched glass were embedded vertically in the oak door, so I should have been able to see the edge at least of a note tacked anywhere on it. I stood close to the glass and ran my eyes up and down both strips. Nothing. Unless the note was less than five inches wide, the width of the opaque part of the door. But MC’s note was in a size-ten envelope and there was no reason to think mine would be different.

  I moved through various angles, looking past the decorative trim, catching the bushes, the tree near the curb, the edge of Mr. Dorlando’s lawn. Nothing threatening or even interesting.

  I was about to turn away when a patch of moonlight seeped through a gap in the rain clouds and reflected off a piece of glass on the floor of the porch. Many pieces of glass. The lightbulb, in shreds on the porch.

  Next to the largest piece was a rock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I jumped back from the door, as if the frosty surface of the lightbulb might defy entropy, gather itself together, and attack me. I told myself it wasn’t out of the question that an unruly adolescent had decided to terrorize Fernwood Avenue by throwing rocks at selected porch lights. I wasn’t about to test the theory, however; or do anything else that required leaving the house.

  My second, more likely theory was that Wayne Gallen, upset by the PFA, had decided to intimidate Matt and me, perhaps to lurk in the darkness he’d created by smashing our porch light. It was possible that composing one note to MC had taken all the creative energy he had for the evening. This juvenile, mental scoffing at Wayne Gallen seemed to help make him less fearful to me, and got my pulse rate back to normal.

  I stayed at the door a few minutes longer, uncomfortable with my stocking feet on the cold tile. I gave the already tight dead bolt an extra twist and listened for out-of-the-ordinary movement; I heard none and eventually put my shoes back on and went up to my office.

  At my computer, I clicked on the Alex Simpson email MC had forwarded to me, and read carefully.

  There’s good news and bad news. Our contact sees no problem delivering the package, but one unfortunate outcome—the bute that’s not bute—might bring trouble.

  Was it as simple as Alex Simpson giving show horses a dose of bute before a competition? Illegal, according to Jake Powers, but was it an FDA matter? I made a note to ask Matt about the mission and jurisdiction of the FDA. Matt, who seemed very far away at the moment, but would soon be home and we’d work cases together as usual, for a long time. Wasn’t there a philosophy that said positive thinking brings about the reality?

  I got out my case folder, now labeled MARTIN/FORMAN, for the two murdered Texans. I doodled around the star I’d drawn, the one that had led me to Lorna Frederick. Suppose the FDA, or whichever regulating body cared, got wind of a bute coalition, with Alex and Lorna working together, drugging show horses before competitions? They’d need a vet, at least to obtain the bute, if not to administer it, and Dr. Schofield was the one. What part they played in the research project, I didn’t know—a loose end I’d have to work on.

  Nina would have taken MC’s class to get close to Alex, then might have come to Revere to track down Lorna. But was this scam worth the risk Alex and Lorna would be taking?

  Maybe MC had a better idea.

  “Not really,” she said when I got her on the phone. “That’s all I came up with, too.”

  “Is Alex Simpson also an equestrian?”

  “Not as far as I know, and I think I would. The guy doesn’t miss an opportunity to brag, if you know what I mean.”

  “So his bute reference might be something entirely different.”

  “It could be some shorthand for a completely unrelated compound.”

  “Lorna gave us the impression that there isn’t a lot of money in equestrian sport, nothing worth killing people over. Is that your understanding?”

  “Uh-huh. Jumpers—that’s what show jumping horses are called—can be very expensive, and some of the bigger competitions have pretty hefty prize money, but not in the league of racing horses, for example. I can ask Jake.”

  “Is he there?”

  MC laughed. “Smooth move, Aunt G. No, he’s not here. And if you want to know if we’re getting back together, I don’t know. We’re taking it slow.”

  “If you ever want to talk …”

  “I know. And maybe I will. Soon. Right now though, sleep is sounding really good. I’m glad I have a burglar alarm.”

  I didn’t need the reminder of my vulnerable state. When Matt returned, I told myself, we would revisit the need for increased security in our house. Whether or not it had anything to do with Alfred Hitchcock, I knew I could not take a shower. I felt defenseless enough fully clothed. I pulled my white flannel robe over my knit pantsuit, already wrinkled from sitting around the hospital waiting room, and settled on t
he overstuffed chair in our bedroom.

  The last time I looked at the clock it was three in the morning.

  I woke at six, stiff from the chair/footstool combination that had served as a bed. Psycho or not, my need for a shower and a change of clothes won out. I carried my cell phone into the bathroom and got ready for the day.

  I knew I should have called Jean last night, but it was very late when I got home. And now it was very early. But Jean was a morning person, and I couldn’t put it off any longer. If I’m lucky, I thought, she’ll be jogging and I can leave a message on her answering machine.

  I wasn’t lucky.

  “What’s wrong?” Jean asked as soon as she heard my voice. A normal reaction, I told myself, when a call comes before seven on a Saturday morning.

  “Matt had a slight reaction to his medication. They kept him at the hospital overnight for observation. Nothing serious; I just thought you’d want to know.” I had no idea why I downplayed Matt’s condition. Certainly not because I was at ease with it.

  “I’ll be there by noon,” she said, and hung up.

  I glared at the receiver, as if it had rudely broken its electromagnetic connection to Cape Cod on its own. “You’re welcome,” I said.

  Matt looked much better. I’d stopped at the nurses’ station first, and learned that he’d had a good night. If he promised to rest for a couple of days I’d be able to take him home after the doctor checked in.

  I took a seat next to his bed, happy to see the diagnostics had been turned off.

  “I miss our tutorials,” Matt said. “Tell me something technical.”

  “This is because we can’t leave here until Dr. Rosen comes by, isn’t it?”

  He gave me a sheepish smile and looked up at the clock, next to the tiny television set hanging from the ceiling. “We have at least a half hour.”

  “Okay, then,” I said, rubbing my hands together and assuming a professorial voice. “Today we’ll discuss tachyons.” For relief from all the chemistry and pharmacology I’d had to study lately, I brought up a pure physics factoid. “They’re small particles that have a strange property—when they lose energy, they gain speed. And, the slowest a tachyon can go is the speed of light. Also, I think ‘tachy’ means ‘fast’ in some ancient language. How am I doing?”