Carbon Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

  “She needs a little time, I guess,” I’d said.

  “Oh, for sure. And, oh, I’m real sorry about Detective Gennaro’s …” Martha leaned closer to me. “ … illness.” A non-cancerspeaker, I thought. “But he’s lucky to have you to cover for him on these terrible Rumney Marsh cases.”

  I smiled a thank-you, having long ago stopped correcting Martha’s notion that I was a “real policewoman,” as she’d introduced me to her second-grader twin boys.

  “I’m on it,” I’d said, and climbed the last flight to MC’s door, barely ducking a spray of cedar-smelling freshener. I wondered if Martha would be so obsessive about odors if she worked in a bank or a bookstore instead of a funeral home. Yes, I decided.

  I stood on the maroon-carpeted landing, my eyes passing fondly over the familiar setting—the polished mahogany railing and baseboard, the subtle swirling pattern in the wallpaper, the pair of shell-shaped sconces that gave out a pinkish light. I knocked again, and called MC’s name. I chose not to use the irritating door buzzer, in case she was asleep. But if she was awake anywhere in the apartment, she’d hear me and she’d know I’d keep at it.

  I put my eye to the peephole—I remembered the unhappy circumstances that had precipitated its installation—and made a silly face.

  I heard the dead bolt click. It worked.

  MC fell against me and sobbed. I patted her back and made soothing sounds. Nothing articulate seemed appropriate until MC was ready. Her own words were scattered, but I understood that she felt guilty.

  “I should have told Jake about how crazy Wayne’s been lately. What if I could have prevented Wayne from killing him?”

  “We don’t know for sure that Wayne killed him, MC, and we can’t be sure it would have made a difference anyway, whether you’d said something or not.”

  MC was in dark blue sweats that looked like she’d slept—or not slept—in them. We sat on a small couch Rose had bought for the apartment, in purples and blues that were of a different color family than my blue rockers. I suspected the old rockers would become a charitable donation the next time MC took a close look at her décor.

  MC brought her breathing under control. “You probably haven’t heard this. The police have witnesses that say they saw Jake and Wayne fighting outside that bar by the marsh. They were threatening each other.”

  I’d gone from Dr. Schofield’s office to the mortuary, with only one quick stop at the grocery store to pick up a treat for MC. It had been about two hours since I’d checked my phone messages. It didn’t take long for me to fall behind in this case, I noted.

  “Is Wayne MIA again?”

  She nodded. “He seems to just disappear.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. You’d think he’d stand out in Revere with those filthy cowboy clothes and that mustache.”

  “Missing or not, it doesn’t make Wayne guilty.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you know anyone else Jake might have had a run-in with? Anyone from his work, or from his horse interests?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. He managed hydrocarbon conversion technology—so we’d all have enough fuel for our SUVs, you might say. He rode horses.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not like he was connected, or anything.”

  “‘Connected’? You sound like your mother.” I meant it as endearment, but my comment did nothing to help MC relax.

  Time to bring out the treat. “Why don’t I fix you our special comfort drink?”

  MC smiled. She knew what I meant. “I don’t have any—”

  “I do.”

  I dug into my oversized purse, and made a dramatic showing of a can of Ghirardelli chocolate, a San Francisco staple that had happily made its way to East Coast groceries.

  MC clapped, as if acknowledging the performance. “Remember going to that factory every year? Having humungous ice cream sundaes and planning how we’d wait until no one was looking and then vault ourselves into that big vat of melted chocolate?”

  “I certainly do. And there’s more.” I pulled out a quart of milk. “The real thing. I figured you’d have only low-fat.”

  She smiled and nodded. “I drink two percent. But not today. Let’s go for the butterfat.”

  The hot drink did wonders to calm MC, making me question the myth that there was caffeine in chocolate. We sipped quietly for a few minutes, but the parade of expressions on MC’s face told me we were far from finished with our conversation.

  “Aunt G, do you ever think you just don’t know how to live?”

  “All the time.”

  “No, really. I meant like you don’t even know the basics of living? Like maybe all these years you’ve been brushing your teeth the wrong way … and that every single choice you’ve ever made was the wrong one.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “We all feel that way sometimes, MC, especially when something as horrible as this happens.”

  “I have no idea right now how I’m supposed to feel, where I want to live, what I want to do with my life. No idea at all.”

  “Probably because you have an overabundance of choices. You can do anything. You’re intelligent, healthy; nothing’s closed to you, except you’re perilously close to the cutoff age for military service.” I welcomed MC’s smile at that observation. “Too many choices can be as bad as none. No wonder you have a headache.”

  Her eyes were red and puffy and her hair not as fresh and bouncy as it should have been, but I thought I saw signs of recovery in her smooth breathing and relaxed shoulders.

  “Have you always known what you want, Aunt G?”

  I laughed. “You mean you haven’t noticed my erratic migration patterns? Anyway, times are different now. When I got out of college, the options were few. Women became either teachers or nurses, until they got married. I didn’t really want to do that—be a housewife—mostly because my own mother didn’t make that life look very good. But I was ready to follow the rules, until … well, you know about Al.”

  MC nodded and gave me a wide-eyed look. “How could I have forgotten? How hard that must have been. Here I am whining about Jake, and you lost your fiancé right before your wedding.”

  I didn’t believe in that kind of comparison, but I let MC think about it, hoping it would give her perspective.

  “You probably don’t want to handle the loss the way I did,” I said. “Move away, hole up, in many ways avoid the problem.”

  “If Al hadn’t died, you might have stayed in Revere all your life, had three kids, like my mother. I’m sure she’s never looked back.”

  Poor MC, I thought, if she’s trying to reproduce her parents’ relationship. I couldn’t contradict her notion that Rose and Frank Galigani had the perfect marriage and every intention of keeping it that way.

  “And nothing would have been wrong with my remaining in Revere with a husband and three children, either. It’s not what you do, it’s whether you have the sense of contributing to life in some way … well, now I really am going off, aren’t I?”

  “I hear you though. It’s just that I did so many things wrong with Jake. I let him get away with so much when we lived together. Then, just as we were finally starting to get it right … he’s gone.”

  I didn’t want to tell her what I’d learned from Matt about DVR—domestic violence recidivism. An abuser seldom gets converted, he’d told me. If he stops, it’s usually because he’s gotten beat up himself and is no longer strong enough to batter someone else.

  I noticed for the first time a photo of Jake Powers in a frame on MC’s end table. He was astride a spotted gray horse, the deceased Spartan Q, I presumed. Jake sat erect, a high white collar that could have been a scarf or a turtleneck jersey keeping his head straight and his neck rigid. I wondered if Jake had as many horse-related tchotchkes as Lorna, or if collecting symbols of your interest—like my large assortment of science-related pins—was a female thing. I fingered the pin I wore today, a square representation of an integrated circuit, bought from an
on-line computer club.

  MC had followed my gaze to Jake’s photo. She put down her mug and picked up the photo, holding it in both hands. “I found this in a box I hadn’t unpacked. Jake was so happy when he was riding. And competing—he loved winning. He loved Spartan Q, his jumper, and Werner, his dressage horse. He gave them only the best treats, home-baked cookies he bought from a friend who had a side business. No store-bought generics for Spartan Q or Werner.”

  MC talked more about Jake, and I let her show me a video of dressage. I had no interest in a competition with prancing horses, but at that moment I would even have watched slapstick comedy, which I hated, if MC wanted me to.

  MC scanned through to a prize-winning performance by Jake and the dark brown Werner. She narrated the moves for me. Canter pirouette right, extended trot, zigzag half-pass, and a gentle tap dance called a piaffe. Or it might have been pilaf.

  Knowing I’d never be tested on the information, I concentrated instead on the peripherals. The ring, or corral, or whatever the fenced-in area was called, was draped in the banners of advertising sponsors. I checked off the obvious ads for saddles, insurance, riding apparel. But a beef restaurant? Would these equestrians who treated their horses like crown princes really have dinner later at the expense of a cow?

  I also tried to apply a bit of basic physics, calculating the tension in each very skinny leg of a horse weighing about fifteen hundred pounds.

  MC’s video camera lingered on the score chart, presumably to show Jake Powers and Werner in first place, with 76.525 percent.

  MC laughed and held up her hand. “Don’t say it, Aunt G. I know what you’re thinking.”

  But I had to say it. “Three significant decimal places! It looks like a freshman lab report.”

  MC stopped the tape. “Okay, that’s it. Thanks for being a good sport, Aunt G. I feel a lot better.”

  “I know it doesn’t seem so now, MC, but you’ll meet someone you won’t have to work so hard with.”

  MC shook her head, drained her hot chocolate. “I don’t think so. I feel like I’ve hit the wall here. I’m getting too old for the dating scene.”

  “I managed to skip that scene,” I said. I spread my arms wide, as if to encompass an absent Matt Gennaro. “And look at me.”

  “I hope I do as well,” MC said.

  I did, too.

  One other concern had been crowding my thoughts, and as much as I didn’t want to worry MC, I decided I couldn’t let it go.

  “Have you thought about what Jake’s murder means to you, MC? I mean in terms of your own safety?”

  She nodded. “I sure have. When Nina Martin was murdered, I thought maybe she was the one they, whoever they are, were after all along. Now, Jake. Either it’s over, or …”

  I was torn—should I try to put her mind at ease or keep her alert? Should I protect her from any notions of danger? MC was an adult, I reminded myself, not the little girl I waited for at a gate in San Francisco International Airport every summer.

  “It’s probably over,” I said. “But please be careful until we have Jake’s murderer.”

  “You’re still working on it, right?”

  “I certainly am. Just be careful, okay?”

  MC gave me a hug. “You already said that. I love you, Aunt G.”

  “And I love you.” And woe to him who hurts you, I thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I turned onto Fernwood Avenue from Broadway, passing the former site of a favorite high schoolers’ pizza parlor, now a professional building. I could almost hear the parade of Italian-American crooners that we all loved, coming from the small jukeboxes attached to the wall of each red booth. Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Julius La Rosa, and Jerry Vale, nee Vitaliano.

  We’d walk down School Street, picking up classmates along the way, singing “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,” “There’s No Tomorrow,” “Love and Marriage,” “Pretend You Don’t See Her,” as if we understood the words. As if any of our hearts had been broken, or our dreams crushed, as they would be later in life—when Connie would lose a twelve-year-old daughter in a diving accident and Olga’s husband would be fired from his job and commit suicide.

  I wondered what songs Alysse and Petey, Jean’s children, listened to and what their dreams were.

  Not that anyone has a choice, but I was content with my age, with not being part of the dating scene that MC loathed to re-enter, not needing to worry about career advancement or any other issues of the young.

  I know Matt agreed. One time his nephew Petey, the philosophical one in the Mottolo family, asked Matt if he wished he were still a kid.

  “Not if I’d have to see the Ice Capades again,” Matt had replied.

  As if to confirm my feelings of domestic satisfaction, I opened the door to the aroma of steaming New England clam chowder.

  “I thought I was supposed to cook for you?” I said, ninety-nine percent sure all he’d done was heat up a pot that Rose had brought over.

  He smiled and wiped his brow. “The hardest part was traipsing the beach in my hip boots digging for the clams.”

  The same Matt. No ill effects from the radiation treatment he’d had that morning. So far, so good.

  “Seems I missed a lot,” I said. “Witnesses saw Wayne Gallen and Jake Powers in a bar fight, threatening each other?”

  Matt nodded. “I don’t suppose you’d want to look at the report?”

  I smiled, shed my jacket, and walked to the coffee table where Matt’s papers were spread out. I picked out the ones headed POLICE REPORT—STATEMENT. I’d seen a number of these reports in my consultant work, but I’d never before paid attention to the check-off squares at the upper left where there were options for the type of report: CRIM., INCID., COMPL., INSUR., DOMES. VIOL.

  I wondered if MC would feel better or worse if she knew that domestic violence was so common that it had its own line on police forms. It made me feel worse.

  Statements taken at the scene weren’t as easy to read as formally typed transcripts, but I made my way through the handwriting of Officer Benjamin R. Di Palma.

  The narrative told the story of two white males, later identified as Jake Powers and Wayne Gallen, both similar build, one dark coloring, the other redhead with a “barbershop mustache,” the witness had called it. They’d started to argue in the One A Bar, I read, then had taken it outside to the parking lot, where many patrons formed a ring around them and watched. Two witnesses claimed there were more verbal hits than physical; a third said the opposite.

  I sighed. “Do men still really do this? It’s not just in old western movies?”

  “You should pay more attention to the police blotter,” Matt said. “Di Palma did a good job on this. He located three different witnesses who’d talk to him. Very unusual in these circumstances. Guys don’t want to be known as spectators for this kind of thing. In fact, most of them don’t even want to be known as ever having been in the One A.”

  Had I ever been in a place I wouldn’t want to be seen in? I asked myself. Maybe an ice cream shop alone, feeding my habit with a hot fudge sundae.

  I looked at accounts of the words flung about along with the fists of the two men.

  All three witnesses reported either, “I’ll kill you,” from Wayne, and “Not if I kill you first,” from Jake, or vice versa.

  I read a few of the alleged quotes from the brawl aloud, though Matt had already seen the narrative.

  “‘You’re breaking the law.’”

  “‘I’ll break your jaw.’”

  “Do you think that was deliberate poetry?” I asked him, not waiting for an answer.

  “‘I can’t believe you thought you’d get away with it.’”

  “‘You’ll keep your trap shut if you know what’s good for you.’”

  “‘Not in a million years. You are going down, friend, you are going down.’”

  “‘I don’t know what you’re so upset over.’”

  “‘She was mine.’”


  “‘She was mine’?” I repeated, incredulous. “As if he owned MC? Whichever one said this—”

  “Keep reading,” Matt said.

  “‘Damn your Suzy Q.’”

  “‘You’ll pay for what you did to her.’”

  “‘Suzy Q. Suzy Q.’” [Witnesses’ interpretation: taunting.]

  “Doesn’t sound like jealous guys fighting over a girl, does it?” Matt said.

  “No, it doesn’t. And Suzy Q. Do you suppose that could be—” I asked.

  “Spartan Q is my thought. They’re fighting over a horse.”

  “A dead horse.”

  “So this brings Gallen back into the case.”

  “And therefore maybe Alex Simpson.”

  Matt sat down, and I served the chowder and sourdough bread, another San Francisco treat that had also made it to Revere’s grocers.

  “This gets weirder and weirder,” he said.

  I thought of the elements of the case. Three dead people and two dead horses. Buckyball scientists, vets, and equestrians. Houston, Texas, and Revere, Massachusetts.

  “I agree. The case is weird,” I said. “And I haven’t even told you yet about my day.”

  Matt had the same reaction I did to Dr. Schofield’s confession.

  “Not enough to worry about,” he said.

  “Unless you’re the funding sponsor. Not that I’m going to report him.” I waved my hand. “It’s his conscience.”

  Matt gave me a sympathetic look. “I know it’s tough on you when a scientist doesn’t live up to … what would this be, the Hippocratic oath, maybe?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Were veterinarians also regular MDs who took an oath? At the moment I didn’t care at all.

  Well, maybe I cared a little. Once Matt and I finished dinner, I reached for my briefcase and retrieved the printout with the list I’d gotten from Dr. Schofield’s secretary—horses with microchip implants. I might have been influenced to remain in the western/ horse-related mood by the words to Perry Como’s “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” coming from an “old crooners” CD in the background, my choice for the evening.