Thinking about Jim's moral high ground and daily mass, I gave him no stars, for "unlikely suspect."
Both Connie and Jim were among the people in our occasional dinner group. Each month we'd explore a different San Francisco fish emporium or a new ethnic menu, which Berkeley offered on almost every street corner—Thai, Indian, Persian, plus cuisine from places that had been countries for only a month or so.
Not that anyone was asking, but I decided I could rule out the six scientists who were permanent residents of California, once I verified that they were still on the West Coast.
Brilliant powers of deduction. If this was the best I could do, I'd better go to bed.
~~~~
Just after I turned out my reading lamp, I heard the now familiar noise of the garage door opening, two floors below my bedroom. I stretched across the bed to look out the window. Through my parted white linen drapes, I saw a Galigani hearse leave the driveway and pull out onto Tuttle Street. The long black vehicle moved slowly across the gray shadows cast by the streetlight, and for a moment I thought I'd tuned in to a classic movie channel.
At the same time, my phone rang and Rose's voice came over the line.
"I don't want to freak you out," she said. "But it turns out Eric Bensen is going to be waked at our place—your place."
I tried not to register too much dismay, although this would be a first for me. Usually I didn't know the corpses laid out in my building.
"Isn't Cavallo's closer to where the Bensens live?" I asked, trying not to sound like I was rooting for the competition.
"Not at all. They're way over by the Chelsea overpass, remember? And anyway, Eric's grandmother lives in the senior apartments across from Saint Anthony's, right down the street, so they signed on with us. Does that bother you?"
"No, it's just different," I said, still looking out the window. I was aware of the new housing for the elderly that Rose was talking about. Almost nightly I heard ambulances and police vehicles screaming past my apartment on their way to the facility.
"One of the hearses will be leaving soon to pick up the body," Rose said, not having the advantage I did of seeing the hearse already turning the corner onto Revere Street. "It didn't take them very long at the morgue. I guess the cause of death was cut and dried. Frank's going to work on Eric himself and he'll be ready at the end of the week, probably Friday evening."
I'd learned a lot more than I cared to about how Frank "worked on" his clients. When I first moved in, Frank gave me a tour, taking me down in the rickety old elevator used to transport the bodies between the floors. Most unforgettable was the prep room where Frank and his staff, headed by his older son Robert, did the embalming. The shiny facility, looking as clean as an operating room, which in a sense it was, was at the back of the building, in the basement. Often when I was home during the day I'd hear the sound of the pumping machines. Thanks to Frank's excellent presentation, I could envision pint after pint of human blood being drained from a body and replaced with embalming fluids.
The washer and dryer were also in the basement, and so far I had managed to arrange my laundry chores so they coincided with a lack of activity in the prep room.
I dropped the curtain as the taillights of the Galigani hearse disappeared around a bend in the street.
"Thanks for telling me," I said to Rose. "By the way, you didn't seem surprised to find Peter here tonight."
"He told me not to warn you. I knew he was going to drop in on you unannounced, but not necessarily tonight. I hope I didn't spoil a twosome."
"I'm very glad you did."
"I gathered as much," Rose said, with a laugh. "Thanks to your bickering I ate more than I needed to."
"Really? I didn't."
"Have you heard from your detective?"
"Yes. I'm going to have lunch with him tomorrow."
I expected something like "aha" from Rose, and wasn't disappointed.
"Yeah," she said. "Let's invite him—"
"No, no," I said, interrupting her. "It's just business."
"We'll see," Rose said as we hung up, making me regret telling her about lunch. Ever since I'd been back, Rose's pace in the matter of my personal life had more acceleration than I was comfortable with. She'd dragged out every unattached man over fifty that she knew in an attempt to make me part of a pair. She was also after me to "do something about my appearance," telling me she saw more make-up on the nuns who taught catechism at Saint Anthony's.
"And just a little rinse to soften the gray," she'd say to me, reaching for the wiry curls around my face.
"I love you dearly," I'd tell her. "I envy your figure and your family, but not your auburn highlights."
I settled back in my bed, feeling very fortunate to have a friend to talk to that way. As I drifted off to sleep, three questions paraded in front of my brain. Was Eric Bensen's body going to be worked on that night in the prep room downstairs? Should his wife, Janice, be on my suspect list? What should I wear to lunch with Matt Gennaro?
I couldn't quite remember if we were still at the Doctor-Sergeant stage or if we'd gotten as far as Gloria and Matt.
CHAPTER 4
I woke up to Columbus Day, October 12.
Besides the changing seasons, another thing about the East Coast that I'd missed were holidays like Patriot's Day on April 19 and Bunker Hill Day on June 17. Berkeley parking meters called October 12 'Indigenous Peoples Day,' and California residents in general emphasized a different set of holidays, like a Mexican battle victory, Cinco de Mayo on May 5.
The most curious to me was Admission Day on September 9.
"Is that some holiday for school registration?" I'd asked when I was new on the West Coast. My greatly amused friends informed me that the holiday was to commemorate California's admission into the union.
To recover some dignity, I reminded them that I was from Massachusetts, one of the states that was on the admissions committee.
"You ought to thank me," I'd said, and we called a truce.
I looked at my wardrobe choices. I had clothes in several sizes, some for my thinner times and others, more often used, for my fuller figure phases. My resolution to get to the smaller sizes by fall hadn't worked out so I put on my mid-range dark gray suit and a white cotton shell. I added a necklace of hematite beads and pinned a small replica of crossed Italian and American flags to my lapel.
Just as when I was a kid, there'd be a parade later in the day starting at the base of the statue of Christopher Columbus outside Saint Anthony's Church and flowing down Revere Street to the beach. I remembered years long past, watching my father march with the Sons of Italy, carrying the huge bass drum around his strong dark neck. I wondered if they kept the custom of ending up back at the church with a special mass at its main altar. No wonder we used to think Columbus was one of the saints.
I checked the clock. For two reasons, I wanted to arrive early at Russo's Cafe where I was to meet Matt. The first reason was tied to another inherited trait from my mother. Josephine would have the table set for dinner—she called it supper—by four in the afternoon. If you were ten minutes late, she'd be furious. She'd have been waiting two hours and ten minutes by then, and blamed you for every second.
"Why did you even bother to come?" she'd ask, blowing smoke through her nose and breathing heavily under her flowered cotton apron.
I was a little better than that since my lifestyle didn't permit all-day meal preparation, but still, I had a reputation among my friends for always being way ahead of schedule.
The second reason I wanted to be early is that I was resisting the image of Matt and the rest of Russo's lunch crowd seeing me pull up in my sleek Cadillac. I didn't want people to think I was running for office. I began to doubt the wisdom of my deal with the Galiganis.
"You'll get used to it," Rose had told me. Small comfort, since it came from someone who thought of six cylinder cars as toys for teenagers.
Russo's Cafe, an up-scale sandwich and coffee shop a block from th
e post office on Broadway, was at the site of the old five-and-ten where I bought all my Christmas presents until I was in college. The new owners had taken advantage of the large room and high ornate ceiling to create the look of old Rome, with plaster columns and murals of chariots and ancient fountains. Several armless white sculpted figures were scattered among the small round tables, as if waiting to be fed.
Although I'd arrived early enough to park in one of the few spots around the back of the restaurant, Matt was already at a table with an espresso and a stack of papers and manila folders in front of him. As I approached, I could tell he didn't know whether or not to stand. Feminism confuses a lot of men, I remembered. He rose halfway and rearranged the table so that the piles of paper were out of the way of the second place setting. Smooth move.
I guessed that Matt also had two wardrobes. He was a little thick around the middle, but not fat, just enough to give him a solid appearance. His hair had about the same amount of gray as mine, still showing up dark in photographs, but mostly gray as it fell on the hairdresser's cloth. His long nose, with its straight downward slope, was also like mine and fit right in with the Mediterranean decor. As I considered the similarities in our appearances, I wondered if I was infatuated with my twin. I remembered reading a pop psychology article that said it was a sign of high self-esteem if you were attracted to people who look like you. I decided not to pursue that concept, conscious that a little psychological knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The second awkward moment after the should-I-stand-for-a-lady dilemma consisted of a round of call-me-Matt, call-me-Gloria. We eased the situation by getting to business.
"Here's the report," Matt said, his voice gravely as I had remembered. "Not much to go on, but since you know a lot of the principals, you might have some ideas."
I settled down to the six pages of single-spaced type and a sheaf of crime scene photographs while Matt excused himself. I watched him walk past the kitchen to the men's room, his dark rumpled suit receding into a row of fake Italian palms. I wondered what percent of my excitement was from seeing him again and what percent from the challenging puzzle before me. I'd long ago accepted the occupational hazard of a lifelong career in science—trying to measure everything. Even excitement.
I opened the envelope of photographs, keeping it low on my lap so as not to offend the sensibilities of those dining at tables around me. Most of the other patrons at Russo's were in business suits and career dresses and I envisioned them as tax accountants and retail clerks and at other non-bloody occupations.
I noted with relief that these crime scene photographs were a little easier to take than the ones I'd had to look at for my first case, which were of a gruesome murder in a chemistry lab. Eric Bensen had been the victim of a relatively clean murder. I found it easier to take the pools of blood around his torso, as long as all of his body parts were intact. I saw that Eric had fallen on his side, and looked almost comfortable spread out on his lab floor. The fabric of his khaki pants that was visible looked clean, and his left arm was tucked under his upper body as if he were taking a quick nap on a small red carpet.
I took a deep breath and a long drink of lemony water to counteract the queasiness that had come to my stomach in spite of the tidiness of the crime scene, and moved on to read the pages of text.
I was ready with some questions when Matt returned.
"There's nothing in this report about disks or printout around Eric's desk," I said. "His computer screen is blank and the area around him looks bare in these photographs. Would the officers have listed papers and disks if they were there?"
"Absolutely," Matt said. "Maybe he was doing something else that didn't require the computer?"
I thought about this as our waiter brought my dry cappuccino and eggplant and pepper sandwiches for both of us.
I pulled out the photograph with the best shot of Eric's workplace. His computer monitor and keyboard were surrounded by yellow sticky notes and dozens of small figures, a few of which I could identify—Batman, Spiderman, Wonderwoman, Superman. Among the other action heroes in different sizes was a small white plaster bust of Albert Einstein, similar to ones I'd seen in science museum gift shops. I could also make out a soft drink can, a framed photograph of his wife Janice, and a mug full of pens and pencils, but there was no sign of floppies or hard copy anywhere.
As I pointed to the peripheral equipment in the photograph, Matt pulled out a pair of rimless half glasses and followed my fingers with his gaze.
"This shows Eric had a complete system with his own printer and drives," I said, "so he wasn't just using a terminal connected to a mainframe. It's hard to believe all his disks and printout are stored out of sight."
"So, does that mean you think the murderer stole the computer stuff?" Matt asked. "And if so, why?"
While we ate, I told Matt my initial theory that the murderer might be a scientist who stood to lose a lot if Eric retracted the journal article with their hydrogen data.
"Then it would make sense that the killer would try to remove all evidence that there was something wrong with their work," I said. "And that evidence would most likely have been around Eric's computer."
"Wouldn't the error in the data eventually be found out anyway?" Matt asked.
Temporarily abandoning loyalty to my profession, I explained that this kind of thing happened all the time. Not murders necessarily, but borderline dishonesty. It wouldn't be the first time scientists exaggerated the potential of a new technology in order to get funding to further the research.
Although I still didn't know the exact nature of the discrepancy or error Eric had uncovered, I'd been around research science long enough to make a good guess. I told Matt that the error wasn't necessarily an incorrect number or calculation. It could be that the team had neglected to account for some particular factor in their experiment, like a magnetic effect, or a temperature dependency. In an extreme case, scientists who used complicated computer programs to do their calculations could actually fake data, by adding a line or two to their software that even another expert in the field might not be able to uncover.
"Maybe a few years later," I told Matt, "the discrepancy between promise and fulfillment would be obvious, but it could be suppressed until long after money had been granted and large facilities were built. And even then, it could be passed off as something no one could have known before."
"Hmf," was all I heard from Matt, so I continued.
Reluctantly, I gave him some other examples of this kind of incident, drawing from the history of weapons technology and nuclear energy.
Matt had been taking notes with his right hand, holding his sandwich in his left. He put down both, wiped his hands on his napkin, and shook his head, as if he'd just heard about another pop idol on drugs.
"I guess I'm still naive about what goes on in the world of science," he said. "I feel a lot more comfortable with people killing each other over insurance money or large family fortunes. I understand the motives involved in wills or domestic situations, but I'm out of my league here."
The phrase "domestic situations" got my attention and I wondered if I should I tell Matt about Janice. Not now, I decided. As bitter as Janice Bensen seemed to be about her life with Eric, I couldn't picture her standing in front of him with a gun and shooting three times. But then, I was new to this life of crime solving, so it was hard to picture anyone other than an obvious madman killing another person.
Awkward moment number three came when our waiter brought the check. I reached for my purse. Matt smiled and held up his hand like a stop signal.
"Department expense," he said.
Another smooth move. Like my late beloved Uncle Tony, Matt had a left-leaning grin and a habit of raising his thick eyebrows when he smiled. I mentally gave Matt a role in the fourth Godfather movie, which I desperately hoped was in the works. I cast him as head of security in a legitimate family pastry business.
"I wonder if you'd consider visiting the murder scene
with me," Matt asked, leaning forward to stuff his wallet in his back pocket. His jacket fell open just enough for me to see the gun holstered in a light brown leather case under his arm.
It was hard to play it cool, but I managed a simple, "I'd be happy to."
"I brought this along in case you agreed," Matt said, spreading a legal-sized packet of paper in front of me. Another charming crooked smile.
I recognized the standard consultant's contract, like the one I'd signed a few months before in Matt's office. Matt reminded me of the conditions of the contract. I wasn't an investigator in the sense that he was, so I couldn't ask suspects about alibis, for instance, or motive. But I could be present when he asked those questions, and I could ask technical questions, like how close was this research to achieving full superconductivity at room temperatures?
He also warned me, as he did the last time, not to do any personal interviews on my own.
"At this point, everyone who knew Eric Bensen and had a motive and the opportunity to kill him is a suspect," Matt said. "And we don't want you in any danger."
Matt had no reason to think I'd do any sleuthing on the side. On my last contract, I'd stuck to the rules, and done only what was required of me. Moreover, I'd never been one to take risks when it came to my body or any of its parts. I wouldn't even consent to let Rose's hairdresser have a go at getting rid of my gray hair. I was afraid she'd do just that, and I'd be bald.
"I have no plans to play detective," I said, breaking into what I hoped was delightful, flattering laughter.
But this case felt different to me from my one and only other murder case. I'd known Eric Bensen and all the more obvious suspects personally, and I wondered if I meant what I said.
The Hydrogen Murder (The Periodic Table Series) Page 3
