The Hydrogen Murder (12 page)

"Peter called to see if Frank and I wanted to join you
two at the Wonderland dance tomorrow night," Rose said.

I clenched my teeth and rubbed at a dull ache that had taken
over my face around my jaw, scowling at the now-droopy roses Peter had brought
as if they'd betrayed me. I decided not to continue the conversation with Rose
in the bent-over position I'd assumed in order to use the intercom, which was
at the back of my desk.

"Why don't you come on up," I said. "I'll
give you lunch and the short form of my feelings in that regard."

"Will do."

~~~~

I gave Rose the recent history of my interactions with
Peter, feeling as though we'd reverted to our days of whispering about boys in
the girls' room.

"I always knew Peter had more than one reason for
maintaining a friendship with me and Frank all these years," Rose said.
"Not that we didn't get along, but I knew he was using us to keep up with
what you were doing."

I let out a long sigh, as if we were fifteen, and Rose had
just told me that the kid with the most pimples in homeroom liked me and wanted
to take me to the senior prom. If we're going to do this, I thought, we might
as well go all the way.

"What do you know about Matt Gennaro?" I asked.

"Aha," Rose said. "Now we're getting
somewhere."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Come on, Gloria, it's time you grew up a little in
that area."

"I don't think I like the way this is going."

"You don't have to. Just let me take care of it."

I knew Rose was right. I did need to figure out what if
anything I was going to do about my love life. While I lived in California, I'd
had what might be called dates, mostly arranged by Elaine, but not many, and
never past the stage of a goodnight kiss. I'd been Elaine's maid of honor twice
and saw her through two divorces. Not much inspiration for trying myself, I'd
mused, conveniently ignoring the successful decades-long Galigani marriage.

By now I was flushed and pacing up and down on the four-foot
paisley runner between my entryway and living room. I faced Rose's direct
attack head on.

"Let's have lunch," I said.

I wandered into the kitchen, Rose at my heels, and pulled
out the makings of sandwiches and a mini salad bar. Rose kept at it while she
made the coffee.

"I'm not talking about a big deal," Rose said.
"Frank knows Matt. We buried his wife ten years ago. Genetic heart
disease. That's why they didn't have children. Very sad." Rose paused to
acknowledge the tragedy of a woman dying in her forties. It was the first I'd
heard about how and when Matt's wife had died. I wanted to know more but
refrained from asking follow-up questions. Rose was in enough of a hurry to get
us together. "Frank would know if he's seeing anyone at the moment,"
Rose continued. "If not, we can invite him for a simple dinner at our
house."

"And I just happen to be there?" I pulled at a
head of lettuce, tearing it apart with my bare hands. I imagined a simple meal
at Rose's, with her Spode china, fine crystal and monogrammed silverware
resting on her grandmother's lace tablecloths. Although they never commented on
my supermarket stemware, bought in packages of six in cardboard cartons with
handles, Rose and Frank didn't have it in them to entertain casually.

"We'll tell him ahead of time. People do this all the
time, Gloria."

Rose emphasized the word people. It was clear that she meant
the large group of normal, romantically active adults, of which I was not a
member.

"It'll be so obvious," I said, surprised that I
didn't just say no.

"Well, what if it is? We're all adults. He can refuse
and nothing's lost."

"Except my face and my dignity. No, I don't think
so."

I pictured myself in Matt's office the day after he told
Frank he wasn't interested in a romantic foursome. I didn't like the picture.

"I'm sorry I mentioned him," I said. "We're
working together. That's all."

"Right."

Rose sighed and picked up a paring knife with her right hand
and a cucumber with her left. She waved the cucumber in my direction.

"I know this isn't just about Al's memory," she
said. "You're smarter than that."

"I'm too old," I said, in a voice so weak I was
amazed that Rose heard me. The beige tiles of my kitchen counter seemed to turn
to a liquid, like very weak tea, blurring my vision so that I lost focus, and
Rose's voice seemed to come from far away.

"I'm going to forget you said that. I'm also going to
wait until this case is over, since you have to work with Matt. Then we'll get
serious."

I recovered my poise, such as it is, and watched as Rose
scored the skin of the cucumber, then put it on the cutting board and sliced it
at an angle until she had a neat row of identical oval pieces with ridged
edges. She didn't speak for several minutes, her jaw set, her small oval face a
study in concentration. I'd seen it before. She'd gone into her long-range
planning mode.

We called down to Frank and invited him up for lunch.

"Not a word," I said to Rose.

She put her index finger on her bright red lower lip and
shook her head. As a promise that gave me confidence, the gesture fell short.

Frank came into the room and gave us each a kiss.
"Smells good," he said. "And I think you'll be happy with how
your friend looks, Gloria." I wondered how long it had taken him to be
able to speak of food and corpses in the same breath.

 
Frank removed
his dark brown suit jacket and hung it in the hall closet with great care.
"The Bensens just arrived to view Eric and they seem satisfied."

"Are they still down there," I asked, relieved to
have the conversation on a new track, away from my social life.

"Yes," Frank said, "Eric's parents and his
wife are having some private time now. Then we'll talk about tonight's
program."

Frank's voice was like a soft hymn by a church organist. He
rolled up his starched white shirtsleeves as if he were folding an altar cloth
at Saint Anthony's, and filled his plate from the small buffet Rose and I had
laid out on my counter.

From the amount of food I'd seen Frank consume at various
meals together, it wasn't clear to me how he kept his short frame looking firm
and trim. As far as I knew the only physical activity he engaged in was golf,
and I always thought of that as more of a networking activity than a bodybuilding
sport. Unlike Frank, I could see every calorie I consumed, easily identifiable
on my body. In fact, my baby fat was still intact.

"So, tomorrow night, are you ready to dance your shoes
off?" he asked me.

Rose looked at me and showed me her palms in an attitude of
helplessness.

"We've had a change of plans," she said to Frank.
"I'll tell you later."

Frank didn't pursue the topic, and I envied the way
long-term partners in life and in work communicated without lengthy
explanations.

~~~~

Rose and Frank left to go back to work at twelve-thirty,
leaving me only an hour to dress and get to Matt's office. The rain had stopped
during the night, but it was colder than it had been all week. I discarded the
idea of a short-sleeved silk dress and put on a three-piece gray and white
striped knit outfit that I thought would also do for the wake in the evening. I
rummaged around my pin collection and selected a pewter cable car about an inch
long, that fit along the edge of the jacket. If I were in San Francisco now, I
thought, I'd wear my silver Old Ironsides pin.

I left my apartment and walked down the front stairs towards
the parlor where Eric was laid out. I wasn't looking forward to seeing him dead,
no matter how good he appeared to my funeral director friends.

Since there was no one with Eric's body except two men from
Galigani's staff, I walked in across the dark carpet. The air in the room was
saturated with the smell of gladioli, lilies, and chrysanthemums, in wreaths
and baskets arranged around the casket. Three tall vases of red roses in front
were wrapped in long white ribbons with gold foil letters attached.
Beloved Husband. Loving Son. Grandson.
On
either side of Eric's casket were other baskets of flowers, among them my own
bouquet and the second one I'd ordered, from his California friends.

I approached Eric's body, kneeled on the wooden prie dieu
and leaned my arms on its gold velvet top. A metal rack with new cream-colored
votive candles stood next to the prie dieu. Heavy burgundy curtains had been
drawn across the windows, and the room was as dark as it would be in the middle
of the night.

It was strange to see Eric in a suit and tie, lying still,
without his thick glasses. The lining of his cherrywood casket was stark white,
the only source of brightness in the room. I looked at Eric's slightly
protruding upper lip, so true to life, and remembered the mini-lecture Frank
had given me on how photographs of clients when they were alive helped the
embalmer reconstruct their faces in death. Frank seldom had a chance to talk
about his work outside the family and was hard to stop when he thought someone
was interested, which for some strange reason, I was.

I was surprised to see a black crystal rosary wrapped around
Eric's fingers. I didn't remember that Eric or Janice ever went to church and I
wondered whose idea it was to put prayer beads in his hands.

I drew in a deep breath and allowed my mind to wander. I
thought about Eric's life in the gas gun lab, the data he'd added to our
information about the elements of the universe, the people he loved. I hoped
that either there was some afterlife he might enjoy or there wasn't and it
didn't matter. I considered how different my prayer life had become since my
youth as a communicant in Saint Anthony's parish. Maybe my prayer for Eric is
taking the form of helping to find his murderer, I thought, with a sudden
hopeful feeling.

When I heard voices on the landing by Frank's office on the
second floor, I moved quickly out of the parlor, like an intruder caught in the
act.

I left the building and went around the side to the garage.
As I pulled out onto the street in my Cadillac, I saw Janice Bensen and an
older couple, whom I took to be Eric's parents, leave the mortuary. I paused in
the driveway, hoping they wouldn't look back and see me, preferring to meet
them when they were ready for guests, later that evening.

The older couple were talking to each other while Janice
walked in silence several yards behind. The couple drove off in a late model
maroon Oldsmobile. Janice got into an old blue Toyota parked across the street
and drove away in the opposite direction.

As far as I could tell, there were no goodbyes.

CHAPTER
12

Walking down the hall towards Matt's office I realized I
still hadn't looked at the computer printout he'd given me. That's what I
should have been doing instead of playing in the attic, I told myself,
remembering what it was like to be behind in my homework.

Matt had on either the same dark blue suit I'd seen him in
all week, or its twin. I wondered who bought his ties, all conservative stripes
in blues and browns.

"I have a few updates," he said, alerting me to
the reason I was there. "First, we talked to Leder's wife. We found out
she takes sleeping pills occasionally and can't be completely sure she didn't
take one on Monday night. So that shakes his alibi a little."

So much for spousal loyalty, I thought, and wondered if Mrs.
Leder, whom I'd never met, was looking for a way to get even with her flirting
husband. I took notes as Matt continued, reading from the top sheet of a thick
file on his desk.

"The Bensens had life insurance, $100,000 on each of
them, payable to the other."

"Not exactly a fortune these days," I said.

"No, but more than an average secretary like Janice
sees in a lump sum very often. Here's what makes it more interesting. We
tracked down a phone number on Eric's calendar—turns out he had a meeting
scheduled with a divorce lawyer next week."

I shot Matt an
aha
look, but his gaze had wandered to the doorway as we heard an eruption of loud
noises. Within a minute Matt's office was filled with balloons, a large sheet
cake, and about a dozen adults tooting on multi-colored paper horns. I was in
the middle of Matt's birthday party.

"Surprise!"

"Happy Birthday!"

"Party time!"

Pam, the department secretary slipped a giant card onto the
notebook on my lap and pointed to a place for me to sign. I took the red
felt-tip pen she offered and wrote 'Gloria Lamerino' in what I hoped was
festive script. Pam did her best to introduce me to the reveling crowd while
she arranged cups on a tray and poured cola from a giant plastic soft drink
bottle.

Matt gave me a helpless look as a tall young policewoman led
a chorus of "Happy Birthday" and then read from a Libra horoscope
card—
classy, cool, and
even-tempered, always in balance, but now's the time to throw back your
shoulders and have a ball.