The Hydrogen Murder (20 page)

Without counting my separated pieces of clothing, I
estimated that it was all there. In spite of the tight feeling all through my
body, I smiled when I looked in the drawer of my night table, which had also
been pulled open, and saw Al's little black book in plain sight next to a bag
of cough drops. At least I know it's not a Mafia hit, I thought.

I checked my jewelry inventory. My pins, which were arranged
in partitioned boxes I'd bought in a hardware store, appeared untouched in the
top drawer of my dresser. My watches and necklaces, all inexpensive, were as
I'd left them, in a half-dozen small china and wooden containers spread out
across my dresser. None of the boxes was opened.

I glanced in my bathroom and sighed when I saw that all my
towels had been swept from the closet shelves to the tile floor, some landing
in the tub and toilet.

As I returned to the living room, I heard one of the
officers deny Peter's request to let him start straightening up.

"Sergeant Gennaro wants to see it as is," the
officer said.

Seconds later, Matt came through the door, red-faced and out
of breath, looking like an overweight fifty-five-year-old who'd just run up two
flights of stairs. He was wearing casual blue slacks, a white shirt and a navy
blue crew neck sweater. He gave me a brief nod as his eyes swept across the
living room and kitchen, floor to ceiling.

"Has anyone checked the attic?" he asked.

The officers looked at each other and shrugged their
shoulders. Their looks of surprise were matched by Peter's as Matt headed for
the hallway behind my bedroom. I didn't look forward to explaining later to
Peter just how come Matt was so familiar with the layout of my apartment.

I watched as Matt dragged the ladder to the trap door and
once again disappeared into Galigani's attic while I waited below. He came back
as dusty as he had the first time, and I had the silly thought of sweeping up
there so it would be clean for him on his next trip.

"I'd like you to take a look up there" Matt said
to me. "See if you think anyone's been up there tonight." He looked
at me, in my heels and pearls, still unaccountably clutching my small black
satin evening bag, its long gold chain wrapped around my wrists. "You
might want to change first," he added.

Without speaking, I closed my bedroom door and leaned
against it, close to tears. I imagined each piece of my clothing, my underwear
and my sweaters, being touched by a stranger. My home had been entered, my
privacy violated. I wanted at least to wash everything in hot water and soap,
or preferably, throw every stitch away and start again. To make matters worse,
Matt was clearly as unhappy as if this had been my fault.

More than tears, I fought against Josephine's philosophy
that when bad things happen, it's because the universe hates you and there's no
use trying to have a happy life. Most days I arrived home from school to find
Josephine in a state of high stress over some incident, cursing the entire Holy
Family—
Gesu, Giusseppe, Sant'Anna,
e Maria.
If you didn't know her, you'd think some great tragedy had
befallen her, but the cause of her raving could be as simple as a chickadee
that had done its duty on the clean towels drying on her clothesline. Not a
great way to train a child how to accept life's ups and downs.

I heard voices from the living room—Rose and Frank had
arrived. I cleared my head and forced myself to change into jeans and a
sweater, picking them out of an already opened drawer. I chose a set that I
thought might not have been touched since they were at the bottom of a stack.

I climbed up to the attic and found nothing changed from
Thursday evening. I sat back against the wall and hugged my knees to my chest.
Looking out the small window at the clear night sky, I wanted to stay up there
forever.

"Gloria?"

I heard Matt's voice and the creaking of the ladder under
his weight. I got to my feet before he could see me in my fetal position.

"I don't think he was up here," I said, and
started down the ladder, my knees wobbling, my eyes burning. By the time I
reached bottom, I was breathing as normally as I could. Matt held my bedroom
door open and looked at my face with an intensity I hadn't seen before.

"I'm fine," I said, in response to his gaze.

~~~~

When I got back to the living room Rose put her arms around
me. She'd changed into what she called her California look—the pink and
turquoise sweat suit that she'd bought in a suburban mall during one of her
visits to me. Her hair was still as perfectly coifed as it had been at the
dinner dance.

"I'm so glad you weren't here, Gloria," she said,
holding on to me. Frank came over and rubbed my back.

"I don't think I set the alarm," I said. "I'm
so sorry."

The alarm system was there to protect their business, and I
felt I'd let my friends down.

I heard Matt ask Frank questions. Had the mortuary ever been
broken into? Not in twenty years or more, when some flowers had been stolen and
replaced with plastic ones as a prank. Who knew the code for the alarm system?
The Galigani's and me, of course, and Rose's assistant Martha. Was there
anything valuable in the offices or the parlors? Rose's mother's furniture, but
that was hardly what they were after unless they'd brought a large van.

"I'm going down through the other rooms with the
officers," Frank said. "I tried the doors as we came up and they're
all locked, so we probably won't find anything wrong."

When Matt turned to me and asked what time I'd left the
apartment it dawned on me that he wouldn't know Peter. I included an awkward
introduction as I gave Matt the timeline for the evening.

It was almost one-thirty in the morning before Matt sent the
officers away. Peter and Rose had put the chairs upright and arranged all my
leftovers on a tray—cheese, olives, pickles, crackers, chocolates and
cannoli. I finally stopped walking in circles and the five of us sat around my
kitchen table with coffee and a makeshift antipasto.

"Do you have any idea what someone might have been
looking for?" Matt asked me.

"No," I said, surprised at the question. I'd
assumed that a random thief had entered the unalarmed house to look around for
cash or small items he could fence.

"You think Gloria's apartment was targeted?" Peter
asked.

He was still wearing his tie, but didn't look quite as neat
and pressed as he had earlier in the evening. His voice, sounding tired and
worried, showed the stress of the last hour and a half.

"What we have," Matt said, "is someone comes
in, skips the other two floors even though those locks are easier to crack, and
heads up here. Then he tosses the place but doesn't take anything."

"Maybe he saw there was nothing valuable. I have only
costume jewelry and no cash."

"Everything has value in a random burglary. These guys
are scavengers. Someone comes all this way, he's going to take the jewelry, the
computer keyboard, the CD's, something to make the trip worth it," Matt
said.

"It has to do with Gloria's work on the Bensen murder
case, doesn't it?" Peter said.

"Maybe she shouldn't be doing this," Rose said.

I heard myself being talked about as if I were asleep in the
next room. I felt that I should be participating, but I couldn't get any words
out.

Matt turned to me. The bags under his eyes were deeper than
I'd ever seen them, but he was clean-shaven. I wondered if he shaved before
going to bed every night in case he got a midnight summons. I wondered if I'd
ever know.

"I know it's tough to think about this now. But let's
give it one more try. Are you fairly sure nothing's missing? A rare book? A
collection of some kind? Stamps or coins?"

"I don't have anything like that."

"Legal papers? Documents that might be important to
someone else?"

"Nothing."

I put my head down, stared at the gray carpet tufts, and
tried to conjure up an inventory of everything I had in the apartment. The most
expensive thing I owned was my computer system and that hadn't been touched. I
look around the room, and as my eyes came back into focus, I noticed something
on my writing desk that hadn't been there earlier.

"My briefcase," I said, pointing across the room.

"I found that in Rose's office when I was there a few
minutes ago with the officers," Frank said. "I knew it was yours so I
brought it up."

"Someone was looking for my briefcase."

"Is there something valuable in it?" Rose asked.

CHAPTER
19

While Matt went over to get my briefcase I gave the others a
two-line summary of where the computer printout came from and how Connie had
confessed to tampering with the gas gun data.

"Then why would anyone want to steal the printout, if
the fraud is already out in the open?" Peter asked.

"Maybe they don't all know it's out in the open,"
Frank said.

"They all know," Matt said. "At least all the
principals. We took care of that today."

Matt was pacing up and down my living room, scratching his
head. When his back was to me, I could see the bulge of his gun stuck in his
belt under his sweater. I preferred the holster-hidden-by-a-jacket look myself.
I wondered if he had a switchblade hidden in his sock, or if only vice cops did
that.

I turned back to the printout.

"It must be these three symbols," I said.
"I've always thought they meant something. I pointed to the bottom of the
last page. "I'll just have to work harder at figuring out what."

As if insects were flying around them, my guests shook their
heads and uttered different forms of "no, you don't." I'd expected it
from Peter or Rose, but I was surprised that Frank was also in agreement.

I ignored them all and looked at Matt, who for all practical
purposes was my boss in these matters. He looked at his watch.

"We shouldn't make any decisions at this hour," he
said. "It's time to think about where you're going to stay for the rest of
the night."

"Right here," I said, my arm sweeping across my
apartment to point to my bedroom, as if I were a game show hostess.

Once I could make sense out of the burglary, I was less
fearful. I reasoned that the state of my apartment fit the pattern of a person
looking for a large stack of papers or a briefcase. He didn't open small
jewelry boxes or disturb obvious areas like my TV or computer center. He
probably thought I could have removed the printout from the briefcase and
hidden it, so he'd looked in files and drawers and underneath cushions. It all
made sense, so I was no longer afraid.

"Now that he thinks I don't have the printout," I
said, "he won't come back." I tried to sound logical and confident,
which worked as long as I didn't dwell on the thought that this abstract
burglar was most likely also Eric's murderer.

"He doesn't know where you were," Peter said.
"Maybe he thinks you had it with you. He didn't find it, so of course
he'll be back." Once again, Peter's logic and mine clashed.

"Come home with us, Gloria," Rose said. "Just
for tonight."

Matt had walked over to the door to my apartment, then to my
phone. He caught my eye and we exchanged looks and nods that said, yes, he
could use it.

I tuned out Peter and Rose and Frank who were talking about
me again.

"She's crazy to want to stay on this case," Peter
said.

"She's a big girl, Peter," Rose said, reminding me
why she should get a lifetime achievement award for friendship.

Matt returned from his phone calls with what sounded like a
nonnegotiable decision.

"Our guy's coming over to fix the door and put in a new
lock," he said. "And an unmarked police car will be out front until
further notice. I'll wait here until it's all set up. You can all go home and
get some sleep."

Rose frowned a bit, but didn't comment, and Frank seemed
satisfied.

"It's like getting back up on the horse," he said,
"A person shouldn't give in."

Frank wasn't any better at figures of speech than Rose was,
but I was grateful for his support.

Peter was clearly the least happy with the arrangement.

"I'm not through with this," he said as he left,
using the possessive tone that I'd fought against a few days before. This time
I was too tired for a smart aleck comeback and gave him a patronizing smile
instead. It never occurred to me to thank him for the evening of dinner and
dancing and for being so supportive in an emergency situation.

With my friends gone, I tried to process the fact that I was
sitting in my apartment at two in the morning with Sergeant Matt Gennaro, at
the end of an evening that began with a date with Peter Mastrone.

We'd both switched to decaf coffee and sat opposite each
other in my living room. Matt was on the couch leaning over the coffee table
writing in his notebook. I studied the bald spot at the back of his head and
wondered if he knew it was there. I remembered my father's surprise at seeing
his in a department store monitor as he stood under a surveillance camera.