Boric Acid Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

  “So the delivery people left the lions in the middle of the lobby at ten o’clock?” I was sure Derek wondered why I wanted these details, but I had John on my mind …John and his alleged timeline.

  Derek nodded. “Yolanda was here when they arrived. She heard the truck pull up and called me on the interoffice phone.”

  “And this was on the night she was …?”

  Another nod. “I was working upstairs while Yolanda was in the basement using the computer. After the delivery guys drove off, I hung around awhile longer, and left myself about eleven.”

  “Did anyone else come, in between the delivery of the lions and the time you left the building?”

  “No. We were closed of course. Why all this interest in the lions? Do they have something to do with Yolanda’s murder?”

  “No, no. Just curious. It has nothing to do with the case.”

  I hoped I was right.

  How COULD JOHN HAVE seen lions that were delivered after he says he left the scene? The timeline ran through my mind as I walked to my car. I saw it as clearly as if it were written on the fluffy white clouds that hung over Beach Street.

  8:30 p.m.

  John drops Yolanda off at the library, Derek lets her in.

  10 p.m.

  Patience and Fortitude are delivered, left in the lobby. (Delivered by whom? Should I check out the delivery service for a possible suspect?)

  11 p.m.

  Derek leaves the library. Yolanda is alive, according to him.

  ?

  John, back in the library with Yolanda, sees Patience and Fortitude in the lobby.

  For my own sanity, I had to add two other lines.

  ?

  John leaves the library, Yolanda is still alive.

  ?

  Killer arrives.

  I looked to the left, in the general direction of the police station, wondering where Matt was. I hadn’t seen him since the Open House at the lab on Saturday. There had been a murder /suicide at the edge of town, near the Lynn border, and he was busy, I reminded myself. “No science in this one,” he’d said. I hoped that was the only reason he hadn’t called.

  I’d parked around the corner on Sewall Street. The first thing I noticed was how my Cadillac was listing to the right, toward the curb, as if a tire was flat.

  But I was wrong.

  Two tires were flat.

  Bad luck, I thought. Until I looked closely. I saw the angry slash marks, the rubber pulling away from the rims, the exposed inner linings. Someone had taken a knife to my tires, on this lovely tree-lined street. A teenager? There was no longer a high school nearby, no easy targets of blame.

  I walked quickly toward the busier Beach Street, taking my cell phone from my purse at the same time. I realized I was alone, the only pedestrian on the street, the few parked cars empty.

  Or at least, I hoped they were empty.

  NINETEEN

  I SAT IN MY LIVING ROOM, carless until Ching-Liang at Florello’s garage finished outfitting my Cadillac with two new tires. Unless I wanted to borrow one of the shiny black hearses in the Galigani Mortuary garage, which I didn’t.

  I tried to process the recent attacks on me and my property, more like pranks, as if some thirteen-year-old were after me. A nasty note, like one that might be passed in homeroom. An alarm set off, but no entry. And now slashed tires. Or was this just a string of bad luck, a coincidence of minor misfortunes? I didn’t really think so.

  The realization that I might be the target of a murderer dawned on me as I paced my small living room, hugging my arms, trying to concentrate. In an odd twist of memory, I recalled the stain on Councilman Byrne’s jacket at the luncheon. A spot of car grease? I shivered. Was I in a time warp?—Byme gets a smudge on clothing first, before he slashes my tires? And the note—that had also seemed backward, a warning possibly written before Yolanda was murdered.

  Strange things happened in the world of quantum theory, the realm of leptons and quarks and ten-dimensional string theory, but not in the real world of Cadillacs and cappuccinos. Tunneling through energy barriers and even time reversal were allowed if they occurred in the very, very small timescale of quantum physics—but the Yolanda Fiore murder case was as big as everyday life in Revere, Massachusetts.

  Still, I wished I could get a look at the councilman’s stationery.

  Stuck at home until a call came from the auto shop, I retreated to my boron reading, a good distraction. No great insights, except I was able to convince myself that although Yolanda had investigated waste-handling practices, she hadn’t been able to come up with a plausible transgression. That made Yolanda annoying, but not threatening, to the likes of Garth Allen, and it eliminated all but a personal motive for her boss, Tony Taruffi, to kill her.

  It was time to reinterview John Galigani. I had to determine how much he knew about the research project that sent Yolanda to the old Journal files.

  And there was the matter of the inconsistent timeline for John, Patience, and Fortitude.

  “YES, I DID GO BACK,” John whispered into the phone. It had taken three tries to get through busy signals at the Galiganis’, and five minutes of conversation for John to come up with the truth.

  “John.” It came out two syllables. I hadn’t planned the carping tone, but I was piqued that he’d lied to me.

  “I’m sorry, Gloria. But I knew it would sound fishy.” lying that’s fishy, I wanted to tell him. I heard his heavy sigh, then his weak voice. “I finished up my article at home, E-mailed it off to Arnie at the office, then drove back to the library.”

  “Because …?”

  “I wanted to end on a conciliatory note. When I got there, I didn’t see Derek’s Jag. He has this black ’89 XJ6 that you’d know anywhere. It’s very cool, even though he says it has bad brakes and you need two hands and a knee to open the door.”

  “You sound fond of Derek, or at least his car.”

  “I like him. It wasn’t his fault Yolanda dumped me for him.” I wished the police could hear this John Galigani, so mild-mannered, not even holding a grudge against his competition. “So, I called Yolanda on her cell phone that night. She let me in—it was about eleven-twenty, eleven-thirty. That’s when we had the Patience and Fortitude conversation. That story about the lions was true, it’s just that it happened later than I told you. I figured no one would believe me. She was alive when I left her, Gloria.”

  John’s voice was strained. I pictured him chewing his lower lip the way his mother did when she was upset. His reasoning was understandable in my mind, although he’d obstructed justice, withheld information that would help narrow down the time of Yolanda’s death, and lied to all of us. I feared my empathy was coming from our close friendship, rather than from a reasoned assessment of his behavior.

  I had one other question before I’d give him a “you have to tell the police” speech.

  “What was she working on, John? I have a feeling you know what Yolanda was researching in those old Journal files.”

  Silence on the other end. “John—”

  “OK, OK.” I could hear a long sigh of resignation. “It was about her grandfather. I guess he’d been in jail, here in Revere, years ago, and she wanted to look into it. Evidently he skipped bail or something and went back to Italy. The story was, he stole his wife’s jewelry and sold it to finance the trip out of the country. Yolanda had this idea that he wouldn’t have done that, so she thought she’d try to clear his name.”

  “Why was he in jail in the first place? And what made her think he wouldn’t have jumped bail? Did he—”

  “I don’t know. Really, this time I don’t know. But I have the feeling that’s why she left Detroit and came back to Revere in the first place. Why it took her so long to work on the project seriously, I don’t know. And I don’t know if she had any evidence. It might have been just a reporter-thing.”

  “A reporter-thing?”

  “Yeah, reporters always want to investigate. We’re looking for that big story, t
he one that will win the Pulitzer. You know, all the president’s men, etc. And if you think there’s something worth exploring in your own family, you’re going to want to pursue it all the more, whether you have evidence or not.”

  My mind raced, making connections, adjusting to the new information. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” Carping again. “This could be very important, John. What if her grandfather was mixed up with something, some criminal behavior that’s still going on in Revere. Maybe Yolanda found out and that’s why she was murdered.”

  I’m not a good phone person. I need to see people to have a meaningful conversation of any length. Either that, or I require immediate advances in video-phone technology. I wanted to read John’s face, the set of his chin. Instead, the only expression I could see was my own, a frustrated countenance reflected in the glass frame of the San Francisco poster in my living room. I carried the phone to the window and gazed at the empty space where I usually parked my Cadillac during the day. I wished for its miraculous reappearance so I could drive to the Galiganis’ and look John in the eye.

  “I doubt her grandfather’s problems had anything to do with Yolanda’s life today,” John said. “It was a long, long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  “Well, probably in the 1940s since those were the years she wanted files for.”

  I did the math—1995 minus 1940. More than half a century ago. Still …

  “Did you give her the old files?”

  “No, I hadn’t gotten around to it. I guess I was stalling, trying to bribe her. You know, use the files to get back together. That’s another thing we argued over the night she …”

  This part I didn’t want to hear. What about Carolyn Verrico, who was expecting to go to Bermuda with him? I hated the idea that John was courting one woman while trying to rekindle a relationship with another. I thought I knew him, but realized it was foolish to expect a young man to share his sexual philosophy with his parents’ best friend, no matter how often they corresponded. Better not to pursue that line, but I still wasn’t through.

  “I’m not sure I understand why you wouldn’t at least have told the police about the research, John.”

  “I didn’t see any point in bringing it up. Why should I tarnish her memory, her family’s memory, by dredging that up? The family obviously moved to Detroit to get away from whatever it was, why would I force whoever’s left to revisit it? Her grandmother is in her nineties.”

  I shook my head at him, though he couldn’t see me.

  “And you really don’t know why her grandfather was in jail?”

  “No, honest.” His voice had the ring of a Boy Scout, and I saw John’s right hand raised, the way it was in a photo of him, in his little green uniform, on my bookshelf.

  This time I believed him.

  I NEEDED TO KNOW what happened in the 1940s. I knew about Pearl Harbor, World War II, and the first sustained nuclear chain reaction, but what happened in Revere? Since John no longer had access to Journal files, and I didn’t have any other contacts there, I went on-line to my favorite search engines.

  I’d been browsing only a short time when my doorbell rang, and a better resource arrived at my door.

  “I know you don’t have a car,” Rose said, “so I brought some goodies.”

  God forbid I should be without goodies for half a day. I relieved Rose of half her burden, which consisted of two pink bakery boxes and two plastic bags filled with fruit, crackers, cheese, sparkling cider for me, wine for her.

  “This is wonderful,” I said. “Thank you. It’s good to see you out and about.”

  Rose wore a matching pale green skirt and sleeveless blouse, and beige sandals with the stylish square heels I’d seen on the young attorney, Frances Worthen.

  “Well, it’s about time I did some work down there.” She pointed in the direction of her office, one floor below my apartment. “Martha has been very good, working overtime through all this, but I have to take care of some things.”

  “Lucky me,” I said, opening the pink boxes, sending sweet smells through the kitchen. Almond. Candied fruit. Mascarpone.

  Rose smiled. “Not only that, John won’t eat, although he’s looking better this last hour, since he talked to you on the phone.” That’s a surprise. “And Frank’s in class. I need someone to feed.”

  “Frank’s taking a class? After all these years in the business?”

  She nodded. “He needs to, to keep up his license. Five credits every year. So he works the sessions in during the summer when business is slow.”

  As long as I’d known the Galiganis, the funeral business still held mysteries for me. How can there be seasons for dying? “Does that mean people die in cold weather more than hot?” I asked Rose.

  She shrugged. “It seems so. We average about thirty-five cases a month in winter, twenty-five in summer. Of course, there’s the holiday season that accounts for some increase, when there are more suicides. I remember one Christmas Day when Frank had eight clients.” She shook her head, and I knew she was saying quick prayers for all of them. “Anyway, lately he’s had classes in pathogens—blood borne, airborne, whatever. Today he’s in a disease class, and—are you OK with this, Gloria?”

  Did I want to know more? I nodded, wanting to give my friend wide latitude in her good mood. “What about the disease class?”

  “Well, Frank explained it to me. Suppose you lift a sheet off a corpse that had a disease? You have to know what you’re dealing with and take the proper precautions.”

  “Thanks for the explanation.” That wasn’t so bad.

  We sorted out the food and drink, and within a few minutes a late but delicious lunch was spread out on my coffee table. “I need your help,” I told her, once my mouth recovered from a large chunk of pepper jack cheese. “I need some information about Revere in the 1940s.”

  Rose, who never filled her mouth with large chunks, but always nibbled instead, sat up straighter on the rocker. “Is this about John? I overheard a little of your conversation, something about Yolanda’s grandfather, but I didn’t want to pry.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  Rose gave me a charming smile. “I know, that’s hard to believe, but I’m trying very hard to be patient and wait until I’m called on, if you know what I mean.”

  “I really appreciate that, Rose. And now we need your help, your vast store of Revere lore, your—”

  She waved her hands in front of her, waist high. “I’m on it. What do you need to know?”

  “Whatever you can dig up about that period. Crimes, especially. Who was in jail, scandals in the city, that kind of thing.”

  Rose put her plate down. I wished I could lose interest in food so quickly. She screwed up her nose, squinted her eyes in concentration. “The 1940s. That would be about the time of that moonshine liquor tragedy I told you about. The one where Councilman Byrne’s family was wiped out, in a manner of speaking.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. “Do you remember the names of people who were arrested?” I was hoping for a Fiore among them.

  Rose squeezed her eyes shut again, as if she were trying to read small print from a computer monitor in front of her face. Her active, well-organized memory bank. “Well, there were a lot of stills in those days. Especially around the Malden Street area, and farther back on Washington Street. Some individuals, and some families, in business together. Let’s see, the Della Rosas, the Vecchis, the Radocchias, the Petrinis …”

  “Rose, you were only a little girl at the time, just like me. How do you know this stuff?”

  She raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “I’ve lived here all my life, Gloria.”

  The things you miss when you leave home. “Anyone else?”

  “And, of course, there were the Scottos, the ones involved in the Byrne calamity. I told you about him. Sabatino, I think his first name was. Yes, Sabatino Scotto. He escaped to Italy while he was out on bail.”

  Escaped to Italy. Yolanda Fiore’s grandfa
ther escaped to Italy. If I’d been paying attention, I would have put it all together. I slapped my forehead. “Why don’t I listen to you, Rose?”

  She smiled and rocked way back on the glider. “I’ll never know.”

  I buckled down, sorting through the pieces. “Did you tell me the Scotto family moved to Chicago after Sabatino fled to Italy?”

  Rose nodded vigorously. “Chicago. Or somewhere out west.”

  “Could it have been Detroit?”

  She stood up. “I see where you’re going with this, Gloria. Yes, it definitely could have been Detroit. And some Scotto or other could have married a Fiore.”

  We looked at each other, our faces happier than they’d been in a long time.

  It felt very good to have a hug from my best friend.

  TWENTY

  IT HAD BEEN a long time since I’d needed an excuse to call Matt, but at the moment I was happy to have one. I phoned him immediately after Rose left to pursue her genealogy research, but I didn’t reach him until nearly seven o’clock that evening.

  “We might have a lead,” I told him when he finally answered the page.

  “We …?”

  I explained the workings of Rose’s mind and how we’d come up with a possible Scotto-Fiore-Byrne connection. “So either man had a strong motive to kill Yolanda,” I said, wrapping things up neatly. “The father or the son—Councilman Byrne or Derek Byrne.”

  “Or both, I assume, using your logic.”

  I didn’t like the way he said logic, as if there weren’t any to my argument. “Or both,” I said, holding my ground.