In the hot morning sun, I shivered as I looked up and down the street. Silly. It was all clear.
I saw DEREK BYRNE immediately, at the circulation desk at the front of the main floor. His long, thin body was draped over the counter. In a light blue suit and a tie that matched the countertop, he looked cool and comfortable, at ease with his staff and surroundings. The small air-conditioning unit stuck in the window casing was working again.
Glancing around, I could see clearly that more space was needed. Bookcases were squeezed into every corner of the large, open area, some of them fine dark wood, others a lighter wood, others dull gray or bright blue metal. Rows of shelving blocked parts of the tall, narrow windows.
Derek seemed glad to see me. He pushed himself away from the counter and buttoned his jacket as he approached, as if out of respect for an older woman. I knew I’d been wise to choose him over Frances Worthen and Dorothy Leonard.
“I’m here on business. I hope you don’t mind,” I said after a few words of greeting. I didn’t want to mislead him about the purpose of my visit. “As you can imagine, I’m still working on Yolanda Fiore’s …case.”
His pleasant, lightly freckled smile collapsed. “I’ve been over this so many times, Dr. Lamerino. I don’t know what else I can tell you.” He seemed genuinely sorry not to be able to offer more. I had to nudge myself into remembering the strong motive he had for murdering Yolanda. Whatever Sergeant Matt Gennaro thought, Italians didn’t have the lock on revenge killing.
“You might be able to help me get to know Yolanda better. If you could just answer a few questions.” He gave the slightest nod. Not a wholehearted yes, but not a no either. “How did you meet, for example?”
Derek pointed to a set of round-back chairs tucked into a light-wood circular table, and we took seats about a third of a circumference away from each other. “We met at a Chamber of Commerce dinner last year—Yolanda wasn’t even supposed to be there. She was filling in for her boss, who was sick.”
“Anthony Taruffi?”
He nodded. “We ended up sitting next to each other, whispered through all the speeches, and then went dancing afterward.”
“And that was a year ago?”
“Yeah, about a year.” Right after she left John Galigani, I figured. Unless they overlapped. “Yolanda hated that kind of function, and I kept teasing her about it. I like those events, strangely enough. You get to meet people you might be working with later.”
I remembered Rose’s comment about how Dorothy Leonard was promoted over Derek. “Very politically astute of you. I’m sure that makes you a good director, uh, assistant director.”
Derek laughed. Even I knew immediately what a poor attempt that had been at subtlety. “And, if you’ll forgive me, you’re not very political, Dr. Lamerino. Yes, Dorothy was named director even though I’ve been here in one capacity or another for more than ten years. They pulled her from the City Council. But it’s all part of the game, and she’s a good manager. Dorothy’s wanted this for a long time, probably since Irv died.”
“Her husband.”
“Right. I worked under him for a short time. Good man, too.”
Back to Yolanda. I cleared my throat. “How long was it before you found out who Yolanda’s grandfather was?”
Derek raised his eyebrows. The muscles around his jaw tensed. I thought I saw an internal debate about whether or not to lie. After a moment, his face relaxed and I assumed truth won out. “That wasn’t common knowledge, believe it or not. But my father had her checked out. He automatically suspected everyone who moved here from anywhere in the Midwest, especially Detroit. He always claimed the Scottos would be back.”
I smiled. “I guess Revere is a hard place to leave for good.”
“Apparently.” Derek seemed to understand the reference to my own return, and smiled back. “But Dad didn’t tell anyone about Yolanda, as far as I know, and I certainly didn’t.”
“How about vice versa? Did Yolanda talk to him about it—maybe apologize for the family in some way?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure. It was always tense between them, the few times we were all together. But I figured it was just that memory, no matter how long ago, my father couldn’t drop it. Yolanda and I never discussed it, except one time—when I told her my father knew who she was.” Derek looked around the nearly empty reading room, as if to keep Yolanda Fiore’s secret safe from the one or two older people reading newspapers in the corner. I noted that both of Yolanda’s men were of one mind in their attempts to protect her family’s reputation.
“He couldn’t have been happy about your relationship.” Here I was, going far beyond what was my business, but Derek didn’t seem to mind.
“Hardly. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. However …” Derek stopped, his countenance changing. I couldn’t tell if his thoughts brought him sadness, embarrassment, confusion, or a bit of all of them. “To tell you the truth, we wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway.”
“You were going to break up?”
“More than likely. And it had nothing to do with my father, although I think he suspected it was coming to an end. It was just … we were two different people with different ideas about commitment.”
I nodded and murmured a syllable of understanding, as if I knew exactly what he meant Sympathetic, worldly wise Aunt Gloria. “Well, I know about her affair with her boss.”
Another eyebrow-raising, correct guess. “For one,” DereK said.
My turn for raised eyebrows. A new picture of Yolanda Fiore was forming in my mind. I wondered how much Detectives Gennaro, Parker, and Berger knew about Yolanda’s paramours. When a victim has had many intimate partners, that’s usually the starting point for the police investigation. I made a note to review this with Matt. Not only was it more appropriate for the police to pursue this line of questioning, but I was getting distracted from my primary mission.
“Derek, I’d like to have a copy of the documents you gave Frances Worthen, showing land ownership and use.”
He frowned. “I don’t know … as I told you last time, Yolanda wasn’t concerned about the expansion project, either way. I don’t see what it could have to do with her death.”
“You’re probably right, but I feel compelled to follow every possible lead, until we know exactly what she was working on when she, uh, was on the Internet downstairs.” I’d never had such a hard time saying the word “murder” or its derivatives. It might have been Derek’s ocean-blue eyes, looking so sad and vulnerable. I reminded myself how those eyes had looked when Frances Worthen was around—“flirty and available” came to mind. I pressed my case. “And I may be able to help. I have some contacts that might bolster your cause.”
So far he was not impressed, maintaining a dubious, uncooperative look. At the same moment, one of his staff—an older woman with upswept hair reminiscent of the fifties—left her spot behind the circulation desk and headed for us. I wondered if he’d planned the interruption as I did sometimes, prepping a secretary to call me out of a meeting after a certain span of time.
No time to fool around. “Derek, it’s probably better for you to give me a copy of those papers than be officially required to produce them at a later time.” I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I must have sounded convincing, because Derek gave the fifties woman instructions, and ten minutes later I walked out the door with the documents.
As I descended the steps to the sidewalk, I looked over my shoulder for Dorothy Leonard to come and snatch my briefcase from my hand. Or for the tire slasher. Seeing neither, I allowed myself a silent whoop of victory.
TWENTY-TWO
ON THE WAY HOME, I reviewed the interview, primarily to fix it in my memory, since I hadn’t taken any notes. What struck me was that Derek had so many motives, from betrayed lover to avenging grandson, with important, controversial documents in between. And Matt had admitted that Derek’s alibi was no better than John Galigani’s. Both men had cla
imed to be home alone by midnight on the night of the murder. Finally, Derek was certainly strong and tall enough to have overpowered Yolanda.
Derek Byrne—means, motives, opportunity. Almost too easy.
I turned my attention to Derek’s father. Councilman Byrne’s parents weren’t exactly innocent victims of Sabatino Scotto. They must have known the risks. Unfortunate as it was, the Byrnes weren’t the first to suffer the tragic consequences of drinking alcohol from a backyard still. I imagined, however, that these facts might not have curbed the young Brendan Byrne’s deep resentment of the Scottos. And a desire to kill them? That was the question.
Derek had told me his father knew he was about to break up with Yolanda. Would that give the councilman more or less motive to kill her? Would it be easier to murder your son’s exgirlfriend than the one he’s still seeing? Or, since she’d no longer be in line to give his family an heir with dreaded Scotto genes, would that ease the tension? I wished I knew the criminal mind better. Or at all.
It wasn’t any easier to understand Yolanda’s life. A picture emerged of her flitting from one man to another. Derek. John. Taruffi? Derek had implied there were others. I shook my head in dismay.
A glance at my briefcase, on the passenger seat like a silent, comforting friend, gave me hope. The land-use documents were tucked into a side pocket. At least I’d made some progress, and Rose would be pleased.
I CAME HOME TO a bright orange six on my answering machine, representing nearly my entire complement of friends and relatives.
Andrea called to thank me for dinner. She wanted to get together to review the outline she’d prepared for her first class with Peter Mastrone. Three months ahead of schedule, a woman after my own well-organized heart.
My Worcester cousin, Mary Ann, welcomed me back from my vacation in California. She had a way of sounding like my old-school aunts and uncles who could appear positive, then make you feel guilty a nanosecond later. “I’m sure you would have called me eventually,” Mary Ann said in a sweet voice.
The call from Rose sounded like an encrypted message setting up a hit. “My man in Chelsea is ready to accept the package,” she said. “Let’s arrange a pickup and drop-off time.”
I’d taken the legal documents from my briefcase and flipped through them while I listened to my messages. I was immediately intimidated by their official look—very wide margins, numbered lines, the seal of the City of Revere, a generous sprinkling of heretofores and henceforths, one or two Latin phrases per page, and strange alphanumeric strings, like 710CMR7.65(2)(d)(iii)(a). I flipped past the pages of text to the drawings, noting the scale on one of the close-ups—1” 3/32”, it read. I never understood why engineers wouldn’t adopt the metric system, but that was the least of my problems as I tried to interpret the sheaf of papers.
Three of the drawings looked like a child’s rendition of the library building from different angles, with trees no better drawn than I could do. There were also aerial views of the interior and exterior, showing parking spaces for more than one hundred cars.
I was glad someone else was responsible for authenticating the papers. How would you ever know? Probably some very high technology analysis made it easier to distinguish real from fake documentation. But then I tended to attribute all progress to the advance of technical knowledge.
From Erin Wong’s message I learned that Tony Taruffi was ready to deliver the model reactor to the high school. I wasn’t quite prepared for the project, but I knew that another meeting with him would be to my advantage, as far as information-gathering. It gave me secret pleasure that I intimidated him. Not something I was proud of.
I made a callback list. Andrea. Mary Ann. Rose. Erin.
Elaine Cody’s call was also in code. “Let me know how the project is going. Any milestones? Have you set a deadline yet?” I wondered how Matt would feel about being referred to as “a project.”
Matt’s call was last. Could he come by with the old police files on the Scotto trial?
“Please do,” I said, returning his call first.
But Rose beat Matt to my apartment, not waiting for me to call her back.
“I can’t linger,” Rose said. “I have an appointment with Cappie at three. Do you have the goods?” She winked, and pulled an imaginary cloak across her face.
I handed over the papers, stuffed into a manila envelope at the last minute, at her request.
“In case they’re watching,” she said.
I thought her attitude was a little extreme for someone who hadn’t even had her tires slashed.
AN HOUR OR SO LATER, after a suitably long greeting, I briefed Matt on my meeting with Derek. I emphasized his comments on Yolanda’s active, polygamous love life.
“Parker and Berger are working that angle. Don’t worry,” he said.
But I did. I wanted my old life back, the one where Rose and Frank and Matt and I played canasta every week, and all the Galigani children were safe and happy and untouched by serious crime.
Matt read to me from the police file on the old Scotto case.
“Listen to what they found in Scotto’s backyard, up on Malden Street. And I quote: two fifty-gallon stills in operation, condenser cisterns, coils, five-ply burners, gasoline pressure tanks, tanks full of mash, tanks full of water ready to set, and five-hundred-gallon reserve tanks above the still for pumping the mash. There were hoses, receiving kegs to catch the whiskey when it came out of the stills, filter barrels, sacks of barley, caramel coloring for the brandy, ten-pound packages of yeast, sugar. Plus hydrometers, test tubes, and a row of two-burner stoves, coal-oil lanterns—it goes on and on.”
“Wouldn’t it have been hard to hide all that paraphernalia?”
Matt nodded. “It makes you think the police knew all this was there, but didn’t bother to do anything about it until someone died.”
“I’m certainly glad that doesn’t go on these days,” I said.
“Right.”
We smiled at our mutual, clever sarcasm.
Matt and I took turns with the arrest report, the fingerprint form, evidence inventory, and a set of articles from the Journal. We fell into our comfortable routine for working a case together, alternately reading to ourselves, mumbling aloud when something caught our eye, asking a question, throwing out a theory. And, of course, nibbling on Sees nuts and chews from Elaine.
“Involuntary manslaughter,” I said. “Remind me what that is.”
“Recklessly causing death under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life.”
“Not that you know it by heart.”
He gave me a smile and we said together, “It’s what I do.”
“It’s easy to see how ‘recklessly’ fits,” I said. “These amateurs with no knowledge of chemistry put together makeshift equipment to purify poisonous, denatured, industrial grade alcohol. They use lead and zinc in the construction of the stills and storage vats. And under the conditions of extreme heat, the poisons are distilled right into the alcohol.”
“Now who sounds like a textbook?”
I shrugged. “Misuse of science, even chemistry, galls me. I just saw an op-ed piece in one of the old Journal clippings in this pile. They cited cases of brain damage and insanity that resulted from drinking moonshine. Byrne’s mother, Grace, was blinded and his father, Brendan Sr., died, as sure as if Scotto had administered the poison directly.”
“The newspapers were pretty tough on him. At least there’s that consolation.”
“True. It’s a wonder he was let out on bail. Not to mention he was a perfect candidate for maximum flight risk.”
“He was a U.S. citizen, though,” Matt reminded me. “And it depends on who was on the bench that day.”
“You mean, maybe one of his customers?”
“Exactly,” Matt said.
“Here’s a description of Scotto. Five feet one and a half inches tall, one hundred sixty-five pounds—”
“Chunky,” Matt said, sucking in his stomach.
>
I nodded and tucked in my own. “Brown eyes, dark hair parted in the middle. Sounds like my Uncle Jimmy, except for the tattoo. Scotto had a bunch of grapes on his arm. I would have expected a heart or a—”
“Grapes, grapes.” Matt’s muttered interruption was accompanied by his rapid shuffling through papers scattered on my coffee table. “Where did I see something about a bunch of grapes?” He picked up a typewritten form, so yellow and brittle with age that pieces of it fell onto his lap. “Here it is, on Mrs. Scotto’s list of jewelry stolen from her bedroom vanity. One of the most expensive pieces was a pendant with sapphires and emeralds arranged like a bunch of grapes.”
“A family symbol, I guess.” I put down my folders and leaned across to look at the photograph clipped to the report, one of a set that cataloged Celia Scotto’s extensive jewelry collection. Diamond earrings, a cross set with rubies, elaborate necklaces and brooches. Nothing so frivolous as my boron pin.
“That’s strange,” I said. “You think she’d cover for her husband and not confirm the reports that he stole her treasures and ran. I wonder why she turned him in?”
More shuffling while Matt found the report he was looking for. “She didn’t. Look at the timing on this. A week before he disappeared, while Scotto was still at home, out on bail, she reported a robbery.”
“Someone else stole the jewelry?”
“Or they were setting up a cover story together.”
“It seems we’re learning something new every minute on this case, even though it’s been closed for fifty-five years.” But did any of it matter? I wondered if Matt had the same doubts about researching an interesting, but potentially useless, period in Revere’s history. I didn’t want to break our rhythm by asking, and we’d almost finished with the material he’d brought.
We’d gone through several day’s worth of the Revere Journal, the Chelsea Record, and the Winthrop Sun Transcript. I didn’t know there were so many separate small-town publications. We had only one more envelope to go—more articles and photographs from the Journal published during the days following Mr. Byrne’s death and Scotto’s arrest. The longest piece included a snapshot of a crowd in front of City Hall, taken before the bail hearing, protesting the potential release of Sabatino Scotto. We could make out signs that included every derogatory term we’d ever heard for Italian-Americans: PUT GINNEYS WHERE THE MOON DON’T SHINE. SPECIAL JAILS FOR WOPS. KILL DAGO MURDERERS. PUT SCOTTO’S BODY ON A BOAT TO ITALY. “Just like a reporter to focus on the most inflammatory responses,” I said. Then I thought of another reporter, John Galigani, and blushed at my stereotyping.
Boric Acid Murder, The Page 17