Boric Acid Murder, The

by Camille Minichino

  “Gloria!” The alarm in Rose’s voice sent ripples of panic through my body. “John …” was the next word I heard clearly.

  “What’s happened to John?” I imagined her son in the hospital, having collapsed from tension, or in a coma after being attacked by Yolanda’s killer. Or …

  “He’s gone.”

  Gone, as in abducted? I had to remind myself John was no longer a child who could be scooped up in front of the post office while his mother did an errand. Gone, as in dead? I dared not ask, let alone think it for more than a moment.

  To my relief, Frank’s slightly calmer voice came over the line. “John left the house, and probably the city, since his overnight bag is gone. There’s a note. I’ll read it to you. ‘Away for a while. Don’t worry. I have to do my job. It’s best if you don’t know any more.’” Frank paused, then sighed heavily. “That’s it, Gloria. I can’t imagine where he’d go. Or why.”

  I could, but I didn’t say so.

  My HEAD WAS SPINNING with new thoughts, new information, new questions. I wanted to spend the rest of the day tracking John down. I had a pretty good idea where he’d headed. But I’d agreed to go to the high school to meet Erin Wong and Tony Taruffi to set up the model nuclear reactor. I had seriously neglected my reactor pool project in favor of document fraud and moonshine. At this point I’d be better off making a still with Erin’s students instead of a boron-laced waste pool.

  I’d also committed to have dinner with Andrea to go over her presentation to Peter’s class. And I knew my cousin Mary Ann was sitting in her pristine Worcester living room, fingering the antimacassars, waiting for me to call. Meanwhile I mentally edited a long speech I couldn’t wait to give to Dorothy Leonard and Derek Byrne.

  In retirement I was becoming better at multitasking than I’d ever been as a professional physicist. I took my cell phone from its charging base and set out to do at least two things at once—head for the high school and make some calls on the way. I’d read that some states were about to outlaw using handheld phones while driving—DWP, driving while phoning?—but so far I would be legal in Massachusetts.

  I punched in my cousin’s number. I wasn’t proud of my reason for calling her first—I knew Mary Ann made the novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help every Wednesday afternoon, so she wouldn’t be home. At a little after one o’clock, she’d just be standing as the priest came in from the sacristy to lead the prayers. The perfect time to call and leave a message.

  “This is cousin Gloria,” I said. “I just got back to Revere and wanted to say hello. I’ll call again and set a date to come and visit. Hope you’re well.”

  A fine way to treat a seventy-something-year-old relative, I thought. But I was relieved that my tactic worked.

  My next call was to Matt, who, happily, was not at a novena.

  “The documents were doctored,” I said, negotiating a left from Broadway onto Mountain Avenue, toward Revere High. The new Revere High, I called it, though it was almost twenty years old.

  “I heard,” Matt said.

  “And John—”

  “I heard.”

  “Then I guess we’re all caught up.”

  Matt laughed. “Frank called me a few minutes ago.”

  “I think I know where John is.”

  “Detroit.”

  Why was I amazed that Matt would also be able to figure it out? John wasn’t playing games on his laptop all this time, apathetic to his own predicament. He was using white pages and search engines and the services of e-ticketing agencies. He was doing what reporters do. Investigating.

  “The displaced Scotto family,” I said. “Especially the grandmother.”

  “That’s what I think. She’d be, what, maybe early nineties now. Some chance she’s still alive, and that she’d remember something that would help John figure out who killed Yolanda.”

  “And there’s the funeral. He’d want to go to Yolanda’s funeral.”

  “Now you’re ahead of me on that one. How’d you think of that?”

  “Think about where I live.”

  He laughed. “Residential hazard.”

  “John’s not in trouble, is he?” I asked. “It’s not illegal for him to leave the state since he hasn’t been charged with anything, right?”

  I heard a sigh from Matt. I wondered which street he was on. For all we knew we were passing each other on Beach Street, on our cell phones, both guilty of DWP. I pulled up to the high school, still on the phone, waiting for Matt’s answer.

  “No, it’s not against the law, but it does make him look more suspect.”

  Not the answer I wanted, so I assumed the role of defense attorney. “If he were guilty, wouldn’t he go to Brazil or some beach in Bermuda? Why would he go to Detroit?”

  “Of course, we don’t know where he is. He might be in Brazil. Or maybe he’s in Detroit to apologize to the family, or to eliminate them also.”

  “Matt!”

  “You asked. I don’t believe that, Gloria, but if you ask what might a cop think, I’m telling you.”

  “Is that what Berger and Parker think?”

  “I’m not sure they know. I’m giving John another hour or two lead time, which I shouldn’t, then I’ll call them. I’m hoping Frank will do it.”

  “I can’t see Frank or Rose figuring out where he is. They’re not exactly tuned in to reason right now, and anyway, they wouldn’t be breaking the law if they don’t inform the police their innocent son has left their sight for a day.”

  “Are we fighting?”

  I took a breath and laughed, slightly. “We might be. My fault. I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight.”

  “I don’t either. I love you, Gloria.”

  That was enough to cause the phone to slip from my hand.

  THE HIGH SCHOOL Rose Zarelli, Frank Galigani, and I attended, one of the many beautiful redbrick buildings in Revere, had burned down in the seventies, replaced with a modern structure a few blocks away on what used to be the Mountain Avenue quarry. With its straight lines and beige stucco exterior the new Revere High looked more like it belonged in a California valley town than among the established brick buildings of the East Coast.

  One of my goals was to reach Erin’s second-floor office without running into Peter Mastrone who’d been teaching Italian and American history there since he graduated from college in the late fifties. It didn’t quite work out that way, but I was spared a long conversation by the arrival of the lab’s model PWR in an enormous wooden crate, large enough for Patience, Fortitude, and a tiger or two.

  “Erin told me you’d be coming this afternoon. You’re late, of course. And besides, if I’d known sooner we could have had lunch,” Peter said, following me and two men in black support belts who were pushing the crate, on a large dolly, down the hall. Only my cousin Mary Ann could rival Peter in his ability to make an invitation sound like a rebuke. Peter’s arms were full of student notebooks I recognized as containing his standard homework assignments.

  Within a few minutes, Erin’s office was crowded with Peter, Tony Taruffi, me, and the two deliverymen, all waiting for further instructions. She dispatched everyone efficiently, getting rid of Peter without seeming to aggravate him as I usually did.

  “Call me,” he said, picking a splinter from his button-down shirt. I was sorry I missed his brush with a PWR crate, and I wished Peter didn’t always bring out the petty side of my personality.

  I’d talked on the phone to Erin Wong and E-mailed her often, but had never met her. I was surprised at how tall she was, for an Asian woman anyway, at least five four or five. She had the same brand of luxurious black hair as Officer Michelle Chan.

  The unveiling of the PWR took place in the large science hall in the east wing of the building where four of Erin’s students met us. She’d invited two boys and two girls—one Asian, two Caucasians, and one African-American, a reflection of the new ethnic makeup of the city. My classmates had been primarily Italian or Jewish, both of Mediterranean origin, and
therefore hard to distinguish. With similar hair color and nose profiles, Sol Finkelstein didn’t look that different from Sal Fanciulli.

  There was no diversity in the students’ wardrobes, however—they all wore predominantly black, except for the girls’ pastel tank tops. The boys’ pants hung wide and low on their hips, the crotches around their knees. No tartan plaid skirts or neat button-down shirts. I wondered what these students would think about the way my classmate, Johnny Pacioli, was ushered to the principal’s office for wearing “dungarees” to class one day.

  Tony Taruffi, presiding over today’s event, didn’t miss the opportunity to make a little speech about the benevolence of the Charger Street lab, making this loan possible through its outreach program. His collar barely stretched around his thick neck, forcing his paisley tie to sit on his chest at an awkward angle.

  When young Jamel asked him about the tritium leak reported in the Journal a week or so ago, Tony responded in true PR style.

  “The situation was under the control of the scientists and engineers. At no time was there any threat to the laboratory employees, the public, or the environment,” he said, straightfaced.

  I’d hoped Jamel and his friends would pursue the question, if only to make Tony squirm, but they seemed ready to play with the model reactor instead. They took turns pushing buttons and exclaiming over the verisimilitude of the steam and the lavender vapor from the heat exchanger. I’d specifically asked Tony not to bring the documentation on the various functions and systems so the students could do the research themselves.

  I hadn’t done very much prep work for this meeting, counting on years of working in the field to carry me through until the first real class. But I had managed to collect photos of waste pools and reactor environments to get the students started in their construction project.

  It didn’t take four bright, energetic teenagers long to figure out a way to put lights on extended, adjustable coils for lowering into the tank.

  We ended the session with soft drinks in the faculty lounge where I’d met Peter several times during my visits to his classes. We treated the students to soft drinks from the vending machine, but Erin had the good sense to make real coffee for the adults, using individual filter holders and ground-on-the-spot coffee beans.

  “This is going to be very cool,” Jamel said.

  Nods from Mi-Weh and David, and a yawn from Charlotte, the only blond in the room.

  “Aren’t you excited about this project?” I asked Charlotte, immediately regretting that I’d embarrassed her.

  She covered her mouth and drew in her breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Our band won the regional competition and the prize was a trip to the ice-skating show at Warner Center. We didn’t even get back to the parking lot until one this morning.”

  Congratulations from all, plus an extra word from Tony, still keeping his role as master of ceremonies. I hoped he wasn’t planning to come to the regular project sessions. We’d scheduled daily meetings for the rest of the week to get things started.

  “Well, good for you,” he said, in what I heard as a condescending tone. Or maybe it was the only tone in his repertoire. “You know, as long as Warner Center has been there, I’ve never been in it. I go by it a lot when I go to the North End to my favorite pizza spots. What’s it like inside?”

  “Like, huge. They have this special sound system, and …”

  Charlotte went on about the acoustics and other cutting-edge features of the Warner Center, but my mind was back on what Tony had said—or, more precisely, admitted.

  I remembered Matt’s telling me about Tony’s alibi for the night of Yolanda’s murder. He had special tickets to a Warner Center event. When asked to produce the stubs, he’d said they were in Austria with his companion of the evening, or else in a Viennese trash heap. He’d added that this person held a high office in the IAEA, the agency that oversaw nuclear power worldwide.

  The first time I met Taruffi, he’d said, “I heard about you,” or something to that effect, so he could have sent me the note.

  It all fit.

  I wasn’t so good at multitasking that I could process this new twist and still pay attention to the conversation. I looked at my watch and stood abruptly. “Oh, dear,” I said. “I didn’t realize what time it was. I’m going to be late for another appointment.”

  I gathered my purse and briefcase and acknowledged goodbyes from around the table. As I turned to go, I inadvertently caught Tony Taruffi’s eye.

  “We’ll see you soon,” he said pleasantly. But the expression on his face said he expected the next meeting to be anything but pleasant.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I HURRIED TO MY CAR, parked at a side door near the intersection of Mountain Avenue and School Street. I looked over my shoulder constantly, or as often as I could without tripping. I expected to hear Tony’s footsteps on the driveway, to have him pop out of the bushes, or pole vault over to me from the fields at the back of the building. One thing I was sure of, Tony knew I’d caught the discrepancy in his two stories about Warner Center.

  All that moonshine research for nothing, I thought. And the same for the whole project with the property documents. And John, probably in Detroit, tracking down a dead end. Now it seemed it was a science-related case. Or at least a lab-related case, having to do with illicit romance in the PR department, or boron, or both.

  Would Tony follow me? Should I drive straight to the police station? When my cell phone rang, I was driving south on School Street, headed for Matt’s office. I startled and checked all my mirrors, as if Tony would be calling my car to announce his stalking. I calmed myself by focusing on other reasons he might have had for concocting a phony alibi—a compromising liaison with whoever replaced Yolanda, for example.

  My car was unbearably hot and I was perspiring, both from running and from fright. I pushed the air-conditioning lever all the way to high and took a breath. As far as I knew, Tony didn’t even know my cell phone number. I clicked the phone on, took another breath, and relaxed when I heard Dorothy Leonard’s voice.

  In keeping with my new trend to multitask, I’d stepped out for a minute while Erin was brewing coffee, and called Dorothy Leonard’s office.

  “I got your message,” she said.

  Coincidentally, I was at the bend where School Street runs into Beach Street, a stone’s throw from the library. I assessed my situation: fleeing one suspect, contemplating arriving into the arms of another. But surely a public library was safe. I pushed away a little voice in the back of my head. Not for Irving Leonard or Yolanda Fiore, it said.

  I focused on the still-unresolved matter of faked documents. “I’d like to stop by and talk to you for a few minutes,” I said. “I have something important I’d like to discuss.”

  A long sigh. “I thought you would.”

  Aha! I thought. Dorothy Leonard is about to confess. She’s been waiting all along for me to focus on her.

  But I realized this was at least my third aha of the Fiore case, and I still hadn’t made any progress helping bring in the murderer.

  SITTING BELOW her marvelous Revere Beach Boulevard prints, Dorothy Leonard seemed quite at ease for someone who had just confessed to forgery. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she took out a manicure kit and redid her long nails, a deep coral that matched both her sleeveless linen dress and her lipstick. Her nonchalant attitude put a damper on my theory that she’d be motivated to kill the person who discovered her treachery.

  “You’re a step ahead of Frances Worthen, who, I expect, will come back with the same finding. As soon as I got your message I called the lawyers and withdrew the papers from the record.” She arranged the fashionable gray streak in her dark hair. “So, technically, I’ve committed no crime.” Dorothy made a tent of her fingers and gazed over my head. “I knew the documents didn’t have much chance of making the grade—I’ve dealt with Cappie myself in the past, authenticating manuscripts and so forth—but I needed to buy ti
me. Another twenty-four hours would have done it.”

  Stonewalling—one of Cappie’s guesses. I’d have to tell Rose Cappie was indeed an expert in the field. “What happens in twenty-four hours?”

  “June fifteenth is the drop-dead date for filing objections, counterpapers, and so on. I thought if I could just stall things past that date …” She spread her hands in a gesture of resignation. “It was worth a try.”

  Her expression turned so sad, as if she’d lost the Director of the Year award, that I almost felt guilty for spoiling her plan.

  “Weren’t you taking a big risk? If you’d been found out after the decision …”

  She nodded. “It wasn’t that smart, I know. I told myself it wasn’t really a crime since we’re so sure there was no burial ground there. The way the police plant evidence when they know they’ve found the right person.”

  I frowned at her matter-of-fact comment on police work. “I don’t think—”

  She held up her hand. “I didn’t mean Matt, of course. But we just needed a bit more documentation, and all I did was change some numbers, to add a few square feet. I’ve had a little experience myself with document examination.”

  Not enough to make Cappie proud of her, I mused. Dorothy continued her argument, as if she were in front of a jury, instead of someone who stumbled onto the plan and no longer had a reason to expose her.

  “Look at what we do have,” she said, partly to the wall behind me. “Even without any funny business—all our zoning and building permits are in order, back to 1902. It would have taken a special zoning permit to establish a cemetery in the first place, and if there were one, it would have shown up. The city offices have no record of any such document. Plus, at least half a dozen books have been written about the history of Revere by local authors, and none have mentioned a cemetery in that location.”

  A convincing defense. And more words than I’d ever heard Dorothy Leonard speak at one time. “Then why bother tampering with the papers?” I asked her.