The Nitrogen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHA PTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAP TER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  GLORIA LAMERINO MYSTERIES BY CAMILLE MINICHINO

  Copyright Page

  For my husband, Dick Rufer

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My special thanks to my niece, Mary Ellen Schnur, for her inspiration and advice; and to Inspector Christopher Lux of the Alameda County, California, District Attorney’s Office for his interest and willingness to answer my questions, often the same ones more than once.

  As usual, I drew enormous amounts of information and inspiration from Robert Durkin, my cousin and expert in all things mortuary; and from my cousin Jean Stokowski, who was constantly available and supportive.

  Thanks also to the many writers, family members, and friends who reviewed the manuscript or offered generous research assistance, in particular: Judy Barnett, Barry Black, Verna Cefalu, Erin Chan, Darla Granzow, Margaret Hamilton, Dr. Eileen Hotte, Jonnie Jacobs, Anna Lipjhart, Peggy Lucke, Philip “Buddy” Marcus, Robert Olson, Ann Parker, Lisa Shapiro, Susan Shapiro, Sue Stephenson, Karen Streich, and Jennifer York.

  I’m most grateful to my loving husband, Dick Rufer, the best there is. I can’t imagine working without his 24/7 tech support.

  Any misinterpretation of such excellent resources is purely my fault.

  Special thanks to Marcia Markland, my wonderful editor, who has been with me in one way or another from my first book and continues to be my guide; and to my patient, extraordinary agent, Elaine Koster.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Summer is the wrong time for me to visit California.

  First, I’ve always hated desert heat, claiming membership in the tiny club—a nanoclub, in scientific terms—of people who prefer humidity Second, there’s only a meager Fourth of July in California. You might see modest fireworks displays, but nothing like the shows on Revere Beach, in Massachusetts, back in the old days. Magnificent sprays of color and thunderous bursts of stars and stripes came from giant barges out on the Atlantic Ocean, the finale perhaps a replica of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima or an image of the presidential faces of Mount Rushmore.

  Elaine Cody, whose wedding was the reason I was dragging my own fiance from Revere to Berkeley in mid-June, reminded me that I spent too much time dwelling on how things used to be.

  “I’m going to find you a Fourth of July celebration you won’t forget,” she said. “We had a terrific fireworks show at the marina last year. Great new designs, with interlocking circles and geometric figures. You’d have loved them.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Did I ever tell you about Aida?” I asked.

  Elaine sighed and maneuvered her army green Saab into her Northside garage. We’d just made a harrowing trip from the San Francisco airport, across the Bay Bridge at rush hour on a Friday. “The amazing Aida, the horse that dives into a bucket of water.”

  “Dove. Past tense. I’m sure she’s dead by now,” Matt offered from the backseat. His gray head rested on one of my oversized carry-ons. I’d used Elaine’s wedding—her third—as an excuse to bring an extra forty pounds of luggage.

  “It was a large tank, not a bucket,” I said, letting decades-old memories of Aida crowd out maid-of-honor images. A graceful pony and flowered-bathing-capped rider falling through space with style and flair, versus me, in a plus-size floor-length dress.

  No contest.

  In my mind I heard a drum roll and a cymbal crash, as I followed Aida’s leap off a fifty-foot tower. A larger horse whose name I’d forgotten would twist in the air and land on his side, making it more difficult for his rider to land safely But Aida tucked up her willowy legs as if she were going over a jump and plunged into the water. I felt wet from the enormous splash, then realized the doors of the Saab were open and I was dripping perspiration. We’d arrived in Elaine’s sweltering garage.

  I’d lived and worked in Berkeley for thirty years before returning home to Revere, so I knew the heat wave would be short-lived, and unbearable only during the daytime. The fog would roll in, and breezes from the San Francisco Bay would take over after a magnificent sunset, compliments of the Bay Area’s particular spectrum of air pollution.

  “ … so I chose navy blue for you, Gloria,” I heard Elaine say “I thought it would be better for you than a pastel.”

  No kidding.

  Elaine had redone the interior of her two-tone brown Tudor. Her built-in dark oak bookshelves were still in place, but new living room furniture in various shades of brown and burgundy leather had replaced the floral set that was there on my last visit. During our long friendship, I’d often teased her that she changed furniture and men with equal frequency

  Her Hummel collection was now distributed around the room on various small tables instead of lined up on her mantel. She owned at least two dozen of the figurines, mostly children or angels, at play, napping, petting small animals, or fingering tiny musical instruments. Her newest figure, a special edition Hummel-ized policeman, claimed the center of her glass-topped coffee table. Behind his back the cherub-cop held a scroll with an imprint of an NYPD badge.

  “I have the fireman on back order,” Elaine said when she saw me pick up the Salute to American Heroes, as the script on the base of the statuette proclaimed.

  Hummels were Elaine’s only “cute” habit. At five-nine, with shoulder-length gray-blond hair, Elaine still dressed like the Radcliffe graduate she was. Tailored clothing of fine fabric, nicely matched. No polyester, no shoes with ties, no jeans or pants with an elastic waist unless she was in the act of jogging. Her long neck could sport a scarf two inches wide without wrinkling. Mine was best suited to the silver chain that had held my lab ID badge for three decades.

  Elaine’s two-story home was at the top of a hill in an older, tree-lined neighborhood a few streets north of the University of California Berkeley campus and the laboratory where I’d cleaned my first laser windows. She was still a technical editor at that lab, Berkeley University Laboratory—BUL. I was glad labs didn’t choose mascots.

  “I can’t wait for you to meet Phil and his daughter,” Elaine said as the three of us toted bags up the stairs to her guest room.

  Matt grumbled at being forced, by a vote of two to one, to carry only the lightest suitcase. His recovery from prostate cancer treatment was going well, and I wanted to keep it that way I hoped this wedding trip would be a vacation for him, away from the homicide desk of the Revere Police Department. Service, courage, and commitment, the RPD motto, had me tired just thinking about it.

  “And I can’t wait to wear my new tie that matches Gloria’s little navy dress,” Matt teased. Unburdened as he was by heavy luggage, Matt ran his fingers up my back, where the zipper of
my dress would lie in two weeks. That neither of us had ever had the physique to wear “little” clothes didn’t seem worth mentioning.

  I’d had transcontinental briefings from Elaine since her first date with Philip Chambers, a retired BUL chemist now working as a consultant. “I know I said ‘never again,’ Gloria,” she’d told me, “but he’s a scientist like you. How can I go wrong?”

  I had a feeling she’d mistaken my silence to mean I understood her logic. The courtship with Phil had been even shorter than her usual prenuptial process, but I reminded myself that my role in Elaine’s love life was to be her support, not her critic. What was so awful about Elaine’s record of four engagements and two ex-husbands, anyway? At least she tried. I’d cut and run when my first engagement ended decades ago. My only fiancé had died—which was why I put my hand on Matt’s chest at night unless I could hear him breathe. I was most reassured when his snoring filled the room of our Revere home, the hazards of sleep apnea notwithstanding.

  Matt and I took a few moments with Elaine to catch the view of Berkeley from our guest room windows, which were elaborately treated with yards of rich fabric. I felt sure the design had a technical name. Framed by the draperies, the UC campanile stood out, more impressive in the soft evening light than BUL’s sister lab, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the giant concrete building that held its cyclotron.

  Elaine pointed out a flat-topped, rectangular white building in the distance, with an array of satellite antennae on its roof. “Phil works in that facility. Dorman Industries, kind of a midsize consulting firm.” She turned to Matt. “This is one of the few days you can make it out; it’s usually too foggy”

  Elaine was right, but even Alcatraz was visible today, in the middle of San Francisco Bay. I remembered touring “the Rock” many times with East Coast guests when I lived here. I was glad Matt wasn’t the tourist type. I’d passed the point where riding the cable cars up and down the streets of San Francisco, angled at nearly ninety degrees, was fun.

  Elaine hadn’t stopped talking about her fiance. “Most of what Phil’s doing is classified, as I’ve told Gloria. It’s a kind of extension of what he was doing at BUL.”

  “He’s retired and now consults in his field? What a novel concept,” Matt said. He nudged me in my ticklish zone, which, I supposed, was meant to say he was glad I’d veered off course to police work.

  Not that I’d deliberately chosen a career as a Revere Police Department consultant—I drifted into it when they needed technical help with the murder investigation of a hydrogen researcher, shortly after I returned to Revere. I met Detective Matt Gennaro at that time, and one contract had led to another.

  Elaine had stocked the guest room with pear-scented soap and lotions, which she knew I liked, and a vase of white and orange flowers. On the bedside table she’d placed a Hummel—a little boy in an old-fashioned (of course) wooden cart, with an American flag pinned to the back. If it were a music box, it would be playing a John Philip Sousa march.

  “In honor of your favorite holiday,” she said.

  “Sweet,” I said, and meant it.

  After impressive hors d’oeuvres, prepared by Phil, we were told, and Elaine’s famous chicken Kiev, Matt went up to bed. One side effect of his anticancer medication was that he needed more sleep. Elaine and I began our usual program of “remember whens.” The monthly dinner club we’d belonged to (Berkeley was a hub for ethnic restaurants); the time I’d tried to keep up with her on a bike trip through the steep, winding paths of Grizzly Peak (what had I been thinking?); her ten least favorite BUL authors to edit (not me). We laughed at engineers’ infatuation with putting capital letters in the middle of words: MicroCell assembly, LasAmp module, ForBal spindle, BioAssayFlow device. It was Elaine’s job to talk them out of such language gimmicks.

  “It demeans your amazingly creative engineering breakthrough to have its name look like some popular commercial product,” I said in a deep, mock-serious voice. “How’s that for an imitation of your tech-editor bedside manner?”

  “What I want to say is ‘You idiot, you’re not working for Disneyland.’”

  We had another laugh at BUL engineers’ expense as Elaine refilled our espresso cups.

  “It’s so wonderful to have you here, Gloria. I know Phil’s sorry he couldn’t come to dinner tonight.”

  “It was nice of him to make the hors d’oeuvres.”

  “Poor guy slashed his hand in the process.” Elaine pointed to the tiny, delicious shrimp wraps that had been the culprits in a kitchen accident. “He was working here and isn’t used to my new knives. He had to go to the ER in the middle of the project, but still he came back to finish the tray.” Elaine smiled, a proud fiancee. “And then back to work until late tonight.”

  “I’ll be sure to thank him profusely But maybe it’s just as well that he couldn’t make it this evening. Matt’s probably better off early to bed.”

  Elaine looked at her watch. “Early by Pacific time, anyway. Phil’s set to meet us at Bette’s for breakfast in the morning. And Dana—well, who knows. Being an EMT, she has a crazy schedule. I love her, though, and we get along really well. She’s the one responsible for all the flowers around here tonight. She insisted they be right off the truck at the farmers’ market and took care of it while I was at work.”

  I skipped over mention of the fresh California blooms and zeroed in on Dana’s career. This was a new fascination of mine—high-risk vocations—traceable to my first dates with a cop. “Phil’s daughter’s an emergency medical technician? That sounds exciting. I don’t remember your telling me that.”

  Since my return to my Massachusetts roots, Elaine and I had stayed in close touch, with daily e-mails and at least weekly telephone conversations. She’d met her latest fiancé less than a year ago at their health club Christmas party. Still, about all I knew was that he was handsome, that his job was extremely important and highly confidential, and that Elaine and he were “very much in love.”

  “Not really that exciting,” Elaine said. It took a moment to realize she was referring to Dana’s EMT job, not Phil himself, or their relationship. “Dana works for an ambulance transport company They’re not the ones who answer 911 calls; they just take patients from one hospital to another. Or from a convalescent home to an ER, and so on. Seems more like taxi service.”

  “A taxi with a gurney, I’m sure,” I said.

  Elaine’s phone rang. She placed her cup next to a ceramic angel playing an accordion and went to the hallway to answer.

  I settled back on one of the paisley pillows I’d sent her at Christmas. I was glad to see they fit nicely with the new color scheme. Sent by me, but not chosen by me. I’d left that job to my Revere friend Rose, whose elegant taste was a match for Elaine’s; mine ran more to what the high-diving pony Aida’s stall decor might have been.

  I riffled through a large illustrated book on Elaine’s coffee table, Our Wedding. The title alone gave me a headache. I’d successfully deferred all Gloria Lamerino/Matt Gennaro wedding talk until after our California trip, though Rose was chafing at the bit.

  My coffee table books displayed the wonders of science and technology. I’d just acquired a large album of Harold Edgerton’s pioneering high-speed, stop-motion photography: now-famous photos such as the milk drop coronet, a .30-caliber bullet passing through an apple, and the swinging arcs of golfers and tennis players. Elaine’s photography books used to have exotic flower arrangements or black-and-white classics of New York City in the rain. Now she was displaying close-ups of wedding paraphernalia. I flipped past a lacy garter, a cake cutter decorated like a ballerina, glittery white slippers filled with candy Tsk-tsk, I said mentally.

  I looked at my bare ring finger. I hadn’t wanted an engagement ring. “I’ll wear one if you will,” I’d told Matt.

  Elaine also had chosen not to have an engagement ring, leading me to believe her wedding would be for mature audiences. Surely she wasn’t about to offer stale almonds wrapped in ne
tting to her wedding guests?

  “How awful,” I heard her say Had she overheard my mutterings about pink tulle? “She’s … she’s dead?”

  Uh-oh. I hoped I’d heard incorrectly, but I sensed a cloud forming over Elaine’s wedding, not to say someone’s life, someone’s family and friends.

  Elaine came back to the living room, a look of consternation on her face.

  “That was Dana, Phil’s daughter. Her partner’s been shot. Dead.” Elaine’s speech was slow, as if she were weighing each word for credibility. Her voice was high-pitched, as usual when she was upset. She rubbed her bare arms as if a sudden chill had overtaken the warm room.

  “Her partner?” I tried to recall what Elaine had told me about Phil Chambers’s daughter. Twenty-four, living with a couple of roommates in a house in Oakland, working to earn money for med school. Dating preference? Male or female, I couldn’t remember.

  “Her ambulance partner,” Elaine clarified. “A beautiful young black woman. Tanisha Hall. I’ve met her.”

  I moved closer and rubbed Elaine’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Elaine.”

  “I just can’t believe it. She was studying to take the firefighter’s exam. She has a little daughter.”

  Had a daughter hadn’t registered yet, I noted.

  I continued my amateur massaging, though I wasn’t sure Elaine was aware of my touch. “You said she was shot?” I asked.

  Elaine took a deep breath; her voice told me she was close to tears. “Dana says Tanisha was walking from the ambulance to the trauma center entrance. They’d just delivered the patient on a gurney, and Tanisha was taking his property in after him.” Elaine threw up her hands, as if newly surprised. Her voice became a whisper. “Someone ran up and shot Tanisha and stole the briefcase that belonged to the patient. And she died. While just doing her job.”

  In the line of duty. So much for the taxi driver theory.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Granted, I wasn’t meeting Dr. Philip Chambers under the best of circumstances. He’d been interrupted during an important meeting the night before to talk to his traumatized daughter. She’d seen her friend and partner shot down in front of her. Phil may even have known Tanisha Hall and been grieving for her. On top of all that, he’d cut his hand making special hors d’oeuvres for Matt and me.