The Nitrogen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  Still, I wished I liked him better. I’d always relied on my first impressions as holding true. I ran a checklist through my mind. Did his expensive-looking clothing intimidate me? Not likely—I wasn’t put off by Elaine’s cashmere sweater sets, nor by the dapper wardrobes of my friend Rose and her husband, Frank Galigani, the well-put-together mortician.

  Was it his physical appearance? Phil Chambers was tall and thin; he had thick brown (I wondered about this) hair and wore strong cologne. Citrus, I guessed. Matt was short and stocky and odor-free, and his hair color matched my own more-salt-than-pepper locks. But I couldn’t imagine that was what turned me off about Elaine’s fiancé.

  I hoped it wasn’t solely his opening remark when Elaine introduced us.

  We’d all met for breakfast on Saturday morning at Bette’s Oceanview Diner, an award-winning Berkeley restaurant. Old-timers remembered when Bette’s stood out on Fourth Street, one of the few operating businesses for blocks, surrounded by abandoned factories and warehouses and gravel lots that were empty except for debris. Now the diner was physically dwarfed by gentrification. In the early eighties, we referred to the whole neighborhood, close to the Berkeley marina, as “Bette’s”; now it was “the Fourth Street Shopping Center.” I’d even heard “the Crate and Barrel Mall.” Still, Bette’s managed to attract both locals and tourists on its own merits, and in great numbers, as evidenced by the long sign-up sheet for seating.

  Bette’s itself hadn’t changed much since its opening: black-and-white harlequin floor; long, shiny counter with swivel stools; authentic 1950s jukebox that crowded the minimal waiting area; and chrome trim wherever possible. Bette’s was always densely populated with the eclectic mix we expected in Berkeley Elaine and I used to play at naming the customers. The long-haired family in the booth next to ours today, for instance—we would have imagined the children’s names to be Sunflower (a girl), Redwood (a boy), and Mulberry (too young to tell). A twenty-something couple waiting by the jukebox, on the other hand, dressed nearly identically in khaki shorts and white tops, had to be Ashley and Josh.

  Phil had been seated in a red Naugahyde booth when Elaine, Matt, and I arrived. He stood and shook Matt’s hand, protecting his bandaged left hand with his right underarm, then turned to greet me. His eyes narrowed as he half said, half asked, “Elaine tells me you have a doctorate in physics?” As if he hadn’t believed his fiancee and, now that he’d seen me, he was sure she’d been mistaken.

  I called up a questioning look of my own. “And you have one in chemistry? Amazing!” I said.

  Elaine and Matt laughed, both better prepared than Phil for the nastier, sarcastic side of me. Most people don’t expect much from a short, gray-haired female.

  “We need a diner like this in Revere,” Matt said, redirecting our attention to what no one could be acerbic about. He slid in next to me and unobtrusively patted my knee. Relax. “I’ve been craving homemade pancakes, and I see that’s a specialty here.”

  “Made with locally milled flour and all natural ingredients,” Elaine said. “After all, this is Berkeley.”

  I took a deep breath, deciding I might order according to smell. Bacon or fruit? Buttery pancakes or hash browns? Even the salad that swished by us in the hands of a waitress had a fresh, handpicked aroma.

  I resisted a reminder to Matt to choose an item with a heart icon: low-fat, low-cholesterol choices. I didn’t remember noticing his diet before his prostate cancer; I know I never kept surreptitious track of his fat and calorie intake every day But since his diagnosis I’d been on guard, as if everything he ate, every choice of movement or activity, was related to his illness, which had to be kept at bay

  To his credit, Phil rushed to clarify his comment to me. “I didn’t mean to sound surprised, Gloria. I work with a lot of women these days.”

  “You’re not helping yourself, Phil,” Elaine said, containing a laugh. And then to me, “He’s old-school, as you can see.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d met sexism as a woman in science, but I didn’t often meet it among scientists themselves. And I wondered about the “old-school” designation. Did that mean he and Elaine never went out without a chaperone? Too snide, I told myself, and held that remark back.

  I thought of Elaine’s two ex-husbands and her “extra” fiance. Where were they now? I wondered. Not in our lives. Elaine had lost track of Greg, a lab engineer; Skyler, a San Francisco street artist; and Rene, a Parisian chemist, whom she’d been engaged to but never married. In between, there had been Bruce, Mel, José …

  Looking at Phil, I missed them all.

  We spoke only briefly of Tanisha Hall’s death, but the fact of it was there, hovering over the heavy white mugs of strong coffee and the wide-bottomed glasses of orange juice. Every time we laughed, someone cut the moment short, as if it were improper to be frivolous so soon after hearing of the young woman’s murder.

  “How’s Dana holding up?” I asked Phil, once our pancake and French toast specials had arrived. I knew he’d had a lengthy conversation with his daughter last night, though he hadn’t left his meeting to visit her.

  I saw a pained look cross Phil’s face, but it passed quickly. He shrugged his shoulders, then swung his syrupy fork in the air, its tines pointing upward, carving out a small circle a few inches from his face. “You know Dana,” he said, turning to Elaine. “She takes everything so seriously.”

  “Murder is pretty serious, don’t you think?” Matt asked. A simple question from one who’d made a career out of bringing killers to justice. His voice was calm, his eating uninterrupted, and he saved me from making another remark I might later regret.

  “Sure, sure,” Phil said. “It must be hard seeing someone you know get shot. And over a duffel bag.” He shook his head: the futility of it all. “But Dana’s strong. She’ll be okay.”

  I caught the error in Phil’s comment. According to Elaine, the shooter had taken a briefcase, not a duffel bag. I almost corrected Phil, but I thought I’d caused enough friction already.

  I did my best to be pleasant for the rest of the meal, though anyone who knew me would have been able to tell I was in a polite-but-cold mood. Then I saw the look on Elaine’s face. She did know me well, and she was distressed.

  I felt guilt settle in my stomach, making Bette’s double-egg-dipped sourdough French toast seem feather-light by comparison. Elaine had chosen Phil; it was my shortcoming that I couldn’t find his redeeming qualities. And what about Phil having to sit through breakfast with his fiancee’s flighty friend, going from one coast to another every twenty or thirty years?

  I gave myself a mental slap. I needed to get with the program and behave like a normal maid of honor. I’d come to help with bridal tasks. I’d been Elaine’s attendant twice before, and I knew there were endless errands to run and phone calls to make concerning the food, the champagne, the minister, the flowers, the rings, the photographer, the decorations, the music, the outfits. I was out of breath thinking about it.

  “So, when are we going shopping for our shoes?” I asked Elaine. “I’m favoring some navy patent leather flats with a little Mary Jane T-strap.”

  Poor Elaine choked on a piece of Bette’s famous lemon scone.

  Phil was a connected guy. Not connected like my long-deceased Uncle Pasquale, a small-time Revere bookie, but connected to his cell phone and pager and state-of-the-art PDA, each of which he fingered at one time or another during our breakfast. Taking a call, entering a date, answering a page, making a note with a sleek black stylus. Elaine didn’t seem to mind this, so I tried not to. Not surprisingly, Phil had to leave our company earlier than he’d hoped, to attend an important meeting. I congratulated myself on resisting the temptation to ask why he couldn’t clear a whole Saturday morning for his fiancee and her maid of honor.

  Outside Bette’s, Phil kissed Elaine, shook Matt’s hand and mine, and crossed the street. He got into a snazzy BMW driven by a white-haired man, about the same age as all of us.

  Elain
e waved at the BMW driver. “Howard Christopher, Phil’s boss,” she told us. “Nice guy, but always on Phil’s back to do more, work more hours. You know the drill. I keep telling him, ‘You’re not marrying Christopher.”

  I’d caught the parting I-love-yous between Elaine and Phil. That had made me happy, but by the time Phil left, I’d given myself enough mental slaps to keep me alert for two weeks.

  Elaine wanted to check out the wedding site—the magnificent Berkeley Rose Garden. True to her name, my best East Coast friend, Rose Galigani, loved roses and insisted on visiting the garden every trip she made to visit me when I lived in California.

  “There are three thousand bushes and two hundred fifty varieties,” I’d told her the first time, reading from the guidebook, pleased with myself for finding such a treasure for her.

  “They’re not all blooming at once, Gloria. Different varieties peak at different times.”

  “You mean pink one month, red another?”

  Rose shook her head and rolled her eyes at the idea that a woman whose bedtime reading was the latest news on the Big Bang wouldn’t know the life cycles of roses.

  What I liked best about the Rose Garden was the surprise of it. Even with the newly installed viewing area, walking or driving along Euclid Avenue in northeast Berkeley, you might miss it. Bushes and trees partly hid the entrance. Once you turned down the path, however, an enormous amphitheater of six terraces opened up below you. Berkeley’s own Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Roses everywhere.

  In the bright sun, I enjoyed sharing the pleasure with Matt.

  “Whoa,” he said. The expression he reserved for special occasions.

  Today’s roses were a breathtaking pink and white, their scent swirling around like clouds of charge around a heavy nucleus. Steep, wide stone steps, as beautiful as they could be treacherous to any but the sure-footed, led down, down, down, to a small clearing—a few square feet that were as lovely as any sanctuary.

  Straight ahead, looking across to the horizon from the street level, were San Francisco Bay and the hills of Marin County. A postcard scene in Elaine’s backyard, and mine at one time.

  A wedding ceremony was coming to a close as we arrived. In the Rose Garden, no invitations were needed. It was normal for families and passersby enjoying the park’s tennis courts, paths, and picnic areas to pause and “attend” a wedding in progress, settling on the stone steps or leaning on bikes and scooters. We watched as the bride and groom and their attendants—all youngsters, compared to Elaine’s and my wedding parties—climbed up to the street level and rode off in a Model A Ford appropriately decked out in streamers. Cameras clicked and rolled as the driver, in a vintage 1930s cap, cranked up the car.

  For no good reason, I wondered whether Hollywood producers had ever used the Rose Garden for an action-movie car-chase scene, sending motorcycles and police cars up and down the narrow walkways. For all I knew it had been done.

  Elaine had made arrangements for us to hold a rehearsal here in two weeks, before the Saturday afternoon Cody/Chambers wedding. Saturday was the third of July, so everyone would be celebrating all night, Elaine had told me.

  “You’ll walk in from this direction, Gloria,” Elaine said, indicating a set of steps that began at the Euclid Avenue entrance. Her arm swept to the aisle sixty degrees away “Dana will come in from there. Phil and I are going to come in together from the other side.” She turned to me and said in a soft voice, “Too late for me to be given away, don’t you think?”

  I smiled. “No comment.”

  Elaine felt it would be a good idea for us to stop in to see Dana. She called ahead and reported that Dana sounded very grateful we’d thought of it. We stopped at Fourth Street again and picked up pastry from Bette’s takeout annex, coffee beans from Peet’s, and a small purple plant (Elaine called it by name) at one of the many home and garden shops. If Dana was at all ready to be cheered, these items would do it.

  I could hardly wait to meet Dana Chambers. Like father, like daughter? I hoped not.

  “Open mind,” Matt whispered as he held the car door for me. I always marveled at how well he knew me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dana’s neighborhood in the flats, where the cities of Berkeley and Oakland overlapped, was densely packed with single homes and duplexes, mostly run-down, their unkempt front yards dotted with rusty toys and car parts. Battered old autos and trucks were parked bumper to bumper on both sides of the street. We’d been lucky to find a parking spot around the corner from Dana’s. I doubted the chirp chirp of Elaine’s car alarm meant a lot, but it did give some comfort.

  The sun beat down on us. I’d remembered to wear long sleeves for protection against the intense California rays, but Matt had on a polo shirt and complained mildly about his skin burning up. “Summer wimps,” Elaine called us both. Her sleeveless linen dress, a pale yellow, showed no sign she’d even sat in it.

  As we picked our way along the broken sidewalk, skirting candy wrappers and cigarette butts, Matt assumed his assessing-the-environment attitude, scanning the area. The posture seemed incongruous with the pretty flowers he carried.

  “Dana just moved in a couple of weeks ago. I’ve never been here,” Elaine said. From her tone, she may have wanted to assure us that she had nothing to do with choosing the shabby neighborhood.

  Except for several rowdy dogs, mercifully behind chain-link fences, there was no sign of life on the street until we arrived at the house Dana shared with two roommates. Her door was propped open by a large, bulging backpack. The purse of choice for recent generations.

  Dana’s house was old, built long before safety codes. The stairs were steep and narrow, with no railing, almost as precarious as the Rose Garden’s terrace steps, but not at all as attractive. Neither were the few roses in the small front yard. They hung limply from their stems, as if they were sad, having just heard the news of Tanisha Hall’s death.

  I worried about Matt, who insisted on carrying everything up the steps. I strained to listen to his breathing, inexpertly evaluating his respiration. He’d awakened to news of a murder that affected someone close to Elaine, if not to us, and probably was concerned about my juvenile reaction to Phil Chambers. So far, not a fun vacation. I’d wondered about the wisdom of his making the trip in the first place, but his doctors enthusiastically had given permission.

  “I was on the lookout for you,” Dana said, appearing at her door. “It’s hard to see the number here with all this greenery.”

  She’d swept aside a hanging plant, her gentle voice and sad eyes belying the obvious strength of her body Fitting my stereotype of what an EMT should look like, Dana was tall and broad-shouldered; her long arms and legs, not very covered by short shorts and a tank top, were tanned and muscular.

  Elaine embraced Dana, reaching up as high as when she’d embraced Phil a while earlier. “I’m so sorry, Dana,” Elaine said. “This must be just … incredibly hard for you.” The two women stayed together a moment or two. Elaine sobbed quietly; Dana stared over Elaine’s shoulder, her eyes ringed with red. She patted Elaine’s back, as if Elaine were the one needing comfort. My heart went out to Dana; I liked her immediately and pointlessly wished I’d been nicer to her father.

  “We brought some sustenance from Fourth Street,” Elaine said when she broke away

  Matt produced the food and the plant and a warm smile, and we crossed the threshold into Dana’s living room.

  “Elaine’s told me all about both of you, and I’ve been dying to meet you,” Dana said, addressing Matt and me. “I’m sorry I’m not in better shape, but I’m so glad you came. My roommates both had things to do, and I told them I didn’t need them to stay around, but I really don’t want to be alone.”

  I had the feeling this visit would be free of hidden, or not so hidden, hostility and resolved to give Dana’s father another chance.

  We settled ourselves on a variety of mismatched chairs in Dana’s living room. I took a wooden rocker with a multicolored braided
pad; Dana and Elaine sat on the floral patterned couch, which I recognized from Elaine’s old living room set; Matt dragged in a straight-backed chair from the dining room. I imagined three sets of parents, plus assorted stepparents, all contributing to furnishing the house for the three young women. I wondered what, if anything, Dana’s mother had passed along. Elaine knew little about Phil’s first wife, she’d told me, other than she now lived in Florida with a new family.

  In spite of her cushy seat on the couch, Dana sat stiff as the bed board I’d used when I hurt my back lifting an oscilloscope. Her conversation was equally taut.

  “How was your flight?” she asked. She swung her head from me to Matt, her eyes not quite focused on either of us.

  “No incidents,” I replied, regretting my word choice as soon as I said it. Dana showed no special reaction.

  “Don’t you hate airplane food?” Dana asked. She glanced at the buttery scones, the moist muffins, and the double-thick brownies we’d brought from Bette’s as if they, too, had been served ice cold, wrapped in plastic on a tray of questionable cleanliness.

  “We stopped at the Rose Garden,” Elaine said, with no elaboration.

  Elaine’s tongue is stuck, too, I thought.

  “Have you had your incident debriefing?” Matt asked Dana. I gasped, inaudibly, I hoped. He’d run in, guns blazing, so to speak, and addressed what was on all our minds.

  Dana shook her head. Her long, straight hair was wet, as if from a swim or a shower, with no attempt at styling. “Not yet.” A weak voice, but on the way to opening up.

  “You know, I’ve been there, as you can imagine.” Matt’s face was as serious as I’d ever seen it, as if he’d just been through a life-changing experience. He reached back into his pants pocket. “I made some notes. Might be useful to you.”