Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  My boxes were identical brown cartons, marked with long-forgotten codes. I could only guess that the box labeled PT60-4 contained four years of back issues of one of my favorite magazines, Physics Today. I knew that the two with AG in wide black letters were about Al Gravese. He’d been living with his parents in the North End of Boston when he died, so the only things I had were souvenirs and presents from him or items that he might have left around my home.

  By the time I met Al, Josephine had died and I was sharing a bottom-floor apartment in a duplex with my father on Tuckerman Street, a hilly road not far from the current Bensen residence. Often after a late night with me or business of his own, Al bunked upstairs with the Corrados, the old couple who owned the house.

  I could almost hear Mrs. Corrado’s broken English. “You got a nice boy,” she’d tell me, with as much of a twinkle as her watery old eyes could hold.

  In the four months since I’d been back in Revere, I’d gone through only three or four boxes, all with codes other than AG. I’d found my high school yearbook, the dust of years embedded deep in the crevices of the embossed replica of Paul Revere’s lantern that was its logo. For some inexplicable reason, I’d also kept a collection of essays in Italian that had won me a prize in the Sons of Italy contest, and a crinoline petticoat, most of which had disintegrated into a pile of dry white flakes.

  It was time to dig deeper, I decided. I dragged the box marked AG#1 under the light bulb and slit open the top. My fingers sifted through enough dried flowers to line a casket and picked out a sour-smelling brown photograph album. I took a seat on a rickety director’s chair by the small attic window and put the dusty book on my lap.

  All the pictures I had of Al were in the album. I’d left it behind in Revere and hadn’t seen it since. I took a deep breath, and flipped through the black pages, made of thick construction paper. I looked at dozens of photographs in front of the same background. First me on the sand at the beach, then Al in the same spot, then a whole group. I paused over a few pictures with Rose and Frank at a flower show and other couples whose names I couldn’t remember. Enough of this I thought, I’ll try another box.

  I repacked the first carton and slit open AG#2. Everything in this box was contained in a wrinkled brown paper bag sealed with transparent tape, yellow and cracked with age. Along the side of the bag was written, “from M. Corrado,” in the oddly curled script of people from the old country. I barely remembered getting this bag from our landlord right after Al’s funeral. It seemed I’d stuffed it in a box without even opening it. From the weight and feel of it, I guessed it held clothing.

  I opened the bag and pulled out three shirts that I recognized as Al’s. There was a toothbrush, a dark green chenille robe, some socks and underwear and a square-faced travel clock in a plain silver case. The clothing had a putrid smell that did nothing for the already dank air of the attic. This one’s easy, I thought, give the clock to the Salvation Army and toss everything else.

  As I shook out the robe a small object fell onto my lap—a tiny address book, not more than three inches long and two inches wide, with a black leather cover, brittle and dry. The pages were in good shape for their age and as I leafed through them, I saw line after line of names and numbers in Al’s handwriting. Some of the numbers were obviously phone numbers, others had dollar signs next to them.

  I sat back on the floor and tapped the book against my leg. I groaned out loud, tapped a few more times, and put the book in my pocket for a later decision.

  By ten o’clock my knees were hurting and I decided to go downstairs and soak in my tub. In the old days at ten o’clock Al and I and Rose and Frank might be just starting an evening together, heading out for an all-night diner. But my knees didn’t hurt then, either.

  I carried a glass of water and the latest New Yorker magazine into my bedroom, counting on the cartoons for complete distraction from decisions about my belongings and from the emotional lows of the day.

  As I placed my glass on the nightstand, I noticed the blinking light on the answering machine. For all the nervousness it produced at the time, I’d forgotten about the call that came in while I was in the attic. I pushed the button on top of the unit and heard Rose’s voice.

  “Hi, hope you had a good day,” she said, her voice too cheerful for the message to come. “I just want to tell you not to worry if you hear noise downstairs tonight. The guys will be moving Eric Bensen’s body into the first parlor around midnight. Have a good night. Talk to you later.”

  ELEVEN

  I’d become accustomed to living two floors above dark parlors where corpses appeared regularly. Galigani’s was one of only three funeral homes in a city of nearly forty-five thousand people, so they had ‘clients’ as they called them, at least four days out of every seven. On my first night in the apartment I had to walk past a small white casket holding the body of a stillborn baby girl. Images of the grieving young parents and the tiniest pale pink flowers I’d ever seen haunted me for days.

  But this was my first experience living in the same building as the wake of a friend, a murdered one at that. Another restless night, with dreams of cardboard coffins falling apart in rainy graveyards. The shifty-eyed rats I hadn’t met in the attic visited my subconscious in the middle of the night. I stayed in bed until almost ten o’clock on Friday morning, lazily sipping coffee, to make up for a busy, nerve-wracking dream life.

  Since I wasn’t due at Matt’s office until one-thirty, I used the rest of the morning to catch up on some other work. I had to finish a junior high science education project on lasers for a San Francisco science museum, and in three weeks I was scheduled to speak at a high school physics club meeting.

  I’d deliberately arranged my physics club talk for November 7, the common birthday of two of my heroines, Marie Curie in 1867 and Lise Meitner in 1878. I planned to open with the story of the first meeting between Meitner and the other great nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford.

  “Oh,” he’d said as a greeting, “I thought you were a man.”

  Having been nearly invisible at many physics conferences myself, I had no trouble believing the anecdote—that Rutherford was unaware of Meitner’s gender although he had read her publications and followed her research with interest.

  I sat down with my third cup of coffee and started my yearly reading of my favorite biography of Marie Curie, written by her younger daughter, Eve. I thought again what a wonderful, simple realm of reality physics provided. Eric’s murderer couldn’t possibly be another physicist, I told myself again, and revisited the temptation to rule out Leder, Connie, and Jim for that reason alone.

  Just before eleven o’clock Rose called up to me on the intercom that connected the three floors at Galigani’s Mortuary.

  “How are you doing?” she asked. “Have you seen Eric?”

  For the second question, Rose went into her graveside voice. After years in the business, she moved easily from her normal light tones to her compassionate business voice. Anyone listening to her would know that Eric was lying dead in a funeral parlor, and not someone you might have seen walking along Broadway that morning.

  “No, I’d rather not go in until the family sees him,” I said.

  “Frank did a good job,” Rose said.

  “I’m sure he did,” I said. I remembered Frank’s pride when he first worked out a formula that gave the skin of his corpses a more life-like color. He added a pink dye to the formaldehyde mixture and was able to eliminate much of the heavy make-up I saw at most viewings. Every time I paid my respects to shapeless faces with crusty orange make-up I renewed my resolution to be cremated. I hadn’t told that to Rose and Frank yet.

  “Peter called to see if Frank and I wanted to join you two at the Wonderland dance tomorrow night,” Rose said.

  I clenched my teeth and rubbed at a dull ache that had taken over my face around my jaw, scowling at the now-droopy roses Peter had brought as if they’d betrayed me. I decided not to continue the conversation with Ro
se in the bent-over position I’d assumed in order to use the intercom, which was at the back of my desk.

  “Why don’t you come on up,” I said. “I’ll give you lunch and the short form of my feelings in that regard.”

  “Will do.”

  ~*~

  I gave Rose the recent history of my interactions with Peter, feeling as though we’d reverted to our days of whispering about boys in the girls’ room.

  “I always knew Peter had more than one reason for maintaining a friendship with me and Frank all these years,” Rose said. “Not that we didn’t get along, but I knew he was using us to keep up with what you were doing.”

  I let out a long sigh, as if we were fifteen, and Rose had just told me that the kid with the most pimples in homeroom liked me and wanted to take me to the senior prom. If we’re going to do this, I thought, we might as well go all the way.

  “What do you know about Matt Gennaro?” I asked.

  “Aha,” Rose said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Come on, Gloria, it’s time you grew up a little in that area.”

  “I don’t think I like the way this is going.”

  “You don’t have to. Just let me take care of it.”

  I knew Rose was right. I did need to figure out what if anything I was going to do about my love life. While I lived in California, I’d had what might be called dates, mostly arranged by Elaine, but not many, and never past the stage of a goodnight kiss. I’d been Elaine’s maid of honor twice and saw her through two divorces. Not much inspiration for trying myself, I’d mused, conveniently ignoring the successful decades-long Galigani marriage.

  By now I was flushed and pacing up and down on the four-foot paisley runner between my entryway and living room. I faced Rose’s direct attack head on.

  “Let’s have lunch,” I said.

  I wandered into the kitchen, Rose at my heels, and pulled out the makings of sandwiches and a mini salad bar. Rose kept at it while she made the coffee.

  “I’m not talking about a big deal,” Rose said. “Frank knows Matt. We buried his wife ten years ago. Genetic heart disease. That’s why they didn’t have children. Very sad.” Rose paused to acknowledge the tragedy of a woman dying in her forties. It was the first I’d heard about how and when Matt’s wife had died. I wanted to know more but refrained from asking follow-up questions. Rose was in enough of a hurry to get us together. “Frank would know if he’s seeing anyone at the moment,” Rose continued. “If not, we can invite him for a simple dinner at our house.”

  “And I just happen to be there?” I pulled at a head of lettuce, tearing it apart with my bare hands. I imagined a simple meal at Rose’s, with her Spode china, fine crystal and monogrammed silverware resting on her grandmother’s lace tablecloths. Although they never commented on my supermarket stemware, bought in packages of six in cardboard cartons with handles, Rose and Frank didn’t have it in them to entertain casually.

  “We’ll tell him ahead of time. People do this all the time, Gloria.”

  Rose emphasized the word people. It was clear that she meant the large group of normal, romantically active adults, of which I was not a member.

  “It’ll be so obvious,” I said, surprised that I didn’t just say no.

  “Well, what if it is? We’re all adults. He can refuse and nothing’s lost.”

  “Except my face and my dignity. No, I don’t think so.”

  I pictured myself in Matt’s office the day after he told Frank he wasn’t interested in a romantic foursome. I didn’t like the picture.

  “I’m sorry I mentioned him,” I said. “We’re working together. That’s all.”

  “Right.”

  Rose sighed and picked up a paring knife with her right hand and a cucumber with her left. She waved the cucumber in my direction.

  “I know this isn’t just about Al’s memory,” she said. “You’re smarter than that.”

  “I’m too old,” I said, in a voice so weak I was amazed that Rose heard me. The beige tiles of my kitchen counter seemed to turn to a liquid, like very weak tea, blurring my vision so that I lost focus, and Rose’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  “I’m going to forget you said that. I’m also going to wait until this case is over, since you have to work with Matt. Then we’ll get serious.”

  I recovered my poise, such as it is, and watched as Rose scored the skin of the cucumber, then put it on the cutting board and sliced it at an angle until she had a neat row of identical oval pieces with ridged edges. She didn’t speak for several minutes, her jaw set, her small oval face a study in concentration. I’d seen it before. She’d gone into her long-range planning mode.

  We called down to Frank and invited him up for lunch.

  “Not a word,” I said to Rose.

  She put her index finger on her bright red lower lip and shook her head. As a promise that gave me confidence, the gesture fell short.

  Frank came into the room and gave us each a kiss. “Smells good,” he said. “And I think you’ll be happy with how your friend looks, Gloria.” I wondered how long it had taken him to be able to speak of food and corpses in the same breath.

  Frank removed his dark brown suit jacket and hung it in the hall closet with great care. “The Bensens just arrived to view Eric and they seem satisfied.”

  “Are they still down there,” I asked, relieved to have the conversation on a new track, away from my social life.

  “Yes,” Frank said, “Eric’s parents and his wife are having some private time now. Then we’ll talk about tonight’s program.”

  Frank’s voice was like a soft hymn by a church organist. He rolled up his starched white shirtsleeves as if he were folding an altar cloth at Saint Anthony’s, and filled his plate from the small buffet Rose and I had laid out on my counter.

  From the amount of food I’d seen Frank consume at various meals together, it wasn’t clear to me how he kept his short frame looking firm and trim. As far as I knew the only physical activity he engaged in was golf, and I always thought of that as more of a networking activity than a bodybuilding sport. Unlike Frank, I could see every calorie I consumed, easily identifiable on my body. In fact, my baby fat was still intact.

  “So, tomorrow night, are you ready to dance your shoes off?” he asked me.

  Rose looked at me and showed me her palms in an attitude of helplessness.

  “We’ve had a change of plans,” she said to Frank. “I’ll tell you later.”

  Frank didn’t pursue the topic, and I envied the way long-term partners in life and in work communicated without lengthy explanations.

  ~*~

  Rose and Frank left to go back to work at twelve-thirty, leaving me only an hour to dress and get to Matt’s office. The rain had stopped during the night, but it was colder than it had been all week. I discarded the idea of a short-sleeved silk dress and put on a three-piece gray and white striped knit outfit that I thought would also do for the wake in the evening. I rummaged around my pin collection and selected a pewter cable car about an inch long, that fit along the edge of the jacket. If I were in San Francisco now, I thought, I’d wear my silver Old Ironsides pin.

  I left my apartment and walked down the front stairs toward the parlor where Eric was laid out. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing him dead, no matter how good he appeared to my funeral director friends.

  Since there was no one with Eric’s body except two men from Galigani’s staff, I walked in across the dark carpet. The air in the room was saturated with the smell of gladioli, lilies, and chrysanthemums, in wreaths and baskets arranged around the casket. Three tall vases of red roses in front were wrapped in long white ribbons with gold foil letters attached. Beloved Husband. Loving Son. Grandson. On either side of Eric’s casket were other baskets of flowers, among them my own bouquet and the second one I’d ordered, from his California friends.

  I approached Eric’s body, kneeled on the wooden prie dieu an
d leaned my arms on its gold velvet top. A metal rack with new cream-colored votive candles stood next to the prie dieu. Heavy burgundy curtains had been drawn across the windows, and the room was as dark as it would be in the middle of the night.

  It was strange to see Eric in a suit and tie, lying still, without his thick glasses. The lining of his cherrywood casket was stark white, the only source of brightness in the room. I looked at Eric’s slightly protruding upper lip, so true to life, and remembered the mini-lecture Frank had given me on how photographs of clients when they were alive helped the embalmer reconstruct their faces in death. Frank seldom had a chance to talk about his work outside the family and was hard to stop when he thought someone was interested, which for some strange reason, I was.

  I was surprised to see a black crystal rosary wrapped around Eric’s fingers. I didn’t remember that Eric or Janice ever went to church and I wondered whose idea it was to put prayer beads in his hands.

  I drew in a deep breath and allowed my mind to wander. I thought about Eric’s life in the gas gun lab, the data he’d added to our information about the elements of the universe, the people he loved. I hoped that either there was some afterlife he might enjoy or there wasn’t and it didn’t matter. I considered how different my prayer life had become since my youth as a communicant in Saint Anthony’s parish. Maybe my prayer for Eric is taking the form of helping to find his murderer, I thought, with a sudden hopeful feeling.

  When I heard voices on the landing by Frank’s office on the second floor, I moved quickly out of the parlor, like an intruder caught in the act.

  I left the building and went around the side to the garage. As I pulled out onto the street in my Cadillac, I saw Janice Bensen and an older couple, whom I took to be Eric’s parents, leave the mortuary. I paused in the driveway, hoping they wouldn’t look back and see me, preferring to meet them when they were ready for guests, later that evening.

  The older couple were talking to each other while Janice walked in silence several yards behind. The couple drove off in a late model maroon Oldsmobile. Janice got into an old blue Toyota parked across the street and drove away in the opposite direction.