Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “I don’t know what to do with you,” he said. “You apparently are not going to follow my advice, so I’m going to have to make it stronger. This is not a suggestion. You’re not to operate on your own in this investigation. It’s a violation of your contract for one thing, and extremely foolish, for another. If you see or hear anything you think is significant, you don’t handle it yourself. You call me.”

  Matt leaned toward me as he talked, emphasizing certain words by tapping his hands on his desk blotter.

  “I have something else to tell you,” I said. “Not exactly what we’re talking about but I should have told you before.”

  He leaned forward a few more inches and opened his eyes wide. He tilted his head and tightened his jaw. I was sorry I mentioned it, but there was no turning back. I told him about Leder’s phone call on Wednesday night, but not the gossip from Andrea’s alleged eavesdropping incident, so I felt only partly cleansed, as if I’d been to confession and held back a sin.

  He let out a loud breath, but seemed to take it better than I thought he would. If he felt he’d intimidated me enough, he was right.

  “Okay,” he said. “Thank you. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes,” I said. I flipped over the computer printout so the last lines of the stack were on top. “There are three symbols at the end of the program that seem out of place.”

  SEVENTEEN

  I left the station with the same officer who’d picked Connie and me up earlier in the evening. As I stepped into the white cruiser I noted the red script along the bottom of the back door. “Revere Pride” it read, and I wondered if whoever created the slogan meant the cars, the officers, or the special escort service for naive amateur detectives.

  Connie’s car was not in front of Galigani’s where I’d last seen it, so I assumed she was finished before I was. Or else they’ve put her in jail and impounded her car, I thought. In any case, I was ready to admit to myself that it wasn’t my problem. My problem was to get ready for a double date with Peter and Rose and Frank.

  As I entered the front door of Galigani’s, I saw Rose standing on the second floor landing, her hands on her hips, her eyes full of energy. When I reached her level, she pulled me into her office.

  “I can’t stand it, Gloria. You have to tell me what’s going on.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Neither of us could get much farther without a burst of laughter.

  We each took one of the upholstered chairs in front of her desk. Rose was still in her funeral garb, but I knew she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t already have a smashing outfit laid out on her bed for our evening of dinner and dancing.

  “A cruiser picks you up and drops you off. What’s that about? And what happened last night with Matt? How come you’re going out with Peter?”

  “More important,” I said, “how did you handle the guest book crisis with Janice Bensen?”

  She looked as if she’d lose her breath if I didn’t satisfy her curiosity. But she played along for another minute.

  “I told her we’d use it as is for the evening, and then later we’d add a cover on top of the white linen that she thinks is too feminine. She can have any color of her choice.”

  “Brilliant,” I said, patting her knee.

  She folded her hands on her lap and looked at me as if to remind me that she’d earned the right to some information. I knew it was my turn. I told her why Matt stayed behind and she seemed as disappointed as I was that it was for less than romantic reasons.

  “He was really upset when I told him you had Eric’s wife and friends up here,” Rose said. “I think he cares a lot about you.”

  “He doesn’t care about me in particular, Rose. He just doesn’t want a civilian employee dead on his watch.”

  “You’re pouting, Josephine,” Rose said, using her old trick of calling me by my mother’s name whenever she detected a regression to my childhood training.

  “Okay, never mind. Let’s move on to the police escort,” I said.

  I explained that the cruisers were due to what I thought was Matt’s paranoia about my having Connie in my apartment once I knew she’d been at the crime scene on the night of the murder. To my surprise, Rose took his side.

  “I never thought of that risk,” she said, frowning as she did when she was serious. “He’s right. Excitement is one thing, but you can’t be putting yourself in danger.”

  “Well, there won’t be any more excitement or danger. My job is almost over.”

  “You mean they’re going to arrest one of the scientists?”

  “Not necessarily, but there’s not much more for me to do.”

  We looked at the clock, a mahogany heirloom like Rose’s desk. Even though most clients never saw Rose’s office, it was beautifully furnished with antiques from her family.

  “Well, I’ve got work to do,” she said, leaning over to show me the roots of her chemically enhanced dark hair. We left her office together.

  ~*~

  As soon as I closed my own apartment door behind me, I realized that I’d left my briefcase in Rose’s office. I grimaced in annoyance since I’d wanted one more look at my notes. Somewhere I had a key to the second floor rooms, but I’d never used it and couldn’t remember where it was.

  Finally I decided not to bother, that a better idea was to fill my tub with water and lavender foam from Crabtree & Evelyn and forget about the investigation. I couldn’t give it up completely, however, so before I got in to soak I put a notebook and pencil on the small white wicker stool next to the tub, just in case I had a brilliant insight.

  I wondered how Leder and Connie would work out the debt they owed the scientific community. My opinion of Leder was low enough that I thought he might divert all the blame to Connie. As project leader he could take the high ground and say that he merely allowed his name to be used on the research papers of his underlings and had no knowledge of the fraud. In any case they’d have to retract their paper and face the consequences in front of a review board of their peers.

  Although the technical mystery of the hydrogen data was solved, I still had a lot of questions. Was what the scientists had done enough to think of them as murderers? If so, who— Connie or Leder or both? It wasn’t as if fudged data were the only motive for killing Eric.

  I mentally reviewed my notes, which were as clear in my head as they were on paper. Andrea seemed eager to cast suspicion on Leder. At first I thought she might have made up the whole story about Leder’s call to his wife, but how else would she have known about the sleeping pills or what Leder and his wife told the police?

  There was still Andrea’s own motive to think about, and Janice’s. Surely jealousy and domestic discord were still more popular motives for murder than damage to scientific reputations. And for all his holy image, I couldn’t rule out Jim as a possibility.

  Even though it was none of my business, I wished Matt would share more of his thinking on procedural matters with me. I wondered if he had followed up on the discrepancy in Janice’s statement that she hadn’t been to the lab since Memorial Day. I also wondered if Janice knew about Eric’s scheduled meeting with the divorce lawyer or that he allegedly had a girlfriend in California.

  I knew my assignment was almost over—technically, the only thing left for me to do was figure out what if anything the strange characters on the printout meant. I stretched a dripping arm over to the stool, picked up the pencil and wrote the symbols on my notepad. I stared at it for a while, then closed my eyes as the watery shapes became blurry and illegible.

  As I dressed, I tried to shift my thoughts from Matt to Peter. My black knit dress had come back to life after its morning steam bath. I looked in the bathroom mirror and felt I was as presentable as I could hope to be, after adding a long strand of faux pearls, drop pearl earrings and the highest heels I owned, two inches, in black patent leather. No pin for this outfit.

  Peter knocked on my door at exactly five-thirty, wearing the brightest smi
le and the most sharply pressed suit I’d ever seen. His black wing tips were as polished as many a lens I’d seen on an optical bench. He took my hand and stepped back to arm’s length.

  “Gloria,” he said, slipping a corsage with tiny red tea roses on my wrist. He gave me a hug like the ones I’ve seen baseball players give a batter as he crosses home plate. I wondered if he was congratulating me on my outfit or himself on talking me into this date.

  I offered him wine left over from the stock Leder had supplied, but he refused.

  “I’m driving,” he said. “And we need to pick up Rose and Frank in fifteen minutes.”

  When Peter said fifteen minutes, he meant exactly fifteen minutes. I expected him to have worked out the evening’s schedule for a smooth operation, leaving nothing to chance. My suspicions were confirmed as I entered his dark blue Buick and smelled the unmistakable odor of a brand new cedar air freshener tree.

  The Galigani home was across town and up a hill on Adams Street. In the old days Revere Memorial Hospital was around the corner from them, on Proctor Avenue. Josephine had spent the last twenty-four hours of her life in that hospital, and my father had spent his last days there many years later. Rose had told me that in the late seventies the hospital was converted to a multi-level nursing home. I looked at the tall, imposing building, visible from Rose and Frank’s driveway, and was glad I didn’t have time to dwell on memories of my parents’ deaths.

  As I guessed, except for being nearly a foot shorter, Frank met the standard Peter had set for sharpness. And Rose’s outfit was smashing—a calf-length electric blue chiffon, with matching high-heeled sandals. I felt dowdy in their company, but that was nothing new.

  “How’s the investigation coming?” Frank asked, earning himself disgusted looks from his wife and Peter.

  “Thanks for asking,” I said, smiling at Frank. “I’ll tell you later.”

  ~*~

  We drove together to the Wonderland Ballroom, a one story yellow concrete building with a red tile roof reminiscent of California architecture. Saint Anthony’s dance was only one of many going on at the same time. With its three large rooms, Wonderland had a heavy schedule of city functions and private celebrations—fund-raising dinners, awards ceremonies, and golden anniversary parties.

  Another long-standing structure in Revere was directly across the street from the ballroom—Wonderland Dog Track, thirty acres of land dedicated to the sport of greyhound racing and the largest employer in the city. No matter how tight money was, my parents always had a little place in their budget for the activities at the dog track or Suffolk Downs Horse Track, the other recreational landmark in Revere. I remembered the evening of their seventeenth anniversary when they won fifty dollars by betting on seventeen in the daily double.

  Saint Anthony’s dinner dances hadn’t changed much in three decades. As we walked to our places in the ornate dining room, I saw the parish priests wearing their Roman collars going from table to table, mingling and schmoozing. Now and then one of the priests would beam at a proffered envelope, presumably contributions for the never-ending building fund drive. I could have sworn I saw many of the same people who’d been at The Fenway for pizza earlier in the week.

  The music was designed for people like the four of us, who stopped learning new dances right before the twist. The orchestra played “things you can hum later,” as Frank said. I began to suspect a conspiracy among my three friends to keep the conversation far from both hydrogen and murder. The closest we came to hitting on science was Peter’s flattering remark.

  “Gloria gave a wonderful talk on Enrico Fermi,” he said.

  “Tell us all about it,” Frank said, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, and we all laughed.

  Strangely, the highlight of my evening came during a trip to the women’s room with Rose. As we stood before the mirrored wall in the vestibule of the lounge, Rose stopped in the middle of applying lipstick to her already perfect make-up suite.

  “I almost forgot to tell you two things,” she said, using the long jeweled tube of Shades of Blue to emphasize her points. “See, I’m getting like you, Gloria, making mental lists.”

  “It comes in handy, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, I guess. So, here are the two things. First, Janice Bensen came to my office after the funeral this morning. She wanted me to identify who sent one of the larger baskets of flowers. The card was from Petrillo’s Flower Shop and it just said, ‘cherished friend.’ I don’t know if that’s interesting or not.”

  “Very interesting,” I said. “What did you tell her?”

  Having finished a meager repair job on my hair, I turned and sat on the counter, my back to the mirror, to face Rose while she was talking. We’d both checked out the population of the lounge and although no one was close enough to hear, we kept our voices to a near whisper. It was unusual for Rose to reveal anything about the conduct of her clients, living or dead, and I knew she didn’t violate that policy easily.

  “You know I won’t say anything about this,” I said, to reassure her.

  “I know that, Gloria. I’m comfortable telling you this. I think of you as the police now.”

  “Thanks, I think. So what did you tell her?”

  “Just that I didn’t know. The flowers and cards come in and Martha accepts them at the door usually. I told Janice she’d have to call the florist.”

  “So you can’t tell even if they were sent by someone out of state, for example?”

  “No, only Jeannie at Petrillo’s would know how the order came in.”

  “Did Janice seem satisfied with your answer? Do you think she called Petrillo’s?”

  “My guess is yes. She was pretty upset. I think she thought I was holding out on her.”

  “Would the florist tell her or is that considered confidential?”

  “It depends. Probably not if she went in there raving. But if she presented herself as a grieving widow who wanted to send thank you notes to her late husband’s friends, they might.”

  “Would they tell any one else?”

  “They told me,” Rose said, turning to me with a wide, smug smile.

  “You mean you already checked? Why didn’t you tell me?” My excitement was all the reward Rose needed, and the smile never left her face as she told me how she and Jeannie did a lot of business together.

  “The flowers were ordered by an A. Lee from Berkeley, California.”

  I gave Rose a smile and sideways tilt of my head that to us always meant, “thank you so much and I owe you.”

  “Next?” I asked, settling farther back on the cold marble countertop.

  “Next what?”

  Rose had continued to work on her face while she talked. I marveled at the equipment she could stuff into a tiny evening bag. Her blue sequined purse, not more than six inches across, held a set of creams, powders, and tools that would put an undergraduate physics supply room to shame.

  “You said you had two things to tell me.”

  “Oh, right. See how the number thing doesn’t work for me?” she said. I winced as she moved a sinister-looking pair of curved tongs toward her eyes. “The second thing is that Jim, the tall young guy who was saying the rosary at the wake? He was in with Eric’s body really late last night.”

  “You mean after he left my apartment?”

  Rose nodded.

  “Sal, Robert’s number one man was doing some work in the prep room. He came back through the foyer to get his jacket and saw a man kneeling in front of the casket. It was around midnight and Sal was a little nervous but he said the guy looked harmless so he went up to him and told him it was time to lock up. They walked out together and that was that. It’s probably nothing, but I decided to tell you any little thing that’s different.”

  “You did really well for someone who doesn’t like to count,” I said.

  Rose beamed, showing me at once her pride of accomplishment and her new face.

  ~*~

  Back at our table, Rose covered
for me, helping me keep on track with the small talk, knowing that my mind was processing the two pieces of information she’d given me.

  My mind was drifting for more reasons than Rose’s detective work. Through the evening my feelings oscillated between comfort and familiarity with my old friends, and excitement at the prospect of a new friend and new experiences. As the four of us talked about the winter opera season and how we’d need to get tickets soon for the Messiah concerts by the Handel-Hayden Society of Boston, it was Matt’s face I saw, not Peter’s in my mental vision.

  I felt like a hypocrite enjoying ravioli and roast chicken that Peter had paid for while plotting how to tell him that this was probably our last date. Hard as it was, for a while I forgot about the long-term future and allowed myself to get caught up in the festive atmosphere of Wonderland, doing my share of dancing, eating, and humming.

  ~*~

  When Peter and I arrived at Galigani’s Mortuary after dropping Rose and Frank off at their home, I couldn’t talk him out of walking me upstairs. It turned out to be a great blessing that he did.

  My door stood slightly open, shreds of wood hanging around the brass lock plate. My apartment had been trashed.

  EIGHTEEN

  I looked at my overturned rocker and my books and papers strewn about and studied the scene as if I were examining a photograph at a museum exhibit. From the doorway I could see my three sofa cushions on the floor, forming a line to the kitchen, looking like a stepping stone pathway to the stove.

  I started to enter my living room, but Peter pulled me back and ushered me down the stairs to his car. We drove two blocks to a pay phone and called the police. Peter hadn’t even let me run over to my coffee table to get my cordless phone.

  I was in a daze as I followed his instructions, finally realizing that he was acting out of sensible caution—we couldn’t be sure the burglar had left the apartment. I’d never been burgled before and I didn’t know the protocol.

  Twenty minutes later Peter and I sat in my kitchen with long faces, as if we were mourning a mutual friend. A uniformed policeman spread fine black powder over every flat surface in my apartment and a few curved ones. Peter had called Rose and Frank and made a pot of coffee. I’d done my best to answer the questions of a second officer. It disturbed me that I couldn’t remember whether I’d set the alarm before we left for the dance. Peter was almost sure I hadn’t.