Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “Did you have any cash around?” the officer asked.

  “No, I don’t usually keep any, outside of what’s in my wallet.”

  “Have you seen anyone strange hanging around lately? Someone who shouldn’t be here?”

  “This is a funeral home,” Peter said, in an aggravated tone. He apologized to the officer so quickly that it came out almost as one sentence. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She shouldn’t be living here in the first place. You’re just doing your job.”

  Although I was too distraught to respond to his comment, I was alert enough to register it as one more reason the Gloria and Peter team would be history very soon.

  “Can you tell us if anything’s missing?” the officer asked. I guessed he’d seen enough domestic squabbling over the years to know he should ignore it.

  “Nothing big,” I said, glancing at my entertainment center, as the home decorating catalog called it. My television set, VCR, CD player were still there, in an upright position. My computer station, wedged into a corner between the living room and kitchen was also undisturbed, except that my file drawers had been rifled through.

  “I’ll have to take a closer look,” I said, walking toward my bedroom.

  I stepped around dresser drawers that had been pulled out to the end of their track or tipped onto the floor, struggling to ignore the knot in my stomach. My mirrored closet door was open; my shoeboxes had been emptied and transparent storage bags with sweaters and blankets were in a heap. Dresses and shirts still on hangers had been draped over the handles of my exercise bicycle as if they were part of a window display in progress. Compared to this scene, moving-in day was neat and orderly.

  Without counting my separated pieces of clothing, I estimated that it was all there. In spite of the tight feeling all through my body, I smiled when I looked in the drawer of my night table, which had also been pulled open, and saw Al’s little black book in plain sight next to a bag of cough drops. At least I know it’s not a Mafia hit, I thought.

  I checked my jewelry inventory. My pins, which were arranged in partitioned boxes I’d bought in a hardware store, appeared untouched in the top drawer of my dresser. My watches and necklaces, all inexpensive, were as I’d left them, in a half-dozen small china and wooden containers spread out across my dresser. None of the boxes was opened.

  I glanced in my bathroom and sighed when I saw that all my towels had been swept from the closet shelves to the tile floor, some landing in the tub and toilet.

  As I returned to the living room, I heard one of the officers deny Peter’s request to let him start straightening up.

  “Sergeant Gennaro wants to see it as is,” the officer said.

  Seconds later, Matt came through the door, red-faced and out of breath, looking like an overweight fifty-five-year-old who’d just run up two flights of stairs. He was wearing casual blue slacks, a white shirt and a navy blue crew neck sweater. He gave me a brief nod as his eyes swept across the living room and kitchen, floor to ceiling.

  “Has anyone checked the attic?” he asked.

  The officers looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Their looks of surprise were matched by Peter’s as Matt headed for the hallway behind my bedroom. I didn’t look forward to explaining later to Peter just how come Matt was so familiar with the layout of my apartment.

  I watched as Matt dragged the ladder to the trap door and once again disappeared into Galigani’s attic while I waited below. He came back as dusty as he had the first time, and I had the silly thought of sweeping up there so it would be clean for him on his next trip.

  “I’d like you to take a look up there” Matt said to me. “See if you think anyone’s been up there tonight.” He looked at me, in my heels and pearls, still unaccountably clutching my small black satin evening bag, its long gold chain wrapped around my wrists. “You might want to change first,” he added.

  Without speaking, I closed my bedroom door and leaned against it, close to tears. I imagined each piece of my clothing, my underwear and my sweaters, being touched by a stranger. My home had been entered, my privacy violated. I wanted at least to wash everything in hot water and soap, or preferably, throw every stitch away and start again. To make matters worse, Matt was clearly as unhappy as if this had been my fault.

  More than tears, I fought against Josephine’s philosophy that when bad things happen, it’s because the universe hates you and there’s no use trying to have a happy life. Most days I arrived home from school to find Josephine in a state of high stress over some incident, cursing the entire Holy Family—Gesu, Giusseppe, Sant’Anna, e Maria. If you didn’t know her, you’d think some great tragedy had befallen her, but the cause of her raving could be as simple as a chickadee that had done its duty on the clean towels drying on her clothesline. Not a great way to train a child how to accept life’s ups and downs.

  I heard voices from the living room—Rose and Frank had arrived. I cleared my head and forced myself to change into jeans and a sweater, picking them out of an already opened drawer. I chose a set that I thought might not have been touched since they were at the bottom of a stack.

  I climbed up to the attic and found nothing changed from Thursday evening. I sat back against the wall and hugged my knees to my chest. Looking out the small window at the clear night sky, I wanted to stay up there forever.

  “Gloria?”

  I heard Matt’s voice and the creaking of the ladder under his weight. I got to my feet before he could see me in my fetal position.

  “I don’t think he was up here,” I said, and started down the ladder, my knees wobbling, my eyes burning. By the time I reached bottom, I was breathing as normally as I could. Matt held my bedroom door open and looked at my face with an intensity I hadn’t seen before.

  “I’m fine,” I said, in response to his gaze.

  ~*~

  When I got back to the living room Rose put her arms around me. She’d changed into what she called her California look—the pink and turquoise sweat suit that she’d bought in a suburban mall during one of her visits to me. Her hair was still as perfectly coifed as it had been at the dinner dance.

  “I’m so glad you weren’t here, Gloria,” she said, holding on to me. Frank came over and rubbed my back.

  “I don’t think I set the alarm,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  The alarm system was there to protect their business, and I felt I’d let my friends down.

  I heard Matt ask Frank questions. Had the mortuary ever been broken into? Not in twenty years or more, when some flowers had been stolen and replaced with plastic ones as a prank. Who knew the code for the alarm system? The Galigani’s and me, of course, and Rose’s assistant Martha. Was there anything valuable in the offices or the parlors? Rose’s mother’s furniture, but that was hardly what they were after unless they’d brought a large van.

  “I’m going down through the other rooms with the officers,” Frank said. “I tried the doors as we came up and they’re all locked, so we probably won’t find anything wrong.”

  When Matt turned to me and asked what time I’d left the apartment it dawned on me that he wouldn’t know Peter. I included an awkward introduction as I gave Matt the timeline for the evening.

  It was almost one-thirty in the morning before Matt sent the officers away. Peter and Rose had put the chairs upright and arranged all my leftovers on a tray—cheese, olives, pickles, crackers, chocolates and cannoli. I finally stopped walking in circles and the five of us sat around my kitchen table with coffee and a makeshift antipasto.

  “Do you have any idea what someone might have been looking for?” Matt asked me.

  “No,” I said, surprised at the question. I’d assumed that a random thief had entered the unalarmed house to look around for cash or small items he could fence.

  “You think Gloria’s apartment was targeted?” Peter asked.

  He was still wearing his tie, but didn’t look quite as neat and pressed as he had earlier in the evening. His voice,
sounding tired and worried, showed the stress of the last hour and a half.

  “What we have,” Matt said, “is someone comes in, skips the other two floors even though those locks are easier to crack, and heads up here. Then he tosses the place but doesn’t take anything.”

  “Maybe he saw there was nothing valuable. I have only costume jewelry and no cash.”

  “Everything has value in a random burglary. These guys are scavengers. Someone comes all this way, he’s going to take the jewelry, the computer keyboard, the CD’s, something to make the trip worth it,” Matt said.

  “It has to do with Gloria’s work on the Bensen murder case, doesn’t it?” Peter said.

  “Maybe she shouldn’t be doing this,” Rose said.

  I heard myself being talked about as if I were asleep in the next room. I felt that I should be participating, but I couldn’t get any words out.

  Matt turned to me. The bags under his eyes were deeper than I’d ever seen them, but he was clean-shaven. I wondered if he shaved before going to bed every night in case he got a midnight summons. I wondered if I’d ever know.

  “I know it’s tough to think about this now. But let’s give it one more try. Are you fairly sure nothing’s missing? A rare book? A collection of some kind? Stamps or coins?”

  “I don’t have anything like that.”

  “Legal papers? Documents that might be important to someone else?”

  “Nothing.”

  I put my head down, stared at the gray carpet tufts, and tried to conjure up an inventory of everything I had in the apartment. The most expensive thing I owned was my computer system and that hadn’t been touched. I look around the room, and as my eyes came back into focus, I noticed something on my writing desk that hadn’t been there earlier.

  “My briefcase,” I said, pointing across the room.

  “I found that in Rose’s office when I was there a few minutes ago with the officers,” Frank said. “I knew it was yours so I brought it up.”

  “Someone was looking for my briefcase.”

  “Is there something valuable in it?” Rose asked.

  NINETEEN

  While Matt went over to get my briefcase I gave the others a two-line summary of where the computer printout came from and how Connie had confessed to tampering with the gas gun data.

  “Then why would anyone want to steal the printout, if the fraud is already out in the open?” Peter asked.

  “Maybe they don’t all know it’s out in the open,” Frank said.

  “They all know,” Matt said. “At least all the principals. We took care of that today.”

  Matt was pacing up and down my living room, scratching his head. When his back was to me, I could see the bulge of his gun stuck in his belt under his sweater. I preferred the holster-hidden-by-a-jacket look myself. I wondered if he had a switchblade hidden in his sock, or if only vice cops did that.

  I turned back to the printout.

  “It must be these three symbols,” I said. “I’ve always thought they meant something. I pointed to the bottom of the last page. “I’ll just have to work harder at figuring out what.”

  As if insects were flying around them, my guests shook their heads and uttered different forms of “no, you don’t.” I’d expected it from Peter or Rose, but I was surprised that Frank was also in agreement.

  I ignored them all and looked at Matt, who for all practical purposes was my boss in these matters. He looked at his watch.

  “We shouldn’t make any decisions at this hour,” he said. “It’s time to think about where you’re going to stay for the rest of the night.”

  “Right here,” I said, my arm sweeping across my apartment to point to my bedroom, as if I were a game show hostess.

  Once I could make sense out of the burglary, I was less fearful. I reasoned that the state of my apartment fit the pattern of a person looking for a large stack of papers or a briefcase. He didn’t open small jewelry boxes or disturb obvious areas like my TV or computer center. He probably thought I could have removed the printout from the briefcase and hidden it, so he’d looked in files and drawers and underneath cushions. It all made sense, so I was no longer afraid.

  “Now that he thinks I don’t have the printout,” I said, “he won’t come back.” I tried to sound logical and confident, which worked as long as I didn’t dwell on the thought that this abstract burglar was most likely also Eric’s murderer.

  “He doesn’t know where you were,” Peter said. “Maybe he thinks you had it with you. He didn’t find it, so of course he’ll be back.” Once again, Peter’s logic and mine clashed.

  “Come home with us, Gloria,” Rose said. “Just for tonight.”

  Matt had walked over to the door to my apartment, then to my phone. He caught my eye and we exchanged looks and nods that said, yes, he could use it.

  I tuned out Peter and Rose and Frank who were talking about me again.

  “She’s crazy to want to stay on this case,” Peter said.

  “She’s a big girl, Peter,” Rose said, reminding me why she should get a lifetime achievement award for friendship.

  Matt returned from his phone calls with what sounded like a nonnegotiable decision.

  “Our guy’s coming over to fix the door and put in a new lock,” he said. “And an unmarked police car will be out front until further notice. I’ll wait here until it’s all set up. You can all go home and get some sleep.”

  Rose frowned a bit, but didn’t comment, and Frank seemed satisfied.

  “It’s like getting back up on the horse,” he said, “A person shouldn’t give in.”

  Frank wasn’t any better at figures of speech than Rose was, but I was grateful for his support.

  Peter was clearly the least happy with the arrangement.

  “I’m not through with this,” he said as he left, using the possessive tone that I’d fought against a few days before. This time I was too tired for a smart aleck comeback and gave him a patronizing smile instead. It never occurred to me to thank him for the evening of dinner and dancing and for being so supportive in an emergency situation.

  With my friends gone, I tried to process the fact that I was sitting in my apartment at two in the morning with Sergeant Matt Gennaro, at the end of an evening that began with a date with Peter Mastrone.

  We’d both switched to decaf coffee and sat opposite each other in my living room. Matt was on the couch leaning over the coffee table writing in his notebook. I studied the bald spot at the back of his head and wondered if he knew it was there. I remembered my father’s surprise at seeing his in a department store monitor as he stood under a surveillance camera.

  “Are you going to fire me?” I asked.

  He laughed and rubbed his hand across his chin. He gave me a look I would have called intimate in other circumstances. Since he first came in I’d wanted to fix his shirt collar, half of which was under the crew neck of his sweater and half over it. My old-school conservatism came to my rescue before I made a fool of myself. I may preach raving feminism, I thought, but I’m still going to wait for him to make the first move.

  “Not yet,” Matt said.

  It took a moment for me to connect his phrase to my question about being fired, not my unspoken thoughts about romantic moves.

  “At this point, I think you’re right about the doodles at the end of the printout,” he said, pulling at the tufts of gray hair around his ear. “I can’t imagine why else you’d have had this break-in. I’d like you to keep thinking about the printout, but we’ll have to find a way to make it absolutely safe for you. I have a plan that I think will work.”

  The phone rang and we both jumped a bit. The ring had the unique sound that phones always seem to have after midnight, even if you’re up and dressed.

  I answered and heard Peter’s voice.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Is the cop still there?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “Well, I just wanted to make sure. I think you should have go
ne home with Rose and Frank.”

  I sighed loudly enough, I hoped, for Peter to hear a message of exasperation.

  “Thanks for checking. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Call me tomorrow,” he said, as if it were his idea.

  I still hadn’t thanked him for the evening and although I thought of doing it, I didn’t want to have that conversation in Matt’s presence. Matt had walked over to the far wall of my living room and was looking at my books, photographs, and memorabilia scattered around on the shelves. I appreciated what seemed to be a gesture toward giving me privacy without a lot of options in my small apartment. When I hung up with Peter, Matt returned to the sofa.

  “Your boyfriend?” he asked.

  So much for privacy, but I was glad to have a chance to explain Peter.

  “Peter’s an old friend,” I said, emphasizing the difference. “He wanted to make sure everything was still all right. We went to Saint Anthony’s dance at Wonderland tonight with Rose and Frank. I’ve known them all since fourth grade at the old Lincoln School. Except I didn’t really have contact with Peter these last thirty years. I just met him again when I came back to Revere. Actually, just this week.”

  I stopped, looked up at the ceiling and down again, acutely aware that I’d been rambling. This must be how Matt gets confessions from murder suspects, I thought. Ask a casual two-word question and let the guy convict himself.

  “You probably didn’t want to know all that,” I said.

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  I swallowed and noticed stirrings in all the danger zones of my body.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to know?” I asked.

  He sat back and crossed his legs, one arm along the back of the sofa.