by Lois Winston
“A lot.”
And there in my ransacked apartment, I felt a surge of happiness to rival any other joy in my life. I wished I could explain to Josephine how this was possible.
“Ask away,” I said.
“Is your friend a scientist?”
“Which friend?” I asked, laughing at the thought of Peter’s being mistaken for a scientist, and at the same time determined to situate him as one among many friends on a long list.
“Peter.”
“Peter’s about as anti-science and technology as you can get,” I said. “He doesn’t have a microwave oven or a car phone and he thinks calculators mean the end of quality education as we know it.”
“Is he smart?”
As he asked this, Matt waved his arm in the direction of my bookcases. I wasn’t sure what he meant and decided to take no chances.
“He teaches history and Italian at Revere High.”
“So he’s smart, but not necessarily your caliber.”
“Do I have a caliber? Like a gun?”
That drew a laugh, a deep, warm laugh and a slight shake of his head. If this is flirting, I thought, I like it.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “The guys at the station call you a brain. They’re all afraid to talk to you.”
“Not George Berger,” I said.
“Berger’s okay, he’s just young. He still has a lot to prove, and I think you intimidate him.”
“Well, we’re even,” I said. “I’m intimidated by policemen.”
“Because ...?”
“Because you carry weapons and have a lot of power and authority.”
“To make up for no brains?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, afraid I was about to flunk flirting.
At that moment a tall young man in a khaki jumpsuit knocked on my half-open door. Poor timing.
“Joey,” Matt said, and waved him in.
Matt introduced me to Joey, a police department lock expert who looked young enough to be my grandson. While Joey worked on my door with a strange-looking tool he’d taken from his wide leather belt, Matt and I resumed the business talk we’d strayed from. Matt explained his plan—he’d call the principals together for a meeting as soon as possible, preferably Sunday afternoon. We noted that it might be difficult to arrange since it was already well into Sunday morning.
Matt would tell everyone who’d been questioned in the case that my work was over, that he was pursuing other lines of inquiry. Meanwhile, I was to keep working on the printout.
“Can you just write down that last line of characters for your use and give me the printout with all your red notes? That way they’ll figure you don’t have a copy.”
“That’s fine,” I said, “Whatever this line of type is, I don’t think it’s connected to the rest of the data. And, believe me, I know the characters by heart.”
“You think Eric was trying to tell us who his killer was, like in the movies?” Matt asked.
“I guess I do. He might have had a split second to hit three keys that would identify the person. Is it only amateurs who come up with things like that?”
“No. It happens.”
“But you don’t think so in this case?”
“I try to keep an open mind.”
I wasn’t satisfied, but I knew that was all I was going to get.
Joey signaled that he was finished. He closed and opened the door for me twice.
“It’s better than it was before your break-in,” he said, and showed me a new pin that made it harder to jimmy the lock.
I thanked him and offered him coffee or a soft drink, but he said he had another stop to make across town. Joey reassembled his belt and said goodnight. I wondered if the department kept locksmiths on duty all night. There was a lot I didn’t know about the police business, I realized, watching Matt and Joey exchange forms and signatures.
Matt walked over to my window and looked down at the street. When I imagined that he saw a lamppost and a man in an overcoat smoking a cigarette in the shadows, I knew the strain of the evening had caught up with me.
“The unmarked is there,” Matt said, bringing me out of the realm of Bogart movies. “I hope you can get some sleep.”
“I hope you can, too. Do you want me at that meeting this afternoon?”
“I’ll let you know, but right now I don’t think so. It’s probably better if they don’t see us together.”
“You mean we have to stop meeting this way?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
Matt had stuffed his notebook and pencil into his pants pocket and was at the door. He turned and gave me a broad smile.
“Until after the case,” he said, and left.
I locked the door behind him and went over to the couch. I sat in the spot he’d been in during our most personal conversation to date. Next time this happens, I told myself, I’m going to fix his collar.
TWENTY
Without a glance at the shower or my toothbrush, I took off my jeans and sweater, wrapped myself in a robe and got into bed. I slept really well for someone who had to climb over ravaged drawers of clothing and an upside down lamp on the floor to get to her pillow. I looked at the black fingerprint powder on my night table and thought of Josephine who couldn’t sleep if there was so much as a dirty coffee cup in the sink or an open newspaper on a chair. I asked her forgiveness under these special circumstances.
Throughout the morning I heard the bells from Saint Anthony’s tower announcing the hourly Sunday masses, but they became part of my dreams, which were strangely peaceful. The only recognizable figure was my father dressed in his paint-splattered overalls showing me his bald spot and telling me to take care of myself.
It was almost noon before I was fully awake. I wandered around my apartment, picking up towels and shoes, like a bag lady after a storm. I created a large pile of clothing and linens, mentally labeled it “laundry” and rewarded myself with the last cannoli. The two-day old pastry shell was soggy and the cream had the consistency of rubber cement, but I ate it anyway. I had the crazy thought that I’d better stock my refrigerator in case I ended up with a house full of company for the third night in a row.
I considered calling Matt to ask about the meeting, or Peter to apologize for my abruptness on the phone. I decided to go easy on myself and started with Rose.
“What a night,” she said. “I didn’t know what time you’d get to bed, so I didn’t want to call too early.”
“You mean you didn’t know if I’d be alone.”
She laughed and I heard a distinctly hopeful sound from her throat. I hated to let her down.
“I slept alone,” I said. “But there was a—uh—a little hint of something.” How articulate, I thought, but my stuttering was enough to make Rose gasp.
“We have to talk,” she said, and we agreed to meet for a late lunch at Kelly’s Roast Beef, at the north end of Revere Beach.
I left a message on Matt’s voice mail at his office to tell him I was available for a meeting. I gave him the number for my cellular phone and dressed for my first walk on the beach. My red windbreaker hanging in my hall closet was the right weight and showed no signs of being handled by strangers the night before. I shoved the phone into the long front pocket across my waist and headed out.
With a gusty wind lifting sand into the fifty-degree air, few people were out of their cars along Revere Beach Boulevard. Traffic flowed beside me at a steady pace toward the Point of Pines. They’re probably all going to Kelly’s, I thought, remembering the long lines waiting there for roast beef sandwiches and clam plates all year round.
I walked about a half mile in the opposite direction from Kelly’s, most of it through the sand, dark and muddy down near the water line, light and soft near the cement boardwalk. The ocean was on my left, curving in front of me as I headed south along the beach. I took my rhythm from the pounding surf, giving myself up to its power, as if I could take in some of its energy and make it my own, as if with th
e ocean at my side I could be anything I wanted to be. For all we know about hydrogen, I thought, we don’t know enough about the ocean.
I crossed the street where the old red brick bathhouse used to be. The bright blue sign on a tall post outside the building identified now as the home of the State Police. Enormous apartment buildings with tiny balconies stood a few yards to the north, which I estimated to be the former site of the Cyclone, the old roller coaster.
I pictured myself on that spot at fourteen years old. Dressed in a starched white cotton blouse, I’d made pink cotton candy for fifty cents an hour while sleek metal cars whirled and screeched above me, like unruly children playing tag on thirty-six hundred feet of track. I was glad I was three thousand miles away in 1974 when a wrecking crew tore down the charred remains of what was once called the fastest ride in the world. Since returning to my childhood home, I found I could dwell on the past for a long time. I wanted to ask Rose if it was any different for her, since she had lived her whole life on the same streets.
Rose was fourth in line by the time I retraced my steps and walked north to Kelly’s. Her short frame was dwarfed by the people around her lined up at the counter. In her most grubby look, designer jeans and hooded sweatshirt, Rose looked better than most people on their way to a wedding.
“Good timing,” she said. “What are you drinking?”
“Water. A lot of it,” I said, licking my lips at the thought of a tall bottle of spring water and a lobster roll. I’d walked fast enough to keep warm and to feel deserving of a feast.
We took our food across the street. Passing up the cold, wet benches of the pavilion, populated by swarms of pigeons and sea gulls, we ate in Rose’s station wagon. Families on both sides of us had the same idea, turning their mini-vans into picnic areas. Rose had parked facing the ocean and for a while we watched the gray-green waves and ate in silence, with the sound of the surf as background.
“I’m ready to hear about the hint,” Rose said when we’d finished our sandwiches. “The Matt Gennaro hint of ... what was it? But only if you want to tell me.”
I did want to tell her, my forever friend, what I was feeling. If I were going to make a fool of myself in front of anyone, I wanted it to be Rose. I told her about Matt’s parting comment, and asked her what she thought I should do about Peter. I felt like a fourteen year-old on her break from making cotton candy.
“I’m not sure whether anything is possible with Matt,” I told her. “But after last night I’m sure of two things.”
“Let’s have your list,” Rose said, in her usual way of making fun of my constant need for mentally organizing and counting everything.
“One, I’d like to see Matt socially, and two, I’ll never feel anything for Peter beyond friendship.”
“Clear enough. You have no obligation to Peter,” she said, picking at the straw in her large iced tea. “But I think you need to be more direct with him.”
“Instead of sarcastic?”
“Well, I know sarcasm is more fun, but you’re not getting through to Peter. You know how hard he’s trying when he starts including science in his lesson plans.”
“You’re right. And since there’s nothing I can do about the Matt thing until this investigation is over, I should be working to help solve the case as quickly as possible.”
~*~
Rose drove us to the mortuary and made a pretense of having to make a stop at her office.
“I’m not afraid to go up alone,” I said.
“I am,” she said. “I’ll feel better seeing you arrive home with no surprises today.”
Rose came upstairs with me and stayed around for a while, straightening the area around my bed. Without a doubt, it was less depressing to have help and companionship clearing up the mess.
As we worked, I pictured the chief Bensen murder suspects in my apartment, one at a time. Leder picking through my nightgowns and pantyhose with lecherous fingers. Connie in her career-minded business suit methodically searching the files next to my computer. Janice in a silk pants suit looking through my clothes, disgusted with the contents of my wardrobe. Jim making the sign of the cross as he tipped over my glide rocker. Andrea checking to see if I had any superheroes among my knick-knacks while she rifled through my desk.
None of the images rang true, but I didn’t want to return to the random victim theory of my burglary either.
~*~
As soon as Rose left, I put on a CD of the Three Tenors and went back to my original case notes, with its star system of guilt. I’d given Leder four stars as my first choice, and his phone call to me supported my thinking. But Janice, who wasn’t even on my original list, was acting the most strange. Why would she care who sent flowers to her dead husband unless she was unbalanced in some way? When it came right down to it, I still envisioned murderers as unbalanced. I wished I knew more about the psychology of killers and wondered how soon I’d be able to ask Matt to teach me about homicidal maniacs.
Most of Jim’s behavior for the last week was normal for Jim. Taking care of everyone’s needs, praying the rosary in public. But his late night appearance at the prie dieu in front of Eric’s body seemed to me overdoing it. If it weren’t for his outburst on the way to the funeral, I would have chalked it up to genuine concern for the salvation of Eric’s soul. But after seeing the intensity of his anger at what he perceived as immoral behavior on Eric’s part, I wondered if his religious zeal could lead him to murder.
I reviewed my notes on Connie and Andrea and couldn’t come up with anything new. Their behavior was at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, telling me nothing about their guilt or innocence. The fact that the other “other woman” Annie had sent flowers didn’t amount to any solid information either.
Once again I had no idea whether to tell all this to Matt. Andrea’s eavesdropping on Leder’s phone conversation with his wife. Jim’s extra prayers and self-righteous evangelism. Annie’s flowers. Were these bits of meaningless gossip or important clues in an investigation? I was beginning to feel like a den mother trying to keep track of the movements of all her little brownies.
Worse than that, I realized that my decisions about how to handle the information were governed by my fear of Matt’s disapproval. I couldn’t bear his thinking of me as either an inept investigator or a meddling civilian who trafficked in rumors. It was a bad sign, I told myself, when I was attracted to a man who inspired the same feelings in me that Josephine had.
After a while, I put the people side of the case away and found my notes on the elusive printout characters. I’d drawn lines to make three columns on a piece of paper and put each character at the top of a column. Under each character I’d written out all the common physical meanings for it in standard textbooks. I even included the muon, an elementary particle represented by the Greek letter mu, and found in cosmic radiation, although I couldn’t think of the slightest reason for the muon to be involved in Eric’s hydrogen research.
Separately the characters had little significance to the computer program, and together they had even less. I decided to leave that exercise for a while and had just booted up my computer to balance my checkbook and pay some bills, when the phone rang. The conversation I’d been putting off all day.
“I saw your so-called unmarked police guard outside the building on my way to mass this morning,” Peter said. “If I could tell it was a cop car, I’m sure a burglar could tell.”
In the last couple of days I’d been irritated with Peter’s use of the word “cop,” spitting it out in his references to Matt especially. It seemed a deliberate deviation from his usual formal, elegant speech patterns.
“Maybe that’s the idea,” I said. “Scare away the bad guys.”
“Gloria, you’re being very difficult.”
No sarcasm, I remembered, and softened my voice.
“You’re right, Peter. And in all the excitement, I never thanked you for the evening. The tea roses still look good. I have them in a mug on my table.”
“Excitement is not the word I’d use. Danger is more like it.”
I held the phone receiver away from my ear and looked at it, as if to ask what it wanted of me.
“Well, it’s over,” I said, “and I’m sorry you had to be part of it.”
“I’d really like to have a talk, Gloria. I haven’t seen you alone for more than ten minutes.”
“We can have a talk now,” I said, departing from my usual tendency to keep phone conversations brief. I’ve always needed visual input to fully understand what’s being said to me. I liked to use the phone to set up meetings, not to hold meetings.
“I’d like to see you,” he said. “Just the two of us, for a conversation.”
Peter sounded frustrated and I wrestled with how cooperative I should be. Besides that, I didn’t know for sure if Rose was right. If Peter had no romantic intentions, I certainly didn’t want to put ideas into his head. Maybe he’s going to tell me he just wants to be friends, I thought. I decided he deserved one more face-to-face encounter.
“I’m free this evening,” I said.
“I’ll pick up something and see you at six.”
I knew that when Peter picked up something, it would be better than anything I could have prepared, even if I spent all day cooking. My guess was that he’d make a quick trip to Boston’s North End and carry out gourmet pesto sauce.
On my second attempt to work at my computer, I heard a soft knock. I stopped in my tracks a few feet from the door and felt a brief, unfamiliar shiver of fear. It’s the middle of a sunny afternoon and I’m in my own living room I told myself, let’s not overreact. Let’s also ask Frank to have a peephole installed, I added.
Another knock, and then, “It’s Matt Gennaro.”
Until I saw his face, I thought nothing could have made the day sunnier than a visit from Matt. He was in his business blues again and his shoulders sagged as if they were bearing the weight of the bad news he’d come to give me.
“Ralph Leder’s been murdered,” he said.
TWENTY-ONE
I sat down on my rocker without offering Matt a drink, or a chair for that matter. He came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder, but I hardly felt it. I was facing my bookcases, which seemed to be toppling over, spilling books and photographs onto my carpet. I blinked several times until they came into focus back in their rightful places, like an exercise in reverse entropy.