Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “I wanted to tell you before it hits the news,” Matt said, waving his arm in the direction of my television set.

  Leder had remained high on my list as the one most likely to be Eric’s murderer, especially once Connie confessed to the cover-up. In my mind, it added up. He’d masterminded the data fraud and murdered Eric when Eric threatened to expose it. Hadn’t he called to warn me not to pursue that line of investigation? He also owned a gun and his alibi was weak since his wife could have been knocked out with sleeping pills the night of Eric’s murder. Not only that, he was sexist, and I didn’t like him.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised to read about Leder’s arrest in the Boston newspapers, but hearing about his murder threw me off balance. The voice of Luciano Pavarotti bounced around in my living room and in my brain, the last aria on the disk, Vincero, I shall win.

  “Are you all right?”

  Matt had been standing over me while I sat with my hand pressed against my forehead. As he handed me a glass of water, apparently from my kitchen, I wondered how long I’d been lost in my thoughts.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Thank you for telling me this way.”

  Not one to be outdone in service in my own apartment, I made coffee. But I was almost completely out of solid food except for three chocolates, and felt embarrassed as I told this to Matt. He patted his narrow leather belt and said he’d had a late lunch.

  Matt took a seat on the couch. He leaned over the coffee table in front of him, put down his mug and picked up my notes on the printout characters. He rolled the page into a long tube and tapped his leg with it.

  “I’m not sure what we’re dealing with here. It could be a psycho out for every physicist in Suffolk County for all we know. I’d like you to forget about this case.”

  “I’m really over the shock,” I said. “Was Leder’s the same kind of murder as Eric’s?”

  “Leder was shot, apparently with the same gun, but I haven’t had the final word on that.”

  “Did you have your meeting?”

  “No, this new development got in the way. I postponed it to tomorrow morning. But I don’t want you there. You’re off the case.”

  “I think I’m close to figuring out the code,” I said, hoping my lying nose wasn’t stretched out past the coffee table. “How about one more day? Let me come to the meeting in the morning and give me until six o’clock tomorrow evening.”

  Matt stood up and shook his head. He held my notes in both hands, as if he were ready to tear them to shreds. “I guess I’m not being clear,” he said. “You’re off the case.”

  I tried to recall every assertiveness tip I’d ever read about and made a pronouncement that might have startled Matt. It certainly startled me.

  “You can’t just pull me off,” I said. “I have a contract.”

  The CD had ended, and my voice boomed out into the silence. He sat down again, leading me to believe I’d scored a victory. Maybe there’s something to this 1990’s self-confidence, I thought.

  His voice was soft and had none of the scolding tone I remembered from the stormy visit he’d paid me after I’d entertained murder suspects. Double murder suspects, I reminded myself.

  “I’m worried about you,” he said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I appreciate that. But I’m not going to sue the department or anything.”

  Matt took a deep breath. I felt my stomach turn over as he looked directly at me, his eyes close to pleading.

  “Do you really think that’s what I’m worried about,” he said.

  I thought my heart was banging out loud, until I realized it was a knock at my door. I looked at my watch. Six o’clock.

  ~*~

  Peter was at my door, and Matt was on my couch, and except for the two murders hanging in the air, I felt like the centerpiece of a French comedy.

  “Come in, Peter. You know Sergeant Matt Gennaro.”

  I took a brown paper grocery sack from Peter’s hand and carried it to the kitchen, thus avoiding his gaze. He walked over and shook Matt’s hand.

  “Matt has terrible news,” I said. “Doctor Leder, who was Eric Bensen’s mentor, was found murdered also.”

  “I hope this is the end of it, Gloria,” Peter said, shaking his head. “This is serious business. It’s a job for the police, not for amateurs.”

  “Two people I know have been murdered,” I said, grateful at least that Peter hadn’t said “cop.” “If there’s a way I can help find the person who did it, I can’t just walk away.”

  As I said this, I turned my head back and forth, Ping-Pong style, between Peter and Matt. I hoped I sounded sure of myself.

  “I was just leaving,” Matt said. “I wanted to give Gloria the news in person.”

  I was distressed that he didn’t respond to me and more upset that he thought he had to apologize to Peter for being there. I walked him to the door. I put my left hand on his and with my right hand slid the tube of notes up and out of his fist. I was close enough to catch his smell, a neutral shaving-cream odor rather than a scent from an after-shave.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said. “Did you say ten o’clock?”

  “Nine,” he said, his face in the scrunched up configuration of a good loser as he left my apartment. I wanted to think I’d won him over by a combination of impeccable logic that appealed to his brain, and a sensuous touch that appealed to the rest of him.

  Peter had gone to the kitchen and filled my spaghetti pot with water.

  “I made a quick trip to the North End and picked up some pesto sauce,” he said.

  There’s something to be said for predictability, I thought, one of the linchpins of the scientific method. Why not make it a requirement for a personal relationship? Matt brought me surprises—two personal searches of my home in the late evening hours, a private security guard, two murders. Peter brought me what I expected from a suitor—chocolates, roses and gourmet pesto sauce.

  I watched Peter make himself at home in my kitchen, filling it with the smell of garlic and basil, and tried to imagine him in my future. With one of my aprons covering his forest green polo shirt, he looked like an advertisement for Mother’s Day cards.

  “Your fridge is empty, Gloria,” Peter said. “Do you get enough nutrition?”

  At that, Peter’s face went out of my future and Matt’s came in. What a way to make decisions, I thought, but there it was. Both men seemed to be trying to take care of me—something I’d managed pretty well without for my entire adult life—but Matt’s solicitude seemed more respectful, less possessive. Or maybe it was just chemistry, the non-laboratory kind. I pictured Matt in my bedroom emptying his pockets of handcuffs, loose change and an index card with the Miranda rights typed on it.

  Peter and I sat at my kitchen table and ate freshly made pasta, garlic bread, and tossed salad, all from Mangia’s in the North End. I’d found some Girl Scout cookies in the freezer and created a respectable dessert by crumbling mint chocolate wafers over vanilla ice cream.

  As we carried our coffee into the living room, I had the sense that our talk was about to begin. It was nice of him to wait until we’d finished dinner, I noted. During my childhood, meal times were always stressful, with unpleasant, critical conversations. Josephine used supper as a forum to bring up whatever was bothering her, usually about me, while my father sat eating his macaroni and meatballs, his head a few centimeters from his plate, no help at all.

  Many years after my mother died, my father said to me, “Your mother was very hard on you. I don’t know why. She was just very hard on you.”

  That was the only closure I was ever able to get about my unhappy childhood.

  Peter cleared his throat.

  “Gloria, I heard you tell the cop you’d see him tomorrow. Why are you being so stubborn?”

  “Is this our talk?”

  “You’re making fun of me. I don’t appreciate that.”

  We were sitting on my glide rockers, across the cof
fee table from each other. The dinner music, a CD of Neapolitan folk songs was still playing. Music from the old country for an old-fashioned conversation. I dug into my store of new-fashioned pop psychology phrases.

  “I feel that you’re trying to take over my life,” I said. “I’m not used to having people tell me what I can and can’t do.”

  “Maybe it’s time to let someone take care of you.”

  “That’s not what I want, Peter.”

  “You never answered my letters when I wrote that first year or two.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “Well, you sent post cards of the redwoods and the Pacific Ocean, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I had a lot to work through, Peter. And my graduate program was very demanding.”

  Peter was sitting with his legs crossed, his right ankle over his left knee. His voice sounded like that of the chairman of the board who has a certain number of agenda items to cover. From the white skin on the tips of his knuckles, I sensed that he thought he was losing some important vote.

  “You never married. Did you ever come close?” he asked.

  “Not even close,” I said, coming up behind him from the kitchen. “How about you?”

  I didn’t like the way our little talk was going, but I decided to cooperate. To gain some distance from the touchy subjects, I refilled our coffee mugs and took the empty dessert dishes to the sink.

  “Because of Al?” he asked, skipping right over my question about the history of his love life. I figured he could tell by my tone that I didn’t really care about the answer.

  “Because it just never came up,” I said.

  “What if I bring it up?”

  “Let’s not do this,” I said. “We haven’t seen each other in thirty years. Why don’t we see if we can be friends first?”

  I was proud of myself for coming up with a nice compromise, hoping Peter didn’t interpret “friends” as people who go on cruises to the Caribbean together. I thought I was offering something open-ended, gentle but not misleading, the perfect win-win solution. Peter apparently thought less of my bottom line than I did.

  “While you date one of Revere’s finest?” he asked.

  “I certainly hope so,” I said.

  Peter looked at his watch and stood up.

  “I’d better be going,” he said.

  I guessed our talk was over.

  ~*~

  After Peter left, I sat on my rocker for a long time wrapped in guilt because, in spite of Rose’s warning, I’d resorted to sarcasm again. Maybe there’s no good way to tell a person that his romantic interest in you is not mutual. Maybe right now Matt’s having the same problem, I thought, deciding how to let me down gently.

  Having had enough emotion for one evening, I turned to the comfort of physics. I picked up Scientific American and treated my brain to an article on fusion energy research and helium, thinking life might be simpler one step higher than hydrogen in the periodic table.

  For further enjoyment, and in keeping with the oscillator pattern of my mood I turned to browsing the web. I clicked on one of my favorite sites, pages of graphics from the Vatican Art Collection and enjoyed the magnificent paintings of Michelangelo and Rafael in my own living room.

  Once my computer was booted up, I made a gesture toward efficiency and decided to work on my laser project. I had only a few more sections to add and I’d have a complete lesson, ready for teachers to use with junior high students.

  For the hands-on part of the lesson, I’d written an experiment using a water hose. Students would compare the sprays of water coming from the nozzle of the hose at different settings with the sprays of light coming from a regular flashlight and a laser. I wrote a few paragraphs of texts and equations to help the teacher explain the parallel— just as the narrower beam of water had more power than the wider beam, the narrower beam of light from the laser would have more power than the spread-out beam of a flashlight.

  At midnight I went to bed with thoughts of seeing Matt the next day. But when I realized I’d have nothing more to tell him about the printout, the idea didn’t seem so pleasant, especially if Berger were back by now.

  ~*~

  I arrived at Matt’s office a little before nine o’clock, wearing a three piece knit suit that was identical to the striped one I’d worn to Eric’s wake, except that this one was in two shades of burgundy. Since it’s not always easy to find attractive professional clothing in large sizes, I’d followed Josephine’s advice, “if it fits, buy two.” I pinned a small gold replica of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a gift from Elaine, to my jacket.

  Matt was behind his desk in a brown suit and striped beige shirt, both of which looked new. His tie was as dark brown as his eyes, and the effect was of someone who’d just had his colors done. Maybe Monday is dress up day, I thought.

  “This is your swan song, right?” Matt said as I sat down.

  It amused me that he was using participatory democracy, appearing to ask my permission. He’d apparently abandoned the benevolent despot role he’d assumed on three different occasions in my apartment. I was starting to feel like an expert in asserting myself with men. And at such a young age, I thought, not above a little self-inflicted sarcasm.

  “Is that the best you can do for a greeting?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I ever tell you I’m crazy about swans?” he said.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Connie and Jim came in right behind me, dissipating the effects of Matt’s words on my complexion. If they hadn’t both looked so distraught, I would have worried that I looked as though Matt and I had been caught in an embrace. But their grim faces brought me back to reality and I worried about them instead, wondering how they got the news of Leder’s murder. Probably not as painlessly as I had, I guessed.

  “Let’s move to an interview room down the hall,” Matt said, “I’ll have someone direct Andrea and Janice when they get here.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Connie said to no one in particular, as we walked past desks and ringing phones. “First Eric, now Ralph.”

  Except for her casual use of Leder’s first name, Connie seemed as uncomposed as I’d ever seen her, a tight ponytail pulling on the skin around her ears. She clutched her briefcase, holding it close to her chest as if it were a pile of schoolbooks without a handle.

  “I brought my conductivity notes,” she said to me, “just in case.”

  Soon after Jim had helped Matt arrange chairs around a gray metal table, Janice and Andrea were ushered into the room by a young policewoman. Andrea looked at me and shrugged her shoulders as if to give me a private sign that probably meant she was wrong about Leder, but I didn’t pursue the interaction.

  “Do you have any clues you can tell us about?” Janice asked Matt, taking a seat next to him.

  Matt shook his head and straightened the small pile of papers he’d carried in.

  “We’re following some leads,” he said. “But first, coffee. I know it’s early.”

  “Matt pointed to a side table and Jim acted as waiter for a few minutes, pouring coffee. I thought of asking him for a donut but I was afraid he’d take me seriously and run out to a bakery. More than that, a joke seemed out of place. This was the most solemn gathering of our group, surpassing even Eric’s wake in gravity. Two murders seemed more than our little dinner group could handle.

  We settled in our chairs and waited for Matt to speak, all eyes turned in his direction.

  “I have a few things I want you all to hear,” Matt said. “Then I’ll need a brief private session with each of you. I know you’re all anxious to move on.”

  Matt took a sip of his coffee and the five of us followed suit, as if we were playing “Simon Says.” As I glanced around the table, I couldn’t decide which member of the group looked more shell-shocked.

  Andrea, looming larger than ever in a shapeless denim jumper, seemed out of place, like a child admitted by mistake to a kindergarten faculty meeting. Janice picked at her
Styrofoam cup in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture.

  “The good news,” Matt said, “is that we’re no longer pursuing technical issues in these cases, so you don’t have to answer any more of Gloria’s questions.”

  If his intent was to lighten the mood, Matt succeeded at least in part. We all relaxed our bodies a little, smiled, and shifted in our chairs.

  “You have another theory?” Jim asked, sitting forward in his chair. Jim had chosen the least comfortable furniture in the room, a gray folding chair with a hard metal seat.

  “We’re off the hook,” Connie said, extending the new, lighter atmosphere and placing her briefcase down on the floor between us.

  Not yet, young lady, I wanted to say. What are you going to do about the small matter of falsified scientific data? I knew my place, however, and remained silent. As I moved my feet to accommodate her briefcase, I noticed a set of gold initials in the corner—CMP—and vaguely wondered what her middle name was. I looked at the initials longer than I needed to, not clear why, but something was flitting around in my brain trying to connect itself to an important piece of a puzzle.

  I almost missed Matt’s next agenda item, tuning in to hear him finish a sentence.

  “... and be extremely cautious, at home and at work. If you feel like you want police protection, let me know.”

  Leder’s body had been found in the foyer of his Medford home on Sunday morning while his wife was singing in the German Lutheran Church choir. As with Eric, there was no sign of struggle. Both victims had apparently welcomed their murderer.

  Our general meeting seemed to be over.

  “Let’s take a short break, and then I’d like to talk to all of you separately. I’ll take Gloria first and clear up some final details of her contract,” Matt said.