Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

You’re being a little extreme, Matt, I thought, but smiled and nodded.

  “It might work best if you four decide who’ll be next—whoever has another appointment or whatever. It shouldn’t be more than ten minutes each in any case.”

  ~*~

  “How did I do?” Matt asked when the two of us were seated back in his office.

  “You sound like the former mayor of New York,” I said, “But I’m sure they all think I’m off the case.”

  “You are off the case.”

  “It hasn’t been twenty-four hours since I asked for another day,” I said, looking at my watch. “I have until six o’clock this evening.”

  “Okay,” he said, “We’ll celebrate the official end of your contract. Let’s meet at six o’clock.”

  I thought the little Golden Gate Bridge pin on my jacket must be swinging from its rafters as my internal organs became unsettled. I looked at him to be sure I’d heard correctly.

  “Six o’clock. Here?” I asked.

  He laughed, and my bridge pin swayed in the wind.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ll pick you up and we’ll find more pleasant surroundings.”

  ~*~

  As I drove home, I felt split into at least three pieces. One piece of me was thrilled at the idea of a social evening with Matt Gennaro. From another part of me, Josephine’s voice warned that I might be misunderstanding his message. But the third and worst part was the frustrated voice that kept reminding me how little use I’d been to Matt’s investigations.

  I reviewed my meager contributions. I’d explained a little physics, which most likely had nothing to do with the murder cases. I’d caught Janice in a slip up that could easily be explained, since she may have just forgotten some September visit to the lab. I’d tracked down the Connecticut plates on the Corvette no sooner than the police had. I’d exposed poor Andrea’s retrieval of her birthday present to Eric. And I’d gathered up bits of gossip that didn’t amount to a nano-hill of beans.

  I’d also put my money on Leder as the murderer, and he turned up a second victim.

  To further indulge my feelings of incompetence, I reflected on the trouble I’d been to Matt. Because of my foolishness I’d prompted a late night search of my apartment, including worry on his mind and dust on his jacket. Even my break-in seemed my fault. If I’d set the alarm before going out for the evening, the burglar wouldn’t have gotten so far, and Matt wouldn’t have been summoned to a second round of overtime.

  I checked the clock on my dashboard—eleven A. M. I still had seven hours to crack the case, and then turn myself into a gorgeous creature worthy of a night out.

  All morning I had the feeling that I was very close to deciphering the meaning of the characters I’d been living with, even taking them to the bathtub with me. Something about the initials on Connie’s briefcase, three characters in a row.

  I thought about my options for lunch. I still had a few Girl Scout cookies in the freezer, plus garlic bread from Mangia’s and one more chocolate from the box Peter had brought. I decided to make a stop for real food, including something to offer my six o’clock guest.

  ~*~

  I arrived home with two large sacks— fruit, cereal, juice, eggs and cheeses from the supermarket in one, and breads and muffins from Luberto’s in the other. I climbed up the stairs past the closed door of Rose’s office and remembered that she and Frank were taking a rare day off together. I was grateful that Leder’s body wouldn’t be replacing Eric’s in the main parlor, since he lived in Medford. As I kicked my apartment door shut behind me I wondered why I’d bought so much breakfast food. Was I planning on company in the morning?

  Rose and Elaine had left similar messages on my machine.

  From Rose I heard, “Gloria, what’s happening? I heard about Doctor Leder. Please take care of yourself and call me when you get back from the police station.”

  Elaine, who must have called right after the morning news in California, sounded equally concerned about me, and I tried not to take either message seriously. After all, I thought with a smile, I’m going to be under police protection all evening.

  I was anxious to tell both women about what might be called my date with Matt, but decided I’d wait until I had something more definite to report. I still hadn’t put Josephine’s voice to rest—maybe Matt did just want to celebrate the end of my contract. Period. In the end, I had to be satisfied with leaving messages on both Rose’s and Elaine’s machines, telling them I was fine.

  I carried a plate of cheddar cheese, grapes, and apple slices to my computer table and hit the top right key to boot up my drive. As usual, the last thing I’d worked on came to life on my screen, my notes and transparencies on how lasers work.

  On one of the transparencies I’d drawn two circles, one to represent the area illuminated by a regular flashlight, and the other a beam from a laser. The flashlight’s area was a much larger circle, with light spread out evenly across a wide diameter. The laser’s circle of light was tiny and intense. I marked the radius of each circle, r-F for the flashlight and r-L for the laser, and wrote the formula for calculating the areas.

  The transparency was finished except for adding pi, the Greek letter that represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. To add the letter in its Greek form to my document, I had to use a special menu item called “keycaps.” I selected keycaps, typed a regular p from the keyboard and looked up at the screen to see that I’d produced a pi on the screen.

  It worked as I’d expected. But I got much more than my pi. I got the last piece of the puzzle that I needed.

  It finally dawned on me that if Eric had been typing Greek letters or any other special mathematical notation with his keyboard, he’d have had his keycaps selector on. So when he typed in letters to tell us who his murderer was, they appeared as keycap symbols, not the standard English alphabet. The characters could be the keycaps version of the murderer’s name or initials. I realized that was why the letters on Connie’s briefcase had been nagging me all day. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I’d already had the idea that the strange grouping of characters might be someone’s initials.

  I sat up in my chair, hardly able to contain my excitement. I had to work backwards to unscramble the code. I kept my keycap selector on and began hitting the keyboard, watching the screen to see which symbol came up.

  I started in the middle row of letters, the usual base position for touch-typing. I typed ;lkj and saw the triangle symbol when I hit the letter J. I continued typing, moving to the bottom row of the keyboard, until I saw a mu. It came on the screen when I hit the letter M. An integral sign showed up when I hit B. Eric meant to hit the initials J. M. B., and instead got keycap language.

  Janice Bensen? I searched through my notes, nearly tearing the pages in my haste, to see if I had any record of Janice’s middle name or maiden name. None. I checked the Revere phone book and found only Bensen, Paul K., who I knew was Eric’s father, and Bensen, E. and J., no middle initials.

  I mentally ran through my options and came up with calling Matt or Janice directly. I wasn’t anxious to call either one—Matt because he might think I was faking an opportunity to speak to him and Janice because she might be a double murderer. If Leder had also figured out the code, Janice might have killed him, too. I stopped short at “If Janice knows I know ... .”

  I punched in Matt’s number, choosing a known non-killer over a possible murderer, and got his voice mail. Not wanting to disturb him by paging him at lunchtime, I left a message.

  “This is Gloria Lamerino at one o’clock on Monday. I have a clue I think you should hear about. It might be important. Please call when you have a chance.”

  As soon as I put down the phone, I had what seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d call Janice and pretend to need her full name for my final report.

  Another answering machine. Another message.

  “This is Gloria Lamerino at a little after one on Monday. I’m writi
ng up my final report for Sergeant Gennaro and I need to know your full name, maiden name and place of birth. Call me when you have a chance. Thanks.”

  I was proud of myself for throwing in the red herring of place of birth.

  Since my business was at a standstill until I heard from either Matt or Janice, I tried Rose again and reached her.

  “Another murder,” she said. “Gloria, I’m really worried about you.”

  She didn’t say that I could be next but I knew she was thinking it. To put her mind at ease, I told her how I’d worked out what I thought was the meaning of the characters in the printout.

  “So you’re sure Janice Bensen is the murderer?”

  “Yes, fairly sure.”

  “Did you call Matt? You shouldn’t be alone, especially now that you know.”

  “I left a message for him. Everything’s going to work out fine.”

  Rose wasn’t as relieved as I thought she should be, so I left out the part about my message to Janice, a move I was having second thoughts about myself.

  “Do you want me and Frank to come by?”

  “No. In fact, I have plans for the evening, with Matt,” I said, figuring that was the one thing that would distract her from worrying about me.

  Although Rose usually has a keen sense of justice, I knew she saw the end of the murder investigation as the beginning of my social life, and I capitalized on that to take her mind off my physical well-being. I told her how Matt suggested meeting that evening, and before I could emphasize the part about celebrating the end of my contract, Rose went into high gear.

  “Yes,” she shrieked into the phone. “What are you going to wear?”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “White Shoulders.”

  “A white jacket?”

  “It’s a perfume, Gloria, haven’t you even seen ads?”

  “They don’t advertise in Scientific American,” I said. “What else should I wear?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and we both laughed.

  “I have to pick up a new candelabra near my house,” Rose said. “I’ll grab my White Shoulders and bring it up to you by five thirty.”

  Hearing the excitement in her voice increased my own, and I went to my closet to choose my outfit. I wished I knew exactly what pleasant surroundings Matt had in mind. A walk on the beach with sensible shoes? A dark formal restaurant with shiny black sandals? A stroll through Boston Common with casual loafers? I couldn’t picture Matt arriving in black wing tips, so I went for my gray suede T-straps with crepe soles. Working upwards from my shoes, I pulled out my gray and blue broadcloth paisley pants, which looked a lot like the runner in my entry way. I shook out the matching tunic top and hung the suit on the door.

  With more than three hours before my perfume was due, I spent most of it on cleaning chores—washing my dishes, vacuuming, and changing the sheets on my bed. At four-thirty, I put on a CD of Gregorian chant and sat in my rocker, dressed for the evening except for my shoes. Between the relaxing music and the relief of having at last done something useful to Matt’s investigation, I fell asleep.

  ~*~

  I woke up, not knowing how long I’d been out, when I heard a shuffling sound outside my door. Rose and her perfume, I thought, a little early. As I stood up to go to the door, it swung open, and I realized I hadn’t gone back to lock it after carting in my groceries that afternoon.

  Janice Bensen stood on my threshold.

  “I thought I’d deliver the information in person,” she said.

  TWENTY-THREE

  For one desperate moment I thought Janice might have just dropped in to tell me her middle name was Theresa and her maiden name was Jones. She was wearing sweat pants and thick athletic shoes. With a dark blue gym bag slung casually over her shoulder, she looked like any suburban housewife off for an afternoon of fitness routines. But her wildly disheveled hair and glassy, staring eyes contrasted sharply with her pink teddy-bear sweat shirt and told me that Janice had committed two murders and was contemplating a third.

  “Miller,” she said, and I remembered a few hours too late that Eric’s father had referred to Janice’s father as “old man Miller.”

  “Janice Miller Bensen. J. M. B.,” she said. “You scientists are too smart for your own good. I always told Eric that.” She seemed to be biting her lower lip as she talked and I couldn’t imagine how I understood her words. “You all thought I was stupid, just a secretary, lucky to be married to an important physicist, that I’d be nothing without him.”

  Janice was standing on my narrow runner, about a third of the way past the threshold of the one and only door to my apartment that led outside.

  “No one thinks secretaries are stupid, Janice. And we all think you’ve done really well at your company.”

  Although I believed what I said about secretaries, at that moment it didn’t matter. I didn’t even remember what company Janice worked for. I was grasping for any words that might calm her down.

  “For years all I heard was hydrogen this, hydrogen that,” she said. “It was going to make us rich. It was going to get me a family. Then he thinks first he’s going to be high and mighty honest and chuck everything and then he’s going to walk out on me.”

  Words I’d learned in my negotiating seminars and communications classes ran through my head, and I actually used one of the classic phrases on the double-murderer in my living room.

  “I understand how you’d be upset, Janice,” I said, showing more loyalty to sensitivity training than it deserved. “Let me help you work this out.”

  I came to my senses, however, and let my survival instincts take over when I saw her hand reach into her duffel bag. I took a step closer to the edge of the runner, reached down quickly and pulled as hard as I could. Luck was on my side as I caught her balanced on one foot, walking toward me. She fell backward toward my door, her head hitting the open door, the gun falling out of her hand.

  I made a split second decision not to try to get past her, out my door. Instead I ran back to my bedroom, grabbing my cordless phone on the way. As I’d guessed, she was far from knocked out by her fall and I could hear her already moving in my direction. I slammed my bedroom door and locked it behind me. I knew the flimsy lock on the knob was relatively useless, but I hoped it would at least slow her down and buy me a little time. I had no idea what good time would do me, trapped in my attic, the only place left to go. I thought of my warnings to dozens of leading ladies in movie thrillers.

  “Don’t go up there,” I’d say to the celluloid women, gritting my teeth, but they all did, from Olivia De Havilland to Julia Roberts.

  On the way to the hallway I passed my exercise bicycle and wished I’d used it more often. Not only did Janice have a twenty-five-year age advantage, she was fit in a way that I never was even at her age. Too late now, I thought, resolving to join the senior softball league at Di Salvo park if I lived to have the chance again.

  Besides age and extra pounds, the other things working against me were my wide-legged paisley pants and bare feet. I’d kicked off my shoes while I was relaxing in my rocker. The ladder to the attic was still in place from Matt’s last trip to the attic. Ignoring creaking knees and the stiffness in my hips, I climbed up in record time, my personal best with no shoes.

  When I got through the trap door, I tried to pull the ladder up but Janice had already broken through my bedroom door and reached the bottom rung. Her weight kept me from pulling the ladder through the opening.

  I was on my knees at the edge of the trap door, keeping to the side, where I hoped a bullet wouldn’t find me. With my left hand, which has never been very dexterous, I was pushing 911 on my phone pad, and with my right I was struggling with the top of the ladder, trying to unhook it from the grooves in the attic floor. I mentally drew the force diagram with an arrow to represent Janice’s weight on the third or fourth rung and another arrow to represent the direction I was pushing. I realized I’d need two hands to unhook the ladder completely, but I didn�
��t want to give up my phone work. Lucky for me, Janice had only one hand available also, since she wasn’t about to give up her gun.

  We volleyed back and forth, grunting as if on a tennis court—just as I’d get one hook off, she’d get the other on. We were both breathing heavily and making sounds that could have passed for screams, but nothing I could distinguish, even from my own mouth. I’d given up trying to talk her out of killing me. Although Janice seemed to have abandoned her speeches about how unfair Eric and his colleagues had been to her, I heard one or two phrases from her.

  “It’s over,” she said once, and I couldn’t tell if she meant my life or hers or both.

  I heard a shot ring out and shrank back from the opening. On an imaginary piece of paper in my mind, I plotted the trajectory of a bullet and got no comfort from the calculation. The next one could be dead on. At the same time I was looking around for something I could use as a weapon, remembering the baseball bat and swords I’d seen a few nights before. My deep breathing brought the sharp smell of the attic to my nostrils and I wondered if I would die among musty relics of my life.

  The high-stakes interaction with Janice was straining my physical limits. I’d always been able to juggle several things at once in my mind. One spring while I was doing full-time research on crystals, I also wrote a short biography of the nineteenth century British mathematician Mary Somerville for a children’s book publisher, devised and tested a program of science experiments for first-grade teachers, and taught Italian conversation at a community adult school.

  When it came to physical maneuvers, however, I couldn’t successfully stir soup with one hand and hold a book with the other. I knew because the one time I’d tried it, I’d burned a large pot of lentil soup and dropped my math book, ruining several pages.

  After what seemed like hours, I heard an operator’s voice in my ear. I focused on my mouth and said every syllable of “Galigani’s Mortuary attic” as clearly and loudly as I could. I tossed the phone to the side and grabbed the object nearest to my knees—a rubber sword. Great, I thought, feeling like a cartoon character. It was all I had nearby, however, and I slammed it down on Janice’s fingers, still conscious of staying out of gunshot range. She grabbed the prop from me easily and threw it down to the hallway floor. Another gun shot frightened me into moving back from the edge, but I knew that if I left my post and let Janice’s head and arm reach the opening, she’d have a straight shot at me.