The Boric Acid Murder (22 page)

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Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #Revere Beach (Mass.), #Police Procedural, #Mystery & Detective, #Boric acid, #General, #Boston (Mass.), #Lamerino; Gloria (Fictitious character), #Women Sleuths, #Fiction, #Women physicists, #Detective and mystery stories; American, #Massachusetts

BOOK: The Boric Acid Murder
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Congratulations from all, plus an extra word from Tony, still keeping his role as master of ceremonies. I hoped he wasn’t planning to come to the regular project sessions. We’d scheduled daily meetings for the rest of the week to get things started.
“Well, good for you,” he said, in what I heard as a condescending tone. Or maybe it was the only tone in his repertoire. “You know, as long as Warner Center has been there, I’ve never been in it. I go by it a lot when I go to the North End to my favorite pizza spots. What’s it like inside?”
“Like, huge. They have this special sound system, and …”
Charlotte went on about the acoustics and other cutting-edge features of the Warner Center, but my mind was back on what Tony had said—or, more precisely, admitted.
I remembered Matt’s telling me about Tony’s alibi for the night of Yolanda’s murder. He had special tickets to a Warner Center event. When asked to produce the stubs, he’d said they were in Austria with his companion of the evening, or else in a Viennese trash heap. He’d added that this person held a high office in the IAEA, the agency that oversaw nuclear power worldwide.
The first time I met Taruffi, he’d said, “I heard about you,” or something to that effect, so he could have sent me the note.
It all fit.
I wasn’t so good at multitasking that I could process this
new twist and still pay attention to the conversation. I looked at my watch and stood abruptly. “Oh, dear,” I said. “I didn’t realize what time it was. I’m going to be late for another appointment.”
I gathered my purse and briefcase and acknowledged goodbyes from around the table. As I turned to go, I inadvertently caught Tony Taruffi’s eye.
“We’ll see you soon,” he said pleasantly. But the expression on his face said he expected the next meeting to be anything but pleasant.
I HURRIED TO MY CAR, parked at a side door near the intersection of Mountain Avenue and School Street. I looked over my shoulder constantly, or as often as I could without tripping. I expected to hear Tony’s footsteps on the driveway, to have him pop out of the bushes, or pole vault over to me from the fields at the back of the building. One thing I was sure of, Tony knew I’d caught the discrepancy in his two stories about Warner Center.
All that moonshine research for nothing, I thought. And the same for the whole project with the property documents. And John, probably in Detroit, tracking down a dead end. Now it seemed it was a science-related case. Or at least a lab-related case, having to do with illicit romance in the PR department, or boron, or both.
Would Tony follow me? Should I drive straight to the police station? When my cell phone rang, I was driving south on School Street, headed for Matt’s office. I startled and checked all my mirrors, as if Tony would be calling my car to announce his stalking. I calmed myself by focusing on other reasons he might have had for concocting a phony alibi—a compromising liaison with whoever replaced Yolanda, for example.
My car was unbearably hot and I was perspiring, both from running and from fright. I pushed the air-conditioning lever all the way to high and took a breath. As far as I knew, Tony didn’t even know my cell phone number. I clicked the phone on, took another breath, and relaxed when I heard Dorothy Leonard’s voice.
In keeping with my new trend to multitask, I’d stepped out for a minute while Erin was brewing coffee, and called Dorothy Leonard’s office.
“I got your message,” she said.
Coincidentally, I was at the bend where School Street runs into Beach Street, a stone’s throw from the library. I assessed my situation: fleeing one suspect, contemplating arriving into the arms of another. But surely a public library was safe. I pushed away a little voice in the back of my head. Not for Irving Leonard or Yolanda Fiore, it said.
I focused on the still-unresolved matter of faked documents. “I’d like to stop by and talk to you for a few minutes,” I said. “I have something important I’d like to discuss.”
A long sigh. “I thought you would.”
Aha! I thought. Dorothy Leonard is about to confess. She’s been waiting all along for me to focus on her.
But I realized this was at least my third
aha
of the Fiore case, and I still hadn’t made any progress helping bring in the murderer.
SITTING BELOW her marvelous Revere Beach Boulevard prints, Dorothy Leonard seemed quite at ease for someone who had just confessed to forgery. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she took out a manicure kit and redid her long nails, a deep coral that matched both her sleeveless linen dress and her lipstick. Her nonchalant attitude put a damper on my theory that she’d be motivated to kill the person who discovered her treachery.
“You’re a step ahead of Frances Worthen, who, I expect, will come back with the same finding. As soon as I got your message I called the lawyers and withdrew the papers from the record.” She arranged the fashionable gray streak in her dark hair. “So, technically, I’ve committed no crime.” Dorothy made a tent of her fingers and gazed over my head. “I knew the documents didn’t have much chance of making the grade—I’ve dealt with Cappie myself in the past, authenticating manuscripts and so forth—but I needed to buy time. Another twenty-four hours would have done it.”
Stonewalling—one of Cappie’s guesses. I’d have to tell Rose Cappie was indeed an expert in the field. “What happens in twenty-four hours?”
“June fifteenth is the drop-dead date for filing objections, counterpapers, and so on. I thought if I could just stall things past that date …” She spread her hands in a gesture of resignation. “It was worth a try.”
Her expression turned so sad, as if she’d lost the Director of the Year award, that I almost felt guilty for spoiling her plan.
“Weren’t you taking a big risk? If you’d been found out after the decision …”
She nodded. “It wasn’t that smart, I know. I told myself it wasn’t really a crime since we’re so sure there was no burial ground there. The way the police plant evidence when they know they’ve found the right person.”
I frowned at her matter-of-fact comment on police work. “I don’t think—”
She held up her hand. “I didn’t mean Matt, of course. But we just needed a bit more documentation, and all I did was change some numbers, to add a few square feet. I’ve had a little experience myself with document examination.”
Not enough to make Cappie proud of her, I mused. Dorothy continued her argument, as if she were in front of a jury, instead of someone who stumbled onto the plan and no longer had a reason to expose her.
“Look at what we do have,” she said, partly to the wall behind me. “Even without any funny business—all our zoning and building permits are in order, back to 1902. It would have taken a special zoning permit to establish a cemetery in the first place, and if there were one, it would have shown up. The city offices have no record of any such document. Plus, at least half a dozen books have been written about the history of Revere by local authors, and none have mentioned a cemetery in that location.”
A convincing defense. And more words than I’d ever heard Dorothy Leonard speak at one time. “Then why bother tampering with the papers?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Just an extra precaution. I was hoping to impress the Catholic Church.”
We smiled, co-conspirators, sharing an in-joke at the expense of Bernard Cardinal Law.
“Does Derek know about this?” I asked her. Interesting as all this was, I still had a killer to find. Maybe Derek took this pseudo-crime more seriously, I thought.
She shook her head. “Derek doesn’t know anything about this. He’s sweet, and naive. He really thinks these papers fell into our hands at just the right time.”
“And he still doesn’t know?”
“Not unless you’ve told him. And I think we’ll win this anyway. Fortunately for us, the Church is not a great keeper of secular records. About all they have is obituaries from old newspapers and parish bulletins with a vague reference to burial in that general vicinity. But the announcements could just as easily have been directing the faithful to the old Rumney Marsh cemetery.”
“You’re the one who really wants this project to go through aren’t you?”
Dorothy’s eyes misted over, as she nodded slowly. “I couldn’t stand the idea that this would fail again. It was Irving’s dream.”
“What made it fail when he was director? Surely Councilman Byrne couldn’t have stopped it by himself.”
“Byrne wields a lot of power. He convinced the rest of the Council that the money should be used for a new cultural center. Which, by the way, has never been built.”
“It almost sounds like he had a personal vendetta against your husband. As if he wanted to stop the expansion just to be nasty to Mr. Leonard. Who was appointed when he died?”
Dorothy raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Joe Reilly, the councilman’s friend, wouldn’t you know. Someone who had no interest in expanding the library. Actually no interest in the library.” Dorothy smiled. “But if Byrne’s intention was to foil the Leonards’ careers, he got an even bigger surprise when I was appointed last year.”
Revere politics were coming together for me. “You were promoted over his son. That must have been hard for him.”
A vigorous nod. “Indeed, although I do like Derek. I think another factor in the councilman’s contrariness here is that he’d rather have this undertaking come later and be credited to his son. In spite of the political haggling, the people of Revere want this project to succeed. And, not only did his son
not
get this job, but a
woman
did. Dear old Brendan has a problem with females in authority, as you may have noticed.” Dorothy sat back in her chair and swiveled a few degrees. A broad smile took over her face. “Poor old man. He had the nerve to tell me to join a sewing circle.”
I gulped. “What an interesting metaphor.” I smiled, to match Dorothy’s expression, hoping my distress—to me it seemed visible—would come across as amusement at the councilman’s choice of words.
The image of the note I’d received, on formal, off-white stationery, floated between us. TAKE UP SEWING. First the note, then Tony Taruffi’s comment to me, now Councilman Byrne’s advice to Dorothy Leonard.
Dorothy seemed not to notice my discomfort as I tried to figure out whether Taruffi or Byrne had sent me the note, or whether all the men in Revere had suddenly gone macho. In line with her talkative mood, Dorothy gave me an account of her husband’s vision for the library, and of his untimely death at forty-six. Or perhaps she simply allowed me to be there while she reminisced.
“Irving was working late—it was a Friday night. He was often here late on Friday so he could take the rest of the weekend off. The custodian found him early Saturday morning, at the foot of the stairs.”
“So you weren’t here at the time?”
She trained her eyes on me, giving me a soft, amused look. “I wondered when you were going to get around to that. I was in East Hartford, Connecticut, visiting our daughter, Sarah, at her school. But what you really want to know is my alibi for the night Yolanda was murdered. Coincidentally, I was also at
Sarah’s that night, ten years later. Sarah now lives in Malden, with her family. I was baby-sitting my young grandson.”
I felt my face flush, embarrassed at my awkward probing. “I—”
“No, no, it’s all right, I know you’re close to John Galigani’s parents, and it’s always hard when one’s child is in trouble. I remember how it was when Irving died. His father was a doctor, you know, to make it even worse. Medical people always expect to be able to save their loved ones from death of any kind, of course. My father-in-law was devastated.”
Dorothy’s eyes drifted off again. I felt like an eavesdropper on a discussion she’d had with herself many times in the last ten years.
“Apparently Irving had been carrying a large crate of folders and lost his footing at the top of the stairs. The crate and all the contents were strewn over the bottom landing. It was very strange, since I remember the folders were an odd collection of files he wouldn’t ordinarily be concerned with. Files I thought his staff would handle. And Mrs. Tremel who worked for him back then said the same thing. She said Irving had marked the crate for long-term storage.” Dorothy frowned and wagged her head, as if to scold Irving Leonard for the foolish error that cost him his life and denied her many more happy years with him.
She turned back to me and to the present. “Yes, I want this project to succeed, Gloria, for Irving. I want it badly enough to tell a fib here and there, but I would never kill another human being.”
In spite of her perfect figure and elegant presence—what other grandmother could wear a linen dress in the summer and end up with only the most discreet set of wrinkles?—I believed her.
ONLY MY MOTHER’S TOUGH training about keeping commitments prevented me from canceling dinner with Andrea. I had serious mental reorganizing to do, charts to create, notes to update, not to mention tracking John Galigani. I’d hoped for a
message from him, his parents, or Matt, but no new information had entered my apartment electronically while I’d been gone. And no more threatening messages, either, I was happy to say.
I had barely enough time to set out the lasagna pan when the doorbell rang at six o’clock.
“I brought the salad, and some bread, and a few cookies,” Andrea said, though I’d agreed only to the salad.
Andrea was always excited to be in my flat, looking through my books and admiring the California prints on the walls. This evening she brought unprecedented energy and enthusiasm, thanks to her scheduled appearances in Peter Mastrone’s classroom.
“I’ve been driving by the high school during my lunch hour,” she told me. “I wanted to see what the kids were like these days. I parked along Mountain Avenue yesterday, and School Street today, so no one would think I was a pedophile or anything.”
It was just like Andrea Cabrini to raise the concept of teacher preparation to a new high. “That was a good idea. What did you learn?”
“There were so many Asian students. I was surprised. I went to high school in West Adams and we didn’t have much variety out there. So, I changed the plan for my first subject.”
“Not Jenny Bramley?”
She shook her head. “What do you think of my using C. S. Wu instead?”
I nodded and smiled at her. “The woman who did the experiments at Columbia. One of my favorites.”
“Yeah, I’ve been reading up on it. Two men, Lee and Yang, were the theorists and they got the Nobel Prize in 1957, the first scientists of Chinese birth to win it. But Wu should have been acknowledged, too.” Andrea shook her pudgy finger at me, as if I were the Nobel committee, skipping over a female whose experimental results were crucial to the milestone—the overthrow of parity that changed the way physicists looked at symmetry in the universe.
“I think Wu is an excellent choice, Andrea. And I agree
she’s gotten too little credit and recognition. You’ve done a lot of work very quickly.”

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