The Carbon Murder (22 page)

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Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths

BOOK: The Carbon Murder
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“Have you thought about what Jake’s murder means to you, MC? I mean in terms of your own safety?”
She nodded. “I sure have. When Nina Martin was murdered, I thought maybe she was the one they, whoever they are, were after all along. Now, Jake. Either it’s over, or …”
I was torn—should I try to put her mind at ease or keep her alert? Should I protect her from any notions of danger? MC was an adult, I reminded myself, not the little girl I waited for at a gate in San Francisco International Airport every summer.
“It’s probably over,” I said. “But please be careful until we have Jake’s murderer.”
“You’re still working on it, right?”
“I certainly am. Just be careful, okay?”
MC gave me a hug. “You already said that. I love you, Aunt G.”
“And I love you.”
And woe to him who hurts you,
I thought.
I
turned onto Fernwood Avenue from Broadway, passing the former site of a favorite high schoolers’ pizza parlor, now a professional building. I could almost hear the parade of Italian-American crooners that we all loved, coming from the small jukeboxes attached to the wall of each red booth. Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Julius La Rosa, and Jerry Vale, nee Vitaliano.
We’d walk down School Street, picking up classmates along the way, singing “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,” “There’s No Tomorrow,” “Love and Marriage,” “Pretend You Don’t See Her,” as if we understood the words. As if any of our hearts had been broken, or our dreams crushed, as they would be later in life—when Connie would lose a twelve-year-old daughter in a diving accident and Olga’s husband would be fired from his job and commit suicide.
I wondered what songs Alysse and Petey, Jean’s children, listened to and what their dreams were.
Not that anyone has a choice, but I was content with my age, with not being part of the dating scene that MC loathed to re-enter, not needing to worry about career advancement or any other issues of the young.
I know Matt agreed. One time his nephew Petey, the philosophical one in the Mottolo family, asked Matt if he wished he were still a kid.
“Not if I’d have to see the Ice Capades again,” Matt had replied.
As if to confirm my feelings of domestic satisfaction, I opened the door to the aroma of steaming New England clam chowder.
“I thought I was supposed to cook for
you
?” I said, ninety-nine percent sure all he’d done was heat up a pot that Rose had brought over.
He smiled and wiped his brow. “The hardest part was traipsing the beach in my hip boots digging for the clams.”
The same Matt. No ill effects from the radiation treatment he’d had that morning. So far, so good.
“Seems I missed a lot,” I said. “Witnesses saw Wayne Gallen and Jake Powers in a bar fight, threatening each other?”
Matt nodded. “I don’t suppose you’d want to look at the report?”
I smiled, shed my jacket, and walked to the coffee table where Matt’s papers were spread out. I picked out the ones headed POLICE REPORT—STATEMENT. I’d seen a number of these reports in my consultant work, but I’d never before paid attention to the check-off squares at the upper left where there were options for the type of report: CRIM., INCID., COMPL., INSUR., DOMES. VIOL.
I wondered if MC would feel better or worse if she knew that domestic violence was so common that it had its own line on police forms. It made me feel worse.
Statements taken at the scene weren’t as easy to read as formally typed transcripts, but I made my way through the handwriting of Officer Benjamin R. Di Palma.
The narrative told the story of two white males, later identified as Jake Powers and Wayne Gallen, both similar build, one dark coloring, the other redhead with a “barbershop mustache,” the witness had called it. They’d started to argue in the One A Bar, I read, then had taken it outside to the parking lot, where many patrons formed a ring around them and watched. Two witnesses claimed there were more verbal hits than physical; a third said the opposite.
I sighed. “Do men still really do this? It’s not just in old western movies?”
“You should pay more attention to the police blotter,” Matt said.
“Di Palma did a good job on this. He located three different witnesses who’d talk to him. Very unusual in these circumstances. Guys don’t want to be known as spectators for this kind of thing. In fact, most of them don’t even want to be known as ever having been in the One A.”
Had I ever been in a place I wouldn’t want to be seen in?
I asked myself. Maybe an ice cream shop alone, feeding my habit with a hot fudge sundae.
I looked at accounts of the words flung about along with the fists of the two men.
All three witnesses reported either, “I’ll kill you,” from Wayne, and “Not if I kill you first,” from Jake, or vice versa.
I read a few of the alleged quotes from the brawl aloud, though Matt had already seen the narrative.
“‘You’re breaking the law.’”
“‘I’ll break your jaw.’”
“Do you think that was deliberate poetry?” I asked him, not waiting for an answer.
“‘I can’t believe you thought you’d get away with it.’”
“‘You’ll keep your trap shut if you know what’s good for you.’”
“‘Not in a million years. You are going down, friend, you are going down.’”
“‘I don’t know what you’re so upset over.’”
“‘She was mine.’”
“‘She was mine’?” I repeated, incredulous. “As if he owned MC? Whichever one said this—”
“Keep reading,” Matt said.
“‘Damn your Suzy Q.’”
“‘You’ll pay for what you did to her.’”
“‘Suzy Q. Suzy Q.’” [Witnesses’ interpretation: taunting.]
“Doesn’t sound like jealous guys fighting over a girl, does it?” Matt said.
“No, it doesn’t. And Suzy Q. Do you suppose that could be—” I asked.
“Spartan Q is my thought. They’re fighting over a horse.”
“A dead horse.”
“So this brings Gallen back into the case.”
“And therefore maybe Alex Simpson.”
Matt sat down, and I served the chowder and sourdough bread, another San Francisco treat that had also made it to Revere’s grocers.
“This gets weirder and weirder,” he said.
I thought of the elements of the case. Three dead people and two dead horses. Buckyball scientists, vets, and equestrians. Houston, Texas, and Revere, Massachusetts.
“I agree. The case is weird,” I said. “And I haven’t even told you yet about
my
day.”
 
Matt had the same reaction I did to Dr. Schofield’s confession.
“Not enough to worry about,” he said.
“Unless you’re the funding sponsor. Not that I’m going to report him.” I waved my hand. “It’s his conscience.”
Matt gave me a sympathetic look. “I know it’s tough on you when a scientist doesn’t live up to … what would this be, the Hippocratic oath, maybe?”
I shrugged my shoulders. Were veterinarians also regular MDs who took an oath? At the moment I didn’t care at all.
Well, maybe I cared a little. Once Matt and I finished dinner, I reached for my briefcase and retrieved the printout with the list I’d gotten from Dr. Schofield’s secretary—horses with microchip implants. I might have been influenced to remain in the western/ horse-related mood by the words to Perry Como’s “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” coming from an “old crooners” CD in the background, my choice for the evening.
I scanned the list.
Clever names,
I thought, wondering if astronaut Dr. Sally Ride or the owner of McDonald’s restaurants had given permission for use of their names. Or if they owned the horses. Inventive, either way.
There it was. Lucian Five. The names of horses didn’t have a long shelf-life in my brain, but I recognized Penny Trumble’s deceased horse.
“What if
all
these horses are dead?” I asked Matt. I tapped my pencil the way Dr. Schofield had, end on end.
Matt lowered his
Revere Journal.
“I doubt it. That would raise a flag.” He came to my chair and peered at the list. “There’s one I know,” he said.
I gave him a strange look, as if he’d just admitted to having fathered a child now living on a ranch in Texas with its mother. “What else are you keeping from me?”
He laughed and pointed to a line on the chart.
“Mike Mercati used to be on the job. He went into private practice a couple of years ago and opened an agency in Saugus. This is probably his middle daughter; I remember she was into horses as a teenager.” Matt sounded like Rose. It seemed I was the only one who had forfeited my knowledge of Revere history.
We looked up simultaneously, our heads making a nearly identical angle, its sides being parallel lines from my chair to the old analog clock on the mantel. I had the fleeting thought that we should implant an identification microchip in the clock, a valuable antique.
At the same time that I said, “It’s only ten o’clock,” Matt said, “It’s ten o’clock already.”
“I said it first.” I kissed his cheek and handed him the phone.
The crooning had stopped, but neither of us bothered to reload the player. The evening had turned into a work session where the words to “Catch a Falling Star” would only be distracting.
I waited through a catch-up session between Matt and his old friend, hearing Matt’s easy comments, as if he had all the time in the world. How nice that Sheila was teacher of the year at Saugus High. Did Uncle Bill ever buy that cottage by the ocean? And yes, Matt was still on Fernwood Avenue and things were fine. I noticed he left out both me and his cancer. I heard a few more pleasantries, then finally, the reason for the call.
“Okay, yeah. And I’m glad to hear Uncle Sam is doing so well.” A pause. “No, no, I’m just following up with some statistics for a case. Thanks a lot, Mike.”
“Alive?” I asked. I was glad Mr. Mercati couldn’t hear my disappointment
Matt nodded. “Uncle Sam won a second in a show yesterday.”
“So the chips don’t kill all the horses.”
“Or any of them, as far as we know.”
“Right. Coffee break?” I asked, already at the espresso maker.
 
It had been a long time since I’d responded to a dream by waking up with an idea. I got out of bed as quietly as I could and went down to the living room.
In my dream I kept forgetting to put cash or credit cards or my checkbook into my purse, so I couldn’t pay for what I was buying. I had no idea what I was trying to buy, but the dream crisis reminded me that I hadn’t looked at the financial details of the Charger Street reports. Sometime later I might delve into what the dream really meant. As far as I knew, I was solvent.
I pulled the stack of material onto my lap—I’d read the same annual summaries of the projects over and over and thought I knew them by heart, but had just skimmed the financial reports. Not the most interesting to me. I riffled through and found the money sections, appearing as appendices to the reports.

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