The Helium Murder (10 page)

I could tell that at first Matt thought the idea was on the wild side, but he humored me.

“How would we get at it?” he asked, looking at the lining of the apparently empty case, open on his lap.

We fiddled with the edges for a while; and then, from sheer luck, hit the right combination of pressure points, and the bottom came loose at the corners. We lifted the top section from the case.

On the next level, against a maroon felt backdrop, was a manila file folder labeled
Personal Correspondence
.

Matt gave me a wonderful smile, and then uttered one of my favorite expressions.

“Nice work, Gloria,” he said.

Chapter Eleven

I
stood with my hands behind my back, like a child waiting for a treat, while Matt thumbed through the papers in the file. Finally he spread them out on his desk and invited me to look at them with him.

The folder contained five letters to Hurley, with responses clipped to two of them. Two letters were from Patrick Gallagher, two from Vincent Cavallo, and one from Bill Carey. None from Buddy or Rocky.
Maybe they can’t write
, I thought.

We read the letters quickly, swapping pages and mumbling out loud as we went along.

Two short letters from Patrick Gallagher carried the threat of suicide if Hurley didn’t take him back.
“How can you let a career in corruption keep us apart,”
were his exact words in one of them.

Two long letters, several pages each, from Vincent Cavallo, were reasoned pleas for Hurley to reconsider
his proposal for upgrading the helium facility instead of scrapping it. Hurley had attached her responses with paper clips. Put briefly, the answer was no.

The letter from Carey was the most revealing. It read, in part:
“I strongly urge you to continue the relationship you’ve had with our firm. I’m sure neither of us would profit from letting your colleagues or the general public in on our agreements.”

“So, Hurley got him the contracts in the first place,” I said.

“Something to ask him about,” Matt said, checking his watch. “How convenient that we’re on our way to Chelsea.”

We rode in one of the RPD’s unmarked sedans, a beige four-door decorated with white swirls from the remains of snow and rock salt. It occurred to me that Matt and I did a lot of our talking in cars. I was beginning to know his right profile very well, from the tiny mole on his ample Roman nose to the wrinkled collar of his soft blue shirt. More often than not, we were on the way to or from interviews with murder suspects. It worried me a little that I liked this getting-to-know-you scenario more than the usual ones, like cocktail talk or blind dates.

“Did you have a chance to ask Rose or Frank about Saturday night?” Matt asked.

“Yes, they’re free and would love to go,” I said, understating Rose’s excitement by a lot. “I’m looking forward to hearing the new and improved audio system that Symphony Hall has been advertising.”

“I don’t do this very often, you know.”

“You mean fraternize with your PSAs?” I asked, referring to our Personal Services Agreement.

“That, too,” he said, with a laugh.

“I hope you like it. You can have a preview if you like—I have
The Messiah
on disc.”

“Maybe I’ll do that. Are you as good at teaching music as you are science?”

Blushing is not as bad when you’re in a car
, I thought,
and maybe that’s why I like this side-by-side arrangement
.

“Thanks,” I said. “I hope I’ve been some help.”

Matt turned to look at me briefly.

“More than you know,” he said, and this time I was sure he caught my blush.

When we pulled into the parking lot at CompTech, I was almost relieved. I didn’t know how many compliments I could take from Matt in one day.

CompTech was behind a market I remembered going to as a child with Josephine. I had a clear memory of standing in line with her to exchange stamps for government-controlled items like butter and sugar. Like my other memories of World War II, however, I wasn’t sure whether I actually experienced the event or simply thought I did because I’d heard the stories over and over. Well into my teens in the late fifties, my aunts and uncles spoke of victory gardens, stamps for gasoline and alcohol, and ticker-tape parades as if they’d happened the day before.

CompTech’s Chelsea operation was unimposing—a small office off a reception area, and a modest manufacturing
section at the back. All the doors were open, and every room was visible from where we stood in the foyer.

The noisy back room had a dark concrete floor, lined with bulky metal tables. Men and women in unisex gray overalls sat on stools and in front of workbenches cluttered with tools and papers. A far cry from what I’d pictured when I thought of computer manufacturing—I’d envisioned rows of silent workers, clad in white from head to toe, in a meticulously clean room, using nanosized instruments.

“We have an appointment with Mr. Carey,” Matt told the young receptionist, as if we couldn’t see him, all six-one of him, standing behind the desk in an office a few feet away.

Carey was on the telephone, motioning to us with his free hand to enter. The receptionist seemed insistent on protocol, however, and ushered us in with a slight bow.

Near the door was an open box full of circuit boards in the shade of green familiar to anyone who’s looked at the innards of a computer or any other piece of nineties electronics.

“This is all we do here,” Carey said, pointing to the box and anticipating my question. He’d come around the front of the desk, towering over both of us.

“Just the boards. The chips are made at our main plant in Amarillo. We have three hundred thousand square feet down there in Texas,” he said, feeding into my stereotype that everything in the Lone Star State is enormous. Carey certainly was—as wide as a steer,
I thought, with a healthy amount of dark brown hair and a flat, square face with enough wrinkles to put him at about sixty years old, I guessed.

I looked around for a ten-gallon hat on a coat rack somewhere, but didn’t find one. I did see the traditional bolo tie around Carey’s neck, however, a thick black cord with a large turquoise-and-silver ornament that looked out of place in Chelsea.

“You’re Sgt. Gennaro, I presume,” he said, taking Matt’s hand. I hoped he didn’t crush my boss and friend. “And you’re Miss—?” This last query was directed at me, but before I could recover from his enthusiastic Southern drawl, Matt introduced me.

“This is my technical consultant, Dr. Gloria Lamerino,” he said.

I thought I saw Carey’s eyebrows go up a notch, but it may have been my biased imagination.

We took seats around the desk in the small office. What motif there was leaned decidedly toward southwestern, with geometric patterns the colors of sand and pastels in the carpet, and Native American art on the walls.

“I’m afraid we’re not set up for the kind of hospitality we could show you down in the Panhandle,” Carey said, “but I can have Miss Lacey get you a cup of coffee.”

We shook our heads “no thank you,” and exchanged a few more pleasantries about the Massachusetts weather. Then Matt assumed his business posture, his right leg crossed over his left, his notebook on the newly made lap.

“What was your relationship to Congresswoman Hurley?” Matt asked.

“Why, I didn’t really have one to speak of,” Carey said. “Of course, we met during the course of business now and then.”

“The business being the federal government’s helium operation?”

“That’s right.”

“Tell us about your contracts with the program,” Matt said, sounding as casual as if he were interviewing a celebrity for a general interest magazine.

“Oh, we have a contract or two with them, has to do with computers and such. Lots of folks do. Universities, laboratories.”

“I noticed that you’re installing upgrades in the software and adding memory boards,” I said. “Sixty-four megs of RAM on each of three dozen PCs since last fall. Isn’t that overkill for a simple database system?”

“Especially one that might close this year?” Matt added. I’d resolved to leave the political phrases to him.

“That surely has not been decided,” Carey said, stiffening, and converting his relaxed smile into a tight-lipped frown. “That project is one of the few examples of government gone right. They provide a valuable service to private buyers, for one thing.”

“Not since the new source was discovered in Wyoming more than twenty years ago,” I said, noticing both Carey’s and Matt’s eyebrows go up this time. It bothered me to be arguing against the helium operation,
but I felt it was necessary to smoke out Carey’s vested interest, and therefore his motive for murder. “That source amounts to about two hundred billion cubic feet of helium, and the total worldwide consumption is less than four billion cubic feet a year.”

While I was rattling off numbers that I’d boned up on that morning, Matt was waiting to zero in on his real question. He took out the letter we’d found in the hidden compartment of Hurley’s briefcase and handed it to Carey.

“Can you explain this letter, Mr. Carey?”

Carey handed the letter back to Matt, holding it by one edge as if it might be contaminated, or, I thought, evidence in a murder trial.

“I have no comment,” he said.

“It looks to me like you and the congresswoman had something going that you didn’t want to end,” Matt said. “You contracted for more than two million dollars last year alone. Maybe Ms. Hurley was starting to worry about her conflict of interest?”

“And maybe I misunderstood the nature of this call,” he said.

Carey stood up, looming over the neat desk. He buttoned his jacket in a gesture of closure.

“This conversation is over until my attorney is present,” he said. “Leave your card with Miss Lacey and she’ll call you to schedule an appointment.”

I admired Matt’s response under the circumstances, showing that he was more accustomed to this kind of abrupt send-off than I was.

“Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Carey,”
he said. “I’ll see you at the police station with your lawyer.”

On the way back to Revere, I took the Hurley folder out of my briefcase to insert my new notes.

“I had a few more questions,” I said, “but I guess they’ll have to wait.”

“You did all right with the time you had,” Matt said. “Those numbers you had at the tip of your fingers—very impressive.”

“I just learned them this morning,” I said, reverting to my old-time habit of self-effacement. “The numbers are on the Internet.”

“Maybe, but not everyone knows how to get them or what they mean.”

“So, do you think he did it?” I asked, amazed at my ability to change a subject.

“I’m not ruling him out.”

Before I closed my Hurley folder, I made a neat pile of the newspaper clippings from the day following the murder. A headline caught my eye and I remembered something I’d wanted to ask Matt.

“One of these clips says that the 911 call came in shortly after eight o’clock on Sunday night,” I said.

“Right. Mrs. Whitestone was at the back of the house, without her hearing aids, and didn’t hear anything. The young couple next door heard a loud noise and the screech of a car leaving in a hurry. They went out to check and called 911.”

“But another clip here says that Hurley died late
Sunday night. Eight o’clock isn’t ‘late.’ Did Hurley live for a while in the hospital?”

“She did. She hung on for a couple of hours, but didn’t regain consciousness.”

“Did she say anything at all? Maybe to the people who found her or the paramedics?”

“You sound like Mrs. Whitestone. She demanded to talk to all the people who handled Margaret, asking how she was and if she had any last words.”

“Did she?”

“As a matter of fact, the paramedic has her making some sound. I can’t quite remember, but I wrote it down. If you want to reach into my coat pocket on the backseat, you can take out my notebook.”

I leaned over and pulled Matt’s coat toward me. I found his notebook and flipped through some pages, stopping at one headed
Paramedic
. I was impressed with his organizational skills and legible handwriting.
The sign of a good researcher
, I thought,
if someone else can follow your notes
.

“It looks like ‘mole,’” I said. “As in ‘spy’?”

“That’s what the guy said. Mole or moles. No name in the case sounds like that, so I gave up on it as a lead. And, of course, she kept asking for Mrs. Whitestone. That’s it.”

“Hmm,” was all I said, but something else that I couldn’t put my finger on was churning in my brain.

Chapter Twelve

T
rying to cultivate at least one healthy habit, on the way home I stopped at a market and picked up bread and fruit and raw material for a salad. At the last minute, I added a quart of ice cream to my basket, unable to resist a new Ben & Jerry’s flavor with caramel and marshmallows.
For unexpected company
, I told myself.

Mrs. Whitestone had chosen the old custom—two evenings of wake before burial—so Wednesday evening presented another opportunity to talk to the principals in the case.

I had to weigh my desire to meet Patrick Gallagher and Vincent Cavallo against the dread of encountering Rocky Busso again. I threw the probability of seeing Matt into the equation, although he hadn’t said anything about attending the wake. All in all, I entertained one final vision of Rocky’s tiny eyes and puffy face
and came down on the side of staying in my apartment.

“I have too much to do tonight,” I said, talking to Rose over the intercom.

“I’ll stop by when we’re finished and give you any news,” she said. “Don’t forget, the cruiser will be out there again tonight.”

Following my theory of no personal attacks while a police car is outside one’s door and Christmas music is playing, I put on a CD of
The Messiah
. I changed into comfortable pants and a loose black sweater and went to my computer. I checked my e-mail, paid some bills, and opened my Hurley file. After typing in the new notes from the interview with Carey, I printed out the whole file and took the pages, with a cup of coffee, to my rocker.