The Hydrogen Murder (15 page)

Leder stood behind Connie and put his hands on her
shoulders.

"See if you can find a bottle of Mondavi for Connie, or
anything from one of those Napa Valley wineries," he said, leaning into
her ear. Connie rolled her eyes and moved away.

"Maybe we shouldn't invite ourselves," Jim said,
still fingering his rosary, part of which hung out of his jacket pocket. He
hadn't taken the money Leder was holding out. Connie and Andrea seemed to be
echoing Jim's sentiment by giving me questioning looks.

As for me, my second thought after the one about Leder's
impure intentions was that my apartment was a mess. I thought about the whole
day's worth of dishes in the sink and the books and papers spread out on the
table. A voice in my head that sounded like Josephine's told me to ask everyone
to wait while I ran up and straightened out. The new voice I was trying to
cultivate said no one who matters will judge me by what kind of housekeeper I
am.

I looked at the group and smiled. "What a great
idea," I said. "It's just up the stairs."

CHAPTER
14

Jim approached me as if I were his mother and he needed the
car keys for the prom.

"I think we should invite Janice and Eric's parents,
too, don't you?" he asked.

Evidently Jim felt that an all-inclusive imposition on me
was better than one that excluded part of the population. I agreed, grateful
that he didn't make a general announcement to the more than two dozen assembled
mourners.

Eric's parents declined with grace and Janice accepted with "I
could use a drink." Andrea then bowed out, but not before pulling me aside
in the foyer.

"I'm not sure I should tell you this," she said.
"But I overheard Doctor Leder on the phone with his wife yesterday. He was
arguing with her and I know it was about his alibi for the time of Eric's
murder."

"What makes you think that?" I whispered,
imitating the low volume of Andrea's words.

"I heard him say something like, 'why the hell did you
have to tell them about the sleeping pills?' She's his alibi, isn't she?"

"It doesn't mean he killed Eric."

"No, but it sounded fishy to me. He'd been angry with
Eric ever since they came back here. And I know he wanted his wife to lie. He
kept saying how she should call the police back and tell them she remembered
not taking a pill."

"Why didn't you tell this to the police?"

"It happened way after you and the detective left. It
was late and Doctor Leder probably thought no one else was in the building, but
I was in the library right next to his office. The building was so empty the
sound carried and before I knew it, I heard the whole conversation."

Andrea shuffled her feet as she talked, occasionally looking
down at the floor as if there were a TelePrompTer on the carpet. Unlike the day
of her interview with Matt, her speech came out smoothly, like a dramatic
performance given in a stage whisper.

"I thought maybe you could tell the police for
me," she said, "since you're helping them."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Andrea," I
said, conscious of people not far from us in the parlor, including Leder
himself. It might have been my imagination, but I thought he was watching us
and lip-reading, and I wasn't anxious to receive another late night warning
call. "I'm not the police. If you're sure what you heard and think it's
important, you should call Sergeant Gennaro and tell him yourself."

Andrea didn't look convinced, but it was impossible to
continue the discussion as Connie, Leder, and Janice closed in on us. Andrea
said goodnight, and I had no idea if she planned to call Matt, nor even if she
was telling the truth in the first place.

A few minutes later, Jim returned from doing his mentor's
errand and five of us climbed the stairs and entered my apartment together. I
noted without surprise that Jim had included sparkling cider in his selection
of drinks, most likely remembering that I don't drink alcohol.

Four people constituted more company than I'd ever had at
one time in my apartment, and I made a mental note to have a dinner party soon
with guests of my own choosing.

One look at my cluttered kitchen table was enough to tell
even the least observant person what I'd been doing. Evidence of my high-tech
snooping was in plain sight: the printout of the gas gun data with red-penciled
question marks in the margins, a notebook with my calculations, and the
world-famous handbook of physical and chemical measurements, open to the pages
on conductivity.

I couldn't have been more embarrassed if all my underwire
bras were strung on a clothesline across the room. Leder's long legs got him to
the table before I could get there and clear the trail.

"You've been busy," he said, standing over the
table, his hands on his hips where a gun might be holstered if we were in an
old western movie. "What's it going to take for you to mind your business,
Gloria?"

I wondered how Leder's face could simultaneously support a
wide, grinning mouth and pinched, angry eyes. I heard a general shuffling of
feet behind us and found myself in the familiar territory of young researchers
covering up the unacceptable behavior of their mentor.

"Nice collection of photographs," Jim said.

"Mind if I put on a CD?" Connie asked, and pretty
soon Wynton Marsalis was filling the awkward spaces between unconnected bits of
conversation.

I'd started to answer Leder with an evasive comment, but
changed my mind when I realized that his remarks could be turned into exactly
what I'd wanted— a conversation about the gas gun data with at least some
of the suspects.

"As a matter of fact this is my business," I said.
"I've been looking at your printout. One of the things I'm getting paid to
do."

Leder's eyes remained pinched together and his nose joined
the other angry features of his face, his nostrils growing wider by the second.

"The police said there was no sign of activity on the
computer that night," Connie said, before he could collect himself to
speak.

"Eventually they were able to pull this up with a lost
and found utility," I said, pointing to the stack of green and white
pages.

"So the killer deleted a file that was on the screen
when Eric was murdered?" Jim asked.

"Evidently," I said.

By now everyone had gathered around the table and Leder had
recovered enough to make one last pitch at putting me in my place.

"Do you really understand our data, Gloria?" he
asked.

Coming from Leder, my name sounded like a little girl's
nickname and his question had the lilt of "can you say your ABC's?"

"I have no problem understanding the data," I
said, stretching the truth longer than your average rubber band, "except
for these characters at the end." I ran my index finger back and forth
under the three mathematical symbols.
 

"They're nothing I recognize," Connie said.

"Is it some code for the end of the run?" I asked.

"No, I'd have seen it before if it were," she
said, while Jim and Leder uttered no's and shook their heads in apparent
agreement. "Besides," Connie continued, "this may be the last
page of the printout, but it's not the end of the program. Eric was somewhere
in the middle of the program when he typed these characters."

"So clearly he was interrupted at his keyboard," I
said.

If anyone was about to give the matter further thought or
make a comment, it was swallowed up by Janice's voice.

"Do we have to make this a technical meeting?" she
asked, nearly shouting at us. "I was under the impression that I was
invited to relax with a glass of wine."

Janice's voice was hoarse and shaky. None of us seemed to
have noticed that she'd left the table and taken a place on the sofa. Her chin
was in her right hand and she was close to tears.

Connie and Leder appeared stunned. Jim went over and sat
next to Janice, and I mentally gave myself the award for the hostess most
insensitive to widows.

We stood in silence, made less awkward by the trumpet music,
while Janice sobbed on Jim's shoulder. I finally came to and brought her a
glass of white wine. I also put a tumbler of water on the coffee table in front
of her. Too little, too late, I thought. Josephine knew how to take care of
visitors. She'd serve food and drinks with one hand while taking her guests'
coats with the other. In a situation like this, with a young woman whose
murdered husband lay in a casket below us, Josephine would have attempted to
carry the widow to the couch while pouring her drink.

Although it didn't take Janice long to compose herself, the
mood for technical talk had passed.

"I'm sorry," she said, dabbing at her eyes,
"I guess it's just starting to hit me that Eric is gone."

Jim continued to sit close to her, giving her alternating
drinks of wine and water. Ever the altar boy, I thought.

 
Connie and Leder
and I took seats in the living room across from Jim and Janice and talked about
friends we had in common on the West Coast. Janice had seen the flower
arrangement from some of our California dinner group.

"I'm sure you were responsible for that Gloria,"
she said. "Thank you. I never would have thought of calling them."

"I talk to Elaine Cody regularly," I said,
"and it was no trouble for us to contact people. Everyone was truly sorry
for your loss."

"Thank you," she said, in a soft voice, a great
contrast to her usual sharp tones. Janice was showing us a whole new side of
herself, subdued and vulnerable. With no apparent thought about the position of
her legs or whether a piece of lint had landed on her jacket, she sat on the
couch and unceremoniously pulled tissues from the box Jim had found for her.

Connie seemed mellow also, asking about various memories I
had of the old Revere. We'd all been, separately, to the big one-hundredth
birthday celebration held on the beach in July. Revere Beach was the first
public beach in the United States and even though the two miles of amusements
were gone, the three-mile stretch of sandy beach remained. The city went all
out for the anniversary, with games and music, and a fireworks spectacular by
the same group that produced the Boston Pops Fourth of July concert every year
on the Esplanade in Boston.

"Four of my Saint Aidan's boys won second prize in the
sand castle competition," Jim said. "I helped them build a scale
model of the gas gun, one inch to one foot. It was spectacular. Even had little
buttons for control panel lights."

"Did you get any good data from it?" Connie asked,
with the widest grin her tiny mouth could handle. "Maybe we can use
it."

"Here we go again," Janice said, and we all fell
silent for a moment.

We got back to non-lab talk and made a plan to go to Kelly's
Roast Beef, at the Point of Pines end of the Boulevard and have a picnic on the
beach before it got too cold. Unless one of us is in jail, I thought.

After about a half hour, we heard a knock on the door. I
thought it might be Rose who I knew would still be in the building. I was half
right. I opened the door to Rose and Matt.

I hoped my face showed only a third of the surprise and
pleasure I felt. Matt was wearing a different suit, a darker blue, newly
pressed. He looked newly shaven, too, and had as comfortable an expression as
if his presence were expected.

Rose spoke up to set everything straight.

"Matt came just as we were closing up," she said.
"He saw the lights and all the cars and thought we might still be here. He
was right." At this last phrase, she swept her arms across the room to
encompass the party, and looked as if she might take a bow.

Matt greeted everyone and went over to Janice. He knows how
to treat a victim, I thought.

Rose took over as hostess, refilling glasses and serving
Matt sparkling cider at his request. I guessed he considered himself on duty
although I had no reason to believe he drank otherwise.

My first apartment party didn't last much longer, ending
with our making plans for getting to Saint Anthony's for Eric's funeral service
the next morning.

Leder, Connie, Janice, and Jim left at the same time. I
heard Jim offer to drive Janice home, but she said she was fine. Rose reminded
her that a limousine would pick her up in the morning. I may have imagined it,
but I thought I heard Connie utter a soft but firm "no thank you" to
Leder.

Matt had stayed behind and Rose was talking to me with her
face, her dark eyes darting from me to Matt to the door. I understood her as
only friends do, and talked back. The gist of the eye-to-eye conversation was
Rose's noting how Matt was still here and wanted to be alone with me, and my
answering, no that's not it and please don't go.

Rose ignored my unspoken but clear request, and excused
herself.

"Well, I have a busy morning," she said. "And
Frank isn't feeling that well, so I'll be going."