The Hydrogen Murder (22 page)

"I'm ready to hear about the hint," Rose said when
we'd finished our sandwiches. "The Matt Gennaro hint of ... what was it?
But only if you want to tell me."

I did want to tell her, my forever friend, what I was
feeling. If I were going to make a fool of myself in front of anyone, I wanted
it to be Rose. I told her about Matt's parting comment, and asked her what she
thought I should do about Peter. I felt like a fourteen year-old on her break
from making cotton candy.

"I'm not sure whether anything is possible with
Matt," I told her. "But after last night I'm sure of two
things."

"Let's have your list," Rose said, in her usual
way of making fun of my constant need for mentally organizing and counting
everything.

"One, I'd like to see Matt socially, and two, I'll
never feel anything for Peter beyond friendship."

"Clear enough. You have no obligation to Peter,"
she said, picking at the straw in her large iced tea. "But I think you
need to be more direct with him."

"Instead of sarcastic?"

"Well, I know sarcasm is more fun, but you're not
getting through to Peter. You know how hard he's trying when he starts
including science in his lesson plans."

"You're right. And since there's nothing I can do about
the Matt thing until this investigation is over, I should be working to help
solve the case as quickly as possible."

~~~~

Rose drove us to the mortuary and made a pretense of having
to make a stop at her office.

"I'm not afraid to go up alone," I said.

"I am," she said. "I'll feel better seeing
you arrive home with no surprises today."

Rose came upstairs with me and stayed around for a while,
straightening the area around my bed. Without a doubt, it was less depressing
to have help and companionship clearing up the mess.

As we worked, I pictured the chief Bensen murder suspects in
my apartment, one at a time. Leder picking through my nightgowns and pantyhose
with lecherous fingers. Connie in her career-minded business suit methodically
searching the files next to my computer. Janice in a silk pants suit looking
through my clothes, disgusted with the contents of my wardrobe. Jim making the
sign of the cross as he tipped over my glide rocker. Andrea checking to see if
I had any superheroes among my knick-knacks while she rifled through my desk.

None of the images rang true, but I didn't want to return to
the random victim theory of my burglary either.

~~~~

As soon as Rose left, I put on a CD of the Three Tenors and
went back to my original case notes, with its star system of guilt. I'd given
Leder four stars as my first choice, and his phone call to me supported my
thinking. But Janice, who wasn't even on my original list, was acting the most
strange. Why would she care who sent flowers to her dead husband unless she
were unbalanced in some way? When it came right down to it, I still envisioned
murderers as unbalanced. I wished I knew more about the psychology of killers
and wondered how soon I'd be able to ask Matt to teach me about homicidal
maniacs.

Most of Jim's behavior for the last week was normal for Jim.
Taking care of everyone's needs, praying the rosary in public. But his late
night appearance at the prie dieu in front of Eric's body seemed to me
overdoing it. If it weren't for his outburst on the way to the funeral, I would
have chalked it up to genuine concern for the salvation of Eric's soul. But
after seeing the intensity of his anger at what he perceived as immoral
behavior on Eric's part, I wondered if his religious zeal could lead him to
murder.

I reviewed my notes on Connie and Andrea and couldn't come
up with anything new. Their behavior was at opposite ends of the emotional
spectrum, telling me nothing about their guilt or innocence. The fact that the
other "other woman" Annie had sent flowers didn't amount to any solid
information either.

Once again I had no idea whether to tell all this to Matt.
Andrea's eavesdropping on Leder's phone conversation with his wife. Jim's extra
prayers and self-righteous evangelism. Annie's flowers. Were these bits of
meaningless gossip or important clues in an investigation? I was beginning to
feel like a den mother trying to keep track of the movements of all her little
brownies.

Worse than that, I realized that my decisions about how to
handle the information were governed by my fear of Matt's disapproval. I
couldn't bear his thinking of me as either an inept investigator or a meddling
civilian who trafficked in rumors. It was a bad sign, I told myself, when I was
attracted to a man who inspired the same feelings in me that Josephine had.

After a while, I put the people side of the case away and
found my notes on the elusive printout characters. I'd drawn lines to make
three columns on a piece of paper and put each character at the top of a
column. Under each character I'd written out all the common physical meanings
for it in standard textbooks. I even included the muon, an elementary particle
represented by the Greek letter mu, and found in cosmic radiation, although I
couldn't think of the slightest reason for the muon to be involved in Eric's
hydrogen research.

Separately the characters had little significance to the
computer program, and together they had even less. I decided to leave that
exercise for a while and had just booted up my computer to balance my checkbook
and pay some bills, when the phone rang. The conversation I'd been putting off
all day.

"I saw your so-called unmarked police guard outside the
building on my way to mass this morning," Peter said. "If I could
tell it was a cop car, I'm sure a burglar could tell."

In the last couple of days I'd been irritated with Peter's
use of the word "cop," spitting it out in his references to Matt
especially. It seemed a deliberate deviation from his usual formal, elegant
speech patterns.

"Maybe that's the idea," I said. "Scare away
the bad guys."

"Gloria, you're being very difficult."

No sarcasm, I remembered, and softened my voice.

 
"You're
right, Peter. And in all the excitement, I never thanked you for the evening.
The tea roses still look good. I have them in a mug on my table."

"Excitement is not the word I'd use. Danger is more
like it."

I held the phone receiver away from my ear and looked at it,
as if to ask what it wanted of me.

"Well, it's over," I said, "and I'm sorry you
had to be part of it."

"I'd really like to have a talk, Gloria. I haven't seen
you alone for more than ten minutes."

"We can have a talk now," I said, departing from
my usual tendency to keep phone conversations brief. I've always needed visual
input to fully understand what's being said to me. I liked to use the phone to
set up meetings, not to hold meetings.

"I'd like to see you," he said. "Just the two
of us, for a conversation."

Peter sounded frustrated and I wrestled with how cooperative
I should be. Besides that, I didn't know for sure if Rose was right. If Peter
had no romantic intentions, I certainly didn't want to put ideas into his head.
Maybe he's going to tell me he just wants to be friends, I thought. I decided
he deserved one more face-to-face encounter.

"I'm free this evening," I said.

"I'll pick up something and see you at six."

I knew that when Peter picked up something, it would be
better than anything I could have prepared, even if I spent all day cooking. My
guess was that he'd make a quick trip to Boston's North End and carry out
gourmet pesto sauce.

On my second attempt to work at my computer, I heard a soft
knock. I stopped in my tracks a few feet from the door and felt a brief,
unfamiliar shiver of fear. It's the middle of a sunny afternoon and I'm in my
own living room I told myself, let's not overreact. Let's also ask Frank to
have a peephole installed, I added.

Another knock, and then, "It's Matt Gennaro."

Until I saw his face, I thought nothing could have made the
day sunnier than a visit from Matt. He was in his business blues again and his
shoulders sagged as if they were bearing the weight of the bad news he'd come
to give me.

"Ralph Leder's been murdered," he said.

CHAPTER
21

I sat down on my rocker without offering Matt a drink, or a
chair for that matter. He came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder, but
I hardly felt it. I was facing my bookcases, which seemed to be toppling over,
spilling books and photographs onto my carpet. I blinked several times until
they came into focus back in their rightful places, like an exercise in reverse
entropy.

"I wanted to tell you before it hits the news,"
Matt said, waving his arm in the direction of my television set.

Leder had remained high on my list as the one most likely to
be Eric's murderer, especially once Connie confessed to the cover-up. In my
mind, it added up. He'd masterminded the data fraud and murdered Eric when Eric
threatened to expose it. Hadn't he called to warn me not to pursue that line of
investigation? He also owned a gun and his alibi was weak since his wife could
have been knocked out with sleeping pills the night of Eric's murder. Not only
that, he was sexist, and I didn't like him.

I wouldn't have been surprised to read about Leder's arrest
in the Boston newspapers, but hearing about his murder threw me off balance.
The voice of Luciano Pavarotti bounced around in my living room and in my
brain, the last aria on the disk,
Vincero
,
I shall win.

"Are you all right?"

Matt had been standing over me while I sat with my hand
pressed against my forehead. As he handed me a glass of water, apparently from
my kitchen, I wondered how long I'd been lost in my thoughts.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Thank you for telling
me this way."

Not one to be outdone in service in my own apartment, I made
coffee. But I was almost completely out of solid food except for three
chocolates, and felt embarrassed as I told this to Matt. He patted his narrow
leather belt and said he'd had a late lunch.

Matt took a seat on the couch. He leaned over the coffee
table in front of him, put down his mug and picked up my notes on the printout
characters. He rolled the page into a long tube and tapped his leg with it.

"I'm not sure what we're dealing with here. It could be
a psycho out for every physicist in Suffolk County for all we know. I'd like
you to forget about this case."

"I'm really over the shock," I said. "Was
Leder's the same kind of murder as Eric's?"

"Leder was shot, apparently with the same gun, but I
haven't had the final word on that."

"Did you have your meeting?"

"No, this new development got in the way. I postponed
it to tomorrow morning. But I don't want you there. You're off the case."

"I think I'm close to figuring out the code," I
said, hoping my lying nose wasn't stretched out past the coffee table.
"How about one more day? Let me come to the meeting in the morning and
give me until six o'clock tomorrow evening."

Matt stood up and shook his head. He held my notes in both
hands, as if he were ready to tear them to shreds. "I guess I'm not being
clear," he said. "You're off the case."

I tried to recall every assertiveness tip I'd ever read
about and made a pronouncement that might have startled Matt. It certainly
startled me.

"You can't just pull me off," I said. "I have
a contract."

The CD had ended, and my voice boomed out into the silence.
He sat down again, leading me to believe I'd scored a victory. Maybe there's
something to this 1990's self-confidence, I thought.

His voice was soft and had none of the scolding tone I
remembered from the stormy visit he'd paid me after I'd entertained murder
suspects. Double murder suspects, I reminded myself.

"I'm worried about you," he said. "I don't
want anything to happen to you."

"I appreciate that. But I'm not going to sue the
department or anything."

Matt took a deep breath. I felt my stomach turn over as he
looked directly at me, his eyes close to pleading.

"Do you really think that's what I'm worried
about," he said.

I thought my heart was banging out loud, until I realized it
was a knock at my door. I looked at my watch. Six o'clock.

~~~~

Peter was at my door, and Matt was on my couch, and except
for the two murders hanging in the air, I felt like the centerpiece of a French
comedy.

"Come in, Peter. You know Sergeant Matt Gennaro."

I took a brown paper grocery sack from Peter's hand and
carried it to the kitchen, thus avoiding his gaze. He walked over and shook
Matt's hand.

"Matt has terrible news," I said. "Doctor
Leder, who was Eric Bensen's mentor, was found murdered also."

"I hope this is the end of it, Gloria," Peter
said, shaking his head. "This is serious business. It's a job for the
police, not for amateurs."