The Nitrogen Murder (18 page)
Read The Nitrogen Murder Online
Authors: Camille Minichino
Tags: #California, #Lamerino; Gloria (Fictitious Character), #Missing Persons, #Security Classification (Government Documents), #Weddings, #Women Physicists, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Women Sleuths, #Reference
“Now, that I’m sure of,” Evan said. “It had obviously just happened, and I don’t forget people who come in bleeding right as I’m leaving.”
Dana’s look must have been intense, because Evan hurried to explain. “Just kidding, just kidding. I was happy I was around to take care of him. It only took a few minutes, anyway. In fact, I left right after that, so I wasn’t here when Tanisha … you know.” Evan rapped his knuckles on his forehead, ruffling unruly dark waves. “Geesh, Dana, you must think I’m some kind of jerk.”
But Dana wasn’t judging Evan’s professional demeanor; she was thinking hard about last Friday. She’d let herself and Tanisha into Elaine’s house around noon, during a lull, to drop off the fresh flowers for the guests while Elaine was at work. Dana had insisted. Elaine was always doing nice things for her. Finding her books to help her study for the MCATs; sending everything from casseroles to furniture while Dana was moving; even paying to take care of Dana’s Jeep when she scraped it, so Dana wouldn’t have to tell her dad.
Dana remembered seeing the beautiful hors d’oeuvres tray. She’d slapped Tanisha’s hand playfully when her partner tried to steal a shrimp wrap.
Dana took a deep breath.
“Evan, are you sure—”
Evan had already opened the large register and turned it
toward her. He’d flipped back to last Friday evening’s log-ins. Dana saw her father’s name above Evan’s finger and read across to the time: 4:54 P.M.
toward her. He’d flipped back to last Friday evening’s log-ins. Dana saw her father’s name above Evan’s finger and read across to the time: 4:54 P.M.
Friday’s timeline ran through Dana’s head. She and Tanisha had arrived here at the trauma center, where Tanisha was shot, about 6:15. So her father had been here an hour before. She ran the timeline farther back. The call had come to pick up Patel at 5:45. Say it had taken Golden State Hospital about forty-five minutes to bandage him up and make the call. That meant Patel and her father were both wounded around five o’clock.
So what?
Dana shook her head and blew out a loud breath.
“Are you okay, Dana? Why is this so important?”
“Thanks, Evan. I’m fine.”
Evan took her hand and squeezed it. He gave her a smile that would have knocked her out in different circumstances. “Let’s have coffee sometime, huh?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Dana turned toward the door. Cute as Evan was, her flirting mood had passed. She needed some air. She couldn’t figure why her dad would lie about when and how he’d slashed his hand. Or why he wouldn’t have said something about being at the trauma center right before Tanisha’s murder.
And now he was missing. Surely he couldn’t be involved in Tanisha’s death, or Patel’s.
In the next minute, Tom came out to her. “Hey, couldn’t find you. They’re already finished with Senora Santiago. That’s a surprise.”
At this point, nothing would surprise Dana.
A
ccording to his secretary, the message that interrupted Phil’s presentation sent him to another meeting “in an hour.” That would put the urgent meeting at about three o’clock on Monday afternoon. But where was the rendezvous? And with whom?
ccording to his secretary, the message that interrupted Phil’s presentation sent him to another meeting “in an hour.” That would put the urgent meeting at about three o’clock on Monday afternoon. But where was the rendezvous? And with whom?
We bent over the local map spread on Elaine’s farmer’s-style kitchen table, like treasure hunters looking for a chest of gold, or human genome researchers seeking clues to genetic markers.
What would be a likely spot? we asked. I put the stylus of a compass—neither Elaine nor Matt was surprised that I’d have one with me—on Dorman Industries. I was ready to swing it around in a circle of radius one hour.
“Do you think we can assume it would take an hour for Phil to get there?” Elaine asked. “Or that the other man needed an hour? Or each needed half an hour?” She threw up her hands. “This is too much like the word problems I always hated in freshman algebra. ‘If it takes three men four days to chop down six trees …’”
“Then those men aren’t working very hard,” Matt said.
Elaine laughed, but just barely. “It’s hopeless,” she said, and I saw the same look in her eyes.
We abandoned the map project and put together a list of questions that would have simple answers. If only we had the legal right, or the nerve, to ask them.
“We could just ask Robin what she was doing with one of Lokesh Patel’s IDs,” Dana said. “And why she changed my incident report to Valley Med before she printed it.”
We turned to Matt, the only one with any authority or training to evaluate the situation. I knew he was skittish about investigating in any formal way He’d want to put together a reasonable presentation for Russell.
Matt’s look said it wasn’t good news. “Russell’s already claimed no interest in Robin,” he said. “First, Dana gave the uniforms at the scene a stack of IDs with Patel’s photo and different names. One of them might have been accidentally—or deliberately, for all he knows—held back. The card could have fallen from Dana’s pocket onto Robin’s closet floor. They are roommates, after all.”
Strike one.
“Same with number two. We have only Dana’s word that Robin changed the report. Dana was clearly stressed and could have marked it incorrectly or, in a fit of honesty, marked it correctly—indicating that drugs
had
been involved in the incident.”
had
been involved in the incident.”
Elaine bristled. “Are you saying—”
Matt held up his hand. “I’m only saying what the Berkeley police have said and might well be investigating. Let’s say Dana files a formal complaint against Robin, accusing her of fraud with respect to the report. So we have to ask, what will we gain by doing that, or by approaching Robin without real proof that she had something to do with the deaths?”
“What about confronting Julia with the fake invoices?” I asked, bracing for a third strike.
“Same thing, really,” Matt said. “There are any number of explanations for those sheets of paper. Besides, they’re obviously copies. We have nothing to take to Julia or the Berkeley PD at the moment. They’re never going to issue a search warrant on what we have. We’d essentially have to catch her in the act. Whatever that might be.” He gave an apologetic shrug, the bearer of bad news.
“So, we have all this evidence, and all these crimes, but not enough of anything, no way to connect them,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Then there’s my dad,” Dana said in a weak voice. I figured it cost her a lot to throw her father into the mix of suspicious characters. “He knew about Patel’s briefcase. He
had
the briefcase. And he lied about his hand.”
had
the briefcase. And he lied about his hand.”
“His hand?” Elaine asked, her voice exasperated, as if this were the last straw. She couldn’t even count on her fiancé to have a legitimately slashed hand.
Dana briefed us on a conversation she’d had with an intern at the trauma center.
“Didn’t you actually see Phil cut himself while working on the shrimp?” I asked Elaine. “You mentioned all the blood—I assumed you were there and drove him to the ER.”
Elaine looked sheepish. “No, no. I was at work when it … something … happened. I just repeated what Phil told me.”
I understood. Elaine seemed to have adopted the same storytelling technique Rose had always used. Even when Rose related an event from the days of the nineteenth century about one of the more famous Revere natives, Horatio Alger, she spoke as if she’d been present at his speeches. I’d always thought she’d have made an excellent history teacher. More recently, her description of the blown-up hearse had all the elements and drama of an eyewitness report.
“So, Phil told you he slashed his hand here, in the morning.” I turned from Elaine to Dana. “But the intern told you he arrived, bleeding, at the trauma center, just before five o’clock?”
Dana and Elaine nodded. “I believe Evan,” Dana said. “He showed me the log.” She turned away from us, as if embarrassed for her father’s lie.
“Okay,” Matt said. “We can certainly ask Phil to explain some of this, if …”
If we can find him
hung in the air.
hung in the air.
I wondered if there was a sport that allowed four strikes.
When the phone call came from Rose, we were at an impasse. That might have been the reason I didn’t hesitate to take the call when her number appeared in my cell phone display. It had taken us a moment to determine whose cell phone was ringing, since four of them were on the table, at different angles and positions, like a cross-sectional snapshot of the positions of particles in a plasma.
“Hi, Gloria. Mail call!” Not only was Rose’s voice cheery, it was innocent. I’d told her nothing of the crime wave sweeping through our little corner of the Bay Area.
“Anything interesting?” I asked. Maybe Matt and I had miraculously won the Massachusetts lottery. Doubly miraculous, because we never played the games, and also, I doubted the winners were notified by mail.
“An interesting package came,” Rose said. “Besides the usual, like a note from your cousin Mary Ann. Doesn’t she know you’re away?”
“I told her. She forgets.”
Mary Ann was old-school in many ways, besides her age. She lived in Worcester, only about forty-five miles from Revere—many Californians commuted that far to work every day—but she still wrote me weekly letters rather than call. When I phoned her, she’d end the call within three minutes.
“Before they cut us off,” she’d say. I often wondered if she contacted the operator every time to put the call through for her, as in the old days.
Number
,
please,
I remembered hearing on our old party line. I couldn’t imagine Mary Ann adjusting to my new cell phone, with directions for making a call on page twenty-four of the instruction manual.
Number
,
please,
I remembered hearing on our old party line. I couldn’t imagine Mary Ann adjusting to my new cell phone, with directions for making a call on page twenty-four of the instruction manual.
“What about the package, Rose?” I asked.
“It has an Oakland postmark. I can’t read the date, but I thought you might like to know about it. Maybe someone sent you a present and you should thank them while you’re there.”
Rose’s impeccable logic. I imagined her on her white wicker porch, where her own mail was deposited every day by the same man who’d brought it for decades.
“Is there a return address?”
“None. It’s just your name, not Matt’s, and it’s handwritten. Also, your name is spelled wrong. They have it”Lamerina.“An
a
instead of an o on the end. It’s one of those brown padded envelopes. I thought it might be a videotape, but it’s bigger than that. And it’s flatter than an audiotape but thicker than a compact disc.”
a
instead of an o on the end. It’s one of those brown padded envelopes. I thought it might be a videotape, but it’s bigger than that. And it’s flatter than an audiotape but thicker than a compact disc.”
I wished I could put Rose on speakerphone. It didn’t seem fair that my companions in Elaine’s kitchen were not privy to a comedy routine that could bring smiles to their pensive, straight faces. Or maybe, except for Matt, they wouldn’t realize how amusing it was to hear my near-Luddite friend use electronic devices as measuring criteria, rather than her bread box, knitting needles, and garden tools.
“Rose, please open the package.”
While Rose undid whatever held the package together, I covered the mike and briefed Matt, Elaine, and Dana on the call, mostly to explain my recess from the work at hand, and noted relatively uninterested nods all around.
“Oh, it’s one of those new memo things.” Rose sounded disappointed, as if she might have been hoping for a film with mature language and content. “Robert and John have them, and now even William wants one. Have you seen the new cell phone holders, by the way, Gloria? Some of them are obscene. William’s friend—a girl, but let’s not go there—has one that’s a miniature black leather thong, the underwear kind, with rhinestones. William wants one for his birthday. I don’t think so!”
“If it weren’t for you, Rose, I’d be so out of touch with pop culture. But tell me, is there a tape recorder in the package, after all?”
“No, it’s one of those devices that looks like a mini-mini laptop computer and you don’t even use a pencil.”
“A PDA?” Someone from Oakland sent me a personal digital assistant? Though I was generally on the other end of the scale from Ludditism, I’d resisted the technology that squeezed an appointment calendar, address book, e-mail, music, and games into the palm of my hand. I thought my life was not that busy and my eyesight not good enough to read a three-inch-square screen comfortably.
I heard a faint snapping of Rose’s fingers. Or maybe I imagined it, from knowing her so well. “A PDA. Right.”
“Is there any note of explanation? An invoice or a packing slip?”
I covered the phone and addressed Matt, sitting next to me. “Did you by any chance order a PDA?”
Matt frowned and shook his head, as I expected. I knew it was unlikely.
I was about to tell Rose to set the PDA aside and I’d deal with it when I got home. Then it came to me.
“Rose, can you turn it on for me and see whose it is?”
“You’re kidding.”
“You’re smarter than it is, Rose. I’m sure there’s a power button in an obvious place.”
I heard her sigh. “A power button? Okay. I’m pushing this red button at the top right. Oops!” I envisioned Rose jumping back as the screen came to life in her hand. “It worked. The screen says”This device is owned by‘then there’s a space. Hmmm.”
I tapped on the table. “Rose!”
“Gloria, it’s not often I have the upper hand, you know.”
She was right. Also, I reminded myself that Rose had no idea
what we’d been going through since Friday evening. For all she knew, we’d been wining and dining at the tourist sites of San Francisco and overdosing on wedding talk, all of which Rose would enjoy immensely
what we’d been going through since Friday evening. For all she knew, we’d been wining and dining at the tourist sites of San Francisco and overdosing on wedding talk, all of which Rose would enjoy immensely
“I don’t mean to be impatient, Rose. It’s an important piece of”—I looked at Elaine and Dana, both with heavy expressions—“a business matter for Elaine’s fiance.”
“Oh, okay. The owner’s a Lokesh Patel. Must be Indian. I think half our Indian clients are named Patel, and Frank has to be careful to put the red dot … sorry, this time I wasn’t trying to tease you.”
I gasped at the sound of Patel’s name, the first time Rose said it. Elaine placed a cup of coffee in front of me. She held out a plate of biscotti and raised her eyebrows.
Want one
?
Want one
?
I shook my head. I was reeling from the information from Rose, and from the idea that Patel’s PDA had been mailed to me. By whom and why had yet to be processed.
“Lokesh Patel,” I said out loud. Elaine pushed her chair back from the table; Matt and Dana leaned in.
“The address is … are you ready?” Rose asked.
I pulled the pad of paper I’d been doodling on closer to me and picked up my pen. “Very ready.”
“127 Woodland Road, Berkeley then there’s a telephone number—510-555-9712.”
“Anything else?” I asked Rose, as if I hadn’t heard enough.
“There’s a note on the bottom of the screen. It says, ‘If found, please contact me.’”
Too late,
I thought.
I thought.
“Something’s going on there, Gloria, isn’t it?”
“You might say that.”
“You’re not just rehearsing your walk down the Rose Garden aisle in pretty shoes.”
“No, we’re not.”
A pause, while Rose plotted, I was sure. “Robert is good with these things. If I get him to dig out whatever’s in here, do you promise to tell me why it’s so important?”
“I do,” I said, as if I were a bride.
“Why would Patel send his PDA to you?” Elaine asked. “You didn’t know him, did you?”
I put my hand to my chest. “Not at all.” I felt an unwarranted defensiveness, as if Elaine were accusing me of withholding a connection that might help exonerate Phil.
I’d determined from Rose that although Lamerino was spelled incorrectly (what else was new?) my Fernwood Avenue address was correct; there was no mention of Matt; and the envelope had no other distinguishing features, such as scent or unusual markings.
“Someone who knew we were away must have sent it to our address for safekeeping, so to speak, figuring it wouldn’t be opened for a couple of weeks.” Matt smiled. “They weren’t counting on Rose.”
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