The Oxygen Murder (12 page)

“It’s fun, but let’s not make a habit of it,” I said.

Rose laughed, clearly taking my comment as more of a joke than I meant.

The Ellis Island Immigration Hall put us both in a contemplative mood. We made our way to the dormitories that our grandparents may have slept in. Bunk beds—thin, lumpy, mattresses, more exactly—were stacked three high, two such units to a room, in a space that was barely ten by ten.

“And we think our hotel rooms are small,” Rose said.

“I feel extremely petty complaining about the size of our closet when I see this,” I said.

By unspoken agreement we stood there in silence. I knew Rose was praying, and I thought I was, too.

But my mind had been wandering away from Ellis Island, to a precinct in Manhattan, where Matt was pleading my case to Buzz, if that’s what he was doing. I wondered what favors he’d owe as a result of my indiscretion. More indicative of my lack of willpower was that I was dying to know what Matt had learned. He’d mentioned some “skinny” he could share on Amber Keenan’s case. I didn’t dare ask him while he still held my freedom in his hands.

Anyway, I was off the case.

“Gloria, did you hear me?” Rose asked. “I’m suggesting we get in line for the next ferry back, since it will take a while to catch a cab uptown once we’re in Manhattan.”

“Good idea. Oh, by the way, Rose, do you know if Karla does any business in New York?” Off the case, but not off the curiosity.

“She certainly does. It’s nice to be able to claim a business expense when you’re visiting parents, right? Not that the IRS should worry,” Rose said, giving me a poke in the arm.

“She lived here in New York through college, didn’t she?”

“Yes, all her life until she graduated. She was on vacation in Boston one spring and drove out to Revere to see her cousin Edwina. You’ve met Edwina. She’s the one with the charming pixie haircut. Nice young woman. Well, Edwina’s brother was a friend of my Robert’s, so they were introduced, and the rest is history.”

The history was that Karla Sasso relocated to Revere, went to Northeastern Law School in Boston, and married Robert, who was now in partnership with his father, running the Galigani Mortuary. Their teenaged son, William, was Rose’s only grandchild. Rose always gave her children equal time, so I was surprised she didn’t launch into the history of her other two children: John, a journalist for the Revere newspaper, and Mary Catherine, MC, my godchild, an ex–research chemist and now a high school teacher.

“I hope we’ll be able to see Karla this week. Unless you think she’ll have too much business?” I said.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I talked to Karla this morning. I wanted her to know we’d still be here, so we can all hook up at her parents’ for dinner some night. You and Matt are invited, too, of course. She mentioned having to follow up on some work with a private investigator.”

I gulped. “A private investigator here in Manhattan?”

“Yes, and I wish she’d forget work for a while and relax. She’s seemed so stressed lately.”

I mulled this over, but before I could pry further, Rose turned her back to me. “Let’s not miss that view, Gloria. Isn’t that the perfect skyline?”

Looking over Rose’s shoulder, I had to agree. The beauty and the density of the buildings were overwhelming. Rose snapped a few photos, but I couldn’t bear to limit the view to a tiny four-inch-square screen, and my camera stayed in my purse.

I wondered in which building
Fielding
lived, and why Karla was stressed.
It’s nothing,
I told myself.
What lawyer isn’t stressed?

After nearly a half hour of stepping on and off the curb at Battery Park, taking turns sticking our arms out, bouncing up and down to keep warm, Rose and I garnered a cab to our hotel. We settled in for a tinny-sounding “Let It Snow” blaring from the back-door speakers. Once we were warm, Rose made another pitch for a wedding reception for Matt and me, just a simple party at her home, to celebrate our marriage.

“A party for the new Mr. and Mrs. . . . Oops,” she said. “I mean, the Lamerino-Gennaro union. Really, Gloria, I don’t see why you didn’t change your name. Aren’t you happy to be married to Matt?”

A straw-man fallacy if I ever heard one.

Then, as if to make up for her biography of Karla and Robert on the ferry, Rose related anecdotes about John (he took his girlfriend, Suzanne, to a wedding last weekend, and that could be a sign he’s thinking of getting married himself ) and Mary Catherine (she finally got rid of the couch I left in the apartment above the mortuary and bought her own).

I took in enough of the stories to pass a quiz, but in the back of my mind was Amber Keenan and her short life. I knew Matt was out there bailing me out with the NYPD, and I’d promised not to meddle again, but how was I supposed to pretend Amber’s terrible death hadn’t happened, right in front of me?

In the hotel elevator, Rose pushed the button for the sixth floor.

“ ’Bye until dinner, Gloria. Thanks for a wonderful, wonderful afternoon.”

All I’d done was show up. Rose had suggested the trip to Ellis Island, bought the tickets, and narrated the tour. If she weren’t so easy to please, we wouldn’t have been friends this long.

I wondered if Rose noticed that I hadn’t pushed the button for my floor, three above hers. Now alone in the elevator, I pushed
L
for lobby. I didn’t know if Matt was in our room, and I didn’t want to know, until I’d done one more errand, even though it was already past daylight.

On the street again, I rewrapped my old-fashioned, plain wool scarf around my neck and headed north to Lori’s building on West Forty-eighth. Matt had told me Lori was going to spend another night with
her friend in Queens. I had no intention of going up in her elevator, but I wanted another look around the outside area, without Lori, and without a uniformed sentry.

Rounding the corner from Eighth Avenue, I could see that there was no cop outside. I walked up the street, nearly as deserted as on Sunday morning since there were few theatrical performances on Monday evenings. I surveyed the building. When I got to the alley, I slipped in.

And someone else slipped out, knocking me into the brick wall. No apology, no
’scuse me.
Whoever had been in the alley didn’t want to share it with me. I caught only a shadowy glimpse of the person, the impression of someone tall and not too heavy. He or she had been close enough to leave a scent. Not the odor you’d expect from an alley dweller, however, but a fruity perfume. A woman? If so, a lady who worked out. I rubbed my shoulder where it had been smashed against the wall.

No time for nursing wounds, however. I had work to do.

I fished around in my purse for the small flashlight I always carried and tracked the edge of the alley closest to the building. Where the police might have missed a centimeter or two, I told myself. In my daydreams I saw a piece of incontrovertible evidence pointing toward the killer. A piece of his jacket with his name stenciled at the neck, the way we used to identify our lab coats. A gun or a knife (so what if Amber wasn’t shot or stabbed) with fingerprints matching a known killer of young women. A date book or a cell phone with fingerprints the same as above.

That was my imagination. In reality, all I saw was several bits of bright tinfoil, in red, gold, and green. From wrapping paper?
This is dumb,
I told myself, stuffing one tiny red scrap into an outside pocket of my purse. Maybe just not to leave empty-handed.

Or maybe I needed something to fill that empty spot where Karla’s letter had been.

Matt and I sat in our tiny hotel room, in what had become our conversation positions: Matt partly on the windowsill, partly on the heating and cooling unit, me on the bed. It was dark, and I could see into an office across West Forty-fifth Street where what appeared to be a
holiday party was going on. Trays of food, bottles of wine or champagne, and everyone wearing red Santa hats. I had a flash of nostalgia as I remembered parties from my lab life around this time of year, when the chemists from the next building would whip up a nameless pink brew with a “secret” ingredient that we suspected was denatured alcohol. Old Rad (for radiation) Lab, it was called, and
drink at your own risk
was the operative greeting.

“We’re all set,” Matt said, magnanimously including himself in the problem that needed to be settled in the first place.

I took a breath that seemed to start at my feet and flow smoothly through my body. It was as if I’d been holding my breath for the whole day, and now pure oxygen was free to move around inside me. My stomach muscles, sore from tension, relaxed.
This must be what it feels like to hear a not-guilty verdict,
I thought.
Even though I am guilty.

“Do I want to know what you had to go through to make this go away?” I asked Matt.

“You do, but you’re not going to.” Matt seemed calm, so I guessed he hadn’t had to sell his soul, at least.

“I understand.” I figured Matt didn’t quite trust me not to do something like this again if I thought there was a simple procedure to get me off the hook.

I had so many questions for him. Was the Tina Miller Agency going to get its letter back? Matt had taken it from me in the bookstore café. I wished I’d made a photocopy, although I realized that went against my firm purpose of amending my life. I was dying to know if the police would tell Tina it had been stolen, and who stole it.

Chasing all my unanswered questions for Matt around my brain, I wasn’t ready for one from him.

“Would you be willing to talk to Buzz about ozone?” Matt asked.

I blinked hard and stared at him. “Ozone? Me? I . . . talk to Buzz? Your cop friend?” I couldn’t have stuttered more if my lips had been swollen from some bad calamari at Zio Giovanni’s.

Matt laughed and slapped his thigh. “I thought that would get you. Only because I know you, I’m taking that as a yes.”

After what I’d put him through, he deserved a “gotcha” moment. He’d not only kept me from a trip upstate to Sing Sing, he’d gotten me
a gig doing what I love to do: talk science to an audience who cared—or, at least, needed to know.

“How did you manage that?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, well, as I told you, I had some news about Amber’s case. A couple of things. First, it’s looking like Amber was involved in some kind of blackmailing scheme. Buzz might tell us more, but it’s kind of simple, really. Instead of reporting back to the PI agency with her photos or what-have-you, Amber turned around and blackmailed the people she caught.”

“Wouldn’t the agency get suspicious, unless they were in on it?”

“Not if she spread things out, I guess, and chose her victims wisely. It’s not clear yet how clean the agency is.”

I pictured Tina Miller behind her desk. She seemed no-nonsense, honestly working hard to make her business successful. So she ran a very clean agency, was my guess, but I didn’t want to dwell on that phase of the case.

Matt continued. “The second thing is that the uniforms found a letter when they searched Amber’s apartment that could have something to do with ozone. They need some help deciphering what Lori’s video is all about and what Amber may have learned. They’re not about to ask Lori because . . . well, she’s not completely ruled out, since it was her loft and all.” He waved his hand. “Not that’s she’s a viable suspect.”

“No, no, but she might not know all the technical details of what Amber could have uncovered.”

“Exactly. So I told Buzz about the work you do for the Revere PD, and he thought it was a good idea to talk to you.”

“Really? The NYPD?”

“You act as though it’s a promotion.”

“No, I—”

“Just because they’re about thirty-nine thousand times bigger?”

I leaned over and kissed him. “They don’t have you.”

The revelers in the office across the street were toasting each other. I thought I also saw a couple by the water cooler in an extra-long mistletoe embrace. I wished I’d brought mistletoe for our room, but it turned out we didn’t need it.

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