The Carbon Murder (18 page)

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Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths

BOOK: The Carbon Murder
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I moved through various angles, looking past the decorative
trim, catching the bushes, the tree near the curb, the edge of Mr. Dorlando’s lawn. Nothing threatening or even interesting.
I was about to turn away when a patch of moonlight seeped through a gap in the rain clouds and reflected off a piece of glass on the floor of the porch. Many pieces of glass. The lightbulb, in shreds on the porch.
Next to the largest piece was a rock.
I
jumped back from the door, as if the frosty surface of the lightbulb might defy entropy, gather itself together, and attack me. I told myself it wasn’t out of the question that an unruly adolescent had decided to terrorize Fernwood Avenue by throwing rocks at selected porch lights. I wasn’t about to test the theory, however; or do anything else that required leaving the house.
My second, more likely theory was that Wayne Gallen, upset by the PFA, had decided to intimidate Matt and me, perhaps to lurk in the darkness he’d created by smashing our porch light. It was possible that composing one note to MC had taken all the creative energy he had for the evening. This juvenile, mental scoffing at Wayne Gallen seemed to help make him less fearful to me, and got my pulse rate back to normal.
I stayed at the door a few minutes longer, uncomfortable with my stocking feet on the cold tile. I gave the already tight dead bolt an extra twist and listened for out-of-the-ordinary movement; I heard none and eventually put my shoes back on and went up to my office.
At my computer, I clicked on the Alex Simpson email MC had forwarded to me, and read carefully.
There’s good news and bad news. Our contact sees no problem delivering the package, but one unfortunate outcome—the bute that’s not bute—might bring trouble.
Was it as simple as Alex Simpson giving show horses a dose of bute before a competition? Illegal, according to Jake Powers, but was it an FDA matter? I made a note to ask Matt about the mission and jurisdiction of the FDA. Matt, who seemed very far away at the moment, but would soon be home and we’d work cases together as usual, for a long time. Wasn’t there a philosophy that said positive thinking brings about the reality?
I got out my case folder, now labeled MARTIN/FORMAN, for the two murdered Texans. I doodled around the star I’d drawn, the one that had led me to Lorna Frederick. Suppose the FDA, or whichever regulating body cared, got wind of a bute coalition, with Alex and Lorna working together, drugging show horses before competitions? They’d need a vet, at least to obtain the bute, if not to administer it, and Dr. Schofield was the one. What part they played in the research project, I didn’t know—a loose end I’d have to work on.
Nina would have taken MC’s class to get close to Alex, then might have come to Revere to track down Lorna. But was this scam worth the risk Alex and Lorna would be taking?
Maybe MC had a better idea.
“Not really,” she said when I got her on the phone. “That’s all I came up with, too.”
“Is Alex Simpson also an equestrian?”
“Not as far as I know, and I think I would. The guy doesn’t miss an opportunity to brag, if you know what I mean.”
“So his bute reference might be something entirely different.”
“It could be some shorthand for a completely unrelated compound.”
“Lorna gave us the impression that there isn’t a lot of money in equestrian sport, nothing worth killing people over. Is that your understanding?”
“Uh-huh. Jumpers—that’s what show jumping horses are called—can be very expensive, and some of the bigger competitions have pretty hefty prize money, but not in the league of racing horses, for example. I can ask Jake.”
“Is he there?”
MC laughed. “Smooth move, Aunt G. No, he’s not here. And if you want to know if we’re getting back together, I don’t know. We’re taking it slow.”
“If you ever want to talk …”
“I know. And maybe I will. Soon. Right now though, sleep is sounding really good. I’m glad I have a burglar alarm.”
I didn’t need the reminder of my vulnerable state. When Matt returned, I told myself, we would revisit the need for increased security in our house. Whether or not it had anything to do with Alfred Hitchcock, I knew I could not take a shower. I felt defenseless enough fully clothed. I pulled my white flannel robe over my knit pantsuit, already wrinkled from sitting around the hospital waiting room, and settled on the overstuffed chair in our bedroom.
The last time I looked at the clock it was three in the morning.
 
I woke at six, stiff from the chair/footstool combination that had served as a bed.
Psycho
or not, my need for a shower and a change of clothes won out. I carried my cell phone into the bathroom and got ready for the day.
I knew I should have called Jean last night, but it was very late when I got home. And now it was very early. But Jean was a morning person, and I couldn’t put it off any longer.
If I’m lucky,
I thought,
she’ll be jogging and I can leave a message on her answering machine.
I wasn’t lucky.
“What’s wrong?” Jean asked as soon as she heard my voice. A normal reaction, I told myself, when a call comes before seven on a Saturday morning.
“Matt had a slight reaction to his medication. They kept him at the hospital overnight for observation. Nothing serious; I just thought you’d want to know.” I had no idea why I downplayed Matt’s condition. Certainly not because I was at ease with it.
“I’ll be there by noon,” she said, and hung up.
I glared at the receiver, as if it had rudely broken its electromagnetic connection to Cape Cod on its own. “You’re welcome,” I said.
 
Matt looked much better. I’d stopped at the nurses’ station first, and learned that he’d had a good night. If he promised to rest for a couple of days I’d be able to take him home after the doctor checked in.
I took a seat next to his bed, happy to see the diagnostics had been turned off.
“I miss our tutorials,” Matt said. “Tell me something technical.”
“This is because we can’t leave here until Dr. Rosen comes by, isn’t it?”
He gave me a sheepish smile and looked up at the clock, next to the tiny television set hanging from the ceiling. “We have at least a half hour.”
“Okay, then,” I said, rubbing my hands together and assuming a professorial voice. “Today we’ll discuss tachyons.” For relief from all the chemistry and pharmacology I’d had to study lately, I brought up a pure physics factoid. “They’re small particles that have a strange property—when they lose energy, they gain speed. And, the slowest a tachyon can go is the speed of light. Also, I think ‘tachy’ means ‘fast’ in some ancient language. How am I doing?”
“Tachyon.” Matt stretched out the syllables, seeming to like the sound of the word. Then he snapped his fingers. “That’s what I had. Tachycardia. Rapid heartbeat. That’s what caused the fainting.”
Of all the particles of physics, I’d picked the one that matched Matt’s
reaction
. “Maybe there is something to the idea of being on the same wavelength,” I said.
Matt smiled. “And I almost know what a wavelength is. Is this tachyon one of those particles no one has actually seen yet, but there are a million papers written that predict it and how much it weighs, and everything about it, so when it shows up, we’re ready?”
I gave him an approving look. “I didn’t know you’d been listening.”
“I hear everything,” he said.
“I know. It’s what you do.” I reached over and tucked the thin cotton blanket around him, taking the opportunity for a long, if awkward, embrace.
“Remember when I first met you—you’d come up with all those facts, like Einstein’s birthday, or some atomic number?”
“March fourteenth, and the number is six for carbon,” I said.
He laughed. “Aren’t you going to draw me some pictures?”
I took a pen and small notebook from my purse and sketched the standard graphic of a carbon atom, or any atom—the familiar solar system model with negatively charged electrons orbiting a positively charged nucleus. It always bothered me to perpetuate a model that had been superceded in the 1920s, but the old representation was easier to picture than the “clouds of charge” of the new physics. I consoled myself with the fact that for some phenomena, the solar system paradigm still worked.
“Aren’t you going to tell me how no one model accounts for all behavior, and you’re using the simple model to make a point?”
“Like human behavior,” I said. “Your field.”
Matt knew my deep-seated belief that we would always have better physical models than human models. I thought of Wayne Gallen, and how psychology couldn’t possibly describe his behavior using the same model as the one for Matt Gennaro’s behavior.
“Tell me about Buckminster Fuller. A good quote, maybe.”
“Fuller was only five two,” I said.
He laughed, and raised his arm in the air. “Let’s hear it for short men,” said the five-foot-seven detective.
“Here’s a quote, as near as I can remember it: ‘When people discard the notion that ownership is important, they will not be burdened with possessions. The less we own, the greater our mobility.’”
“Didn’t Jesus say that?”
“And Chairman Mao, I think.”
Matt pointed to the clock. Dr. Rosen was late. “My doctor is probably making a prom date,” he said.
I smiled. “She
is
young, isn’t she? But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow her orders and go to bed when you get home.”
“I’m ready to promise anything as long as they let me out of here,” he said.
“Isn’t the food scrumptious?”
Matt frowned. “Even your cousin’s fruitcake is better.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her.”
Enough,
I thought. This was the kind of hospital small talk people made when someone was dying. “Are you up for some real work?” I asked him.
“You bet. What do you have?”
I reviewed Jake Powers’s remarks, the ones Matt had missed when he inconveniently lost consciousness. I used the notepad to emphasize key words and possible links.
“So you think this bute is the key? Maybe an illegal drug? And the vet you met at the high school is involved?”
I nodded. “The trouble is, there doesn’t seem to be enough at stake to kill someone over it. You remember what Lorna Frederick said about prize money and—”
“What is this?” A loud, reprimanding voice. Jean Mottolo, nee Gennaro, entered the room. She was in nicely tailored casual pants and a thick Irish sweater, comfortable for driving, but not inappropriate if a prospective client came her way. She stood at the foot of Matt’s bed, arms folded, and glowered at me. “I can’t believe you’re making him work. Don’t you care at all about him?”
I was dumbstruck. First, I’d forgotten she’d said she’d be coming to the hospital, and second, I hadn’t been scolded in a long time.
Matt recovered from the outburst quickly. He pointed to an orange chair stuffed under the television set. “Jean, pull up that seat please, and sit down.”
Jean obeyed, breathing heavily.
She’s nervous and worried about her brother,
I told myself.
“I’m sure you didn’t drive all this way to upset us.” He took her
hand. “You know I wouldn’t be ‘working,’ as you call it, unless I wanted to. What’s going on with you, Jeannie?”
I’d never heard Matt call his sister “Jeannie” and suspected it was meant to recall happier days of their childhood. I could see her body respond to the endearment. She took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Gloria,” she said, using the correct words, but in a tone that sounded like a homework assignment from her brother. She swiveled her head to face first me, then Matt, and back to me. “What’s going on is, I feel very left out of all this. Is there something you want to tell me?”
Matt and I looked at each other. “I told you everything I know, on the phone, Jean,” I said, proud of my adult behavior so far.
“How nice of you to call my sister, Gloria,” Matt said, with a teasing smile to both of us.
I went on, needing to finish my defense. “The doctor will be by in a few minutes and then Matt should be able to leave, but I didn’t know that until I got here.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean, Jeannie?”
She looked at Matt, tilted her head toward the door and reception area beyond. “The nurse told me your fiancée was in here.”
Matt and I looked at each other and burst into a reasonably decorous laugh; the rattle of the food carts passing by provided the perfect background music.
Matt held up his hand in a
let me explain
gesture. “We told them that because hospitals have a hard time with people who are unrelated. You can’t get information, can’t come and go—”
“So it’s not true?” Jean sat back, apparently immensely relieved.
“I haven’t gotten down on one knee yet, but … did you think we were just temporarily playing house?”
Jean gave a loud sigh. “So are you getting married or not?”
I stood and picked up my purse, headed toward the door. “Anyone want a cup of coffee?” I asked.

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