M
C wanted to stay in bed forever. She’d slept badly, waking up often, each time fighting back tears at the image of the young woman’s body on the morgue table.
MC had liked Mary Roderick, or Nina Martin, or whatever her real name was. She was older than MC’s other students, and seemed to really connect with her. She’d told MC her birth name was Maria Rodriguez, that she’d changed it to Roderick to sound more American, even though she loved her Mexican family and sent them money whenever she could. MC thought of Mary/ Maria/Nina’s familiar Houston Oilers cap, barely covering her wild, jet-black hair, and how her sparkling dark eyes brought life to the old, badly maintained classroom at Houston Poly.
The police had asked MC to make a secondary ID, since her name was on the Galigani Mortuary card. MC had wanted to go down there anyway. She had to be sure it was really Mary. Maria. Nina. They were saying that the woman must have enrolled in MC’s class as part of an undercover job, that she was a private detective, and maybe even worked for the FDA. Very unsettling, when you thought you’d been close to someone, to find out you didn’t even know who they really were. Like with Jake, she thought, in some ways.
MC flipped over onto her back and blew out a breath so harsh it hurt her cheeks.
I’m a Galigani,
she told herself.
I grew up around dead bodies; I am not freaked out by death
. An image came to her mind—her father in the prep room downstairs, inserting thin brass
wires into the jaws of an old man, to bring his teeth together; shaping his mouth with cotton into a slight smile. She’d been fascinated watching him, not frightened at all.
She’d gotten used to the sound of the hearse in the middle of the night, and the nasty odors that her mother tried valiantly to cover up.
I couldn’t have hated them too much
, MC thought,
since I chose a field with its own pukey smells.
She remembered sneaking down to the prep room whenever she could while her father was working on a body. She’d watch him cutting, sewing, stuffing, painting, and weighing things she couldn’t identify at the time.
But none of those bodies was real to her. She realized later that her parents deliberately kept her from the basement when she’d known the deceased.
This woman, Nina Martin, had been her student, or at least pretended to be her student, and was way too young to die.
The class MC taught was almost a throwaway at Houston Poly, basic chemistry for liberal arts majors. Most of the students couldn’t care less about science, choosing the class for convenience—they needed a science class to graduate, and this one happened to be on a night when they were free.
But Nina, a pre-law student—or so she’d said—had been so conscientious, seeming truly turned on by state-of-the-art chemistry, especially nanotechnology.
MC pushed herself into an upright position on her bed, Aunt G’s bed, really, except that MC had added a little color to the décor, splashing some blue and purple floral pillows here and there over Aunt G’s stark bed linens. It was time to move off these pillows. She pulled off her favorite stretch-pants-cum-pajamas, shook out a pair of chinos from a basket in the corner, and selected a white shirt she had actually ironed. This was the best the RPD was going to get. She was due at the police station, to talk about Nina, though she couldn’t imagine what she could tell them. She’d racked her brain already trying to figure what Nina was doing in Revere in the first place.
She remembered the day Nina had approached her, early in the semester.
“I’d love to do some extra research, since there’s so much going on, right here,” Nina had said, sweeping her arm, as fluid as a ballerina’s, in the direction of the windowless research facility, the ugliest building on the campus. “I’m especially interested in Buckminster Fuller, and that new molecule named after him—the, uh, what’s it called?”
“Buckminsterfullerene—buckyball!”
“Right! I read that buckyballs started the whole carbon nanotech thing. Do you know anyone doing that kind of stuff?”
So MC had put Nina Martin in touch with carbon researcher Wayne Gallen and the nanotechnology team.
And now Nina was dead, and Wayne was MIA. And Wayne had told her “they” were after her. Did “they” murder Nina? MC shuddered, then peeked out her bedroom window, a habit she couldn’t shake, even in the middle of the day, ever since she’d first spotted the stalker. That is, Wayne. But maybe not Wayne. Well, at least she hadn’t seen the creepy-looking car for a while.
Nina was probably the real target all along, and now I’m safe,
she thought.
Maybe one of these days she’d actually enter her house from the front.
R
ose, the unofficial historian of Revere, had Rumney Marsh stories at her fingertips, literally. She held her hand up and drew a map in the air. The middle finger of her right hand was Route 107, also called the Lynn Marsh Road, which split the marsh (the palm of her hand) in two. She pushed her hand closer to me, as if she were asking me to read her future.
“They used to call this the Old Salem Turnpike,” she told me. “Remember how they’d find wrecked cars there with their motors running?” She used the fingers of her left hand as cars. “Oh, no, that’s right. You weren’t home then.”
To Rose, Revere had always been my home, my three decades in California a mere blip in my life. An anomaly, like a summer vacation that stretched out too long or a forced confinement that was finally over. Often, I agreed with her.
We sat on Rose’s porch, a mass of white wicker and leafy green plants, screened- and storm-windowed-in. We were waiting for MC to come by after her interview with Matt and George Berger. It had started to drizzle, which Rose hated, but I loved. I felt I was due thirty years of greater-than-normal rainfall once I returned to the East Coast. Easier on the eyes than the almost daily, unfiltered California sun; and setting a perfect mood for the hot coffees we drank. The smell of split pea soup from Rose’s Crock-Pot, a few feet away, also said “rainy New England fall day” to me.
I tried to get Rose back on track. “Do you know why the dead woman was carrying your business card?” I asked her.
“Well, apparently she was MC’s student in that night class. Of course, MC had no idea she was an undercover investigator.” Rose took a sip of coffee. “I was telling you about all these stories in the
Journal,
about the marsh—John covered a couple of them when he was just starting out. The thieves would steal sports cars from Lynn, Saugus, Everett, you name it, and have demolition derbies out in the marsh, on that unfinished road that went nowhere.” She wiggled her right pinkie, west of 107, from her point of view. “And then they’d just abandon the vehicles, motors running and all. Some of the cars were from as far away as Boston.”
Rose laughed, always enjoying her own stories as if she were hearing them all for the first time herself. I smiled at her depiction of Boston, about eight miles from Revere, as “far away.” By West Coast standards, that could be a quick jaunt to the nearest supermarket.
“How interesting,” I said. “So, do you think this Nina Martin could have been coming to Revere to visit MC?”
Rose shrugged. “That could be it. But MC doesn’t think so; she thinks the woman would have given her some notice, not just showed up. I guess they’re looking into other relatives or—who knows. She was undercover, after all.” She pulled up the collar of her rust-colored coat-sweater—perfectly matching the highlights in her hair—whether because of a chill or as an illustration of clandestine work, I couldn’t tell.
More significant was Rose’s nonchalance about a dead Texan in her hometown, a few days after a live Texan had scared her daughter enough to make a 911 call.
Either Rose was avoiding an unpleasant possibility, or I was paranoid about MC’s safety.
“That’s the second time this week I’ve been in the police station,” MC said. She rolled her shoulders counterclockwise and back, and rotated her neck from side to side, as if to undo the stress of the meetings. She sat on the small wicker footstool at her mother’s feet, the one I was sure would crack under my weight, but seemed not
to be aware MC had landed. She looked very young, very vulnerable.
I remembered summer visits from MC, the first when she was just past her tenth birthday, her first solo plane trip. I loved taking her to the lab—she’d squealed in delight at the Berkeley University Lab cap I’d bought her, with B-U-L in bright yellow letters. We cooked macaroni and cheese for dinner, got take-out pizza, stayed up as long as she wanted to, and rode in my Jeep to San Francisco and Santa Cruz to do what I desperately hoped were “kid activities.”
“My daughter’s giving you competition, Gloria, with all the time she’s spending with the RPD.” Rose moved a few strands of MC’s short, deep brown hair from one side to the other. “I don’t understand the crooked parts girls wear these days,” she said, with a seriousness that made it sound like a metaphor for life.
“I kind of like hanging around the police station,” I said with a smile, then a sigh, as the remark led me straight to worrying about Matt’s test results. I’d almost stayed home, in case the doctor called, but I knew they’d get in touch with Matt directly, no matter where he was, and probably not before the weekend was over.
“So how did the interview go?” I asked MC.
In other words,
I’m dying to hear everything.
Rumney Marsh was on the same side of town as the Charger Street lab. Maybe scientists were involved. Maybe someone needed tutoring on buckyballs.
MC rubbed her arms, as if she were chilly, and in the next minute Rose left the porch and came back with a sweater, a tightknit beige one with tiny off-white flowers along the ribbing, thus preserving her daughter’s put-together chino-and-white look. MC gave her mother an adoring glance that warmed me more than my plum-colored wool vest did.
Finally, MC started in, letting out a rush of words. “I guess I wasn’t much help—they told me more than I could tell them. Nina was
not
a pre-law student, and she was
not
working nights as a waitress to pay for school, and she was
not
writing any paper on the geodesic dome. She’d asked me for an extension because her
mother was sick, who now I know was
not
in Mexico.” MC jerked her head to the side at each
“not,”
frowning as if she’d been betrayed, which in a way was true. “Nina’s family is middle-class; her mother and father are both dentists in San Diego. Not even her grandparents are in Mexico anymore. She’s about as Mexican as I am Italian.”
Rose looked at her, seeming uncertain whether that was good or bad.
We ran through the obvious questions, interspersed with tenuously related anecdotes or trivia tidbits from Rose. No, Nina had never mentioned having relatives in Boston that she might be visiting. (Robert and Frank were going to a conference in Boston; they might give a paper on independent funeral homes versus chains.) Yes, Nina would have told MC ahead of time if she were going to fly out to see her. (The Logan reconstruction project was behind schedule.) No, Nina gave no indication that she needed to talk to MC about schoolwork, or anything else. (William’s school band would be playing at the North Shore games on Thanksgiving.)
I felt uncomfortable putting MC through yet another interview, but she seemed willing enough to talk. Once or twice I had the feeling MC didn’t want to remind her mother how close she was to a “situation,” as Matt might call it. Neither did I.
The rain continued falling at a slow rate as the streetlights came on. Up and down Prospect Avenue, all the cars looked highly polished, every leaf glistened, shiny patterns played on fences and on the Galiganis’ special rosebushes. Tiny lamps sat on small tables in the back corners of the porch, creating an intimate setting that would be impossible to read in. “It’s for atmosphere,” Rose had said often. “You’re supposed to be musing, not reading.”
Rose adjusted the lamp shades as she made her way to the kitchen, where she’d prepare dinner for ten, though she was expecting only five. Matt and I would join MC and her parents. Like my own mother, Rose claimed you never knew who might drop in, and God forbid there wasn’t enough food.
MC moved to the chair her mother had used, and pulled her legs
up under her—a position my always-chubby body would have had trouble with even in kindergarten.
Alone at last.
But start slowly
, I told myself.
“How did you like teaching?” I asked MC.
“I liked it enough to want to do more, but maybe something more advanced. These students were all …”
“Poets,” I said, and she laughed. “I taught a class called ‘Physics for Poets’ for several years. It’s frustrating, because you know most of the students don’t want to be there.”
She nodded. “On the other hand, there’s this great opportunity to change someone’s view of science. So you try to make it fun.”
“Did you do the banana trick?” I asked.
MC rolled back in laughter. “How did you know?”
Together we mimicked immersing a banana into a vessel of liquid nitrogen, pulling it out, stiff as a board, then cracking it in half by slamming in onto a desk or chair in the classroom.
“I used a hammer,” MC said, seeming embarrassed that she’d succumbed to the gimmick.
I’d always wondered if students learned anything from the tricks science teachers came up with to make the subject seem more fun than the amusements that used to line Revere Beach Boulevard. If nothing else, I figured, it showed we had a playful side.
Sharing science teaching anecdotes with MC was fun, but I needed to talk about the recently deceased Nina Martin.
“Had you been in touch with Nina at all since you came back to Revere?” I asked.
She shrugged, apparently not surprised that I’d changed the topic. “Just an email or two. I glanced at them when I went through the list the other night for the first time, but I haven’t read hers closely. They seemed to be about her
Incomplete
, and could wait. I have till the end of the year to post the grades.” She threw her hands up. “Not that she’ll be getting a grade.” MC paused to catch her breath. “I’m sure I would have noticed,
Hey, Ms. Galigani, I’m coming up to Revere to visit
.”
“Well, Nina obviously had some intention of contacting you,
MC, or she wouldn’t have been carrying the Galigani card. Do you even remember giving it to her?”
She nodded. “Vaguely. She said something about keeping a file on all her teachers, for potential casework when she was in law school, and she’d like to be able to contact me after I left Houston.” MC banged her fists together. I saw sadness mixed with frustration. “She sure fooled everyone.”
Except for her killer,
I thought.
“Have you had a chance to look at all your emails, MC?” My way of asking if she had any clue what Wayne Gallen had been warning her about, and whether Nina’s murder might be connected to it.
MC nodded. “I went through them all. I didn’t find anything in Alex Simpson’s emails that would explain what Wayne was talking about, if that’s what you mean.”
That’s what I meant. “I was thinking—”
“Would you be willing to look at them yourself, Aunt G?”
“My, what a good idea,” I said, feigning surprise.
I loved it when MC smiled.