T
he most entertaining dinner table stories always came from Frank Galigani, professional mortician, Rose’s high school sweetheart, and husband of many decades. As usual, the contrast between Rose’s elegant place settings and Frank’s work environment was striking. A soft, cloth runner in autumn hues on the one hand, and the bare, steel-gray embalming table on the other. Cheerful flower arrangements on mahogany surfaces in their home on Prospect Avenue, somber gladioli in stately baskets down on Tuttle Street.
Frank had the same all-Italian look as Matt, only thinner. And neater. Matt’s body did not accommodate “dapper” any more than mine did, but Frank always looked perfectly groomed and ready to represent families in mourning, to stand as a confident sentinel in a shadowy parlor, to console the grieving with style and grace.
You knew Frank would take care of you and your deceased in the most dignified manner. You knew Matt would be willing to walk through garbage and murky marsh waters to find evidence that would solve a crime perpetrated on you or your family. I loved them both.
This evening’s story came as soon as we’d all sat down to Rose’s idea of casual dining for a rainy fall evening. Matching place mats and napkins, and a cornucopia centerpiece that seemed designed for Thanksgiving, but, in fact, would be dwarfed by what she had in mind for that day.
Frank served from one end of the table, placing a small, stuffed
Cornish hen on each platter. We helped ourselves to gravy, biscuits, green beans, and yellow squash for color, Rose said. We’d already enjoyed small china cups of split pea soup.
“There I am, in the prep room, ready to dress Sonny Lucca’s boy.” Frank had started his story, with no break in his meticulous serving technique.
“A shame, really, a young boy; he died in that eight-car pileup on One-A.” An interruption from Rose, and we knew that Frank wouldn’t mind. He waited a respectful amount of time before continuing.
“I push the casket up close to the table, so I can move him after he’s dressed. I hate those hydraulic lifts; I like to move my clients myself. I pick up the jacket from the side chair, and I make a slit up the back as usual, and I arrange the arms, and the jacket’s way too big.” A grin made its way across Frank’s face; he could hardly keep from laughing before the punch line. MC, sitting next to her father, put her elbows on the table, on either side of her plate. I thought I saw a grin on her face, too, before she buried her head in her hands. It seemed we had all guessed where the story was headed, but we let Frank have his moment.
“The sleeves are so long, they cover the kid’s hands.” By now, Frank had dropped the serving tools and used his hands to illustrate various points. “I figure maybe Sonny sent one of his own jackets by mistake. But the next thing I know, Mikey comes down—you know Mikey Vitale, who helps me out sometimes. He was upstairs in the office, on his way to some fancy shindig in his new suit.” Frank had a wide smile, ready to erupt in laughter. “‘Where’s my jacket?’ Mikey asks me.”
“Oh, no,” Rose said, leading a chorus of such exclamations. “You cut up Mikey’s jacket!”
“Well, at least
this
story’s not a gross-out,” MC said.
“As if you never had your own messy stories, sweetheart,” Frank said. He patted her arm, and earned the same adoring glance MC had given her mother a while before.
Our Fernwood Avenue home looked a bit dismal after the festive dinner at Rose’s, but neither Matt nor I was willing to put the time into making it anything more than extremely comfortable for us. I remembered a quote attributed to Buckminster Fuller, something like, “Homes should be thought of as service equipment, not as monuments.” Besides the couch and coffee table layout in the center of the room, the living room was big enough to accommodate a reading area at one end. We’d arranged two easy chairs and footstools at a slight angle, nearly facing each other, and shared news or ideas across the space.
“McConachie is playing at Jazz Too next weekend,” Matt, the avid jazz fan, might say, scanning the entertainment section of the
Boston Globe
.
“Let’s plan on it. Look here, there’s a new book on string theory by James Bryer, that BU physicist we heard last year.”
“Sounds good. Want a coffee?”
“Sure. I’ll find those cookies Rose packed up for us.”
If married life—not that the phrase had come up—was like this, no wonder people flocked to it.
This evening’s banter included police matters, however. Matt brought me up to date on the Nina Martin murder—it looked like the body had been dumped in the marsh postmortem, and there was a kind of standoff between the Houston PD, the FDA, and the RPD.
“The FDA won’t tell us why PI Martin had one of their cards until we share our forensics, and … you know the rest.”
“Toddlers will be toddlers,” I said, and Matt nodded.
“There’s a sit-down with us and them on Monday that might get some cooperation on both sides.”
“How about Wayne Gallen?” I asked him.
“He hasn’t shown up yet, at home or at work in Houston.”
“And he never went back to the Beach Lodge once he left the station?”
Matt shook his head. “No reason to put a lot of effort into finding him, either,” he said. “Gallen’s hardly a suspect in Nina’s murder
just because he also happened to be in town from Houston. Nothing else connects him to that crime.”
“Except the fact that he acted suspiciously with respect to MC,” I added. “And he did know Nina in Houston. I assume there’s no word from the hospitals about a gunshot victim showing up?”
“Nope.” Matt wiggled around to read his vibrating pager. “Berger,” he said.
I turned down the CD player—I was tired of jamming woodwinds anyway—and gave him a pleading look.
“I know, the speakerphone.” Matt punched in the number and switched on the system so I could hear the conversation.
Berger’s speaker voice was hard to understand, but it was better than my standing over Matt’s shoulder trying to read his notes.
“The good news is we got the shooter,” Berger said, his voice sounding muffled. “A pharmacy over in Chelsea called in response to our bulletin. Told us a guy phoned and said he sliced himself with a piece of broken glass, and he wants hydrogen peroxide, antiseptic cream, tape, bandages, extra-strength painkiller.” Matt and I gave each other a thumbs-up. “And here’s the clincher—the guy asks for forceps. Says there’s a piece of glass in his hand, he has to catch a plane, doesn’t have time to go to the ER, et cetera, et cetera, and he wants the package to be delivered to the Beach Lodge.”
“Where Gallen stayed.”
“Yeah. ’Course there’s not exactly a hundred places to hole up around here. Anyway, by the time we got there the guy was out cold, bleeding like crazy.”
Good girl, Nina,
I thought.
“The other good news is that we found two weapons in the room. One is most likely the gun used on the PI woman, the other probably her gun, which he must have kept after dumping the body. We have to wait for ballistics, but it looks like the right ballpark all around.”
PI woman? Would Berger have said PI man? Never mind,
I told myself,
that battle’s for another day.
“Could have been shot by a third party who killed the PI,
planted the gun, and so on.” Matt made twirls in the air as he spoke, as if he were reciting a formula he was very familiar with, but which needed reviewing. “Or, he shot the PI, and someone else shot him using her gun. Handy that her gun was right there, don’t you think?” Matt’s tone was more telling than asking, as he continued his elaborate hand gestures. “Won’t know till we talk to him. Where is he now?”
“Oh, that’s the bad news.”
“He’s DOA,” Matt said, with a click of his tongue.
“Right.”
Bad news for sure. I’d been hoping for a wellspring of information from a killer in custody, some connections that might also solve MC’s problem, though I seemed to be the only one who thought there was anything to worry about in that regard.
“Any ID?” Matt asked.
“Yep. An ex-con, Rusty Forman, from—three guesses, the first two don’t count.”
Leave it to George Berger to pull up a corny expression from the fifties.
“Houston,” Matt and I said together.
S
unday morning. Still raining, and still twenty-four hours before there was a chance we’d hear from Matt’s doctor. It had been a while since I’d been to church for anything other than a wedding or a funeral, and I gave it some thought. I pictured myself kneeling to pray, opening my missal—where was it? Had I seen it when I was packing for the move to Matt’s house?—singing a hymn, standing for the Gospel. Then came the hard part. I heard the priest’s homily as clearly as I had when I was in Confirmation prep classes. As they were then, the words were meaningless to me, and I mentally left the church again.
Rose was still practicing the faith. On the most recent Holy Day of Obligation, August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, I’d called their house, and Frank told me she was at mass.
“She goes for all of us,” he’d said lightly.
Later, I’d chatted with Rose about how likely it was that the body of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, had been assumed into heaven, not subject to the deterioration process every other human body underwent.
“And why not just pray wherever you are?” I’d asked her, continuing our Why I Am (or Am Not) Still A Roman Catholic debate.
“Because God lives at St. Anthony’s,” she’d said with a grin. End of discussion. At times I envied her faith.
The mortuary was just down the street from St. Anthony’s Church, so I’d had a daily reminder when I lived there of the choices I made regarding religion. I always came to the same conclusion—I
couldn’t pretend. Some days I felt I knew what it meant to pray, and others I didn’t. Some days I believed there was an all-loving God in heaven who knew each hair of our head, and other days I imagined random gaseous events set in motion and left to the laws of science. There was no use trying to package that into religious observance. Blame it on Sister Pauline, I thought, who never could answer my logic questions when I was ten.
“Maybe they counted the loaves of bread and the fishes wrong to begin with, and that’s why there seemed to be more at the end,” I’d said, earning no holy card that week.
Surely there was no hope for me now.
Matt, another fallen-away Catholic, as we were officially called by Holy Mother Church, was spending Sunday morning at his office to make up for his hours on the tubular pillow in our living room. He was being productive, while I was home, too distracted to do anything useful.
I grunted and paced the thirty-foot expanse that included the living room and dining room, picking up a piece of lint here and there, ignoring the dust gathering in the corners of the hardwood floors. When the bottom level produced nothing inspiring, I climbed the stairs to the old guest room that was now my office. I looked with distaste at the pile of notes I’d accumulated for my next Revere High Science Club lecture, on crystallography, which had been my specialty in graduate school and for many years after.
The rain beat down on the roof, spilling out of the gutters, sweeping an idea into my head. The Science Club. I shelved the old notes. Another time. I couldn’t very well storm the clinic for medical information on Matt, but I could face the other, distracting loose end.
I pushed the phone buttons and tapped my fingers on my desk during the fewer than ten seconds I had to wait for the pickup. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been less patient. “MC. I’m so glad you’re home. I’m preparing a lecture on buckyballs for Revere High, and wondered if you could help me out. We could go for coffee and—”
MC laughed. “Aunt G, this is MC. Who are you trying to kid?”
“Busted,” I said.
MC and I sat across from each other at Tomasso’s Coffee Annex, at a table barely big enough for two espresso cups. We’d forced ourselves to make room for their pastry also, however, a maple scone for MC, a cannoli for me. We finished at the cashier’s desk just before a large influx of people who I guessed had come from St. Anthony’s Church, a few blocks away.
I knew MC had made yet another trip to the morgue to see if by any chance she’d be able to tell the police something about the ex-con who’d apparently murdered Nina. I’d been hoping she might recognize him from work, from teaching, even from her local supermarket in Houston.
“Nuh-uh,” MC said, looking down at her drink, stirring nothing into her espresso. “I’ve never seen this Rusty Forman before.”
I searched her face. I didn’t like the lack of eye contact.
“What do you think is going on, MC?”
“What do you mean?”
“Now it’s my turn—who are you trying to kid?” I kept my voice low, since the tables around us were now full, black wrought-iron chairs touching, back to back, throughout the small shop.
MC laughed, but only barely. I wanted to put my arms around her and protect her, as I did on a too-windy ferry ride from San Francisco to Sausalito when she was a little girl.
“If you mean Wayne and Nina and this Rusty, I really don’t know.”
“But … ?”
“It’s Jake,” she said, finally meeting my gaze. “He’s been calling, wants to see me. He’s at a big equestrian conference in New Hampshire and wants to stop by on his way back to Texas.”
“How bad was it, MC?”
She looked away again, her eyes tearing up. I could see her reflection in the shiny copper vat, only a foot or so away from us. “Bad enough.”
“Then why would you even think of seeing him again?” I hoped she wouldn’t tell me she loved him. For me, love was a choice, not an inevitable “falling” that you couldn’t get up from. But no one had ever accused me of being a romantic, either.
“Habit,” she said, and I sighed with relief. Habits can be changed, broken. Well, except for the one about eating cannoli.
“I know what I have to do, Aunt G. Get a life. And I’m working on it. I have an interview at Charger Street lab at the end of the month.”
“Wonderful.”
“In fact, it’s with that Lorna Frederick, the woman I asked you about. She’s been recruiting me for the nanotechnology team.”
“Would you be working directly with her?”
“It’s not clear. She has one of those jobs out here on the org chart.” MC leveled her arm straight out from her shoulder and wiggled her wrist to indicate a vague position outside of line management. “She has a PhD in chemistry and used to do real research, but now she manages programs. I think her title is ‘Special Projects.’”
“I have a well-connected technician friend out there. Andrea Cabrini. I’ll ask her if she knows her.” I made a note on a small pad I carried. “Lorna Frederick,” I said, as I wrote the name. It gave me a feeling of productivity, as if I could be a big part of MC’s life again.
MC gave me a big smile. “And—you’ll be proud of me—I also have an interview at Revere High later in the week. How’s that for moving right along?”
I sat back. “That’s perfect.”
I resisted the temptation to pat the top of her head in approval. I’d save that gesture for Matt.
We ended our coffee klatch, but not before we set a specific time, six o’clock that evening, for me to review MC’s emails with her, and another date later in the week, when we’d visit old Mrs. Cataldo in the senior center together.
“Science teachers, unite!” MC said, and I grinned.
My cell phone rang as I was buckling up in front of Tomasso’s. I’d planned to stop at Rose and Frank’s, to return a stack of platters that had been sent home with me, piled with gourmet leftovers, over the past month or so. Not to go empty-handed, I’d picked up a fall bouquet at a little stand right outside the coffee shop. I knew Rose would be able to call the flowers by name; I just called them yellow and orange.
“Hi,” Matt said. “Where are you?”
“Just finished having coffee at Tomasso’s with MC. I’m on my way to Rose’s.”
“Can you meet me at home?”
My chest clutched up. “What is it?”
“I can be there in ten minutes. You?”
“Don’t do this, Matt. I’m not one of your suspects. You can’t skirt my questions like that.”
“You’re right. Sorry. My test results are back, and I’d like to see you, okay?”
I pressed my forehead to the steering wheel of my Caddie, grateful I wasn’t on the road. My muscles went to a soft paste, like the filling of my cannoli, my skin as flaky and unsubstantial as its crust. “The doctor called you on a Sunday? It must be bad news.”
“He’s a good guy, that’s all. He was at the clinic today, and he knew we’d be waiting. Please just meet me at home.”
The flowers on the passenger seat seemed to wilt before my eyes. I started the car and drove toward Fernwood Avenue, slowly and carefully, as if my life depended on it.