The Helium Murder (16 page)

“Actually, I’m surprised she’s still around, with bad memories right at her doorstep,” Rose said. “Margaret was the closest thing Frances had to a granddaughter. If something like that happened to me, I’d split for another state immediately. And she’s the one who can do it—the Whitestones have houses all over New England. For that matter, so do the Hurleys—what’s left of them.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Do you think they have cars all over New England, too?”

Chapter Eighteen

I
t was too awful a thought to entertain for very long—Buddy murdering his own sister. I still had no firsthand knowledge of him and it was hard not to be swayed by his media image, a gambler from a rich and powerful family, with gangster buddies. I resolved to try to sweet-talk Matt into telling me at least the status of the Hurley estate with Margaret out of the picture.

But, for the moment, I had serious shopping to do, and Rose cooperated by picking me up and driving us into Boston. Her reasoning was that we’d be carrying home too many packages to make a subway trip feasible.

With only about two weeks until Christmas, I had to make a big dent in my shopping list, at least for the people in California. I’d already called for rates for overnight delivery, and hoped I didn’t have to use the
service. Rose helped me choose a silk scarf with a beige print, and a gold circle pin from the Museum of Fine Arts Design School, both for Elaine. I picked up sweatshirts with “Boston” and “Quincy Market” logos for several other Berkeley friends, and bought odds and ends of decorations for my apartment.

“Now for the hard part,” I said, looking at the window display in a men’s store on Tremont Street.

“Matt?”

“Matt and Peter.”

To my surprise, I found it as difficult to choose a present for someone I didn’t care about as for one I liked a lot. I didn’t want to give either man the wrong impression, and in Matt’s case, I wasn’t even sure what the right impression was.

Rose cleared her throat in a way that I recognized as the signal for a revelation or confession of some sort.

“Peter called me,” she said.

“And?”

“He wanted my advice on a present for you.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Not anymore. I talked him out of a heart-shaped locket. I told him I didn’t think it was you, and that he should consider a gift certificate to Borders Books and Music.”

I breathed a sigh of relief into the cold air and watched it fill the space between us.

“Thank you, thank you,” I said, hugging my friend as we walked along the edge of Boston Common.

The temperature had been rising one or two degrees
every day throughout the week, and the warmer weather had created a patchwork design on the Common. Rose and I left our footprints in the interlocking squares of dirty snow and brown grass in front of the State House.

We stopped for coffee and talked about what we’d wear on our double date the next night, and for a while we were young girlfriends at Revere High School again, the reality of an unsolved murder drifting very far way.

“We need to find you something in red or green,” Rose said. “You can’t wear black all the time.”

“I have some clothes that aren’t black.”

“Even the ones that aren’t black might as well be.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let’s go to Copley Place and I’ll show you what I mean.”

We laughed and put on our coats, ready for the next round.

By the time we were finished for the day, I’d bought myself a
Messiah
outfit—a calf-length green velvet dress with three-quarter sleeves, and black patent flats with a sling back. I’d rejected the same style in three-inch heels. As we piled ourselves and our bundles into Rose’s station wagon, I tried to ignore the neatly folded white curtains she kept in the trunk in case the car was pressed into service to pick up a client.

I’d bought a coffee-table book on the wonders of Italy for Peter, an electronic address book that dialed a telephone, for Frank, and all my California gifts. Rose had bags of stocking stuffers for her children and
grandson, since, as usual, she had bought and wrapped most of her major gifts before Thanksgiving. I still had nothing for Matt.

We drove home to Frank, who’d used his rare day off to prepare a meal for the three of us—a dish he called eggplant Galigani, with polenta and eggplant and roasted peppers. He seemed pleased with his efforts, and we gave him enough praise to ensure a repeat performance. Until I met Matt, I’d never cared about being “the odd person,” even when visiting couples in California, but lately I’d found myself wanting to share moments like eggplant Galigani with him.

I left the Galigani home early, hoping to get my first reasonable night’s sleep in almost a week. I wasn’t sure whether it was Frank’s culinary talent or the shopping bags piled around my bedroom that gave me comfort, but I managed to fall asleep quickly, with no nightmares that I could remember the next morning.

My Saturday seemed out of my hands—I’d have to wrap presents before and after lunch with Peter, and get ready for dinner and the
Messiah
concert. With no decisions to make, and the mindless task of stretching jolly paper and ribbon around boxes, my brain was free to draw up lists and make connections among all the fuzzy bits of data on the Hurley case.

I still considered the most promising line the one from Vincent Cavallo to his “partner” and the partner’s out-of-state car. My best guess was that Buddy
Hurley was the partner—he could have hired Busso to kill Margaret, then killed Busso to cover himself—but I had nothing concrete to back it up.

I tried to push the whole case out of my head as I sang along with Barbra Streisand, wondering who had talked a Jewish woman into making a Christmas album.

I dressed casually for lunch with Peter, partly because it was Saturday and partly to diminish the importance of the event. As I pulled on my black wool pants, I admitted to myself another reason—I knew Peter still preferred dresses and skirts on women.

Once again fully wrapped in my new winter clothes, I went to the garage, coming upon Guido, the sweet young student from Italy who cleaned the building on Saturday mornings. Whenever we met, Guido and I had a routine exchange of Italian, during which I practiced the language I was once fluent in.

“Buon giorno,”
I said.

“Che porta?”
Guido asked, pointing to the large, gaily wrapped book I had for Peter.

“Una cosa per natale,”
I said, using the ridiculous phrase, “a thing for Christmas,” since I didn’t know the word for “present.”

Guido always gave me a thumbs-up anyway, no matter how poorly I responded.

Peter had chosen Russo’s café, near the center of town, where the police station, Revere City Hall, the main post office, and the
Journal
office all sat within not more than a hundred yards of each other.

The first thing that worried me when I saw Peter, already sipping a mocha, was the tiny box near his napkin. It looked more the right size for a locket than for a gift certificate.
Not off to a great start
, I thought,
and so much for Rose’s powers of persuasion
.

“I’ve ordered an antipasto, and the pasta primavera for both of us,” Peter said, and even that annoyed me, as just another sign of his male chauvinist attitudes. And I was going to have to choose between Russo’s delicious, delicately fried zucchini and making a feminist statement by fasting.

I barely focused on our conversation during the meal, distilling phrases like “more of each other in the new year” and “so much to catch up on.” I concentrated on my pasta, glancing now and then at the tiramisu in the pastry case.

“Present time!” Peter announced, with a big smile.

I took a deep breath and handed Peter’s package across the table.

He put the short edge on his lap, leaned on it, and handed me the small box.

“You first,” I said, hoping Peter would see the trend, take back the box, and pull a gift certificate out of his pocket.

Peter opened his package carefully, as if he intended to use the paper and the cellophane tape again.

“You can exchange it for something else if you already have it,” I said as he was lifting the book from its wrapper. What I meant was, “this gift has no personal significance, and is interchangeable with all the other gifts in the world.”

He seemed pleased with the wonders of Italy and assured me that he didn’t already have a copy and that he’d been wanting one.

There was no more stalling; it was my turn. I tore the paper off the small box. I had a strange recollection of opening the box Rocky Busso had handed me not so long ago.

On a bed of white silk I saw a gold heart-shaped pendant, about two centimeters down the middle. At least it wasn’t a locket with his photo in it, I thought, trying to smile at the same time.

“This is beautiful, Peter. Thank you.”

“I wanted to get you something special.”

“Peter ...”

“Don’t say anything, Gloria. I know you’ve been busy and haven’t had time for socializing, but as I said a few minutes ago, I hope that’ll change in the new year.”

“I don’t—”

“Why don’t we wait till all this holiday rush is over and spend some time together. I’ll be gone for two weeks, and when I come back—”

It was my turn to interrupt, and it took a giant effort for me not to scream.

“Peter, I can’t see us ever spending a lot of time together,” I said. “I hope we can be friends without complicating things.”

Peter’s jaw stiffened as he pinched his eyes closed and breathed in deeply.

“I don’t want to hear this now,” he said. “I have
a meeting this afternoon, and there’s no time to really talk.”

He looked at his watch and signaled for the check. I thought about making a move to pay my share, but felt I’d done enough damage to Peter for one holiday season. He left bills on the table and stood up. Without my noticing, he’d managed to rewrap his book with no detectable wrinkles. He tucked it under his arm and leaned over to kiss me on the forehead.

“Sorry I have to run,” he said. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

I ordered another coffee and sat at the table for a while, wondering what made people like Peter tick. We certainly had different responses to rejection. Whenever anyone expressed the slightest displeasure with me, I backed away immediately, apologizing for being in the way. Josephine’s training, I realized, and couldn’t fault it.

I got home about two o’clock and did something rare for me—I started to lay out my clothes for the evening.
Rose would be proud of me
, I thought;
I’m practicing dating behavior
. I was smoothing out the folds of my new dress when I stopped to answer my telephone, hoping it wasn’t Peter.

I heard a muffled voice against a background of traffic.

“This is Vincent Cavallo,” he said. “I have some information you might want on the Hurley murder investigation.”

“What is it?” I asked, clutching the phone, as if that would keep my informant on the line.

“Not now. I’m calling from a pay phone near City Hall. Can you meet me somewhere?”

I didn’t relish the thought of going all the way back down Broadway again, but I couldn’t pass up a chance for information. And I certainly would be safe out in public, even if Cavallo were setting me up. I looked at the clock. Matt was to pick me up at six. As long as I was back by five-fifteen, I’d have plenty of time to get into my new dress and shoes.

“I’ll meet you at Luberto’s in twenty minutes,” I said, seeing nothing wrong with combining a Deep Throat meeting with a pastry run. I’d wanted to have something to go with coffee after the concert anyway.

I drove to Luberto’s, arriving about three o’clock, and took a seat at a small table near the back of the shop. I ordered a cappuccino and gave the clerk a list of sweets to package for me.

More than an hour later, I was still waiting for Cavallo. It had already turned dark, and I’d finished my
Scientific American
. I couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong. The worst thing I could think of was that he was the third victim in the Hurley case.

I picked up my box of pastry and left the shop. As I unlocked my car, something in the window of a store near where I was parked caught my eye.
Luggage sale
, the sign said, and under it was a garment bag.

How could I have been so dumb?
I asked myself. As I drove home, I saw how the clues added up. Number one, Mrs. Whitestone had complained to me that
the police still had Margaret’s garment bag, but the police had told no one about the luggage. She couldn’t have known about the bag unless she drove the car herself, or learned about it later from Rocky, probably while she was forcing him to write his confession to the murder.

Number two, I finally realized, was that Margaret had not been calling for Mrs. Whitestone, as the paramedic thought. She had been naming her killer, since she recognized the license plate. No wonder Mrs. Whitestone insisted on talking to everyone who had access to Margaret before she died.

Number three, Mrs. Whitestone had the money to be Cavallo’s “partner,” and therefore also the motive to kill to protect her interests.

I planned to report to Matt as soon as I got to my apartment, skipping the part where I went on a wild goose chase to meet Cavallo.

My only question was whether Mrs. Whitestone was so ruthless that she would have her friend and protégé murdered for the sake of her investments.

I pulled into the mortuary garage, entered the foyer, and came face-to-face with Frances Whitestone. One look at her, gun in hand, and I had my answer.

Chapter Nineteen

I
stood in my foyer, holding my box of Italian desserts. Mrs. Whitestone seemed to tower over me more than ever.

“How did you get in?” I asked, as if logistics were all that mattered. She was wearing a long, dark brown coat with a high fur collar, and for a moment I convinced myself that the gun in her hand was merely an extension of her tasteful brown leather gloves.

“It’s astounding what people will do for a helpless old lady,” she said, standing straight as ever, not a hair out of place. “A man in overalls let me in earlier so I could pick up more of my dear departed friend’s holy cards. For all he knows, I left the building before he did.”