The Carbon Murder(21)

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.