The Carbon Murder(82)

“No problem. MC can’t make it anyway. She’s started this new gym class.” I heard a clicking sound. “Imagine paying to walk around a pool or exercise or whatever they do. I had enough of that in junior high.”

“I don’t think they call it gym class anymore. And I know they don’t wear those awful blue outfits.”

Rose laughed. “I forgot about those costumes. The itty-bitty dresses with the bloomers to match!”

“Mine wasn’t so itty-bitty, remember?”

“Anyway, MC is doing so much better. I know you’ve been a great help to her, Gloria.” I didn’t want to mention that the person who killed her daughter’s boyfriend was still at large. Rose had seemed more than willing to believe that the investigation was going well, and that it had nothing to do with her daughter. “I’ll be over in a half hour and I’ll bring some goodies.”

“I’ll have a goodie for you, too, when you get here. A bit of news.”

What is this? I asked myself. Have I been influenced by the checker/bagger duo, playing a silly guessing game about an engagement between two consenting adults?

Rose gasped. “What fun. Is this about Jean?”

No going back now. Rose would be into this, and I owed it to her for all her trips to the hospital. For her big part in getting Matt and me together. For sticking with me when I’d tried to leave Revere behind forever.

I stopped at a light on Broadway just after the Chelsea overpass. Ahead of me to my left in the clear night was a building complex on the former site of the Revere Theater. The memory of Saturday matinees with newsreels, cartoons, and short subjects put me in the right frame to continue the little drama with Rose.

“Better than that,” I said into my tiny cell phone speaker.

A pause. “You and Matt are engaged.”

I moved with the green light. “Rose! How could you possibly … ?”

“It’s what I do.”



Before Rose arrived I had time for a shower and a phone call to Elaine Cody in Berkeley.

“I can’t believe I’m not there to hug you, Gloria. I am so excited. You have to tell me immediately when you know the date. And I have dibs on providing the cake. There’s this on-line wedding-cake site—I looked into it many times for my near-miss engagements. They do chocolate of course.”

I laughed, remembering most of her near misses. Bruce, Paul, José, and others whose names escaped me. “Hold on,” I said. “This is not going to be a big event.”

I heard Elaine’s sigh. “Never mind. I’ll just deal with Rose.”

I didn’t have many friends, but I did know how to pick them, I told myself.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“How do you feel, Gloria?” Rose asked me from Matt’s chair in the reading area.

She sipped white wine from a crystal glass that Matt owned from his marriage to Teresa. When I lived at the mortuary Rose kept a couple of her own wineglasses in my cupboard for emergencies like this. Elaine, whom Rose had met several times, had given her the idea.

“No need to use Gloria’s recycled jelly jars,” Elaine had teased.

I hoped my engagement wouldn’t result in an influx of crystal and china and silverware. Managing household goods was boring, unlike inventorying and caring for lab equipment.

“I’m much better after my shower,” I told Rose.

She waved one hand at me and with the other filled my wineglass with sparkling cider. “You know what I mean. Listen, we’re going to have an engagement party, like it or not. I’ll have to see if Elaine will come out. As soon as Matt is up to it.”

“I’ll never be up to a party.” I sighed. “You know, maybe I should be all excited, but now that we’ve made the decision, in some ways I feel I’ve been engaged to Matt almost from the beginning.”

“I’ve felt that way, too. You know, MC really likes that cute blond teacher—Daniel.” A smooth segue to her daughter’s love life. I’d introduced MC and Daniel only a couple of days ago so they could talk about MC’s appearance at the Science Club. I doubted MC had told her mother anything about her personal feelings so quickly. “Did you know the Endicotts used to live across the street from the mortuary? Isn’t that a coincidence? Right across from where MC lives now. The father worked in City Hall for years, in the clerk’s office, and the mother used to help out at a florist we dealt with back then.”

I was sure the only engagement that Rose would have been happier about than mine was MC’s. Preferably to a young man from Revere whose family Rose knew.

“Daniel’s a nice guy,” I said. I wasn’t ready to vouch for him as anything but an excellent teacher.