The Fluorine Murder

The Fluorine Murder



There's nothing special about a third wedding anniversary, unless your best friend has been waiting three years to get you to celebrate. Deprived of the pleasure of planning my wedding, Rose Galigani wouldn't stop nagging until Matt and I agreed to some form of public display.

"It's leather," Rose told me, as we sat on lawn chairs facing the geranium-filled back yard of the mortuary she ran with her husband.

I looked around. The seats were rattan. My purse was fabric. "What's leather?"

"The traditional gift for third anniversaries is leather."

"Who else knows this?" I asked.

"It's a hard theme to deal with, but maybe we can work up something around luggage. We can have tiny suitcases for favors, but that means you'll have to take a trip right after the wedding, Gloria."

I checked her expression. Teasing or serious? It was never possible to tell for sure. Rose didn't ask for much in life, other than continued good business for her funeral home, which was pretty much guaranteed, and the freedom to provide a meaningful social life for those she loved.

"We agreed to a small party," I reminded her. "Not a full-blown wedding. We're already married. And we're not twenty years old."

Homicide detective Matt Gennaro and I had run off, if fifty-somethings can be said to run, for a weekend in Vermont and had come back married. Thus, the delayed consumer-approved show of bliss.

Rose snapped her fingers. "A Unity Candle. That's what you need," she said. "They do that at all the weddings these days. The mothers in each family light a small candle. Then the bride and groom use those flames to light a big candle in the middle, to symbolize the coming together of the two families."

I could have sworn her eyes started to fill up.

"Our mothers are dead, Rose. Matt has one sister; I have one cousin. It will look silly."

"Maybe you're right, Gloria. But we need candles. How about just one big one?" She held her hands to indicate a circumference of about nine inches. If we lit a candle that size, it would alert every smoke detector in its path.

As Rose's hands grew farther and farther apart, the candle expanding to larger and larger proportions, the shrill whine of a siren filled the night air, still humid at eight o'clock in the evening. I heard a loud honk, then saw the flash of a fire engine zipping past on Tuttle Street.

For a minute I thought they'd come to extinguish the flame on our imaginary Unity Candle.

****

The next day's newspaper reported that the fire was one of the biggest in the history of Revere, Massachusetts. It was also the fifth major blaze in the small city in less than a month, which was five times the usual number. The first four fires had leveled empty buildings, sweeping through an abandoned elementary school, a set of vacant apartments in a long-ago public housing project, a deserted church hall, and a car dealership that had gone out of business.

This fifth and latest fire was different in one significant way. The inferno had hit a sprawling, operating nursing home across town from Rose and Frank Galigani's mortuary. The box-shaped building, which had been a general hospital many years ago, was full to capacity with patients at various levels of disability, from people in a doctor-recommended program of physical therapy to those needing around the clock care.

This fire had also claimed a life. The body of a young woman, as yet unidentified, had been found in the rubble.

The residents of the home had been moved to safety, and all members of the staff were accounted for. The fire had broken out well past visiting hours.

So who was the dead woman? I wondered.

Not to mention—who was trying to burn down Revere?

****

I learned a little more a week later when a call to Matt's cell phone interrupted our regular Sunday morning brunch in the Galiganis' beautifully appointed dining room. Matt's and my dining room, by contrast, was still a work in progress even after three years.

"Looks like we're going to need your help again," Matt said, addressing me as he clicked his phone off. "Fluorine came up in the investigation of the fires."

"Fluorine," I said. "I'm on it."

"Is that the deceased woman's name?" Rose asked.

"It's the ninth element of the periodic table," her husband, Frank, said, polishing off his second home-baked croissant and earning a nod of approval from me for his science literacy. "And we know who's the expert on all things science."

"Dr. Gloria Lamerino," Rose said, using her best drum-roll voice.

I did enjoy my association with the Revere Police Department, which called me in as a consultant whenever science was involved in a case. Revere was home to the Charger Street Laboratory, a major research facility with more than seven thousand scientists and support staff. I often found myself in the position of interpreting and explaining their work to my husband and his department.