“It’s not that we’re engaged either, Rose,” I said. “We’re just starting to become friends.”
Another sigh from Rose. “Still, here’s your first serious relationship since 1963 and you’re thinking of work clothes? A shirt and tie is what you should buy Frank,” she said, referring to her husband of three decades and my good friend for as many years.
Rose and Frank were also my landlords for the six months that I’d been back in town. They’d set me up in an apartment above their place of business, so for the moment, my address was the same as the one in their yellow-pages ad: Galigani’s Mortuary on Tuttle Street.
The Galiganis also sold me last year’s Cadillac from their fleet—a side benefit that took some getting used to. For the first few weeks, I’d arrived early for every gathering and parked in dark corners to avoid being seen behind the wheel of a long, black luxury car.
“How about something personal?” Rose said, bringing me back to the task of shopping. “It’s a perfect time to show Matt you think of him more as a friend than a boss.”
At the word “friend,” Rose lifted her penciled-in dark brown eyebrows and puckered her lips, a gesture I tried to ignore. She picked a piece of white lint from my new winter coat, as if that was all it would take for me to look as stunning as she always did.
“What if I have his initials embroidered on the pocket of the shirt?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a slow-dancing tape in the pocket of a bathrobe,” Rose said, sending us into a preteen laughfest again.
Just to humor her, I let Rose take me through the men’s department, past the ties, to the more personal aisles. Before she said anything out loud, I shook my head wildly when she pointed to a headless plastic torso wearing orange-and-black-tiger-striped underwear. Rose knew it would take more than one visit for me to be as comfortable in the menswear section as I would be in a hardware store, so she didn’t press me to buy anything. However, I could tell from the slight smile on her well-made-up face that she was devising a plan for a future trip. As for me, I made a mental note to visit Radio Shack on my own.
We headed for the Park Street subway station, walking past a long row of newspaper vending machines. Rose was five feet ahead of me before she noticed that I’d stopped in front of a Boston Globe display. I was staring wide-eyed at the headline: Seventh District Rep Hit-and-Run Victim.
Rose joined me at the blue metal case that stood in front of us like a truncated TV anchorman announcing the day’s bad news. Since neither of us had change, we leaned our shopping bags against the rack, and read as much as we could see of the folded front page.
Congresswoman Margaret Hurley died late last night of injuries sustained after a vehicle ran her down in front of the old Whitestone home in Revere. Neither Mrs. Whitestone, longtime supporter of Hurley’s career, nor Hurley’s brother were available for comment. Police have no witnesses to what appears to be a random hit-and-run.
“Wow,” Rose said. “Whitestone lives in that beautiful white house on Oxford Park, the one that has green shutters with shamrock cutouts.”
“I know the one you mean,” I said, still stooped over, “only because it was the only non-Italian symbol in that neighborhood.”
“I remember when Margaret was elected to Congress, two years ago, largely due to the widow Whitestone, by the way, but we didn’t know her very well. Did you?”
I straightened up with a jolt, when I finally remembered why her name was familiar.
“She’s the helium vote,” I said.
“She’s the what?”
“She’s on the House Science and Technology Committee. I wonder if her death had anything to do with the helium vote?”
“Oh-oh,” Rose said. “Here we go again.”
Chapter Two
Not that I didn’t like my new career as science consultant to the Revere Police Department, but I needed a longer break after the last murder investigation I’d gotten involved in. That case was only two months earlier, and didn’t end until I got my first taste of a bullet wound.
Back in my apartment after an afternoon of shopping with Rose, I rubbed my shoulder, not so much from residual pain as from the memory of wrestling with the murderer. Before I could get too upset, however, I realized that my boss and, as Rose would say, boyfriend, Sgt. Matt Gennaro, dealt with many more homicides than that. I was called in only if the murder involved science or scientists as suspects, like the case of the murdered hydrogen researchers I’d just helped with.
From the headlines, I had no reason to believe that Hurley’s death had anything to do with science, and I certainly didn’t know her personally. So why was I giving this case a second thought? It was none of my business. It was a simple hit-and-run, I thought, as if random violence is any more simple to understand than premeditated murder.