The Helium Murder(24)

“You don’t look like you’ve been mopping up slush.”

“I haven’t. I’ve been doing everything else while Martha and Tony take care of the slush—I cleaned around the flowers, scraped the wax from the candle rack, did a little vacuuming. Gloria, don’t you think I’ve earned a break?”

“More than I have. The only exercise I’ve had is getting from my bed to my desk.”

“So tell me,” Rose said, cutting off a well-deserved slice of cannoli.

I knew exactly what she meant, so I got to the point.

“We talked business,” I said, “about the Hurley case.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Except, he took Al’s book.”

Rose sat back, a look of smug relief creeping over her face.

“I’m glad. It’s a job for professionals, Gloria. Here’s my dream. You met Matt through some police work, but now you forget about that and settle down with him. Maybe buy that little house for sale across from us on Proctor. Do a little teaching on the side.”

Rose brushed some crumbs from her jeans, and folded her arms as if she’d just made an incontestable judicial decision. She seemed pleased with the details of my life as she’d just planned it. Her courtlike demeanor didn’t last very long, however.

“I did have one little thing to share with you,” she said, leaning her body toward mine where we sat on the couch. We both twisted our necks around in a playful gesture, as if scanning the room for eavesdroppers.

“After you left, Hurley’s ex-fiancé came by.”

“Patrick Gallagher?”

“The same. He strolled right up to the casket, knelt down, and started sobbing and talking loudly—to the deceased.”

I’d noticed that none of the Galiganis ever used words like corpse, or body, preferring more abstract phrases like “the deceased” or “departed loved one.” It was easier to learn the language of quantum mechanics, I thought, than that of policemen and funeral directors.

I wanted to know more about Gallagher, and figured it was useless to try to hide my interest from Rose.

“Go on, Rose,” I said, rotating my hand like a camerawoman on a live shoot.

“Well, it was obvious that he’d been drinking,” Rose said. “Luckily, Tony was right there to handle him, but Frances Whitestone was livid.”

“Is that all? Did you hear anything he said?”

“I’ve been saving that,” Rose said. “He kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.’”

Rose sat back with a satisfied look on her face. My heart went out to her as I realized the conflict she had between wanting me out of the homicide business, and needing to share with me whatever she knew, just in case it would help me.

“Thanks, Rose,” I said.

After Rose left, I worked on Peter’s class, just enough to ward off the panicky feeling I was getting with only four days till my appearance on Monday. Cruising the waves of the Internet, I located a source of old diagrams showing Marconi’s early wireless systems, and typed out a few pages of notes on his work as a delegate to the peace conference at the end of World War I. I hadn’t resolved the question I had about whether to mention his support of Mussolini.

I had to keep reminding myself how young Peter’s students were, juniors and seniors in high school. I was sure they thought that the wars my peers and I lived through were in the same timeframe as the Trojan War.

While I had the files out, I decided to organize the rest of the series. I’d told Peter I’d give him a list, outlining six classes to take us through the rest of the school year. After Marconi, I planned to introduce the inventor of the battery, Alessandro Volta, in February, followed by Avogadro, Da Vinci, Galvani, and Torricelli. I’d close with one of my personal favorites, Maria Agnesi, an extraordinarily accomplished eighteenth-century mathematician.

At noon, when the phone rang, I was still in my jeans. I wasn’t over being a little touchy about answering my phone, afraid that Rocky Busso might have used a code to determine who called him last night without leaving a message. Technology, which I usually embraced wholeheartedly, was beginning to show me its dark side.

No problem this time, however, as I heard Matt’s voice.

“Is there a change of plan?” I asked.

“No, we’re still on for one o’clock, in my office. But I wanted to ask you about this weekend. Some civic group came by here this morning offering us tickets to the Messiah concert by the Handel-Haydn Society. I guess it’s be-kind-to-policemen week. Anyway, I thought I heard you and Rose say you’d like to go sometime, so I picked up four tickets for Saturday evening. What do you think?”