The Helium Murder(5)

Rose and Frank saved me from further daydreaming by coming upstairs after closing their offices on the floors below me. We’d planned to ride together to Anzoni’s restaurant and meet Matt there.

“Then he can drive you home,” Rose had said, “and, you know, you can invite him up.” Rose was convinced that I didn’t know the first thing about dating, and she wasn’t shy about giving me advice.

“Just met what’s left of the Hurley family,” Frank said, entering my living room. He plucked a tiny piece of lint from his perfectly pressed jacket. The Galiganis are the lint police, I thought, and I pictured their closets beating out an industrial laboratory, meeting all the government requirements for a class-A clean room.

“That brother is something else,” Frank said. “Now I remember the stories of his gambling, and how the grandmother cut him out of her will.”

“Tell me more,” I said, trying to sound casual, while at the same time avoiding a disapproving look from Rose.

“Frank,” was all she said, and Frank went silent.

I guessed she was using a certain pitch that Frank recognized as the director’s sign for “cut.”

“Rose,” I whined, “you know I can keep a confidence.”

“And you know that’s not why I’m cutting this off. I know you, Gloria. You’re just looking for an excuse to call this a murder. That bullet didn’t teach you anything, did it?”

“Frank,” I begged, “what exactly was Buddy’s demeanor?”

Rose and Frank roared with laughter and even I couldn’t believe what had happened to my vocabulary. “Now I know you’ve gone off the edge, Gloria,” Rose said. “You sound like Court TV.”

I had to admit she had a point.





Chapter Three

Most of the changes I’d come back to in Revere were for the better, with the grand exception of the Boulevard. Once famous for its beach and boardwalk, Revere’s Boulevard had been lined with roller coasters and Ferris wheels, carousels, hot dog vendors, and frozen custard stands. My first pay envelope, with fifty cents for every hour I’d worked, came from my skilled labor at Johnny’s Cotton Candy Counter.

The Boulevard now held multilevel condominium complexes, liberally sprinkled with miniparks of a few benches and trees. All of the rides and, with only a couple of exceptions, all of the food concessions of the first public beach in the United States had been leveled to the ground one way or another.

Anzoni’s new restaurant was on the site of the old Tilt-A-Whirl. If it weren’t for my overwhelming sadness at the loss of the entire two-mile strip of amusements, I would have considered a good Italian restaurant an improvement over a thrill ride. I’d worked behind counters on the Boulevard all through my years at Revere High School, but never once rode anything more risky than a bumper car. My guess is that Josephine told me I’d be scared.

As soon as we pulled up in back of Anzoni’s, just after seven o’clock, I saw Matt’s steel blue Camry. I felt the now familiar twinge in my chest and paused only a fraction of a second before acknowledging that it was not due only to the thirty-degree air that greeted us outside the car.

Matt stood up as we entered, hitting a faux Italian olive tree, and catching the few strands of hair that covered the top of his head in its leaves. Anzoni’s was done up in deep burgundies with faux Tiffany lamps and faux sculptures. Only the food and the tiny poinsettia plants on the tables were authentic.

Matt caught my eye and smiled.

“Gloria,” he said, nodding. “Rose. Frank.”

His smile was warm, his voice comfortably deep, but from his clipped tone, you might have thought we were preparing for a lineup. Matt had been widowed for many years and, by his own account, had given all his attention to his job. He was as awkward as I was in social situations. One of his charms, I thought.

Matt ran his hand along his dark blue tie, tucking it into his brown suit jacket. As usual, he took my coat, a long lapis lazuli blue that Rose had talked me into. I’d held my ground on jewelry, however, and wore a small hand-painted set of wooden bells instead of the elaborate holiday pin Rose suggested.

I had mixed feelings about Matt’s chivalry, of course, since I’d lived my life in a man’s profession and without a partner. I’d never allowed any deference to my gender in the laboratory, but when Matt pulled out a chair or held the door for me, it was a different story. I resolved to research the latest feminist thinking on male/female etiquette.

We settled around the small square table, juggling hats and gloves and scarves—another difference between the coasts. In California I kept my winter clothes with my luggage since I needed them only on business trips to cold climates. I’d forgotten what it was like to need an extra chair for woolens.