The Nitrogen Murder
CHAPTER ONE
Summer is the wrong time for me to visit California.
First, I’ve always hated desert heat, claiming membership in the tiny club—a nanoclub, in scientific terms—of people who prefer humidity Second, there’s only a meager Fourth of July in California. You might see modest fireworks displays, but nothing like the shows on Revere Beach, in Massachusetts, back in the old days. Magnificent sprays of color and thunderous bursts of stars and stripes came from giant barges out on the Atlantic Ocean, the finale perhaps a replica of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima or an image of the presidential faces of Mount Rushmore.
Elaine Cody, whose wedding was the reason I was dragging my own fiance from Revere to Berkeley in mid-June, reminded me that I spent too much time dwelling on how things used to be.
“I’m going to find you a Fourth of July celebration you won’t forget,” she said. “We had a terrific fireworks show at the marina last year. Great new designs, with interlocking circles and geometric figures. You’d have loved them.”
I rolled my eyes. “Did I ever tell you about Aida?” I asked.
Elaine sighed and maneuvered her army green Saab into her Northside garage. We’d just made a harrowing trip from the San Francisco airport, across the Bay Bridge at rush hour on a Friday. “The amazing Aida, the horse that dives into a bucket of water.”
“Dove. Past tense. I’m sure she’s dead by now,” Matt offered from the backseat. His gray head rested on one of my oversized carry-ons. I’d used Elaine’s wedding—her third—as an excuse to bring an extra forty pounds of luggage.
“It was a large tank, not a bucket,” I said, letting decades-old memories of Aida crowd out maid-of-honor images. A graceful pony and flowered-bathing-capped rider falling through space with style and flair, versus me, in a plus-size floor-length dress.
No contest.
In my mind I heard a drum roll and a cymbal crash, as I followed Aida’s leap off a fifty-foot tower. A larger horse whose name I’d forgotten would twist in the air and land on his side, making it more difficult for his rider to land safely But Aida tucked up her willowy legs as if she were going over a jump and plunged into the water. I felt wet from the enormous splash, then realized the doors of the Saab were open and I was dripping perspiration. We’d arrived in Elaine’s sweltering garage.
I’d lived and worked in Berkeley for thirty years before returning home to Revere, so I knew the heat wave would be short-lived, and unbearable only during the daytime. The fog would roll in, and breezes from the San Francisco Bay would take over after a magnificent sunset, compliments of the Bay Area’s particular spectrum of air pollution.
“ … so I chose navy blue for you, Gloria,” I heard Elaine say “I thought it would be better for you than a pastel.”
No kidding.
Elaine had redone the interior of her two-tone brown Tudor. Her built-in dark oak bookshelves were still in place, but new living room furniture in various shades of brown and burgundy leather had replaced the floral set that was there on my last visit. During our long friendship, I’d often teased her that she changed furniture and men with equal frequency
Her Hummel collection was now distributed around the room on various small tables instead of lined up on her mantel. She owned at least two dozen of the figurines, mostly children or angels, at play, napping, petting small animals, or fingering tiny musical instruments. Her newest figure, a special edition Hummel-ized policeman, claimed the center of her glass-topped coffee table. Behind his back the cherub-cop held a scroll with an imprint of an NYPD badge.
“I have the fireman on back order,” Elaine said when she saw me pick up the Salute to American Heroes, as the script on the base of the statuette proclaimed.
Hummels were Elaine’s only “cute” habit. At five-nine, with shoulder-length gray-blond hair, Elaine still dressed like the Radcliffe graduate she was. Tailored clothing of fine fabric, nicely matched. No polyester, no shoes with ties, no jeans or pants with an elastic waist unless she was in the act of jogging. Her long neck could sport a scarf two inches wide without wrinkling. Mine was best suited to the silver chain that had held my lab ID badge for three decades.
Elaine’s two-story home was at the top of a hill in an older, tree-lined neighborhood a few streets north of the University of California Berkeley campus and the laboratory where I’d cleaned my first laser windows. She was still a technical editor at that lab, Berkeley University Laboratory—BUL. I was glad labs didn’t choose mascots.
“I can’t wait for you to meet Phil and his daughter,” Elaine said as the three of us toted bags up the stairs to her guest room.