The Nitrogen Murder(2)

Matt grumbled at being forced, by a vote of two to one, to carry only the lightest suitcase. His recovery from prostate cancer treatment was going well, and I wanted to keep it that way I hoped this wedding trip would be a vacation for him, away from the homicide desk of the Revere Police Department. Service, courage, and commitment, the RPD motto, had me tired just thinking about it.

“And I can’t wait to wear my new tie that matches Gloria’s little navy dress,” Matt teased. Unburdened as he was by heavy luggage, Matt ran his fingers up my back, where the zipper of my dress would lie in two weeks. That neither of us had ever had the physique to wear “little” clothes didn’t seem worth mentioning.

I’d had transcontinental briefings from Elaine since her first date with Philip Chambers, a retired BUL chemist now working as a consultant. “I know I said ‘never again,’ Gloria,” she’d told me, “but he’s a scientist like you. How can I go wrong?”

I had a feeling she’d mistaken my silence to mean I understood her logic. The courtship with Phil had been even shorter than her usual prenuptial process, but I reminded myself that my role in Elaine’s love life was to be her support, not her critic. What was so awful about Elaine’s record of four engagements and two ex-husbands, anyway? At least she tried. I’d cut and run when my first engagement ended decades ago. My only fiancé had died—which was why I put my hand on Matt’s chest at night unless I could hear him breathe. I was most reassured when his snoring filled the room of our Revere home, the hazards of sleep apnea notwithstanding.



Matt and I took a few moments with Elaine to catch the view of Berkeley from our guest room windows, which were elaborately treated with yards of rich fabric. I felt sure the design had a technical name. Framed by the draperies, the UC campanile stood out, more impressive in the soft evening light than BUL’s sister lab, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the giant concrete building that held its cyclotron.

Elaine pointed out a flat-topped, rectangular white building in the distance, with an array of satellite antennae on its roof. “Phil works in that facility. Dorman Industries, kind of a midsize consulting firm.” She turned to Matt. “This is one of the few days you can make it out; it’s usually too foggy”

Elaine was right, but even Alcatraz was visible today, in the middle of San Francisco Bay. I remembered touring “the Rock” many times with East Coast guests when I lived here. I was glad Matt wasn’t the tourist type. I’d passed the point where riding the cable cars up and down the streets of San Francisco, angled at nearly ninety degrees, was fun.

Elaine hadn’t stopped talking about her fiance. “Most of what Phil’s doing is classified, as I’ve told Gloria. It’s a kind of extension of what he was doing at BUL.”

“He’s retired and now consults in his field? What a novel concept,” Matt said. He nudged me in my ticklish zone, which, I supposed, was meant to say he was glad I’d veered off course to police work.

Not that I’d deliberately chosen a career as a Revere Police Department consultant—I drifted into it when they needed technical help with the murder investigation of a hydrogen researcher, shortly after I returned to Revere. I met Detective Matt Gennaro at that time, and one contract had led to another.

Elaine had stocked the guest room with pear-scented soap and lotions, which she knew I liked, and a vase of white and orange flowers. On the bedside table she’d placed a Hummel—a little boy in an old-fashioned (of course) wooden cart, with an American flag pinned to the back. If it were a music box, it would be playing a John Philip Sousa march.

“In honor of your favorite holiday,” she said.

“Sweet,” I said, and meant it.



After impressive hors d’oeuvres, prepared by Phil, we were told, and Elaine’s famous chicken Kiev, Matt went up to bed. One side effect of his anticancer medication was that he needed more sleep. Elaine and I began our usual program of “remember whens.” The monthly dinner club we’d belonged to (Berkeley was a hub for ethnic restaurants); the time I’d tried to keep up with her on a bike trip through the steep, winding paths of Grizzly Peak (what had I been thinking?); her ten least favorite BUL authors to edit (not me). We laughed at engineers’ infatuation with putting capital letters in the middle of words: MicroCell assembly, LasAmp module, ForBal spindle, BioAssayFlow device. It was Elaine’s job to talk them out of such language gimmicks.

“It demeans your amazingly creative engineering breakthrough to have its name look like some popular commercial product,” I said in a deep, mock-serious voice. “How’s that for an imitation of your tech-editor bedside manner?”