The obituary was only slightly more informative: Patel had no family in this country; he was an upstanding citizen, a member of the Claremont Tennis Club and a volunteer with charitable organizations throughout the Bay Area.
“No dying declaration,” Matt had said, reminding me how handy it would have been if Patel had, number one, known he was dying; number two, named his killer; and number three, then died. One of the more compelling pieces of evidence in a murder case. When I’d once asked Matt how come, he’d told me the traditional wisdom was If you know you’re going to meet your maker, you’re not going to try one more lie.
Tanisha’s death in the line of duty didn’t buy much space in the Bay Area papers. On the first day, one of them had carried a photo of Tanisha with her daughter, Rachel, blowing out candles on a birthday cake, a happier time. After that, there were no reports of the second shooting.
The papers quoted the police as saying the two incidents appeared to be unrelated, but I guessed that was a misstatement on the part of some journalist. If Alameda County was anything like Suffolk County in Massachusetts, the ballistics report would be a long time coming, since this was not a high-profile case.
I tried to think of ways to insert myself or Matt into the Berkeley PD files, but the only cop I’d met, Inspector Dennis Russell, wouldn’t be happy to see me, I knew. I’d had a not-so-pleasant interaction with him the last time I’d visited. I’d thought I was helping his investigation into the death of a former colleague of mine; he’d thought I was meddling. Matt did promise to keep his eyes open when he accompanied Dana to the police station later in the day That would have to do.
Along with these limitations, I was hampered by having to hide my curiosity and suspicions from Elaine. Fortunately, her computer was in an office, separate from her bedroom, and I was able to sneak in after she’d gone to bed. I hoped she wouldn’t think to track the most recently accessed URLs on her browser. She’d count a half dozen nitrogen- and weapons-related sites. It was all I could do to remember not to bookmark them.
The elements of the physical universe always amazed me, especially how different forms of the same one had such widely varying properties. Nitrogen, the seventh element on the periodic table, was a perfect example. A two-atom form of nitrogen was the most abundant element in our atmosphere, making up nearly 80 percent of the air around us and found in all living systems. We breathed in nitrogen safely every day.
A three-atom form of nitrogen, however, was highly explosive.
Even the explosive form had a spectrum of uses. Nitrogen gas exploded in air bags to save lives; it also exploded in events like the Oklahoma City bombing.
At the last minute, just as we were about to leave for our lunch date with Phil, Elaine had a call. I gathered from her side of the conversation that something logistic was not going well. By the time she hung up, Elaine had an exasperated look.
“My florist,” she said. “I’m going to have to go down to the shop and choose another color scheme.”
“With three thousand blooms in the Rose Garden, you need a florist?” I asked. “That’s probably seventy-five thousand petals.”
Elaine laughed. “Leave it to you to find a way to do arithmetic, Gloria. We still need bouquets, corsages, centerpieces for the tables at the reception.” She gave me a hopeless look as she prepared a beige leather purse, almost as large as my carry-on, for departure. Of course, she had on beige shoes. “I can see that you’ll need me when it comes to planning your wedding.”
I choked. On nothing but my own breath. Matt and I hadn’t talked about a wedding date. Or a wedding at all. I didn’t see why we couldn’t stay engaged forever.
Elaine patted me on the back. “Don’t worry I’m too caught up in this wedding to worry about anyone else’s. But after our honeymoon, I’m linking up with Rose, and we have major plans for you and Matt.”
Scary as that thought was, I at least had a reprieve. I blew out a breath.
Elaine looked at her watch. “The bad news is I’ll have to skip lunch with you and Phil. The good news is you and Phil get to bond without my being in the way.”
“Is that a deliberate pun?”
Elaine frowned, then raised her neatly drawn light brown eyebrows. “Of course. I meant, like nitrogen bonding.”
I’d taught my friends well.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The bonding lunch suffered from another last-minute change. A call from Phil, his cell phone to mine, brought me to a bagel place near his work site, a few blocks from Bette’s Diner. He had to give a presentation to some visiting consultants at Dorman Industries, he’d said, and needed to keep his lunch hour short. Typical bureaucracy, I thought, where consultants have consultants.