Matt and I sat on a short bench meant for bus riders. We were in the shade of a tall old building with ornate carvings around the high windows and tantalizing falafel odors emanating from a street-level restaurant. I was still hot, however, and eager to move into the next air-conditioned place. I hesitated to cut Rose’s call short and searched my mind for a question that might express concern and enthusiasm for her tale.
I looked at Matt and asked myself what he might care about. “Who’s on the case at the RPD?” I asked Rose.
“Michelle Chan was the officer at the scene. I don’t know who else. She cut her long, beautiful hair, you know. Looks a lot older. Frank and Robert are down there now, and Robert is thinking of hiring a private security service for us. Everyone in the business is sure Bodner and Polk are behind this.”
“The mortuary chain? Is there any evidence?”
“I don’t know from evidence, but Frank’s hoping to get a copy of the police report. I’ll send it to you, and maybe you and Matt can take a look at it. William says there’s a way to send these things by e-mail.”
Uh-oh. I knew that Rose’s grandson, like most teenagers, was more than capable of attaching a document to an e-mail, but I couldn’t risk further aggravating Elaine. Besides, I might never again have access to Elaine’s computer.
“A fax is better,” I told her. “In a few minutes I’ll have a fax number you can send to, right down the street from Elaine’s.”
“Okay, I can do that myself. Gloria, that hearse was a black, black, black … shell. Can you imagine if anyone had been in it? The family would be devastated.” As usual, Rose worried about the dear departed and their families. She continued, “I wonder if that would be a homicide if the person killed was already dead? Matt would know.”
“I’ll let you ask him.” I gave Matt a smug smile and handed him the phone.
While Matt—such a good sport—talked to Rose about intent to kill and felony murder, I was free to pursue the thoughts cluttering my mind.
We found a twenty-four-hour copy shop in the next block. I took the fax number and called Rose. I was able to get off the line quickly by letting her think we were just sitting down to dinner. Not that it showed in her size-six body, but Rose Galigani took mealtime very seriously.
I called Andrea next.
“You got a new battery,” she said.
“Oh, uh, everything’s all set.” Lies always come back to haunt you, I remembered, and my punishment for the battery fib was my stuttering over Andrea’s comment. Anyone but sweet, naive Andrea would have seen through me, even without being able to see the flush in my cheeks.
“It’ll probably take me an hour or so to get these ready, Gloria. I have to copy them here, and then go back to my office and get the fax code, because all the secretaries have left, and then—”
“Don’t worry. I completely forgot how late it is there. I don’t expect you to do it immediately. Even tomorrow would be fine.” Not fine, exactly, but here was another friend I needed to hold on to. I didn’t have that many left.
“No, no, I can do it,” Andrea said. “Call me back in an hour and I’ll let you know how it’s going, okay?”
“That sounds good. And let me give you Matt’s number in case you need to reach me and this phone isn’t working.”
“Oh, good. I know I shouldn’t call the bride, right?”
“That’s the idea,” I said.
It was after six o’clock, many hours since my bagel with Phil Chambers, colleague of the deceased Lokesh Patel.
Matt and I sat at a table in a small Japanese restaurant on Shattuck Avenue. I wasn’t sure about Matt, but I wondered less about what I’d order for dinner—crabmeat with wasabi mayonnaise or shrimp tempura?—than where we’d be sleeping that night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The hour after dinner was an active one. We collected faxes from Andrea and Rose and walked to the UC campus library, open later than the public library branches. I was able to use my BUL retiree card to gain admittance, once I’d extricated it from deep in my purse and detached it from the sticky wrapper of an old cough drop.
UC Berkeley had overlapping summer classes, guaranteeing that the campus walkways and libraries would be busy in all seasons. Whether a sign of the times or of California, the students we passed were all ages and ethnic groups. Even with our mature body shapes and graying hair, Matt and I blended in with the mixed population. We might have been administration-of-justice majors, I mused.
Matt picked a dog-eared copy of the Berkeley yellow pages from its place in a row of phone books that seemed to cover all the counties of California. “We should think about renting a car,” he said. “And maybe a room.”