The Nitrogen Murder(79)

In the office, I booted up Elaine’s computer and watched the software icons take their place on Elaine’s tapestry desktop.

“That’s a very famous tapestry,” she’d told me a while ago. “See that lovely unicorn in the middle of the fenced-in area?”

I would have been more impressed if the fantasy animal could have speeded up the start process.

I walked to the window over the driveway and gazed out at a sunny day. Perfect for a BART trip to the newly renovated Ferry Building in San Francisco, for example. Though I’d never get on my knees in the dirt, I loved looking at flower gardens. Elaine had planted a strip about two feet wide of low-lying deep purple flowers along the fence between her yard and her neighbor’s. I gazed at the colorful blossoms on both sides of the driveway And then I noticed …

Not again.

A missing car.

This time it was Elaine’s.



I knocked on Elaine’s bedroom door, but I knew there’d be no answer. I shoved it open. Empty I had a good idea where she was.

I pushed the buttons for William’s cell phone, shifting from one foot to the other while I waited for the connection.

“Hey, Aunt Glo. I have caller ID, so I could tell this call was from California. Cool, huh? Did you get the equations?”

I hadn’t checked. “Yes, thanks a lot, William.” Lying to a minor, again. “I have another question, though, a quick one. When you called this morning you said something like you were surprised to know I’d be awake?”

“Right.”

“How did you know I’d be up in the first place?”

“Oh, your friend Elaine called around seven o’clock California time. So I figured you’d be up, too. She called Grandma first, and then she called me and she asked me for that address from the PDA.”

I was right, but not happy about it.



Matt, Dana, and I piled into her Jeep, and she drove us across town to Patel’s Woodland Road home. By now I knew the windy route by heart and could direct her easily.

It wasn’t clear why we decided, with almost no discussion, that we needed to go to the house in Claremont immediately. I realized in retrospect that it was the first Dana had heard that her father might be alive and living at Patel’s, and she naturally would want to see him. For me, I wanted to support Elaine in what must have been an overwhelming need to see and confront her fiance.

I suspected we all also felt an undercurrent of fear.

Because it might not be Phil, but a murderer waiting for Elaine? Because it was Phil, and he was a murderer? No one offered a conjecture.

I pushed the numbers for Patel’s phone. “We’re on our way,” I said to his answering machine—again, without a clear reason for what seemed like a warning to Elaine. I felt like the leader of a posse. The effect of being out west, I figured.

I navigated as Dana took a left from Claremont Avenue and eventually a right onto Woodland.

And into an emergency situation.

A sliver of sunlight made it through the morning fog and bounced off a bright red fire truck, a stark white ambulance, and the spinning blue lights of a police car, giving the scene a patriotic look. The emergency fleet took up most of the cul-de-sac in front of Patel’s house.

Dana gasped and slammed on her brakes, throwing us all forward, as if our bodies were mimicking our minds: stunned, doing double takes, straining to look more closely and understand what was happening.

I didn’t breathe again until I saw Elaine, in her familiar Burberry windbreaker, standing by a police car.



I stayed to the side, a few yards away, in the small, albeit slowly accumulating, crowd in the cul-de-sac. Mostly women in jeans and T-shirts, I noticed. I wondered if I was in the land of stay-at-home wives and mothers, though I didn’t see any children.

We’d arrived in time to see two paramedics push a gurney into the ambulance and lock it down. Matt joined the Berkeley police officers who were questioning Elaine, and so far they were letting him hang around. Dana talked to a uniformed young man she seemed to know. I didn’t see Inspector Russell in the contingent of two uniforms and two suits, and I couldn’t hear anything of the conversations. I was determined to keep out of the way and satisfied myself with the thought that I’d be briefed shortly.

After a few minutes, Dana climbed into the back of the ambulance, whether as the victim’s nearest relative—I assumed it was Phil’s feet I’d seen on their way into the bus—or as visiting EMT, I didn’t know. I caught Elaine’s pained expression as the imposing vehicle pulled away, sirens blaring.

I wanted to wave to Elaine, to make sure she knew her closest supporter was handy, but I held still, feeling helpless.