The Helium Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

risk.
    “She’s beautiful,” I said.
    “Her name’s Cynthia,” Berger said, still grinning.
    “Beautiful,” I said again, and actually meant it. I was a traditionalist when it came to names, making fun of the new trends and the unlikely cultural combinations. In a class I taught in San Francisco one semester, I had two young men named Ian Wong. Not that I was against interracial marriage, just interracial names.
    If I had children, I thought, I’d probably number them until they were old enough to choose for themselves—too much responsibility to give a lifetime label to a person. Another advantage I’d noticed in moving back to Revere was that people here, at least the old-timers, could spell and pronounce my name without trouble.
    “‘Cynthia Berger’ has the ring of a cellist at Carnegie Hall or a Nobelist in literature,” I said, happy to be flattering and honest at the same time. “You must be really proud.”
    “We are,” Berger said. What I saw in the vicinity of Matt’s eyes came very close to a wink.
    I took a seat and Berger excused himself to go to a meeting. As he left the office he shook my hand and said, “I told Matt you were the one to help us with this. Most of it is pretty straightforward, and I couldhandle it, but there are a couple of things I think you could clear up.”
    I sat facing Matt across his desk and we both sighed the equivalent of “whew.”
    “I think fatherhood agrees with him,” I said.
    Matt shook his head. “Maybe,” he said, “but your fancy footwork didn’t hurt. Nice work, Gloria.”
    Matt was always generous with his compliments, but not so free that I doubted his sincerity. Just the right level for a woman of my generation who had a hard time accepting praise for anything but her spaghetti.
    “Before we get into this,” Matt said, lifting a folder from the pile on his neat desk, “I wanted to say something about last night.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    “I know that, but I want to. It was a difficult day for me and I probably shouldn’t have made dinner plans in the first place.”
    I debated with myself about mentioning that I knew of the anniversary, worried that Matt had an entirely different reason for leaving without me, so to speak.
    “Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Teresa’s death,” Matt said, removing my dilemma. “Sometimes I forget and other times ...”
    “I know. Frank told me. I’m sorry. And I suppose we never really forget completely.”
    “That’s right,” Matt said. “In my own world here, I forgot about Al.”
    Matt and I had talked a little about the circumstances of the death of my late fiancé, Al Gravese.Matt had just joined the police force at the time and remembered the rumors of foul play. I wondered if this were a good time to tell him that I intended to do some research on Al’s business connections and the car crash that killed him, and that I could use his help. I looked at him, still appearing vulnerable, and decided not to.
    “I knew Al only a short time compared to you and Teresa,” I said.
    “Thanks for understanding, Gloria,” he said. “Maybe we can make it up this weekend?”
    “You have nothing to make up,” I said. “But I do happen to have some time this weekend.” If I were filling out one of the dozens of questionnaires that I’d seen in my lifetime, I would have called myself “extremely satisfied.”
    Matt turned to his desk and I knew that personal talk was over and it was time for business. He had a way of shifting abruptly from one to the other with the speed of a bullet. He handed me a manila folder thick with papers.
    “Here are some of the documents we found in Ms. Hurley’s briefcase,” he said, holding up one of the widest attaché cases I’d ever seen. “They probably have nothing to do with this hit-and-run, but it bothers me to have papers in my file that I can’t understand. Why don’t you get a start on these while I dig out a contract. And if you can hold