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The Fluorine Murder

    There's nothing special about a third wedding
anniversary, unless your best friend has been waiting three years
to get you to celebrate. Deprived of the pleasure of planning my
wedding, Rose Galigani wouldn't stop nagging until Matt and I
agreed to some form of public display.
    "It's leather," Rose told me, as we sat on
lawn chairs facing the geranium-filled back yard of the mortuary
she ran with her husband.
    I looked around. The seats were rattan. My
purse was fabric. "What's leather?"
    "The traditional gift for third anniversaries
is leather."
    "Who else knows this?" I asked.
    "It's a hard theme to deal with, but maybe we
can work up something around luggage. We can have tiny suitcases
for favors, but that means you'll have to take a trip right after
the wedding, Gloria."
    I checked her expression. Teasing or serious?
It was never possible to tell for sure. Rose didn't ask for much in
life, other than continued good business for her funeral home,
which was pretty much guaranteed, and the freedom to provide a
meaningful social life for those she loved.
    "We agreed to a small party," I reminded her.
"Not a full-blown wedding. We're already married. And we're not
twenty years old."
    Homicide detective Matt Gennaro and I had run
off, if fifty-somethings can be said to run, for a weekend in
Vermont and had come back married. Thus, the delayed
consumer-approved show of bliss.
    Rose snapped her fingers. "A Unity Candle.
That's what you need," she said. "They do that at all the weddings
these days. The mothers in each family light a small candle. Then
the bride and groom use those flames to light a big candle in the
middle, to symbolize the coming together of the two families."
    I could have sworn her eyes started to fill
up.
    "Our mothers are dead, Rose. Matt has one
sister; I have one cousin. It will look silly."
    "Maybe you're right, Gloria. But we need
candles. How about just one big one?" She held her hands to
indicate a circumference of about nine inches. If we lit a candle
that size, it would alert every smoke detector in its path.
    As Rose's hands grew farther and farther
apart, the candle expanding to larger and larger proportions, the
shrill whine of a siren filled the night air, still humid at eight
o'clock in the evening. I heard a loud honk, then saw the flash of
a fire engine zipping past on Tuttle Street.
    For a minute I thought they'd come to
extinguish the flame on our imaginary Unity Candle.
    ****
    The next day's newspaper reported that the
fire was one of the biggest in the history of Revere,
Massachusetts. It was also the fifth major blaze in the small city
in less than a month, which was five times the usual number. The
first four fires had leveled empty buildings, sweeping through an
abandoned elementary school, a set of vacant apartments in a
long-ago public housing project, a deserted church hall, and a car
dealership that had gone out of business.
    This fifth and latest fire was different in
one significant way. The inferno had hit a sprawling, operating
nursing home across town from Rose and Frank Galigani's mortuary.
The box-shaped building, which had been a general hospital many
years ago, was full to capacity with patients at various levels of
disability, from people in a doctor-recommended program of physical
therapy to those needing around the clock care.
    This fire had also claimed a life. The body
of a young woman, as yet unidentified, had been found in the
rubble.
    The residents of the home had been moved to
safety, and all members of the staff were accounted for. The fire
had broken out well past visiting hours.
    So who was the dead woman? I wondered.
    Not to mention—who was trying to burn down
Revere?
    ****
    I learned a little more a week later when a
call to Matt's cell phone interrupted our regular Sunday morning
brunch in the Galiganis' beautifully appointed dining room. Matt's
and my dining room, by contrast, was still a work in progress even
after three years.
    "Looks