Chapter 20. Feeling Nostalgic

WHITNEY

On the phone with Collin late Tuesday night, I told him what my father had told me. I also told him what I'd found on the web. "I'm getting an eerie vibe. Do you think someone could have intentionally poisoned Joanna?"

Collin came back with, "Would someone have a reason to?"

"Maybe Lane killed her for the inheritance. He's admitted he was addicted to drugs, and drugs don't come cheap." In fact, people had done some pretty awful and desperate things in order to feed their addictions. Burglary. Robbery. Prostitution. Murder.

"He claimed he's clean now, right?"

"Yes," I said, "but Gideon didn't seem to believe him, and Gideon knows him much better than we do." I wondered if Macy, too, suspected he might not have kicked his habit. Maybe that's the real reason she didn't want him moving in with her and her family. "There's also several people interested in the townhouse Buck and I plan to fix up and flip. Samira and D-Jay want to buy it. Those meddling men. Gideon himself."

It was also possible one of the Bottiglieris had somehow poisoned Joanna. They were a vindictive bunch, obviously. Peter had been arrested for vandalizing our townhouse. Maybe he'd somehow put mercury in the place in the hope it would hurt or kill Buck and me, but somehow the mercury had ended up seeping into Joanna's place. We knew for a fact he'd been in the building, and the only thing separating our space from Joanna's was a few inches of boards and drywall. We hadn't spent extensive time in our townhouse since we'd bought it, so even if mercury was present there, it might not have had a chance to work its evil magic on Buck and me. But could it have somehow traveled into Joanna's place? It certainly seemed possible that, if there was mercury vapor in our place, it could have invaded her adjoining townhouse.

Collin was quiet for a moment. "I don't want to tell you you're wrong, because I've thought so before and ended up being wrong myself. So how about this? Let's wait and see what the water test and air test tell us. If they show that the source of mercury was either Joanna's tap water or the air in her townhouse, you'll let this go. If not, we'll talk about next steps."

It was hard to tell whether he'd suggested this because it was a solid, methodical approach, or because it would appease me for the time being. Maybe both. But I couldn't deny that the plan made sense. "Okay. Thanks for hearing me out."

If either the water test or air test came back positive, indicating that there was indeed mercury in Joanna's home, Buck and I would need to test our townhouse as well. Until the test results were returned, I figured it was best for us to stay out of the place. Maybe it had actually been a good thing that I'd changed the door code and prevented Samira, D-Jay, and Kavish from entering the place. I might have unwittingly protected the three of them, and Samira's unborn child, as well.

Collin and I said good night and ended the call. I put my phone down and picked my cat up, cradling him to my chest. "What do you think, Sawdust? Do you think Joanna is another murder victim?"

He issued a mew, which could be taken either way.

"You're no help, kitty." I gave him a kiss on the cheek. "But I love you anyway."

On my way to the fire station Wednesday morning, I made a quick stop at the building supply store for specialized masks rated to filter out mercury vapors. No sense taking a chance. We'd wear the masks if we had to go into the townhouse for any reason.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Buck and I finished installing the drywall on the divider walls, and started a process called mudding to fill in the seams and indentations with a wet paste to smooth it out. The mud would need some time to dry before we could sand it. While it set, Buck and I installed the new countertops in the bathrooms. Owen came by to help Buck with the new bathroom fixtures. I was glad he had time to assist us. Moving heavy fixtures could be dangerous and, while I was strong enough to do it in a pinch, I'd much rather defer to someone with bigger biceps. Besides, Owen had three young girls. He could use the extra pay we'd give him.

While the men worked upstairs, I gathered up a variety of cleaning supplies and a scrub brush. I also gathered up Sawdust, who'd mewed incessantly at the door that morning, letting me know he wanted to come to work with me today. I put his harness and leash on him, and headed down to the garage bay. Though September was rapidly approaching, it was still August and warm in the bay. I raised the roll-up garage door a couple of feet, high enough to allow for air circulation, but low enough that someone couldn't just walk in. We'd had more than enough people trespassing at our properties lately.

After attaching the end of Sawdust's leash to the fireman's pole so he couldn't roam off, I donned my knee pads, filled a bucket with warm water, and got down on my hands and knees to scrub the oil stains off the concrete. Because Collin and I would be holding our wedding ceremony in this space, I planned to paint the floors with a textured, slip-resistant decorative coating so that it would look more finished. The oil stains had likely existed for years, and this task could very well be a futile effort but, even if I could only lighten them a little bit, it could mean one less coat of paint.

I was on my knees scrubbing hard, when a male voice came from under the bay door behind me. "You trying to get rid of oil stains?"

I turned to see three sets of feet and three angled faces peering under the door. The umarells were back. Ugh.

Before I could even respond, one said, "That abrasive cleanser won't cut it. What you want to use is dish soap. It's made to fight grease."

His friend disagreed. "No, what she ought to use is a tea kettle of boiling water. The heat will break up the oil."

"Hydrogen peroxide," said the third. "That's the only way to go."

Behind the men, a maroon Saturn sedan cruised slowly by on the far side of the street. The rosary hanging from the rearview mirror glinted in the sunlight. Judith Bottiglieri sat at the wheel, looking over at the men. A teenage boy with shaggy hair and a surly expression sat in the passenger seat, leaning forward to eye the fire station. Is that her grandson? The one who allegedly torched the firehouse?

Judith's eyes met mine and snapped wide. She turned her head back to the road and punched the gas, her tires squealing for a second or two before the car roared off. Had she and the boy been casing the fire station, planning another act of vandalism? I could only hope the security cameras Buck had installed on the exterior would deter them from any further attempts to destroy the property. As much as I didn't want to reward Judith or Peter after they'd damaged our property, I wondered whether Buck, Presley, and I should go ahead and pay the Bottiglieri siblings the additional five-hundred dollars they'd demanded to put them on equal footing with what we'd paid their brother John. I wondered if doing so would put an end to the conflict, get them to back off.

I barely had time to entertain the thought when the upstairs door swung open and Buck trotted down the steps. "I'm out of mud. Is there any more down here?"

"Over there." I pointed to a premixed four-and-a-half-gallon tub that sat behind the boxes of bathroom tile.

One of the men chimed in under the door. "That premixed stuff is no good. You should buy the powdered kind and mix it yourself."

Buck took one look their way, turned, and aimed for the wall. He slammed the heel of his palm on the green Start button and the alarm rang out so loud I felt it through my entire body, the sound echoing in the enclosed space. I dropped my scrub brush and grabbed Sawdust, clutching him to my chest and putting a hand over his exposed ear to muffle the sound. The meddlers yanked their heads back, which was Buck's goal. He jabbed the button to lower the bay door before hitting the Stop button to turn off the alarm. He gave his head a hard shake, as if to clear the ringing in his ears. "If those men give us one more piece of unsolicited advice, I'm going to spackle their mouths shut."

We heard the men talking on the other side of the door.

"That was uncalled for! We were only trying to help," one voice said.

"Some people just can't take criticism," another muttered.

"Let's go over to that townhouse on Van Buren Street," said the third. "Those guys sure could use our help. I saw one of them using a carriage bolt on the fence when a simple wood screw would do. Can you believe it?"

Sheesh.They'd accused me and Buck of not being able to take criticism, but they were unable to take a hint. Their advice, however well-meaning, was insulting and annoying.

Buck grabbed the tub of drywall mud and headed back upstairs. With the bay door closed now, it would be safe to let Sawdust roam about untethered. I unclipped him from his leash, and he strode forward a few steps, his tail swishing as he stopped to survey the bay and decide which part to explore first.

As Sawdust sniffed about the edges of the room, I finished scrubbing the first oil spot and moved on to another closer to the pole. Sawdust strutted over and sat down just outside the edge of the puddle formed by the soapy water. He stretched out a paw and gently touched the bubbles along the perimeter. He held his paw up to his face to examine them for a moment, like a feline detective looking over a clue, then flicked the bubbles aside.

After cleaning the second spot, I sat back on my heels on the floor. Sawdust stood and took a few steps before stopping and staring down intently at the concrete. What's caught his attention? Even when I squinted, I saw nothing there but a few specks of dust that had either been tracked in on our boots or blown in under the door. He reached out a paw to gently bat at the item. It rolled a few inches toward me, visible now. It was a tiny, shiny silver ball, hardly bigger than one of the round rainbow sprinkles commonly dashed onto ice cream or cookies. I never would have noticed it myself, but with Sawdust scouting around on the floor, he'd spotted it right away.

Where did that ball bearing come from?I'd swept the garage thoroughly before we'd brought in our supplies and materials to keep everything as clean and tidy as possible. I'd hosed out the space with a high-pressure water hose attachment, too. Hmm…

Sawdust gingerly batted the shiny little ball again, and it rolled a few more inches toward me. Some power tools contained ball bearings but, to do the job they were intended to do, the ball bearings were meant to stay inside the tools. Has one of our tools been damaged? Did the ball bearing come out of it? It seemed unlikely. We hadn't used power tools inside the bay. We'd used our power saws to cut the reclaimed flooring boards, but we'd set up out in the parking lot to perform that task, and the tools had worked perfectly. Regardless of where the ball bearing had come from, there was no sense in leaving it on the floor, where we might accidentally paint over it, leaving a tiny bump on the surface.

Sawdust watched closely as I crawled over on my hands and knees, and reached out to pick up the ball bearing. No easy feat in latex gloves. The darn thing slipped out of my grip and rolled a few inches away. I tried again to pinch it between my thumb and forefinger to no avail. Yanking off the slick gloves, I tried a third time with my bare hand. That's when I realized why the silver sphere had been so hard to pick up. It wasn't a solid ball bearing at all. Rather, it was a malleable liquid metal. A tiny drop of quicksilver, liquid mercury.

My heart leapt into my throat and I scrambled backward, startling Sawdust, who skittered off to hide behind my toolbox. Though a single, tiny bead in such a large space was unlikely to cause me or my cat any harm, the scary things I'd read while researching the toxic stuff nevertheless had me in a panic.

I rounded up Sawdust, secured him in his carrier, and placed it by the door, which I opened to allow fresh air to circulate. My beloved pet now safe, I ran over to the stack of supplies and grabbed one of the respirator masks I'd purchased, the ones that could filter out mercury vapors. After ripping it from the packaging and putting it on, I returned to the spot where the bead lay on the floor and knelt down to process the situation. I stared at the shiny bead, its smooth surface reflecting the blue of my coveralls. Where had the little bead come from?

The oil spot I'd just scrubbed nearby reminded me that an ambulance used to park in this bay alongside the fire truck. Could one of the paramedics have dropped a thermometer? It seemed possible. Maybe it had broken and released the liquid mercury. But how long would mercury stick around? Hadn't I read something about it vaporizing while I was researching last night? Yes, I had. I recalled that a pea-sized drop would vaporize in just over a year. This fire station had sat empty and unused for several years. There's no way a drop of mercury from a medic's broken thermometer would still be in liquid form here. The metal must have found its way onto the floor more recently.

I glanced around. There on the floor, only a few feet away, was the butt of the cigarette that Joanna had been smoking when she'd entered the bay last week, shortly before collapsing. The butt was squashed flat from my having ground it out with my boot. The second cigarette that she'd shaken from her pack and attempted to light also lay nearby, surrounded by a scattering of dry tobacco flakes. The tobacco shouldn't have fallen out of the cigarette to that extent. Clearly, it hadn't been packed well. Someone in quality control at the cigarette factory had really dropped the ball.

Dropped the ball…

I stared at the eerie relics for a moment, again experiencing that niggling feeling in the back of my mind that there was something to be gleaned from this tiny, shiny sphere, as if it were an itty-bitty crystal ball. Oh, no! I gasped inside the mask as I had a horrifying epiphany. My father had mentioned that the mad hatters had inhaled mercury vapors, and I'd read that inhaling mercury was the most common method of mercury poisoning. While the vapor from a small bead of mercury would dissipate in a large space, if the vapor were directly sucked into a person's lungs it could probably cause real damage, even death. Had someone inserted the tiny bead of mercury into Joanna's cigarette sothat she'd inhale the colorless, odorless vapors as she smoked? If so, who?

My first thought went back to Lane and his job at the auto salvage yard. Could he have obtained the mercury from a pre-2003 switch? Lane smoked Newports, the same brand of cigarettes as Joanna. It seemed it would have been easy for him to sneak an adulterated pack into her home. All he'd have had to do was stop by for a visit, and leave the pack behind somewhere. Joanna might not even realize it wasn't her own, or even if she realized the cigarettes belonged to Lane, she might smoke them anyway. But had he been in her house recently?

I'd seen Gideon with a pack of Newports, too, of course. He'd carried them from his place across the street, and left them on the table on Joanna's porch rather than turning them over to her directly. Why would he have done that? Why wouldn't he have knocked on the door to give them to her? After all, he saw the woman nearly every day. They regularly viewed the soap opera together. He could have returned the pack to her when he came over to watch the show with her. Hmm…

Samira and D-Jay had handled Joanna's cigarettes, too. When we'd moved Macy, Holden, Alyssa, and the moppy dog into Joanna's townhouse last Saturday, Samira and D-Jay had showed up, offering to help. They'd stuck around even after seeing that there were several others already recruited and assisting with the move. Samira had aimed straight for Joanna's pantry and started tossing things out. Had she known that Joanna stored her cigarettes there? Had she thrown out incriminating evidence under the guise of cleaning out the pantry?

I pulled out my cell phone and placed a call to Collin. My call was sent immediately to voicemail. Ugh!The nature of his work as a homicide detective meant he was often interviewing witnesses or examining evidence, and wasn't always immediately available. Maybe he'd caught a break in his double homicide case. I left a voicemail. "Hey, Collin. Call me when you can. I've found evidence that Joanna was murdered with mercury, like I'd thought." I really hadn't wanted to be right about this. "Judith Bottiglieri and her grandson drove by earlier, too." Could the two things be related somehow?

As I sat there, drawing breath through my heavy-duty plastic mask, I mulled things over. Sitting still and doing nothing was not my style. I was a woman of action. I wanted answers about Joanna's murder, and I wanted them now. The potential suspects could possibly give me some answers, but who should I contact first?

Lane seemed to work irregular shifts for the salvage yard, and I didn't have his address. He could be anywhere in the city right now. Samira and D-Jay were at work, and I wasn't about to bother them at their places of employment when, as of yet, my suspicions were only speculative. But, as a retired man with no family, Gideon was likely to be home.

I snapped several photos of the cigarettes and the bead of mercury with my phone, and texted them to Collin. I found a hex bolt in my toolbox, removed the nut, and placed it over the drop of mercury to prevent it from rolling away. I then grabbed Sawdust's carrier and took it upstairs, where I informed Buck and Owen of my discovery, showed them the photos I'd taken, and warned them not to disturb what was very likely a crime scene. I filled them in on my findings and speculated who might have killed Joanna.

Owen gaped. Though he'd helped us before on projects where someone had been found murdered, this was the first time he'd been around when things heated up. Meanwhile, Buck set down his faucet wrench and ran his fingers over his beard. Like me, this wasn't his first rodeo when it came to suspicious deaths. "You think Gideon might have tampered with her cigarettes? Why?"

"He expressed interest in buying the townhouse after we remodel it, remember? He knew I'd given Joanna the right of first refusal. The only way he'd have the chance to buy the place was if he got her out of the way."

Buck looked doubtful. "You think he'd kill her just to buy a piece of real estate?"

"Why not?" I shrugged. "People kill for less." Besides, people who committed premeditated murder weren't generally rational. They justified their actions to themselves somehow. The rest of us would only kill in immediate self-defense or defense of another. "Remember what Lane said? That Joanna hadn't exactly welcomed Gideon and her partner to the neighborhood when they moved in? He must have sensed that she wasn't happy about a gay couple living nearby. Maybe he's harbored resentment over it."

"But that was years ago," Buck said. "Lane said his mother got over it. Joanna and Gideon were good friends."

He had a point. Even so, maybe Gideon had some other reason to kill Joanna that we weren't aware of. It certainly seemed he had the means to kill her, even if, as yet, we didn't have a compelling motive for him to do so. "That old thermometer he has on his porch? The one advertising Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer? It's broken. The mercury is gone."

Buck's eyes narrowed. "How do you know that?"

"After we stopped at Gideon's place, while you were carrying Colette's risotto over to the Griffins' unit, I noticed it was hanging crooked and I stopped to straighten it." The large sign hadn't been askew the first time I'd spotted it. As someone who religiously used a level to make sure things were straight, I'm sure I would've noticed. It wasn't until a few days later that the promotional sign had become askew. "I looked closely at it to see what the temperature was, but there was no silver line." I went on to tell him what my father had told me, that many thermometers made today contained alcohol rather than mercury. "You can still get mercury thermometers online, though. Probably in some drugstores, too. But an online purchase can be easily traced, and a security camera in a store would record someone coming in to buy a mercury thermometer. There'd be some hard evidence pointing to the killer. It still seems that the root beer sign could have been the source."

Buck cocked his head. "You want to go talk to him?"

"I do." As I said the words, I realized I'd be repeating them here in a few months when I pledged my love and fidelity to Collin on our wedding day. Of course, when I said the words then, it would be for a happy reason, to begin my life with Collin, not to investigate the end of someone else's life.

Owen appeared uncomfortable, his face contorting in a cringe. "You two are just going to march over there and accuse the guy of killing the woman who was supposedly his best friend? What if you're wrong?"

He had a point. We'd look like a couple of major jerks if we mistakenly accused Gideon—or anyone else, for that matter.

"We need a guise," I said, "some reason to ask Gideon about the root beer thermometer." It took only a few seconds for an idea to pop into my head. "We're going with a nostalgic feel here, right? Leaning into this building's history as a fire station? Maybe I can ask him where he got the thermometer under the guise that I want to find similar kitschy things to decorate the firehouse before we put it on the market. I can ask him when and where he got the thermometer, and how it broke. We can assess how he responds."

"Works for me," Buck said.

Owen raised his palms and took a step back. "Count me out. I got a wife and kids at home. I don't need to go around antagonizing a possible killer."

Owen remained at the station with Sawdust, while Buck and I moved quickly down the stairs and exited the building. We strode around the corner, down the block, and onto Gideon's porch. Buck stepped over to take a look at the root beer sign, while I knocked on Gideon's door.

The door opened, and Gideon stood there, looking disheveled in a wrinkled white undershirt, rumpled plaid shorts, and a pair of slippers, no socks. A couple days' growth created a salt-and-pepper shadow across his face and neck. He appeared absolutely distraught. But was it because he'd lost his best friend, or was it because he'd killed her? Was I looking at a man overcome by grief or by guilt?

In order to answer that question, I peppered him with a series of questions. "Hi, Gideon. We normally stage our properties when we put them on the market. I'd noticed your old root beer sign." I pointed down the porch, where Buck stood in front of the sign. "We'd like to find some nostalgic decorative items like that. Can you tell me where you got it?"

Leaving his door open, he took a step out onto the porch. "That sign belonged to my partner. He got it from his grandfather, who ran a full-service gas station back when there still were full-service stations in the South. Y'all are probably too young to remember that time."

We were. As far as I could recall, we'd always had to pump our own gas here in Nashville, but it sure would be nice to have an attendant pump the gas for you on a rainy, windy, or hot day like today, or when you were dressed up and didn't want to get dirty.

Buck pointed to the thermometer. "I'm not getting a reading. Is the thermometer broken?"

"Not as far as I know." A V formed on Gideon's heavy browbone as he shuffled down the porch to take a look for himself. He leaned in, squinting and bobbing his head to and fro, like a bird. "You're right, Buck. I don't think it's working. I'll be damned." He reached out and gently removed the sign from the nail it hung on. He turned it over and inspected the thermometer attached to the back of it. "The glass looks like it's been broke." He peered down at the porch as if looking for glass fragments. "I wonder when it happened."

"You don't know?" I asked.

"No." He shook his head, again visually examining the oversized thermometer. "Last I checked, it was still showing the temperature." He looked up at me now, his gaze meeting mine. "That's probably been years ago, though, now that I think about it. If I want to know the outside temperature these days, I just check my phone."

I glanced down at the porch and saw no telltale sparkle of broken glass, either. Of course, if the thermometer had broken recently, any debris could've been swept up. I prodded him further. "Did you ever come out here and find the sign off the nail? Maybe it fell off at some point and that's when it broke."

He pondered the idea for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "I don't recall this sign ever falling off the wall. I think I'd remember if it did, because my partner was very attached to this rusty old thing. He worked at his grandfather's gas station when he was young. He had some fond memories of the man, said they both loved Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer, drank case after case of it. That's how they got the sign, from placing a large order of root beer for the gas station." Going back to our purported purpose for being here, to find out where I might find pieces of Americana for sale, Gideon said, "You can find things like this in antique shops here and there. I bet there'd be some for sale on the internet, too."

"Good ideas," I said. "Thanks, Gideon." Shifting gears, I turned to the matter of the cigarettes I'd seen him carry over to Joanna's townhouse. "By the way, I saw you take a pack of Newports to Joanna's place early last week. Do you smoke that brand, too?"

"No," he said. "I came out here to enjoy my morning coffee and spotted the pack on the porch rail there." He gestured to a spot in the center of the porch he shared with the Griffins' unit next door. "I figured Joanna must've accidentally left them there when she came over to check on her daughter. Macy won't let her smoke in their house. It was odd, though. She always carries her cigarettes and lighter together, but she'd only left the pack of cigarettes." His brows formed another V, though this one was less deep. "Why?"

I shrugged. "Just thought it was a coincidence that you two might smoke the same brand."

"Not me," he said. "I've only smoked three cigarettes in my life and each one made me sicker than the last. I didn't like the taste, either. Might as well chew on an old whitewall tire."

I cocked my head. "Can I ask you something, Gideon?"

He issued a soft snort. "When someone says that, they're asking permission to be nosey." He wasn't wrong. He cocked his head, too, his eyes narrowing. "What is it you want to know?"

I felt uncomfortable raising the issue, but I felt that it had to be addressed. "Lane mentioned at the memorial that Joanna had concerns when you and your partner moved into the neighborhood. You must've been aware of her feelings."

Gideon straightened his head. "That's not a question. That's a statement." He and I stared at each other for a long moment before he spoke again. "I could tell she wasn't happy about it. She wasn't alone in her thinking, either. But once she realized I was a good sort, she came around. So did the others."

"You didn't harbor any ill will against her?"

"It's hard to be angry at someone who's learned their lesson." He gave me a dismissive nod, letting me know the subject was closed, and turned to Buck. "I've washed your dish." He went back to his door and reached inside to retrieve it. He held the serving dish out to Buck. "Please tell your wife I enjoyed her risotto."

"Will do," Buck said, taking the dish from him.

With that, Gideon stepped back into his townhouse and shut the door on us.

Buck and I headed back to the fire station.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"If someone intentionally poisoned Joanna with mercury, it wasn't him." The poor guy was a wreck.

"That's what I think, too. He seems so lonely now."

But if it wasn't Gideon who'd killed Joanna, then who? Could the pack of Newports Gideon found on the porch have belonged to Lane? Or might Lane have left them there, knowing whoever found them would assume they were Joanna's and take them to her?

I put my mask back on and finished scrubbing the oil stains. They refused to disappear entirely, but at least they were much less noticeable once I finished. As Sawdust and I left for the day, I cast a glance back at the nut on the floor, the one keeping the tiny drop of mercury corralled. Where had it originated? Who had sneaked it into Joanna's cigarette? If only that drop could talk.…