Old Poison (6 page)

Ken Hoffman walked over to us, and guarded
looks passed between the two men. Ken was not really handsome but
was large and athletic, with a strong masculine presence. From my
first glance at his broad shoulders and thick neck, I pegged him as
a college football hero and big-man-on-campus.

With forced casualness Gill said, “Mr.
Hoffman, allow me to present Diana Hunter, an acquaintance of
Professor Lilac’s. It seems that Evelyn loaned Miss. Hunter her
pass for the expo. I think maybe this solves the mystery of why it
was said that Evelyn was here.”

Ken tried to control his facial reaction but
was artlessly transparent, revealing first relief then confusion
and concern. His lack of skill in the fine art of duplicity seemed
like a good opening.

Shaking his hand, I said, “I stopped by your
booth earlier, Ken, but I had no idea we had a mutual acquaintance.
How is it that you know Evelyn?”

His expression warmed immediately. “Oh, Ev
lives in a small cottage at our institute. It’s somewhat of a
symbiotic relationship. In fact, she says she is like one of the
air plants that cling to trees. We give her free rent to help with
her work. Then she stays there year round and keeps an eye on the
place during the months we have to come back to the States and beg
for money.”

“Oh, that’s great,” I said. “So does Gill
work with your institute too?”

He started to answer in his same happy-puppy
openness, but Gill interrupted before Ken could speak.

“No, I just live in the same village.”

“Don’t you believe him,” said Ken. “If it
wasn’t for–”

“Whoa, whoa, my friend. Before you begin
telling lies about me, I promised Miss Hunter a glass of our
wonderful homemade fruit juice.” The look that passed between them
was sufficient to stop Ken’s open discourse.

“Oh, ah, sure. Come on in the back here,” he
said, inviting me into a small canvas enclosure at the back of the
exhibit booth.

It did not escape my notice that I was now
out of sight of the people in the hall, and had lost what safety
there had been in that crowd.

Ken stuck his head through the curtain to
the front of the booth and asked, “Judy, we still have some Number
Ten on ice?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the ice chest, of course.”

“Ah, which one?”

Through the opening I could see Judy’s face
and almost laughed out loud. Her expression was one of both
exasperation and resignation. “You want me to come and do it?”

Ken gave her a little boy grin.
“Please.”

She came into the back to find the juice,
and I was again introduced as Evelyn’s “acquaintance,” this time to
Dr. Judith Hoffman, M.D. She was a tall woman who radiated an
intelligent, calm control. The football hero had not married the
cheerleader but the valedictorian. As she started rummaging around
through the ice chest, Gill turned on his inquisitor voice and
asked, “Miss Hunter, how exactly is it that you are acquainted with
Professor Lilac?”

I hesitated as I considered truth or lie. My
people-reader pegged Gill as an investigative professional of some
sort. Revealing information to another professional when you have
no idea whether he is a good guy or bad guy is dangerous.
Sometimes, however, it’s helpful to reveal some of your information
in order to see what sort of response it draws. Here I had three
people I could watch for reactions, and I already knew that one of
them had a hard time with a poker face.

“We met on the river bike trail yesterday.
Some guy had pulled her off her bike and was trying to shove her
into a waiting boat. I sort of ran over the guy with my bike and
knocked him into the boat instead.”

I had hoped for a reaction and got both more
and less than I had hoped for. All the color drained from Judith’s
face and air hissed past her teeth as she drew a sudden startled
breath. She lost her grip on the bottle of green-colored juice and
it dropped to the cement floor. The glass exploded like shrapnel,
and the fragrant green juice splashed in a 360-degree radius. Ken
cursed and all of us instinctively jumped away from the disaster.
For the next few minutes all conversation about Evelyn Lilac
ceased. We busied ourselves sopping up the liquid and picking
dozens of sharp little diamonds of glass from the floor and our
clothing. Judy was apologizing, Ken was reassuring, and Gill was
very, very quiet.

As we were finishing the cleanup, Gill said,
“Judith, Ken, it’s almost time for you two to make your
presentation to the pharmaceutical committee.” For a split second I
thought they both looked at him a little confused, but as he issued
instructions, they checked their watches and seemed to catch his
sense of urgency.

“Judith, you show Miss. Hunter to the
exhibitor’s powder room so she can get all the glass and juice
stains out of her clothing. Work quickly, Miss Hunter, because that
will stain if it dries. Ken, you and Judith go to the trailer and
change into your presentation clothes, and I’ll clean up the rest
of the mess here.

“Miss Hunter, we all want very much to know
more about this incident on the bike trail. If you have time, we
would be grateful if you could meet us at the Costa Rican
restaurant in the food court in about one hour. If you will be so
kind as to be my guest at dinner, we can have time to talk.”

I was hustled off to a spacious and
well-equipped powder room and spent almost thirty minutes shaking
my clothes, rinsing the spots out of my skirt, and drying it under
the hand dryer.

Once finished, I still had a half hour to
kill, so I ambled slowly toward the food court, looking at some of
the exhibits I had missed earlier. When I passed the booth where I
had bought a video of one of Evelyn’s speeches, it occurred to me
that I no longer had it and assumed I must have set it down in the
Enviro-Medic booth.

I circumnavigated the food court twice, and
though there was a wide selection of food, no booth said Costa
Rica. I then sought out an employee and asked for directions to the
Costa Rican restaurant. He told me flatly that there was no such
thing. All the food was supplied by convention center catering.

Feeling unbelievably foolish, I fought my
way back through the crowd to the Enviro-Medic Research booth. At
the spot on the convention floor where the booth had been, there
was nothing left but a large green stain on the floor and the sack
with my video of Professor Evelyn Lilac.

* * * * *

Monday morning I had bits and pieces of
eleven cases pending. By Friday, I had mailed nine final reports,
with invoices attached. This burst of energy and efficiency was my
way of ignoring the one case that had me stumped. Mr. Borson,
Professor Evelyn Lilac, Guillermo Jesus Montegro Y Monteblan, and
Ken and Judith Hoffman had all flat-out disappeared. I was left
with part of a retainer and a very unpleasant question. What had
been Borson’s real agenda?

I had broken my own basic rule: Only work
for attorneys where cases are filed and everything done through
legal procedures. With a layman client you can get blind-sided by
your client’s hidden agenda. Private investigators who ignore this
end up in the wrong kind of newspaper headline: “MAN KILLS
ESTRANGED GIRLFRIEND. ADDRESS SUPPLIED BY PRIVATE EYE.”

The fact is, if Borson had just tried to
hire me that first day, I would have turned him down. He had played
me expertly, introducing himself inside the courthouse, baiting me
with my own curiosity, and sucking me in with two seemingly
innocent meetings. “Just try the first assignment,” he had said.
“If you don’t like the work, you will never hear from me again.”
Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Hard work on other cases allowed me to
ignore the question until Friday night, when Sam and I were having
dinner at the Ocean Way Grill. A young man walked up to me and
asked, “Are you Ms. Diana Hunter?”

“Yes.”

“I was supposed to deliver this package to
you here at seven p.m. Sorry, I’m a little late.”

The kid turned to leave and did not respond
when I said, “Wait, who told you I would be here? Where did this
package come from?” He kept right on going and was out the door in
a dozen running steps.

I looked at Sam. He put his napkin on the
table and lumbered his big body out the door. He returned in about
five minutes. His only comment was a shake of his head. The kid had
disappeared.

Eyeing the unopened package he asked, “You
want to have a demolitions guy look at it before you open it?”

I smiled. “No, I know what’s in it. A CD and
a wad of cash. I just don’t know how in the hell Borson knew I
would be here at seven o'clock.”

Sam shrugged. “We can check your phone and
apartment for bugs, but with the equipment today, he could
eavesdrop on you with no hardware in place. Chances are we won’t
find anything. Let’s just go to your place and see what we
got.”

Neither of us spoke as Sam drove us the
eight blocks to my building. As we climbed eight flights of stairs,
however, he did mumble something unflattering about my choice of
residence.

I pressed my thumb to the security button
Sam had installed on my door. After reading my print, the system
unlocked the dead bolts and I opened the door.

Yeabot rolled over to the entry and greeted
us with, “Hello, Mother. Hello, Uncle Sam. Mother, you have two
messages. Would you like to hear your messages now?”

Sam studied his handiwork for a moment, then
said, “You know, Diana, if you keep living in this dump, you’re
gonna get hit. It’s a bad part of town.”

“Sam, I already have Yeabot to protect me,
as well as the security system you put in. No, thank you, Yeabot.
I’ll hear messages later.”

“Would Mother and Uncle Sam like a
scotch?”

“No thanks, Yeabot. Just rest. We’ll call
you if we need anything.”

Still frowning at his own thoughts, Sam
said, “Yeah, well, you know what trouble I’d have if anyone knew
about Yeabot. I think I better upgrade its security system a
little. Maybe I could also work on some sensors that would pick up
on anyone listening in on you.”

We pulled chairs up to my desk; I turned on
the computer and put in the new CD. I typed in my password,
“rdskblu,” and the screen filled with words. Above the diary text
was a note.

“You will soon have news of Evelyn. You need
to read this. B”

15665-6-3 MY LAST DAY (47th language
translation–English 20th century)

Syntax adjusted

Copy 2,783 (Caretaker–Nosha)

I do not know if the dreams we Nomads have
lived and died for have any hope of ever coming true. But hopeful
or hopeless, I have lived for those dreams for twenty-two years.
Now, I am ready to die for them.

The day the nomads rescued me was the real
beginning of life. That day is still vivid in my memory. I sat on
the plastibag after the Red 19 dissipated and cried with relief,
then crawled to the rim of the Great Drain. Looking around at the
vast expanse of sand and sky, I was overwhelmed by the immensity of
the world. Born and raised in a subterranean burrocity, I had never
seen a ceiling of more than one man-height nor a habitat space
larger than one cordat. This much sky and this much space was
terrifying. How could I hope to find the Nomads or even
survive.

Like a frightened nimwat who curls into a
ball and becomes as still as death, I curled up, pulled my windrobe
over my head, and gave up hope.

I awoke to rough hands picking me up and
wrapping me tightly in great coils of cloth. I did not even care to
resist for I had already accepted death. Then a man with kind blue
eyes and a huge red-blond beard took my face in his hands. He made
me look into his face and said, “My friend, you are in need of
water and you have the open land sickness. I cover your eyes so you
will not fear. Go to sleep now. We will take you to safety.” Then
he gave me water to drink and bound cloth around my eyes.

I was tied to some hard surface that moved
roughly across the land, but I could not guess what propelled it.
There was no sound or smell of motors, only the wind overhead and
the thumps against the uneven sand.

I slept fitfully and awoke to chilling cold.
We had stopped and I was on the ground again. Quiet voices murmured
around me, soft footsteps patted about, and occasionally there was
a muted tinkle of pots and dishes. Someone touched my shoulder
gently and I heard the voice of the Red Beard say, “Here, Antia,
let me unbind you. It is night now and the world will not look so
fearsome.”

I was surprised to hear my name and see the
welcome roof of a low rock cave. An open fire blazed a few feet
away, powered by small black lumps of fuel. I had never seen such a
thing. Only Red 19 stoves were allowed in the burrocity.

Red Beard bade me move closer and warm
myself and gave me a large cup of hot drink. It was a strange drink
with many flavors vying for my tongue’s attention, first bitter,
then herbal, then sweet and satisfying.

Four men and two women moved about the cave
in quiet efficient movements, revealing long familiarity with their
routine. Soon a camp was set, a meal cooked, and security zones
established. As we all ate our meal, Red Beard introduced himself
as Ober, leader of this group sent to search for me.

Seven people risking their lives to rescue
me seemed such an obvious fabrication that it insulted my
intelligence and I said so. The group responded in anger that I
should call their Ober a liar, but he calmed them, telling them
that I was burrocity raised and knew no better.

“Antia, there are two things you must know.
First you must open your mind to a totally different society. We
Nomads care about one another and often give our lives to save
others. Prepare yourself for a new world which you must learn about
very quickly.”