Elixir

by Davis Bunn

  “The second item was not a plant. Not a plant at all. An artifact. A clay jar that looked quite old. Centuries. She asked me to test the residue.”

  “And?”

  “I have no idea. It was unlike anything we have seen before. Except that it did bear a faint resemblance to the composite found within the roots of the Gincava gravis. Which is astonishing.”

  “Astonishing how?”

  “Think about it, man. She identified a medicinal compound from the earliest settlers, perhaps something brought over from Europe. Then she traced how these early healers sought out a local plant that contained a similar sort of compound. This is groundbreaking research. I urged her to write it up. I would present it to a top journal for publication.”

  “But what does the compound do?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. Wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess. Finding the answer to that would take a great deal of further research. Years. I told her it would make for a fascinating doctorate. One I would be happy to help sponsor.”

  “Where did she come across the jar?”

  “A private collection. I recall her mentioning something about one of the older establishments in the area.” He waved the question aside. “It was perfectly in her right to maintain confidentiality while she prepared for publication.”

  Taylor started to rise, then was halted by a further thought. “What if she found documents that said what the compound had been used for?”

  “That would speed things up, certainly. But you don’t understand the significance here. More than likely, modern science has already isolated a new compound that does the job better than this old elixir, whatever it was. What is fascinating is that healers of old actually thought enough of this treatment to identify something here that worked like what they had there. Do you see?”

  “I think so.”

  “This suggests a remarkable degree of scientific study, of testing any number of compounds on patients and themselves until they finally came up with a substitute.” The thought was so exciting the professor was unable to remain in his chair. “Think about it, man. What we are seeing is the birth of our nation’s pharmaceutical heritage. This might even be the earliest known example of indigenous herbs being adapted for healing by Europeans in the New World.”

  “Thank you for your time.”

  “When you find her, tell her she must return and complete this work. Tell her it is a groundbreaking discovery. Groundbreaking.”

  TAYLOR WAITED UNTIL DARK, THEN ARRIVED AT HIS mother’s house via the back route. The fences were more rickety than he remembered, or perhaps he had simply grown more awkward with age and injury. An old hound whose name he did not recall barked once, then smelled his hand and whined in recognition. Obviously the dog’s memory was better than his own.

  The key was under the same flowerpot. The kitchen door still had to be lifted over the bulge in the linoleum. The odors assaulted him even before he entered the house. He smelled oil-based paints and turpentine and wood smoke and soap. It was the clearest memory of his childhood, these smells.

  Taylor was halted by the photograph over the kitchen sink. He had the same picture on his mantel. He and his father were standing on a coulee west of town, their flat-bottomed skiff filled with bass and gear. His father bore a smile so grand it shone in the faint light. Here was a man who could do anything, go anywhere, be forgiven of any failing. Even imparting to his son habits that had destroyed the one relationship he ever wanted to see last.

  “Taylor?”

  “Hello, Ma.”

  She came into the kitchen wearing her painting smock, her face and hands decorated by the day’s work. “Why didn’t you call, son? I haven’t got a thing in the house for you to eat.”

  He hugged her. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Of course you are. Big strapping boy like you.” She moved back far enough to see the bandages. “What on earth have you done to yourself?”

  “I scraped my head. It’s nothing. How are you?”

  “Fine. How else should I be?” She headed for the front room. “Let me just clean up and I’ll put something on the stove.”

  “No thanks, really.” The front parlor had been turned into her studio. Taylor’s mother had adapted to a hazardous world by pretending. She had a reputation through five states, painting portraits of what wasn’t necessarily there. All her subjects were happy. All her painted children shone with the joy of new life. All her families clung together in blissful harmony.

  Her easel held a yard-wide portrait of a young couple holding twin infants who had captured enough sunlight to illuminate the room. “That’s real nice, Ma.”

  “It’ll do.” Her own smile was a somewhat twisted affair, as though the ends of her mouth could not quite release themselves from invisible weights. “Pays the rent.”

  He watched her use the rag to clean first her brushes and then her hands. He finally spoke because waiting made it no easier. “Ma, I’ve got to ask you to do something for me.”

  His tone was enough to freeze her up tight.

  “I need you to pack up some things and go stay with Ada for a few days. Not long. A week max.”

  Taylor expected a serious argument. His mother loved the old place, such that anything he tried to do around the house—be it paint the exterior, fix the sagging front porch, or buy a new fridge—provoked serious dissent. But his mother surprised him by merely asking softly, “Is it a woman?”

  “No, Ma.”

  “You got some girl in trouble. Her family’s coming after you.”

  The way she said it, as a statement drawn from her own shadows, struck him as hard as waking up inside the dungeon. “Did that happen to Pop?”

  “We’re talking about you, not your father.”

  As far as Taylor was aware, his mother did not possess a sharp edge to her tongue. But he caught the edge to her words, sure enough. “It’s not a woman. Truth, Ma. I’m involved in an investigation at work. The company’s being acquired. It’s very complicated. A lot of people’s jobs are on the line here.”

  She greeted the news as she did all the darkness in her life, quietly and with eyes wide open. “Now somebody’s after you?”

  “I can’t be certain. But it’d make me sleep a lot better if I knew you were safe. Please, Ma.”

  She touched his head with turpentine-drenched fingers. “Did they do that to you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She opened her mouth as if to object. But something she saw in his face changed her mind. She merely sighed and said, “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

  chapter 6

  TAYLOR DROPPED HIS MOTHER OFF AT ADA’S. HE could not say which was worse—his mother’s quiet resignation or Ada’s silent glare.

  He drove along the river to the Vilano Bridge and crossed to the northern barrier island. He passed through Vilano Beach and took Highway A1A north. Soon he entered the dark and empty reaches of Guana River State Park. Taylor rolled down all four windows of his rental car and let the memories wash in with the warm night breeze. Guana Park had been one of their favorite meeting places. He had always kept a blanket in his pickup. Kirra would go anywhere he wanted, and she was not a woman who expected to be entertained. She could lie in his arms for hours, content to watch the stars and listen to the ocean’s orchestration. That had been a hard lesson for him to learn. At first Taylor had felt challenged to measure up to the ritzy parties he had witnessed on board the floating palace. But Kirra slipped off her wealth as easily as she did her sandals. All she wanted was him, she had whispered in a voice drawn from rushing waves and moonlight.

  Taylor pulled the car to the side of the road. He pressed his fists against his eyeballs and fought down the flames of castoff memories. He should have never come back. There was no way to make this warped way straight, or heal these wounds. Taylor punched the wheel. The universe was riven. The course of everyone’s life was permanently distorted.

  A car roared by him, trailing faint tendrils of l
aughter and music. Taylor opened his eyes when the sound faded away. The night was empty of all but the heat and the sea breeze. He heaved his aching chest around a sigh. He put the car into gear and headed north.

  Sawgrass was a community designed by people who didn’t care how much it cost to do exactly what they wanted. It was their attempt to remake the seaside world as they saw fit. An undeveloped lot in Sawgrass went for a million and change. Zoning was so restricted their one McDonald’s was housed in a red-brick palace whose golden arches were only three feet high and solid bronze. Taylor parked in a shopping mall done up as a pristine Italian village. He entered the development as he always had for Kirra—over the wall by the seventeenth green.

  He tracked around the bordering pines, studying the Revell manor as he would enemy terrain. The house was Provençal in design, with tall dormer windows peeking from the roof of pale tiles. Taylor waited for a security golf cart to meander by, then slipped through the groomed hedges and approached the house. He spied Amanda and her father seated in the living room, talking earnestly with a man he did not recognize. The stranger wore a priest’s dark suit and collar. Father and daughter were leaning forward in tight unison. Taylor felt a moment’s sympathy for the vicar and the pressure he was enduring.

  He climbed the massive live oak, his feet treading along the uppermost branch as he would a familiar path. He slipped over Kirra’s balcony and found the key where she had always left it for him. Silently he let himself into her room. He crossed the carpet, hating how the place smelled of Kirra and his own bitter regrets.

  He opened the bedroom door and checked the empty hallway. He knew this house so very well, particularly in secret. He slipped down the darkened stairwell, recalling other nights when she would hang on his arm and giggle over the senseless risks they took. Taylor walked down the rear hall and took the last door before the kitchen. The library’s lights were on. The home office was precisely as he remembered, the only change a huge aerial photograph of the company’s sailing yacht winning some international competition. It hung behind the desk, a place formerly reserved for a portrait of Kirra’s mother. The desk was piled high with papers and files bearing the Revell corporate logo. Taylor padded across the Persian carpet and stood looking out the French doors at the night. Kirra’s fragrance seemed to have followed him in here, which was impossible. She had always hated this room.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.” Taylor turned to face an irate Amanda. “We need to talk.”

  “I have a guest.”

  “Five minutes.”

  Carefully she shut the door behind her. “You were supposed to call me last night!”

  “I got held up.”

  Without taking her eyes from him, she crossed to her desk. “Explain.”

  “You first. Who is after Kirra, Amanda?”

  “If I knew that, I’d know where to look for her.”

  “You’ve got to have some idea.”

  “A competitor, maybe. Somebody out to profit from her absence.”

  “Don’t expect me to believe she’s become involved in the family company.”

  “Of course not.” Amanda seated herself behind the massive African stinkwood desk. “But you see for yourself how distracted we’ve become by all this. It would suit a lot of people to know we’ve taken our eye off the ball.”

  “Give me a for instance.”

  “I can’t, not with any certainty.” Amanda appeared to be genuinely confused by this prospect. “I spend the better part of every night pondering the same question.”

  “Your goons didn’t turn up anything?”

  “If they had, you think I’d have asked for your help?” Amanda reached behind the desk and hefted a briefcase of whitened steel. “At least your appearance saves me the need to arrange a handover. Here, take it.”

  He walked over, snapped the locks, found himself staring at a pile of cash.

  “A hundred thousand dollars. Go where you need, buy who you have to. Just bring my sister home.”

  Taylor’s mind was hit by too many conflicting questions. The one that came out was what had carried him this far. “She really asked for me?”

  “We’ve received one message from her. If you want to find me, send Taylor. Nothing else.”

  “You know she’s had a history of running away.”

  “Not since she got into her religion kick. Besides, this time is different.” Amanda let that one hang between them, then finished, “Here’s your chance to succeed where you last failed, sport. Don’t blow this one. She needs you.”

  “Like you would know. Like you ever understood Kirra.”

  “Oh, and you’re the expert now?”

  He made a process of shutting the case and closing the locks. “Back up to when she and I broke up.”

  “What about it?”

  “I want you to admit to putting detectives on my tail.”

  Amanda sneered as if she had spent years preparing her response. “Was I the one who slept with that peroxided tramp?”

  “Answer the question, Amanda!”

  “Why should I?” Matching his tone lifted her from the chair. “You want to play inquisitor, how about trying a little of your own medicine? Who was the one who was unfaithful to my little sister?”

  “Only that one time! Or didn’t your detectives bother—”

  “Oh, spare me! You broke her heart!”

  “We weren’t together! I hadn’t seen her in almost two months! She—”

  “Save it for somebody who cares, Taylor! Deal with reality. She’s gone.”

  The door behind them slammed open. “I should have known.”

  Jack Revell remained ever the patriarch, even when supported by a walker. The priest stood behind him, holding the old man’s elbow, not bothering to hide his curiosity.

  Jack pointed one shaking hand at Taylor but directed his anger at his daughter. “I warned you this would happen. You allow scum like this back into our lives, he’ll never let go!”

  “Leave it alone, Pop.” Amanda no longer sounded angry. Only tired. “You know we have no choice.”

  “Scum!” Jack’s entire arm trembled with the rage of ages. “I should have had you shot and salted and mounted for what you did to my daughter! You wounded my family. You shredded every hope of recovering Kirra and bringing her back into the fold!”

  “That’s not—”

  A bullet blasted through the French doors, lodging in the wall between him and Kirra’s father. Instinctively, Taylor leaped forward and dragged both Jack Revell and the panicked priest out of the line of fire.

  Amanda shrieked and dove behind the desk as a multitude of guns opened up. Both sets of French doors shattered. Glass and wall plaster fell like arid rain.

  Taylor heaved Jack Revell back down the hallway. The old man was still raging over Taylor’s audacity in doing anything other than what Jack Revell ordered him to do. The priest lay with his hands over his head, his jacket now white with dust.

  The shooting halted. Amanda used that instant to crawl to the hall’s relative safety, dragging the briefcase with her. She shared her father’s rage, only hers was aimed at the attackers. “How dare they do this!”

  “You see?” Jack’s voice was hoarse from the dust and the strain, but his rage at Taylor was unabated. “This is his fault! He wasn’t satisfied with—”

  “Quiet!” Amanda rammed the briefcase into Taylor’s arms. “Go!”

  “My car is five blocks from here.” He heard sirens in the distance. “Let’s wait for the police.”

  “No!”

  “It’ll be safer for everybody, Amanda.”

  “You can’t be seen! They can’t know you’re looking!”

  Taylor tried to say they already knew, but Amanda was not in listening mode. She shoved a set of keys at him. “Take my car from the garage! Get the priest out of here! Run!”

  chapter 7

  NATURALLY, AMANDA’S CAR WAS THE MOST EXPENsive Porsche o
n the road, a silver convertible Carrera Turbo. It was parked facing out with the top down. With the priest cowering in the passenger seat beside him, Taylor punched buttons all over the dash until the garage door started grinding up. He hit the starter. The noise exploded around them like audible flames.

  Taylor blasted out of the house like a rocket impatient to leave the pad. He roared down the lane and did a four-point skid into the main road. He hit a hundred in second gear while he was still approaching the guard station. The security cop on night duty must have recognized both the car and the manner of driving, because the barrier bounced up like it was afraid. The cop stepped from the brick house to shout something about gunfire, but Taylor could not risk raising one hand in a wave. The car was that fierce.

  He blasted out of Sawgrass and aimed south. The night whipped about them in fragrances of frangipani and salt. Fifteen minutes into the screaming flight, he realized that their speed alone was enough to get him locked up forever. He slowed to a relatively sane seventy-five. The motor seemed to grumble at being reined back. Only then did Taylor realize that his entire body was trembling.

  He pulled off the road, turned off the motor, and got out of the car. He looked down at his passenger. The priest had neither moved nor spoken. “Are you hit?”

  “They said she was in danger.” The priest was neither young nor old, his face a series of taut creases, his features even, his dark hair framed with silver flecks. “I had no idea.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He turned his face upward. A passing car reflected upon clear gray eyes. “You are Taylor Knox.”

  Then it hit him. “Father Pellecier?”

  “It seems we have both been informed of the other’s existence.” The father smiled. “I hope they spoke more favorably of me than they did of you.”

  “They didn’t tell me a thing. Ada Folley suggested . . . never mind.” He slid back into the car. “Do you know where Kirra is?”

  “Let me see if I understand this correctly.” He had a professor’s precise way of speaking. Every word was laid in place with ecumenical precision. “Are you not the young man responsible for crushing my favorite student’s heart?”