Zinnia

by Jayne Castle

  She listened while the answering machine picked up the call.

  “Zinnia? This is your Aunt Willy. I have been trying to reach you all day. Why didn’t you tell me that Mr. Chastain was a member of the Founders’ Club? You never mentioned that you were going to the annual charity ball. By the way, I wonder if Mr. Chastain ought to consider a lawsuit against that dreadful tabloid and Rexford Eaton, too. Give me a call as soon as you get in.”

  Zinnia heard the new note of respect in her aunt’s voice. So it was Mr. Chastain now, was it? Maybe Nick was right. Maybe one could buy respectability. A single photo of him inside the Founders’ Club, even though it showed him stretched out on the lobby floor, and Aunt Willy was starting to think he had possibilities.

  Zinnia got off the bed and headed for the shower. The phone rang again just as she was about to step into the bathroom. She paused on the threshold to listen.

  “Zin? It’s me, Leo. I just got back from the hospital. Nick is chomping at the bit. The doctor says she wants to keep him for another day or two for observation, but I have a hunch he’s going to check himself out soon. I called to see how you’re doing. Guess you’re still asleep.”

  Zinnia hurried across the room and scooped up the phone. “Hi, Leo. I’m awake. Just about to take a shower.”

  “Feeling better? I was worried about you last night. You looked as if you’d been dragged through a Western Islands jungle after you finished focusing for Nick.”

  “Nothing like having a younger brother when you want to know the truth. I’m recovering fast. Almost back to normal. How’s Nick?”

  “Like I said, getting ready to check himself put in spite of the doctor’s orders. Clementine was visiting with him when I got there.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I think they’d had what might be called a heated discussion about you just before I arrived. But they looked like they’d called a truce when I walked into the room.”

  “A truce?”

  “I heard Nick say something about having a plan.”

  Zinnia winced. “Not a good sign.”

  “Zin? Level with me. What’s happening between you and Chastain?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Leo was silent for a moment. “Think he’s in love with you?”

  Zinnia clutched her robe tightly and sank down into a chair. “The last thing he said to me before the crazy-fog got him was that he loved me. But I’m sure he only said it because he thought he was going insane. He was facing what, for him, was the ultimate horror. I was the last human being he saw before he walked into chaos.”

  “In other words, you think the drama of the situation had a profoundly motivational impact on his decision to declare his love,” Leo said dryly. “The final farewell before the great battle, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “I think we can assume that, yes.” Zinnia reached for a tissue to blot the sudden dampness from her eyes. “Perfectly understandable.”

  “It’s also perfectly understandable that he might actually be in love with you.”

  “I don’t fit the profile of the woman he intends to marry. And he’s not exactly my ideal mate, either. It’s one thing to have an affair with a matrix, but what intelligent woman would marry one?”

  There was a short loud pause on the other end of the line. “An affair?”

  “That’s all it can ever be.”

  “Do yourself a favor, Zin. Don’t make any snap decisions here, okay? You’ve been through a lot during the past twenty-four hours. Give yourself some time to calm down and regain your sense of balance.”

  She sniffed into the tissue. “Okay.”

  “Take care. I’ll check back with you later.”

  “Thanks, Leo.” Zinnia put down the phone. For a long time she gazed morosely at the Early Exploration Period seascape on the wall.

  After a while she crumpled the tissue, tossed it aside, and got up to take her shower.

  She did not hear the phone ring a third time because of the noise of the pulsing water and the closed door. But when she walked out of the bath half an hour later the answering machine was in the midst of recording another call.

  “Miss Spring? Newton DeForest here. Say, I did some checking in those old files. The ones I have stored down in the family crypt. I was surprised to find that I did have some information on the financial aspects of the Third Expedition. Not much, but if you would like to take a look at it— “

  Zinnia snatched up the receiver. “Hello? Professor DeForest? Hang on.” She punched buttons madly until the answering machine clicked off. “Sorry about that. What were you saying?”

  “I have a brief note taken from an old interview with a New Portland University clerk here. For some reason, I jotted down the fact that a company by the name of Fire and Ice Pharmaceuticals had expressed an interest in underwriting the Chastain expedition. The firm went out of business years ago, however. Is this the sort of thing you were looking for?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”

  “I may have a few more bits and pieces here somewhere. Not a lot, but you’re welcome to what little there is.”

  Zinnia glanced at the clock. Five-fifteen. “Would you mind very much if I pick it up this evening?”

  “I’ll be waiting for you, Miss Spring. If I don’t answer the door, come on around the back. I’ll be in the garden. I like to use these long summer days to get in a little extra pruning. My dear little blood-creepers grow so quickly.”

  Chapter 22

  Nick looked up from his notes when he sensed the hulking figure in the doorway of the hospital room. “Come on in, Feather. It’s safe. Zinnia went home to get some sleep.”

  “Too bad.” Feather ambled into the room. “I was going to make my report to her.”

  “What report?”

  “She didn’t like me being here in the same room with you last night so she ordered me to go make myself useful.” Feather’s shaved head gleamed in the glow of the overhead light. He came to a halt beside the bed. “She sent me off to find the twin-snakes that jumped you in the garage.”

  Nick had a vague memory of an argument that had been waged across his bed sometime during the night. “Any luck?”

  “Yeah. Kind of interesting. One turned up in the morgue.”

  “Don’t look at me. I didn’t put him there. The last thing I remember, he was on the floor of the garage but he was still breathing.”

  “He was still breathing when he and his pal got away during the confusion before the cops arrived, too,” Feather said. “But he had a real unfortunate accident later. They found him in an alley in Founders’ Square about five this morning.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone stuck his own knife in his chest. The official verdict is that he was just a dealer who got into a quarrel with one of his crazy-fog clients.”

  “He was carrying far too much crazy-fog to be a street dealer or a fog-head.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Miss Spring said, too. Y’know, she’s prickly as a cactus-orange, but she’s got a brain on her shoulders.” Admiration gleamed briefly in Feather’s eyes. “So we have to assume someone paid two street toughs to dose you with the stuff.”

  “And later that same someone killed one of them to make sure he didn’t talk. What about the second man?”

  Feather shook his head. “No sign of him so far. I’ve put the word out that we want him and we’re paying top dollar for information. My hunch is he’ll turn up in the same condition as the other one.”

  Nick glanced down at the notes he had been making. “Two more connections in the matrix. Whoever sent those men after me knew that I was a matrix and probably had a good idea of what a heavy dose of pure crazy-fog would do to my kind of talent.”

  “Shit synergy. You mean whoever is behind this wanted to drive you insane?”

  “Yes.” Nick mused over that for a few seconds. “But why go to all that trouble?
Why not just kill me instead?”

  Feather’s mouth twitched. “You’re a hard man to kill. Easier to hit you with a batch of crazy-fog. Safer, too. The police would probably spend a lot of time looking into the murder of a guy in your position. There’d be a whole bunch of dumb speculation about gangster connections and stuff. Be all over the newspapers for days.”

  “But it would be easy to label what happened last night as just an unfortunate accident that occurred during a routine mugging. The police wouldn’t have any reason to dig for a murder conspiracy.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, the logic makes sense,” Nick admitted. “But I think there’s something else I’m overlooking in the matrix.”

  “No offense, boss, but you always think there’s more to a situation than meets the eye. Some things are just what they look like.”

  “Not in this case.” Nick hesitated.

  “Jeez, boss, don’t go gettin’ paranoid on me now.”

  “The bottom line here is that I didn’t have these problems before I started trying to get my hands on the Chastain journal a few weeks ago.”

  “If you ask me, you didn’t have any of these problems until you met Miss Spring.”

  Nick looked at him. “She saved me last night, Feather.”

  “I ain’t arguin’ about that. Point is, would you have needed saving if she hadn’t walked into your life?”

  “Now you’re the one who sounds like a conspiracy buff. Concentrate on finding the other knife man.”

  “Don’t worry, I will. Hey, almost forgot.” Feather reached into his pocket and drew out a small notebook. “Finally located one of the clerks who used to work in the budget offices of New Portland University thirty-five years ago. Name of Mrs. Buckley. Retired to a little farm in Lower Bellevue.”

  Nick swung his legs over the side of the bed. The movement caused a flicker of lightheadedness. He froze, but the sensation vanished quickly. He drew a deep breath of relief and stood on the cold floor.

  “Did this Mrs. Buckley remember anything about the funding arrangements for the Third Expedition?” he asked as he yanked at the tie that secured the hospital gown.

  “She didn’t handle that project. Said the clerk who processed the paperwork for it died a long time ago. Heart attack or somethin’.”

  “Yet another astonishing coincidence.” Nick tossed the gown onto the bed. He was still a bit unsteady but everything felt relatively normal.

  “You okay, boss?”

  “Yes.” He made his way to the small closet and opened it. The formal black shirt, jacket, and trousers that he had worn to the ball hung inside. They were badly wrinkled and there was a lot of garage-floor dirt on them but he was not feeling too concerned about presenting a respectable appearance at the moment. He reached for the shirt. “Did Mrs. Buckley have anything useful to tell us?”

  Feather chuckled. “Turns out she was having an affair with the clerk who handled the Third Expedition arrangements. He talked a little about it after they got word that it had been canceled. She believes he told her that a chemical or pharmaceutical company of some kind had agreed to underwrite the venture. She thinks he said that the company wanted to remain anonymous in order to avoid publicity.”

  “A chemical or pharmaceutical company.” A tingle of adrenaline shafted through Nick. It had a remarkably steadying effect. The familiar sense of tightness told him that the coordinates in the matrix were starting to form a complete pattern at last. He paused in the act of buttoning his shirt. “Yes. That fits. Did she give you a name?”

  “She couldn’t remember it exactly, but she thinks the word fire was in there somewhere.”

  Nick felt more points in the matrix begin to connect. He stepped into his trousers. “Did you check the—”

  Feather held up a hand. “Hold it right there, boss. I’m way ahead of you. I checked the phone books, the tri-city-state registry of corporations, and the lists of all business-license holders in New Vancouver, New Seattle, and New Portland. There are no chemical or pharmaceutical companies with the word fire in their corporate names.”

  “The company probably disappeared along with everything else that has to do with this thing.” Nick buckled his belt. “We’ll have to go back to the phone books and the corporate registries of thirty-five years ago.”

  Feather scowled. “Where the hell you gonna find those?”

  “The public library, where else?” Cold amusement flowed through Nick. “Even the most obsessive matrix-talent on the planet would have found it impossible to destroy the microfilm records of every library in the tri-city-states.”

  “Never thought of that.”

  “Maybe whoever is behind this didn’t think of it either.” Nick considered that more closely. “Especially if he moves in the corporate world. He would have been focused on covering his tracks from the business and financial angles. Even a matrix makes mistakes.”

  “You’re sure whoever’s behind this is a matrix?”

  “Zinnia’s right. It has the feel of a matrix scheme.” Nick yanked his jacket off the hanger. “I’ll start with the main branch of the New Seattle Public Library downtown.”

  Feather surveyed the crumpled black tuxedo. “You going to go back to the casino and change first?”

  “No time.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Find the second mugger. By now he probably knows what happened to his friend. He’ll be running scared. Check New Portland and New Vancouver and all flights leaving for the Western Islands. Check the freighters, too.”

  “I’ve already got people on it.”

  Nick shrugged into his jacket as he headed toward the door. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Feather.”

  Feather reached into a pocket and pulled out an object. “Guess this means you won’t be needing this, huh?”

  Nick glanced at the deadly little blade lying on Feather’s broad palm. It was small enough to smuggle into a hospital room but sharp enough to cut the plastic tubing that led to a piece of vital equipment, or anything else that a man facing insanity might want to slice. His wrists, for instance.

  “No.” A soul-deep shudder went through Nick. “I won’t be needing that. And for the record, you can cancel all previous instructions relating to it.”

  “Glad to hear it. I never did like that part of my job description.”

  Zinnia knocked a third time, but there was still no answer.

  “Professor DeForest?” she called loudly.

  Still no response.

  “Great. I guess this means the gardens.” She had hoped that she would not have to take another tour of the maze.

  She walked reluctantly around to the back of the old house and crossed the stone terrace.

  The innocent-looking trellised entrance to the vast garden maze loomed at the bottom of the steps. She glanced around, wishing that Newton would appear.

  There was no sign of the chubby-cheeked horti-talent.

  Zinnia walked cautiously to the gate of the dark maze and stepped just short of the feathery leaves that had woven themselves through the latticework.

  “Professor DeForest?”

  “Afraid he’s busy at the moment. But I’ll bet I can help you.”

  “What?” Zinnia whirled around. She stared at the wiry man who was striding toward her across the terrace. There was something familiar about his voice. And about the way he moved.

  “Took you long enough to get here,” the man said.

  Zinnia did not like the swift way he was closing in on her. She assessed the situation quickly and knew at once that there was no way she could get past him if she chose to make a run for the house. He must have sensed her thoughts because he gave her a cruel grin.

  “Not like last night, huh? You haven’t got that damned matrix to help you this time. How’s he doing by the way? Swinging from the chandeliers yet? Or did he try to cut his own throat or take a hike across a busy freeway? We weren’t sure how the fog would get him. Kin
d of an experiment, y’know?”

  “You were one of the men in the garage.” The one she had hit with the trashcan lid, she realized.

  But he was not wearing his mask this time. In the light of the fading sun she could see his haggard angular face very clearly. The fact that he was allowing her to get a good look at him worried her more than anything else. He obviously did not expect her to be in any position to go to the police with a description at some point in the near future.

  “Name’s Stitch. Pleased to meet you.” Stitch’s pale eyes glittered with malice. “Look forward to spending a little quality time together before he gets here.”

  “Who?” Instinctively Zinnia stepped back a pace, past the feathery leaves that guarded the maze entrance. At that moment the terrible garden of carnivorous hybrids seemed preferable to falling into this man’s clutches.

  “Never mind. You’ll find out soon enough. Come on out of there, now. I got a score to settle with you. My head hurt all night on account of that trashcan lid. I’m gonna make sure you do some hurtin’, too.”

  “Stay away from me.” Zinnia took another step back.

  “You don’t want to play in that garden. I hear it’s some kind of maze. If you get too far in, you’ll get lost. Be dark in another couple of hours. You don’t want to be wandering around in there after the sun sets. No telling what you might find.”

  Zinnia took one last look into Stitch’s vicious eyes and made her decision. Nothing in the maze was as nasty as this creep. Thanks to her earlier visit with DeForest, she knew what awaited her in the garden. If she was very careful, she would survive it. She did not even want to think about what Stitch intended to do to her, let alone what the mystery man had planned.

  She dropped her purse, whirled, and ran several steps down the nearest green corridor.

  “Damn bitch. Come back here.”

  The leafy canopy overhead thickened rapidly within a few feet of the entrance. By the time she reached the first intersection it had blotted out most of the waning sunlight.