by A. L. Jambor
He had to stop taking new patients looking for the miracle supplement. He had enough to treat himself at least 100 more times if he used one-fifth of the tube. But what if that wasn't enough to cure the cancer completely?
One day he walked into an examining room and saw a young, bleached blond with too much make-up on. Before he could say more than three words, she jumped off the examining table and handed him a slip of paper. She said Antonio had sent her. She then ran out the door and got to her car before Michael could catch her.
When Michael called the number, she’d answered and told him she had the plants and was willing to give them to him for a price. He arranged to meet her and went to his bank to withdraw the money. If it were true, he could make the drug himself. It couldn't be that hard. He may even be able to get the formula from Antonio's wife - for a price.
Chapter 68
“That's all I know,” Maisie said. “He told me he was meetin' somebody that evening and to lock up the office when I left. I never saw him again.”
“How do you know all this?” Dani asked her.
“Michael wrote stuff in his journal. He kept it locked up in his desk. I went over there the next day to open up like I always did. The police had left a message for someone to call when they got into the office. I called and they told me they had found Michael's car.
“I kinda panicked and went to the cabinet where he kept the drug. I took them out and put them in my car. Then I went to his desk and tried the key. It opened it and I found the journal. I took that too. When they found his body, they made me guardian of the files so people could get their records.” Maisie paused. “I thought he was a good man. He always did right by me. He must have been in awful pain to do those things.”
“Then why did he have my father killed?” Jason was looking at Maisie. His eyes were hard.
“Son, he never did nothing like that. He would have put that in the journal. Why kill the goose that laid the golden egg?”
“She's right, Jason. He needed your father. He wouldn't have killed him.” Dani looked over at Jason. He was still angry.
“Then who did? Who killed him? Who had a motive?” Jason was trying to hold back his anger.
“Maybe it was just a botched robbery,” Dani said.
“They didn't take his wallet. They left everything. This was no robbery, Dani. This was murder.”
“Could have been the drug company,” Maisie said. Jason and Dani both turned to look at her. “They kept harrassin' Michael for the drug.”
“What drug company?” Dani asked.
“One of the big ones. Starts with a W.” Maisie was thinking hard.
“Wilmer?” Jason asked.
“Yup, that's the one. They kept sending Michael letters telling him to cease and desist. I remember that ‘cause they came all the time. Michael just ignored them. I filed them away.”
“You wouldn't have a copy of one, would you, Maisie?” Dani asked.
“Maybe in there.” Maisie pointed to the box and drawer.
Dani and Jason scrambled to search through the papers again. Jason could find nothing from Wilmer and March Pharmaceuticals. Finally, Dani pulled a sheet of paper out of the banker's box with the Wilmer and March letterhead.
It was dated the year Antonio had been killed. It said that Wilmer and March was aware of Michael's illegal use of their product and that he was to cease and desist or face a lawsuit to recover damages.
“What are they talking about, their product?” Jason said.
He remembered reading his father's notebook. Antonio had been afraid to file for the patent in case Wilmer and March caught on and took the plants from him, but his lawyer had been able to file for Antonio and he got his patent. Jason remembered the file he had found tucked under his father's dresser drawer.
“They found out,” he said.
“Who found out what?” Dani asked him.
“Wilmer's. They found out about the plants. They knew about my dad's drug.”
Dani and Jason sat and looked at each other. They then looked at Maisie. It was time to leave, but they just couldn’t leave her here alone.
“Why don’t you come with us, Maisie,” Dani said to her.
“I'm fine. I have enough food, and the purple stuff is workin' fine.”
“You're taking it?” Dani asked.
“I have diabetes. When the medicine didn't work anymore, I started taking little bits every couple of months. I just got better and better.” Maisie smiled. “You don't have to worry about me.”
So that explained how she’d stayed alive during the tragedy.
“But don't you get lonely? You'll run out of food eventually. We have a big place with plenty of room. Why don't you think about joining us? We can always use another adult. You could help us teach.” Dani was trying to look excited.
“I'll think on it. You come round tomorrow, and I'll give you my decision.”
Dani and Jason left Maisie's home and headed back to the beach. Jason was quiet and Dani was thinking. If Wilmer's had arranged for Antonio's murder, what had they hoped to gain? Surely one doctor in Florida couldn't make that much of a dent in their profits. Or was it revenge for Antonio stealing their property, even though they hadn't used it in over 40 years?
“I'm sorry, Jason. I'm afraid we have more questions. At least we know there aren't any more children out there alone somewhere. Maybe I'll bring Mindy with me to meet Maisie tomorrow. I hope she decides to come with us.”
Jason didn't respond. He was too lost in all that Maisie had told them. The man he’d hated all his life, the man he believed had killed his father may actually be innocent. Somehow he had to find out. He decided to go back to the school with Dani and spend the night. He wanted to talk to Andrew at the biosphere.
Chapter 69
Jason appeared at his door while Andrew was working on the computer. He asked Andrew if he could help him search for something in Wilmer's mainframe.
“I don't know if the corporate mainframe is working. I've had no reason to go into it, and if the electricity is off, we can forget it.” Andrew was looking at the monitor and didn't see Jason's face. He turned to look at him and saw that the kid was really mad at something. “What are you looking for, Jay?”
“I always thought Tomlinson killed my father. Now I think it may have been someone else.”
“Who's Tomlinson?” Andrew had been out of the loop about the purple babies. He knew about the kids, but he didn't know how they got that way.
“My dad found this stuff that prevented miscarriages. Tomlinson was the doctor who used it. But then my dad stopped giving it to him, so my mom thought he was the one who murdered my father.”
“Your dad was murdered?” Andrew was half-listening to Jason while he typed.
“Yes, Andrew, he was murdered.” Jason smiled sadly at Andrew. “And if Tomlinson didn't do it, I want to find out who did.”
“What makes you think hacking into Wilmer's will help you find out?” Andrew was typing fast. He was trying to see if Wilmer's corporate was online.
“I think they hired someone to kill my father.”
Andrew stopped typing. He turned his chair and looked at Jason.
“Jason, you're not gonna find that kind of information in their corporate files.”
“Then where will we find that kind of information?” Jason kept his gaze steady.
Andrew sat thinking. Those kinds of deals went down in private. The parties didn't keep written records. What you would need is a witness, and since almost everybody in the country was dead, including Jacob Wilmer, the odds of finding a witness were pretty much nil.
“Isn't there a special place here Wilmer built for himself? Maybe he kept something there.”
“The door's open,” Andrew said as he got up off the chair and followed Jason out the lab door. They went down the stairs, and a bunch of kids ran over to ask Andrew to play with them.
“Not right now, guys, I have some work to do.”
The kids protested but he and Jason kept walking. They got to the residence door and Andrew knocked.
“Christie's been staying here. I don't want to scare her by just walking in,” Andrew said. They listened but no one answered, so Andrew and Jason entered the residence.
It was so much nicer in there, like someone's home. They looked around to see if there were any obvious places Wilmer might have stored paperwork. The living room was pretty straightforward – sofa, chairs, tables, etc. Andrew led Jason through the hallway that led past the theater, the virtual room, and the kitchen.
“All the bedrooms are in the back. There's a library and a study back there, too.”
Wilmer had built the residence to resemble his New Jersey home. There were more rooms in the back than in the front, like someone had just kept adding on with no thought as to how the home would look in the end. When he and Jason walked to the end of the hallway, they were standing before three doors.
“The library is that way.” Andrew said, pointing at the first door. Jason searched the library while Andrew went into the second door, the study.
Wilmer had planned on being the last man standing and had taken the best of Western Civilization with him, sparing no expense. The living quarters were full of rare original art pieces, and the library contained the several first editions. There were glass cases containing books you couldn’t touch due to their age. The books on the shelves were alphabetized and surprisingly clean. The biosphere's filtration system kept the dust away.
Jason was glancing at the books rather absentmindedly when he stopped dead in his tracks. He walked backwards looking at the books again. He was right. He had seen it. There on the middle shelf was a book titled “Mortevida.”
Jason pulled on the book and the library wall opened up to reveal a secret room. The room contained stacks of gold bars and empty glass cases waiting to be filled. Why had Wilmer used the name Mortevida to open this room?
Jason walked the length of the room, but he couldn't find anything unusual. He ran his fingers along the walls. He found a door set into the wall without a doorknob. Jason could just make out the outline.
Jason felt around the wall looking for some kind of button to open the door. His hand moved over a section of the wall and it lit up, revealing a number pad. Jason ran out of the room and into the study. He found Andrew going through the contents of the desk.
“Come on, Andrew, I found something and I need you.” Jason ran back to the library with Andrew following close behind.
“Holy crap,” Andrew said when he saw the secret room.
“Come over here and watch.” Jason slid his hand across the wall and the number pad lit up again. “I need the code.”
“I didn't do that one. It must have been programmed by somebody else.” Andrew looked at the number pad. “If it's a safe, we'll never get it open without the code. There are no gaps in the door for a crowbar to pull it open and I’m no safecracker. He must have something pretty special in there.”
“What do you think he would use for a code?” Jason wasn't going to give up that easily.
“How did you get in here?” Andrew asked.
Jason showed Andrew the book he had pulled down.
“What made you pull on that one?”
“It was the name of the plants my dad brought back from Brazil. They were named after the lady who discovered them. Her name was DeMorte. She had given the plants to a guy in 1953 named George....”
Jason brought up the number pad and entered the name Ranier. The door swung open. “That son of a bitch Wilmer thumbing his nose at you again, George,” Jason said out loud. He looked into the wall safe and saw what Wilmer had been hiding from the world.
*****
In the stainless-steel-lined safe, there were 20 glass shelves. On each shelf were rows and rows of glass tubes. And in each tube were the lovely purple Fetura spores.
The tubes were sealed. They looked quite old to Jason. Then it hit him. These were not Fetura spores. These were Mortevida spores.
Jacob Wilmer had kept them for himself all these years. He’d brought them here because he knew if he ever got sick, these spores would save his life. Not his chemical pharmaceuticals, but these little purple spores scraped from the edge of a poisonous plant from the rainforest. Wilmer had known all along what he had, and there was no way he was going to market it.
Jason turned to Andrew.
“Those are the purple spores that made me invincible,” said Jason. “He kept them for himself, the greedy bastard. If he’d produced them in the first place, my dad would never have tried to do it himself. He would have lived, at least for a few more years.”
“But that doesn't answer your question, does it?”
Andrew picked up one of the tubes. On the side were numbers that looked like dates. Most of them were created in 1955.
“All the lives he could have saved.” Andrew looked very sad and tired.
Jason saw something in the back of the cabinet. It looked like a small notebook. He took several rows of tubes out carefully, one by one, and laid them on the floor. He was just able to reach in and grab the notebook without knocking anything over. He and Andrew went back to the study and sat on the couch.
Jason flipped through the notebook. It had belonged to Jacob Wimer. It contained abstract thoughts and doodles, with Jacob's brother James being the victim of Jacob's hangman drawings. Jason flipped a few more pages and then Andrew grabbed the notebook out of Jason's hand. He was looking at a page with a date written on it and the words “Orlando. Send Simon.”
“That's a day before my birthday,” Jason said. “My eighth birthday. That's when...” He stopped talking.
Suddenly everything came together in Jason's head. Maisie had told him that Tomlinson was incapable of killing Antonio. She was so sure of Tomlinson’s innocence, that it had rattled Jason's faith in what he’d believed to be true all his life. But now, looking at the note written in Jacob's hand, it became clear that Wilmer had sent Simon to Orlando to kill his father.
“Jeez, I never would have thought that Simon…I didn’t even know he worked for my father before we came down here. He never said a word,” Andrew said.
“He killed my dad. Wilmer killed my dad.” Jason kept shaking his head.
“Why would he kill your dad?” Andrew asked, and then returned his attention to the notebook. He flipped through a few more pages but found nothing else of interest in it. “Really, why would Wilmer kill your dad?”
“You really don't know anything, do you?” Jason said shaking his head.
For the next two hours, Jason recounted the story of his family, George Ranier, Tomlinson, Maisie, the dogs, and the children living in the biosphere and St. Thomas. When Jason finished, Andrew was sitting on the edge of the couch, rocking back and forth.
“But Jason, if Matthew Wilmer passed on making the drug, why would Jacob kill Antonio? It just doesn't make sense.”
“Maybe because the greedy son of a bitch decided to make it after all once old Matthew died. My dad was helping people. Maybe word was getting around. Maybe another company was getting ready to buy it from him and Tomlinson. I bet that would have pissed off Wilmer.”
Andrew stopped rocking and sat back on the couch. He sighed deeply. He held the notebook in his hand. He flipped through it one more time, and then stood up.
“Come on Jay, I've gotta show you something.” Andrew walked out the door and Jason quickly followed him.
*****
Andrew led Jason to Jacob's bedroom. He walked through the bathroom to a door that Jason hadn't seen before. Andrew opened the door and beckoned Jason to come inside. Jason was just about to enter when he looked up and stopped dead in his tracks.
It was a woman's frilly bedroom. From top to bottom, it was filled with small boxes of varying shapes and sizes. There were two paths in the carpet; one leading to the bed from the doorway and one leading from the bed to the bathroom.
The walls were covered with rows and
rows of shelves. And on the shelves were 12” fashion dolls perched on stands. There were hundreds of them. They were all naked and they all had one defining feature – their hair was permed into wild, curly halos.
Some of the dolls had corkscrew curls, other waves, and others had frizzy tresses. Jason just kept staring at the dolls. He’d never seen so many. The boxes were also filled with dolls, but they were new and hadn't been taken out and curled yet. Jason turned to Andrew with wide eyes.
“How did you know about this?” he asked Andrew.
“Because I set them up. They were my mother's.”
Chapter 70
Jason turned around and walked back to the library. Andrew closed the bedroom door and joined him. They replaced the spores and closed the safe door. They closed up the library and then the study. As they were walking through the living room, Jason began to talk.
“They don't know who you are, do they?” Jason asked Andrew.
“Nah, they don't. It wasn't on purpose, it was just easier, you know. My dad wasn't that popular and they would’ve treated me differently if they knew.” Andrew paused to collect his thoughts. “I came down here from Jersey and worked in Tampa setting up the servers and connecting everything. My dad wasn't thrilled that I wasn't that interested in running the family business, but he let me run the IT department. I worked for him since I graduated from college. I wanted to transfer down here, but my mother.....” Every time Andrew thought of his mother, he would get a catch in his throat.
“She...wasn't well. She had good days and bad days. The dolls...kept her happy. It got to a point where my dad had to make a decision about hiding her somewhere, to save her from embarrassment. She had lots of friends and they were always calling, asking her to come to this event or that luncheon. We didn't know what to do and then one day I got the idea to build this place, a place where she would be safe. He made up a story about a nuclear holocaust and how he would have to take her underground. This whole place was for her.”
