by Maddy Hunter
“No kiddin’? Are they gonna need my Polaroid so’s they know what they’re lookin’ for?”
“They should be fine without it. I told Dr. Limeburner they should concentrate on the underbrush along the cliff walk, and to use your pink wildflower as a marker. If the plant is there, they’ll find it. Any botanist worth his salt should be able to recognize this variety of angiosperm.”
“GIT OUT OF MY FACE, YOU FREAKING DRONGO!”
Toward the rear of the room Lola Silverthorn propelled her husband backward with a two-handed shove to his chest. He hit the wall with a resounding BOOM!, then spat out a curse as an oversized art print came crashing down on him in a hailstorm of glass, leaving him in a motionless heap.
Gasps. Cries. Lola nodded with satisfaction and dusted off her hands. “No worries, Hinry. I’ll pay the damages.” Ruffling her shaggy hair, she thrust out one curvaceous hip and eyed the room at large. “So which one of you handsome mates wants to buy me a real drink?”
Pandemonium erupted. Henry punched a number on his cell. Guy Madelyn corralled Lola and rushed her to a neutral corner. Duncan and Etienne scrambled through the shattered glass to lift the heavy frame off Jake. Several guests attacked the buffet while the waiting line was down. “I’m CPR certified,” yelled Conrad as he raced toward Jake’s inert body.
Nana hovered close beside me, watching with rapt attention. “You think he’s dead?”
“Oh, Lord, he can’t be.” Two deaths in one day would be pretty extreme even for one of my tours.
“That’s a crime.” Helen Teig waved her punch glass toward Jake. “Reframing that print is going to cost someone a bundle.”
“Shhhhhh!” Bernice hissed. “Listen.” She glided her hand like a conductor’s baton through the air. “‘Que Sera, Sera.’ I haven’t heard this in years. No one sings it like Peggy Lee.”
“It’s not Peggy Lee,” Margi piped up. “It’s Doris Day.”
“Is not,” said Bernice.
“Is so,” said Margi.
“Are you sure it’s not Gisele MacKenzie?” asked Alice.
“Show of hands!” Osmond shouted.
While Osmond tallied the votes, I angled a look at the Polaroid Nana still clutched, my pulse suddenly quickening as I was struck by an improbable thought. Oh, my God. Could that be why Claire had left the visitor center?
I fired a glance at Conrad; I fired a look back at the photo. Uff da. If my hunch was right, I’d just solved the riddle.
“Sippelspermum australianse,” announced Tilly an hour later. We were in my room on the twenty-first floor, decompressing. “Or would you prefer, Marionspermum australianse?”
“I’d rather have my name on a candy bar,” Nana said as she unlaced her sneakers. “They done that for Babe Ruth. I want mine with caramel and chocolate but no nuts. Old folks can’t chew nuts real good, especially if they don’t got teeth.” She leaned back in her chair, her feet dangling high above the floor. “Awful shame about the ‘Meet and Greet’ comin’ to such a quick end.”
I kicked off my shoes and fell back on the bed. “Yeah, policemen and paramedics can have that effect on a friendly gathering.”
A team of strapping paramedics had carted Jake off to the hospital, while a couple of seriously buff police officers had dealt with Lola. Made me wonder where Melbourne’s emergency services recruiting offices were located. Male strip clubs?
“It was extremely kind of your two young men to ride along with Jake to the hospital,” Tilly commented. “Henry assigned the task to the right people. They’re quite responsible, aren’t they?”
“Responsible. Dependable.” I made a sweeping gesture around the room. “Conspicuously absent.”
To be fair, Henry would have volunteered for ambulance duty himself if Lola hadn’t wrapped herself around his legs, begging him not to abandon her when she was in such desperate need of moral support. So he’d agreed to babysit Lola at the police station and had asked Etienne and Duncan to accompany Jake.
“You s’pose Lola’s gonna have to spend the night in the pokey?” Nana asked.
I gave her a palms’ up. “That’ll probably depend on how kindly Jake is feeling toward her and whether he decides to press charges. Do you think he’ll even be able to give the police a statement?”
“His cuts looked relatively superficial,” Tilly said. “I doubt they’ll keep him overnight. But I’m concerned that Lola may prove to be a disruptive force throughout the whole tour. She’s loud; she’s obnoxious; and did you notice how she hogged Guy’s entire photo session this evening?”
“The only reason he was takin’ her picture so much was on account a she was wearin’ one a them atomic outfits,” said Nana. She lifted her eyebrows and smiled impishly. “He was waitin’ for the fallout. Did you see the size a them puppies? When she’s my age, she can use ’em for a scarf.”
“Well, I think Guy is very generous to take professional pictures of everyone. He probably makes a habit of doing nice things for people”—I stared pointedly at Nana—“like offering them jobs that pay six figures.”
“Forgot all about that.” Sighing, she pulled some loose photos out of her pocketbook and studied them critically. “I don’t know, dear. It’s real flatterin’ to catch the eye of an expert, but every one a these pictures looks pretty ordinary to me.”
“Do you have your angiosperm photo handy?”
She sailed it across the room to me; I scrutinized it under the light. “I have a theory about your photo, Nana, but I need you to double-check something on your laptop to see if it holds water.”
“I love listenin’ to them theories a yours, dear. They’re always so…” She whipped the air with her hand as she searched for the right word.
“Wrong?” I offered.
“I was thinkin’ more like, ‘earnest.’”
“What’s our assignment?” asked Tilly.
“Here’s the scoop. Claire Bellows told me she had to attend a scientific meeting in Melbourne after our tour ended. Would you access the International Society of Botanists online, and if they have a listing for registrants of the Melbourne conference, see if Claire Bellows’s name is on it?”
Nana’s mouth rounded into an O. “You think she was a botanist?”
“If she was, it would explain why she went outside, what she was looking for, and why your photo was never returned. You heard Conrad say that any botanist worth his salt would be able to recognize this angiosperm. If she identified the plant when your photos were making the rounds, she could have slipped your Polaroid in her shirt pocket and went out searching for it when Henry announced we were being delayed. She probably had your photo in her hand when she collapsed, and the wind blew it away. If she’d discovered the angiosperm on her own, it would have been her ticket to shattering the glass ceiling where she worked. She told me she’d have to reinvent the wheel to get any recognition. I’d guess that finding a plant that’s been extinct for a hundred million years would be the botanical equivalent, wouldn’t you?”
“Bellowspermum australianse,” Tilly muttered. “Has a nice ring to it.”
“We’re on the case,” said Nana as she retied her sneakers.
I regarded her photo once more, another thought occurring to me. “Do you know how many total snapshots you took at the Twelve Apostles?”
“Three film packets, so that’d be twenty-four photos.”
“Would you count them when you go back to your room and make sure you have all twenty-four?”
“You bet. Are you thinkin’ that Bellows woman mighta run off with more than one?”
“Don’t know, but it won’t hurt to check.” I held up her photo. “Do you want your angiosperms back?”
“How ’bout you put it in your room safe for me, dear. If it’s what Conrad says it is, Tilly and me don’t want it nowhere around us. Last thing we wanna do is relive Hawaii.”
After seeing them out, I slid my closet door open and knelt to examine the small safe located inside. I read the operating
instructions, and after ten frustrating minutes of fiddling with the key pad and passwords, finally got the system to work.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Be right there!” I yelled, a little stunned. In the time it had taken me to secret away one measly photo, Nana had completed a major computer search and was back with her results. This was so typical. Of course, it probably helped that her room was directly opposite mine.
I opened the door. “What took you so lo—”
Etienne cupped his hands around my head and kissed me with the hot-blooded fervor of his Italian side. Kicking the door shut behind him, he scooped me into his arms and crossed to the bed, lowering all six feet two inches of himself on top me. “Say you’ll marry me,” he whispered against my mouth.
“Can’t,” I choked.
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
“Can’t breathe!”
He rolled off. “Sorry, darling. The idea was to coax a commitment out of you, not to crush you.” He touched his thumb to the corner of my mouth, his eyes lingering on my lips. “Have I mentioned today that I love you?”
I peered up at him. “Does Duncan know you’re here?”
He kissed the tip of my nose. “We seem to have lost track of each other in the hotel lobby, so I’m not sure what he knows.”
“How can you both be back from the hospital already? You should still be helping Jake fill out insurance forms.”
“It was a slow night in the emergency room. A tetanus shot, a few butterfly bandages, and they sent him on his way. We grabbed a taxi and dropped him off at the police station.”
“And you didn’t stay with him?”
He shrugged one shoulder with jungle cat ease. “How do you Americans say, ‘He’s a big boy.’”
I boosted myself to my elbows, eyeing him suspiciously. “A tour guest dies earlier and you don’t wrangle your way into the investigation? You take a man to an actual police station, and you don’t bother to go inside with him? You live in police stations, Etienne. What’s wrong with this picture?”
“I’m demonstrating that I can think of something other than work. In fact, I’m thinking of something right now.” He trailed a lazy finger up my arm and across my bare shoulder. “Can you guess what?”
“You’re having trouble with short-term memory loss again, aren’t you? You’ve forgotten you’re a workaholic.”
“I don’t have to be a workaholic anymore.” He nuzzled my throat with his warm, wonderfully soft lips. “As of last week, I have all the time in the world.”
“Oh, my God. You got fired.”
He lifted his head so that his nose touched mine. “I retired.”
“You WHAT?”
“Retired. They even had a little party for me. They gave me a very thoughtful going-away gift.” He stretched out his arm and exposed his wrist. “Gold watch. Swiss. Waterproof.”
“But…you’re too young to retire. You’re not even thirty-five! What are you going to do for the rest of your life?”
“You mean, besides make love to you?” He tangled his fingers in my hair and kissed me slowly and hungrily, but my mind refused to get with the program. If we got married, would I be able to handle Etienne’s retirement? Would I be preparing him three meals a day, watching him take afternoon naps, and listening to him say, “So what are you doing now?” every ten minutes? Uff da. This isn’t what I had in mind when I suggested he needed to spend more time with me. Old people retired. What was he thinking?
I tapped his shoulder. Up went his head. “What?” he said breathlessly.
“We need to discuss this retirement thing.”
“It’s only temporary, darling. I have something else in mind, but—”
Knock, knock, knock.
He froze. “Don’t answer that. It’s probably Lazarus.”
“I thought you two were buds.”
“Closer than brothers. Now, where was I?” He resumed the prodigious task of sucking all the air from my lungs.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Etienne!” I gasped, breaking off his kiss. “I need to answer that. I’m expecting Nana.”
“Is she planning to stay long?”
“May I get up, please?”
Groaning, he detached himself from me and assisted me to my feet. “Next time you decide to wear the hot dress, would you schedule more free time into your evening?”
“You was right,” Nana said, when I opened the door. “Her name—Whoa.” She took one look at me and stumbled back a step. “Why don’t Tilly and me come back when you don’t got company.”
“How do you know I have company?” I lifted my hand self-consciously to my head. “It’s my hair, isn’t it? Do I have bed-head?”
“Your hair don’t look bad, dear, but you know how Helen Teig looks when she accidentally smears her eyebrows across her face?”
“You have the same look going on with your lipstick,” Tilly observed. “It bears a startling resemblance to Zulu war paint.”
“Ladies.” Etienne flattened his palm against my lower back as he came up behind me. “Is this a girls-only event, or can anyone join in?”
“I knew one a you fellas was in there,” Nana said, smiling. “Did you buy them international small-cap funds we was talkin’ about?”
“The best advice yet, Marion. They went through the roof.”
I stared at Etienne; I stared at Nana. I fluttered my finger between them. “The two of you are exchanging financial advice?”
“It’s not exactly an exchange, darling.” Etienne trailed his fingertips down my naked spine, causing the down on my arms to stand on end. “It’s more like a one-way transfer of knowledge from your grandmother to me.”
My jaw dropped in shock. “How long has this been going on?”
“Since Italy,” said Etienne. “I had little need for financial advice before then.”
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.” Duncan tramped down the hallway toward us, breathing heavily and appearing a little ragged around the edges. “I would have joined you sooner, but both elevators are mysteriously stuck on the forty-fifth floor, so I had to take the stairs.” He sent a questioning look Etienne’s way before gaping at my Bozo the Clown mouth. “So, what have I missed?”
Oh, yeah. Having both “boys” along on the same tour was working out really well.
“Not much,” said Etienne. “The ladies are getting together for girl talk, and you and I are heading back to our room to allow them their privacy.” He nodded to Nana and Tilly and dropped a kiss on my forehead. “See you in the morning, bella.” He gave Duncan’s back a friendly slap and redirected him back down the hallway. “So you had to hike up all twenty-one flights of stairs, did you? That must have been a bear.”
Nana nodded toward Etienne. “Isn’t that somethin’? For a foreigner, he’s learnin’ our clichés real good.”
“He bought a dictionary.” I pulled Nana and Tilly into my room and closed the door behind us. “Did you find Claire’s name on the registrant list?”
“You bet,” said Nana. “Her name was there, just like you said.”
“Her business affiliation was listed as Global Botanicals.” Tilly read from a scrap of paper. “According to their website, they’re an ‘international company involved in research and development of age-reducing cosmetics and organic supplements that help the human body operate at peak performance.’”
“Yes! I knew it! Your photo didn’t accidentally blow out the visitor center’s door, Nana. Claire Bellows deliberately took it.”
She heaved a discouraged sigh. “She mighta took more than that, dear. I counted my pictures like you told me, and I’m missin’ two other ones.”
“Do you know what they’re photos of?”
She shook her head. “I snapped so many shots, I don’t got a clue what’s missin’.”
“If the photos revealed more angiosperms, don’t you imagine Claire took those, too?” asked Tilly.
“She mighta snitched all three,” sai
d Nana, “but how are we ever gonna know for sure?”
I summoned a mental image of Claire Bellows as she patted down her voluminous travel shirt. “We know that one photo blew away, but I never saw any others. She was wearing a shirt with several pockets, though. Do you suppose the other two photos might have been in one of those pockets when she died?”
Nana’s eyes brightened. “If someone finds ’em, you think they’ll give ’em back to me?”
A bulb went on over my head. “I’m not sure, but why don’t you and Tilly have a seat while I find out.”
“Whatcha gonna do, dear?”
I found the card I was looking for in my shoulder bag and sat down on the bed by the phone. “I’m calling the coroner in Warrnambool.”
Nana consulted her watch. “It’s awful late, Emily. Are you sure he won’t think you’re bein’ rude?”
“He gave me his home phone number and told me to call anytime a memory kicked in, so I’m about to remember something.” I held up a finger for quiet as he came on the line. “Hi, Peter, this is Emily Andrew. We met this afternoon at—Oh, I’m so happy you remember. I apologize for calling so late, but—Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yup, I did recall something. My grandmother is missing a couple of Polaroid snapshots that she’s just now remembering she lent to Claire Bellows, so I’m trying to track them down. I don’t know if you’re allowed to divulge information like this, but could you possibly tell me if you found any photos in Claire’s shirt pockets?
“Uh-huh. I see.” I gave Nana and Tilly a thumbs-down. “How about her pocketbook? Anything there? No kidding? Yeah, people used to call them penny postcards, but with the rise in postal rates, it can cost a small fortune to mail them these days.” I bobbed my head as he continued. “I appreciate that. Um…they’re mostly of scenery and stuff but my grandmother takes her photography seriously, so she’d love to get them back. Uh-huh. If I give you my number here, would you give me a buzz if you run into them? Thanks, that’s so nice of you.” I rattled off the information. “We’ll be leaving for Adelaide the day after tomorrow so—Uh-huh. Sure, I’ll be happy to do that. Thanks for your help.”
“Well?” asked Nana when I’d hung up.
