by Maddy Hunter
No. If they’d found traces of skin under Claire’s nails, they would have checked everyone in the park for fresh scratch marks.
I blew a puff of air into my face. It struck me then that there was no colleague. Diana was the one who’d made the discovery, which meant she’d cut her hands in the puckerbrush, all right…while ripping Nana’s plant out of the earth.
Damn. I had to find out what was in her backpack. But first—I needed something to eat. I was starving.
I glanced up Main Street, wondering if this is what Tombstone or Dodge City had looked like in the 1850s. One- and two-story clapboard buildings with overhanging roofs. Plank sidewalks. Cobblestone gutters. Wooden railings and hitching posts. Teams of horses pulling wagons and coaches. Ladies in hoop skirts and bonnets sidestepping clumps of manure. Gentlemen in stovepipe hats leaping daringly over it, proving that even though times might have changed, men obviously hadn’t.
To my left was Dilges Blacksmith, Forge and Wheelright, Alex Kelly’s Bath and Hotel, and the Australian Stage Company. To my right was the Auction and Sale House and a redbrick building that held real potential: HOPE BAKERY.
After a ten minute wait in a line that went on forever, I exited with a boysenberry tart that I purchased from a woman dressed like Betsy Ross. Walking north, I paused in front of the Red Hill Photographic Rooms to admire the souvenir shots of tourists dressed in period costume. Then, spying a bench outside the Post Office, I sat down to devour my tart.
“Do you think if we wait here long enough, a gunfight will break out, and Chester will limp down the street yelling, ‘Mr. Dillon! Mr. Dillon!’”
With my mouth full of boysenberry tart, I nearly choked when I realized the man who’d stopped beside my bench was Roger Piccolo. He was short and square, and even though his face ballooned with almost steroidal puffiness, the rest of him looked hard as a sack of grain.
“I remember my granddad watching that show when I was a kid,” he went on. “Gunsmoke, starring James Arness as Matt Dillon and Amanda something-or-other as Miss Kitty.”
“Blake,” I mumbled around my tart. “Amanda Blake.”
He swung his body around to face me. “I’m impressed you knew that. You don’t look old enough to remember the Gunsmoke days.”
Such a charmer. I swallowed what was in my mouth and smiled. “I used to watch reruns when I visited my grandparents. Grampa ate up Westerns. The Rifleman. Cheyenne. Bronco Lane. He loved watching men in ten-gallon hats blow each other’s heads off. I think it’s a guy thing.”
He eyed my half-eaten pastry. “Is that the boysenberry tart? I almost bought one, but the hot cross bun beckoned seductively from behind the glass.” He shook the brown paper sack he was carrying. “Mind if I join you?”
I slid to my right to make room. “Has your name on it.”
“I know you’re on the tour,” he said as he opened his bag, “but you haven’t worn your name tag long enough for me to see your name.”
“Emily Andrew. Sorry. My name tag never seems to match what I’m wearing, so it spends most of its time in my suitcase.”
“I’m Roger.” He bit into his bun, a heavenly smile appearing on his face. “Unh. Unnnnh. God, I’d forgotten how good fresh food can taste.”
“Yeah, frozen can be a little hard on the teeth. What do you normally eat? Takeout?”
“Nutritional shakes—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They’re all the body needs. Plus a truckload of dietary supplements. It’s one of the perks my company offers. Free product as long as I work for them. I can’t remember the last time I visited a grocery store.”
I tried to suppress my horror. “You drink all your meals out of a can?”
“Bottle, actually. They redesigned the containers a couple of years ago. But you wouldn’t believe how much time and money a liquid diet can save you. My productivity has increased by twenty percent since I made the switch.”
“Yeah, but no pizza, no fudge, no soft serve ice cream with colored sprinkles. What kind of drugs are you on for withdrawal?”
“I’m not suffering withdrawal. Believe it or not, I actually like my diet.”
Sure he did. That’s why he was scarfing down his hot cross bun as if he’d been given the two-minute warning before the start of the Rapture.
He held up the final scrap. “Just so you won’t think I’m a total hypocrite, the only reason I’m eating this is because it’s impossible for me to travel with my own food supply, so when I’m on vacation, I’m forced to eat what everyone else does. But once I’m back home, it’ll be shakes and supplements again.”
“Can you honestly say that drinking nutritional shakes is better for your health than eating steak and potatoes?”
“Spoken like a person who’s never heard of GenerX Technologies.”
I feigned deep thought by wrinkling my brow. “I’ve heard of GenerX. Isn’t that the company who’s developed a new vanishing cream? What’s it called? Perfecta?”
“Bite your tongue! GenerX is not, I repeat not, the makers of that bogus vanishing cream. You’re thinking of Infinity Inc., our scab competitor whose main objective is to peddle snake oil to an unsuspecting public. Bunch of con artists. They’re unfit to lick our corporate boots!” He speared me with an accusatory look. “How did you find out about Perfecta? I thought Infinity was keeping it under wraps until they could explode onto the scene with a major ad campaign.”
“Word of mouth. There’s a guest on the tour who was recommending it to my grandmother. I think she must work for them.”
“There’s an Infinity employee on this tour?” He slapped his thighs in disgust. “Travel halfway around the world, and I still can’t escape their propaganda. Whatever she has to tell you, don’t listen. It’s all smoke and mirrors. And don’t point her out to me. I don’t want to know.” He made a gravelly sound in his throat. “I bet she’s planning to attend the conference in Melbourne. I wonder how many people she thinks she can deceive with her phony scientific results. Botany has devolved into a science catering to flimflam artists!”
“But she claimed to have a port wine birthmark on her face that Perfecta erased. If she’s telling the truth, this vanishing cream could be the best stuff to come along since—”
“A topical cream cannot perform at that level! The implication is that Infinity has found a way to restore a youthful appearance to aging skin. Not true. If you want imperfections removed and elasticity restored, you have only three options: cosmetic surgery, laser surgery, or”—he paused for effect—“GenerX Techologies nutritional drinks and herbal supplements. We attack aging from the inside. A strict diet of our product will not only slow the aging process, it will reverse it. We’ve perfected the nonsurgical face-lift, and I’m a living testimonial. Fifty-three years old and look at me.” He leaned toward me and tapped the corner of his eye. “No crow’s-feet. No laugh lines. No age spots. My face is flawless.”
And the size of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon. “That’s really remarkable. Um…are there any side effects? Nausea? Insomnia?” I paused. “Unusual swelling in various parts of the body?”
“Nothing. Our shakes are as safe as mother’s milk. The important point is, you should introduce our products into your diet while you’re still young so you can maintain a youthful glow throughout your life. See that white-haired lady walking out of Clarke Brothers Grocer across the street? I met her last night. Nora Acres. She should have started popping our herbal supplements years ago.”
I glanced toward the grocer to find Nora scuttling gnomelike behind Heath while Lola Silverthorn walked hip to hip beside him, her arm entangled in his, her chest pressed to his sleeve as if held there by static cling. Unh-oh. If Jake found Lola cozying up to Heath, I didn’t want to be around to witness the fireworks. What was her game? Was she planning to hit on every man on the tour to make her husband jealous?
“Here’s the punch line,” Roger continued. “If Nora bought into our product, she’d look a hundred years younger in no time.”
“Can you imagine the before and after photos?” His eyes brightened at the prospect. “You know something? This idea has teeth. Nora Acres could be the face of GenerX Technologies, selling our product to the world.” He stood up suddenly. “I should speak to them.”
He removed a phone from the holster at his waist, punched a couple of buttons, and studied the display screen.
“Is that a satellite phone?” I asked. “I thought they were a lot bigger.”
“Global Positioning System. I’m marking waypoints where interesting things happen to me on this trip. I press this click stick on the front and it assigns a three-digit number to the place where I’m standing. Then when I highlight the number, it gives me exact latitude, longitude, and elevation. I find an obscure specimen I’d like to investigate in an out-of-the-way place? I mark the waypoint and I can walk right back to it. Nothing ever gets lost. It’s an invaluable tool in my line of work.”
He fidgeted with the unit before showing me the display screen. The number zero-one-four appeared inside a rectangular flag. Below it was an array of digits signifying location, elevation, distance, and bearing.
“So where’s zero-one-four?” I asked.
“That’s—” He hesitated, his eyes flickering with sudden unease. “That’s one of the places we stopped yesterday.”
“Port Campbell?”
He clicked off the power button and returned the unit to its holster. “Yeah, probably. Look, I want to catch Nora before she heads farther up Main Street. Great talking to you.”
“Have you ever heard of a company called Global Botanicals?”
“Another competitor,” he said as he backpedaled into the street. “What of it?”
“Did you know that the woman who died yesterday was a research botanist who worked for Global Botanicals?”
He puffed out his bottom lip in a miserable attempt at surprise. “Guess she’ll miss the conference. That’s too bad. It’s supposed to be a good one.”
I wagged a cautionary finger at him. “Before you go any farther, you better turn around and watch where you’re—”
Squish.
“—stepping.”
After helping Roger locate a restroom where he could clean his shoes off, I window-shopped my way up Main Street, tempted by boiled lollipops, soaps, spices, and fudge, but my mind kept drifting to the zero-one-four on Roger’s GPS. What did it signify? Was it a general marker for the national park, or was it more sinister? Could it mark the exact spot where Claire Bellows had died? If it did, what did that imply? Had Roger recorded the death of a competitor simply because it was a momentous event, or because he’d had a hand in her death?
Now there was a sobering thought. But let’s face it, there was so much rivalry between Global, Infinity, and GenerX, it wouldn’t surprise me if knocking off the competition was part of a new corporate strategy to increase market share.
I sighed as I trudged up the plank stairs to the next level of sidewalk. No way was I ready to throw accusations around yet. Before I started pointing fingers, I needed to find out if Roger had actually followed Claire out onto the cliff yesterday. If he’d stayed inside the visitor center to wait for the bus to be repaired, there was no way he could possibly be involved in anything suspicious. Unless—
I paused before a shop window.
Unless the waypoint he’d marked was the location of Nana’s plant. Could he have seen Nana’s photo, gone out searching, and found it himself? Was it possible that the plant wasn’t in Diana Squires’s backpack after all, but was simply camouflaged by all the undergrowth at Port Campbell? Could he be planning to return to the park after his conference to cash in on his find and deliver a knockout punch to the competition? Was it possible he could be involved with the angiosperms and not with Claire’s death?
With my brain twisted into more knots than a macrame rug, I stared at the merchandise in the window, perking up a little when I realized what I was looking at. Oooooh! Jewelry.
The name of the establishment was Rees and Benjamin Watch and Clockmakers, but the display in the window showcased more than antique timepieces. There were trinket boxes shaped like hearts, octagons, and coaches. An egg-shaped case lined in scarlet satin that held a dainty manicure set. Earrings and brooches in intricately carved jet. Lockets encrusted with tiny pearls. Gaudy Victorian necklaces set with amethysts that were big as quarters. And an elegant gold band in a lacy filigree pattern that was quite the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen.
I looked down at my fingers. I looked at the band again. I walked into the shop.
“Could I trouble you for a closer look at the gold ring in the window?” I asked the young woman behind the counter. She was dressed in a poufy pink gown trimmed with black piping and wore her hair pulled back into a tidy chignon that might have been the “in” thing at Tara.
“You’re from away,” the girl greeted me. “We’ve had news that the Charlotte made safe passage from England a fortnight ago. Were you aboard her?”
I stared at her dumbly. Oh! I got it. Since Sovereign Hill was a living history museum, all its employees were “living” in 1850, which meant, so was I. Okay, given my degree in theater arts from the University of Wisconsin and my brief stint on Broadway, I could play along; I could even embellish. “I’m recently arrived,” I said seriously, “but not aboard the Charlotte. I was traveling on a ship that wrecked near Port Campbell and if not for a perfect stranger who could dog paddle like a Labrador retriever, I would have drowned.” I winced as I thought about my previous trips abroad. “I don’t seem to have good karma with water.”
“We’ve suffered terrible wrecks along that stretch of coast, and few people have survived. I’m so happy you were one of the lucky ones.” She patted my hand before removing the ring from the window and placing it on a velvet cloth before me. “What ship were you on? News travels so slowly here. We’re often ignorant of naval disasters until months later.”
“It was the—” What had Guy Madelyn said? Mermaid? Meredith? I remembered it sounded like something you’d take for insomnia or erectile dysfunction. “Meridia!”
The clerk clutched her throat and gasped, her eyes bulging with horror. I couldn’t tell if she was choking on a Tic Tac or being suffocated by her corset.
“How is it possible you were aboard the Meridia? You claim to be recently arrived on our soil, yet the Meridia wrecked over forty years ago.”
I was relieved she wasn’t choking. I wouldn’t be able to use the Heimlich maneuver for another hundred years. “Umm, it must have been the Meridia II. The Roman numeral probably washed off in high seas when we were rounding the horn, or the Cape, or something. I’m not exactly sure which route we took.” I touched the lacy scrolls and arabesques of the gold band. “Would it be all right if I tried this on?”
“Allow me.” She slid it onto my ring finger, cooing at the fit. “We wouldn’t have to make any adjustments. It’s as if it were made for you.”
It certainly was unusual, combining the serpentine grace of Florentine and Celtic designs. I loved all the twisty-turny spirals and loops.
“It washed up on the beach at Loch Ard Gorge, probably from one of the many wrecks. It looks to be the kind of bauble a gentleman might present to a lady when he proposes marriage, doesn’t it? One only hopes the gentleman lived long enough to take a bride. Shall I wrap it up for you?”
I checked the price on the attached tag. Eh! Even with the favorable exchange rate, in order to pay for it, I’d have to omit either food or rent from my budget. I rechecked the tag and winced. Maybe both. “It’s a teensy expensive,” I said as I slid it reluctantly off my finger.
“You’re paying for the fine craftsmanship.”
I stared at it forlornly. It was speaking to me. Nuts. I wondered if the clerk would think me too weird if I clapped my hands over my ears.
“By any chance, would your last name be Mad
elyn?” the clerk asked in a curious tone. “There were several members of the Madelyn clan who survived the wreck of the first Meridia. Might you be a relative?”
“You know about the Madelyns?”
She smiled indulgently. “Everyone in this part of Victoria knows about the Madelyns. They were heroes, risking life and limb to save drowning passengers. Carrying them to safety up those treacherous cliff paths. They became such a vital force in the communities they married into that we often refer to them as Victoria’s First Family. Next to the Queen, they’re our closest link to royalty.”
“I know one of the Madelyns!” I enthused. “You should talk to him. He’d be so excited to hear what you—”
“Forgive me for stealing your customer,” Etienne apologized to the clerk as he circled his arm around my waist and herded me out the door, “but this can’t wait.” He hurried me across the street toward the New York Bakery, sent surreptitious glances north and south, then feinted left, ducking onto the street that ran behind the eatery. In the absence of foot traffic, he pinned me to the restaurant’s rear wall and kissed me with the urgency of a man whose Viagra fix was about to expire. His breathing was rapid; his mouth was hot. This was the perfect moment.
“Back to the retirement thing,” I mumbled against his lips.
“Shhh. I’m trying to make love to you.”
“In an alleyway?”
“I’m desperate. Kiss me, Emily.”
“There you are, Miceli,” Duncan called from a distance.
Etienne stiffened like a sprung trap. “Merda.”
Uh-oh. I knew what that meant, and it wasn’t good.
“I turned around and you were gone.” Duncan entered the alleyway at a quick clip, sounding a little breathless. “I thought you’d had a Madelyn sighting and were taking evasive action, but I obviously drew the wrong conclusion. You were hungry for sweets.” He gave me a sizzling once-over and smiled.