After what seemed like hours, a doctor, middle-aged, bespectacled, and balding, emerged from the double doors. We all sprang from our seats.
“His tox screen came back with an interesting finding,” said Dr. Burke. “He appears to have been exposed to a toxin that causes hallucinations.”
“What kind of toxin? He didn’t eat or drink anything unusual,” I said, thinking back. The only thing Conrad drank was that one beer. That couldn’t have been the cause, unless the bartender had somehow dropped a roofie in it, which seemed far-fetched. “Could it have been something he ingested hours ago?”
Dr. Burke shook his head. “It’s a fast-acting toxin that’s absorbed through the skin. It’s called bufotoxin. Has he been around frogs, by any chance?”
Uh-oh. “As a matter of fact, we were at the Academy of Sciences when this happened. They have a frog exhibit.”
“Any chance he touched one?”
“Excuse me?”
“I noticed . . . I thought perhaps the young man was a drug user. Some people lick them for their psychedelic properties.”
“Conrad did not lick the frogs. Land’s sakes. He touched a few, but those were in the children’s petting section. Surely they weren’t dangerous.” I looked at Bronwyn, Duke, and Maya. “Did he lick any frogs while he was with y’all?”
They shook their heads.
Dr. Burke smiled. “I’m not the frog police, folks. I’m only asking because the more I know what happened the better able I am to help your friend. Okay. Well, we’ll have to keep him here overnight for observation. He also has a minor concussion, no doubt received when he fell.”
“Could I speak with him?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You may peek in on him if you like, but he’s not awake. The dose of toxin he received was very nearly fatal, and there could be more complications. But I’m confident he’ll be all right.”
We found Conrad in a hospital bed, hooked up to a dripping IV and several monitors. Someone had pulled the hair away from his face, and he suddenly looked very young.
“Conrad’s an addict, Lily,” said Bronwyn gently. “Isn’t it possible he . . . ?”
“He was with us the whole time,” I said.
“Not the whole time,” Maya said. “He was with us at the exhibit, then left to help Bronwyn and Duke with the drinks.”
“Yes, but he came right back with them—there wouldn’t have been enough time, would there?” I asked.
“It was a bit of a mob scene,” pointed out Bronwyn. “If he’d wanted to slip away for a few seconds, he could have managed it.”
I shook my head. “Conrad wouldn’t do that. Not while we were there. Someone did this to him.”
“But why would someone target Conrad?” Duke asked.
I didn’t know, and I certainly couldn’t explain how this might be connected to a haunted, hateful tree under which a man was killed—a tree that might also have swallowed Oscar. Exasperated and afraid, I reminded myself to breathe in and out deeply and slowly.
Might Conrad have seen something I hadn’t noticed at the crime scene? Or perhaps Conrad had seen something earlier, one night when he was sleeping there? Was someone was trying to silence him, afraid of what he might know?
Lance had been in Golden Gate Park when Conrad and I found Sebastian. Lance, the bumbling scientist who had shown a different side of himself tonight.
Then again, Kai had been there, too. And Nina showed up after we had gathered, and she’d been to the tree previously and knew Conrad. They all had been at the academy tonight before Conrad had fallen ill.
Outside, the evening was chilly. The marine layer—as the ocean fog is called—had settled over the city like a cool, sea-scented shroud. Maya handed me my keys—she had driven the Mustang while I rode in the ambulance with Conrad—and Bronwyn and Duke offered to drop Maya at her apartment. We said our good-byes in the parking garage.
I pulled Nina’s card out of my bag. I imagined the cocktail party was still hopping, but I thought I should let her know what had happened with Conrad. I went back into the hospital and found a pay phone.
“Nina, I wanted to let you know that it looks like Conrad is going to be okay. And I was wondering whether I could talk to you about something.”
“Now?”
“If you have time.”
“Um, okay . . . shoot.”
“I’d rather speak in person.”
I heard her chuckle. “What is this, like in a mystery novel? ‘Meet me at midnight down by the pier’?”
She was more right than she knew. “I’m just . . . not fond of talking on the phone.”
I loathed phones because they didn’t allow me to sense a person’s energy. I was much less easily fooled when I could sense someone’s vibrations.
“Okay, I guess. The party’s still in full swing, but I was about to get back to work. I’m finishing up a report for Monday. Just call me from your cell when you get here, and I’ll meet you at the employees’ entrance.”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
There was a pause. “What?”
I rolled my eyes. Surely I wasn’t the only person in California who didn’t have one. “I said, I don’t have a cell phone.”
“Did you drop it? I dropped mine on the BART tracks once. Boy, was that a drag.”
“No, I just don’t own one.”
“Oh my God, are you serious?” Nina seemed more shocked by this news than she had when Conrad passed out at the cocktail party.
I sighed inwardly. Eventually, I supposed, I was going to have to give in to the inevitable and start carrying a phone, strange electronic vibrations or no.
“I’m afraid so.” I glanced at the clock. Eight thirty-five. “I can be there in twenty minutes. . . . Could we meet at nine o’clock at the employees’ entrance?”
“Okay, sure,” she said. “See you then.”
I thought about calling Sailor, but decided against it. We didn’t have to be attached at the hip, after all. And though I hated to admit it, I feared I didn’t pick up on things as well with him at my side. Though he made me feel safe, sometimes safe is not all it’s cracked up to be. And it wasn’t as though I was meeting a stranger at the end of a dark pier, as Nina had suggested. I was going back to a museum full of visitors and staff.
On the drive, I made a point to pass by Ms. Quercus. You could barely see her from the road, but the upper branches extended high in their malevolent embrace, looking black against the moonlit sky. Nighttime in Golden Gate Park would lend itself to nightmares, I decided, trying to shake the sensation that I was being watched. Perhaps it was just the ghostly police officer. What had the poor fellow done in life to merit condemnation to forever issuing traffic tickets?
True to her word, Nina was waiting for me at the rear employees’ entrance. The door was propped open, the light from within making it a bright rectangle in the otherwise dark stretch at the back of the building. She wore her lab coat and glasses; only faint remnants of her red lipstick remained. The cocktail party do had fallen, the locks now limp from their earlier curl. I could relate.
“Thank you for meeting me.”
“Sure thing,” she said as she led the way into the building. The door slammed behind us with a loud bang. “You have to sign in,” she said as we walked past a desk space staffed by a huge, bored-looking security guard. His badge read: HI, MY NAME IS BUZZ.
I signed my name, clipped a temporary visitor’s badge to the neckline of my dress, and followed Nina through the inner door to a long, featureless hallway.
“How’s your friend?” she asked as we descended the stairs to the basement level.
“It looks like he’ll be okay.”
“Was it just too much to drink?”
“I don’t think so—that’s one reason I asked to speak with you.” I glanced around, tryin
g to feel or notice if anyone was present and could overhear. “Maybe we could wait until we get into your office?”
She looked back at me, a curious expression on her face. “Sure.”
I smiled lamely, hoping she’d just assume I was quirky.
The lower level included a number of underwater exhibits, which cast everything in a bluish, ghostly glow. Fish, turtles, and jellyfish swam around lazily. Party sounds still emanated from the upper level.
“You got tired of the party?”
“I can socialize only so much. I’m happier in the lab. We have overnights here sometimes; people come with their kids. It’s really fun, but by dawn I’m ready for solitary confinement. Speaking of which . . . here’s my office.”
Nina’s office did have a lot in common with a prison cell: It was a windowless box. But the stacks of files and newspapers and reports reminded me more of her uncle Bart’s apartment. The desktop was a jumble of pens, graph paper, forms, correspondence, and an old-fashioned letter opener. I wondered if she and Bart had more in common than she’d like to admit. On the other hand, a lot of creative types tended to live messy—or at least that’s what I told myself when Aunt Cora’s Closet threatened to get out of hand.
She had to clear a short stack of papers from a chair in order to offer me a seat.
“So,” Nina said as she sat behind the utilitarian beige office desk. “What’s up? Please tell me this isn’t about my uncle. I really don’t know—”
I cut her off. “Only tangentially. I really wanted to ask you about what happened to my friend Conrad tonight. At the hospital they said he was poisoned by bufotoxin.”
Nina blinked. Stared. And blinked again.
“Was he licking the frogs?”
“No.”
“Bufotoxin is secreted from some of the poisonous frogs. I mean, I’m not a herpetologist, but I know it’s used by the frogs to paralyze animals that try to prey on them. But some people actually expose themselves to it on purpose, to enjoy the high. You don’t actually have to lick the powerful ones—touching them can be enough to get you high.”
“I’m aware of that. But Conrad was with me the whole night. Do you know if Lance . . .”
“Damn, if they trace it back to the expo . . . they’ll be closing this whole thing down.” Nina leaped out of her seat. “This is terrible. I’ve got to notify the director before it makes the news.”
She rushed out of the room.
I remained seated, unsure of what to do. A long moment passed. I stuck my head out the door, but saw nothing more than a metal cart full of boxes in the long, empty hallway.
“Nina?”
I returned to my chair. Surely she would be right back. After a minute, the lights in the corridor flickered off.
I rose and faced the door, wondering whether the tingling at the base of my neck was a premonition or just the perfectly normal awareness that I was in the basement of a huge building, didn’t know my way around, and the lights had just gone out.
I could still hear the party upstairs. The constant murmur of voices, background music, and the tinkling of glassware were reassuring. Maybe I should go up and join the crowd and deal with this another time. With Sailor by my side.
Just in case, I grabbed the letter opener from Nina’s desktop, stepped to the doorway, and peered down the darkened hallway again. Had I been set up? Was Nina somehow in on whatever was going on? Or was I grasping at straws now?
Probably the lights were on a timer, or a motion sensor, as an energy-saving device. That’s all. These Californians and their environmental awareness . . .
Stroking my medicine bag for strength and protection, I stepped into the hallway and did a couple of jumping jacks, flinging my arms over my head, hoping a sensor would pick up on my movements and turn the lights back on.
It remained dark. Even the exit signs were extinguished. And now I heard a sound. Faint, barely there, just the whispering of cloth. But I heard it.
I started moving down the hall in the opposite direction of the noise. This was the way I came with Nina, so if I could just retrace our steps . . . Unfortunately, I couldn’t see a danged thing. There was no natural light, and without so much as a glowing exit sign . . .
The elevator pinged. Its doors opened and light flooded out. No one was on it, but I ran toward it, glancing behind me in the hopes of glimpsing whether someone really was behind me.
The elevator doors closed right before I reached them.
Damm it! I slapped the call button repeatedly, but it was already gone.
Now there was no doubt: I definitely heard someone behind me.
I backed blindly down the pitch-black, windowless hallway, hands in back of me trying to feel. Disoriented, I tried to remember whether the stairs were in front of me or behind.
I banged my hip and knee against the metal cart, which clattered to the floor. Grabbing it, I threw it farther down the hall as an obstacle to my pursuer, then ran.
I heard a crash and a grunt as my ploy worked. But then I ran into a doorframe. Pain lanced through my shoulder. Swearing a blue streak, I dashed around the corner and finally spotted greenish light coming out from under a door.
I ran to it and found the door unlocked. I dashed in. Lights were glowing on enough of the computers and equipment to bathe the room in a very subtle green light. There was no way to lock the door without a key, so I pushed a desk in front of it, risking alerting my pursuer to my location by the scraping noise. Then I searched the room madly for a phone. Nothing. Dammit. Everyone had cell phones these days. Modern technology would kill me yet.
Hearing someone at the door, I kept my eyes on it while backing up until I hit a metal enclosure, like a cage, that ran the full length of the room.
Was the cage for valuables? I wondered. Or something alive? The spaces between bars were too big for lab rats. I tried to peek in but couldn’t see any monkeys, anything like that. What could they possibly keep in here? Aliens, probably.
Stop it, Lily. I was weirding myself out.
I had to pull myself together. I stroked my medicine bag, forced myself to breathe, and gathered my wits.
The thing about this cage, I thought, was it seemed to serve not only this room, but also the one on the other side.
Realization dawned on me just as someone grabbed my hair from behind and pulled so hard the back of my head banged against the bars of the cage.
Chapter 18
The attacker’s arm snaked through the space in the bars and wrapped around my throat, squeezing.
Gripping the letter opener in my right hand, I reached up and jabbed at the arm that was trying to suffocate me.
I heard a grunt, but my assailant still didn’t call out or withdraw the arm. But the grip around my throat loosened a little. I yanked back again with the sharp tip. Suddenly my hair was released.
I careened through the lab, dislodging a beaker, which shattered on the floor. I hauled the desk away from in front of the door, raced into the corridor, and bowled smack-dab into Nina.
We both sprawled on the floor of the hallway.
“What’s going on? What are you doing?” Nina demanded, retrieving the flashlight she had been carrying. “Why are all the lights off?”
“I’m . . . I was . . .” Until that moment I wasn’t entirely sure Nina hadn’t been the one chasing me. Why she would, I had no idea.
The bloody letter opener lay on the floor between us. The beam of her flashlight landed on it. Nina picked it up, questions flooding her eyes.
“What in the world’s going on, Lily? Are you all right? Isn’t this . . . mine?”
I nodded. “I took it off your desk. The lights went out, and I took it with me when I went to investigate, just to be safe. And then . . . someone started chasing me.”
“Chasing you?” Nina stood, sending her beam both ways down t
he hallway. “Why would someone chase you? I don’t even think anyone’s here. Everyone’s up at the party. Are you sure? Maybe you imagined it.”
I shook my head, which hurt my throat. I put my hand up to it and pressed gingerly; it felt bruised. My scalp stung where my hair had been pulled so viciously.
“It was real,” I said. “He was real.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything.”
The overhead lights blazed back on. We both looked down the corridor. There was nothing to see but a boring hallway.
“If you didn’t see whoever it was, could it have been a woman?”
“Maybe. A strong woman.”
“Strong. Like me?”
I nodded. “I stabbed him—or her. In the forearm.”
“Okay, this is crazy. Let’s go check with security.”
Up at the security desk, Buzz no longer looked bored. He had a phone to his ear as he fiddled with his screens and checked his computer.
Nina told him what happened.
“No kidding? There must have been some sort of serious power interruption, ’cause not only did the lights go out, but the cameras went out on that whole level at the same time. You okay?”
I nodded.
“We haven’t had a breach in the building that we know of. The party’s just now winding down, so there have been folks all over the upper floors. And then you know how it is; scientists come in and out of here all night long. There are even some folks working on the new diorama upstairs. You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded again. “Would you be willing to walk me to my car?”
“Are you sure you don’t want us to call the police?” asked Nina.
What purpose would it serve? I hadn’t seen who it was. I suppose they could search for someone with an arm injury, but how could they prove anything? And if I was right, that this was all caught up in something supernatural, their intervention would only make everything that much more complicated.
“I’m sure. Thanks. Hey, just one question: How long have you known Lance Thornton?”
A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery Page 21