He’d answered her text by the time she got back to the car: Rare metabolic disease. 1 in 500K US births. Fatal by teens. Why?
She replied: Explain later. Theravin?
Older drug. Expensive. Only treatment now. Gene therapy in pipeline.
Gene therapy. The security guard had taken his photo at a party celebrating a new gene therapy. She recalled something on the news about a new gene therapy for a rare inherited eye disease costing nearly five hundred thousand dollars per eye. Even if only half-a-million people had the disorder, at a million dollars per patient, some drug company would earn five hundred billion dollars. People have killed for a lot less. Ellen Jacobi would kill for less. Ellen Jacobi might kill for looking at her cross-eyed.
If she inherited. Jacobi might have changed his will. Or Avar’s board of directors might do some legal maneuvering to keep her from getting Jacobi’s shares. Murdoch and Karl had been arguing about “spin” and “deals” and the board “seeing things” a certain way. Maybe they didn’t like the idea of Ellen Jacobi calling the shots on the pharmaceutical side of the house. Maybe they’d hatched a plan to convince the board to agree with them. Which one of them could she convince to tell her about it?
Rehearsal pushed its way to the top of the priority list. Murdoch and Karl would have to wait for Prokofiev. She drove to the Athaneum.
People milled about the auditorium when she arrived, carrying signs and clipboards and pushing carts loaded with flower arrangements. The stage sat empty, except for a chair and music stand. She peered into the orchestra pit on her way to the stage entrance. Now dark and deserted, the image from six months ago of a body, another stabbing victim, lying in the pit by the piano, seemed as if it belonged to a grim graphic novel or slasher film. She shook her head to clear it of the memory and went on stage.
A few moments later, she sat with her Vuillaume violin poised on her shoulder and sheet music for “The Tale of the Stone Flower, Op. 118: Prologue: The Mistress of the Copper Mountain” open on the music stand. A deep breath and then she drew her bow across her strings. Eerie, yet majestic, notes meant to evoke the Russian mountain spirit who protected the mines and their underground treasures welled up from the violin and spilled over onto the stage and into the auditorium. All activity stopped and all eyes locked on Gethsemane until, four minutes and fifteen seconds later, she lowered her bow. Applause erupted. She acknowledged the crowd with a bow.
She turned back to the sheet music, intending to run through a section where she heard herself fall behind an eighth of a beat, when she saw Karl Dietrich waving to her from the first row. She put her violin and bow back in their case and went to greet him.
“Dr. Brown, a fantastic performance. I felt myself transported to the Ural Mountains. If you play this well at rehearsal, I know you will be the essence of perfection at the awards ceremony.”
“Thank you, is it Doktor Dietrich or Herr? Or Herr Doktor? I apologize, my German etiquette is marginal.”
“Herr Doktor is correct. But how did you know?”
“You said you’re a botanist. Botany’s usually an advanced degree. Since you work for a pharmaceutical company, I figured you must hold a doctorate.”
“As perceptive as you are talented. And, please, call me Karl.”
“You may call me Gethsemane, if you can say it with a straight face.”
“You have no pet name, er, nickname, I believe you Americans call it?”
She imagined Eamon standing next to her shouting, “Sissy!” “No,” she said to Karl. “Couldn’t come up with a good one.”
“‘Karl’ does not lend itself to nicknames, either. But, please,” he gestured toward her chair, “do not let me keep you from your work.”
“May I ask you a question? I planned to find you later but since you’re here…”
“Of course. Shall we sit?” He waited until she sank into one of the blue velvet auditorium seats then sat next to her.
“I’m sure you’re busy, getting ready for the rose show. With Mr. Jacobi’s…” She waved a hand, searching for the right word.
“Death,” Karl offered.
“Death, you must have a lot of extra work to do. By, the way, what are you doing here? In the theater, I mean.”
“As you say, extra work. Roderick’s widow is determined everything proceed as planned. Murdoch and I are here seeing to the flower arrangements for the opening. Rather, Murdoch is ordering people about and I am checking behind him to make sure he doesn’t ruin anything. But that was not your question.”
“No. My question deals with Avar Pharmaceuticals. My brother, a physician, told me about some new gene therapies being developed to treat rare diseases. I confess I didn’t grasp all the scientific details but I gathered these novel therapies may revolutionize medical care but at a significant cost.”
Karl nodded. “New drugs, especially those as radical as gene therapy, are expensive to research and develop. And with no guarantee they’ll win approval.”
“My brother is thinking of investing in some companies that are developing gene therapies. Avar Pharma came up. Word in the doctors’ lounge is, new gene therapies are in the pipeline for some diseases whose more traditional treatments are already patented by Avar. My brother wondered, given what happened to poor Mr. Jacobi,” she lowered her gaze for a moment, “if Avar intended to go ahead with those research and development plans.”
“I’m afraid you’ve put me in an uncomfortable spot.” Karl shifted in his seat. “I don’t like to refuse to answer your question but I can’t talk about sensitive internal matters.”
“I don’t want any insider trading-type information. It’s just that Zeb, my brother, is a family physician who divides his time between community health centers and medical missions. He doesn’t have money to spare and I’d hate to see him lose it all on a wrong investment. I guess I’m concerned what will happen if Mrs. Jacobi inherits Roderick’s interest in the company. I’m sure she’s a competent saleswoman but, at the end of the day, she’s a glorified florist. What’s she know about medicine?”
“Many of the drugs we use to live better and longer lives are derived from plants: colchicine, digoxin, ephedrine, atropine…”
Gethsemane tensed with an involuntary shiver. She’d gained more familiarity with digoxin and its plant parent, foxglove, than she’d ever hoped to. Eamon had been poisoned to death with the pills. Her investigation of his murder led to her own near-poisoning with the plant. The phrase “digitalis glycosides” had seared into her brain. She’d never look at clusters of bell-shaped purple flowers again without remembering.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine, just a cold chill down my back. Doesn’t that mean someone’s walking over my grave?”
“I confess to a limited knowledge of, and no belief in, folk tales and superstition.”
She used to say the same. Until life in Dunmullach proved folk tales were often less fake than the news and skepticism wasn’t always healthy. “You were telling me about plant-derived drugs.”
“Ah, yes. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of species of as-yet-unknown, at least to Western medicine, plants with medicinal properties waiting to be discovered.”
“In places like the Amazon.”
“Tropical climates have yielded more than their fair share of medicinal herbs.”
“Travel to remote places to identify, harvest, study, and commercialize these plants must be expensive.”
“True. However, compared to the cost of gene therapy, which is targeted to specific genes and, therefore, has a much narrower application and will benefit fewer people?” Karl shrugged.
“So, Mrs. Jacobi, being a plant-person, might be more inclined to fund botanical research than genetic research. If she takes an active role in Avar.”
Karl leaned closer and lowered his voice in a conspiratorial fashion. “Bet
ween you, me, and, what is the saying, the lamppost, I am no fan of Ellen Jacobi. She frightens me. I don’t trust her half as far as I can push, no, throw her. However, I must give her credit for being more than a ‘plant-person’ or ‘glorified florist.’ She has degrees in both botany and horticulture. At the master’s level.”
“So, she’d definitely be more inclined to fund plant-finding expeditions than reverse engineering viruses or whatever they do to alter the genes.”
Another shrug. “Mrs. Jacobi is an astute business woman. Whatever her background, she is well aware of the direction in which the future demands medicine proceeds.”
“So, she’s pro-gene therapy?”
“Ellen Jacobi is as inscrutable as a cat. And it’s to be seen whether she takes on a significant, or any, role in Avar Pharmaceuticals. She has her garden empire to attend to. If Roderick’s hybrid does as well in the rose show as expected, a patent will generate sizeable income. The global floral trade is worth more than one hundred billion dollars.”
“Less than the genetic modulation industry but not chump change. Guess I’ll tell Zeb to look into a Roth IRA instead.”
A scream, a nerve-shattering shriek—Male? Female? Inhuman?—from the direction of the lobby filled the auditorium with terror and dread.
“Not another one,” Gethsemane said as she, Karl, and the others ran to investigate.
They found Murdoch Collins in the lobby, tears down both jowly cheeks, cradling the withered remains of a rose bush.
“They’re dead,” he blubbered. “They’re all dead.”
Fifteen
“Murdoch,” Karl rushed to his colleague, “what’s happened?”
“This!” Murdoch held up his plant. Curled leaves marred with scorched, yellow-brown edges hung limp on brown canes. Only dried, broken petals remained of once-vibrant red blooms. “The ‘Lucia di Lammermoor,’ They’re all like this. They’re all dead.”
“My god,” someone said, “It’s sabotage.”
Several people ran toward the area where flowers were stored before going on display.
“What did that?” Gethsemane pointed at the destroyed rose, a twin of the sickly plant she’d given Frankie to save.
Karl examined the leaves. “Sabotage is an accurate assessment. Weed killer did this. Someone’s sprayed weed killer on this rose. A highly concentrated dose, judging by the damage.”
“Not just this one, Karl. All. Of. Them. Here and over at the show grounds. ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ is no more.”
“You’re sure about the show grounds?” Karl asked.
Murdoch nodded. “I called as soon as I discovered the damage here to have some new plants rushed over. Pinky went to check on them and, and,…” Tears flowed.
“Pinky?” Gethsemane asked.
“One of the garden assistants,” Karl said.
“What are we going to do, Karl?” Murdoch wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Karl, red-faced, muttered in German and paced the lobby. “What can we do? What can we do? We can do nothing!” He pounded his fist against his palm. “Who could have done this to us?”
Murdoch tore at his hair, leaving mouse-brown tufts sticking out at odd angles. “The money we’ve lost. Lucia was practically guaranteed a gold medal. Garden centers would have crawled on their bellies over broken glass to beg for a chance to bring her to market. We could have sold her patent for millions. How are we going to tell Ellen?”
“From a great distance,” Karl said. “Although if the ‘Lucias’ in the show tent look the same as this, she already knows. Poor Pinky.”
Karl’s and Murdoch’s phones rang simultaneously.
“I don’t need caller ID to know who that is.” Karl pulled his phone from his pocket and spoke without waiting for the person on the other end to speak. “Right away, Mrs. Jacobi. We’ll be there right away.”
Karl and Murdoch left the theater. Murdoch still sniffled and cradled the dead plant. Gethsemane hurried after those who’d gone to check their plants. She entered a space normally used for pre-concert lectures. Riotous color greeted her. Long, folding tables sporting rose-centric floral arrangements of various shapes and sizes filled the room. Flowers that had lost the competition for any inch of available table space settled for a spot on the floor. Folding chairs displaced from their ordinary places in the center of the room leaned stacked against walls in corners. She wandered along the narrow aisles, admiring blooms ranging from pale, almost luminescent white to the deepest, almost-black crimson. Rose growers chattered with relief their flowers had been spared the fate of Jacobi’s and whispered about who could have done such a vile thing. However dreadful Jacobi may have been, his roses had never hurt anyone.
She stopped in front of a table that stood off to one side by itself. A Jacobi and Fortnum sign marked it as their exclusive territory. An empty pot, its soil disturbed as if someone had yanked a plant out by its roots, sat at the table’s front edge. Three other pots, filled with scorched, wilted, yellow-brown leaves and the bedraggled remains of blossoms, sat behind it.
“Shame, ain’t it?”
Gethsemane turned to see an elderly woman in an old-fashioned, but still stylish, green linen suit with a pale pink rose pinned to her lapel. “I guess someone decided to level the competition. With Frankie Grennan out—”
“The ‘Sandra Sechrest’? What happened? Not more weed killer?”
“No, gardaí feet.” Gethsemane described the appearance of the rose bush in Frankie’s garden.
“Oh, that would only take Grennan out of the running in the garden show. The entries in the rose show are judged separately and required submission of plants not in the garden. He still has a chance there.”
“Maybe Grennan poisoned the ‘Lucia di Lammermoor,’” a man in an old-fashioned, and no-longer stylish, suit said. “Knocking off ol’ Jacobi didn’t work to knock his rose out of the competition so Grennan went in for the direct kill.”
Gethsemane opened her mouth to speak but the elderly woman beat her to it. “I know Francis Grennan and he is not a killer. Even if he were to strike out at another human in anger, he’d never harm a rose.”
Gethsemane wanted to hug her.
The man continued, unmoved. “You think you know someone but when the stakes are high enough…He doesn’t have an alibi for Jacobi’s murder, from what I hear. Does he have an alibi for this?” He jerked a finger at the dead roses.
“You know Grennan as well as I do,” the woman said. “Have you seen him?”
“No,” the man said, “but people are in and out of here all the time. Easy enough for someone to slip in—”
“With a gallon of Round Up?” Gethsemane asked.
The man hesitated. “Well…”
“And attractive young men with bright red hair are so easy to miss in a crowd,” the woman added. “I’m sure Prince Harry is hardly ever noticed when he goes out in public.”
The man shoved his hands in his pockets and skulked away.
“This is the kind of thing I’d expect from Roderick Jacobi, not from Frankie Grennan,” the woman said. “Roderick cared about winning, not about fair play.”
“You knew him, too? Roderick? I admit I’d never heard of him before this competition.”
“I know him from the amateur competition circuit. It’s rather like Peyton Place. Everyone gets to know everyone else. You’re not a fan of gardening shows? Roderick made a name for himself on one of those DIY channels, on the basis of his looks, not his botanical talent. The behind the scenes people did the work and Roderick grabbed the glory. He did have an uncanny knack for winning competitions, though. I don’t know how he managed to get his hands on so many prize-winning hybrids and cultivars. I can’t imagine him putting in sweat equity. But no one ever found any proof he cheated. And accusations without proof—”
“Are just gossip. It helps being married
to a woman who owns a commercial garden empire.”
The woman laughed.
Gethsemane looked around. “Doesn’t this event have security? These flowers must be worth a fortune. I remember how much the flowers cost at my sisters’ weddings and those weren’t prize-winning displays.”
“Security of a sort. A few rental guards supplied by Jacobi and Fortnum. My three-year-old great-granddaughter could probably slip by them with little trouble. Security tightens up a bit when the show officially opens. Mostly for crowd control. We grow roses. We don’t race monster trucks or cage fight. People expect us to behave.”
The woman moved off. With a final look at the remnants of ‘Lucia di Lammermoor,’ Gethsemane returned to the auditorium to pack up her violin. She noticed something white sticking up from beneath the Vuillaume’s body. A card. A card with a colored pencil drawing of flowers. Gethsemane whipped around. The stage was deserted. A janitor passed through the rear of the otherwise empty auditorium.
Gethsemane called to him. “Excuse me, sir. Did you see anyone near my violin a few moments ago?”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”
Gethsemane turned, slowly, and looked around three hundred sixty degrees. No one. She’d been within, possibly, arm’s reach of Frankie’s admirer—or Jacobi’s killer—and hadn’t known it. Damn.
Still mad at herself for missing the flower girl, Gethsemane sent gravel flying as she skidded to a stop in front of Carraigfaire. She grabbed her violin and got as far as the porch, then stopped. She sniffed. What did she smell? She took a deep breath. Bread? Not some otherworldly harbinger of spectral visitation scent. She smelled actual bread. Eamon didn’t cook? Did he?
“Hello,” she called from the entry way.
“We’re in the kitchen,” Frankie answered.
“Who’s we?” She detoured by the music room to deposit her violin then stepped into the kitchen. Frankie, Colm and Saoirse Nolan, and Father Tim Keating sat around the table laden with dishes of ham, potato salad, cheese, and fresh-baked Irish soda bread.
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