Lab Notes: a novel (15 page)

μ CHAPTER TWENTY SIX μ

“Mr. Lee?”

“Yes.”

“This is Diane Rose. I’m a scientist at Bayside Research in Texas. I… um…” Deep breath. “First, I want to offer my condolences. I’m told that your nephew Harry was a very special person as well as a… Mr. Lee?”

No response. She’d lost the connection. “Rats”! She’d have to start again. She hit redial.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Lee, this is Diane Rose again. We were disconnected. I was saying that—”

“Dr. Rose. I do not wish to be rude. But I will not speak to you about my nephew. Not now, nor at any time in the future.”

Diane sat at her desk staring at the phone. Hu Lee had hung up on her. Twice.

She tried not to take it personally; Hu Lee didn’t even know her. But he did know Bayside Research. What might Harry Lee have told his uncle that poisoned him against BRI?

She had spent the past few days practicing her lines and building her courage to make that call. She had checked the internet for the time difference with Hong Kong and phoned from home in the morning to be sure and catch him after diner, but before bedtime. All for naught.

But she had no intention of giving up. She had to find a way to get Hu Lee to talk to her. Vincent had written of his strong belief that Harry Lee’s technology and
Peruvase
had suffered the same fate. Hu Lee could unknowingly hold the key to the whereabouts of
Peruvase
.

Diane tapped her pen on the desk for several seconds. Then, “Eureka!”

The newspaper article about Harry Lee’s death had stated Hu Lee was an investment banker. She remembered that Tung Chen’s father was also in banking. She reached for her mouse and clicked the email icon on her monitor. Maybe she could get to Mr. Lee through the back door to the vault.

By the time Diane finished composing her note to Tung Chen, two new emails appeared in her in-box.

Jane Galvin, Diane’s old lab mate, now a professor at Texas A&M, had sent the first email. Subject:
Re: Request for info on David Crowley.
Jane’s message was not a welcome one. She reported that David Crowley had resigned from poultry science in the 90’s after being accused of inventing data in one of his research projects. It was thought that he went to work at a veterinary clinic after leaving the university. Jane added that if she discovered anything more, pro or con, she’d send it on.

Diane exhaled wearily, rested her head against her chair back and closed her eyes. So there it was: Fowl play in his turkey treatise. Okay, not funny. She considered David a friend. And even though evidence against him seemed to be piling up, what did it point to? She’d reserve judgment until all the facts were in.

Diane frowned as she clicked on the next email; the way the morning was stacking up, it was sure to be bad news.

The message came from Olimpia Garza asking Diane to speak at a Conference of International Ethnobotanists in a month. It was being held on Aruba where Olimpia had her vacation cottage. And she invited Diane to stay with her.

But that wasn’t all. Olimpia proposed a jungle trek after the conference. It would be a surprise destination, a place she had never shared with another scientist. Diane’s heart jumped in anticipation.

Olimpia Garza was responsible for Diane’s specializing in ethnobotany. She had been popping into Diane’s life, providing professional opportunities and needed diversions, ever since their first meeting at a National Science Foundation Botany Camp at Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory.

Olimpia, a visiting instructor, was a graduate student at the
Universidad de Bogotá
in Colombia at the time.

Olimpia was twenty-three years old. Diane was twelve.

Arriving early the first morning of camp, Diane goes exploring and finds a secret cul-de-sac down one of the winding pathways under the glass sky. For several moments she stands transfixed, studying a beautiful, but somehow disturbing green orchid made up of small flower clusters. The sign identifies it as a “Malaxis.”

Just as she succumbs to the urge to touch it, Olimpia Garza appears—like a high-energy field moving in.

“They call it ‘the adder’s mouth’ because of its resemblance to the open mouth of a snake,” Olimpia says.

Diane jerks her hand back from the predator flower and turns to stare in amazement at Olimpia. It’s not Olimpia’s hyper presence, her smooth olive skin or the tempest of dark hair that seems to be wired to her personality; it’s her speech. Other than on television, it’s the first time Diane has ever heard English spoken with a Spanish accent.

Olimpia introduces herself, then explains when and where the Malaxis orchid was first discovered.

Diane listens, fascinated, as syllable after exotic syllable curls elegantly around Olimpia’s tongue and rolls out as English. It occurs to her that if calligraphy could be spoken, it would probably sound like that.

For the duration of the camp, she follows Olimpia around, inhaling her every word. The two of them develop a bond, and on the last day Olimpia gives Diane a rough-cut necklace made from a jungle tree fungus.
Olimpia calls it an amulet and says it’s for good luck. Diane vows to treasure it always, and she decides then and there that she will become fluent in Spanish. And she will learn about the people who speak it.

Huck barked at something outside, bringing Diane back to the present. She reread Olimpia’s email and hurriedly composed her acceptance for both the conference and the jungle trek.

Diane left the University of Texas medical library at Galveston and drove out Harborside Drive heading home. Having gathered more than enough material for her ethnobotany conference paper, she experienced a sense of accomplishment, the first time in months. She pulled up to a red light at 23rd Street, second car back.

An enormous cruise ship sat at dockside, which probably explained the throng of tourists crossing the street.

The light up ahead turned green, but the car in front waited patiently for the Sunday afternoon crowd to clear the crosswalk.

Suddenly, Diane’s eyes fastened on a
War Eagle
bumper sticker in the oncoming lane. “War Eagle” was the battle cry of Auburn’s Tigers whose nickname had come from an eighteenth century poem. David Crowley had explained all that to her and even recited part of the poem. He had attended vet school at Auburn.

She watched as David’s red Jeep Grand Cherokee made a right turn onto 23
^rd
Street. Finally the car in front of her moved on.

Diane had every intention of driving straight ahead. But, entering the intersection, she flipped on her turn signal and whipped to the left, in front of oncoming traffic. She found herself traveling up 23rd Street, three cars behind David Crowley. With a start, she realized she was spying on him. So much for her magnanimous gesture of withholding judgment.

David made it through the next intersection before a trolley, moving along The Strand, blocked Diane’s view. By the time the trolley cleared the intersection, the Jeep was out of sight.

Diane crossed The Strand and crawled along checking parked cars. Then, easing through the next intersection, she spotted the bright red jeep off to the right, along Mechanic Street. It sat in front of The Tremont House hotel, apparently waiting to be valet parked. Diane came to a dead stop in mid-intersection, prompting a lot of horn-blowing behind her. She made a tight right.

She crept along Mechanic Street toward the hotel entrance wondering what she was doing there. What could her drive-by spying possibly accomplish? And what if David saw her? She shrugged. If he didn’t want to be followed, he should clean up his act… and get a nondescript
gray
car like hers.

With a horse and buggy setting the pace, she passed the hotel entrance slower than she would have liked. A bellman was holding open one of the doors, so she had plenty of time to peer into the lobby
“…where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey…”

Inside, on the stairs, David Crowley was shaking hands with another gentleman—a perfectly harmless thing to do. Except that Diane was almost certain David had switched administrative call with Pete Sabedra for that day. He had told Pete he had Houston Symphony Sunday matinee tickets at the Jones Hall—fifty miles north of Galveston.

μ CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN μ

Diane unlocked Maxine’s office door, stepped inside and switched on the light. Her night raids were becoming a bad habit. But this time, she knew exactly where to look. She’d be out of there in ten minutes.

Then a voice came from behind her.

“You could have just asked me for whatever you needed.”

Diane turned to face Maxine who stood in the doorway wearing a jogging suit and sneakers. “I didn’t know if I could trust you.” Immediately she wished she hadn’t said that.

Maxine shot a glance at the master keys in Diane’s hand, then made eye contact and grinned.

Red-faced, but struck by the irony, Diane returned a reluctant smile and pocketed the culprit keys. She moved to the center of the room, her mind casting about for some pretext for trespassing.

Maxine stepped into her closet and emerged with the keys to the file cabinets. She held them out to Diane. “I guess you’ll need these. I won’t even ask what you’re looking for.”

Diane bowed humbly. “Thank you,” she said. Dumbfounded by Maxine’s indulgence, she headed for a bottom drawer labeled
Admin Call Schedules
. She knelt on the floor studying the file, all the while wondering why Maxine had shown up there. Then, drumming fingers on the desk behind her broke the silence.

“Amelia, my psychic, said you’d come back here tonight.”

Diane stopped reading. She had a sudden respect for Amelia’s pronouncements.

Maxine went on: “I knew you’d been in here the last time. You were on administrative call that night too. The scent of your hair conditioner was still strong in the closet the next morning. Cherry Almond Bark wasn’t it?”

Diane carefully closed the bottom drawer, then sat on the floor and leaned back against the file cabinets. “Yes… it was.” Where was this going?

“Amelia said if I caught you here, it would level the playing field. Then we could talk.”

Diane felt like an interrogation lamp might switch on at any moment. “Okay… let’s talk.”

Maxine stood up, walked around her desk and settled lotus-style on the floor across from Diane. “I’ll go first.” She cleared her throat. “I’m an animal rights activist. No one here knows that—except Colton, of course. He’s one of us. He likes to hang with animals more than with people. He says that the critters don’t look down their noses at him.

“I came to work at BRI to keep an eye on the research animals. There were some problems here in the past; some of the macaque monkeys looked like they’d been tortured—burned in the butt—with a hot wire, possibly.

“But after you arrived, everything seemed fine—until the break-in.”

Maxine leaned forward, set her jaw and spoke through her teeth. “I want you to know that our group was not responsible for that. We did
not
break into BRI. And we did
not
set the chimps loose.

“Sometimes we find it necessary to vandalize a laboratory or torch a fur store or throw some red paint on the symphony & opera crowds to make our point—it’s hard to believe that some people actually wear furs coats in subtropical Houston… Then on some very rare occasions we kidnap research animals. But we would never-ever turn animals loose in an environment where they might get hurt.”

Diane’s face was frozen in neutral, but her insides jumped up and down shouting “Holy Crap!” Why was Maxine delivering this profile in activism to her? Scientists were considered natural enemies to those of Maxine’s ilk. Was she setting up to give her an ultimatum?

Maxine continued. “There’s something scary going on around here—”

“If it wasn’t your people, then who broke in here and took Vincent’s—ESPN’s—video camera?”

Maxine turned her palms upward and slowly shook her head. “They stole my iPod, Raymond’s digital camera and Pete’s tablet computer too. Luckily, Pete’s stuff was backed up…. I know you’re looking for answers too. And I think we can help one another.” She raised her eyebrows in a question.

Diane met Maxine’s gaze and measured it for a moment. Here was a person who closely followed the advice of a psychic (albeit one who was spot-on about her coming there tonight) and acted as a secret agent for the animal rights extremists. She asked herself:
Can this girl be trusted?
Her intuition responded immediately with an unqualified
YES
. She nodded slowly.

“It’s your turn then.” Maxine said.

Diane flexed her knees, hugged them to her and took a deep breath. Time to play
Truth or Dare
.

“Vincent left me some notebooks that contain a lot of disjointed information—mostly about unethical practices in the biotech industry, BRI in particular. He wants me to track
Peruvase
. I’ll tell you how I know that over a beer sometime.

“At first, I thought he wanted me to make sure
Peruvase
was brought to the marketplace. But that was only part of it. He feels—felt—that by following the
Peruvase
trail, Bellfort’s successful business model can be exposed for what it is—pure greed. Vincent wants me to track it down. Write it up. Publish it.

“Tonight, I came here primarily to check on Leonard Everly. Vincent mentions him in his notes.”

Maxine sat speechless for a moment, then untangled her legs, jumped up and held out her hand. “Let’s see those keys.”

Diane tossed her the cabinet keys. Maxine retrieved Everly’s file, sat down—almost thigh to thigh with Diane—and opened it.

Other than Everly’s address, phone number and social security number, the file wasn’t very informative. Maxine filled in some of the blanks: Dr. Leonard Everly had worked at BRI as a researcher and retired several years ago. But he continued to keep up with the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and served as a consultant to Raymond Bellfort.

Maxine had never met him. But Doreen in bookkeeping had been at BRI almost from the beginning and she knew him. As a matter of fact, Doreen had gone to his ranch down the Texas coast to get a puppy last year; Leonard Everly bred Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

Raymond Bellfort had been upset when he learned that she had gone down there. He said that Everly preferred to be left alone. Doreen concurred that even when he worked at BRI Dr. Everly had kept to himself. Maxine promised Diane that she’d get more information from the bookkeeper.

Diane thanked her profusely for her help, then said, “Now, what can I do for
you
?”

Maxine scrambled to her knees and sat back on her haunches. She reached over and took Diane’s hand.

It had been a while since Diane experienced intimate human contact; her initial instinct was to draw back. But Maxine’s distress was palpable. Diane stayed put.

“I’d like to have the chimps sent back if you don’t need them. Or at least put a twenty-four hour guard on them. I’ve pleaded with Raymond, but he doesn’t think they’re in danger now.

Diane patted Maxine’s hand. “I’ll make sure they’re safe,” she said firmly.

“Yes!” Maxine shouted, fist in the air. “I knew we’d become friends after Vincent told me and David about how you rescued the research puppy from the lab when you were a graduate student.”

Diane’s voice went weak. “He told you about that?”

Maxine smiled and nodded. “He was proud of you for it.”

Diane blinked back her memories, then said: “Do you like David?”

“What’s not to like? Handsome. Funny. Animal advocate.”

Diane forced a smile and nodded.

Maxine extended her little finger toward Diane. “A pledge to our partnership.”

Without hesitation, Diane raised her little finger. “To our partnership.”

They locked pinkies