G'Day to Die (8 page)

As I looked down the path toward the eagle cage, I noticed a small commotion, followed by a scene that I knew was going to end in disaster. I sighed as I turned toward Heath. “Park officials wouldn’t allow large, man-eating birds to roam freely around the park, would they?”

“Hard to find man-eating birds in Australia,” he assured me. “The bist we can come up with is an emu, and they’re harmliss.”

I regarded the ostrich-sized bird chasing Bernice across the glade and smiled brightly. “Gee, that’s a relief.”

“I don’t care how much money you collected,” Bernice sniped, “you’re not gettin’ my T-shirt. You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Told you she was gonna be trouble,” Nana said in an undertone.

We’d arrived at Sovereign Hill Park and Living History Museum ten minutes ago and were in the souvenir shop portion of the entrance building, waiting for Henry to hand out tickets. Gold fever had hit Australia a decade after the California Gold Rush, and according to what Henry had told us on the way over, Sovereign Hill had proven to be one of the country’s richest deposits. No serious mining took place here anymore, but an authentic gold-mining town had been re-created over the footprint of the original diggings to allow tourists to step back in time and experience a typical day in 1851, from panning for gold to slogging through the mud of the wheel-rutted streets.

“All those in favor of killing Bernice say ‘Aye,’” Osmond called out.

Bernice thwacked him with a plastic souvenir pickax. “Stay away from me. All of you! My shirt stays on my back.” She swung the pick in a threatening arc. “Don’t make me use this.”

Dick Teig hitched up the waistband of his trousers and took a brave step forward, which was weird, because Dick never stepped up to the plate to solve problems; he was usually the one who caused them! Wow. This was huge.

“Stow the ax and listen good to what I’m about to say, Bernice.” His voice was nasally from the tissue he’d stuffed up his nose. His cheeks ballooned with righteous bluster. “Emily has something to say to you.”

Everyone took a giant step backward, leaving me front and center. “Look, Bernice, I’m sorry about your shirt, but wouldn’t you agree that your health is more important than an article of clothing?”

“No.”

“It’s a scientific fact that inhaling noxious fumes can kill you!”

“Emily’s right,” Alice said helpfully. “You can keel over dead if you inhale carbon monoxide.”

“And smoke,” said Margi.

“And Helen’s perfume when she puts too much on,” said Dick Teig.

“You stink, Bernice!” Dick Stolee wailed. “Lose the shirt!”

“All those in favor of Bernice losing her shirt—”

Yup. This was going well.

“Bernice! Just the person I was looking for.” Guy Madelyn flagged her down with a black T-shirt with gold lettering. “How hard would I have to twist your arm to be my photographic model for the afternoon? I need someone with great bone structure and presence, and you fit the bill. I’ll even buy lunch and provide your wardrobe.” He shook out the shirt so we could read the block letters:
GO FOR THE GOLD AT SOVEREIGN HILL, BALLARAT, AUSTRALIA
.

“Lunch
and
the T-shirt?” She plucked the shirt from his grasp. “Deal. I used to be a magazine model years ago, but you probably figured that out already. Once you have it, you never lose it.”

He handed her a zippered storage bag. “For your monster truck shirt.”

“My, my.” She smiled coquettishly. “You think of everything.”

We held our collective breath as she sashayed toward the fitting room and erupted into spontaneous whoops as she disappeared behind the curtain. Dick Teig hammered Guy gratefully on the back. Margi yanked streamers of toilet paper from her nose. Helen grabbed Dick’s ear and dragged him off behind her.

“What’s this problem you have with my perfume?”

“Sorry about the wait, folks,” Henry announced from the turnstiles at the front door. “I have your tickets and visitor maps. The queue starts here. Synchronize your watches. It’s twelve-thirty now; we’ll meet back in this building at four o’clock.”

The group dispersed helter-skelter, leaving me alone with Guy. He winked good-naturedly. I stared at him in awe. “You do realize that you’re about to commit one of the most generous acts in recorded history?”

“I had no choice. I sit directly in front of her on the bus and the drive back to Melbourne will take over an hour. We’re talking life or death here.”

“I’ve gotta warn you, she’s a handful.”

“I cut my teeth on mothers of the bride. Trust me. This should be a cakewalk by comparison.”

The fitting room curtain flew open and Bernice stepped out, a vision in black and gold. “How do you feel about my nose? You think I should get rid of the zinc oxide? I’m not sure pistachio fits our color scheme.”

Guy’s attentiveness to Bernice boded more than unpolluted air; it meant Etienne and Duncan would be freed up all afternoon! All I had to do was find them. I scanned the souvenir shop and, not finding them in the midst of a buying spree, headed for the next most logical place for them to be.

Conrad Carver occupied a bench in the waiting area outside the men’s room, talking heatedly into a cell phone. “Tell them to look harder! I don’t accept that. I hope you’ll have better news for me later.” He punched a button to end the conversation, then muttered a few unintelligible syllables that I suspected might be Polish swear words.

“Problems?” I asked, sitting down beside him.

“Fools.” He stared at the phone as if willing it to disappear. “Blind fools.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“You can say a prayer to St. Anthony. Ellie always tells me, ‘If you lose something, St. Anthony will help you find it.’ Ellie’s a believer. Me, I’m not what you’d call a religious man.”

“Hey! I pray to St. Anthony when I lose things, and he’s never let me down. Honest. It’s freaking amazing. And the best part is, he’s an equal opportunity saint. He operates under a nondenominational policy.”

Conrad looked too depressed to crack a smile. I gave his knee a sympathetic pat. “So, what did you lose?”

“Your grandmother’s angiosperms.”

“
W
hat?”

He squeezed the phone until his hand turned white. “Dr. Limeburner and his team have been at Port Campbell all morning. They can’t find anything that resembles the angiosperm I described. They’re going to continue searching, but he didn’t sound hopeful about finding anything. I could hear the censure in his voice, Emily. He thinks I’ve lost my edge. He thinks I made a mistake. But I didn’t! I know what I saw in your grandmother’s photo!” He looked about the room impatiently. “If I wasn’t stuck in this damnable place, I’d go look for it myself.”

I leaned back in the bench, deflated. “Nana’s plant is extinct again?”

“No! If it was there yesterday, it has to be there today. They’re not looking hard enough. A plant of that size doesn’t disappear overnight, not unless someone dug it up deliberately. And who would have done that? No one even knew it was there until I phoned Limeburner.”

Which wasn’t precisely true. The person who stole Nana’s photo knew the plant was there, so they could have done the digging. But I’d like to think that if someone had dragged a large chunk of landscape onto the bus yesterday, I might have noticed.

“Sorry to make you wait so long, Connie.” Ellie bustled over to us. “They ran out of paper towels in the ladies’ room, so I had to blow dry my hands. The buzz is that they offer stagecoach rides here. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I have to use the facilities,” he said in a dull voice, “and return Henry’s phone.”

“I’ll do that.” I stood up. “I’m headed in that direction anyway. But would you do me a favor? If you see Etienne and Duncan while you’re in there, would you tell them I’m heading up Main Street, so they can look for me there?”

Henry was still at the turnstiles, passing out tickets and maps. I took my place at the back of the line and tried not to think about how disappointed Nana was going to be when she heard the news about her angiosperms. Was Dr. Limeburner right? Had Conrad simply identified them incorrectly? Was it possible that a renowned expert could be so wrong about something?

I scanned the shop while I waited, my gaze lighting on Diana Squires’s ponytail as she hefted a huge backpack onto the
PACKAGE CHECK
counter at the opposite end of the room. Yikes. That thing was big enough to hold a gas tank! I gave myself a mental slap as I gaped. Had she been wearing it earlier today when I talked to her? Had she been wearing it yesterday? Was I blind in one eye and unable to see out the other?

I handed Henry his phone in exchange for my ticket, then idly studied my site map while Diana passed through the turnstile.

“Where are you off to?” she asked, her map already open. “Panning for gold sounds like fun, but that involves water, and I’d prefer not to get wet. Accidents can happen even in shallow water.”

Hmm. The Wicked Witch of the West had melted when she got wet. I wondered what would happen to Diana Squires. “Did you bring a change of clothes with you?”

“We’re on a nine-hour tour. Why would I do that?”

She’d obviously never watched
Gilligan’s Island
. “That backpack you left at the package check counter was a pretty good size. Looked like you could fit your entire wardrobe into it.”

“Just the essentials. You know how it is. The older you get, the more essentials you need.”

“Were you wearing it yesterday?”

“I wear it every day when I’m on vacation. I guess you were one of the few people I didn’t sideswipe with it. How’d you luck out? I get some pretty mean looks when I move the wrong way.”

“Were you wearing it at the wildlife park earlier?”

“Sure was.”

“How did I not notice something that big strapped to your back?”

“Because it wasn’t that big earlier. It’s expandable. I buy the expandable model of everything, but I’m downsizing at the moment.” She patted the fanny pack at her waist. “I turned the wrong way in the ladies’ room and pulled something in my lower back, so I’m giving my muscles a rest.” She whacked my arm with her map. “The aging process. See what you have to look forward to?”

“In the oft-spoken words of my grandmother, it beats the alternative.”

“Speaking of your grandmother—” She snugged her hand around my forearm and spoke to me from the heart. “I’m afraid I might have scared her off with the price of our product, which is too bad, because it’s women like your grandmother—elderly ladies living on fixed incomes—who could benefit most from what Perfecta has to offer.”

“Actually, Nana isn’t on a fixed—”

“So I’m going to let you in on a little secret that you can share with her. Tell her one of the reasons our product is so pricey is because we have to synthesize a key ingredient in the lab, and we’re forced to pass the expense on to the consumer. But I happen to know that one of my colleagues has recently stumbled upon an alternative that grows freely in nature, so there’s a possibility we could lower the price to something every woman can afford. Isn’t that exciting?” She squeezed my arm as if it were a lemon that needed juicing.

Yow!
I looked down at her hand, jerking to attention when I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. “Has anyone ever told you you don’t know your own strength?”

“All the time. When I’m not in the lab, I’m exercising.” She clenched her fist several times. “I’m especially fond of handgrips.”

“Is that how you got all those scratches?”

She rotated her hands to examine the angry red nicks that scored her fingers and knuckles. “They’re an eyesore, aren’t they? Got them yesterday at the Twelve Apostles.”

“Really?” I angled my head for a better look. “How’d that happen?”

She hesitated. “You know how most woman go into a clothing store and have to finger all the soft fabrics and fur collars? Botanists are like that, too, except instead of touching merchandise, we’re all over the local flora. We can’t keep our hands off those unfamiliar leaves and flowers, and unfortunately, nature tends to be thorny.” She regarded her hands again. “I had a veritable field day yesterday, but it does look as if I’ve been clawed by a cat, doesn’t it?”

Yeah, a cat with long, manicured nails.

“I’ll have to keep applying antibacterial cream. The last thing I need on this trip is a skin infection.” She consulted her map. “If I’m going to sign up for the gold mine tour, looks like I walk straight up the street and bang a left. You want to join me?”

I couldn’t tell if her smile was sincere, or a dare. “I’m supposed to be hooking up with a couple of people somewhere along the main street, so you’d better go on without me.”

“Suit yourself. Catch you later.”

My heart pounded in my ears as I watched Diana hike up Main Street.
Uff da!
Had Peter Blunt made the wrong call yesterday? He said they’d found no evidence of foul play, but was there a chance they’d overlooked something as obvious as skin particles under Claire Bellows’s fingernails? Was it humanly possible for a technician processing a noncelebrity case outside LA to make a mistake like that?

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!”