Mulch Ado About Nothing (6 page)

Jane shrugged. "I wouldn't want them in my living room, but I wasn't disturbed by them."

“You should have studied them. They're all about Satanism." Ursula leaned forward and a paper clip fell off her from somewhere.

Shelley lifted an eyebrow skeptically.

“Yes, it's a conspiracy that was started by the Dauphin when he escaped to America and set up the Virginia Company, which meant all the money made in America would eventually go to England.”

Jane cleared her throat. "Uh. . wasn't the Dauphin French?" She almost added,
And wasn't the Virginia Company set up several centuries earlier?
But she was curious about where this was leading.

“By birth, of course, but he'd been rescued by Englishmen and owed his allegiance to them. So this trust has operated with the consent and encouragement of the Windsor family ever since then. The Queen of England actually owns most of Colorado, you know. Under a false name, of course. And she owns the land the Denver airport is on.”

Shelley mumbled through the hand she was holding to her mouth to keep from laughing, "What's the false name?"

“Nobody knows," Ursula said. "Probably there are many false names for her.”

Jane was having trouble keeping a straight face as well. "Does the IRS know about this?"

“Naturally. They're part of the conspiracy. As is the CIA. And the Masons. They've been involved ever since the Templars were killed in France in the fifteenth century. But a few escaped and went to Ireland and started the Masonic order. The King of France wanted to kill them to get their fortune, and the fortune disappeared as well."

“I think you mean the fourteenth century," Jane said. "Thirteen oh nine or so?"

“Fourteenth or fifteenth, whatever. The capstone at the airport is a Masonic symbol, just like that one that is on our money. I don't know why people can't see the connection. All our so-called Founding Fathers were Masons. On the original architectural drawings of the airport, it said it was a 'control center for New World control.' "

“An awkward sentence to be sure. You've seen the plans?" Jane said. This was spinning out of control and no longer funny.

“Not personally," Ursula said, picking up a barrette that had worked its way out of her hair, "but I know people who know other people whohave seen them. And then when you put this together with Cecil Rhodes—”

Shelley made a choking noise and hurried into the kitchen.

“Cecil Rhodes?" Jane repeated dimly.

“Yes, that was the whole idea of the Rhodes scholarships. To train Americans to think like Brits."

“I never knew," Jane said. "Ursula, it's awfully nice of you to have visited, but you'll have to excuse me. I have some letters to write and a couple birthday cards that have to go in the mail this evening."

“I'll run you to the post office — and speaking of the post office, they're part of it, too. Do you have any idea how many postal workers are Masons?”

Shelley was back, still pretending she had a little coughing fit. "I don't think Jane should really go anywhere right now. She needs to rest. I'll take her mail for her.”

Ursula took this with good grace. Gathering up the huge purse and only dropping two cigarette lighters and a receipt, she said, "Get a good night's sleep and I'll see you two in the morning at class." She barged out, forgetting to even close the kitchen door.

Jane and Shelley sat back, not speaking, only sighing in unison.

A few seconds later, the screen door opened again and Ursula was back with three of the scrappiest paperback books Jane had ever seen. One was held together along the spine with strap- ping tape. All were stained and creased with crumbling covers.

“Here, ladies, read up. You'll find them fascinating." She dumped them on the coffee table and went off again, tossing a remark over her shoulder about needing to get them back someday.

This time Shelley followed her and, when Ursula's battered vehicle was out of sight, closed and locked the door.

“I've heard of people like her," Shelley said, sitting back down by Jane, "but never really believed the descriptions of them. Now we know that there are true nutcases roaming our very own neighborhood."

“She's really sort of frightening, isn't she?" Jane said seriously. "I mean, isn't she exactly the kind of nut who decides that a bunch of Boy Scouts are Nazi spies and poisons their milk to save the world?"

“I'm not sure. But she frightens me just the same. And if I weren't a bit scared of her, I'd still dislike her. She's one of those people who get everything wrong, and when corrected, merely ignore the correction. Not that I go around correcting people if I can help it," she added with a smile.

“Funny. I hadn't noticed that about you." Jane smiled back.

“You've absolutely got to keep all your doors locked and stay in the back of the house where nobody can see you tottering around," Shelleywarned. "She's latched on to you and will be back."

“Maybe I can make it clear that I don't want help?"

“You can't. People like that are incapable of being insulted or brushed off. She's probably gone through dozens, if not hundreds, of potential friends with her loony pronouncements. People have probably moved from their homes in the middle of the night to escape her and gone to live in Venezuela under assumed names."

“Oh, Shelley," Jane whined. "My life's falling apart before my eyes. My foot is broken; my son is out to dinner with a freak of a girl; and I have a nutcase groupie.”

Shelley just shook her head. "Such is life," she said.

Jane was
getting ready for bed
when the
phone rang. It was Ursula again. "Jane, have you eaten your dinner yet?”

Gritting her teeth with irritation for a moment, Jane said in a cool formal voice, "Not yet."

“You must eat, dear. You need all the nutrients you can get.”

Jane drew a deep breath and tried to overcome her upbringing in the diplomatic corps.

“Ursula, I know you mean well, but I'm an intelligent adult and can take perfectly good care of myself.”

As Shelley had predicted, Ursula took no offense. "I know you are. I'm just concerned about you."

“Thank you, but I'm already in bed and almost asleep, so I have to hang up now.”

Jane put the phone down before Ursula could reply.

She knew she'd been rude, but knew of no other way to get rid of this extremely annoying person. Especially when she had other disturbing things on her mind.

The doctor had told her she must be very careful of her foot. The fracture was clear across the large outside bone but still in place. If it shifted, he warned, they'd have to operate and pin it back in place and she'd be on crutches for a very long time.

And her older son was going out with a girl who had deliberately made herself look like a freak. She always thought he had abnormally good sense. Had she merely fooled herself?

Her daughter was acting like she knew everything there was to know about France after a two-week visit, which was annoying because Jane had spent several years total living in France herself when she was a girl and her diplomatic corps parents had been stationed there. Jane's own dislike of a gypsy life with no real home had convinced her that her children would have normal lives and stay in the same home until they were grown. Maybe she'd made a mistake in that.

And besides everything else that was bothering her, her foot hurt. Her arms hurt from fighting the crutches, even the other leg hurt because she was having to put all her weight on it, and her back was having alarming little twinges. When she was a teenager, she could have coped with this, but forty-year-old bodies reacted badly to change.

Then her mind turned to the reactions of others. That was a revelation to her. Perfect strangers had asked her how she did that to herself, and all sounded disappointed when she admitted she simply fell off a curbing.

She finally was able to smile to herself. Maybe she could spice up the story a bit. She crawled into bed, trying very hard not to kick the cats, who were eyeing her suspiciously, and fell asleep thinking of other explanations for the cast.

She woke suddenly an hour later when she heard the front door open and close and Mike's distinctive footsteps coming upstairs. She flipped on her bedside light and called softly to him.

“Don't forget to set your alarm," she said when he poked his head around her bedroom door. "You're really late coming in."

“I always set my alarm, Mom," he said with a grin.

He knew her too well. "Okay, okay. Did you have a nice evening?"

“Fair to middling. Kipsy's an interesting girl. Night, Mom.”

Interesting?
Jane brooded. She didn't get back to sleep for another half hour.

“Mike says Kipsy is 'interesting,' " Jane said to Shelley on the phone in the morning.

“Interesting is a long way from fascinating," Shelley replied. "How's your foot feeling this morning?"

“About the same. I'm more comfortable in bed than anywhere else, though. And I can't let my- self turn into a sloth. We are going to class, aren't we?"

“If you're sure you're up to it. Will you be able to walk around gardens without mowing them down with your crutches or going facedown in the begonias?"

“I hope so. I better get moving.”

Jane used the waterproof tape Shelley had bought for her to fasten the plastic bag around her leg to shower. No water came in the top, but when she finished, she realized the waterproof tape had stuck violently to the back of her knee and hurt like the devil to yank off. What's more, the bag had sprung a leak at the bottom, and the part of the cast near her toes was wet today. She'd have to buy a whole box of plastic bags at this rate.

She'd been wearing her two best casual skirts most of the time since breaking her foot. Today she'd have to shift to slacks or jeans. But she discovered that the cast made her leg too fat for slacks and had to wear the baggy shorts with the pockets on the thighs after all. Still, she managed to get ready on time, by merely whisking a brush through her hair haphazardly and slapping on basic makeup with rough abandon.

“What happened to your hair?" Shelley asked when Jane had bottom-bumped her way down the kitchen porch steps and climbed awkwardly into Shelley's van.

“Not nearly enough," Jane replied. "Whose gardens are we seeing today? I've forgotten my list."

“The instructor's second home over on Linden Street. And then Ursula's yard.”

Jane shuddered at the name. "She called me late last night to see if I had eaten her stuff. I was honest enough to tell her no. And brave enough to stand up for myself. I told her I appreciated her concern, but could take care of myself."

“Not exactly standing up for yourself very strongly. 'Please, PLEASE, leave me alone' might have done it better."

“Frankly, I'm afraid of finding out how high her insult threshold is. Should I exceed it, she could be a more formidable enemy than would-be friend."

“You aren't going to let yourself get sucked into a friendship with her, are you?"

“No. Of course not. I've put up with some pretty obnoxious people that you wouldn't have put up with, but I'm not a complete moron.”

As they pulled up in front of the community center, a strange man, seeing Jane struggle to get out the door of the van, rushed to help her.

“How did you do that to yourself?" he asked.

“An elephant pushed me off a circus van," Jane said. "Thank you so much for helping me.”

The man looked astonished and said, "Wow!"

“A circus van?" Shelley hissed as they went up the ramp.

“I've got a list of interesting answers. I knew he'd like that one better than anybody's liked the truth.”

The class was assembled when they entered the room. All but Ursula. Dr. Eastman, with his prize pink marigolds on display again, had just begun to speak and waited while Jane thrashed the crutches among the chairs and seated herself. Maybe she had insulted Ursula and she wasn't coming to the class any longer, Jane thought.

But her hopes were dashed a minute later. Ursula bustled in, speaking before she was completely in the room because a backpack strap had caught in the door. "I'm sorry to be late, but I was doing last-minute tidying of my garden." She smiled around the room, waiting for admiration.

“Let's begin now," Dr. Eastman said.

Today his talk was about the patent process, using words like "taxon" and "genotype" and "tissue culture" and "approach grafting." Jane was at sea and didn't want to be the dummy who asked what taxon meant. Besides, the outside of her calf was itching like crazy. She pulled a pencil out of her pocket and ran the pencil down inside the cast to try to reach the itch.

Suddenly Ursula, who'd sat behind her, reached forward and snatched the pencil from her hand. "Lead poisoning," she whispered just loudly enough for everyone to hear her. "Wait a minute.”

She rummaged in one of her bags and brought up a very long, fat crochet hook with a nicely rounded tip. "Use this.”

Jane tried to pretend to be listening avidly, while scrabbling around inside the cast, chasing the itch.

Finally the instructor came back to plain English, saying, "The plant must remain stable in its qualities through a great many means of asexual reproduction, such as cuttings, grafting, and budding.”

He went on, "If you're interested in trying to get a patent, there are a number of pieces of valuable advice. One: Get early and expert confidential advice from someone who really knows plant patent law, and be prepared to pay for it."

“He's trying to convince us to try this so he can make money off us," Shelley whispered.

“Fat chance," Jane whispered back.

“Two: Remember that country boundaries are imaginary for plants. You should look into worldwide patents and make yourself familiar with foreign catalogs. Three: Keep your work as secret as possible. Do your climatic testing with trusted professionals. Don't give out samples to friends. And four: If someone learns of your project and offers substantial money up front for exclusive rights, run away. Plant patents on attractive plants that catch the public's interest can make enormous profits for you if you retain your rights.”