The Trouble with Tulip (35 page)

He would have sat on the couch next to her, but it was missing a cushion. Instead, he took a seat on the ottoman to her right, eager to lead her through his thought processes. Since picking up the gold pin that afternoon, he had done a lot of thinking and had come up with a theory, which had then been confirmed by his magician sister and by what he had found at the library.

“What is it?” Jo asked, her eyes on his, a slight smile to her lips. “Tell me what you've learned.”

He sat back and crossed his arms.

“Alchemy,” he said triumphantly.

“Alchemy?” she asked, shaking her head.

“The science of turning metal into gold. Also, some believe, the secret to eternal life.” As she processed what he had said, he reached into his bag and pulled out a stack of books on alchemy he had taken from the library. “You studied chemistry, Jo, so you know basically what alchemy is. Half science, half mysticism, it's been around for thousands of years. Studied by kings and chemists and philosophers, it's supposedly the ancient art of securing both immortality and great wealth through ‘transmutation.' Legend has it that someone who possesses the secrets of alchemy can turn ordinary metals into gold and they will never die.”

Jo nodded.

“Some famous scientists believed in alchemy, didn't they?” she asked.

Danny opened one of the books and flipped through the pages.

“Roger Bacon, Nicholas Flamel, Sir Isaac Newton, Carl Jung. They all dabbled in alchemy, even when it wasn't legal. Newton almost died from mercury poisoning because of his secret experiments.”

Jo exhaled slowly, running a hand through her hair.

“So how does this fit in here?”

Danny leaned forward.

“We know Simon was working a con game on some rich but gullible women. I think his whole con centered around alchemy. He used the photos and the painting to prove he had already achieved immortality himself. As for the ability to turn metal into gold, well, look what I got from the jeweler.”

Danny opened the envelope and handed Jo the metal pin.

“Last week, Simon Kurtz brought this to the jeweler and ordered an identical one to be made in gold,” Danny said. He pulled out the gold version and handed her that as well. “The jeweler told me that Simon has placed a number of orders with him lately, and that every single time he has brought in some sort of metal trinket and had it duplicated in gold.”

“Keep talking,” Jo said, studying both items.

“On the way home, I was wondering why a person would do something like that. Then I started thinking that maybe these were props in a very elaborate trick. I called Denise and asked her how it could be done, exactly, and what she said made perfect sense.”

Jo looked up at him expectantly.

“Let's say Simon wants to convince some rich widow that he has the power to turn metal into gold. He tells her to bring him some trinket, some small worthless item, and he'll prove it to her. Once he has the trinket, he says he needs a few days to mix up some of the secret formula or something. In the meantime, he takes the trinket to an out-of-town jeweler and has a duplicate made in gold.”

“I'm with you.”

“When they get back together, he brings out the trinket and the magic formula. Right in front of her eyes, he drops the metal trinket into the liquid, stirs it around, and pulls out the golden duplicate.”

“But why go to all of that expense? I don't understand.”

“Because she takes back the trinket, now golden, and brings it to her trusted jeweler. He examines it and pronounces that it's real, through and through. What she doesn't know is that at the bottom of the pot, hidden by the liquid, is the original trinket. She thinks she witnessed magic, when all she really saw was a simple switch.”

Jo sat back, her eyes wide. Danny could tell she was coming on board with the idea.

“So,” she said slowly, “first he makes them think he can turn metal into gold. Then, with the painting and the photos, he leads them to believe that he's been alive since the seventeen hundreds. He dupes local experts into validating his claims, and then he tells these women that they, too, can have the Midas touch and can live forever. They, too, can know the secrets of alchemy—for a price.”

“Right.”

“But, Danny, who would be gullible enough to really believe that?”

“Who indeed? What about Sir Isaac Newton? What about all of the alchemists through the ages? What about a few women in this very town who are old and alone and afraid to die?”

Jo's eyes met his and she nodded.

“I think you've hit the bull's-eye, Danny,” she said. “In fact, I may even have found the special liquid he used for supposedly transmuting the metal into gold. It's in a paint can in the shed.”

Jo led the way out back, where the dog was nearly frantic with joy to see them, knocking over his water bowl in jubilation. While Danny knelt and rubbed him behind the ears, Jo ran to the shed and came back out with an unlabeled paint can, an ornate silver and marble container, and a long, silver spoon.

“These were all together, in a box. The ‘magic formula.' ”

There on the back porch, she pried open the paint can to reveal a strange, sparkly liquid. They stared at it for a moment as Jo went through a sort of scientist's checklist.

“Viscous, odorless, opaque,” she whispered. “I'd almost guarantee this is nothing more than some sort of ionic liquid, probably with a dye added for opacity. Or maybe a petroleum distillate. Or a synthetic latex.”

“Whatever you say, Jo. Can you run a few tests, analyze it, and figure out what it is?”

She shook her head.

“I could do a few rudimentary things here,” she said. “But defining an unknown is not as easy as you think. We'll have to send it out to a lab, one with some very high-tech equipment.”

The irony
, Simon thought as he finally rolled the bicycle into Wiggles' driveway,
is that Edna died while involved with a con that was supposed to provide eternal life
. As he thought about that, he finally understood the appeal of his own con: Nobody wants to die—particularly not those who are already frail and failing and alone.

Rolling the bicycle around to the back, he remembered the rules his father had taught him years ago, rules about why elderly women were the most perfect pigeons.

They often had significant savings, for one thing. For another, they were trusting and lonely and a bit socially isolated. Finally, they were always reluctant to go to the police once all was said and done. Not only would doing so be horribly embarrassing, but many elderly women feared that if their families found out how they had been duped, there would be serious consequences—like losing control of their own finances or even being placed in an old folks' home. To most of them, it wasn't worth it, and so they kept quiet.

The perfect pigeons.

Simon dropped the bike and went inside just as Wiggles was getting ready to go out.

“You look like death,” Wiggles said, reaching for his car keys. “What happened?”

Simon realized he hadn't cleaned himself up after spending several hours on the beach. He was dirty, sandy, and tired, and his eyes were still swollen from crying. He knew he was a sight.

“Yeah, I've had a rough day,” he said, for some reason reluctant to tell Wiggles that his sister had died. As long as he didn't say it, maybe it wasn't real.

“Well, I'm going down to the Surf and Turf for all-you-can-eat shrimp night. Wanna come?”

Simon looked at Wiggles, probably the only true friend he had left in the world.

“Sure,” he said tiredly. “Can you wait while I hop in the shower? It'll just take a minute.”

“I'll wait,” Wiggles said. “But if we get there too late for the early bird special, you gotta pay the difference. For both of us.”

Simon sighed, heading for the shower. What difference did it make? Two days from now, he'd be filthy rich.

Danny sat on the couch beside Jo's test kitchen, watching as she pulled on an apron and some rubber gloves. When they'd arrived there, she had a few messages on her voice mail, including one from the science professor saying he could not decipher the notebook and that he had a feeling it was just nonsense. There was also a call from Iris Chutney, saying that no one would be coming to Jo's that night but that the club was having a private meeting and deciding what to do. If they could agree, they would come over the next day at noon, if that was all right.

Since that left the evening clear, Jo decided she would run a few simple tests on the viscous liquid. At the very least, she said she should be able to draw some basic conclusions.

Danny was just enjoying watching her work. He sat on the couch, Chewie curled at his feet, a part of him pretending that this was their life, together, as husband and wife.

What would it be like to be married to Jo Tulip?

It would be beyond any expectation for marriage that Danny had ever had, that was for sure. To marry someone who had been a friend first had to be the very best possible scenario for a happy life. All that remained was how to help her realize, without scaring her off or risking the friendship, that there were deeper feelings involved here than she ever realized.

“Stop watching. You are making me nervous,” she said.

Smiling, Danny turned his attention to the book in his lap, one of the ones on alchemy. Together, they both felt that they were on the homestretch of understanding what was going on with this con game—even if they still had no clue why Edna Pratt ended up dead.

“Chewie, get off the couch!” Jo said, glancing toward the dog. He had been curled at Danny's feet, but in the last half hour he had decided to take over the bottom half of the couch instead and make himself at home there.

After she fussed at him, though, he climbed off, found a spot on the rug, and settled down again.

“Smart dog,” Danny said, glancing up from his book. “He knew what you said.”

“Yeah, a smart dog for the Smart Chick,” Jo replied, pouring a little of the chemical into a glass. “Just what I need.”

Jo's theory was that the liquid was a substance known as molten salt. That was a salt, like sodium chloride, but one in which the cation was bulky and oddly shaped, and the anion was something soft, like tetrafluoroborate. Being oddly shaped and soft, the ions in molten salt didn't stack well, giving them a strange, almost mystical appearance. It also helped that molten salt was viscous and odorless because it had no vapor pressure. If Jo were pulling off a trick like this, she decided, that's what she would use anyway.