Zinnia (37 page)

Zinnia was supposed to be home, resting. But she had not answered the door.

He walked quickly through the airy apartment. The bed was rumpled. The towels in the bath were damp. She had been here earlier but now she was gone.

He paused by her desk and picked up the phone to dial Leo's number. Then he noticed the flashing light on the answering machine. He punched the button.

There was a hum and then a click.
“Zinnia? This is your Aunt Willy
…”

Nick hit the
FAST-FORWARD
button.

Another hum and a click.
“Zin? It's me, Leo
…”

He pushed the
FAST-FORWARD
button again.

Hum. Click. “Miss Spring? Newton DeForest here. Say, I did some checking in those old files …”

“Five hells.” Nick ran toward the door.

The connections in the matrix were shatteringly obvious now. Zinnia was not a hapless bystander who had been caught up in the elaborate web of events surrounding the Chastain journal.

She had been the target of the killer all along.

She had to be here. But she was not responding to his psychic probe.

Nick stood at the entrance of the dark maze. Everything in the matrix was designed to draw him into those twisting corridors of grotesque foliage.

He sensed the hunger of the gently rustling plants. He knew that Zinnia was somewhere inside. He could see her purse on the ground near the first turning point. Farther on a bit of khaki cloth dangled from a long sharp spine. A piece of a man's shirt.

Someone had chased Zinnia into the maze.

He shoved the flashlight he had brought with him into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket. He did not need it yet. The sun would not set for another hour. He walked cautiously into the evil green maze.

He was immediately engulfed in a deep perpetual twilight, thanks to the heavy canopy of vines and leaves. An innocent yellow flower caught his attention. He did not see the toothlike thorns inside until he glanced down into the heart of the bloom. A large half-dissolved insect floated in a sticky pool at the bottom.

He went forward, careful not to brush against even the most innocuous-looking leaves. He slipped through the dark halls the way Andy Aoki had taught him to move through the jungles of the Western Islands.

He let his senses expand to full awareness. His matrix-honed instincts for spatial relationships kept him centered in the passageways.

He turned and went along another corridor. Something slithered near his foot. He glanced down and
saw a small vine creeping toward the toe of his shoe. He stepped over it and continued on to the next intersection.

It did not matter which way he chose to go, he decided. Zinnia had told him that the design of the maze was such that anyone who entered it ended up at the center.

At each twist and bend in the path, his stomach tightened at the possibility of what he might find around the corner. He told himself that the maze was not deadly so long as one was careful. DeForest had given Zinnia a tour. He had explained to her that as long as she did not provoke the plants, she was safe.

But Zinnia had been fleeing from someone when she had entered earlier. She would have been scared. Her thoughts would have been on escape, not on protecting herself from the foliage.

He rounded another corner and saw the body. It dangled from a vine that was twisted around its throat. Dozens of small spongelike flowers had descended from the canopy and attached themselves to the corpse. They were swollen and dark. They throbbed as they dined.

For an instant Nick could have sworn that his heart stopped. Then he realized that he was looking at the body of a man, not a woman. The person who had chased Zinnia into the maze, no doubt. What remained of the torn khaki clothing matched the scrap of fabric he had seen at the entrance.

There was something familiar about the khaki, he thought. Then he made the connections and realized that he was looking at the second knife man.

Nick got down on his hands and knees and crawled beneath the gently swaying body. His hand brushed against an object lying on the moss. A sheath-knife. He picked it up, closed the sheath, and dropped it into the pocket of his black trousers.

On the far side of the body, he stood and continued
along the corridor. He. tried another psychic probe. Still no response from Zinnia. She was alive, he thought. She had to be alive. He would know if she were not. And she was here somewhere in this damned maze. Why wasn't she responding?

He moved more swiftly now. The fear that Zinnia might be lying unconscious or hurt somewhere in one of the green corridors briefly overrode his old cautious habits and his natural sense of timing. The sleeve of his black jacket brushed against a leaf. A rustling sound alerted him to his mistake.

Instinct took over. He leaped forward, barely avoiding two long blade-shaped leaves. The leaves snapped together with a sound that was uncannily reminiscent of a pair of scissors.

A moment later the gurgle of water bubbling over rocks caught his attention. The grotto. He was near the heart of the maze.

He walked around the last corner and saw Zinnia.

She was not alone.

Duncan Luttrell stood a short distance away. He had a gun in his hand. His mouth twisted in amused disgust at the sight of Nick's rumpled tux.

“We've been waiting for you, Chastain,” Duncan said. “You're a trifle overdressed for the occasion. But, given your notoriously bad taste, I suppose that was only to be expected.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Nick.” Zinnia shot to her feet as he walked casually into the clearing. She started toward him.

“Don't move,” Duncan ordered.

She halted. Relief and fear soared through her. Nick was here. But now they were both trapped. “I knew you would find me. But I wish you hadn't. Duncan has gone crazy.”

“Sit
down,
Zinnia.” Duncan's voice vibrated with sudden rage. “Now. Or I'll kill Chastain where he stands.”

She whirled around, fists clenched. “If you do I'll never give you what you want.”

“Yes, you will.” Duncan smiled thinly. “Because I will make certain that Chastain dies very slowly if you don't. I'm sure those plants that are munching on what's left of DeForest would welcome dessert.”

Nick stopped beside a large, dark purple-green plant that rustled expectantly. He ignored the shrubbery and spared only a passing glance at Duncan. His whole attention was focused on Zinnia. “You may as
well do what he says. Have a seat. We'll probably be here a while.”

She searched his face. In the eternal twilight of the maze it was impossible to read his expression. But, then, it had never been easy to tell what Nick was thinking, she reminded herself. He could be as enigmatic as the sea. Slowly she sank back down onto the cold stone bench.

“He's got your father's journal.” She looked at the neatly wrapped package that lay beside her on the stone bench. “He stole it from poor Morris Fenwick and then murdered him. He had already hired Wilkes to create the duplicate and a fake note for Polly and Omar to find. He thought if you accepted the fraud, you'd stop looking for the original.”

“I know.” Nick looked at Duncan. “And you tried to implicate my uncle in both the murder of Fenwick and the forgery.”

Duncan's empty hand swept out in a what-can-you-do gesture. “I tried to put you off the scent or at least distract you by leaving one of your uncle's cufflinks at Wilkes's house.”

“How did you get the cuff link?” Nick asked.

“Oh, that was simple. He and I were meeting regularly to discuss business. I made certain that he lost one link after he'd had a few too many scotch-tinis. I really did not want to have to kill you, Chastain. I was afraid it would draw too much interest, not only from the police, but from your circle of lower-class associates.”

“His associates, as you call them, are not nearly as low class as yourself, but you'll certainly get their attention if you kill him,” Zinnia said fiercely. “You'll never get away with it.”

“I've found a way around that little problem,” Duncan murmured. “By the time anyone finds his body in this charming country garden, there will be very little left. It will be assumed that he and
Demented DeForest argued about the fate of the Third Expedition and both of them ran afoul of these damned meat-eating plants.”

“It will never work,” Zinnia said.

She was hoarse from repeating the words. She had been saying them over and over for the past hour while they waited for Nick.

Duncan had been just as certain as she that Nick would show up eventually. She had deliberately refused to respond to the familiar probe of Nick's strong talent in an attempt to discourage him from entering the maze. But he had found her, anyway. Typical matrix.

Nick looked at Duncan. “Your father went to a lot of trouble to rewrite history. He murdered several people and he faked the bankruptcy of his own company in an effort to blur his tracks. But even a paranoid matrix-talent couldn't wipe out every piece of evidence that related to the Third Expedition.”

The flash of rage that had appeared in Duncan's eyes vanished as if it had never existed. He assumed his familiar warm, charming, open-faced expression. “My father certainly tried hard enough. Got to give the old bastard credit. In all the years I knew him, the only thing he ever cared about was that damned journal. He didn't even bother to come to my mother's funeral because he was so busy working on it.”

“Why didn't he get rid of DeForest years ago?” Zinnia asked.

Duncan chuckled. “There was no reason to do that. In his own bizarre fashion, Demented DeForest made an unwitting contribution to the plan.”

“He helped turn the truth into a legend,” Nick said.

“Precisely.” Duncan smiled. “Thanks to his silly theories about alien abductions, no serious scholar ever paid any attention to the subject. It became the kind of story that only the tabloids covered.”

“Which was just what Marsden Luttrell wanted,” Nick said.

Duncan nodded. “The Third Expedition was receding very nicely into the mists of legend on schedule. But unfortunately, things got complicated after my father jumped out that window a year ago. The Chastain journal disappeared within hours of his death. It was stolen by his mistress. She apparently guessed that it had value, and she decided to make her fortune with it. Sold it to a book collector in New Portland.”

Zinnia raised her chin. “I suppose you murdered her, too?”

Duncan chuckled good-humoredly. “She very wisely disappeared before I realized what she had done. I spent months and a great deal of money searching for her, but I still hadn't found her by the time the New Portland collector had a stroke and died. Morris Fenwick was called in by the family to evaluate his book collection. Fenwick found the Chastain journal and knew he had something important.”

“But he didn't know how important it was, did he?” Nick said.

“Of course not,” Duncan scoffed. “He couldn't break the code. He didn't even realize that it was encoded. But he knew that the family-history angle would be of great interest to a Chastain.”

“So he contacted me.” Nick moved slightly, causing another sigh of anticipation in the leaves of the nearby shrubbery. “He also notified my uncle, Orrin Chastain. The rumors must have started up immediately.”

“Yes.” Duncan pursed his lips in mild disapproval. “By the time I heard them, Fenwick had already made arrangements to sell the journal to you. He refused to turn it over to me.”

Zinnia narrowed her eyes. “So you threatened him.
You forced him to give you the journal and then you murdered him.”

“I really couldn't let him live.” Duncan sounded dryly apologetic. “He knew too much, you see.”

“You mean he had read enough of the journal to know that your father was the sixth member of the expedition team.” Nick watched Duncan with expressionless eyes. “And he knew that the expedition had not been canceled. It had departed on schedule.”

“So you figured that out, did you?” Duncan gave him an approving look. “Very clever. Dad thought he had erased all traces of the fact that there had been a last-minute addition to the team.”

“He tried.” Nick's eyes were the same hard green as the grotto plants. “Marsden Luttrell murdered my father and the other members of the expedition team, as well. What kind of poison did he use?”

“Do you know, I never thought to ask him,” Duncan said. “One of his own creations, no doubt. Something slow-acting and extremely subtle, I imagine. He was always tinkering in his lab.”

“Poison?” Zinnia's mouth fell open in shock. “He poisoned the expedition team?”

“Marsden Luttrell was the founder of Fire and Ice Pharmaceuticals,” Nick explained. “He was a brilliant chemist. He funded the Third Expedition through the University of New Portland. Anonymously.”

“Oh, my God,” Zinnia whispered.

“The legal agreement was that his company would have first crack at developing commercial products from any promising botanical specimens that were discovered,” Duncan said. “Nothing odd about the arrangement. Just business as usual.”

“Not quite,” Nick said. “Your father was a matrix.”

Zinnia winced. “So much for business as usual. Matrix-talents never do anything in the usual manner.”

“That was especially true with Marsden Luttrell.” Nick kept his gaze on Duncan. “He had probably been getting increasingly flaky for years, but he must have been a full-blown paranoid by the time he funded the Third. It's amazing that he was able to conceal his mental state from the university officials.”

“I doubt they would have cared, even if they had guessed that Dad was getting a little weird,” Duncan said. “After all, money is where you find it and the university needed the cash very badly for the venture.”