Gardener: The Roots Of Ancient Evil (14 page)

              “OK, so as long as my phone is on, even though it’s not connected, it’s recording everything, right?” Tommy asked.

              “Yes, but the pickup is only as good as your location, meaning if the phone is buried deep into your pocket you might not get anything good,” Willis explained. Tommy had stopped by his temporary office on his way to work, where he’d set up a basic listening system. “Also understand this is just a preliminary check. I doubt Shea will start to divulge secrets out in the open,” he added

              “Right. I’ll just take my time on this, that’s what Prieto wants anyway,” Tommy said.

              “Exactly. I don’t expect for us to learn anything right off the bat. Take your time, continue to do your job for Shea, and we’ll just see how things go,” Willis said. “Just let me know if you guys think of anything, and I’ll set up the tech side of things.”

Tommy left Willis’s nondescript office, located between an insurance office and a small gym for toddlers.

              “Hello, Mr. Battaglia?” Marco asked.

              “Yes?”
              “My name is Marco Winston, I was wondering if I might talk to you a little bit, when you have time.” Battaglia was eighty-two, and Marco wondered if he’d even agree to meet with him.

              “Sure, what’s this regarding?” he asked pleasantly, surprising Marco.

              “Well, I was wondering about the relatively large plot of land you sold a couple of years ago, near Briargate, in Colorado Springs?” he asked.

              “Uh-huh,” he said.

              “Well, I was just wondering if I could talk to you about the transaction, maybe why you sold it, anything you could tell me about the buyer?” Marco asked, surprised he’d gotten this far.

              “Well, I didn’t really want to burden my children, who are all grown, you see, with the maintenance of it. None of them live in the area, and I just figured they’d rather inherit the money than have to worry about dealing with undeveloped property,” he said.

              “I see, that makes sense. I’m actually doing a little bit of research on the individual who bought the property. How exactly did that transaction take place?”

              “Well, that was strange. I had been thinking about selling it before I died, but I hadn’t mentioned anything to anybody. He just appeared to me out of the blue. I actually never met the buyer, only his agent,” Battaglia explained.

              “I see. So he approached you, made an offer, did he happen to mention what he was going to use the property for?” Marco asked.

              “Oh no, I didn’t ask. I was hoping to get five, ten thousand an acre. But he offered me fifty.”

              “He offered fifty thousand an acre?” Marco asked. That was considerably higher than anything that had sold nearby in the past five years.

              “Yes, and that was his first offer. I took it without really thinking, but I might have been able to get more had I bargained, come to think of it,” Battaglia noted.

              “Well, that helps me quite a bit, Mr. Battaglia. Thank you very much for your time,” Marco said before ending the call.

His next call should be interesting. He’d found out after about an hour of dead-ends that Curtis Lusk, a world-famous gardener, had been hired. Marco had come across the link to the article not through Shea’s name, but by trying random searches related to Colorado Springs and real estate. It only mentioned that Lusk had been hired by an unnamed developer, and by process of elimination, Marco had a strong suspicion that unnamed developer was Shea. However, if he called and said outright he was looking for information on Lusk’s employer, he doubted Lusk would give up anything useful. After a few moments’ thought, he came up with a plan. He called the number he’d found, left a message, and waited for a response.

              “Hello, this is Curtis Lusk returning your call?” he said.

              “Mr. Lusk, thank you so much for returning my call. My name is Marco Winston, freelance journalist. I’m hoping to sell this piece to either
Garden Design
or
Country Gardens
, two of my biggest buyers,” Marco said, hoping he wouldn’t find himself in a detailed conversation he wouldn’t understand.

              “Yes, I see,” Lusk said.

              “I was looking for potential topics online and I came across an article about your new project. What can you tell me about it?” Marco asked, taking a risk.

              “Well, I’m not supposed to say who I’m working for, just that he is very interested in floral design, and I suspect he intends to construct a garden of a certain scale and notoriety. I doubt he’ll be able to keep his name secret for long, as the kinds of things he’s got me researching make me suspect he’s got big plans. I can’t tell you much, but I’ll tell you this much. He certainly knows what he’s doing,” Lusk said.

              “Is that so? Why do you say that?”

              “Well, he’s spoken to me in detail about what he’d like, and his knowledge of aesthetic horticulture. The amount of details he’s conversationally fluent in is what you’d expect from a flower geek like me. But I guess rich people need hobbies too,” Lusk said.

              “So, how big of a garden do you think you’ll be building? One to rival your work at the National Museum in the Netherlands?”

“I suspect that’s what he might be after eventually, but do not quote me on that. He’s paying me quite a bit, and I do not want to upset that at all,” Lusk explained with a chuckle.

              “No sir, it doesn’t sound like there’s enough for a piece here,” Marco said, feigning disappointment.             

              “Yes, that’s a shame too. This fellow has picked the perfect location, I just wish he wasn’t so secretive,” Lusk said.

              “What do you mean by that?” Marco asked, curious.

              “Well, this of course is all off the record, but when I first started planting here, in our small greenhouse, I was astounded by the quality of the soil. It’s like nothing I’d ever seen. I’m surprised this hadn’t been discovered earlier. Very little work will need to be done to grow an absolutely gorgeous garden. I’m really excited,” Lusk said.

              “Well, that’s good to hear. I’ll check back with you in a couple months and see if you are any less tight-lipped.” Marco laughed.

              “You do that. And pay attention to any buzz about new flower gardens springing up. I’ll be sure to give you first dibs on an in-depth story, Marco,” he said politely.

Marco hung up. Nice guy, but absolutely useless information. Some guy hijacks a family fortune because he wants to build a world-class garden?

              “Melissa, what are you doing this weekend?”
              “Um, I don’t know, why?”

              “I need a huge favor. I need to pretend to stay at your house,” Molly said.             

              “Why? What’s happening?” Melissa asked, sitting up on her bed. This sounded good.

              “I can’t say, but it’s really cool, but I need to do something this coming Saturday and nobody can know about it. I promise I’ll tell you everything when I get back, OK?”

              “Wait, get back? Where are you going?” Melissa demanded.

              “Nowhere! OK? Can you also ask Becky to come over, for real?”

              “Is she going with you?”

              “No, I need to tell my mom that me and Becky are coming to your house, so when she calls your mom everything will be set, but then I won’t show up at the last minute,” Molly explained.

              “What about Becky? What should I tell her?” Melissa asked, thinking.

              “I don’t know, just say you don’t know what, or say you think I went to Spencer’s house,” Molly said quickly.

              “Oh my god! You like Spencer?” she screamed.

              “No, but people think I do. So if you tell Becky you think I went there, it will sound, like, normal, right?”

              “But you won’t tell me where you’re really going? I want to know!”

              “I will tell you, Melissa, you’re my best friend, I want to tell you, but they told me not to or it wouldn’t work!”

              “What wouldn’t work?” Melissa asked, beside herself.

              “I’ll tell you when I get back!”
              “Where? Where? Where?” Melissa screamed.

              “Oh my god! Nowhere!” Molly exclaimed, exasperated. “I’ll tell you everything later, just please help me, OK?”
              “Oh my God! Becky will know I’m not telling the truth, and then she’ll be mad!”

              “Just tell her I went somewhere, you don’t know where, it’s a secret and I’ll get in HUGE trouble if my mom finds out! I mean like I’ll never be able to leave the house again. OK?” Molly asked one last time. Why didn’t people just do what you wanted?

              “OK, but you have to tell me everything!”

              “I will!”

              “So while those are spinning, you need my help synthesizing these?” Peter asked.

              “Actually, I’d rather you didn’t,” Viviana answered without looking up. “This is really delicate, and I can’t mess up. When I put them in the mass spec, they have to be at the precise ratio,” she explained.

Peter had only been working here for two days, and she was ready to kill him. He was competent, but unfortunately a lot of the work she had him doing was intensive in the setup, but once the procedure started, there was plenty of downtime. And he was not the type who would just sit and wait the ten minutes it took the centrifuge to complete the spinning process.

              “Once you get all the equipment in, what do you think you’ll be focused on the most?” he asked. “I know you’re initially set up to research genetically based lifespan-lengthening procedures, but I also think there’s an opportunity to do a lot of cancer research. There’s sufficient evidence to support the theory that cancer is genetic, and if you can solve it, you can make a pretty big name for yourself,” he said, either not taking the hint or choosing not to.

              “That’s correct,” she said, concentrating on her two hands and the pipette mechanism with intense focus. A tenth of a milliliter mistake either way would ruin three hours of work. Didn’t he get that?

              “Personally, I like Dr. Takahashi’s theory that it’s a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental factors, which means it might require a two-pronged therapy, both genetic and more of a traditional pharmacological type,” he said, crossing his arms.

She didn’t respond. Just continued working. She had a small stopwatch that she could observe without moving her head. He stood there for a full three minutes after the centrifuge stopped spinning. Finally he went back to process the samples, allowing her to work in peace. She worked the rest of the day with only a few interruptions after she started giving him tasks to do that she really didn’t need done, but that had very little downtime. That would at least keep him out of her hair. When she had a spare moment, she gave Bradley a call.

              “You got a minute?”

              “Yep, you want me to come down?”

              “No, I’ll come up.”

              “I’m going to kill that guy,” she said as soon as she walked into his office. She didn’t sit, only stood in front of his desk with her arms crossed.

              “That bad?” he asked.

She glared and nodded.

              “Can you have him do something off site? Document research at the university or something?” Bradley asked.

              “You know what I’d like to do,” she said, knowing full well she couldn’t.

              “His uncle gave us seventy-five mil, Viv. That kind of money you have to put up with a lot of crap, you knew that when I hired you. I made sure you understood that,”

              “Yeah, yeah, I got it. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to blame you. I just needed to complain to somebody. But I like the offsite research idea. I’ll think of something that might take him a couple years to complete,” she said, finally grinning.

Bradley laughed as she walked out and back downstairs. As soon as she went into the lab, she saw him looking over her workspace carefully. Like he was inspecting it or—a thought suddenly occurred to her. A particularly troubling one.

              “So, uh, Peter,” she began, “how often do you see your uncle?” she asked.

              “Oh, not much,” he answered, looking up quickly at the question.

              “Is he your mom’s or dad’s brother?” she asked.

              “Huh? Oh, um, my mom’s,” he said. With just a little bit too much hesitation.

              “Yeah, I have an uncle on my mom’s side, but not my dad’s side. He ever come over for Thanksgiving?” she asked. “My uncle rarely does. He and Mom kind of had a falling out a ways back,” she said, creating a fictional family history on the spot.

              “Uh, yeah, sometimes,” he answered.

              “Do you guys ever get in big fights? My family always does. I hate it,” she said.

              “Oh, yeah,” he said, nodding and grinning, “all the time,” he said.

She didn’t believe a word of it. Which meant that seventy-five-million-dollar investor that popped in out of nowhere wasn’t related to this guy. She didn’t have the heart to tell Bradley that he may have to turn away that seventy-five mil. She was pretty sure some of it they’d already spent, agreeing in principal to a five-million-dollar deposit on a new synthesizer that would be built to their specifications over the next six months.