Gardener: The Roots Of Ancient Evil (18 page)

              Tommy woke up slowly, careful not to wake Viviana. He could smell the bouquet all the way from the kitchen table. She had been sure to let him know how much she appreciated the thoughtful and unexpected gift, but she also made sure to let him know that she wasn’t a flower kind of girl. Tommy had suspected he’d made a crucial error, and realized that her sister was more the flower type, and she, being lab geek, might appreciate a different type of gift. He’d resolved to learn more about the art of cooking, since she seemed to enjoy preparing meals with him. He waited until she needed to get ready for work before getting out of bed. When she got out of the shower, he was in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee.

              “So, just act like normal today?” she asked, coming out into the kitchen.

              “Yeah, better if everybody just thinks Prieto came out of the blue. But maybe do what your boss suggested, send that lab partner of yours to the research library or something,” Tommy suggested.

Viviana smiled slightly. “I’ve got a couple wild goose chase ideas that will keep him busy,” she said. She walked up behind Tommy and put her arms around his neck. Didn’t say anything, just squeezed him and held him.

              Tommy walked into the coffee shop after the morning rush had subsided, and chose a table near the back, where only he could see his screen. Shea did tell him that he didn’t need to come into the office every day, that it was a long-term project. After his conversation with Lusk yesterday, he felt that something wasn’t quite right, but he wasn’t exactly sure what it was.

              “Dude, you awake yet?” he asked when Marco mumbled a greeting.

              “Yeah, what’s up?”

              “Tell me about your conversation with Lusk, the flower king,” Tommy said. His web tabs were open to various articles about him on Wikipedia and various botany websites.

              “Hmm,” Marco said, thinking. “It was supposed to be off the record, some kind of big, expensive thing, and, oh yeah, he said something about the dirt.”

              “Dirt?”

              “Yeah, something about how it has a strange mix of something or other, perfect for growing flowers, that he thought Shea was lucky or something for having chosen it,” he said.

              “Anything else?” Tommy asked.

              “Nah, man, I think that’s it.”

Tommy wanted to ask Lusk for more information, but needed a legitimate reason. He didn’t want him alerting Shea. Based on how few gardeners there were in the world of botany, Tommy suspected that Shea was paying Lusk a lot more than him. He decided he’d just play dumb.

              “Curtis Lusk,” he answered on the first ring. Perhaps Shea had him on call or something.

              “Mr. Lusk, this is Tom Ricker. She loved the flowers,” he said.

              “Glad to hear it,” he said.

              “That’s not why I’m calling, though. I am in a bit of a bind, and I wondered if you could help me,” he started.

              “I’ll do what I can,” Lusk offered helpfully.

              “I’m supposed to buy all the houses, over the next decade or so, from the neighboring tract. But after what you told me yesterday, that Shea may be planning some kind of monumental garden of the ages,” he said jokingly, “I’m wondering if there’s some kind of angle I might use,” he said.

              “What do you mean?”

              “Well, one of the things I’m worried about is competition from other real estate investors. But if Shea was going to use the real estate to build some huge, I mean massive garden, it might be a better idea just to try and buy the land from the city, all at once. But if he’s not going to do that, I mean, if I knew how big his plans were,” Tommy said, wondering if Lusk would make any sense of that.

              “Well, I don’t know what his plans are, I mean I just found out recently he wants to increase the size of the greenhouse, but I can assure you that the soil under those houses is just as rich as the soil here. In my opinion, building houses on such fertile soil is a big mistake, but that’s just my opinion,” Lusk offered.

              “Yeah, I’ll probably just ask Shea, it would make it a lot easier. Just what do you mean when you say the soil is rich, I didn’t even know there was a difference,” Tommy admitted.

              “Well, depending on the composition and presence of clay and other minerals, there is quite a difference. If this soil under the land that Mr. Shea just purchased would be compared to a wine, he is sitting on top of a bottle of
Cote de Nuits
,” he said, chuckling.

              “Don’t really know what that means, but I’ll take your word for it,” Tommy said, laughing. He sat thinking for another few minutes after hanging up. It still didn’t make sense. Why go through all the trouble of telling him some story about real estate values, long-term planning, if he just wanted to build a world-famous flower bed? Even if it was for pure vanity, why not just admit it? That along with Prieto’s idea that Shea was some kind of imposter didn’t click with what he was being told.

He pulled up Google maps and looked at the limits of Shea’s property. A bit of a crooked square, and adding all of the houses would make a large rectangle. Google maps hadn’t been updated since the new offices had been constructed, so he zoomed in, looking around the vacant area. He chuckled to himself, remembering the few times in college he and Marco had caught the Google car driving around taking pictures. They’d immediately dropped their pants and mooned it, hoping to become famous.

It looked as though the Google image had been taken just after construction had begun. Tommy oriented himself, trying to find out where his office would later be. But the picture was all wrong. According to Google’s satellite image, the large rectangular hole in the ground was on the opposite side of where the parking lot now was. When he drove to his office, he turned in near the corner of Edison and Bristol, and on the current map, that was way at the other corner from where this current construction was being done. Perhaps this was the secret underground flower lab that Lusk had referred to. Tommy decided to go and take a look, or at least drive by the back end of the property, far from where his office was.

              He found the turnoff, but was surprised how small it was. He’d never driven back here before. On his left was a long chain-link fence bordering Shea’s property. On his right was undeveloped land that sloped upward slightly. About halfway in, he noticed a small gate, and a dirt road leading to what looked like a cement driveway leading down. From where he sat, the driveway looked like it curved down to the left, but he couldn’t see the end. He parked as close as he could to the gate, which appeared to have some kind of small, remote controlled lock, and a small motor mechanism that would slide it open.

He got out and approached it. Somebody built this to allow access without getting out of your car, but without needing a guard to verify your ID. Tommy looked around carefully, not seeing any cameras, and decided to hop the fence. He’d just take a look to see what was at the bottom of that ramp, and then come back. There was no razor wire on top, and not even any signs saying to keep out. He was a little nervous, but his curiosity wouldn’t let him play it safe.

He quickly made his way to the other side of the fence and jogged up to the ramp. Down at the bottom was another remote controlled lock, but this was on a metal door that would slide up. This looked to be for deliveries, but of what? He leaned up, put his ear to the metal. Nothing. Randomly pushed on the front of the remote controlled device, which seemed to only be an infrared panel, about a square inch, but nothing happened. No cameras were visible. Whoever made deliveries here would have their own remote access device, so all deliveries were prearranged. He looked up, and guessed he was maybe one floor below ground level.

Just as he started walking up the ramp, the door started to open. He froze. For a brief moment, he thought about sprinting up the ramp and the twenty or thirty yards to the fence, over it and to his car, but in that split second of indecision the door had opened a full third. Instead, he desperately tried to come up with an excuse why he’d jumped the fence and was standing at a door he hadn’t been given access to. The door opened, and he was faced with a tall, well-built man in his mid-forties wearing a very expensive suit. And holding a weapon. The man slowly raised the weapon, pointing it at Tommy’s face, and grinned.

              “And just what the fuck are
you
doing here?”

              It took all of Tommy’s mental focus to ignore the gun completely. All he knew was by his tone of voice, the man knew who Tommy was, but Tommy didn’t know who he was.

              “You going to shoot me, man?” Tommy said, smiling. “Tom Ricker, but I think you already know that.” Tommy extended his hand.

The man tilted his head and holstered his gun. “Max,” he said. “Now, please answer the question. You don’t have access to this area of the property. Why are you down here?” he demanded.

              “I was just looking for angles to come up with whatever story I could to buy all those houses on the other end. I Googled this property, you know, in Google maps? And I saw this place as a big hole in the ground. Just curious is all,” Tommy said.

              “So you decided to hop the fence,” he said.

              “Well, I couldn’t see what was at the bottom of the ramp. I do work here; I mean if I parked in my own parking space, I could have walked back here from my office without needing any security pass, right? Just lazy more than anything else,” Tommy said.

              “I believe you were hired to focus on the other end of the property, not this one. Correct?” Max said, resting his right hand on his holstered weapon and glaring at Tommy.

              “Absolutely correct, Max. I apologize for my intrusion,” Tommy said, backing and slowly turning and walking up the ramp before Max had a chance to respond. When he was at the top of the ramp, he could hear the door sliding back down.

              “Lizzie, it’s me,” he said.

              “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”

              “Got a strange text from Molly a few minutes ago,” he said.

              “She at her friends?”

              “She told me she was just about to get on a plane, do you know anything about this?” he asked.

              “What?”

              “Where do you think she is?” he asked.

              “She said she’s going to Becky’s for the night. Melissa and them are having a sleepover,” Lizzie answered, the concern clear in her voice.

              “Lizzie, please call Becky’s mom to verify that Molly is indeed there, then call me right back, OK? I’ve been texting her for the last twenty minutes but she’s not responding.”

              “OK,” Lizzie said and hung up.

Nelson Prieto looked over at the picture of Lizzie and Molly. He’d told Molly several times she could tell him anything, and he wouldn’t get angry. If something happened to her, and he could have prevented it by calling nineteen minutes ago, he’d never forgive himself. His direct line rang.

              “Well?”

              “She’s not there,” Lizzie said. “She never showed up.”

Prieto paused. He’d made billions of dollars by remaining calm during financial hurricanes while everybody else was losing their cool. He could only do that now with great difficulty. He forced himself to take several deep breaths.

              “OK, you there?”

              “Yeah?”

              “Do this. Exactly as I say. Call your cell carrier, give them her information, and let them know she’s a minor. When you’ve done that, arrange a three-way call. You, them, and me, understand?”

              “OK,” she said and hung up.

Prieto called his assistant. “No calls, no interruptions, no exceptions,” he said and clicked off before she could respond. He jumped when his direct line buzzed again.

              “Hello?”

              “Hi, Dad, I’m here with Douglas.”
              “Douglas, you know what’s going on?”

              “Yes sir, we’ve initiated a trace of her GPS, but at this point there’s nothing we can do except to wait for it to work its way through the system. I understand your concerns, I really do, but it’s a technical process and all we can do is wait.”
              “What about old texts, emails, pictures?” Prieto quickly asked.

              “Please hold,” Douglas said. Prieto and Lizzie could hear him typing.

              “OK, she does have cloud backup, where would you like me to send the information?”

Lizzie and Prieto both gave their emails.

              “OK, that should show up automatically. I’ll stay on the line to make sure you can access this information.”

Prieto waited, and the file arrived. He opened it, scrolled through the texts, emails, pictures. Then saw a photo of a plane.

              “How do I know when these photos were taken?” Prieto asked.

              “If you hover your mouse over the photo, a small window should pop up.”

Prieto did that. The picture of the plane had been taken only twenty-five minutes ago.

              “Shit, both of you call the authorities,” Prieto said and ended the call. He quickly made another one.

              “Hello,” Willis said.

              “Willis, don’t have time to explain. I’m going to send you an image of a plane. The tail number is visible. Let me know when you get it.”

              “OK,” he said. Prieto waited. “Got it.”

              “Send it to the PI that’s working for us, and give me his number.”

              “Yes sir.”

Prieto wrote it down. Made another call.

              “Drake Investigations.”

              “Mr. Drake, my name is Mr. Prieto. You are working for me through Marco Winston and Tom Ricker.”             

              “Yes, sir.”

              “You should have received an email with a photo of a plane.”
              “Yes, sir, I have,” Jamie replied, waiting for instructions. When a billionaire called you with urgency in his voice, you listened.

              “My granddaughter is on that plane, and I believe she may have been abducted. Find out where it’s going, find it before it lands. You help me find her and get her home safe, your bonus is one million dollars. Call me when you have a destination,” he said and ended the call. One more to make.

              “Yes sir,” Amir said.

              “I need to leave as soon as possible,” Prieto said.

              “Of course, sir, may I have a destination?” his pilot asked.

              “I’ll tell you when I get there,” Prieto answered. He stood, took five seconds to collect what he needed, and briskly walked out of his office.

              “Have my car ready downstairs to take me to the airport. Emergency,” he said on his way out without stopping.