The Trouble with Tulip (45 page)

Simon could hear screaming.

No, it wasn't screaming. It was a siren.

He opened his eyes, understanding that he was inside an ambulance. To his right was a man in white, probably a paramedic. To his left was a uniformed policeman.

Simon closed his eyes, realizing as he did so that he was probably dying of a heart attack.

Was this how it had been for Edna? Did she have any warning before she was killed? Did she lay on the floor in the dining room, her head in massive pain, conscious for even a few seconds before she passed, understanding that she wasn't going to live?

Most importantly: If she had, had she been comforted by her newfound faith?

Simon didn't like to think about eternity. Life on earth was hard enough without the prospect of eternal damnation. As far as he was concerned, God had pulled the ultimate con: Believe in Me and you'll have eternal life!

Yeah, right. That “eternal life” was about as real and available as the immortality-on-earth he had sold to the women of Mulberry Glen.

He opened his eyes again, looking around at the tools that were keeping him alive. Was this what it came down to in the end, all of these machines, working to keep his heart pumping?

The pain was so far beyond anything he had ever felt that he could hardly breath. There was a mask over his face, and for a moment Simon thought maybe it was choking him. He reached up to take it off but the paramedic stopped him, held down his hands, and spoke words of comfort.

Simon couldn't hear much of what he said.

“Almost there. Hold on. Just a minute.”

The screaming lessened. The feeling of motion ended. Suddenly, instead of the ambulance, he was looking up at the clear blue sky. Had he just sat on the front stoop this morning, waiting for his check to arrive? What had gone wrong? How and when?

Was he really going to die?

The blue sky turned into a white tile ceiling. Simon felt a piercing in his arm and he knew he'd been given some kind of shot. He was floating then, floating through the carnival, watching his father calling out for people to play the game.

“Time for some ring toss. Just land a ring around a bottleneck and win a great big prize!”

Each week, one of Simon and Edna's jobs was to sit down after closing and go through the rings in the ring toss game, making sure that almost every single one of them had a clear stripe of glue on the inside of the circle, just enough to make it impossible for the ring to fit on the neck of the bottles. Simon's dad kept the three ringers, the sample rings that were slightly bigger than the others and always landed correctly. But the rest of the rings were rigged. People would plunk down their money and try and try and try to get the rings around the bottles' necks. But it never worked because the game had been fixed.

This thing that seemed so simple was actually impossible.

Jo and Keith talked easily, finding common humor in the world of academia. When their pizza came, Jo tried to make some suggestions as to how he could avoid the media.

“The problem,” she said, “is that if they get a look at you, then they'll be all over it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're not…exactly…unfortunate-looking. Television to an attractive person is like a heat-seeking missile to a fire. It will find you. If you're really concerned about it, you should probably get out of town until this thing blows over. That would be the safest move if you need to avoid reporters at all costs.”

He seemed flattered by her compliment.

“That's funny,” he said. “Because when I saw your photo on television this morning, I thought to myself, ‘She's made for that medium.' Even in a still picture, you have quite a presence on screen. Heat-seeking missile indeed.”

Their eyes met and held. Oh, yes, there was definitely a spark between them.

But the spark was misleading. The more they talked, the more Jo decided she might not be interested in him after all. Yes, he was good-looking, and yes, he was smart. But he was also a bit too self-absorbed, talking endlessly about his work, his home, his life. Twice he quoted Taoist sayings, and Jo got the distinct feeling that he was more New Age talk than anything substantial. When she mentioned her Christian faith, he just smiled.

“I've done an historical study of all religions,” he said. “And I've come to the conclusion that all are valid. All say the same thing, just in different ways. My yin to your yang.”

Jo didn't bother arguing with him. In her experience, religious arguments only served to entrench people more deeply into their own positions. Better she simply love the Lord with all of her heart, and love her neighbor as herself.

Finally, despite their differences, when they were finished eating, the professor reminded her that he'd be calling in a month or so, to officially ask her out on a date.

Jo merely smiled, knowing that when he did call, she would decline.

“Thank you for lunch,” she told him before leaving. “And good luck with the media.”

“We'll see how it goes,” he replied. “After all, the journey is the reward.”

Jo had turned off her phone during their lunch, and there were three messages waiting for her when she turned it back on. She had heard from Danny, the police chief, and her agent, Milton. All three were calling to say that there would be a press conference at 6:00
P.M
. in the main auditorium of the township building, and that all parties related to the case were encouraged to attend. In the chief's message, he added that Simon Kurtz had been apprehended in Florida and was now in the temporary custody of the Florida state police.

Jo returned Danny's call, but he was in the middle of a photography sitting and couldn't really talk.

“That's all right,” Jo told him. “Will you be home before the press conference? We can ride over together.”

“Yeah, sure.”

When Jo arrived at Edna's house, a news van was parked out front. Milton had told her to remain accessible to the press, but Jo wasn't ready to be interviewed just yet. She drove right past, peeking to make sure that Chewie was okay in the backyard. From what she could see, he was fine, sitting in the shade of a big tree.

She went home, knowing that if she wanted to come across in the media as articulate and intelligent, she would have to do some more reading about alchemy. Somehow, Jo's education in chemistry had never included much about the topic. Fortunately, Danny had left the books he'd gotten from the library in her home office. She settled down there and started skimming. The things she learned were fascinating.

According to what she read, no one knew for certain the origins of alchemy, only that it had been around for a long, long time. From ancient Egypt to China to everywhere in between, the popularity of alchemy had come and gone throughout history, at some times being banned and other times being celebrated.

The symbols of alchemy throughout the ages were quite prevalent. Jo flipped past a lot of sketches and paintings, many of them similar to those in the velvet-covered notebook, most of them violent and disturbing. The images were so strange: Men and women bonded together, lions eating the sun, winged mermaids holding chalices. Architects and other artisans had inserted alchemical symbols in a number of public structures. Gothic cathedrals had facades full of alchemical symbols. Even the great Notre Dame in Paris featured an alchemic image: a woman with a lizard engulfed in flame.

No wonder Simon Foster thought this stuff was ripe for a con game. From what Jo read, it sounded as though he wasn't even the first person to attempt this particular con. Supposedly the scientist Nicholas Flamel had been spotted in a Paris coffeehouse some 400 years after his “death.” No doubt, some lookalike person had tried to pass himself off as Flamel, bilking gullible Parisians and fooling them into believing that he had achieved immortality, just as Simon Foster had tried to do.

The final irony of all of it, though, was that in 1941, Harvard scientists did finally succeed in turning mercury into gold. Using a particle accelerator, they bombarded mercury with radiation until its chemical structure actually changed. Unfortunately, such a process was so expensive that it cost much more to conduct the experiment than the resulting gold could ever be worth. Jo looked up from the page, thinking about that. For centuries, men had tried to achieve the impossible. Once they did, it was useless to them.

She skimmed some more, flipping pages, until she ran across references to “Taoist alchemy” and “yin and yang.” Jo blinked, thinking of Keith McMann and his adherence to Taoist beliefs. She leaned forward, reading about the transformation of the physiological structure and function of the body, “while at the same time effecting parallel changes in the mind and spirit.” Sounded exactly like something Keith would say.

Was it possible he was an alchemist, that he believed these things as a part of his religion?

If so, then he must have lied about what happened that day at Iris Chutney's house. In her gut, Jo had a feeling that Keith hadn't gone there to validate the photos.

He had gone there to validate alchemy.

When Danny finished his final sitting, he learned that Jo had called back a second time.

“She sounded kind of frantic,” Tiffany said. “She said to tell you she had an errand to run and that she'd see you at the press conference instead of driving over together.”

“Frantic, what do you mean?”

Tiffany shrugged.

“I don't know. She said she was looking through some books you left at her house and saw something really important, and that she had to go talk to somebody.”