The Trouble with Tulip (47 page)

Jo pulled into Edna's driveway and jumped out, the car still running.

She almost stepped in a pile of dog poop, and as she hopped over it, she was glad to pick up the glint of silver. She leaned forward to look closer, thrilled to see that the cream cheese package seemed to have passed fully intact, thank goodness. That was one less thing she had to worry about.

Her relief was short-lived, however, when she got to the fence and saw that the gate was hanging open on its hinges.

Chewie was gone.

Had she forgotten to tie off the latch? She could have sworn she had done it when she first put him out there.

“Chewie!” she called. This was the last thing she had time for.

She ran next door and knocked, but no one was home. She ran toward the end of the block, praying Chewie would be across the street, on the slide, but the park was empty.

Jo didn't know what to do. She had to get to the press conference. She had to explain to the chief about Keith McMann.

One time around the block, she decided, and then she would leave and come back to deal with this later. Chewie was a bright dog. He would be all right on his own for a while.

Jo ran past Edna's house in the opposite direction, calling for Chewie as she went. She almost missed him, but something in the shadows over to the right caught her eye.

“Chewie?”

She ran up the driveway of the vacant house, the one with Marie's For Sale sign in the front yard. There, against the garage door, lying in a crumpled heap, was her dog.

“No!”

Jo ran to him and felt for a pulse but she couldn't find one. She wasn't even sure how to feel for a pulse on a dog. Finally, she pressed her ear against his chest and there she could faintly hear the rapid, irregular beating of his heart.

“You got here much sooner than I thought.”

Jo spun around to see Keith McMann standing behind her. Before she could react, he grabbed her, one hand on her mouth, the other around her chest. She kicked and struggled, but he dragged her around the side and into the door.

He threw her into the garage, where she landed on her hands and knees on the cement. She started yelling for help, but the next thing she knew, he had gripped her by the arm and held a gun to her head.

“Shut up!” he hissed. “Shut up!”

Jo began trembling. This man had already obviously poisoned Chewie. There was no telling what he might do to her now.

“What did you do to my dog?” she demanded.

“Took a little cue from Tips from Tulip.”

“What?”

“You had an item the other day about harmful house plants. From what I recall, dumb cane paralyzes the vocal chords and can even asphyxiate you.”

“You fed my dog a dieffenbachia plant?” Jo asked, aghast.

“Don't worry, he'll sleep it off. If it doesn't kill him.”

“What do you want with me?”

“The notebook. Where is it?”

“The notebook? What notebook?”

“Red velvet cover, filled with notations. I know you brought it to that chemistry professor at the college. Where is it now?”

“I only brought him a photocopy,” Jo said. “The original is in my safety deposit box at the bank.”

Jo realized that it hadn't occurred to her to turn the notebook over as evidence of the con to the police.

He let her go and paced, though he kept the gun trained firmly on her. She spun around and pulled her legs up under her, trying to make herself as small as possible, ignoring the scrapes on her knees and hands. Absurdly, she thought of the other night, when Danny tripped on the fence and scraped himself.

Please, Danny
, she thought urgently.
Find me now
.

“The bank's closed until tomorrow,” he said. “You'll have to call your chemistry professor and get the copy instead.”

“Why do you want it?”

“Because it holds the secrets!” he cried, the gun trembling in his hand. “Because Simon promised it to me.”

“Where did he get it?” she asked, hoping to keep him talking.

“He first received it in the late-seventeen hundreds,” he said, his expression utterly serious. “It was given to him by a renowned alchemist. He has guarded it carefully for more than two hundred years, just waiting until he could find an apprentice worthy of the knowledge it contains.”

“And you're that apprentice?” Jo asked.

Even in the dim, yellow light of the garage, Keith McMann did not look crazy. Intense, yes. Insane, no.

“I am,” he replied. “I have devoted my life to the study of alchemy through the ages. When Simon approached me and told me he knew its secrets and was willing to share them with me, my lifelong dream had been answered at last. I won't leave town without those notes.”

Jo studied his face. Was there no way to convince him that Simon was a first-rate con man, that the professor had been sucked into Simon's lies, just like the women had? Surely, Keith had seen the stories on the news.

“How do you explain the mug shots of Simon Kurtz?” Jo asked. “What makes you think he was anything more than what the newspeople are saying he is?”

“Because it's all an elaborate ruse,” he whispered. “Because Simon fabricated his own past just in case any of this came to light. He always has a fail-safe. The secrets are too important to risk being revealed.”

Jo's trembling had calmed somewhat. She figured he would let her stay alive until they had acquired the notebook.

“Dr. Langley says the notebook is gibberish,” Jo said. “He says it's nothing but obscure symbols and nonsense notations.”

To her surprise, Keith smiled.

“Of course he said that. Only a true devotee of alchemy can understand what those symbols and notations mean. That's how we've guarded our secrets through the centuries.”

Jo hoped her professor hadn't simply tossed the pages in the trash. Her mind raced, trying to think her way out of the situation.

“Where's your phone?” he demanded.

“In my car. At Edna's.”

“We'll have to use mine, then.”

He glanced around, obviously looking for something. The garage was completely empty, however, except for a box of items over in one corner.

Still keeping the gun pointed at Jo, he went to the box, reached inside, and pulled out a hose.

“This'll have to do,” he said.

Kneeling behind Jo, he roughly pulled her wrists behind her back and wrapped the hose around them. He brought the rest of it around to the front and wrapped it around her ankles and then her legs.

“That was you I heard arguing with Edna on Friday night, wasn't it?”

He shrugged, grunting with the effort of wrapping the hose around Jo's body.

“She called and told me she was going to confess everything to the police the next day,” he replied. “I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't listen to what I had to say. I came over, figuring I could talk some sense into her in person.”

“Didn't work, huh?”

He jerked the hose tightly, pinching her skin.

“The stupid woman was going to tell the police that she and Simon were involved in a con. She never understood that it was real. She never believed it at all.”

“So you hit her with the brick.”

“Just to shut her up!” he hissed. “Then at least I was free to search her house for the notebook.”

“But you didn't find it.”

“No, I didn't find it. By the time I was finished looking, I realized she was dead.”

“So you put a dent in the windowsill, mixed some chemicals that would make it look like an accident, and then left.”

“That's about right,” he said. “Since then, I've been waiting to hear from Simon, waiting to learn where he had put the notebook for safekeeping. Then when you said you were settling Edna's affairs, I realized that
you
had it, and that you didn't even know what it was.”

Danny was getting worried. The press conference was rolling along in full force, and there was still an empty seat beside him. He could see why Jo might be a little longer than she had predicted, but this was getting ridiculous.

At the far end of the table, the chief was doing a good job of fielding questions. Danny was surprised to hear him say that though Simon Kurtz was in custody in Florida, he was currently in the hospital there, under full police watch.

“Why in the hospital?” one of the reporters asked. “Was he injured during the arrest?”

“No,” the chief replied. “He was having some heart troubles, so he was admitted for evaluation.”

“Senator Sugarman,” another reporter said, “Simon Kurtz is your uncle. Do you know him well?”

Danny had been impressed with the senator throughout the conference. She was a real pro at a microphone, articulate and intelligent—and evasive when necessary.

“Simon was a part of my life, off and on, when I was a child,” she said. “I vaguely remember him. When he went to prison I was only six years old. My mother told me that my Uncle Simon had died. I wasn't aware that was a lie until this week.”

That earned a sympathetic gasp from the audience. Danny was impressed. He supposed she had shared that nugget of information to protect herself from the critics who might say she had hidden some potentially explosive facts about her family from the voters. To a politician, an uncle in prison could never be a good thing.

“Danny,” another one asked, “do you think Jo Tulip will be able to get any household tips from this whole experience?”

The audience laughed.

“From what I know of Jo Tulip,” Danny replied, leaning toward the microphone, “she can get tips out of everything.”

“Open your mouth,” Keith commanded when he was almost finished. He wrapped the final section of hose around her face, gagging her with it. “Good. Now, understand something. I'm going to get the phone from my car down the street. If you make one sound while I'm gone, when I get back I will put a bullet in your dog. Are we clear?”

Jo nodded, eyes wide.

She watched as he tucked the gun in his waistband, peered cautiously out the door, and then quietly opened it and slipped out.

Jo was alone in the garage. Working quickly, she did the only thing she could think of: She started wiggling. The hose, being cylindrical, was bound to give way if she could just shake it off. Sure enough, though at first she could only move her neck and her ankles, soon she was able to move her legs and her waist. Finally, she spit the hose out of her mouth. It slipped down her shoulders, and then she pulled her hands free.

She had done it.