Amaryllis (23 page)

Without a word, Amaryllis gingerly removed the lid and set it aside. Lucas raised the light and aimed the beam into the open box. Neatly bundled pens, pencils, and desktop accoutrements were packed inside. A large, handsome desk calendar bound in what appeared to be very expensive Green Specter snakeskin lay on the bottom.

“Looks like being head of the Department of Focus Studies paid well,” Lucas observed as Amaryllis removed the calendar. “Green Specter snakeskin doesn't come cheap.”

“We took up a collection and gave him this calendar a few months before I left.” Amaryllis touched the bronze-green snakeskin with reverential fingers. “It was in honor of his thirtieth year in the department. I picked this out myself. Professor Landreth was quite pleased.”

Something in her voice sent a jolt of alarm through Lucas.

“You're not going to cry, are you? Amaryllis, we don't have time for that. Save it.”

“I'm not crying.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as she carried the calendar to the desk. “Hold the flashlight so that I can see what I'm reading.”

Guilt trickled through Lucas. He had to keep reminding himself that Amaryllis had actually been fond of Jonathan Landreth. “Sorry.”

“Never mind.” Amaryllis smiled wryly as she opened the calendar and started to flip the pages. “Mrs. Dunley and I seem to be the only ones who had any real affection for poor Professor Landreth. I hadn't realized until lately that most of the people in the department considered him a prissy, rigid martinet.”

“I guess they just didn't understand him the way you did.”

“He was brilliant, Lucas. He devoted his life to furthering the study of the principles of psychic synergism. He always said that there was so much more to learn, that the swift evolution of psychic talent in humans on St. Helens was unprecedented.”

“Uh huh.”

“What little information we have suggests that on Earth psychic abilities were either nonexistent or so undeveloped that they were frequently dismissed as manifestations of pure fantasy by most experts.”

“Yeah, right.” Lucas motioned with the light. “Could you save the lecture until some other time? I don't want to hang around any longer than absolutely necessary.”

“Yes, of course. Sorry.” Amaryllis concentrated on the calendar. “This section covers the last few days of his life. Let's see, he was killed on the thirteenth of the month. That was a Friday.”

“Figures.”

She turned another page. “Here we go. These are the entries for the thirteenth. I wonder if I should take a look at the whole last week, just in case.”

Lucas glanced at the entries on the pages. They had all been penned in a painstakingly precise hand. “Why don't you just take the entire calendar home with you?” He was
aware of a stirring sensation on the nape of his neck. “You can study it at your leisure.”

Amaryllis gave him a shocked look. “I couldn't possibly remove the calendar. That would be theft.”

“Excuse me, but I'd like to point out that you're already walking a pretty fine line just being in here tonight.”

Her fingers clenched around the calendar. “I'm well aware of that. But I couldn't think of anything else to do. I told you that I had to act quickly because Mrs. Dunley said that one of Professor Landreth's relatives is going to collect the boxes first thing in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“It was not an easy decision to come here tonight. But I finally decided that it was a question of priorities. I felt that the importance of the investigation of the professor's death outweighed—”

“Could you save that speech for later, too?”

“Lucas, is something wrong?”

“Other than the obvious?” Lucas let his senses float, widening his awareness the way he did when he was in the jungle. “Maybe. I don't have a good feeling about this.”

“You're nervous. I knew I shouldn't have involved you.” Amaryllis bent over the last entries in the calendar. “Most of these notes were made by Professor Landreth himself. I recognize his handwriting. He paid close attention to his schedule.”

“Hooray for him. I let my secretary handle my calendar.” He followed her fingertip as she read off the entries.

“Nine o'clock, Test Results Meeting.” Amaryllis frowned. “That was a regular weekly event here in the department. Nothing out of the ordinary. Eleven o'clock, departmental budget review. Noon, lunch with Professor Wagner. Wagner is with the history department. An old friend. Three o'clock—”

Lucas glanced at the name that had brought Amaryllis to a screeching halt. Gifford Osterley. Before he could comment, a jolt of warning flashed through him. He switched off the light.

“Lucas?”

“Quiet. I think I heard someone. Security guard, probably.” He took her arm and edged away from the desk.

Amaryllis did not argue. He heard her close the calendar very quietly. He plucked it from her hand and used his sense of touch to return it to the open box. Then, guided mostly by feel, he found the lid and replaced it.

He had good night vision, but even for him the secretary's office was as black as the inside of a cave. A light appeared through the frosted pane of glass in the door. Someone with a flashlight was coming down the hall. Whoever it was, he moved with the brisk, confident pace of a person who had every right to be where he was.

University security had finally put in an appearance.

With one hand wrapped around Amaryllis's arm, Lucas relied on his jungle-honed sense of orientation to guide him to the solid paneled door of the inner office. He had noted its location earlier, just as he had automatically made a mental map of the position of everything else in the room. After a lifetime in the Western Islands, a man got very good at that kind of thing.

A soft, scraping footstep sounded in the outside hallway. Lucas felt Amaryllis flinch. He drew her into the second office and gently closed the door.

There were windows in this room. A pale swath of moonlight slanted across the desk. Keeping his grip on Amaryllis's arm, Lucas urged her across the office. He set his teeth as he eased open one of the windows.

There was no squeak.

“Out,” he whispered. “Hurry.”

He bundled her through the window. She scrambled awkwardly but silently over the sill. He heard her land softly on the ground.

The door of the outer office opened. The beam of light appeared beneath the door of the inner office. Lucas put one leg over the sill. If the guard was the meticulous type, he would check the second office, too. Lucas figured he had about three seconds.

He slipped through the window.

Amaryllis grabbed his hand. Together they crossed the lawn, hugging the shadows of a tall hedge. Then they
hurried to the safety of the Icer, which Lucas had parked behind a large storage facility.

“Whew.” Amaryllis collapsed into the passenger seat as Lucas got in beside her and activated the engine. “That was a close one. I didn't know that university security checked inside the buildings. I assumed that the guards just patrolled the grounds.”

“You want a professional tip?” Lucas did not turn on the Icer's headlights as he drove past the library. “Never assume anything when you plan a fun-filled evening like this.”

Amaryllis didn't surface from the depths of her uneasy thoughts until Lucas drove through a set of elaborately designed gates. He guided the Icer slowly down a narrow drive. It took her a moment to realize that he had not taken her home. She gazed around in wonder as the car wended its way through the heart of a strange garden.

Unfamiliar trees with massive leaves loomed on either side of the drive. They formed a thick canopy that blocked out most of the moonlight. The headlights revealed glimpses of exotic foliage that looked dense enough to serve as a wall. Plants with broad leaves edged with what looked like golden fringe dipped and swayed. Here and there flowers glowing with surreal colors appeared and disappeared in the lights.

“I've never seen anything like this,” Amaryllis whispered. “It looks like a giant's garden. Everything is oversized. It doesn't look real.”

“The last owner of the house was a class-seven horticultural talent. He used the gardens for his botanical experiments. I bought the place because it reminds me of the islands.”

A colonnade of massive fern-trees ended in front of a house that was as bizarre as the gardens. Amaryllis studied it with open-mouthed amazement. Moonlight gleamed on delicate spires, fluted columns, and tall towers. The style was unmistakable. The mansion dated from the Early Explorations Period, which made it nearly a hundred years old.

The first long-distance voyages through St. Helens's uncharted seas had been undertaken during that era. Enthusiasm, optimism, and expectations had run high, and the mood of the times had been reflected in the soaring architectural styles.

Amaryllis eyed the elaborate waterfall of steps that led to the heavily carved front doors. This was Lucas's home. She had never envisioned him living in such a fantastical creation. And yet, in some strange manner, it suited him. He was a man apart, and his residence was definitely apart from the ordinary, too.

“How do you find the time to take care of this place?” Amaryllis asked.

He smiled fleetingly. “I don't. I pay people to do it. A team of gardeners handles the outside, and I have a staff of housekeepers who come in during the day.”

Amaryllis blushed at her naïveté. “I keep forgetting you're rich.” She cleared her throat. “I'm surprised someone hasn't tried to get you to open the house and grounds for guided tours.”

“The Preservation Society made a stab at it. You know what those folks are like. Anything over fifty years old is an historical monument to them. I told them that if the bottom ever fell out of the jelly-ice business, I'd contact them and we'd talk about paid tours then.”

Silence fell.

“I should go home,” Amaryllis finally said. “I have to do some thinking.”

“About Gifford Osterley?”

She froze. “You saw his name on the calendar?”

“I grew up in a jungle, remember?” His smile held little humor. In the shadows his eyes gleamed with watchful speculation. “I was trained to be observant at an early age.”

“Naturally.” She couldn't think of anything to say.

Lucas opened the Icer's door. “Come inside, Amaryllis. I think we'd better talk.”

“I don't know why his name was on Professor Landreth's calendar.” Amaryllis paced back and forth across the high-ceilinged, old-fashioned living room. “I can't even come up
with a likely explanation. According to my friends in the department, Gifford and Landreth had a major confrontation a couple of months ago. Gifford handed in his resignation because of it. Lucas, there are so many questions.”

“Here.” Lucas thrust a small glass into her hand. “Drink this.”

Amaryllis frowned at the dark, intensely aromatic liqueur. “What is it?”

“Moontree brandy.”

She hastily clutched the glass with both hands. “Good heavens, that must have cost a fortune.”

Lucas's mouth curved faintly. “Don't worry, I save it for special occasions.”

“Oh.” She sniffed cautiously at the exotic brandy. “Well, thank you. You really shouldn't have.”

Moontree brandy was a near-legendary liqueur, so far as Amaryllis was concerned. Certainly no one back home in Lower Bellevue ever had a bottle of it stashed in a cupboard. The production of the brandy was extremely limited because the tree produced fruit only on the rare occasions when both Chelan and Yakima were in total eclipse.

The botanists had not yet been able to explain the exact nature of the synergistic reaction between the eclipsed moons and the tree. All attempts to grow the moontree under controlled conditions had failed.

“Sip slowly,” Lucas advised. “The stuff has a kick.”

“So I've heard.” Amaryllis took a tiny taste—and promptly gasped for breath as a fierce rush of heat filled her mouth. The heady warmth was immediately followed by an equally luscious sweetness.

Lucas leaned back against a table and crossed one ankle over the other. “Like it?”

“It's … interesting.” Amaryllis resumed her pacing.

“You're going to talk to Osterley, aren't you?”

Amaryllis stopped in front of the window. She looked out into the eerie garden. “Yes.”

“I don't suppose it will do any good to tell you that I don't think that's a real bright idea.”

“I have to talk to him, Lucas.”

“Why?”

“Because he may have been the last person Professor Landreth spoke with before he died.”

There was a clink as Lucas set his brandy glass down on the table. He crossed the room and came to stand behind Amaryllis. “This has gone far enough. Stay out of it. It's not your job to investigate Landreth's death.”

“I can't stop now,” she whispered. “Ever since I sensed that prism working with Sheffield, I've had a nasty feeling about this whole situation. Call it prism intuition.”

“I prefer to call it a lack of common sense. I've said it once, and I know it probably won't do any good, but I'll say it again. Talk to the cops if you really believe that Landreth's accident needs more investigation.”

“I can't go to the police until I have something substantial to give them.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Are you sure there isn't another reason why you don't want to talk to the authorities?”

“What are you implying?”

“I think you want answers. But I'm beginning to wonder if you're afraid of what you'll discover. Are you worried that someone you know might be involved in this?”

“Do you really think that I'd avoid going to the authorities in order to protect someone?”

“If you cared about that person, yes.” Lucas framed her face with his hands. His thumbs moved along the line of her jaw. “I think your sense of loyalty is even stronger than your sense of professional responsibility.”