“Yes. Please, Lucas, don’t ask me any more questions. It’s better if you don’t know the details.”
A curious mixture of relief and foreboding washed through him. It didn’t sound as though she had plans to meet another man, Lucas thought. That was the good news.
That left the bad news.
“Listen to me very carefully, Amaryllis. I will meet you at your place right after work. Don’t leave home without me.”
Chapter
9
“This is the second date that you’ve managed to ruin.” Lucas stood next to Amaryllis in the deep shadows of the towering university library and studied the darkened entrance of the building that housed the Department of Focus Studies. “Don’t think I’m not keeping a running score.”
“Stop whining,” Amaryllis whispered. “I warned you that you wouldn’t want to come along.”
“Yeah, you did. Funny, I never would have guessed that you had a hobby like this.”
“Like what?”
“Breaking and entering.”
Amaryllis pulled the collar of her jacket up around her neck with an uneasy motion. The light from the twin moons lined her delicate profile. Her expression was serious and profoundly resolute. One glance told Lucas that he didn’t stand a chance of talking her out of this crazy plan.
“I’m not going to steal anything,” she said. “I just want to get a quick look at Professor Landreth’s calendar.”
Lucas heard the thread of apprehension beneath the bravado and felt a twinge of sympathy. “Do you think they’ll drum you out of the Corps of Upright Ethical Prisms if anyone finds out about this?”
“I should think that you’d be more concerned with being laughed out of the Western Islands Adventurers’ Club for failing to strike the right note of devil-may-care recklessness.”
“There is no Western Islands Adventurers’ Club. I dissolved their charter in a fit of pique years ago.”
“There’s no Corps of Upright Ethical Prisms, either. I think it was disbanded due to lack of interest.” Amaryllis glanced around. “Come on, let’s go. The sooner we get into the building, the sooner we can get out.”
Lucas swallowed another remark, which Amaryllis would no doubt have deemed negative, and followed her across the brick walkway. To his great relief, she did not head toward the front steps of the Focus Studies building. Instead, she led him along a shrub-shrouded path and around a corner to the rear of the department.
A moment later she came to a halt at what was clearly a service entrance. She studied the jelly-ice lock.
“With any luck, no one’s changed the code since I left,” she whispered.
It would all be so simple if she were unable to open the door, he thought. “Your idea of luck and mine are two different things.”
“Keep watch,” she hissed.
Lucas morosely did as he was told while Amaryllis punched in a series of numbers. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, campus security was lax in the extreme. He had seen no sign of a guard since they had arrived, and there was no one around now to witness Amaryllis’s debut as a B&E artist.
“Ah hah.”
Her soft exclamation told him that the door had opened. She stepped into the dark hall and turned to beckon him.
“Hurry,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.” Lucas moved into the hall. He pulled the door closed behind him, cutting off the weak shaft of moonlight.
The darkness in the hallway thickened abruptly. Lucas heard a soft thud.
“Ouch,” Amaryllis muttered.
“What happened?”
“I forgot about the coatrack back here.”
Lucas dug out a pencil-thin flashlight and switched on the narrow beam. He aimed it at the floor. “Better?”
“Much. Very clever of you to think of bringing that flashlight along with us.”
“As a professional sidekick, I try to make myself useful.”
Amaryllis started forward. “Professor Landreth’s old office is down this hall. I hope that no one’s changed the code on that door, either.”
“Given the general state of security around here, I think you can count on it.”
“There’s never been much of a problem with crime on campus.” Amaryllis paused in front of a door that had a frosted glass panel.
Lucas played the light over the name scrolled in black on the front. Euphemia Yamamoto.
Amaryllis punched in another code. The jelly-ice lock dissolved without protest. The office door opened easily when the knob was turned. Lucas saw the orderly stack of boxes against the far wall when he followed Amaryllis into the room.
“Five hells,” he muttered. “There’s a dozen of them. It will take hours to go through each box.”
“Mrs. Dunley is a very methodical person.” Amaryllis crossed the room to where the boxes were stacked against the far wall. “I know her. She’ll have organized everything very precisely. All I have to do is find the one that contains the items taken directly from the top of his desk.”
Lucas aimed the flashlight at the labels on the boxes. They were all clearly dated and labeled in excruciating detail. “Landreth: Private Files—Focus Studies Research Reports,” “Landreth: Private Files—Case Histories of Class-Two Talents and Associated Prisms.”
Lucas moved the light beam to another row of boxes and discovered more helpful labels. “Landreth: Personal Effects—Desk Drawer Number One.” “Landreth: Personal Effects—Desk Drawer Number Two.”
“I see what you mean,” Lucas said. “Talk about a clerical mentality.”
“Be grateful.” Amaryllis shoved a box aside to gain access to the one behind it. “Professor Landreth always said that Mrs. Dunley had a talent for organization. It was one of the reasons they worked so well together.”
Lucas flicked the light upward to get a closer look at the portrait on the wall. “Is that the great man himself?”
Amaryllis glanced at the picture. Her face softened. “Yes.”
“Vivien was right. He looks like a guy whose underwear is two sizes too small.”
“Don’t be disrespectful.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Amaryllis tugged another box forward. “Here we go. This looks like a good candidate.”
Lucas moved closer to get a look at the label on the box she had uncovered. “Landreth: Miscellaneous Items from Desk.”
Amaryllis started to lift the lid and suddenly hesitated. Lucas glanced at her. There was just enough light to see that she was nibbling uneasily on her lower lip.
“If you’re going to search that box, then do it fast,” he said roughly. “If not, let’s get out of here. I don’t like this situation one damn bit.”
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 min
d.” 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?” Amar
yllis 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.