Chapter 33 A Guy Who Knows a Guy
A Guy Who Knows a Guy
Margaret can keep it from Calvin no longer. When she gets back to the lab, she tells him about the guide’s refusal to supply them with leaves without additional pay, although she omits the part about Veronica Ann’s relationship with the man.
“That’s an obscene price,” Calvin says. “Did you tell him it was for cancer research?”
“He knows.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“We need to think.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Wait! I have an idea. I’ll be right back.” Suddenly, Calvin is hurrying out the door, his body canted forward as if he were walking into a stiff breeze. Forty-five minutes later, he’s back.
“I can get seeds,” he announces triumphantly. “Our seeds,” he clarifies, as if Margaret thought they might start cultivating poppies or peonies in the lab. “It will take a while, but we could grow the bush ourselves.”
“How would you get seeds, Calvin?”
“You know how they try to drive us smokers underground thinking we’ll finally give up?”
Margaret murmurs an assent.
“Well, it turns out outcasts do what outcasts do and move into back alleys, abandoned houses and empty doorways.” He pauses. “One of the guys I smoke with here knows a guy who knows a guy who’s on the dark web and he hooked me up. The guy can send us ten seeds for a hundred dollars.”
“That’s smuggling. It’s illegal.”
“Technically.”
“We could get five years in prison for it.”
“Prison?” Calvin squeaks. “The guy never mentioned that.” Calvin swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork on a fishing line. “I can’t go to prison. Do you know what they’d do to me in there?”
“I don’t think it would be good,” Margaret agrees, although she might do all right if there were things in prison that needed cleaning and organizing. She imagines there would be.
“Why does everything I touch go wrong?” Calvin howls.
“Not everything, but this, yes, is not a good thing to touch.”
“I have to stop the deal.”
“You should.”
“If I don’t come back, send my stuff to Canada. I’ll mail you the address,” he shouts and sprints from the room.
Margaret looks after him.
There is only one thing to be done.
She phones Veronica Ann Deaver, who tells her to come by the house at four o’clock.
Margaret is glad it’s too early for cocktails.
Veronica Ann answers the door in a pair of slim black pants with a sleeveless ebony blouse that looks like something a twenty-first-century samurai might wear.
Both are made of cotton with a row of small red-and-black-speckled buttons along the outside seams of the pants.
Thick ribbons of satin crisscross the shirt at the chest. Margaret half expects the woman to pull an ancient Japanese sword from behind her back.
“Come in,” Veronica Ann says. “Would you like tea or a glass of water?”
Margaret is still wary. “I’m fine.”
Veronica gestures toward the huge living room and Margaret makes sure to avoid the torture chair she chose before.
She settles on a love seat with a pretty woven throw tossed over one of the armrests.
It sits across from the white couch where Veronica Ann has arranged herself.
Her long dark hair falls heavily over one shoulder and she wears pale lipstick.
The scene is like a painting that might be titled Beautiful Widow on a Spring Day.
“First, I want to apologize for the last time I saw you,” Veronica Ann says.
“I’ve been having such a hard time since Jon died, and seeing you, well, it triggered all kinds of memories of what Jon and I had before, and I just felt this sudden wave of rage that he’d left me like this.
He was so wrapped up in his work and I was so wrapped up in regret, we stopped being able to see each other.
We never had time to talk through things and apologize for hurting each other before he died.
I lashed out at you because you were handy and he admired you so much. ”
“I understand,” Margaret says.
“Plus, it’s not true what I said about being glad Jon is gone. I’m not.”
Veronica Ann picks at an invisible piece of lint on the beautiful blouse.
“By the way, that yellow-red picotee begonia is one of my favorites. Jon brought it back from Belgium two years ago.”
Margaret ducks her head. “I shouldn’t have been taking cuttings without permission.”
“Don’t worry. I do it myself. You can’t be a plant lover and not be tempted by theft. I would say some plants even encourage stealing by being so beautiful or easy to root. Are you sure you don’t want a glass of water?”
“I’m good,” Margaret says.
She is not.
She is jumpy and nervous and humiliated at being discovered nipping someone else’s plant, even if it was a ruse to cover a more important mission.
She only hopes no one reported seeing her peering over the neighbor’s fence like some Kilroy, the little graffiti man with the big nose from World War II.
Veronica Ann’s chest rises and falls in a soft sigh. “I also want you to know I’ve changed my mind. I want you to have your leaves.”
Margaret almost doesn’t believe her ears. “Oh, Mrs. Deaver. Thank you. You don’t know what this means.”
“I have one condition, though.”
Margaret’s thoughts pull up short.
“I’m going to make a bid to step into Jon’s place and head the Deaver Lab, and I’ll need your support in order to do it.”
Margaret opens her mouth to speak but Veronica Ann lifts a finger.
“I know it’s a long shot, but before you say anything, let me tell you why that will be good for you; good for the work.
I know I mentioned how I recognized the potential of the stinging bush even before Jon did and how my thoughts focused his research.
Well, that’s not the only time. I’ve been part of several of Jon’s discoveries.
His initial work on Hippeastrum stapfianum?
I pushed him in that direction. Urtica dioica as an anti-inflammatory?
My idea too. I have the notes to prove it. ”
Even on a good day, Margaret doesn’t like surprises.
Why would anyone crave the unexpected jolt, the startle of recognition?
Who, for instance, likes feeling duped by information you never suspected?
Who enjoys knowing that you missed every sign of the surprise party being planned, which makes you question the fading power of your brain? No. None of that is appealing.
“Which is why I need your help,” Veronica Ann continues. “Jon promised that I would join him in the lab once he got the Cameron grant and I would get full credit for my work. Then he filed for divorce.”
“I thought you were going to file first. Because of the affair?”
“I threatened to file but was never going to go through with it. Let him have his little fling. To me, the work was the important thing.”
Margaret isn’t sure how she could call what Dr. Deaver and Rachel Sterling had a “fling,” but she supposes that if there had been other indiscretions Veronica Ann might have come to view it that way.
“He filed the divorce petition to punish me when I said I wanted credit even if he didn’t get the grant.
I was tired of cooking and sewing clothes.
I wanted to be recognized for my contributions to his work.
He didn’t like to share the spotlight.” Veronica Ann shifts her legs beneath her.
Her bare feet are long and graceful. “Especially since I told Jon that he didn’t have the skills to take the next steps, and he needed to bring others in.
There’s a guy I went to grad school with, a medicinal chemist, who could have helped. Jon hated the idea.”
“Was the chemist from Florida?” Margaret ventures.
“As a matter of fact, yes. He’s developed the exact techniques the lab needs to get to the next level. Why reinvent the wheel?”
Margaret remembers Rachel’s story. “He didn’t threaten Dr. Deaver in any way? Physically, I mean.”
Veronica Ann lifts an eyebrow. “Certainly not. Maybe scientifically but not in a physical sense.”
Then who sent the threatening text? It had to be Blackstone.
“All you need to do,” Veronica Ann continues, “is agree that I had a hand in the research when the provost and the dean and anybody else questions you, then send me the draft grant application. I’ll add my name to it and submit it.
I’ve already spoken to the chair of the Cameron Foundation board of directors.
He’s a friend of my parents and he assured me I’ll get full consideration, even with the hole in my CV.
Plus the chemist I told you about is very well respected and willing to collaborate.
I think we can get this. I’ll also need a competent research assistant. What do you think?”
Margaret thinks that if the world keeps going topsy-turvy like it is, she will have a hard time knowing which way is up when it finally comes to a stop. Whom should she believe? Rachel Sterling or Veronica Ann?
Veronica Ann uncurls herself from the sofa and stands. “I can see by the look on your face that you’re skeptical and I understand. Let me get my notes for the research I did on the stinging nettle as an anti-inflammatory and you can see for yourself. A woman of science needs facts, right?”
Margaret watches the woman pad down the house’s long hallway.
Veronica Ann is right about a woman of science needing facts, because even with what Veronica Ann is claiming, she still could have poisoned Dr. Deaver. In fact, she may have had a plan to take over the lab all along.
Suddenly, Margaret feels exhausted. It’s all too much.
Who is lying and who is telling the truth?
Who is what they appear to be and who is not?
Should she go along with what might be a lie to get the leaves they need and save some future cancer patient from suffering, or should she continue to look for justice?
Margaret has the sudden urge to remove her boots and curl up on this pristine love seat with that pretty woven throw over her head and take a nap like old people do.
Is that such a bad idea? She closes her eyes.
“Are you all right, Margaret?” Veronica Ann’s voice snaps her out of her reverie. Margaret opens her eyes to see that she has listed onto one side, her elbow on the love seat’s armrest and her head resting on her open palm.
“Oh yes. Of course. I’m fine. Just a little tired.”
“I won’t keep you long, then.”
Veronica Ann holds a notebook out toward Margaret. It looks exactly like the ones Dr. Deaver kept. Margaret opens it to find that not only are the notes handwritten but each page is dated and signed just as Dr. Deaver’s notes were.
“I usually wouldn’t do this, but Jon trusted you and so will I,” Veronica Ann says.
“Why don’t you take the book back to the lab and compare it to Jon’s notebook.
That way you’ll see for yourself that not only are my notes dated two months before Jon started the work, but our hypotheses are virtually the same, only mine is earlier.
Then you’ll know what I’m saying is right. ”
It’s only then that Margaret notices the vulnerability in the way Veronica Ann is standing in front of her, her arms folded across her waist as if for protection. Perhaps her outfit is how Veronica Ann armors herself.
Margaret pushes herself to her feet. She feels like a battle-scarred elephant that accidentally finds itself standing next to a graceful gazelle.
“I’ll look at your notes,” Margaret promises, an idea breaking through the clouds of tiredness that filled her mind only moments before. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have a key to your husband’s office, would you? That way I can look at his notebook.”
Veronica Ann frowns. “I thought you would have a key.”
Margaret shakes her head.
“Well, I certainly don’t have one. I hardly ever went to campus.
All those pretentious men wearing sport jackets with jeans and their knit ties, thinking their private parts somehow bestow them with superior judgment and intellect.
Ugh. Jon didn’t push me down because he thought he was superior to me, by the way.
He did it because he needed the adulation, the spotlight, in order to function.
I’m sure he told you how his mother used to call him stupid and ugly.
One time, in fifth grade, she sent him off to school with a shaved head because he forgot to put the cap on the shampoo bottle after he took a shower. ”
Margaret hadn’t known the story.
“Despite what others saw on the outside, Jon had a deep vein of insecurity and doubt in himself. He needed people like you and me to support him.” Veronica Ann smiles sadly.
“Just let me know what you think after you look at my notes. I’d like to continue the work the lab is doing, the work you’re doing.
” She moves toward the door. “I’ll see you to your car. ”
Outside, the afternoon sunlight has softened. Tall shadows stretch across the front yard.
“You probably don’t know this, but the dean wants to put Levi Blackstone in charge of the lab,” Margaret says as they step onto the porch. Veronica Ann’s research notebook is in her hand.
Veronica shakes her head. “All the more reason to attempt our coup.”
Margaret feels it then: the shift in her earlier judgments of Veronica Ann. Weren’t they all formed through the lens of Dr. Deaver and not the woman herself? Who wouldn’t be angry and hurt after having their career tossed aside?
At the end of the path, they stop at Margaret’s truck and Veronica Ann puts her hand gently on Margaret’s arm.
“By the way, just so you know. I already emailed Neville, so whether you decide to help me or not, you’ll have your leaves. Like I said, it’s about the work.”
Neither of them notices the small car that pulls out of a parking space two houses away and speeds off.