When the Elder Statesman had endured enough, he pulled out his mobile phone to signal that the interview was over, turned, and walked away. There was a slight hitch to his stride, coupled with the hint of a swagger, as if his cycling shoes and plastic helmet were instead a pair of cowboy boots and a brimming ten-gallon hat.
Like many of the abandoned media members, the moon gushed in awe at the Elder Statesman’s departing shadow. Then, straightening its shoulders, it settled into the night’s agenda.
After a short search, the moon located the big white van on the top level of a parking garage across the street from one of the downtown area’s fancy business hotels.
The moon sent out an exploratory beam of light that crept stealthily up the van’s front grill. After carefully picking its way around several smashed insect carcasses, the beam snaked along the surface of the hood, sent a probing spotlight up over the windshield wipers, and looked inside.
A dusting of short white hairs covered the driver’s seat, but the female cat who had claimed this position the previous evening was nowhere to be found. Perplexed, the beam pushed further in toward the back of the van, pulsing the interior with the widest spotlight its shrinking crescent could muster—to no avail. The furry white mischief-makers were sleeping elsewhere that evening.
Momentarily stumped, the moon vacated the van and plopped itself down on the rim of the parking garage roof to regroup.
Hmm, the moon pondered. They couldn’t have gone far.
It scanned its light over the surrounding buildings. Every direction presented a facing of glass walls and windows. Slowly, patiently, the moon filtered through the options, discarding room after room until it located its targets on the twenty-second floor of a nearby hotel: two white cats with orange-tipped ears and tails were curled up on a window seat looking out across Sacramento’s sparkling cityscape.
It was a beautiful suite of rooms, complete with sleek silver-accented furnishings, a full-sized couch and a flat screen television. But how, the moon wondered, had the crew managed to sneak the igloo-shaped litter box into the hotel? And where, the moon puzzled, were the two humans? Clearly, a second sleuthing mission was in order.
Back down on the pavement, the moon darted along the city streets, searching through restaurants and pubs for the cat caretakers. It wasn’t until it returned to the festive area surrounding the State Capitol that it spied the missing pair in the dwindling crowds near the hospitality tents. The tall, skinny man swerved wildly along the sidewalk on his recently retooled bicycle while the woman walked a safe buffering distance to his side.
Spinning skyward, the moon took in a wider view of the area.
“Aha, there,” it said smugly as it spied a figure in a brown kangaroo costume handing out free noisemakers to passersby, about twenty feet behind the mismatched couple.
The moon kicked back, satisfied with the results of the night’s investigations. It was just about to roll out of town when the reflected sheen of a man’s shaved head caught its attention. Standing beneath the trees in the gardens beyond the hospitality area, the bulk of the man’s brawny figure was obscured from the views of the skinny cyclist, his female companion, and the gentleman in the kangaroo costume.
The moon watched, mesmerized, as the menacing man plucked an orange from the tree and held it in the palm of his muscular hand. Slowly, he began to squeeze the large round fruit, his expression one of concentrated fury as the sweet, pulpy juice dripped from his fingers, ran down his arm, and pooled in the grass at his feet.
Chapter 36
THE FLOWER SHOP
THAT NIGHT IN
San Francisco’s financial district, an elderly Asian man sat in a wheelchair on Montgomery Street’s deserted sidewalk.
The empty thoroughfare had the abandoned air of an after-hours amusement park. The artificial canyon created by the mountainous office buildings that lined the street blocked out much of the surrounding city’s noise and light. Debris of discarded sandwich wrappers, used coffee cups, and yellowed newspapers lay in piles pushed up against the cold stone and concrete edifices.
Inside one darkened foyer, a droopy-eyed security guard struggled to remain alert. He tapped his thumbs against the surface of his desk, blankly staring down at the polished marble floor. It was another slow uneventful night in the financial district—or so he thought.
Mr. Wang’s frail body rustled beneath the heavy wool blanket piled over his lap. His bony fingers reached up and thoughtfully twisted the wispy gray beard that spiraled down from the tip of his chin. Tilting his face up toward the narrow wedge of evening sky visible between the rows of office buildings, he listened intently to the whisper of the moon.
In contrast to the quiet on the sidewalk, the flower shop behind Wang’s wheelchair was abuzz with activity. A strong floral scent floated out the shop’s open windows, an odor far more pungent than that provided by the fresh flowers that filled the front racks.
A scattering of purple tulip petals formed a path leading into the shop’s interior. There, in the room’s widest open space, two women suited in goggles, gloves, and aprons worked over a table laden with glassware.
Rubber tubing connected a collection of beakers and vials that had been arranged into a temporary chemistry lab. A trio of Bunsen burners shot flames up against a set of test tubes whose rounded bottoms contained a bubbling dark-colored liquid.
Dilla Eckles bent over a pile of tattered papers as beads of perspiration dotted her forehead. The familiar handwriting scrawled across the top page detailed the last of the author’s numerous experiments with various solvents and distillation techniques used to purify a valuable extract from the petals. When ingested orally, the resulting formulation acted as a powerful antidote to a certain spider venom that caused delusions of drowning followed by a state of near-deathlike paralysis.
“How much more do we need?” Lilly Wang asked as she gathered another handful of stems from a box of fresh tulips. She began expertly plucking petals from one of the blooms, her smooth ponytail of silky black hair swishing back and forth as she worked.
Dilla eyed the clear liquid extract she’d collected from the flasks thus far. “Let’s do a few more batches,” she replied with a grateful smile at her stepdaughter.
Brushing the back of her wrist across the damp surface of her forehead, Dilla stepped away from the counter and glanced toward the windows that looked out onto the sidewalk in front of the store. On their way back from Nevada City that morning, her husband had finally confessed that Frank Napis was on the Bear Flag trail being followed by Oscar’s niece. However, Mr. Wang had been frustratingly oblique about the intended purpose of this large volume of antidote.
With a sigh, Dilla stepped back to the counter to attend to one of the boiling glass containers. As she clamped a pair of metal tongs around the neck of a bubbling test tube, her shoe brushed against one of the half-dozen empty cardboard boxes stored beneath the lab bench. Each box bore the label of a local life sciences supply company and a cautionary statement that read: WARNING: LIVE ANIMALS.
The unloaded creatures were happily exploring their temporary flower shop home. Exactly ninety-nine nude mice played on a collection of spinning treadmills and transparent round tunnels in a row of glass cages stacked against the back wall.
These mice were strikingly different from their housemouse cousins. They had been genetically altered for optimal testing of the spider toxin and its tulip extract antidote. As an unintended side effect of the alteration, the mice failed to grow the white coats typical of their species.
Dilla and Lilly looked up from the table as the front door swung open. Wheels squeaking, Wang rolled through the entrance and rounded the front rack of flowers.
He pushed his chair up to the edge of the lab table and reached out for one of the finished vials. Carefully, he poured the liquid into a small silver flask. After tightly screwing on the lid, he slid the flask into his robe’s chest pocket.
“I’ve got to step out for a while,” he said in response to the women’s concerned faces. He pumped his thin eyebrows humorously. “Don’t worry,” he assured them as he patted the bulge in his chest pocket. “This isn’t for me.”
Mr. Wang maneuvered his wheelchair to the broom closet near the storage area at the back of the flower shop. The women followed, watching anxiously as he lifted himself from the chair and knelt to the closet’s floor. His gray hand wrapped around the handle of a trapdoor and lifted it up. For a short moment, he stood over the gaping hole, wobbling wildly.
Dilla leapt forward to steady him, but Wang regained his balance before she could reach him. Lilly wrapped an arm around her stepmother’s shoulders as he swung a slippered foot into the hatch and began climbing down the metal rungs of the ladder drilled into the side of the wall below.
Wang was breathing heavily when he reached the floor of the tunnel, but he didn’t stop to catch his breath. Slowly but surely, he hobbled in the direction of the basement beneath the Green Vase.
Chapter 37
A SECOND ATTEMPT
BRIGHT AND EARLY
Monday morning, Monty and I loaded the cats into the van and headed out of town for the Tour of California’s Stage Two starting line. Our next stop was Davis, a leafy, laid-back college town on the western outskirts of Sacramento’s spreading metropolis.
Despite its proximity to the state capital, Davis retained a college town’s quaint familiarity, offering a friendly, welcoming atmosphere for the thirty thousand students attracted to its expansive land-grant university. Due to its affiliation with Northern California’s wine country, the university boasted a world-renowned viticulture program. The school offered some of the only college courses in America where students were required to drink (or at least taste) wine in order to receive passing marks.
As we neared the Davis turnoff, I leaned my neck to one side, stretching out a sore knot of muscles along the ridge of my shoulders. All in all, the hotel room couch had been a relatively comfortable place to sleep, but I had nearly packed up for the van floor several times during the night to escape Monty’s incessant snoring.
With a yawn, I glanced in the rearview mirror at the cats, who both looked far more rested than I did. They had each devised their own measures to block out the annoying buzz from Monty’s nasal cavity. Rupert had tunneled into the cat stroller’s blankets, while Isabella had disappeared inside the bathroom and pushed the door shut behind her.
I was still amazed at how easily we’d been able to sneak the cats and their necessities into the hotel room. Given all the cycling teams coming and going with their odd-shaped bike-related luggage, the porters hadn’t noticed when we loaded the litter box onto a luggage cart, covered it with a bedsheet, and rolled it through the lobby.
As for hiding the cats themselves, the stroller had proved to be an invaluable piece of equipment. If you kept the buggy moving at a quick enough pace, most observers assumed that it contained human, not feline, passengers. Even in its stationary position on the elevator up to our room, neither the race-obsessed cyclists nor the stiff-suited businessmen in the lift with us had been interested in disturbing the sleeping “children” I had tucked inside the stroller.
I flicked on the turn signal as the van approached the green interstate sign marking the Davis exit. Monty had left the morning’s driving to me, which was just as well. He was far too distracted by the upcoming ribbon-cutting ceremony to safely operate a five-thousand-pound vehicle.
He’d spent the entirety of the brief trip from Sacramento to Davis on his cell phone with the Mayor’s Life Coach, apparently seeking motivational support for his second attempt at the starting line photo. It had taken several hours of pleading and an intervention from the Mayor himself to convince the race organizers to bump the local official who was originally scheduled for this morning’s ceremony and allow Monty a second shot at a streaker-free photo.
I took a quick peek over at the passenger seat. Monty sat with his eyes squeezed shut as he spoke into the cell phone.
“Visualization,” he said nervously. “That’s a good suggestion. Yes, yes, I can see myself standing in front of the ribbon. I’m holding up the ceremonial scissors. I can see the blades closing in on the tape . . . ”
I couldn’t figure out why Monty was so fixated on obtaining a photo of himself cutting the starting line ribbon, but I had decided not to pursue this line of questioning. Where Monty was concerned, some mysteries were best left uninvestigated.
With a sigh, I steered the van down the main avenue leading into campus, following a trail of pointed arrows posted on neon-colored race signs to the designated parking lot for race-related vehicles. I was still working on a plan to persuade Monty to stop off at the Bear Flag Memorial in Sonoma on our way back to San Francisco. I’d wait until after he’d successfully completed his ribbon cutting operation to broach the subject.
A light drizzle began to smatter against the windshield as I pulled the van into an open slot. Given the heavy rain forecasted for the next several hours, the risk of streakers appeared low, but Monty wasn’t taking any chances. He snapped his cell phone shut and cleared his throat importantly.
“Now,” he instructed as I struggled to disengage the key from the steering column. “I want you to keep your eyes on the crowd. If you see anything suspicious—anything at all—give me the sign, and I’ll have security sweep the area around the starting line.”
With an exasperated eye roll at the ceiling, I yanked the key from the ignition and waited for Monty to finish brushing the wrinkles from his shirt. He had started the day in yet another green cycling jersey with the exact same purple argyle pattern across its front. By my count, this was shirt number four.