“No.”
Madame’s eyebrows arched. “Why not?”
“Because, from what I just learned, I think Matt may have put us in a precarious position.”
“My goodness!” Madame’s hand flew to cover her mouth. “Does your friend know that Breanne Summour person?”
Oh, for pity’s sake. “No, Madame. Matt’s love life is not what’s putting us in a precarious position. His business deal is.”
“Which business deal? You’ll have to be more specific.”
“The Gostwick Estate Decaf deal. There are a lot of issues that Matt’s been keeping from me, and I think from you, too.”
“Is that so? Then you’d better enlighten me. That boy’s kept me in the dark so much, I swear chanterelles are growing out of my ears.”
“Now that’s a surreal image.”
“Tell me the truth, Clare. Are you investigating something again? Because if you are—”
“I know. I know.”
“I want in.”
“That’s what I figured.”
I was about to spill everything, starting with the bizarre mugging with the prerecorded message, when I noticed an elderly couple strolling in our direction. “Come on,” I grabbed Madame’s elbow. “Let’s go to the car. I don’t think we should have this discussion in public...”
Fifteen minutes later, I was wrapping up the delightful tale of Ric’s mugging, the smuggled hybrid cutting, the plant certification issues, and possible biopiracy charges. I was just getting to Ellie’s secret pregnancy when I noticed the woman herself striding purposefully onto the parking lot’s asphalt.
“Look,” I said, pointing. “There’s Ellie now.”
Madame and I were sitting in my Honda. The doors were closed, the windows half open to keep the interior from getting too warm in the sun.
“What is she doing out here?” Madame asked. “Didn’t you just say she had to go back to work?”
“Yes...”
We both fell silent as we watched her unlock a green paneled van and disappear inside.
“Perhaps she’s retrieving something from that van,” Madame speculated. “Or maybe she’s going to drive somewhere for a meeting?”
“Maybe...” I expected the van to start up, but it never did. After about ten minutes, the van’s door opened again, and Ellie emerged.
“She’s changed!” Madame noted.
“Yes, I see...”
She’d dumped her forest ranger style uniform, replacing it with an outfit decidedly more feminine. Her loose slacks had been exchanged for a very short skirt; her boxy zipper jacket for a tight-fitting, cleavage-baring sweater. A dusty rose wrap was draped over her arm, and her manicured feet clicked across the parking lot on high-heeled sandals.
No longer the dignified Garden curator, Ellie was now Pretty in Pink.
Madame shook her head and murmured a series of regretful sounding tisk, tisk, tisks.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Strawberry blondes should never wear that color. What was she thinking?”
“I don’t know, maybe that it worked for Molly Ringwald twenty years ago.”
“Who?”
“Women pushing forty often have these jejune moments of fashion misjudgment, Madame. Take it from me, I know.”
“But why?” Madame asked.
“Crow’s feet, thickening thighs, those first threads of gray—”
“No, dear! Why did your friend change her clothes?”
“Oh, that? I have no idea.”
I’d already assumed, since Ellie hadn’t started up the van and driven away, that she was going to walk right back into the Garden. But she didn’t.
Madame pointed. “It appears she’s heading toward that Town Car.”
A dark four-door sedan sat idling near the parking lot gate, a type of vehicle that car services used.
Although yellow cabs constantly prowled the Manhattan streets, they were practically nonexistent in New York’s other four boroughs, so I wouldn’t have thought Ellie’s hiring a car service was particularly suspicious—except for the fact that Ellie already had her own set of wheels and wasn’t using them.
Ellie approached the Town Car and climbed inside, but the sedan didn’t take off right away. As it continued to idle, I noticed something else, or rather someone else. The Asian man, who’d barged into Ellie’s exhibit, was now swiftly crossing the parking lot.
“That’s funny,” I murmured. “Where’s he going in such a hurry?”
“Where’s who—”
“Do you see that man?” I pointed to the middle-aged Asian man in the silver-blue track suit.
“Yes, I see him,” Madame said.
We watched as the man climbed into a black SUV.
“What about him?” Madame pressed.
“I think it’s a little coincidental that he’s leaving at the exact same time as Ellie.”
“Why? Who is he?”
“I don’t know who he is,” I said, “but he blatantly ignored a ‘staff only’ sign to inspect Ellie’s Horticulture of Coffee exhibit while I was talking to her.”
“Didn’t she throw him out?”
“She politely asked him to leave. He ignored her. Or didn’t understand her. Frankly, I thought he was playing possum, but Ellie was worried he might be a Garden member, and she didn’t want to offend him, so she let him look around.”
“Well, maybe he is a member, dear. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that he’s leaving at the same time she is.”
“Let’s find out.”
The Asian man started up his SUV and pulled out of his parking space. As he drove it toward the parking lot exit, I started my own car and followed.
By now, Ellie’s Town Car was taking off. The sedan turned left onto Washington Avenue. The Asian man’s black SUV turned left, too. So that’s what I did.
“Can you see Ellie’s hired car?” Madame asked, her voice a little impatient.
“Not around that big SUV, I can’t.”
“Darn these ubiquitous all-terrain rollover hazards!” Madame wailed. “Monstrosities like this one have been crowding the New York streets for years now, and I can’t for the life of me understand why—”
“A lot of people like the—”
“I’ve trekked Central America in my prime. I’ve visited high altitude farms in North Africa and Indonesia. I’ve ascended Machu Picchu. Those perilous, backwater, mud road topographies were what these four-wheel drive vehicles were invented for—not Park and Madison avenues!”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“What’s the most challenging terrain these gas-guzzlers encounter? Tell me that? A slippery bridge surface followed by a pothole?!”
“Take it easy. We’re just taking a little drive. No need to get stressed.”
“But behind this man’s big SUV, you can’t even see Ellie’s Town Car. And I believe you’re following the wrong vehicle. I think you need to get around this man’s and tail Ellie’s hired car.”
“Tell you what... if Ellie’s driver turns one way and this man’s SUV turns the other, then we’ll go with Ellie, okay?”
“Will you even notice a turn like that?” Madame asked. “I thought the traffic was quite heavy on Flatbush Avenue coming in.”
“Then why don’t you keep your eyes open, too. Between us, we should be able to figure this out and not lose her.”
With Madame so skeptical about the Asian man in the SUV, I decided that she was probably right. Any moment now, I expected him to peel off and head in a different direction than Ellie’s car. But he never did. When Ellie’s Town Car made a left, so did the black SUV.
Ahead of us now was the majestic Brooklyn Art Museum, rising like a beaux arts sentry over the congested traffic of Eastern Parkway. The Museum, designed by Stanford White, was part of a complex of nineteenth-century parks and gardens that included the Botanic Gardens we’d just left as well as nearby Prospect Park—a 500 acre area of land, sculpted into fields, woods, lakes, and trails by the landscape designers Olmsted and Vaux, the same ingenious pair who’d created Manhattan’s world-renowned Central Park.
Eastern Parkway flowed us into Grand Army Plaza, a busy traffic circle dominated by the central branch building of Brooklyn’s Public Library (one of the first libraries that allowed readers to browse). I remember one of my old professors calling the architecture a triumph of context. The smooth, towering facade was created to resemble an open book, with the spine on the Plaza and the building’s two wings spreading like pages onto Eastern Parkway and Flatbush Avenue, two of the three spokes of Grand Army’s wheel. Prospect Park West was the third spoke, but I didn’t know which direction the vehicles in front of me were going to turn.