“Okay, but let’s go this way,” she said. “We should probably stay away from the security guard at Hall E. I don’t think she likes me.” That was Rolanda’s post. It seemed they had already met.
Fifty-four
After the morning’s excitement the rest of the day was tame. Not many attendees remarked on the extra humidity, thinking, as Lucy had, that it had been ratcheted up for the tropical plants. And if there were booths and exhibits in some disarray, perhaps they were just closing up shop early. Those who did know about the morning’s disaster were impressed at how quickly people had bounced back, but for most attendees it was business as usual.
Four of the pieces I had lent to other exhibitors had sold, so Lucy and I would have that much less to pack and ship back to Springfield. I was surprised Hank hadn’t called, but he was reliable and I expected to hear from him before Monday afternoon when everything had to be removed to get ready for the next event.
Having lived with them for days, I had decided to purchase one of the sculptures myself. It probably meant I wouldn’t make any money for my efforts this weekend, but I was confident Primo would give me a discount. I’d grown fond of the piece, a four-foot oxidized metal sculpture Primo had called Spade and Archer. He had used fragments of a shovel and of a bow and arrow. Since my astrological sign was Sagittarius and I am a gardener and a mystery fan, it seemed to have my name on it as well as Sam’s and Miles’s. I remembered the dumplike backyard at Primo’s place and worried that I’d never find the piece again, so I opted to take that one with me in the Jeep when I left the city and not ship it with the others.
At 1 P.M. Jensen swung by with formal invitations to Mrs. Moffitt’s after-show party in Hunting Ridge. Connie Anzalone had mentioned it on Friday and I had been faintly jealous, but now David, Nikki, and I had been invited, too. David’s unpleasant neighbor with the unsold fountains quietly seethed. Lucy cleared her throat.
“Is it all right if I bring a friend?” I asked. “Maybe two?”
Jensen said yes, and as soon as he left, Lucy pulled me aside. “Speaking of friends? Sarah called just after you left. That professor you asked about? Quite a character. I told her we’d call back since I wasn’t sure what you wanted to know.”
Sarah Marshall picked up after five rings. According to her, the good professor had had an eye for the girl students. That may have been a contributing factor to his getting the boot, but the school blamed it on his unauthorized experiments on pest repellents. Something to do with toxins, Sarah wasn’t sure because the juicier part of the story involved an undergrad, and why stick to boring science when there were more salacious—and easier to remember—details?
“First they pulled the plug on his funding and then they canned him,” she said. “I asked about students who might have worked for him. I don’t think the school would keep records of his former interns,” she said, yawning. “There were lots of them. I’m not sure if I could even get access to them. Especially now. Reporters have been nosing around because of that aggie student who died in New York. Garland something. The prof’s name was Lincoln Wrentham.”
“How are you spelling that?” I asked.
“With a W. Can I go back to sleep now?”
We found a surprising amount of information online about Lincoln Wrentham. At least surprising to me, who prided myself on having the fewest links of most people I knew. Wrentham’s last known address was somewhere in New Jersey. No current employer found. No recent papers published. Divorced.
My cell phone rang. It was Sarah, slightly more awake than she’d been earlier. I could hear her drinking something that I took to be coffee.
“Listen, there’s something else. Wrentham’s daughter went to school here. Some free or discounted tuition thing. She was registered under another name, but when the revelations about her father came out, so did her real identity, and she left when he did. Just as well. It would have been awkward to have everyone know daddy was boffing her classmates.”
“You remember her name?”
“Sure. She was in my creative writing class. A-plus student. Emma Franklin.”
Fifty-five
Findthemnow.com found Lincoln Wrentham in Stilton, New Jersey, a small rural community not far from Philadelphia. He was listed with directory assistance as L. Wrentham. When I called it was only my mentioning Emma’s name that prevented him from hanging up.
“Is this Professor Lincoln Wrentham?”
“No one’s called me that for a while, but, yes, I am. What’s this about? Who are you and what do you have to do with my daughter?”
“My name’s Paula Holliday. I met your daughter in New York this week, sir, and I think she’s in trouble.”
The description matched, even as far as her propensity for storytelling.
Wrentham and Emma’s mother had met at an airport in Dallas. They were trapped in the Admiral’s Club after one inch of snow had halted flights in and out. All the business and golf magazines had been scarfed up by other stranded travelers and the only reading material left was a six-month-old copy of Parents magazine that neither wanted. They spent the next three nights in an airport hotel. “It was as typical a late-eighties meet-cute as you could get,” he said.
“We were both devoted to our careers and swore we didn’t want children, but that changed when we found out about Emma. It was harder for Judith, of course. She went back to work soon after Emma was born, but every time she had a professional setback, she blamed our marriage. My research was bearing fruit and I was offered speaking engagements and appointments all over the country. I started to take them. That led to some indiscretions and our eventual divorce.”
“I suppose I was a terrible husband. Judith was bitter. But I was a good father for as long as I had a relationship with Emma. She was nine when we split up. Judith remarried soon after and insisted on changing Emma’s last name to Franklin, her new husband’s name. I objected, but in the end she got her way. She’s a shrink. She was able to convince a judge it would be traumatic for a child of that age to have a different name from her mother and her stepfather. I only wanted what was best for Emma, so I knuckled under. Later on, I learned she told Emma that I’d wanted nothing to do with her and that’s why they changed her name. She’s poisoned that girl against me for years.”
At some point, the former Mrs. Wrentham read that the professor was developing a formula that could revolutionize farming and gardening: a foolproof pest repellent. She told Emma that her biological father stood to make a fortune and that the girl was entitled to part of it. It was her inheritance.
“Judith became obsessed with the millions she thought I’d make.”
“So did you discover a foolproof pest repellent?”
“Et tu, Ms. Holliday? Foolproof and safe are two different things. But it’s not ready for general use. The unintended ecological consequences could be disastrous. No responsible person would bring something into the market until it had been tested exhaustively.”
Clearly we were dealing with a person who didn’t give a rap about the unintended ecological consequences if they’d killed one or maybe two people to get the formula.
Emma had gone to see him about a year ago.
“I don’t know how she found me. I haven’t made a secret of my whereabouts, but we haven’t exactly stayed in touch. She asked for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I asked her what kind of trouble she was in, and she said no trouble—she joked that it was just back allowance plus interest.”