Page 15 of The Botanist's Assistant
“Anyone who questions me won’t last long in my lab,”Blackstone continues. “There are plenty of ways to get rid of people who aren’t team players.”
Margaret’s heart gives a painful thump.
The college may have a labyrinthine system for hiring and firing, but if a senior person wants you gone, you’re gone whether there is evidence of misconduct or not. She’s already learned that lesson.
But how can she leave a job she loves and one that involves such important work? How could she start over at age fifty-four? And, yet, how could she support a lie just to keep her job? Research is based on honesty, on facts. Change your commitment to either of those things and you can’t call yourself a scientist.
Blackstone returns to his desk chair. “Maybe you suddenly remembered Deaver mentioning my name when he suggested his theory. Maybe you were confused about where the idea originated. It happens, you know.”
He turns to his computer screen and doesn’t even look at her as he says it.
“Think about it carefully, Ms. Finch. After all, I’d hate to have to look for a new research assistant.”
11
Hold On
One year, a rare snowstormswept out of the mountains, blanketing Margaret’s hill and valley in a slippery coating of white. The radio reported downed power lines and slick roads and advised people to refrain from driving unless it was an emergency.
Margaret had listened to the warning but quickly decided that leaving critical plants unwatered in the grow room and letting fragile solutions spoil in an unpowered, warming refrigerator constituted an emergency and started down the serpentine driveway in her truck. She’d become an expert in navigating the dirt track through mud and rain and fallen trees (she carried a chainsaw and shovel in her truck for just such things), but snow was a different matter.
Halfway down the hillside, the vehicle’s tires lost traction, and the bed of the Toyota suddenly seemed to want to become the front of the vehicle and vice versa. Margaret fought the urge to slam on the truck’s brakes. Instead, she downshifted, gripped the wheel more tightly and steered. On oneside, snow-frosted oak and pine reached out as if to take the Toyota in their icy embrace. On the other, a rocky embankment issued a siren call to the truck. She fought them all.
When she finally arrived at the main road, her heart pounded and her hands shook. Any other person might have parked and trudged back to their safe, warm house. Margaret, however, thought of all those cancer patients waiting for cures and plowed stubbornly on.
Margaret feels the same way now, unmoored and shaken but convinced that if no one else will investigate, she will. Not only to save Dr. Deaver’s reputation and research but to see whether something foul was afoot at Roosevelt University and make sure that justice was done.
She stops at the breakroom and buys a cup of vending-machine tea, then heads for a bench outside the science building to compose herself. Unlike Zhang and sometimes Calvin, she neither eats nor drinks inside the lab.
A mourning dove sounds its lonely cry. Students walk past in clumps, some laughing, some engaged in earnest conversation. Oh, to be so young and full of promise.
She swallows the last of the cup, which tastes more like a suggestion of tea, and settles on a plan, even though it will involve a lie. Just this one time, she promises herself, and only because it is absolutely necessary.
Margaret arrives at Purdy’s desk just as the woman is gathering her purse to leave for the day. The materials for detecting carbon 14 are in the pocket of Margaret’s skirt. If there’s carbon 14 residue on the empty scotch bottle or on the Diet Coke container and also on the atropine in the locked cabinet, she’ll have her proof.
“I’m hoping you can help me, Beth,” Margaret says. “It will only take a minute.”
Actually, it will take at least four minutes, but Margaret doesn’t mention that.
“I think I left the budget breakdown for the Cameron Foundation grant in Professor Deaver’s office. If I could just borrow the key, I can grab it and get the application finished.”
Purdy shakes her head. “I wish I could help, but Dean McDonald has closed the office until he figures out what the university owns and what goes to Dr. Deaver’s estate, and I’m just about to leave.”
“Perhaps the dean—” Margaret begins.
“He’s gone for the day.”
“I’m sure the dean would—”
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait.”
Purdy gives one last glance at her desk and heads for the front doors. She’s wearing a tight black skirt and red stiletto heels that cause her hips to sway like a ship at sea. Basic physiology would tell a person that walking around with your heels lifted in the air changes your center of gravity, which puts abnormal pressure on your hips. Which means Purdy may be a walking candidate for hip replacement surgery. Not that Margaret wishes that on Purdy. It’s simply an observation.
Purdy pushes open the door. Margaret’s best chance is escaping.
Before she can think, Margaret calls out after her. “Did you see anyone go into Dr. Deaver’s office the afternoon before I found his body?” The question had been at the front of her mind. How did it escape?
Purdy turns, a frown creasing her forehead. “Why would you want to know that?”
