Page 18 of The Botanist's Assistant
Joe the custodian must see something on her face because he says, “I’ll just wait out in the hall.”
Margaret’s fingers shake slightly as she opens the envelope and pulls out a card.
On the front is a cartoon drawing of a hunched and yellow-feathered chicken trudging across a road. The thought bubble above its head reads: “I’ve got my reasons.”
Inside is the notation, “There are a million reasons to celebrate you. Happy Birthday!” Below that is a handwritten message:Let’s fly this year, Finch.It’s signedJMD.
Margaret’s vision swims. Dr. Deaver had not only remembered her birthday but had spent his precious time buying her a card. She imagines him standing in a drugstore aisle chuckling at the bird’s prickly response, which is not unlike something Margaret might say. She pulls a tissue from her skirt pocket and blows her nose. How is it possible to want to laugh and cry at the same time?
Joe’s voice interrupts. “I, um, should get back to work,” he says. “Did you get what you needed?”
Margaret swallows and turns. “Oh, yes. Of course.”
She got, not necessarily what she needed, but what she wanted—even though she hadn’t realized she wanted it until this very moment.
She pulls back her shoulders. She will find justice for Dr. Deaver, a genius and a rememberer of birthdays. She will flyover obstacles and cross any road to find the truth, just as the card and Dr. Deaver’s note said.
A gust of wind comes through the open office windows and lifts a piece of paper from Dr. Deaver’s desk onto the floor. Margaret closes the windows and retrieves the paper: a dinner receipt for two meals and a bottle of wine at La Bicyclette: $160 plus tax and tip. Dinner with his wife, she guesses.
She returns the receipt and thanks Joe for his help. “I’m going to go run my tests now.”
Which is precisely what she does when she gets back to the lab, although her vision blurs a few times and it feels like she’s swallowed a rock whenever she thinks of Dr. Deaver’s card.
The tests prove nothing, except that Zhang had touched the outside doorknob to Professor Deaver’s office. Everything else was free of contamination. Had Zhang let himself into the office, then suddenly grown fastidious and double-gloved before he’d done his terrible deed? Had he then returned to clean up the scene? How to prove such a hypothesis?
Margaret runs through the possibilities in her mind until an idea forms. She goes to the computer and taps it alive.
“Bingo,” she says ten minutes later.
It turns out Zhang lives in a maze of triplexes not far from the university. There must be at least one hundred units here, all of them beige stucco, each of them looking exactly like the one next to it. Not only that, but many of the building’s numbers are obscured by untrimmed English ivy and overgrown Leyland cypress. Margaret tries to look as if she knows where she’s going although it’s hard when you need to pry ivy strands from walls or shove your way through cypress branches insearch of an address. There also seems to be no organization to the numbering system. How can 1045 be next to 1246? It’sas if this complex was planned to meet the needs of fugitives, debtors and ex-husbands trying to escape alimony payments.
Night is settling and old-fashioned-looking streetlamps snap on, throwing out umbrellas of light. Margaret swears she’s been on the same path twice before when she finally spots what she’s seeking. There, illuminated in an apartment window, is Zhang. He’s seated at a table with three other young men, the scent of pot and pizza drifting out the partially open window.
Margaret’s plan had been to knock on the door and casually ask Zhang for the cabinet key, using the element of surprise to throw him off-balance and possibly admit he had the item in his possession. The sight of Zhang in the flesh, however, reveals the big hole in her scheme. Zhang was sloppy but he wasn’t stupid. If he were the killer and Margaret came to his house to ask for a key to a locked cabinet full of poisonous substances, he would know something was up.
She should leave. Zhang’s voice, however, seeps through the half-open window.
“Why can’t I be a businessman like my brother anyway?”
Margaret stops, then edges closer, ducking beneath the window to hear better. A cypress branch pokes her cheek.
“Just do it, man,” says a voice.
“You don’t know my mom,” Zhang says, then mimics a woman’s voice: “We need brains, Travis. All our relatives say that we made our money with luck, especially my sister, your auntie. We need to show these people that we are smart. We need a professor, a Professor Zhang, and you will be it.”
Laughter erupts.
“When are you going to buy your Volvo, dude?” teases one.
“At least I’d have a shot at girls, unlike you, Ethan,” Zhang says to more peals of laughter.
Crouching is never easy for a woman of Margaret’s size, but it’s made even harder by the fact that the same architect who created this warren of buildings apparently decided three feet above the ground was the right height for window placement. Margaret’s chest is pressed against her knees and her chin is dug into her throat. She pushes her fingers into the dirt to steady herself.
Zhang is now telling his buddies about his family. It seems his paternal grandfather arrived in San Francisco with nothing and started a small noodle restaurant, which turned into a big noodle restaurant and eventually a chain of noodle eateries. His son, Zhang’s father, then did one better by founding a business specializing in throw pillows. Apparently, the world’s need for throw pillows made the Zhang family rich. Zhang had wanted to follow in his father’s entrepreneurial footsteps; however, his mother insisted he become a professor “at a big-shot university,” which Roosevelt certainly was not.
“Then Deaver puts me on restriction and my mother goes crazy. She says she’s going to cut me off if I don’t do something,” Zhang finishes.
Motive, Margaret thinks at the same moment her neck decides it’s had enough and sends a muscle cramp zinging to the base of her skull. Margaret gasps at the sudden pain and lifts her head.
