you because I've applied for the patent, but they're not available to the public yet.”
Jane wasn't all that knowledgeable about plants, but she knew marigolds well. They were one of the few annuals that could survive her neglect and were cheap enough to buy a lot of. 'Could we touch them?' she asked.
“Certainly,' Eastman replied.
Jane pinched a leaf and smelled her fingers. It was the distinct odor of marigolds. The foliage was exactly right — dark, glossy green with jagged edges. It was the color that was astonishing. The flowers were certainly shaped exactly like marigolds, but looked as if they must have been dyed and stuck on with wires. She touched a flower and it was lush and alive. Could they have been injected along the stem or soil with that color?
She remembered the Queen Anne's lace along the hedgerows of her grandmother's farm. She and her sister Marty would pick them and Grandmother would let them put the stems in colored water and sometimes little bottles of ink, and the creamy white flowers changed to that color.
Could you do that to a cream-colored marigold?
Or was it truly a coral pink marigold? Surely Dr. Eastman, who was so knowledgeable about plant patents, wouldn't play the sort of trick Jane was thinking of. Turning around, she glanced at Geneva Jackson, who had remained in her chair at the back of the room. Geneva was smiling.
“How did you do that?' Miss Martha Winstead asked in awed tones.
“Through long and tedious cross-breeding,' Dr. Eastman said. 'Tomorrow I'll bring a copy of my data that you can glance over to get an idea of how it is arranged and the detailing that's necessary as well as what the patent applications look like.'
“This is truly sensational, and that's not a word I use lightly,' Martha said. 'When will they be available to the public?'
“Not for another two years or maybe three. Since they have to be asexually produced, I'll have to hire out the growing to all the plant growers I can find. Fortunately, we have the advantage of cloning now. It's far more expensive, but much faster. Marigolds aren't prone to rooting from slips.”
Nobody in the room could tear their eyes away from the astonishing plants.
“I'll be the first to buy them,' Ursula said. 'They're amazing and will look so good in with my herbs.”
Eastman nodded to Bryan, the helper, who carefully set the top of the box back in place and carried it away.
Six
As Shelley and
“Just think how much work went into creating such a thing,' Shelley said. 'I would never have the patience to do all that. Didn't someone have a long-running contest for a pure white marigold?'
“I remember that, too. I don't think they ever got anything whiter than a light cream color.'
“Nor would I even have thought of trying to get a pink one if I were in that business.'
“You know, that's the thing about this morning that surprised me most,' Jane said. 'That it is a business. A very serious one. I always thought that new plants were much easier to come up with than it appears. There must be big money involved or nobody'd wait years.'
“I wouldn't be surprised. When the pink marigold hits the nurseries, it'll sell in millions. I wonder how we could ask about the money part.”
Jane looked down her cast, which was already getting grubby around the toes. 'Did you notice that Geneva Jackson didn't come up to look at the plants?'
“I didn't. But she has more important things on her mind.'
“But she was smiling as we gawked.'
“Was she really?' Shelley said, taking a corner so fast that it made the wheels of her van squeal.
“Didn't you have the feeling that Dr. Eastman knew her pretty well?' Jane asked in a shaky voice. The worst thing about the broken foot was having to be Shelley's passenger.
“Which one of them?'
“Both Julie and Geneva, it sounded like.'
“Come to think of it, it did seem that way,' Shelley said, beating out another van for the last parking place in front of the restaurant and waving cheerily at the other driver.
“You can't park here,' Jane said. 'It's a handicapped parking spot and I forgot to bring along the sticker they gave me to hang on the rearview mirror.'
“You're obviously handicapped, if only for a little while.'
“I think Geneva might be one of his 'secret' growers. If so, it would explain why she didn't come look at the plants. She's probably seen hundreds of them.”
Jane struggled out of the van, coming down a little too hard on her injured foot. But it was worth it to be free of Shelley's driving.
They got their favorite booth near the front window and made much of studying the menu, even though both of them had it pretty well memorized from their many previous visits.
The waitress saw Jane's crutches and exclaimed, 'What in the world did you do to yourself?' 'I tripped on a curb.”
The waitress looked blank for a minute and finally said, 'Oh.”
Jane got the taco salad with the chili mixed in, and Shelley let herself go with a chicken chimichanga. When the waitress had gone, Shelley asked, 'Do you think the attack on Julie Jackson had anything to do with her job?'
“I've been wondering the same thing,' Jane said. 'I'm not clear on exactly how she fits into this business, though. Geneva said they had a professional relationship as well as being sisters. Is Julie, like Dr. Eastman, a plant breeder?”
Shelley shrugged. 'Eastman suggested that she was some sort of patent cop. Checking out suspicious claims. Only he said 'questionable,' I think. She didn't appear to have anything especially interesting growing in her yard.'
“But we didn't see the backyard.'
“True. Do you think Mel knows exactly what it is that she does?'
“You heard all he said,' Jane replied. 'She had a sort of laboratory/office in her basement with lots of filing cabinets and some plants under lights. I think that's what he said. I was too obsessed with my foot to pay much attention.'
“We need to find out exactly where Julie comes into the process. I might have misunderstood what Dr. Eastman was saying about her job. Maybe this attack on her comes back to money, like we were discussing before.'
“In what way?' Jane asked.
“I don't know, because we have no idea what sort of money is involved. Or who gets it and how. I really want to know about that part of it. So many crimes come down to money.'
“Then why didn't her attacker take anything?' Jane asked.
“We don't know he or she didn't,' Shelley said. 'And Geneva would be about the only one who could guess what might be missing. And even she might not be able to determine that.'
“Mom, why did you get such a boring cast?' Jane's daughter said with just a hint of a French accent as she came into the Jeffry living room later that afternoon.
“I wasn't offered anything else,' Jane said. 'Would you get me a glass of iced tea, Katie? It's in the fridge.'
“I've got something better.' There were a couple of faint z's in 'something.”
Katie rummaged in her jeans pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
“What is this?' Jane said. 'Oh, pretty flower stickers. They actually look like color photos. I could stick them around the screen of my computer.”
Katie threw herself into an armchair and said, 'Oh, Mom,' in a highly critical tone.
“Couldn't I?'
“Mom, they're for your cast. Nobody has a boring cast. You have to have your friends sign it, and if you know an artist, you ask him to draw or paint a picture on it. And even if you don't, you put stickers on it.' She'd
