54
“May I help you?”
asked Alice Robinson timidly, standing behind a screen door in the
center of her front porch.
“My name is Edward
Karn, and this is my friend, Gwen Maulder. I was an acquaintance of
Henry Broome’s back at Princeton.”
Alice Robinson
smiled broadly through the dark mesh screen. “You knew Henry? What
a lovely man. Please come in.”
Gwen was nervous as
she entered the humble living room of the Robinson home. While Karn
may have known Henry during their university days, she was worried
that the Robinsons might know of Henry’s antagonism to the former
FDA nominee. Alice was congenial, at least for now, but her husband
might be another matter.
Alice led Gwen and
Karn to a plastic-covered sofa. As they sat, a man descended a
short, steep stairway.
“This man knew
Jamie’s roommate,” Alice told her husband.
Tom Robinson stared
at his unexpected visitors for several seconds before smiling
weakly. The Robinsons appeared to be in their mid-seventies, and
Tom was slightly hunched over. “Any friend of Henry Broome is a
friend of ours,” he proclaimed. “That man has sent us Christmas
gifts every single year since Jamie’s death. He even sends Alice
flowers on her birthday. Salt of the earth.”
Karn smiled while
Gwen breathed a sigh of relief. The retired couple did not appear
to keep abreast of current political events.
“I’m a doctor, Mr.
and Mrs. Robinson,” Karn said, “and I’ve been told by a friend of
mine, Professor Kucherlapati, that your son was conducting some
very interesting experiments. I was wondering if you had any of
Jamie’s research tucked away in the attic. Professor Kucherlapati
said Jamie was something of a prodigy, and I’d love to look at his
work.”
Gwen knew that Karn
had not yet talked with Kucherlapati, but he hoped it would help
him gain the Robinsons’ confidence.
“Professor K!” said
Mrs. Robinson. “The students adored him.”
“We’ve saved
everything from Jamie’s room,” confessed Mr. Robinson in a more
somber tone. “You’re more than welcome to look at it. Jamie didn’t
keep information written down for very long, but he did put it all
on an Apple computer. Nothing like the computers today, I suspect.
Probably doesn’t even work. It’s been sitting on Jamie’s desk
upstairs all these years.”
Gwen looked at
Karn.
“May we see
it?”
“Of course. Come on
up,” Tom Robinson said, standing.
“Excuse the dust and
the stuffiness,” said Alice Robinson when she opened the door to
Jamie’s room. “I guess we’re guilty, like a lot of parents who’ve
lost children, of keeping everything the way it was.”
“That’s perfectly
all right,” Gwen said. “I understand completely.”
Karn seated himself
at Jamie’s desk after plugging in the old Apple—Gwen couldn’t
remember the last time she saw one of these. The machine came to
life, but Karn was unable to access any files. The operating system
was not only old, but also password-protected. “I don’t suppose we
could borrow this for a week or two so that some friends of mine in
the computer field might be able to look at Jamie’s
data.”
Alice Robinson
smiled. “You can borrow it for as long as you need it, Doctor,
although I don’t know why the notes Jamie made on all those plants
he was growing would be of interest to anyone, especially after all
these years.”
“Plants?” said
Gwen.
“Yes,” said the
deceased student’s father. “We took one from Jamie’s dorm room, in
fact, and tried to plant it on Jamie’s grave, but it didn’t do so
well. We brought it home and Alice pressed it between two sheets of
wax paper and put it in the family Bible.”
“Could I see it?”
asked Gwen. “I’m a physician, too. I work at the FDA, and I’m
always interested in various kinds of plants.”
Mr. Robinson got the
Bible and carefully extracted the flattened plant from the middle
of the large book.
“Do you recognize
this?” Gwen asked her partner.
Karn shook his head.
“Could be anything.”
“We never knew what
it was either,” said Mr. Robinson. “You’re welcome to borrow that,
too, since it probably goes with whatever’s on Jamie’s
computer.”
“Thank goodness we
gave all the rest of Jamie’s plants to Henry,” said Mrs. Robinson.
“It’s a comfort to think that they’re growing
somewhere.”
Gwen’s heart nearly
stopped. Jamie Robinson, killed by a truck, had been growing plants
that his parents gave to Henry Broome, future senator from
Hawaii.
“Thank you both very
much,” said Karn. “I promise we’ll take good care of the computer
and the plant and return them as soon as possible.”
Out in Rick’s
automobile, Gwen turned to Karn. “Do you think that plant could be
tobacco?”
Karn rubbed his chin
and thought. “It’s little more than a seedling, it’s thirty years
old, and it’s not much thicker than a piece of paper. I couldn’t
begin to venture a guess.”
“I’m going to bring
it to John Van Rankin at the Secret Service and let him have a look
at it.”
Karn looked pensive.
“My hunch, Gwen, is that the Robinsons’ plant is coffee, not
tobacco. I know how you feel on this issue, but Broome probably
took Jamie’s plants and started growing them in Hawaii. Why else
would Roberta Chang be so interested in bills of lading showing
shipments coming from Lanai?”
“Coffee seems the
logical answer for the plant,” Gwen conceded reluctantly, “but Van
Rankin has already assured me that the coffee bean Mark obtained in
Seattle is normal. We’re still missing any connection to seizures.
There’s something that doesn’t fit.”
“If Henry’s
involved, Gwen,” Karn said, “you can be sure they fit all too
well.”