The Invasive Species, page 11
part #4 of Professor Molly Mysteries Series
“Emma, there’s no such word as—”
“Oh, this guy. I remember him. He was the older student who would come by your office all the time, right? And give you those flyers about how to take care of your colon and stuff?”
“That’s Primo,” I agreed.
“I loved how you’d always get rid of him by saying you had to go to a meeting right then, like, ‘Oh, I’m late to my two-seventeen meeting,’ like anyone would schedule a meeting at two-seventeen.”
Bananawrangler-dot-com wasn’t a great example of state-of-the-art website design. It had five columns of small print in various typefaces interspersed with pictures of Primo. The photos showed him variously chinning up on a tree branch, stuffing jaboticaba berries into his mouth, and performing a one-armed balancing plank on the low rock wall fronting Mahina Harbor.
“How come he has his shirt off in all his pictures?” Emma asked.
“I guess he’s proud of his physique.”
“He looks like a scarecrow. Let’s see what else there is.” She moved the mouse and clicked, and we waited for the superannuated graphics processor to refresh the screen. “Well this is interesting.”
Primo’s last blog entry featured a photograph of Randy Randolph, Community Liaison for Seed Solutions. The picture looked like it might have been lifted from the company website. Randy Randolph wore a suit and tie, and looked at least ten years younger than he had last night.
The post was titled Five Things You Need to Know about Seed Solutions.
“Number one,” I read. “Randy Randolph is a gigantic—oh dear. Primo really went for the ad hominem here.”
“Whoa, three drunk driving arrests. And a link to Randolph’s divorce papers. Hey, you think Randy Randolph is the one who hacked Primo into stew meat?”
The spreadsheet girls glared at us.
“Let me print this to an image file and mail it to myself,” I said.
“Just send yourself the link,” Emma said.
“What if the page gets taken down?”
“Everything gets cached,” Emma said.
“I’m not going to count on it. Oh wait, if I mail this to my address that then there’ll be a record of it. I’ll just send it to Detective Medeiros. No wait, I don’t think Mahina PD has email.”
“Send it to me then,” Emma said. “I wanna show Yoshi.”
“Is your husband involved in this biotech thing?”
“Nah. Just, he was feeling kind of down the other day about how everyone else from his MBA class was Somebody now, and he was just a freelance artist. He was even saying he shoulda had that Seed Solutions job instead of Randy Randolph. He’ll feel better when he finds out what a schmuck Randolph is.”
“Okay, sending it now. Happy to help spread a little sunshine. Ready to go?”
As Emma and I reached the turnstile to exit the library, Emma said, “Hey, isn’t that Donnie? What’s he doing here?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“That is my husband. What the heck? Why isn’t he at work?”
Donnie was seated at one of the reference workstations, the ones hooked right into our special subscription-only databases. He was facing away from the front entrance, his back to Emma and me, so he wasn’t aware of us until we were practically on top of him.
“Eh, Donnie.”
At the sound of Emma’s voice, Donnie leaped to his feet and logged out in a single, fluid motion.
“Donnie, what a nice surprise to see you. What are you doing in the library?”
“I was on my lunch break and I thought I’d come over and look some things up.”
“Kinda late for lunch,” Emma pointed out.
“I take my lunch after the lunch rush at the restaurant.”
“Lucky they let you use this terminal, brah. It’s supposed to be just for faculty and students. One time, ah? Yoshi tried to use my login to look up places where he could sell his artwork, and the reference librarian wen’ kick ‘em out.”
Donnie turned to look at the terminal he’d just logged out of as if he had just been made aware of its presence (“What? A computer terminal? What’s that doing back there?”)
“Did you find everything you needed?” I asked. “You didn’t have to stop what you were doing.”
“No, I’m done. I should get back to the Drive-Inn.”
“Anything I can help with?” I asked. “I know my way around the databases pretty well.”
“No. See you at home.”
Donnie bent down to give me a quick kiss on the forehead and left. Emma and I exchanged a look, then watched him push through the turnstile and exit through the glass doors.
As soon as he was out of sight, I plunked down in the still-warm chair.
“What are you doing?” Emma asked.
“Browser history.”
She dragged another chair over from the adjacent workstation.
“Can you see anything?” she asked.
“No. He logged out. Darn.”
“He’s probably just looking up some population data or something,” Emma said. “Maybe he’s thinking about building another Donnie’s Drive-Inn location.”
“If he was looking for a new location, why wouldn’t he tell me? I mean, I teach a class in business planning.”
“Maybe it’s cause he thinks that those who can’t do, teach,” Emma said.
“Maybe he’s communicating with someone, and he doesn’t want me to know. He doesn’t want an incriminating electron trail. So he’s emailing whoever-she-is from an anonymous computer.”
“This is the reference workstation, Molly. Does it even have internet access?”
“It does. See, here’s the browser. With no history, of course, because he logged out, which wiped everything. What if it’s Jennifer Yamazaki?”
“Who’s Jennifer Yamazaki?”
“Sole proprietor of Yamazaki Sports Massage. She’s in Business Boosters. She’s an entrepreneur, like Donnie. And she’s young, skinny, and cute.”
“Oh, stop it, Molly. Donnie doesn’t want someone young, skinny, and cute. He wants you.”
“Thanks for the reassurance. Okay, I have to get to class.” I got up and for the second time, headed for the library exit.
Emma followed me. “Hey, are you going to yoga tonight?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to be knackered after teaching for three hours straight.”
Emma pushed in front of me and went through the turnstile. I followed her, lifting my hands out of the way, and turning to move the metal bar with my hip. I could only imagine how many hundreds of germy hands had been on the thing just today, and I doubted anyone disinfected it at night.
“I’ll come with you,” Emma said. “To yoga.”
“You’re going to do yoga?”
“I wanna find out more about Primo. Our murder victim. Maybe we can figure out what happened to him.”
“Emma, I don’t mind doing some research online, but I don’t think we should go around interrogating people. We don’t know who did it. If we go poking around asking questions, who knows what the murderer might do?”
“I can keep it low key.”
“You? Stop right there. Emma. Just leave it alone.”
“Molly, don’t you see? We’re stuck. We can’t really get our research going again, and we sure can’t publish anything from this until this murder is solved. The sooner the murderer’s caught, the sooner we’re back in business.”
The student worker behind the checkout counter, a boy with a spiky black anime hairdo and smudgy black eyeliner, wasn’t even trying to pretend he wasn’t staring at us. I hustled Emma outside.
“Solving murders was not in the RFP, Emma. We can work on the literature review for now, maybe do some online research from home. But we shouldn’t go around like, ‘Excuse me sir, did you happen to murder Primo Nordmann?’”
“Maybe I just want to do some yoga. You’re not gonna try stop me from taking one little yoga lesson, are you?”
I sighed.
“Fine. I’ll swing by your house and pick you up on the way over.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sharon, the skinny sister, was leading the yoga class. Attendance was sparse. Perhaps the rain, heavy even by Mahina standards, encouraged people to stay home. Maybe Sharon’s paint-peeling Boston accent didn’t engender feelings of serenity. Or possibly word of Primo Nordmann’s demise was getting around, and people didn’t want to catch his bad karma.
I wondered how Emma was going to manage to strike up a conversation with Sharon when we were through, but it turned out not to be a problem. As soon as the class was over, Sharon zoomed right over to Emma, asked if she was new, and complimented her upper body development.
“Are you a canoe paddler?” Sharon asked. “I’m thinking about joining one of the clubs.”
And they were off. Emma’s crew was perpetually one or two women short, so as the rest of the students packed up and left the room, Emma laid on a sales pitch about the many benefits of canoe paddling. When we were the only three people remaining in the room, Emma wrapped it up by inviting Sharon to come out and paddle with her crew.
Rapport thus established, Emma abruptly stopped talking and looked at me expectantly. This was where we were supposed to circle around to the real reason we had come tonight.
“I was so sorry to hear about Primo,” I said.
“Did they make it public already? The police came in and grilled us about it, but they told us not to say anything.”
“Do you think he had bad karma?” Emma asked. “I heard a rumor about it, that’s why. Cause he must’ve done something bad to someone.”
“No,” Sharon protested. “Primo? Ridiculous. He was a little lamb. I don’t know anyone who would wanna hurt him.”
“Then why would someone say he had bad karma?” I asked.
“Aw, that’s not hard to figure out.” Sharla, Sharon’s sister, entered the studio, carrying a broom and dustpan. “You all finished in here, Shar? It’s okay. You guys don’t have to leave.”
Sharla started sweeping the edges where the wooden floors met the molding.
“People can’t get their heads around the fact that some maniac can come along outta nowhere and chop you into little pieces. Sorry, I know people don’t like hearing it, but sometimes, bad stuff just happens for no reason. And you couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. Nothing to do with karma, or the balance of the universe, or anything like that.”
“Primo was so dedicated.” Sharon slid her rolled-up yoga mat into a hemp shopping bag and slung it over her shoulder. “He’d go to yoga conferences with us, pay his own way. He’d attend the other instructors’ classes, just to learn from them.”
“And steal their poses, supposedly.” Sharla continued to sweep. “I can’t believe some of the dumb stuff people can bicker about.”
“Did Primo steal anyone’s poses?” Emma asked.
“No,” Sharla said, looking directly at Sharon. “Because there’s no such thing in yoga. It’s about sharing. And supporting one another. Right, Sharon?”
“Oh, whatever. I gotta go get cleaned up.”
Sharon turned and pushed through the clacking beaded curtain. Her sister seemed to have managed to push her buttons in the special way only family members can. I grew up without siblings, but I do have two parents, so I have some idea what it’s like.
“I did the same thing when I first came to Mahina State,” I said, to keep the conversation going with Sharla. “Visited the classes of the other professors in the management department.”
“It helps, right?” Sharla said.
“It might’ve,” Emma said, “if her department wasn’t such a freak show. Hey, you ever see Primo Nordmann’s website?”
“Oh, the banana wrangler?” Sharla laughed. “We gave him a lotta grief about the name.”
“Do you think he had a stalker or something?” Emma asked.
“The police asked us the exact same question. But as far as any of us could remember, nah, he never said anything about a stalker. It didn’t seem like there was anyone he was scared of. I mean, people were always arguing with each other in the comments. And Primo loved to take potshots at the big companies, like Monsanto and Seed Solutions. But those big guys aren’t gonna go after some little guy like Primo. Listen, girls, don’t wanna run you off, but I’m gonna have to sweep that side now.”
Emma and I made sure to talk about nothing important as we left, just in case we were overheard.
“That was a great workout.” I announced a little too loudly.
“I will definitely come to Laughing Lotus yoga studio again,” Emma agreed.
Only when we were safely inside my car did we feel comfortable speaking normally.
“You’re a terrible actor,” Emma said.
“I don’t think either of us should quit our day jobs.”
“Monsanto’s not even doing anything on this island.” Emma buckled in. “How come everyone keeps bringing them up? Hey, you finally got new seatbelts.”
“The ones I had were rotting. I had to mail order these. Finally got them in. The shipping and installation cost even more than the actual seatbelts.”
“How come you didn’t just go down to Lanakila Auto Parts? They got seatbelts. And they’d probably put ‘em in for cheap. What’s so special about these?”
“They’re perfect reproductions of the originals.”
The seatbelts in question were simple turquoise webbing with a rounded buckle.
“Oh, and that’s so important ’cause why? ’Cause the Ghost of 1959 is gonna come audit you or something?”
“So did we find out anything useful about Primo? Other than the fact that he was really into yoga?”
“Nah. Waste of time.”
I backed out of the parking spot with great care, glancing from my side mirror to my rear view mirror and back. The parking lot was dark. The closest light was burned out, and the moonlight was obscured by clouds.
“What about the papayas?” I suggested. “Do you think Primo meant to kill the papaya trees? Or steal the papayas? Or both?”
“Kill, maybe. Steal, no. Those genetically modified papayas were ‘contaminated’ as far as he was concerned. He wouldn’t want to ‘poison’ himself by eating them.”
“It seems like Primo was pretty well-liked at the yoga studio. No stalkers from his website as far as we can tell. Who would want to do him in?”
“Randy Randolph from Seed Solutions, of course,” Emma said. “Primo humiliated him, posting his arrest records and divorce papers and everything.”
“Maybe. I’d like the murderer to be Randolph, because he’s such a jerk.”
“Hey, I never knew about you going into the other professors’ classes. For real, did it help?”
“Dan Watanabe’s class was good.” I stopped at the spot where the parking lot opened onto the dark road, looking both ways several times just to make sure I’d be safe pulling out into traffic. Mahina did have streetlights, but they were the dimmest possible kind, designed so light pollution wouldn’t interfere with the telescopes on the mountain.
“Dan has this nice way of explaining to the students why things in his class are set up the way they are,” I continued. “He tells them about how all this research on attention and learning goes into how he designs his assignments. I think the students appreciated it, knowing they weren’t being asked to do things for no reason.”
“Dan seems like he would be a good teacher,” Emma said.
“The other classroom visits weren’t quite as helpful. Hanson Harrison just walked in and started pontificating about something he’d heard on NPR that morning. His students were all texting each other or dozing off. Hanson either didn’t notice, or didn’t care.”
“He’s like that in meetings, too,” Emma agreed. “He just goes on and on, and doesn’t realize half the table’s falling asleep.”
“And Larry Schneider—he talks fast. You know he has a New York accent, and when the class started to fall behind, he’d say something like, ‘My next comment is addressed to the two individuals in this classroom who actually belong in college.’ It seemed a little harsh to me.”
“Is that your phone?” Emma asked.
“In my purse. Can you get it?”
“It’s Pat. I guess he’s decided he’s speaking to you again.”
“Put it on speaker.”
“Molly.” Pat sounded excited, which was unusual for him. “I got your box back from Jeffrey, the antique dealer. Do you have some time tomorrow?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Friday was a big news day in Mahina. A front-page, below-the-fold item in the County Courier carried the official announcement that the remains on Art Lam’s farm were those of local anti-biotech gadfly Primo Nordmann. The article also mentioned that two “university employees” made the discovery, but fortunately for Emma and me, it didn’t get more specific.
Al Konishi of Konishi Construction called with glorious news. The work on my house was completed, the damage done by the falling tree was fixed, and I could move back in any time I wanted.
Most thrilling of all, Pat’s antique-dealer friend, Jeffrey, had unpacked the contents of the box discovered during my house repair, and I was about to find out more about my buried treasure.
Emma, Pat, and I met for lunch at the Pair-O-Dice Bar and Grill, just a few doors down from the offices of Konishi Construction. Even at noon, the Pair-O-Dice was nearly empty. A lone fan wobbled bravely against the humid air. One couple (an office romance, maybe?) huddled in the farthest, darkest corner, sharing a pitcher of beer and a basket of fries.
“So where’s my box?” I asked Pat, as we got seated. We chose a table for four, close to the window, behind the distinctive neon sign.
“I wanted to make sure we had a place to sit first,” Pat said.
Emma and I watched through the not-so-clean glass storefront as Pat went to his car (he was still driving that cooking-oil-burning Mercedes) and retrieved a cardboard box from the trunk. He came back inside and placed it on the table.
