G'Day to Die: A Passport to Peril Mystery - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,19
upper-level jobs.”
“Where’s my guest roster?” I flew off the bed and riffled through the tour documents I’d stacked on the desk. “I was operating under the assumption that Claire was the only botanist on this tour, but for all I know, there could be a whole slew of botanists with us, all planning to attend that same conference.” I found the sheet I was looking for and waved it at Nana and Tilly. “Can we go back to your room to check the names on this list against the conference registrant list? I think we’re on to something.”
“Well, would you lookit that,” said Nana ten minutes later. “Diana Squires, Ph.D. in botany from Florida State University, and Roger Piccolo, Ph.D. in the same thing from Pepperdine. You was right, Emily. I guess you can hold off on that government job.”
I studied the monitor over her shoulder. “Company affiliations—Infinity Incorporated and GenerX Technologies. Can you check out those websites?”
“Squires and Piccolo,” repeated Tilly as she perused the ‘mugshot’ photos she’d lined up like quilting blocks across the bed. “Here’s Diana Squires. Ah, yes. I remember seeing her. The lady wearing the thick theatrical makeup. You have to wonder if that’s by choice or necessity.”
“I knew them pictures was gonna come in handy,” Nana said as she switched to another screen. “And did you notice that I got close enough so’s you could read the name tags?”
“Roger Piccolo,” Tilly exclaimed, glomming onto a second photo. “I vaguely recall seeing him. He’s a rather muscular fellow.”
I joined her at the bed for a look-see. “I don’t remember seeing him at all.” He had a head like a mason jar and no discernible neck, which had to make swallowing really difficult.
“Infinity Inc.,” Nana read aloud. “Says here it’s some kinda high-tech skin care company, ‘specializin’ in nonsurgical options to rejuvenate what’s been destroyed by the agin’ process.”
I regarded Diana Squires’s photo. Whoa! Most women applied foundation with a sponge; Diana looked as though she used a bricklayer’s trowel. Made me wonder if she’d been a guinea pig for an experiment that had gone terribly wrong.
“GenerX Techologies,” Nana continued after a few clicks on her keyboard. “Claims to be the largest manufacturer of dietary supplements and nutritional drinks in North America.”
“Does it say what kind of supplements?” I asked.
“Natural male enhancement, menopausal relief, and antiagin’ remedies. They’re claimin’ to offer the fountain a youth in ‘easy-to-swallow time-released capsules’. Dang. I wouldn’t mind tryin’ some a them fountain a youth pills, but I’d probably have to OD before they’d do me any good.”
“So Global Botanicals, Infinity Inc., and GenerX are all playing to the same audience with their antiaging remedies,” I tossed out.
“Which means all three companies are in competition with each other for the largest market share,” said Tilly.
Nana turned in her chair. “Which means if them other two botanists recognized my angiosperms, they mighta knowed a discovery like that could be a knockout punch to the competition. You s’pose one of ’em seen Claire take my photos?”
Tilly rapped the floor with her walking stick. “If they did, you can be sure their first order of business would be to wrest the pictures away from her. And we all know what that means.”
I sighed. Unfortunately, it meant that Claire might not have died from natural causes.
She might have been murdered.
Chapter 5
A brief look at Nana the next morning at the Ballarat Wildlife Park and I knew I was in for trouble.
She clomped down the stairs of the bus in her teddy bear T-shirt, flowered capris, and kick-ass boots that cocooned her legs like stovepipes. I covered my eyes and gave my head a weary shake. Oh, God.
“Mornin’, dear. What do you think? Fancy, hunh?” She stuck out a foot that had grown exponentially overnight. “Genuine kangaroo. It’s lighter weight than cowhide and guaranteed not to make your feet sweat in the heat. I hardly know I’m wearin’ ’em.”
Which was saying a lot, considering they were weighed down by fifty pounds of decorative chains and hardware. “I don’t imagine you bought those at the neighborhood Farm and Fleet back home.”
“Got ’em last night right before the meet ’n’ greet. That nice David Jones Department Store was too far a walk, so I run into the little boutique around the corner from the hotel and found everythin’ I needed.”
“You needed Gestapo army boots?”
“I needed protection, dear. We all did. You know…from the spiders and snakes.” She executed a little heel/toe action that caused her chains to jangle