G'Day to Die: A Passport to Peril Mystery - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,46

thing? Granted, it looked common as dirt, but these guys were experts. Shouldn’t at least one of them have stumbled on it?

I stopped drumming as another thought hit me. They should have, unless Conrad had been lying to us right from the start.

Uff da. I typed an entry into the laptop, clicked on a couple of links, wrote down the number that appeared on the screen, and turned off the computer so I could use the phone.

“University of Milbourne, Botany Department,” announced the woman who answered. “This is Liz.”

“Hi, Liz, I need your help. Is the big international botany conference taking place this week?”

“That would be the week after nixt, luv, on the twinty-fourth.”

“Oo-kay. That’s what I thought, but when I stopped by the department yesterday, lots of people were gone, so I was afraid I’d mixed my dates up.”

“No, no. A group of thim were on a field trip to Port Campbell yesterday. But it turned out to be more of a wild-goose chase. If you need to talk to anyone, do yourself a favor and don’t stop by today. Come tomorrow.” She lowered her voice to a discreet whisper. “They might be over their grouchies by then.”

I rang off and powered up the laptop again, frustrated that my hunch had been off the mark, but glad for the verification. Conrad said he’d contacted the university, but how did we know he’d been telling the truth? He could have made up the whole story, and we never would have known the difference. But he had contacted them, and they had sent a search team, and they’d come up dry. So where did that leave me?

I turned in my chair as the door rattled open. “Hi, ladies.” As Nana and Tilly trooped down the long hallway to the living room, I typed the word, angiosperms, into the computer.

“The shoppin’ in that mall area is real good, Emily. They got a David Jones store what sells lots a Queen Elizabeth hats for four and five hundred bucks, and some fancy boutiques with scarves and neckties and pretty opal earrings.”

“Uh-huh.” I clicked on the first site listed and scanned the text.

“We bumped into Conrad and Ellie while we was out. Conrad said he called Sovereign Hill to tell ’em they got a desert rat kangaroo runnin’ around the grounds. The official he talked to didn’t know what that was, so Conrad called the University a Melbourne’s Zoology Department and told ’em they needed to send a team a experts to Ballarat to look for the critter.”

“I bet they could hardly contain their delight.” I scrolled down the page.

“He’s sure got a good eye for findin’ stuff.”

“You have the eye for finding it,” Tilly corrected. “He has the eye for identifying it.”

“Ellie asked if she could hang out with me and Til’ while Conrad run off to the potty, and she really let loose when he was gone. She didn’t take kindly to him gettin’ cross at her this mornin’, so she had lots to vent about.”

“Like what?”

Tilly hovered by my elbow. “Like the decision he made to buy chicken feed futures in China. When the avian flu hit, the commodity price tanked, and so did his investment. Ellie said it ruined them financially.”

“It really depressed her that she didn’t have no money to buy one a them gaudy bonnets at David Jones,” said Nana. “If you was to ask me, there’s times when financial ruin can be a real blessin’.”

Words leaped off the web page at me: epiphytes, synapomorphies, Amborella trichopoda. Oh, yeah, this was helpful. “How could they afford a trip to Australia if they’re in such dire straits?”

“It was a gift from their children for their fiftieth wedding anniversary,” said Tilly. “But I take it they don’t have much spending money.”

“All flowering plants are classified as angiosperms,” I said, referencing the screen. “But what if the team from the university wasn’t looking for the right one?” I scrutinized Nana’s photo. “What if Conrad had them deliberately looking for a plant that wasn’t there?”

“That don’t make no sense, dear. Why would he do that?”

Puffed up with excitement, I grabbed the Polaroid. “Because—”

I gawked at Nana…and blinked. “Out of curiosity, why do you have a latex glove hanging from your ear?”

“It’s on account a the girl what pierced my ears was doin’ it for the first time. She was usin’ one a them guns, and she had an oops. Missed her finger, but she got the tip a the glove real good.