The Orchid Hunter. Sandra Moore K.

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      The morning room faced east, and light cast down through the glass roof for only a couple of hours. I liked this room because it opened onto a little shade garden surrounding an irregularly shaped man-made pond. Von Brutten’s orders must have been to make the garden look like a jungle, with its bowing palms and water-loving bromeliads. It didn’t. This garden looked like a place you’d want to rest in, maybe take a nap.

      The word jungle is from the Sanskrit jangala, meaning “impenetrable.” The jungle smothers you with noise and odors and fear. Its trees tower, woody vines dangle, insects bite, birds screech, monkeys howl, jaguars stalk, and the whole time heat rises through the air like somebody threw water on a griddle. You don’t penetrate the jungle. It penetrates you.

      “Dr. Robards,” Sims announced, his deep voice echoing under all the glass.

      Were he true to the stereotype, von Brutten would have been huddled over a Dendrobium, clutching a watering can and muttering diabolically to himself about humidity. Instead, he relaxed his small, elegantly suited frame into a Lucien Rollin chair and smiled a frosty smile over his silk jabot.

      “Dr. Robards,” he breathed. “Please, sit and enjoy a little something.” He snapped his fingers. Food and juice appeared, carried by silent bow-tied wait staff.

      “Just tea for me, thanks.”

      A French press of tea sat at my elbow. Poof. Just like that. Maybe money was the secret of Houdini.

      “Did you enjoy your flight?”

      “I always enjoy the Lear, thanks,” I said. “Very nice.”

      While we traded meaningless social niceties, I studied him. His pale, even features seemed vaguely threatening in repose, but I’d gotten used to that. He resembled the guy who’d share his last smoke with you before smiling benignly and dropping you headfirst into a shark tank. Small eyes, aquiline nose, a thin-lipped mouth, a closely trimmed goatee. In some circles he might be considered genteelly attractive. I didn’t move in those circles. As far as I knew, there was no Mrs. von Brutten, nor was there a boy-toy wandering around. Von Brutten appeared to be either extremely celibate or extremely circumspect.

      Or maybe he just got his rocks off pollinating nearly extinct orchid species.

      After he asked me a polite question about my limo ride from Spokane to Parsifal, I realized he was desperately excited about something.

      The more excited he was, the less likely he was to act that way. But I needed him to hurry up so I could get back to Scooter. The trick was to hustle him up without appearing to want to.

      “Your jet’s much nicer than the crate I took out of Micronesia,” I said casually. I wished I smoked, so I could blow a stream negligently into the air while glancing away.

      “A successful trip.” His hand strayed in the general direction of Building 3, where the siblings to Scooter’s Phalaenopsis were being studied in a high-tech laboratory.

      “I’m glad to hear it.”

      “Did you…have fun…in Micronesia?”

      I shrugged carelessly. “I ran into Mrs. Thurston-Fitzhugh’s errand boy.”

      “And you took care of him.”

      “He came away empty-handed, as usual.”

      A smile fled across von Brutten’s silvery eyes.

      I waited. You can’t push someone like von Brutten too hard. And he was enjoying my news too much for me to rush him. Mrs. Thurston-Fitzhugh had consistently beaten him to the punch until I came along, and von Brutten had made sure I knew he was pleased with my performance. My ability to outwit and outcollect the handful of professional field collectors in the world meant von Brutten stayed top dog in the insulated and obsessive world of ultra-high-dollar orchid collecting. We had a gentleman’s agreement: he paid me generously and I didn’t work for anyone else.

      The ten or so other professionals tended to freelance, sometimes for private collectors like von Brutten and sometimes for legitimate botanical institutions. Not that the institutions would admit to being party to breaking the CITES Treaty. The only other monogamous employer-hunter relationship I knew of was Mrs. Constance Thurston-Fitzhugh and Lawrence Daley.

      I sipped my excellent tea, poured for me by someone I hadn’t noticed.

      An irregular chuffing noise started up from von Brutten’s direction. I glanced over to see him holding an embroidered handkerchief to his mouth. His eyes wrinkled at the corners. Was he choking? I nearly got up to administer the Heimlich, but the chuffing stopped and he removed the hanky from his mouth.

      Laughing. He’d been laughing at my dumping Daley. I felt bizarrely honored.

      “Hmm,” he said, then surprised the hell out of me by saying, “Tell me about your great-uncle.”

      “He’s not your business,” I replied.

      “He’s ailing, is he not?” Von Brutten’s left hand twisted a gold ring around his right hand’s index finger. “Victim of a pharmaceutical experiment?”

      “That’s not—”

      “It’s a shame that someone who raised you after your parents died—car accident, wasn’t it?—should now be facing imminent death as well as the loss of everything he owns.”

      I stood up, tossed the linen napkin onto the table. “Thanks for the Earl Grey. I’m glad you liked your flowers.” I walked toward the door.

      “I know what it’s like to lose all of one’s family,” he called.

      He could go screw himself. I kept walking.

      “My sources tell me Cradion has a record of concealing its failures no matter the cost.” And when I didn’t stop, he added, “I can repair the damage they did to your uncle.”

      I spun. There was no point in shouting How do you know about Cradion? How do you know about Scooter? because of course this was Linus Geraint Newark von Brutten III. I kept my mouth shut and glared at him instead.

      He inclined his head toward me. A conciliatory gesture. “But I need your help to do so.”

      “Surprise me.”

      “Bring me back the Death Orchid and I’ll see your great-uncle has the best chance at living out his full span of years.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “It’s everything it’s rumored to be.” He spread his hands as he said, “It’s the elixir of life.”

      He was out of his mind. As nuts as Lawrence Daley and his nutty high-society employer. As nuts as any nutty botanist, taxonomist, or nursery owner who longed for glory in the insulated, isolated, nutty world of rare orchid collecting.

      Before I could open my mouth, von Brutten said, “I have proof the orchid exists.”

      He snapped his fingers. Sims glided in with a thick padded envelope, laid it on the table, bowed and vanished.

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