I asked Carl delicately, “Did you know that Sheila brought some tomatoes to dinner the night she—”
Carl exploded. “Of course I knew! Where do you think they came from!”
Veins pulsed on his nose. The knuckles gripping the hoe were white. Karen and I took a step back. Carl stood there shaking. After a moment I realized it was as much from grief and guilt as from anger.
Karen’s voice was even and kind. “You gave them to her?”
“Yes. I mean, no, not directly, I left her a message telling her she could have some and asking when I should drop them off. They’re no big secret. I just don’t usually give them out. Well, anyway, she never called back.” His throat tightened. “If only she did. I could have warned her…”
“About what?”
“It was an experimental line engineered by Tomagen, before we bought them. They set themselves the task of making the best tomato ever — the tastiest, the hardiest, the juiciest. If they hit all the marks, they’d have an incredible product. It was like entering the lottery. Well, they won — except they couldn’t collect. Turned out they’d used a gene from some fish to help the tomato resist cold. See, the same protein that helps a crustacean survive frigid water is the one that causes allergy in humans. Anyway, the protein was still being expressed in the heart tomato. They couldn’t take it to market.”
I opened my mouth, but Carl jumped quickly to the question. He ticked off his points on soil-crusted fingers. “So why did I keep growing it? I told you about the taste. Why did I give it to people? I didn’t give it to many. A few in my department. The chief wanted to try it, too. Didn’t hurt anyone, not so much as a cough. So then Sheila. Why should I keep it from her, if she wanted to try it? I didn’t know she had an allergy. I would have told her, though, I would have warned her, even though the protein showed up weak in the bioassays.”
“But the company had to pull the tomato, in spite of that?”
“Oh yeah. They didn’t even bother asking the FDA. You can’t go around selling food that looks like an apple but really it’s an oyster. You can’t sell soy that’s really Brazil nut proteins. Company that did that in 1996 had to pull it for the same reason: allergies. There were no solid documented cases of adverse reaction, but you’ve got to be double careful. Triple.”
We stared, stunned, at Carl. “Why would a company use a shellfish protein like that?” I managed to ask.
“Lots of people have used fish genes to help crops stand the cold,” he said. His shoulders were slumped, but with a kind of relief. He’d been carrying this knowledge around all on his own. He was dying to share it.
“Carl,” I said gently, “you said you didn’t give Sheila the tomatoes in person. You also said you didn’t talk to her about them. So how did you know Sheila wanted to try them?”
Carl screwed up his face and clutched at his hat. “Jesus, I don’t know!” His fingers slowly released the hat. “It was Dr. McKinnon. He thought she’d enjoy them.”
Karen and I stared at each other. McKinnon.
Carl knew what the look meant. He shook his head vehemently. “No, Dr. McKinnon’s a good man. He wouldn’t knowingly give Sheila something dangerous. The chief neither. But that Dugan — he’s another basket of onions. Listen up, I’m going to tell you right now he will try to pin this on me. Because they got to find someone to blame. The family’s gonna sue, I heard that. And what I think is maybe Dugan’s the one who told the doctor about the tomatoes. Tricked him or something.”
“Dugan likes to spread blame around,” I agreed. “As long as it lands on anyone but himself.”
“In any case, it’s likely the shellfish protein didn’t do the job alone,” Karen said. “We think there was another factor.”
Carl’s brows rose in a hopeful wrinkle.
“How much do you know about MC124?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I know it’s Dr. McKinnon’s big program. But that’s not my field.”
I curled my fingers round one of the tomatoes. “We’d like to take this and analyze it. Is that all right?”
“Take the whole damn plant,” Carl said. “Burn it.”
Karen smiled sympathetically. “I understand how you feel. We’ll let you know what we find out.”
The three of us shuffled slowly back to the gate, each lost in our thoughts. If Carl had been annoyed at our entrance, his face grew sad at our departure. He looked hollow and exhausted, as if an enormous weight had been briefly lifted from his chest — but now he was about to be left alone with it again.
“I could offer you some lemonade,” he said. “I grow Meyers.”
Karen put a hand on his arm. “Another time.”
I shook his hand and promised to be in touch. Karen leaned forward to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for speaking to us.”
We turned to leave. I took a couple of steps, then stopped. “The heart tomatoes — do you still eat them, Carl?”
A cold, distant look came into his eyes. “Not anymore.”
28
“It wasn’t Fay who brought the toxic food to the dinner party,” I said. “It wasn’t Marion. It was Sheila herself.”
“And someone used Carl Steiner to get her to do it.”
I was still stunned by the idea. Saying it made it a little more real. We were back at the kitchen table in Karen’s home away from home in Redwood City. Karen had brewed coffee. She set a mug in front of me. “Drink up. Did you know coffee increases your IQ?”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. But it can’t be true, or I’d be a genius.”
“Do we assume that Carl’s aboveboard? That he was just a pawn?” Karen asked.
I stared into the black cup. “His emotions were real. I suppose he could be pulling some kind of ruse, figuring the truth about the tomatoes would come out eventually. It’s possible he wanted to get back at Sheila for not returning his attention — but it’s not like she broke up with him. They were never even together.”
“What if he’s one of those stalker types who thought he owned her just because he was infatuated with her?” I shook my head. “Do you really think he was capable of murder?”
“No. Not Carl.” Karen paused, then added, “You know who that puts in the hot seat, don’t you? Frederick McKinnon.”
I nodded. “Have you met him?”
“At the last LifeScience Christmas party. Very charismatic, I have to admit. I see why Sheila was inspired by him. He’s smooth, smart, cultured, completely dedicated — everything we always thought a scientist should be. His team is incredibly loyal.”
I looked up at her through the coffee steam. “Maybe most are. Not Doug Englehart. He’s ready to be king of his own realm.”
Karen sipped her drink. “I’ve wondered about that. I’ve met him only once, and it was hard for me to get a reading. He’s been with Frederick for so many years. I thought maybe Doug just didn’t have the ambition to strike out on his own.”
“Oh, he’s got the ambition. It’s more narrow than McKinnon’s, but just as strong. Sheila wrote about it in her diary. Doug was a fountain of ideas, always pushing the frontiers. She said McKinnon acknowledged that in the team meetings. He raved about how brilliant Doug was. She liked that about McKinnon.”
“Now that I think about it, Sheila told me that when McKinnon announced MC124 at the conference, he gave the whole presentation himself. Sheila said Doug looked stricken. He thought he’d at least get to explain the antibody to the session.”
“McKinnon’s generosity could also have been a way to keep Doug right where he was,” I said. “Use his brains, stroke his ego, but take the credit. Maybe the conference was the last straw. Gregory Alton told me Doug’s about to get his own program now. McKinnon dropped hints about it, too.”