The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  “But why would you object, Sheriff Tatum?” Louise asked sweetly. “It’s just picturesque old headstones. Pete’s the cameraman who will be taping TV programs for me, and we might use these shots for background.”

  Tatum approached Louise and shoved his face so close that she could smell his breath—garlic mixed with herbs—probably from lunch in some upscale Boulder watering hole. “Look,” he said, “that film is mine. I think you better mind your own business. This isn’t your property, and he’s shootin’ pictures at my suff’ rance, and turnin’ ’em over to me when he’s done.”

  She tried to look polite, but she must have failed. “And ma’am, don’t look so doubtful at me. I wouldn’t want you—bein’ from the East and all—to think we’re backward. I’m no hick. You better believe I know how to enforce the law. Now, I say, he’s shot the body and the scene, so he’s shot enough pictures.”

  The incident had taken some polish off the man. Hadn’t she just told Bill this wasn’t Hicksville—in jest? How did this guy ever get elected in Boulder County, which she had heard was one of the most educated communities in America?

  Tatum moved away from her, and Louise was grateful. He seemed to want to patch things up with Pete, at least. He said, “Actually, Fitzsimmons, it was just as a courtesy that I came back here t’tell you people what’s what. From the look of things, this murder’s the work of a poacher. They’re dangerous people, and there’s big money in poaching these days—twenty grand alone for a single elk, d’ja know that? My guess is Jimmy tried to stop one of ’em.”

  Pete busied himself covering his camera lens and pulling film rolls out of his vest pockets preparatory to turning them over to the sheriff. Louise looked at Tatum in disbelief.

  Silently, Tatum escorted them back to the ranch entrance, then peeled off to issue a few orders to his deputies. Managing things was a tall, competent woman named Sergeant Rafferty. Louise noted he had a more deferential attitude toward the sergeant than he displayed toward Louise and Ann, and she wondered what the woman had done to wring respect from him. She caught the sergeant’s eye as they passed, and the woman smiled good-naturedly. Louise gave her a thumbs-up.

  They reached the pole fence where Jimmy Porter had died. Blood still festooned the wagon, the fence, the perennials, and the ground. When they joined Ann at the car, Louise sank gratefully into the passenger seat and started pulling off her boots. She turned to Pete, who was observing the boot removal without comment. “If Jimmy Porter wasn’t armed, why would he allow a poacher to come so close?”

  “Makes no sense,” said the cameraman. “That’s why I’m findin’ it a little hard to agree with the sheriff on that. I have a different take. I grew up around here—don’t know if you knew that. In Hygiene, a little community a few miles east of Lyons. My parents were ranchers, and I’ve known ranchin’ since I was little. Ranchers hate things that kill their stock, especially coyotes. Know what they do after they kill a coyote?”

  “No.”

  “They throw the carcass over a fence. Know why? It’s to warn other coyotes to stay away.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the ranch. “Someone killed Jimmy Porter and he ended up like a coyote carcass on a fence. I’d say maybe that was a warning.”

  Chapter 4

  “DRINK IT DOWN, AND THEN we gotta get outta here.” Marty Corbin was a large, heavyset man in western garb, his hatless brown curly hair blowing in the wind. He had placed one hand on a hip in order to project the image of the ever-cool producer, but his big brown eyes, filled with resentment and fright, gave him away. The slanting, top-of-the-world landscape in Rocky Mountain National Park had not been kind to him this morning, and Louise knew he was waiting for another bad thing to happen. They had fallen behind schedule in their Monday shoot and were stopping once more to take a coffee break at twelve thousand feet. Louise happily drank her second cup, exhilarated both by the brisk atmosphere and by the caffeine. But Marty had her worried.

  It had rained Sunday night, ending the oppressive heat wave and helping Louise feel like a new person, despite Bill’s defection—oops, departure—and Janie heading to camp. Her producer, however, who had just flown in yesterday from the East Coast, was the picture of a man out of place—a city guy plunged into a world filled with overpowering mountains staring him down from all sides. Now it would be Marty’s turn to get adjusted to this place.

  He was standing on the path next to the spongy tundra and was about to place a big foot on a clump of miniature forget-me-nots. “Stop!” Louise cried, rushing over to put a restraining hand on his arm. In a quieter voice she said, “You have to watch where you step, Marty. Did you know it could take a hundred years to restore those flowers you nearly stepped on? And I promised Derrell we wouldn’t disturb anything.”

  Derrell, a tall, thin, poker-faced young park ranger, was going to appear in the wildflower segments with Louise and furnish details about the alpine and tundra plants. At the moment, he stood ten paces away and glowered at the clumsy producer. Hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed, he was a botanist and the park’s wildflower expert, and Louise could see he wasn’t going to permit defenseless plants to be ground under the vulgar boot of this East Coast TV big shot. To Derrell, Marty must seem as crude as a Hun to an ancient Roman. The producer, sensing the ranger’s disapproval, glanced crankily at the fellow. “What’s he gonna do, throw me in some little jail carved out of a mountain?” As if reverting to his days growing up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood, he petulantly added, “Anyway, I could take him in a fight—no problem.” He muttered the hostile words as he wandered off the path again in search of a perfect place to shoot. But now he stepped gingerly, as if he might encounter eggs in his path instead of plants.

  Louise smiled indulgently. Before leaving Washington, D.C., Marty had decided a location shoot out West demanded that he look the part. He had arrived wearing new jeans, shirt, and cowboy hat, and now was left with only the jeans and shirt. He had thrown the crew into a panic when he tripped down the wide steps of the steep mountain path. Amidst shouts and laughter, he rolled fifteen feet or so before it ceased to be funny. The sound man ran to his rescue and helped him back onto his unsteady feet, breathless and gasping. It took the entire crew to soothe his nerves and assure him he wasn’t hurt.

  When he fell, his western designer hat had gone sailing off into the clear mountain air. Louise reflected that it might become a bonus for some passing tourist, or might rest in perpetuity in a crevice between two rocks. Now, Marty reached up often and fruitlessly and tried to smooth his hair. The wind was blowing everything, including the sound, straight east to Nebraska.

  More practical after five days in the West, Louise was finally acclimatized. She was also wearing proper clothing; her shirt and jeans were broken in now, and she knew enough to secure her cowboy hat with an under-the-chin rawhide strap. Her hair was imprisoned in a sensible ponytail, so it didn’t fly around in the wind like Medusa’s. And she had ditched her tooled boots; her feet were now shod in climbing boots with soles that gripped the rocks and gave her a budding sense of being a western woman.

  The producer, one eye on the watchful park ranger, returned to the path and swigged down the last of his coffee. “Jesus, what a place!”

  “Don’t you love it, Marty? Above treeline, above almost everything. And look at those mountains.” She grabbed his arm and pointed to the white peaks only a few miles from where they were standing. “They just cry out to you, ‘Climb me!’”

  “Climb me, hell,” he grumbled, bending to stuff their coffee cups into a small duffel bag with the thermos. He straightened slowly, panting from the effort, and gave her a weary look. “Gimme a little slack, Louise, a little more time to adjust. How much do I have to suffer for Gardening with Nature? Hell, we should call it Risk-Taking With Nature. I’ll love it here if we ever get any good footage out of today.”

  Derrell came to the rescue, finding the best display of tundra flowers for the fussy producer to use in the shoot. Pete was whistling cont
entedly, already happy because he had wandered off by himself and gotten some unexpected shots of bighorn sheep. The sound man was as nervous as Marty. He checked his sound mixer, then looked at the producer and shook his head. “Jeez, what a wind! It’s going to be tough getting a good level, even with the wind screen on the shotgun mike.”

  “We’ll do the best we can,” said Marty. “Okay, Derrell—heads up. Louise, sweetie, keep the pace even now. This shoot is weird enough as it is, without having a hurry-up, slow-up effect screwin’ it up. So let’s get started.” Pete, walking backward on the perilous incline with the aid of the grip, taped Louise and die young botanist as they approached what looked like a rock garden full of small plants growing out of the tundra. These species favored the environment of a fell field, which was ground covered with small rocks. The high-altitude plants were growing in a climate where a tree could not survive. Never attaining normal size, they sprang up from old roots during a six-week growing season, and received only a few inches of moisture in the form of melted snow.

  Derrell’s impassive face came alive as he described the qualities of each tough little speciman. He pointed out one of the park visitors’ favorites, old-man-on-the-mountain, only a foot high, with protective hairy leaves and showy yellow daisylike flowers. Then he and Louise crouched down to look at the other varieties growing nearby: a cluster of white bistort; the buttercup-flowered avens; the even more diminutive blue forget-me-not; and smallest of all—a mere pink blotch upon the earth—the pink-flowered dwarf clover.

  Finally, Marty was satisfied. “Yeah—that’s got it!” the producer cried, looking more comfortable now that something seemed to be working. “Good job, Louise, with those dinky little plants. And, Derrell, by golly, you were a real pro. Didn’t know you had it in you. I really admire the two of you for not letting your teeth chatter. As for me, I’m freezing my tushy!”

  Still hyper, Marty hustled them onward to the next task. “Let’s get outta here. We shoot in that wildflower meadow next, and I sure hope a chinook isn’t blowing there, too. I gotta confess—they make me edgy.” He rubbed his ample stomach. “But first, let’s grab lunch. I’m starved. Derrell, how many miles do we have to go to eat?” The park ranger had apparently become Marty’s new pal.

  “There’s a good place near the entrance to the park,” Derrell told him, smiling faintly. “It’s only an hour away.” Groaning, Marty led the way back to the cars, while Pete dropped back to fall in step with Louise. The cameraman gave her a sideways glance. “How’re your cheeks?”

  “What?”

  “Wait,” he said, shying back in mock fear. “I know you think I’m being fresh, but don’t slap me. All I’m referrin’ to is your dried-out face—those cheeks. Did you try the Bag Balm?”

  “Not yet, Pete.” After hearing what Ann Evans said about this guy, she was puzzled. Exactly who was this Pete Fitzsimmons? He strode along, seemingly impervious to the strong wind, his beat-up felt hat jammed on his head without benefit of chin strap. She thought whimsically that this was the test. If those fabulous rugged eyebrows were only glued on, they’d fly away in this gale. They didn’t.

  “Don’t wait too long to grease up,” he said with a grin. “Some people come out here to this dry climate and just plain dry up and blow away. I smear that stuff in whenever I’m goin’ huntin’ or fishin’.” Then he rustled around in the canvas bag on his shoulder. “But seriously, Louise, I got somethin’ spooky to show you. Look at these. I already hustled a set over to the sheriff’s office. I had to do some fast’taürin’ as to why I hadn’t turned this roll over to him. Told’im it got lost in one of my pockets.” They stopped on the path, and as tourists streamed by, he drew a packet of pictures from the bag and tried to hand them to her.

  Still shaken about encountering a corpse, she was reluctant to look at them. “Pete, I’m not sure—”

  He interrupted. “Don’t kid me, Louise. How long do I have to stand here in this chinook and convince you? I know darn well you’re interested.” He shoved the pictures at her, and this time she took them. Then he grinned, as if he had just played an enormous trick on her. “Even with these, I’ll bet you ten grand you could never solve Jimmy Porter’s murder—it’s just not as easy as those lil’ mysteries you solved out East.”

  “I’ll do you a favor,” she said, “and not take you up on that bet.” Then she turned her attention to the photos. They included longer shots of the crime scene. Shots of the ranch, with its rugged rock outcroppings. The blacksmith shop, the old sawmill, the wall of cow skulls. A photo looking down from the top of the steep cliff that backed the ranch property that gave Louise a renewed sense of vertigo. The picturesque gravestones. A glimpse of the back range.

  Pete reached over and put his finger on the shot of the piney woods. It appeared to be a landscape shot, and nothing more. “See that white spot? That’s why the sheriff had to see this one. There’s a face in the pines—someone wearing a dark hat, with a bandanna or something pulled over the bottom of the face.”

  “The murderer?”

  “Who else?” asked the cameraman, challenging her. “Why would someone be standing in the woods when all of us were gathered in the ranch driveway watching the police do their thing? Why didn’t that person come over and join us to find out what was going on? Maybe Tatum is right and it was a poacher.”

  Marty called to them to hurry it up.

  “There’s no tellin’ what Tatum’ll do with this—probably nothin’. I’m busy as hell workin’ on a couple of specials for Channel Six, but I’ll have time pretty soon to make some big prints on fine-grain paper, and we’ll see better what we’ve got.”

  “But I don’t really want to—”

  “Yes, you do,” said Pete. “You want to know who did it as much as I do. Anyway, how are you goin’ to count on our goofy sheriff to find out?”

  “Goofy is right. How did a man like that win the sheriff’s job in a place like this?”

  “You’ve gotta know the county. It isn’t all Boulder sophisticates. There’s lots of farmers and down-to-earth working folks who prefer a guy like Earl. He campaigns really well. Has big barbecues and invites all the registered voters he figures punched a ballot for him one time or another. And when it comes down to it, he knows how to do the job.”

  As if transfixed, Louise continued to stare at the print of the figure in the woods. She didn’t need a blown-up picture. She could already see the person in the picture was staring right at her and Pete. Had to have known they’d been snooping and taking pictures.

  Marty and the others were already far below them on the path. The producer turned around, gesticulated wildly, and called to them again, but his words blew away in the wind. He looked like an excited actor in a silent film. Louise waved reassuringly. Pete had shoved the pictures back in his bag. He grabbed her hand and they hurried down the mountain path together.

  The wind subsided as mysteriously as it had risen, allowing them a less eventful shoot near a streambed in the wildflower meadow. It was so peaceful that Marty said he felt like lying down and taking a nap, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. But Pete, arms akimbo, warned him, “It may be peaceful now, but there’s your warning.” He pointed to the dramatic cigar-shaped clouds floating in the porcelain blue sky. “We’ll have more heavy winds tonight.”

  By practically burrowing into the ground, the cameraman got the clouds, the flowers, and the stream in the frame with Louise. “Streams are good,” he told her amiably, “but clouds are even better, better than everything—well, almost everything: old fences, barns, mines, tombstones, and rusting buggies also are good. But clouds, now, they’re one of Colorado’s endearing attractions. Gotta get ’em, even if you don’t get the talent in the picture.” A big grin, to assure her he was kidding.

  The moist riparian land burgeoned with flower species, each more enchanting to Louise than the next. She and Derrell walked among masses of rose crown, with its elongated pink flower clusters; eight-inch-tall white marsh mari
gold; brook saxifrage, whose loose, white flowers and red sepals were as delicate as dancing ladies; and mauve-colored elephant flower, whose curving upper petals resembled tiny, waving elephant’s trunks and gave the tall plant a decidedly frivolous air. The fluffy white flower umbels of the hairy-stemmed cow parsnip swayed in the gentle mountain breeze, along with other tall plants, yellow Gray’s angelica; and mertensia, with its nodding blue and pink flowers. Louise mentioned that she grew a similar species of mertensia in a totally different environment in her garden in northern Virginia, and Derrell nodded happily. Farther away from the stream they found clumps of paintbrush in rose, yellow, and scarlet; tall, dusky, purple-flowered beardtongue; and drifts of pink pussytoes and avalanche lilies.

  When they were done for the day, they said good-bye to Derrell. Marty gave the ranger an effusive slap on the back and the promise of a tape of the program. Then they dispersed, Pete and other crew members to their homes, she supposed, and Marty to the Hotel Boulderado where his wife Steffi awaited him. Steffi Corbin was the other spouse invited on this trip, and unlike Bill, she had shown up. Louise pressed her lips together and tried not to think about it.

  She also declined her boss’s invitation to join them for dinner, for she knew this was a second honeymoon for Steffi and the workaholic Marty. They had had their share of marital trouble in recent years, none of it helped by an affair he had had with Louise’s predecessor at WTBA-TV. They needed time alone, which apparently they didn’t find much of while at home in Washington, D.C.

  Louise had been left alone in the house in the foothills all weekend, and after finding a dead body, too. Oh, well, it was probably a growing-up experience. She threw her cowboy hat and her backpack into her rental car and headed toward Lyons.

  Lyons, population 1,250, had a peculiar charm, with a river running through it, and a welcome sign made of a huge slab of the town’s trademark red sandstone. Louise looked up into the foothills lining the approach. She had read that stonecutters had worked in those mountains for one hundred years, bringing out the red rock that was used for New York City’s and Chicago’s popular brownstone houses, in addition to some of Colorado’s most famous buildings. And that included the trendy decor in Coors Field, which was one of the newer jewels in Denver’s crown. She smiled. How many cities revered rocks in this way?