The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  Ann, down from her climbing high, was back to her usual sober self. But still she couldn’t disguise her pleasure at hearing Louise’s praise of her house. “I got the idea from that house they found intact in Pompeii. I liked its earthy feel.” She smiled. “And when I pot plants and spill dirt on the floor, I just tell Luke it’s a little volcano ash.”

  Glistening with sweat from her climb, she said, “Time for me to wash up, though since we’re roughing it, I won’t change.” She traded a sober look with Louise. “Just weed research, right?” she said.

  Louise nodded. “That’s right. Weeds.”

  Louise tightened her hands on the steering wheel, took a deep breath, and confronted her fear: the back road to Porter Ranch. She could feel the sweat forming in her armpits, as she drove up at an angle she was convinced was as steep as the beginning of a roller-coaster ride. Strangely, Trail Ridge Road, which crossed Rocky Mountain National Park, was one of the highest roads on the continent, and yet it hadn’t scared her; it was these narrow primitive mountain routes that set her teeth chattering. But just as the second roller-coaster ride wasn’t quite as scary as the first, she found today she could handle it. It helped, too, being the driver rather than a helpless passenger.

  “This is the old Indian trail into the ranch,” Ann explained comfortingly, as if that made it safer. Though she didn’t take her eyes from the road for long, Louise could see in fleeting glances that they were passing a valley full of black cattle gently munching grass. Then came an Impressionist vista of mauve fields that caused her to jerk her foot off the accelerator and slow almost to a stop. “How utterly beautiful,” she said.

  “And treacherous,” added her companion. “That’s all weeds, acres of them. Musk thistle—it’s a scourge out here in the West.” On the spot, Louise realized these picturesque but troublesome intruders had to be part of a program.

  Though it seemed like suicide to Louise, Ann wanted her to slow down when they reached the next hairpin turn. Louise reluctantly complied. “Uh, is this smart? I mean, couldn’t someone come barreling up here?”

  “We’re all right—we’ll hear them coming. I wanted to show you that white smokestack on the horizon. That’s Stony Flats. You must have heard about it.” Ann shook her blond head in disgust. “Here we have pristine foothills, rich grazing land, and wonderful farmland. Right in the center there is that—abomination.”

  “I’ve heard about it, of course,” Louise said, picking up speed and pretending to concentrate on her driving. She wanted to be careful not to repeat anything Bill had told her in confidence.

  But then Ann came right out with it. “And now they’re taking some of the nuclear triggers and sticking them in trucks and moving them to California, where they’ll make the stuff less ready to blow.”

  Louise was amazed. “Is that public information?”

  “Of course. It was in the newspaper. A committee of citizens meets all the time, trying to help decide where all this stuff should go—underground, to some other state…”

  “It’s not going away, is it? I’ve read it takes twenty-four thousand years for only half of it to decay.”

  “On that happy note,” said Ann, giving Louise an ironic smile, “let’s get going.”

  Louise lapsed into thoughts of Bill, and wondered just where he was. Though Stony Flats was central to his mission, she knew he wasn’t around, or he would have made contact with her.

  “Ah, look,” said Ann, “here’s someone you might want to meet.” Approaching them was a gaunt old woman on a horse, moving slowly down the road. Her figure was erect and motionless. Louise brought the car to a near stop. “It’s Jimmy Porter’s next-door neighbor, Harriet Bingham. Looks like she’s checking out that knapweed on the road. Good thing. It’s gotten a big head start on her. Miss Bingham owns the ranch right next to Porter’s—a big one, about three thousand acres. And that’s after having sold off quite a few parcels over the years.”

  Ann stuck her head out the car window and said, “Hello, Miss Bingham. It’s Ann Evans. How are you today?” The woman, wearing dark culottes and an old plaid shirt, gave forth several robust sneezes. Just a few of many sneezes, obviously, for the woman’s eyes were red-rimmed. Louise could see she was allergic to something in the air. She gave Ann a smile of recognition, but since she was riding on the other side of the road, she pulled up near Louise. Ann introduced the two, and Louise saw before her a real evocation of the ranch woman. Harriet Bingham was spare and handsome, with worn hands that were a history of manual work. There was a distant look in the woman’s eyes that Louise could not interpret.

  Harriet Bingham leaned down and said, “Won’t you come in for awhile, Ann, and bring your friend? I could use company. You c’n follow me back to the house.” And with a gentle pull of the rein, she turned her big animal around and led them up the steep incline to the driveway to her ranch. It was a good half mile or more from the Porter Ranch entrance.

  Once past a small forest of ponderosa pines that fronted the property, Louise noticed at once how rocky the front yard was. It was as if someone had scattered small boulders, and a few larger ones, just for the fun of it. Part of a moraine field, she guessed.

  Native grasses of different heights and hues—tan, green, blue-green, and rosy red—grew gracefully between the rocks. Scrub pines and cedars seemed to pop up at precisely the right places to create the finest visual impact. The aesthetic result was better, Louise realized, than the designs of even the most famous designers, such as Oehme and Van Sweden, who had taken the landscape world by storm with their use of native grasses. The wonderful look of Miss Bingham’s ranch yard appeared to be, simply, nature left alone.

  Harriet slowly dismounted and tethered her horse to the fence, allowing it to feast temporarily on the tall grasses. She beckoned the two visitors onto the front porch of the low gray ranch house. If this ranch had a name, as its neighbor Porter Ranch did, it was not being advertised. Two supporting four-by-four posts stood side by side in the front yard, as if a sign from long ago had fallen down or blown away in the wind, and never been replaced.

  Beyond the house were both natural and man-made borders. On one side, an extension of the rock-capped cliff that backed the Porter Ranch. On another, open horse stalls, beyond which a set of cubicles housed rusty farm equipment and old cars, abutted a tall stone outcropping that loomed up like a small monument.

  Louise could not believe that much light would reach inside the house with all the trees and rock formations, and sure enough, as Miss Bingham slowly led them into the house, she had to squint in the dim light. The furniture needed dusting, and the lace curtains looked as if they might dissolve at a touch. Louise wrinkled her nose at the smell. It was the odor of an old house that had been kept neat, but lightly cleaned, and probably never polished. Louise remembered Pete’s image of how fast things dried up in the West. Someday soon, this house and its owner would turn into a pile of dust and blow away.

  The woman invited them to the study, which had slightly more candlepower, since it had a window with a view. “I have some coffee and rolls. Tell me you’ll stay and have some.”

  They nodded.

  “I’ll help you,” said Ann. Miss Bingham’s energy seemed to increase inside the house, maybe because it was cooler than the outdoors, or because company was here.

  While she waited, Louise took the opportunity to look around. She wandered over to a big library table in the corner that held a number of objects, all with a faint reddish-tan color from the millions of particles of Colorado red dirt collected on them through the years. A beaded Indian basket. An Indian war shield. A half heart carved of aspen wood, with a jagged edge indicating the heart had been broken. And an old Bible whose limp repose told Louise it had been turned to the same page for years. She wondered what the woman’s favorite Biblical verse was. In the center of the mementoes was a 1920’s-style photograph of a couple, the man in a dark suit, the woman in a dark polka-dot dress and lacy hat.

 
“That’s a picture of my father and mother when they were married,” said Harriet Bingham when she and Ann returned with the tray. “Henry and Margaret Bingham.” Margaret was a beauty, with her head demurely cocked to one side, the man handsome and happy. “My mother died two years after that picture was taken, when I was born. That was seventy-five years ago.” There was a flick of emotion in the woman’s eyes. “So there was just my father and me for many years.”

  As they drank coffee and ate savory cinnamon buns, Louise remembered Ruthie Dunn’s description of mountain folks. She asked Harriet if she got away from the ranch very often.

  The elderly woman laughed nervously. “Of course. What d’ya think, that I’m stranded up here? It’s only twenty-one miles to Boulder. I go there once in a while for programs, or the occasional meeting of the county commissioners. Closer to home, I’ve been known t’help tutor the first graders at Lyons Elementary—the ones that couldn’t read well.” This bit of spirit was followed by a dulling of her eyes, as if she might be suffering a brief spell.

  “Let me tell you about Louise, Miss Bingham,” said Ann.

  “Please,” Louise demurred, but it was too late. When Ann talked about the Gardening with Nature program, the woman’s interest revived. In fact, when the organic farm shoot was mentioned, the elderly woman turned out to know the operator of the farm. It stood to reason Harriet would know all the large farmers and ranchers in the region, after spending a lifetime here.

  The conversation rolled right along until Ann blurted out Louise’s “criminal” background, the fact that she was involved in solving several murders. It was as if the room darkened, and the specter of Jimmy Porter was present. Harriet Bingham’s eyes filled with tears, and Louise wished the topic of murder had never been mentioned.

  Ann leaped up and went to the woman’s side, realizing her faux pas. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t mind these snuffles,” said the old woman, recovering herself a little. “It’s just that Jimmy was my neighbor for my whole life. We grew up together.”

  “It was so tragic,” said Ann, as she returned to her seat in a dark, overstuffed chair. “Both Louise and I wonder about the sheriff’s theory that it was a poacher.”

  A strange thing happened then, as if the woman were physically disintegrating before their eyes. Her face grew flaccid and her whole head trembled, as did her thin hands. “I don’t know,” she moaned. “Haven’t been feelin’ so good these days—I was dozing in my chair. I don’t even think I heard the shots. Oh, what a loss, what a loss…” And her head bowed to her chest, like a wilted flower.

  “Oh, Miss Bingham,” said Ann, rushing over again, “I didn’t mean to alarm you. Whoever did it could have no reason to harm you.”

  Harriet slowly raised her head again, and Louise and Ann gave each other a relieved glance.

  “Maybe we’d better go and let her rest,” she told Ann. The woman, as far as she could see, was suffering severe melancholy. No husband, no children, and now, no neighbor. Louise didn’t believe the woman still lived the active life she described, and guessed she spent a lot of time alone in that study.

  She took the coffee tray to the kitchen. This room was cleaner, and dominated by a blue porcelain stove. It was handsome and old, rather like Harriet, as were the antique canisters for staples. Sharing their space on the counter was a modern microwave oven. Perched in front of the oven was a single frozen plastic-wrapped chicken breast, destined to be tonight’s lonely dinner. The leftover buns sat in an ancient baking tray whose decorative striations imprinted the bottom of each bun. Louise couldn’t resist examining the bottles neatly lining the window shelf, but they were only multivitamins and iron supplements, and a special vitamin for the eyesight. Surely, the woman had to take other medicine as well, for she appeared to have health problems.

  She returned to the study, and found Ann preparing to leave. Unlike Louise, Ann had a schedule to keep, and probably appointments later at her office. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked. “Can’t I call someone?”

  Harriet Bingham rose out of her chair. In a stronger voice, she said, “I’m perfectly fine, now that you helped me with my pills and my allergy medicine.” Louise then noticed the prescription medicine bottles in a metal box with its lid flipped open, sitting on a table beside the woman. “Don’t you worry, now, Ann. And please come back again.”

  They promised they would, and went back out to their car. Harriet seemed a pathetic figure to Louise: obviously a woman of property—valuable property—and yet with no one here to share her suffering. As they climbed in, Ann shook her head and echoed Louise’s thoughts, “I feel so sorry for that woman.”

  But Louise’s mind was onto another matter. She didn’t know exactly how to tell Ann that she didn’t like people to talk about her involvement in murders. She took an oblique approach. “I sure get embarrassed,” she said with a big grin, “when someone tries to make me out to be an amateur detective.”

  The gentle reprimand brought a blush to Ann’s tan face. “Oh. Sorry. Well, no harm done, I hope, and I promise you I won’t brag you up to anyone else.” No sooner had they pulled out of the driveway than a big SUV pulled in. A blond, sunburned man hopped out in a show of robust athleticism, then stopped for a second to stare at them. Louise noticed a certain masklike quality about his face. In a few great strides he had disappeared through the pines.

  “He’s going in there as if he lives there.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Ann. Her voice sounded strained. “That’s Mark Payne, a Boulder developer who wanted to buy out Jimmy Porter. He’s related to Harriet.” She pursed her lips grimly. “He thinks that gives him an inside track to buy Harriet’s land.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “I’m sure he thinks so. Let’s keep going; I don’t want him to come out and talk to us.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Oh, just because he knows me,” she said shakily. She was trying to sound offhand, but her face had reddened.

  Louise drove down the side road. Through a break in the trees, she could see Harriet standing with Payne near a window. They were staring out at them. Payne loomed beside the elderly woman like a north country god. Louise stole a quick look at the woman sitting beside her. Another blond type, the type Payne might choose for his beloved. Suddenly, she realized something had happened between Mark Payne and Ann Evans.

  Ann seemed anxious to change the subject. “Why don’t we drive back to the Porter Ranch and just give their weeds a quick look?” Louise guided the car past the ponderosa woods and down the road to the entrance with the squeaky old sign.

  “There’s Sally,” said Ann. “Poor thing.” Jimmy’s daughter was a somber figure in the distance. Wearing a plain housedress, she kept her head down as she swept the sunny front porch of the ranch house. With the light falling on her straight, light hair and stocky figure, she looked like a good subject for a Dutch master. Even from afar, Louise could sense her palpable grief. Here was a woman who, granted, had a career as a teacher, but who otherwise had devoted her life to her widowed father. Something occurred to Louise. She glanced at Ann. “Where was Sally going to go when Jimmy sold this place?”

  “Oh, she wanted to get a little condo in Boulder to be near her dad and his new wife. But who knows what she’ll do now.… What do you say we go out the back way? We’ll stop this time to see the weeds.”

  Louise looked at her with panicked eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Ann, laughing. “You got in here just fine. Why can’t you drive out?”

  “Oh, but it’s downhill this rime. You know, steep grade, brakes fail, you fall to your death, end up as a pile of broken bones and seeping blood.”

  Ann just laughed at her.

  “Don’t mind me—I’m obsessing. Sure, I’ll drive you out the back way.”

  Louise put the car in gear gingerly, thinking about the lonely Sally, following Jimmy to town and setting up housekeeping r
ight next door. She wondered how the old man had liked the idea. What if he hadn’t—or if Sally had hated the idea of leaving this mountain?

  Suspicious Interlopers: Weeds in America

  WEEDS MAY BE WINNING IN THE West, just as they did in the South some years ago. Normative and noxious weeds are invading millions of acres of western land, thus crowding out native species, and clogging waterways. This is another version of the South’s experience with the kudzu vine and the Melaleuca tree, that have become dominant in parts of Southern states.

  These weeds form monocultures that reduce the land’s ability to sustain wildlife diversity and livestock grazing. Leafy spurge, an aggressive sort with roots sometimes twenty feet deep, is actually life-threatening to cattle and elk, because of the habitat degradation it creates. Weed specialists call the result “biological pavement,” an enticing-looking scene that to the casual observer resembles a wildflower meadow, but is totally inimical to animals.

  Using the simplest method first: grazing. “Integrated weed management” is the expert’s answer to getting rid of weeds. Like “integrated pest management,” “IWM” calls for using the simplest ecological solution first, and then moving to ever-sterner measures. (Grazing is the easiest way to control weeds, and then come mechanical, biological, chemical, and cultural controls. But so far, the efforts to control these weeds are relatively small, as opposition springs up from residents worried about contamination from chemicals. People also complain about manual weed-pulling, fearing its effect on their respiratory systems, and even biological controls, speculating that they might become a problem in themselves.

  Some of the worst offenders. Most of what are called weeds were introduced as Europeans colonized the world. Some were brought purposely, some by accident in ship holds. Some of the toughest in the West are skeleton weed, leafy spurge, knapweed, Medusa’s head, purple loosestrife, and Canada thistle. It is thought that these invasive plants have already caused more than seven billion dollars’ worth of crop and rangeland losses in the West. Unchecked, the plants affect not only rangeland, but also acreages set aside for wilderness—which are often inaccessible and therefore make it harder to get rid of nonnative pests. Scientists are urgently trying to devise ways to fight them, calling together public and private land managers, commercial nurseries, farmers, ranchers, and foresters.