The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  Is the solution worse than the problem? Herbicide use arouses deep suspicions in communities. An example is Boulder County, Colorado, where people opposed to chemical spraying determined to solve the weed problem another way—with hand-pulling. They gathered an army of volunteers to hand-pull diffuse knapweed and thistle from a certain area of the county. The volunteers obliterated a reported eighty-five percent of the crop, but that was not enough. There was plenty left to reseed the plants. When the county proposed spraying with Transline, a herbicide thought to be reasonably safe, nearby residents objected. It is an ongoing battle in communities throughout the United States.

  Objections or not, large governmental efforts will be needed to curb the spread of acres of these noxious plants. But when only smaller tracts are involved, homeowners, not herbicides, can be the best weed control. Pulling weeds seems so old-fashioned, but is marvelously effective. Even dead-heading weeds, thistles and the like, can shrink the problem before it becomes too big for the householder to manage.

  Don’t buy weeds for your garden. The greatest irony may be that Americans add to the problem by planting weeds—even the ones that are sold for $6.95 a pot in our local nursery. An example is purple loosestrife, or Lythrum, which crowds out valuable native plants. Some states list it as a noxious weed and prohibit its distribution, while many others unfortunately don’t. The naive home gardener can innocently purchase it and worsen the problem. Others that are easy to buy, and hard to get rid of, are Saint-John’s-wort and, in seed form, dame’s rocket.

  The weeds that got a bad rap. Those who have been raised in suburbs where the badge of honor was a weed-less lawn may have a tough time ever handling the truth about dandelions: Dandelions are not weeds! They have always been considered weeds by suburban gardeners, and chemical companies cater to their distaste, featuring pictures of droopy, dying dandelions in weed-killer ads. And yet today, as health foods and alternative medicines are no longer a fad but a gigantic and growing industry, the thinking is changing about these charmingly configured yellow-flowered plants. They are nutritional manna spread upon the earth. Enjoy them in salads or soups, harvesting them when young, before the flowers appear. And don’t mind the neighbors. Some day they, too, will discover what they’re missing, and thank you for providing them with starter seeds.

  Chapter 6

  IT WAS LESS THAN AN HOUR AFTER Louise dropped the land officer off at her home in Left Hand Canyon that she received a phone call from Ann. She had forgotten to ask Louise if she would be interested in attending the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee meeting tonight.

  “It’s a six-thirty meeting, and won’t last much longer than a couple of hours because the agenda is short tonight. It will give you a flavor of the county’s open space program. Everybody will be there, because this is the night we talk about something that’s sort of controversial, but would be terrific if we can ever get it through. Conservation easements on private land to provide a wildlife corridor system through the whole of Boulder County.”

  “And what does all that mean?”

  “Well, for wildlife, it would be just great—a swath of connected paths for animals, many near rivers and streams, which is high-value wildlife habitat.”

  “Wouldn’t it be extraordinary for people to donate land in a place where land is so valuable?”

  “It’s not an easy idea to sell.” A tentative quality entered Ann’s voice. “But we have to try, and of course, some people love the idea. Others are mad as hops: They don’t want to relinquish development rights to their land to the county at any price. It would affect Harriet Bingham and lots of others, especially developers. Not Jimmy Porter, since it looked as if we were getting the whole Porter Ranch. But the Porter Ranch will come up in the discussion, because everybody knows the deal is on hold and they’ll want to chew that over for awhile, too. Join Sally Porter and me for a quick dinner beforehand. Sally’s in Boulder to make her father’s funeral arrangements, but she doesn’t want to attend the meeting.”

  Finally Louise agreed, and Ann told her where they’d meet.

  “The Hogback House—are you kidding? That’s the name of a restaurant?”

  “Louise,” said Ann, chuckling a little, “get with die program. Didn’t you know you are surrounded by hogbacks out there in Lyons?”

  The patio of Hogback House, situated on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall, was packed on this hot August evening. So were the other outdoor dining rooms in the downtown area. Lots of people in Boulder, Louise noticed, seemed to prefer eating out so they didn’t have to cook. Not only could they get a nice meal, but they also could observe the passing show that Boulder had become: a throng of tourists from all over the country in the usual informal tourist garb; the smartly dressed businessmen and women from the Boulder area’s thriving commercial sector; crazily dressed street people who were a decades-long summer tradition in this mellow college town.

  Louise sat opposite Sally Porter at the table so she could study her without appearing nosy. Sally was as plain-looking close up as she had been at a distance earlier today. Tonight, she looked uncomfortable in the dark polyester pantsuit she had chosen to wear, just as she had looked totally natural this afternoon: a lonely figure in a cotton housedress, sweeping the porch on which her father would never walk again.

  Louise was struck by the woman’s impassive face; she probably handled all matters without much emotion. Almost as soon as she sat down, she said to Ann: “I know how you must be worrying about the ranch deal. Frank and Eddie and I are meeting with our lawyer tomorrow. I’ll see if they want to sign an agreement to sell to the county, just like Dad was going to do.”

  Ann reached over and pressed Sally’s hand and launched into a little speech about how she would be carrying out her father’s fondest wishes if she helped persuade the other heirs that the ranch should become open space. “Your father grew to love the idea of providing people with the beautiful nature experience that his own family had enjoyed for several generations.” Louise admired the way the senior land officer discreetly painted a picture of the alternative—the old family homestead becoming the site of thousands of houses. Ann was well into a description of the loss of wildlife that would ensue, when Louise noticed that Sally was not listening. She was looking past Ann with a worried expression on her unremarkable face.

  “Oh, my, I hope this isn’t trouble.” Sally’s brothers were approaching. They caught her eye and came toward their table. When Sally introduced them, Louise said, “I think I’ve seen you before, Eddie. Last night, at the Gold Strike Café.”

  “Yeah. You were the best-looking gal in the place.” He gave an unpleasant laugh. “Of course, it ain’t a very big place.”

  Sally looked down in embarrassment, and Louise’s mouth twisted in an attempt at a smile. Eddie was spiffed up a little to come to Boulder, and didn’t wear his shit-kicker boots tonight, but rather a fancy tooled pair in brown and black. He had slicked down his cowlick with hair grease that shone in the fading evening light.

  Frank was another matter. He was a slim, dark-haired man in a sporty outfit that quietly stated “professional.” He probably wore it to his job at IBM. But right now wasn’t a good time to get to know him, because he looked furious. Eddie cocked his head toward his brother. “Me ’n Frank, we been talkin’ some things out, Sally, in yonder bar.” He pointed back down the mall. “Frank, he got himself all worked up, but he’s gettin’ over it now. So we aren’t about t’talk to you until tomorrow morning. It’s bad enough between the two of us. Okay?”

  Eddie looked at her uncertainly, as if he knew in his heart he shouldn’t be treating his grieving sister with such roughness. “Aw, c’mere and let me hug ya, sis,” he added, grabbing her out of her chair and pulling her up to her feet. He clasped her in a bear hug, rocking her back and forth like a big toy, all the while whispering things in her ear.

  Sally, her stocky body tipped back in the embrace of her eldest brother, seemed to be listening inten
tly to what he was saying. Finally, she raised her head and nodded solemnly at him. Eddie smiled.

  Then it was Frank’s turn. He came over to Sally and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She could hardly meet his gaze. “Look, sis,” he said softly, “it will be okay no matter how it turns out.” He gave her a little kiss on the cheek and turned to catch up with his brother, who was already striding away down the sidewalk.

  Sally sat down without looking at Ann and self-consciously stared at the menu. “All of a sudden I’m real hungry,” she said simply. Ann stared at her for a moment, then pretended to concentrate on what to order. During the meal, Ann put in an occasional remark, but was not her usual self. Louise felt obliged to carry the conversation with Sally, and asked her about her early life on the ranch. Jimmy Porter’s daughter answered Louise’s questions in a quiet, halting voice, with no embellishments. It was clear Sally seldom talked about herself. But with persistent questions, Louise learned over the space of twenty-five minutes that, with her mother dead, Sally had become the substitute “mom” at the ranch when still a mere child. She washed and ironed, sewed, churned butter, cleaned, and cooked. Sometimes she traveled to school in Lyons on her horse, more often just riding with her brothers to the county road, then meeting a school bus there.

  The way she spoke, it was obvious her father was the center of her universe. But one of Louise’s questions had not been welcome: the one about where Sally would go when the ranch was sold. “I had my plans,” she said tersely. Louise was now convinced that Jimmy Porter had rebuffed Sally’s idea to trail after him and his new bride. What a blow that must have been!

  Not once, as they talked, did tears come to the bereaved daughter’s eyes for a father who had died just days ago. A frightening thought entered Louise’s mind: Was this woman some kind of time bomb ready to go off—or that had already gone off? Another of Sally’s answers had also raised little alarms for Louise. “Shoot? Of course I know how to shoot, and to hunt, too. If you live on a ranch, you have to know how; it doesn’t matter if you’re a girl.”

  When dinner was finished, Ann Evans gave Sally a polite good-bye and said, “I hope we can talk about this in a few days, when you’ve thought back on what I said.”

  Sally stepped forward, extending her hand to Ann. As if it were a requiem for a lost cause, she said, “You were a good friend to my father, I’ll say that.” Then she turned and walked away.

  Ann turned to Louise. “Now we’d better double-time it, or we won’t make that meeting on time.” They set out for the courthouse at a fast pace. Halfway down the block, Ann revealed what was bothering her. “I am so pissed—I’m royally pissed!” Louise was a little startled at the strong language coming out of the mouth of this woman. “Did you see that loathsome brother of hers bullying her?”

  “You think, right there in front of us, he was trying to change her mind about the sale?”

  Ann looked at her in disbelief. “Didn’t you see it? He not only tried: he succeeded. You could tell by the way he was talking to her, and the way she gave right in and said yes.”

  “Well, she did nod at him—” said Louise.

  “Louise, I’ve been talking to these people for a year, and I know them. That woman has just transferred all her fatuous adoration of her father to her big, dumb brother!”

  “But Frank seems pretty darned smart. Why can’t he make a case with his sister?”

  Ann gave a low moan, and stopped short on the concrete path into the building. Louise could see the tic in her right eye was bothering her again. But she drew herself up straighter and said in a determined voice, “I can’t go storming through town venting like this, no matter how angry I am at Sally Porter. People will think I’m nuts. Let’s just forget that dinner, okay?” She grabbed Louise’s arm and started walking again. “People sometimes call this courthouse Boulder’s Art Deco folly,” she said, as if the scene with Eddie and Sally and Frank had never happened.

  “Ann,” interrupted Louise, “hadn’t we better talk about this—”

  “No,” her companion said firmly, then softened a bit at Louise’s raised eyebrows. “Later, maybe. Not now.” She pointed up at the squarish yellow brick building and continued her history lesson. “Most of the building materials came from the dismantled Switzerland Trail railroad that ran up to Nederland. I like the building. And I like the way Boulder preserves its history. It’s no longer a sleepy, unspoiled mountain college town, and everyone complains about that. Bet you wouldn’t believe this was once a Republican-dominated, conservative little place where people couldn’t even buy an alcoholic drink. The townspeople thought the university people were flaming radicals.”

  As if swept along by the tide, Louise played along with Ann’s mood. “What changed it?”

  “The sixties. By then, Boulder was no longer dry, and IBM had moved in with its thousands of employees. And then the hippies came, taking drugs and making love in City Park.” She glanced meaningfully at Louise. “I remember my father avoiding that route when we drove through town. That kind of thing certainly helped loosen things up. Now, you have everything here—liberals, conservatives, alternative religions, New Age folks, and the most sophisticated scientists and entrepreneurs. It’s totally changed, but it’s still a great place to work and live.”

  As Ann hustled her up the stairs to the third floor, they encountered another conversational pair on the second floor landing: Sheriff Tatum and Mark Payne. Louise figured the two were engaged in a good ol’ boy conversation, which, if it had taken place outside, might have had one of them chewing a hayseed, the other casually spitting in the dust. As it was, Tatum had one arm propped on a high stone windowsill, and Payne was leaning on the stairway wall, one expensively shod foot on a higher stair, done in marble embellished with an Art Deco inset.

  Everybody seemed to know everybody else in Boulder. “Hi, Sheriff Tatum,” said Ann. Louise nodded politely at the lawman. But Ann sailed past Payne without a word. He didn’t change his stance, but his face was transformed when he saw Ann. Suddenly, he looked soft and vulnerable and almost ashamed.

  Ann turned her attention firmly back to Louise as they left the men behind. “I’m going to give you a little background that might help you sort things out. There are two tiers of people at these open space meetings—the first being what I call notable locals. People like Tom Spangler, manager of Stony Flats—he’ll be here because the land-use people would like river land near that plant for the wildlife passage. Payne, the local developer, because the county is looking at quite a hunk of his properties for the same purpose. Josef Reingold is even bigger. He’s with DRB, a German conglomerate that owns a lot of land in the West. He was one of the contenders for Jimmy’s land, too. Even Harriet: She’ll also be asked to relinquish some acreage for this wildlife plan.”

  They had reached the big conference room, which had a curved wooden platform on which the open-space committee members were beginning to assemble. “How about the other tier?”

  “They’re the environmentalists—what Pete Fitzsimmons calls ‘bunny huggers.’ There’re lots of them in Boulder and Boulder County. People are genuinely interested in preserving natural habitats.” She smiled. “That’s why this place has more designated open space than a lot of others.”

  Louise thought darkly of jimmy Porter, splayed over the fence. “Too bad people have to get killed over it.”

  Louise regretted her words, as Ann shuddered guiltily and bowed her head. “You’re confirming my worst fears,” she said, in a low voice. “Do you really think that’s why Jimmy was killed?”

  Louise shrugged. “How can I help thinking that? It just makes sense.” She gave a wry smile. “In fact, there’s probably a lot of prospective murderers here tonight.” She had meant it as a half-joke. But Ann’s alarmed face told Louise it was no joke to either one of them.

  The senior land officer had her own table at the rear of the room. Louise sat in the row in front of it, realizing now why Ann needed to regain control of
herself: She was the puppet-master here. The fourteen illustrious members of the Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee followed her guidance as they decided the fate of undeveloped land in Boulder County. Ann had fastened the buttons on her linen suit jacket, to give herself a more kick-ass appearance, Louise supposed. She’d drawn half-glasses out and perched them on her nose, immediately aging herself by five years. When she arrived, she was handed her notes by her secretary. Only because Louise sat so near could she see the faint trembling of the papers in Ann’s slender hands.

  The young woman, though totally composed on the surface, was a mass of nerves underneath.

  She identified the players for Louise as they came in. Mark Payne, whom Louise recognized, glad-handed everyone in the room as if he were the host at a cocktail party, making a wide, deliberate circle around Ann. Up close, Louise noted that Payne missed being handsome because of some flaw that was hard to put a finger on. It could have been the overly strong jawline, perhaps, or the hooded eyes, strange in a blue-eyed, blond type. His sandy, almost invisible eyelashes gave the man a faintly sinister look. Maybe this was why he smiled at one and all, but avoided direct eye contact. Except, of course, with people like Sheriff Tatum.

  Tom Spangler, a big, confident-looking man, hurried in next. He was heavyset and balding, about fifty, wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt. Louise’s heart beat faster: Bill must have something to do with this man, since he ran Stony Flats; was he helping Bill and his team, or could he be in on the plot to steal the plutonium shipment? She turned to Ann. “What kind of a man is he? It must take something special to run a plant like that.”