The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  Although she had just read the renter’s instructions upon meeting bears and lions, her mind went blank. What was it she had to do with a lion, slink away—or scold? Look it in the eye, or look away? The cat then did something that sent terror into her heart. It blew air out of its nostrils in a series of high-pitched snorts, and then got up from its crouch and began to move, slowly circling to her left. She realized that in a matter of seconds the question of what to do would be moot. She would be outflanked and done for.

  The answer came from her gut. She raised both arms high, one still holding the aromatic trash. “Owwwrrh” she cried. A deep guttural sound came out of her throat and she began to growl and then yell at the beast. “Owwrrh! Owwrrh! Go home! Go home! This is my home! Get out!”

  The cat stopped dead in its tracks. Knowing she had nothing to lose now, she sprinted a few feet toward it, and the mighty beast sprang back. With surprise, Louise realized she was just as much an unknown quantity to this lion as the lion was to her. Having closed the distance a bit, she sent the white plastic-clad garbage of putrid chicken parts toward the animal with a mighty underhand pitch. Disappointingly, the cat did not pounce upon it, as she hoped it would. Instead, it slunk back into the shrubbery near the Dumpster, perhaps to see if the bag was going to move.

  Still growling, Louise backed away. She stumbled over an apache plume bush, but did not fall. The growls had sent her adrenaline raging; she was determined to survive. Upon reaching the carport, she sprinted into the house and slammed the door.

  Inside, she gave a frightened look at the big curtained windows. Thank God she had not heard stories of wild animals breaking through glass, or she would never sleep again. She flung herself on the living room couch. For a few moments, she just lay there, until her shuddering gasps turned into normal breathing. She felt a complete sense of oneness with the pioneer woman, Emily. She now believed, like St. Thomas after he placed his hand in the wound in Jesus’s side. Then, overwhelmed with a great fatigue, she closed her eyes for just an instant. To her surprise, she did not wake until morning.

  Chapter 13

  BEING A PERSON WHO ATE ORGANIC shredded wheat for breakfast, Louise didn’t care much for brunches. But Marty had insisted that he and Steffi meet her for one this morning, since he had begged off again on work—despite the tightening schedule—and had another proposal for the day instead. They sat in the restaurant of the Hotel Boulderado, plates heaped with intricate omelets sided with fruit wedges and chunky fried potatoes set before them. Marty was running down the details of the remaining shoots, while Louise picked at her omelet.

  As much as she wanted to, she wasn’t going to tell them about the mountain lion. Marty would not allow her to stay alone in her house if he knew both humans and wildlife were after her. It would be a good story to tell people later—if they would believe her.

  “Pete and the sound man are okay on taking today off,” said Marty. “Steff and I want you to go with us to Aspen for the weekend.”

  Louise let that one ride for a minute, and launched into her idea for a program on spontaneous gardens, describing what a great interview Ruthie Dunn would make. He liked it, and said they could work on a script together in Aspen.

  “Do come with us, Louise,” urged Steffi, “and we’ll take Aspen by storm.” She was a large woman with dark curly hair, who looked so much like her husband that they could have been sister and brother. She looked thinner and more sparkly of eye than she had when she arrived, and was full of praise for Colorado. “I’m telling you, we’re having more fun than we’ve had since our honeymoon.” She turned to her husband, and apparently reached under the table to squeeze a part of him. His brown eyes lit up, as if she had turned on a lightbulb.

  “Steffi, I can’t. I just don’t have a trip in me today. I decided I had to kick back and relax, and I even dressed for it, to get me in the proper mood.” Louise was in a casual summer dress with sandals and a big straw hat. She looked across at Steffi, who was wearing a joyously loud black-and-white-checked cowgirl dress and a squash-blossom silver necklace that must have weighed twenty pounds.

  “Well, no relaxation for me,” said Steffi. “I’m ready to roll.”

  Louise tried to soften her refusal. “How’s this—I’ll do the weekend chores for you, Marty. Make a couple calls and firm up details for shooting on Monday at Porter Ranch. I’m sure I can work it out with Frank Porter. He’s a reasonable person, and knows we’re here only a few more days. Also, I want to get Harriet Bingham to take part in the program on weeds—she’s perfect, since she not only owns a lot of weeds, it turns out she’s allergic to them. And it will help take that old woman’s mind off what’s happened to the Porters.”

  Marty pointed a finger at her. “That’s what I mean about havin’ fun—sometimes I don’t think you know how, Louise. Furthermore, I don’t like to leave you here in town alone. I don’t trust Boulder any more.” The producer paused to shovel in the last of his omelet. “We’d have fun together, drivin’ over the mountains, then eatin’ in some nice restaurants once we get there.”

  “I’m perfectly safe. Anyway, Marty, you were forty feet away in that farmer’s field, and that didn’t stop someone from taking a potshot at me. Nothing’s happened since yesterday morning. If someone really wanted to kill me, don’t you think they would have done it by now? I sincerely believe it was kids.”

  “Louise.” Marty sat back, black eyebrows raised skeptically, looking like an uncle who had taken over the care of a rambunctious child in the absence of a parent.

  “I want to believe it.”

  Steffi had checked her enthusiasm for the West for a moment, and was eyeing Louise with a sharp woman’s eye. “Louise, honey, you look a little strung out. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She looked down at the table, sorely tempted. How many people get in a showdown with a lion? How many lived, unscathed, to tell about it?

  She finally raised her eyes and gave Steffi a guarded look. “I’m going to be just fine. But you’re right—I need rest, and the extra day off will be just the thing to set me right.”

  Louise had been nervous about meeting Pete at his studio. For some reason, this man threw her off her stride. Therefore, she was relieved that from the moment she arrived, Pete’s attitude was all business. No jokes or jibes. Looking a little different today, in a new blue plaid shirt that complemented his pale blue eyes. No hat.

  She looked at the bare space, as clean as a computer chip factory, the only decoration the large, dramatic photos of animals and landscapes on the wall. She wandered around the room’s periphery, admiring them. Pete set out cans of cold soda and they sat elbow to elbow at a little Formica counter and drank them, like two old chums.

  She told him about the encounter with the lion, laughing, if also shuddering a little, as she described how she growled at the beast. He looked at her and shook his head. “Louise, you’ve got to take this place seriously. It’s not downtown D.C., where the only predators are two-legged. That was probably a young male who got kicked out of the nest and hasn’t learned how to hunt very skillfully yet. It sounds like you handled it well—I’m proud of you. But I’m a little worried, too, about those people with guns—no growling’s gonna keep them away. You’re gonna have to watch your rear end.”

  “I just had breakfast with Marty Corbin, and he would agree with you. I tried to convince him that the person who shot at me was some wild and crazy teenager.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he drawled, “lookin’ for a little homicide before returning to Boulder High School next month? Get real, Louise. That was a thirty-ought-six—a rifle with a two-hundred-yard killing range, not a BB gun.” He casually shoved his hand through his brown curls, as if looking for a hat to shove back on his head. But his eyes showed his concern.

  “Okay, then, explain this. You must know Eddie Porter—I ran into him last night, and it seemed a little suspicious that he knew we’d been on location.”

  Pete sniffed. “I know the answer to that
. He was by here yesterday, and my assistant told him we were out on a shoot. Probably even mentioned the places we were going.”

  She looked at the cameraman more closely. “You mean he’s a friend of yours?”

  He gestured as if to say it was not important. “Louise, everybody knows Eddie. Everybody knows Eddie’s a screwup—a real bad screwup. You mean, you’re thinkin’ Eddie shot at you, that he’s the killer?” Pete scratched his head. “I know the guy’s heavily in debt. He runs up gambling tabs in Central City when he doesn’t even have a steady job. Always got bailed out by his old man, until recently I heard Jimmy put his foot down…” He looked at her with a frown.

  “So he turned to a moneylender.”

  “Yes. Josef Reingold’s got his ass in a sling—sorry. I mean, he’s in debt to the man for a lot of money—and his only collateral seems to be his piece of property, and his share of the ranch.”

  “And of course you know Reingold, because you know everybody around Boulder County—don’t you?”

  His eyes crinkled in a grin. “With a few exceptions, yeah. You’re not lookin’ at some kid; you’re lookin’ at a middle-aged guy. I’m forty-three. My dad and mom were local schoolteachers, and I grew up on a little old ranch in Hygiene, where we kept cattle. But I’ve had a home and a studio in Boulder for fourteen years. I wasn’t stupid or blind—I cashed in on the 80’s real estate bust. Picked up as much property as I could here in town and in the county. Turned some of it around, held some of it. So, horror of all horrors, Louise, I, too, am in real estate—I’m even rung in on the occasional big deal.”

  Louise felt a bit naive. She and Bill, a supposedly sophisticated State Department couple who had lived in six foreign countries, had, at the same age as Pete, only recently bought their first piece of American real estate.

  Pete looked at her carefully. “You won’t hate me, now, will ya? I’m afraid you’d class me as another one of the good old boys around here. But that has its advantages. Ask me anything about this part of the world—I’ll know it.”

  “What do you think of Josef Reingold?”

  “Big operator. But it’s funny. He always makes himself available to do favors for people around here, gives lots of money to local charities. I think that’s why it’s so easy for him to cut deals that lots of others don’t get to cut. You know, like with the town councils of these little burgs that are becoming bigger burgs by annexing his projects. It was easy for Eddie Porter to get acquainted with a guy like him”—Pete smiled, thinking of it—“though it’s a bit of a mismatch. Eddie needs money. Reingold has it to spare. So, now it’s like Josef more or less owns Eddie.”

  Louise thought about that for a long moment. “Could Eddie have killed his own father?” She remembered how she had briefly suspected Sally Porter, who was a much less suspicious person than Eddie.

  Pete shrugged. “Hey, look, I’m not a shrink. The guy’s hot-tempered and impetuous. But he’s also one hell of a hunter and fisherman, and pretty good company when you go out with him. Knows his home territory around that ranch like the back of his hand.”

  “He could be the one in the picture.” Her heart was hardening against Eddie, thinking of all the unpleasant contact she’d had with the man—and the white truck hidden away in a corner of his property.

  “I can’t tell who that is in that picture. Come judge for yourself.” Pete got up from the stool and led her into the darkroom.

  She walked into the narrow space and stared. Staring back out of a twenty-four-by-thirty-six-inch photographic enlargement propped against the steel counter was an intense face. The person was hunkering down in the woods as if trying to avoid the camera, wearing an oversized coat, a crushed cowboy hat, and a dark scarf tied around the lower face.

  She tried to joke about it. “Looks pretty anonymous to me.”

  Pete looked down at her. “No human being on earth can ID the person in that picture. The sheriff’s right—the photo is useless.”

  “But it’s proof that the person didn’t leave the scene. The question is, why not?”

  “I’d say because they hadn’t had the opportunity. The guy looks like an outdoorsman, not afraid to make his way back to his land vehicle hidden somewhere down the mountain, maybe on that real steep mining road back there. Someone used to eluding the police.” He looked disgusted. “Damn. I’m describing a poacher.”

  She touched the face in the blowup lightly, as if to remove a hex. “How about the pictures of the gravestones?”

  He showed her his enlargements. “I love these photos; I’ll work them into the program when we tape it.” He stood with his shoulder touching hers as she examined them. “The writing’s easy to read now,” he said. “Dig these. They belong to Harriet’s family. That must have been a common graveyard. ‘Henry Bingham, Beloved Father.’ Pretty terse, that one—he croaked forty years ago. Actually, there was lots of action forty years ago up on those ranches.”

  There was another gravestone for Harriet’s mother, who died seventy-five years ago. Louise leaned closer to read the inscription. “‘The dearest woman in the world.’ He certainly cherished his wife, didn’t he? Harriet told me about her mother. She was a very beautiful woman, and she died giving birth to Harriet. Somehow I think the woman still feels guilty about it.”

  “Pretty stupid to carry around that kind of baggage,” Pete said. “I sure wouldn’t.”

  “Look, there’s Bonnie’s stone again. ‘Bonnie Porter, Beloved to the Bone, Who Had Her Trial by Fire.’ Barn fire, I heard from the sheriff. And the children’s graveyard. Nathaniel, Mary, Jacob, and baby Henry.” She let her finger pause on each one, then read aloud, ‘Jacob, Whom We Cherished in Life, and Whose Passing Leaves Us Bereft.’ Oh, gosh … what a kid that must have been. He was about eight when he died.”

  He passed her another photo. “This one will really grab you, Louise.” On the small stone was the inscription, “Dear Baby Henry, Who Could Not Cry.” Henry had lived a few days, then died, forty years ago.

  For some reason this inscription moved her as the others had not. As if removing a speck from one of her eyes, Louise wiped away the moisture. Pete put a hand on her arm, and for a moment she was afraid he might feel he had to comfort her with a hug. But he didn’t.

  “Nothin’ to be ashamed of, crying,” he said, brusquely. “It’s pretty sad stuff.”

  Pete put the pictures in an orderly pile. Here was a man who was cool and emotionless, busying himself with equipment, photographing life with as much truth as he could summon. Living from moment to moment and not lingering long on the ones that had passed. She wondered if he were married, or had ever been close.

  She quickly pushed those thoughts aside. “It might be interesting to know more about these deaths.”

  “It might, though it will probably be a big waste of time. But I forgot—you have some time to waste, don’t you? Now, before you run off on me, how about a couple more pictures?”

  “For what? Publicity stills?”

  “Maybe. Maybe they’ll win me a prize in a national photography contest.”

  “Well, okay.” Louise was reluctantly falling victim to his rough charm. “Where do you want me to go?”

  Back in the big room he perched her on a stool and then painstakingly arranged the lighting. He photographed her with her long bare legs crossed one way and then another; wearing, holding, and fingering her straw gardener’s hat; smiling big smiles, little smiles, and half-smiles; with hand on face, behind her head, in lap. “Those great hazel eyes,” he murmured to the studio at large, as he tipped her chin up so her face caught the proper light.

  Finally she called it quits. She was sure he would get some good pictures, but wondered if he had any other motive. Of course, she was a happily married woman. Or if not exactly happy, certainly married.

  She left Pete’s studio and strolled lazily down Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall again, shielded from the full force of Colorado’s sun by her big hat and sunglasses. She was feeling strangely det
ached from her normal life. That was what being away from her family did to her—or maybe it was the surfeit of sun.

  Pete was not married, she’d discovered. She made sure of this before she agreed to the dinner date with him. Zeeno’s Pizza Palace, which he assured her was the best greasy spoon in town, was going to be an improvement over spending another evening alone in her rented house.

  “I have no wife, Louise,” he had told her. “Once I was married, but no more.” It seemed strange to her that such an attractive man of property wouldn’t even have a girl-friend. But then he hadn’t said he didn’t have a girlfriend. He probably did.

  Since Pete’s studio was near the courthouse, she stopped there first, grateful to enter its air-conditioned gloom. She wanted to check on the deaths of Baby Henry and Beloved Bonnie, but was told both birth and death records were available only to relatives. The Carnegie Historical Library had records from the Daily Camera that would probably help her, the clerk told her cheerfully. The library was an old building in classic style, only a few blocks away. Inside, the huge, south-facing windows turned it into a huge, golden oasis of information. A motherly, gray-haired librarian sat Louise down at an oak table and pointed out the large old books that held obituaries of yesteryear.

  She told the woman she needed help in another area, too. The script for her Porter Ranch program had a little detail on the ranch’s beginnings, but not as much as she would have liked. “Do you have any books that describe how the big ranchers around here came into such large tracts of land?”

  “Some families wrote down their history,” said the librarian, “and often in glowing terms. I’ll get you some of those books.” She smiled. “But there’s others that liked to keep their business to themselves, and they’d no sooner write a family history than they’d fly. Who are you interested in?”