The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  It was almost a reflexive action. When she reached the road, she turned left, proceeded slowly for a half block past the garish nightclub, then followed the gray Jaguar up into the mountains. If she didn’t find out about this man, who else would? Since the moon was shining, and Rein-gold was leading, she had no trouble following. She saw other headlights on the road above Reingold, so it was obviously a well-trafficked route. She should be perfectly safe.

  Following the road’s steep twists and turns, she saw the Jaguar pull into a driveway and disappear around the back of a big modern house set in a forest of ponderosa and Douglas fir. While the other houses she had passed were wood and stone, Reingold’s was like a concrete fortress. It was girded by a tall fence with a red sign that warned of high voltage. Through the trees she could see that a high aerial, proclaiming the ham radio operator inside, rose above his roof.

  How strange, she thought. Most people in the Boulder area—including her neighbor, Herb—used electrical fences to keep livestock from straying. Residents of this expensive mountain community must all own some expensive furniture, art, and possibly jewels, but they did not feel obliged to erect high-voltage fences. What did Rein-gold have in that house that merited one?

  His car had disappeared, probably into an under-the-house garage. Louise stopped her own car and quietly got out, creeping along the fence to get a closer view of the house. Inside, lights were being turned on. Draperies covered most windows, but one set had an enticing slit, through which she saw what appeared to be an array of equipment banked against a wall. From this distance, she wasn’t sure.

  When she was just about to give up and drive home, she saw Reingold’s figure on the porch. He had removed his suit jacket, and stood there, white shirt gleaming in the moonlight.

  The man looked around slowly until he was facing her. Her footsteps in the soft pine mulch had been as quiet as a cat burglar’s. Nervous now, she realized something else was at work. Did he have a motion detector on the boundaries of his property?

  Forgetting caution, she ran to her car, started the engine, and quickly wheeled it around in a U-turn. Almost a mile down the mountain, she calmed down a little and began to feel safe. Then headlights appeared in the side mirror. She realized the man was following her. She increased her speed, frantically trying to avoid the deep gullies on either side of the road. Reingold’s car was catching up!

  Louise veered sharply into the parking lot of the topless bar and cast a quick look at the assemblage of vintage pickups and robust vans. Bad move. Her shiny red rental car would stand out in this funky group. Now she had no time left to escape him by going south on Broadway back to town. Desperate, she wheeled around the big building, her eyes searching out a hiding place. Hope returned when she saw an overhung roof near the rickety back door. She drove her car into the niche and turned out the lights.

  From this hidden place, she could not tell where Rein-gold had gone. She waited several moments, and felt a flood of relief. Just as she turned her motor back on with a noise that seemed to reverberate in the quiet night, the Jaguar silently appeared in the lot like a cruising shark. He must have heard her engine start.

  The driver slowly surveyed each car in the far row. Louise flipped the ignition off again and slouched down in the seat, her heart thumping, realizing it would take little time for him to turn the corner, exhaust the next row, and then come to check her car out, too.

  At that moment, she heard the back door of the bar open. A greasy-bodied young man, who at first glance appeared to be nude, danced down the steps and cavorted over to her car. Now she could see that a g-string covered his private parts in a minimal way. “Wow, I’ve found me a woman!” he chortled.

  She sat up and put her finger to her lips to shush him. She pointed to the cruising Jag, which was just turning into the last row. She whispered, “Can you get rid of him?”

  The dancer had more wisdom in his eyes than his age merited. He gave her a wink, then twirled around and headed for Reingold’s car, which was slowly making its way down the outer column of autos. To Louise’s amazement, the young man pulled a pack of cigarettes and lighter out of his g-string; so that’s what the extra lump was. He was casually smoking by the time he reached Reingold’s car, which had come to a halt on seeing this scantily clad person.

  The dancer bent over and put his greasy forearms on the window, slowly waggling his bottom back and forth, and exhaled a puff of smoke into the car. Then, in a suggestive voice loud enough for Louise to hear, he asked Reingold if he could do anything for him.

  The dancer leapt backward to safety as Reingold pushed the car’s accelerator to the floor and zoomed out of the lot. Victoriously, the young man danced back to Louise’s car, adding a series of bumps and grinds for her pleasure. She quietly chuckled and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet.

  “You may have saved my life,” she told him. “What’s your name?”

  “Jeremy. And what’s yours?”

  “Louise.” They shook hands through the window.

  He shoved a thumb in the direction Reingold had gone. “Fancy dude there, but one hell of a nasty expression on his puss.”

  “You are a friend in need, Jeremy,” she said warmly, and offered him the twenty. He arched his hip so she could reach it more easily, but she demurred. “No, I don’t…”

  “Tuck money in a fellow’s g-string? That’s okay with me,” he said. “I’ll take it anyway.” He grabbed the bill, pausing long enough to kiss her hand before he ran toward the back door.

  Stopping in mid-stride, he struck a hand to his head, as if a great idea had just come to him. He called back to her. “You’re a babe, Louise. But I gotta warn ya. Watch out for guys like him. He looks like he enjoys messing with women.”

  Still another admonition from a man in her life.

  A Deer in the Headlights

  DEER HAVE BECOME AMERICA’S biggest gardening pest. (To some people, “damndeer” has become one word.) They have moved From the woods, mountains, and empty spaces into the yards of the suburbs and sometimes even the city. They eat and destroy millions of dollars of trees, flowers, and shrubs each year, but control of this pest is fraught with both tactical and political problems.

  When they see any deer, small or large, moth-eaten or sleek, most people can only coo and think of Bambi. And it is true, even as they stand there eating the buds off your roses, or remove their horn fuzz by demolishing your young tree trunk, they are just plain winsome. Long-legged, perky-eared innocents that we might like to keep around as pets if they weren’t so voracious.

  Controlling Bambi is hard. In some states, controlling their overpopulation is a political impossibility. But the state of Virginia is meeting the problem head-on, Al Capone style. Designated sharpshooters have been authorized to enter suburban neighborhoods where deer are troublesome and assassinate them quietly and tastefully with guns with silencers.

  Fences, double, single, electrical, triangular, and up to ten feet high, are talked about a lot as remedies, but can be costly and sometimes troublesome. Homeowners can find deer trapped, squeezed, and sometimes impaled on these elaborate fences. Lightweight Da-cron deer-net fencing—which comes in handy seven-foot-by-one-hundred-foot sizes—also is effective, especially if one has avenues of trees or high bushes against which to prop it. But one homeowner who tried this found that the only critter it caught was her dog—who could not see the flimsy stuff, and tangled himself into it as he brought the entire fencing off its moorings.

  The “prison” solution. Individual plant cages made of wire or netting are the old-fashioned remedy, and though not attractive, they are totally reliable. They can be erected around each bush—with the Dacron netting cage being much less obtrusive than wire. Individual tree trunks can be protected by using tree wrapping tape, or by encircling the trunk with pig wire, being careful that as the tree grows, its circulation is not constricted by the wire. This kind of solution is labor-intensive and annoying, especially if one has fifty o
r so trees and shrubs to protect. It looks as if you’ve imprisoned your plants so they won’t run away.

  There are the off-beat remedies, the most picturesque being suspended slivers of Irish Spring soap from the branches of one’s bushes and trees. Or one can try red pepper, bone meal, a radio left on at night, water cannons, human hair, mothballs, Driconure, or even lion scent from the zoo. Many experts are skeptical of these remedies, and they do not yet seem to have caught on with the public. Wily creatures, the deer seem to overcome all but the most fortresslike barricades.

  The deer who provided day care. To prove that deer are ingenious and always thinking of new ways to outwit us, there is the story of the daily routine of a mamma deer, who came each day and assisted her two babies over a homeowner’s cyclone fence, assuring their safety in a good yard while she foraged. Then, when she returned, she hopped over the fence and boosted the babies out again so they could go to their own home to spend the night.

  Those who have dealt with the deer problem for decades believe that the best solution is to use plants that deer don’t prefer, and to provide a water source for the herd. Then, the animals won’t munch your garden simply to fill their needs for moisture.

  On the list of “deer-proof” plants will be some that you’ve seen stripped bare by your deer friends—piñon pine, for instance, sumac, and cranesbill geranium. Some veterans of the deer wars cynically declare there are only two genuinely deer-proof plants: iris and yarrow—and even they’re not for sure.

  Changing our attitude. To prevent deer from getting your goat, you could change your attitude. Adopt the view of a man who visited the Maryland home of Rachel Carson. Carson is the writer who exposed the dangers of pesticides with the publication of Silent Spring in 1962. This man was interested in living in Carson’s former home, now owned and rented out by the Rachel Carson Council. The rent, however, was beyond his resources. Then he peeked out of a window into the woodsy yard and saw a young deer prance by. Instead of scorning its presence, as many would do, he was entranced by the pretty creature, and declared, “High rent be darned. I’ll take it anyway.”

  The director of the Council, Dr. Diana Post, laughed and said, “We knew right then we had the right person.”

  Chapter 16

  AS SHE DROVE THE DARK AND dangerous curves of Route Thirty-Six, Louise’s eyes were still wide with fright. There was something ruthless and insinuating about Josef Reingold. Jeremy the dancer was right. Reingold looked like the type of man who knew how to hurt people.

  Yet, after a few miles, she wasn’t so sure. She realized she could be attributing way too much evil to the man. She knew next to nothing about Reingold, except that he was sometimes charming and sometimes not, a local philanthropist but out for the big profit, very debonair at all times, horizontally integrated, and hellishly rich.

  With relief, she spied a rocky outcropping, a baby hogback, that was a splendid highway marker for her when she first arrived in this strange place. She now knew she was only a few miles from the turn-in to her rented house. Then a car pulled up alongside her. It was Reingold.

  She felt the fool. This crafty man had used the same tricks that her spy husband, Bill, had employed, and actually taught her when she had occasionally helped him on stakeouts. Reingold had played “possum” back in that parking lot, pretending to leave, but actually hunkering down and waiting until his adversary was dumb enough to shoot out of the lot.

  Now, she was in trouble, for they were cruising side by side at fifty miles per hour, and he was edging his Jaguar into her lane. “Oh, God!” she yelled, and swerved to the right. There was a deep gully, and he was forcing her into it. Her heart leapt. This was the very reason Pete called Route Thirty-Six “Death Highway,” for many had lost their lives in these picturesque roadside ravines. She’d be damned if her name would be added to the list of those who’d died here.

  Surely, this man would not want to crease the side of his expensive vehicle! Louise refused to give way, but then the road narrowed even further, and a series of highway reflectors limited her ability to maneuver. She checked Reingold—the man was going to smash her right over into the deep gulch, dented car or not. Ahead on the right a driveway appeared, and she skidded into the turn and drove in. In the distance she saw the lights of a ranch house.

  Would she be safer there, trying to roust out a frightened country family, or was she safer simply confronting the man? In the end, there was no contest, because she hesitated. Like a small tank the Jaguar bumped past her and cut across her bow, leaving a swirl of dust to rise in the moonlit night. She swerved to a halt.

  Groping quickly in her purse, Louise found the pepper spray, then locked the car doors and let down the driver’s side window four inches. Now she was ready.

  Reingold walked slowly to her car. The bulge under his dark suit told her his handgun was still strapped to his shoulder under his suit coat. “Louise Eldridge, my dear.” It was as if they were meeting after a long absence.

  She looked at him and didn’t speak. If he wanted to shoot her, he could. He could have done that on the highway, and he could do it here. No glass window would keep her from dying on the spot.

  He leaned both hands against her door and examined the car as if seeing it for the first time. “You hid from me in the parking lot of that cheap bistro.” He stared down at her through his black metal glasses, and she saw eyes that were not kind.

  She smiled coolly. “Did you like Jeremy?”

  “That creature,” he sneered. “Part of America’s trash. But, Louise”—his voice was like a cat’s purr—“you act so suspicious of me. You come to my house to snoop, then you flee like a criminal down the mountain and into the arms of sleazy people. What am I to conclude? If you had just announced yourself, you could have come in and had a drink.”

  “I was merely curious about where you lived. I meant no harm.”

  In the bright moonlight, she could see he was giving her one of his debonair smiles. A bit of a waste, she thought. “Then why didn’t you stop, instead of fleeing? You acted like a spy in a cheap thriller.”

  She dared to look at him, so close to her beyond the glass window. “It’s because you scared me. As if it were a crime, or something, to pass your house.”

  Emboldened because he had not threatened her, she added with a shake of her long hair, “And it must be a special house, to be guarded with a high-voltage fence.”

  That was going too far. He grabbed the handle of the car door and would have opened it if it hadn’t been locked. And done what—pulled her out and shaken her like a rag doll? Throttled her?

  “I could—” he warned.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” she said, and raised the pepper spray. He stepped well back from the window, aware of how painful the spray could be. His hands on his hips now, he swiveled his head and scanned the area, as if deciding what to do next. Here they were, two cars with headlights on, only thirty feet or so from a nearly deserted highway. A little suspicious on the face of it, provided anyone noticed. Hope sprang in her breast.

  He raised a warning hand. “Don’t try to release that spray at me. Stay out of my affairs, Louise. My house is my castle, as Colorado law provides. It is very private, and I have quite a collection there.”

  She couldn’t believe it. This was like something out of a thirties movie. Reingold pulled a slim gold cigarette case from his breast pocket, opened it, and offered her one. Long cigarettes of some kind. When she declined, he selected one for himself and lit it with a lighter that shot the flame out sideways, defying the frisky little zephyrs that otherwise would have made lighting a cigarette a major undertaking.

  “First,” he said, in his smooth voice, “I see you with Pete in the theater. Were you watching me as if I were doing something outside the bounds of the law? That, my dear, is nonsense.” Big exhale, and pause. Cigarette smoking seemed to turn people into actors.

  “Next, you follow me to my house—which is clearly marked No Trespassing. I must warn y
ou I cherish my privacy. I am not the only wealthy man to do so.”

  Louise had been keeping an eye on the rear view mirror, watching the desultory traffic coming north on Route 36. A car had slowed; it was a white van with red lights on top. A sheriff’s department vehicle. She put her hand on her car horn and kept it there, until the van turned around and drove into the rutted dirt driveway.

  Reingold hissed at her, “All right, here’s the sheriff’s car, but this is my last warning, Louise. If you spy on me again, or if you try to bring charges against one of the most respected businessmen in Boulder County, you will regret it.”

  She realized that he was quite right. He held every advantage. She opened her window further and kept her hand on the horn, giving Reingold the dirtiest look she could muster. “If you’re lucky, I’ll tell the deputy how you were trying to help me with my stuck horn.”

  By the time the sheriff’s department car was parked behind them and a figure had emerged with gun drawn, Reingold had on the million-dollar smile that had brought him so far in life already.

  It was worse than she thought. The deputy knew Reingold. He gave only one suspicious look at the way the Jaguar blocked her smaller car on the dirt road, and then believed the logistical story the man cooked up. He also swallowed the story of the car horn, and offered to follow her home to see that the horn didn’t repeat its malfunction. Louise declined his offer, and thanked both of them, treating Reingold like a helpful stranger who had merely stopped on the highway to assist her.

  The woman was eindringlich. Reingold liked the long swing of her hair, to say nothing of die muscular movement of her hips and legs. But all that aside—she could be terrible trouble, he thought, with that inflated ego she developed from having helped solve a couple of petty crimes. It was inconceivable that a woman like her could seriously affect what he had worked so hard to achieve.