The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  Through the crack Louise could see Fenimore Smith advancing on Rod Gasparra. “Listen, Mr. Gasparra, or whatever your name is, you’ve got to prove it, you know, not just make the argument. Whatever your product, it was not the Sacred Blood iris. And furthermore, if you disbelieve me as you apparently disbelieved Dr. Freeling, then go see my lawyers. They’re in Manhattan. Be assured, however, you will pay the court costs when you lose.” Louise could see Smith rummaging in his shirt pocket for a pencil and a scrap of paper; he was so confident, even arrogant, that he didn’t sense the danger in the man standing so near to him. “Here, I’ll even write their name down for you …”

  At this, Gasparra’s temper exploded. “Why, you prissy son of a—” He shoved Smith just as his wife Dorothy tried to intervene.

  “Rod, oh no, please—that’s enough!” she cried, but Rod was busy now, rummaging in his layers of coats and jackets and elbowing her rudely away. Metal glinted in the dim light. He was carrying a weapon.

  Louise realized she had to act, and act now. She grabbed the shed door and slammed it open with a loud bang. Rod Gasparra froze with his clutched hand halfway out of his pocket. Louise strode over to Smith, nodding in a friendly fashion at the Gasparras on the way. “Hello, Fenimore,” she called jovially, as if she had just blown in out of the rain. “What a day! Too bad the weather isn’t better for your summer tea. I’m glad it wasn’t quite as dreary yesterday. It’ll make for a better show when it’s aired on television.”

  She chattered on for a bit, then turned to acknowledge the Gasparras’ presence, taking special care to include them in the conversational group. She noted with relief that Rod had lowered his hand to his side. “Dorothy, Rod—is Mr. Smith giving you a special tour? Isn’t it wonderful here? It must be particularly interesting for fellow growers like yourselves to see how this place operates.”

  Smith lifted a quizzical eyebrow, at a loss to know whether Louise was aware of what was going on. He was looking at Gasparra with a different expression, she noticed. Wary now, not believing he was totally safe even yet. Taking a cue from her, the nursery owner said, “Perhaps all of you would like to rejoin the tour, for alas, I must return to Manhattan tonight. Big meeting coming up tomorrow morning.”

  “Let’s do that,” encouraged Louise, but Rod Gasparra didn’t move. He stared from under his heavy, dark brows at Fenimore Smith. “You were going to write a name down for me,” he muttered. “Why don’t you do that now.”

  “Be happy to,” said Smith. He rummaged again, and this time came up with a slip of paper on which he wrote a few words. He handed it to Gasparra. “And good luck to you. I mean that in the fairest way, Mr. Gasparra.” He turned to Dorothy and reached out his hand to her. Reflexively, hers came out to shake his. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Gasparra.”

  Louise smiled benevolently. She avoided eye contact with the Wild Flower Farm owner, but she and Dorothy exchanged a quick look. Then the three of them left the shed.

  Once outside, Louise took a deep breath and continued her charade. “I bet we’ll find the others in the Moon Garden. They’re serving tea there, under a tent.” In the distance, she could see the inn guests clustered near the all-white garden, now overflowing with white delphinium, achillea, phlox, and daisy. She wished she had been here in May, when the garden was overlayered with the white panicles of the wisteria. The Gasparras, with a rather beaten look about them, trudged across the wet meadow to join the group.

  Louise went her own way, down a separate garden path, for she needed a moment by herself to think things out. Rod Gasparra didn’t act like a killer back there in the potting shed. Blustery, frustrated, yes. His vanity injured by losing the recognition that would be given to the creator of a bright red iris. But Louise had been able to stop the downward spiral that could have led to violence. If she hadn’t done so, probably the competent Dorothy would have. All in all, she was inclined to cross him off the list of those who might have done harm to Jeffrey Freeling. In Gasparra’s eyes, Fenimore Smith was the offensive SOB who was reaping the harvest, earning the acclaim of horticulturists and making the big profits. It was obviously not the aloof scientist, Jeffrey Freeling. So why would he have killed Jeffrey?

  That still left Mark Post. Could he have killed Jeffrey—either because of some homosexual love affair, or as retaliation for the shame Mark endured when he was thrown out of NYU five years ago?

  The rain was beginning to encroach on her. Louise hurried from underneath the dripping branches of an English beech and past a gloomy stand of rhododendrons as tall as a small house. Then she slowed her pace despite the rain, bewitched by a pleasant, open path lined with flower beds. As she turned a corner, she met Jim Cooley. He, too, was avoiding the company of others.

  “Hello, Louise,” he said wearily. Jim brought out a motherly instinct in her, although she didn’t know why, for the man, along with Frank Storm, ran three of the toughest schools in the country. “Tell me something,” he pleaded.

  “Of course. What?”

  His voice was monotone, driven flat with depression over his wife’s death. “You’ve solved crimes before. Just how do you do it?”

  “I don’t have any special tricks. Mostly it was just by being there. Being there, I mean, at a time when some evidence showed up.”

  A short silence as they wandered down the path. Jim’s unhappy eyes were trained on the ground straight ahead, as if he dared not view the wider world lest he be hurt again. “Grace’s death appears to be of her own volition. But suppose it’s not—suppose it turns out to be something else? You could help find that out, couldn’t you?”

  The man obviously did not know she was already helping the police. But nevertheless, his query made her feel odd, for a combination of reasons. It was a rather intrusive request. The weather—close and breathless and damp. And the surfeit of emotion created by one crisis after another. She was beginning to feel like a character caught in a soap opera. Indeed, this weekend had the right mix for one of the daytime dramas—suspicious deaths, sorrowing survivors, an emotional widow, angry and possibly crooked businesspeople, and warring lovers. Perhaps not enough sex, though, to get those needed Nielsen ratings.

  With her feet and sweater now dripping water and her body cooling—soon to face the shivers and shakes—the only surcease was a cup of hot tea and something sweet to go with it. It was time to head for the refreshments tent, not to talk about murder versus suicide.

  She turned to him. “So you think someone murdered Grace.”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was hollow. “I thought maybe you, with your experience, could …”

  She looked at him curiously. He must suspect Bebe Hollowell; she was the likeliest person. The woman was strong, and able—did Louise ever know that!—and emotionally skewed herself. Bebe had been in her room when Grace went or was taken from the inn. Could she have persuaded the delicate Grace to accompany her on a lethal little walk to the falls? The answer was yes. With a start, Louise realized Grace’s kind heart had made her vulnerable to people who suffered. All Bebe would have had to do was apologize, give Grace a sad tale of how she missed her dead Ernie, and ask her please to go up that woodsy trail with her to the falls. There, they could honor his memory. Louise had been exonerating the very best candidate from all suspicion.

  At that moment, she and Jim were passing a big patch of lacy, clawlike, blue flowers. Perfunctorily, for now she was thinking of things besides flowers, Louise said, “There they are—your flowers.”

  He looked without interest at the tiny-petaled blue blossoms. “What are they?”

  “Oh, I thought you’d know. It’s love-in-a-mist.” Grace had obviously been the only gardener in the Cooley house, but was it possible this man hadn’t even noticed his wife’s new romance garden?

  She said, “That plant is in your new garden at home.”

  He doubled back on the path a few steps, leaned down, and peered at it. “Oh, yes,” he said, “now I recognize it.”

  They
walked a few more paces before she said, “To answer your question: If someone asked me to look into a possible crime, the answer is, of course, I would certainly try to help.”

  “Oh, God, Louise, I wish you could just make some sense of it…”

  Again, he aroused her compassion. “But, Jim, even if there was foul play involved in Grace’s death, I would have little to contribute. You know why?”

  “No. Why?” The eyes had a waiting expression.

  “Because it would be hard to find clues to a murder committed outdoors on a thirty-acre piece of property. If anyone is going to solve it, it’s those troopers who are combing through the grounds.” She thought guiltily of how she and her helpers were already snooping into the affair. “And Sergeant Drucker must have told you he’s doing a background check on everybody who’s been around the inn. That includes even you and me.”

  “He did tell me—I understand. Well, thanks, anyway, Louise. I just thought maybe if …”

  “I wish I had something special to offer, Jim, but I don’t.”

  And at that moment, she didn’t.

  Soggy cucumber sandwiches were the fare at the tea under the tent. Afterward, people headed back to the van to return to the inn, where they hoped for something better. Louise saw Jim again; this time he was meeting up with Frank Storm among the cheerless rhododendrons. Fiona Storm joined them, giving each man a friendly hug. They linked arms and walked down the wide path, looking like three sad musketeers. Well, at least Jim has his good friends, she thought. He was going to need them.

  Quite a trio. The stern Frank. The stern Fiona. And Jim, stern, but with those friendly, rounded edges that made him a sympathetic figure, one who could be trusted. Musketeers, indeed: one for all, and all for one.

  But the musketeers had gone no more than a few strides when they were intercepted by the omnipresent Bebe Hollowell, stomping along in her sturdy walking shoes, determined to break into the group. Louise could tell by their body language that they would rather be alone. After all, they knew, and Louise knew, that this woman could be a killer.

  Chapter 16

  LOUISE HAD LOST TRACK OF BILL AND Nora, so she climbed into the van that would return them to the inn and hunkered down in one of the seats. A moment alone might give her the chance to sort out her tangled thoughts. She looked up just in time to see Bebe plopping herself down in the seat next to her. Not Bebe again!

  “I’m sure your husband won’t mind,” said the woman tersely. “It’s such a short trip.” Louise stole a glance at her. The woman was really quite handsome, in her pantsuit and jaunty raincoat, though her bronze suntan somehow looked out of place on a rainy day. Her big green eyes were giving Louise a sideways glance. Louise tried to disguise a shudder, and shrank back in her own seat. Three miles to town, and no getting away.

  The van filled up and they drove off. Bill and Nora were somewhere behind her. Leaning in toward Louise, Bebe talked in a quiet voice so the others wouldn’t hear; Louise had to strain to catch the words. “Did you call him? Did you call my brother? Are you going to let the police do it all-have you no mercy?” She stared at Louise, and it was scary to see a woman so frightened, so angry. Even if Bebe had committed no crime, she carried an enormous amount of guilt—for something. And of course, if she had killed her husband last month, and Grace Cooley yesterday, she was a dangerous threat. Louise couldn’t remember when she had felt more uncomfortable with a fellow human being; the woman’s heady perfume, and even her mint-laden breath, seemed to surround Louise in an oppressive fog.

  “Bebe, I promise I’ll call him—I’ll try to help you. Now let it rest.” She slumped in her seat, realizing what she had done was totally wrong. Detective Geraghty had recommended her to the Litchfield police, and she was blowing it. It was completely inappropriate to promise to help a murder suspect. Her only reprieve would be if Bill could learn something about the woman from the hometown authorities that would set this all to rest. In the meantime, she would take care not to be alone with Bebe.

  Louise leaned her head back against the plastic seat, closed her eyes, and tried to shut out the world, tried not to mind the smell and the sense of Bebe sitting next to her. She opened her eyes only when they reached the inn.

  Without talking to her family or Nora, she went immediately to her room to complete her calls, first exchanging her wet tennis shoes for sandals. The “Big Five,” as Janie had nicknamed them—the three Eldridges and the two Radebaughs—would meet again at noon to share the results of their inquiries, and to pass them along to Sergeant Drucker.

  The message button on her phone was blinking: Charlie Hurd had called back. She quickly dialed his number from memory. “Louise, how’d you get mixed up with this outfit? Higher Directions: very hot, very cutting edge, very successful—but a little kooky. You have to give them a lot of credit, though. They’ve learned how to jam math into delinquent kids’ brains, and as a little bonus, to teach ’em how to read.”

  “So I’ve heard,” she said. “Did you get any details? Is there any dirt—you know, anything that’s not strictly on the level?”

  On the other end of the line Charlie paused. “Let me read you something here. Higher Directions is, quote, very highly leveraged. Read: several million in debt. They were banking on Federal funds which haven’t materialized because of their religious component—”

  “I know they’re religious, but I thought it was non-denominational.”

  “It is. One of those fuzzy nondenominational churches with lots of personal agendas. You know—improving yourself in ‘regular increments.’”

  “Does that mean saying to yourself, ‘Every day in every way I’m getting better and better’?” she joked.

  “Yeah, and straighter and straighter: no lying, cheating, fornicating, or—if you’ll pardon the expression—buggering.”

  “How do people view Jim Cooley and Frank Storm— and, for that matter, Fiona Storm?”

  “They’re well respected, all three of them. The only other problem they’ve had is the two kids who offed themselves.”

  “Killed themselves? Really?”

  “Yeah. Kids who were banished from the school, or faced banishment—did I say that right? ‘Banishment’?”

  “Yes, but if you’re more comfortable with ‘expulsion,’ you could use that, too.”

  “Louise, quit twitting me: I’m not some kid. So these two students, both of them about to graduate from their Brooklyn school, were found dead. OD’d on drugs. Story was vastly underreported, which tells me someone in Higher Directions has clout. Rumors were that both kids were gay, but nothing firm on that. The police did a long investigation, and there was even talk of it going to a grand jury. They finally concluded the school wasn’t responsible, but there’s still a lot of buzz about the incident.”

  “Suicides. How interesting.” Louise thanked Charlie and gave him Drucker’s phone number to follow up on the details. She knew Charlie would not rest now until he had the full story.

  But then, neither would she.

  Charlie’s research showed that Jim Cooley was in financial difficulties. He might have had a reason to rid himself of Barbara Seymour so that he could inherit. But everything in Louise’s being told her Jim was Barbara’s protector, and not the one preying on her.

  However, the suicides of the two students left her with a nervous feeling in her stomach. So that’s what tough love does for you, she thought. Maybe the Higher Directions file should remain open.

  She lay on her bed and rang Paul Warren again. No luck. She left another message, longer this time, tweaking his memory of Channel Five’s Gardening with Nature program set at the botanical garden, and providing him with more detail on Grace Cooley.

  But what could she learn from him that she didn’t already know? That Grace visited the garden on a weekly basis? That she filched plants, maybe? That she bought pamphlets on plant culture, or took courses in how to raise dahlias?

  Louise lay back and relaxed for a second. It took
only that long, after the swim and the lengthy tour of Wild Flower Farm, to send her into a deep sleep.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  He had avoided this moment, but at last it was here. “Sandy, dammit, there is no truth to tell.”

  “Mark, I know now you’re not straight. You married me while living this great big terrible lie!”

  He flailed his hands in the air, then slumped heavily onto the bed, wishing he could at least light up a cigarette. “I think you’ve gone crazy, girl. I am straight as they come.”

  She stood in front of him, arms akimbo, muscular legs spread wide. “Friday night, you left this room—don’t tell me you didn’t.”

  “Well, maybe I did, but what the hell do you think I was doing? I just couldn’t sleep, so I went downstairs—fortunately I didn’t nearly kill myself on them like our hostess—and then outdoors to take a little run down the road.”

  Her blue eyes smoldered. “In the rain? I’ll bet. You can’t stand being married—admit it. You can’t even stand spending the night in the same room with me. Night after night. Now it’s been, what, three weeks in Italy, and two nights here, with no more excuses that you’re too tired because of climbing all over the Uffizi. I know what’s wrong. You just can’t bear the proximity.” She shook her golden head. “God, even in Florence you had to get out of the hotel; I’d wake up and find you gone.”

  He bowed his head. “Sandy, I wish you wouldn’t think this about me.”

  “I don’t think it—I feel it. It’s in your lovemaking. You’re not there, Mark. So, like, where the hell are you? And why did you marry me in the first place?”

  She turned away angrily and paced the room—the room reserved for newlyweds, or those celebrating wedding anniversaries such as the twenty-fifth or maybe the fiftieth, if anyone could imagine being married that long. Mark looked at his beautiful wife standing against the pink-and-mauve background and felt like screaming.