Summer Garden Murder

by Ann Ripley

  “It’s as I predicted,” Mary said. “Phyllis phoned again, and it was very interesting. She overheard Peter and Mike Cunningham talking a few days before Peter disappeared. From this, she learned that Peter tattled on his buyer, Lee Downing, to the SEC about some illegal activities of Downing’s.” Mary’s bright eyes shone with excitement. “I told Phyllis that she had to tell this to the police, and if she didn’t, I would.”

  “Go, Mary,” said Nora, grinning.

  “She also told me that Peter and Mike used subterfuge when arranging the sale of Peter’s company.”

  “Yes, I—” started Louise.

  “You may already know some of this, Louise,” said Mary, barely pausing in her story, “but what you might not know is that she heard Peter saying he was going to flee the country and divorce her!”

  “Oh, my,” said Nora, dismay in her voice. “That didn’t go over well, I’m sure.”

  In a low voice, Mary said, “Then there’s the last thing she complained about: Peter’s will.”

  “What about Peter’s will?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me, damnit, just that something about it didn’t suit her. I failed to wring that out of her, Louise.”

  “You did well, though,” said Louise. “The police need to know all of this.”

  “They will, because I put the fear of God into Phyllis.”

  Nora said, “Maybe I’m a cynic, but how handy, how self-serving for Phyllis to tell this to the police. It throws all the suspicion on other people. Why would you trust Phyllis to tell the truth?”

  Mary shook her head. “I don’t know, Nora. You’re quite right. Why should we believe her? She’s buttered up to me for no good reason that I know.”

  Nora stared off into the woods, where the light was beginning to fade among the tall trees. “Although I’ve had my mind on other things, I tried to do my small part in this investigation. I deliberately went out and talked to Mike Cunningham this morning as he left for work.” She took a sip of tea. “It was interesting.”

  “What was interesting?” asked Louise.

  “His demeanor. He was bouncing along, hopping along his front walk like a pleased pubescent boy. The phrase ‘the cat that ate the canary’ came to mind. He’s very happy and unworried about anything regarding Peter Hoffman’s horrible death.”

  Louise shrugged her shoulders. “You could interpret that a couple of different ways.”

  “Could Cunningham have profited from Peter’s death?” suggested Mary.

  “Or maybe,” said Nora, “it’s just that Mike Cunningham is an insensitive wretch who never gave a care for his so-called friend from whom he earned millions of dollars.”

  Louise broke out in a big smile. “You two are good, do you know that? Too bad you don’t have more time to give to this.”

  “Where are my girls?” asked Bill. “They’re missing a decent dinner.”

  “Gone for the evening. But they’ll be home at a decent hour, they said.”

  Another person might have concluded his description of her meal was damning with faint praise, but Louise read her husband’s remark as an indication that her cooking was on the upswing. She’d thrown away the twenty-minute-dinner cookbook and was now operating out of The Joy of Cooking, a gift from Sandy Stern. Sandy said she’d buy her a more sophisticated one once Louise mastered some basics. Frozen puff pastries filled with chicken à la king had not been that much trouble, especially as Martha had poached the chicken for her early this morning in some complex broth.

  Her husband gave her a quick glance. “I can see you’re rather pensive. Good day?”

  “Not very. Mike Geraghty called and chewed me out for talking to a few people.”

  “I heard about that. Morton called me and warned me. Louise—”

  “Bill, I took what he said to heart. I spent the rest of the day reading. After a few hours, I have to admit I got very jumpy. Thank heavens my friends dropped over to see me.” She related what Phyllis Hoffman had told to Mary Mougey about her husband informing on Lee Downing to the SEC and also cheating him in the sales deal of Hoffman Arms. “She also said that Peter was ready to flee the country, leaving her behind.” She mentioned what Nora Radebaugh had said about Mike Cunningham’s demeanor, but Bill seemed uninterested, as if it were too subjective to be of value.

  He thought for a moment. “The police need to know about Hoffman being the one to inform the SEC about Downing. I’ll mention it to Dan Trace when I talk to him tomorrow.”

  “Do you talk to him every day, Bill?”

  “I call him or he calls me. I tell him everything I learn about the case. Maybe I’m wrong, but I figure that the more I can do for him, the less they’ll consider you a murder suspect.”

  “If they don’t find another suspect by Friday, I might be arrested.”

  Bill shook his head. “George Morton just won’t let go, even though God knows I’ve given him a strong lead in another direction. If Lee Downing knew that Peter Hoffman outed him to the SEC, that gives him an even stronger reason to kill.”

  He turned to her with a warm, blue-eyed smile. “I’m sorry you got chewed out by Geraghty. On the other hand, you are pretty aggressive for one who has so much evidence pointing to her.” He shook his head a little and took another bite of his dinner.

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “You must realize that we’re limited in what we can do. We can listen. We can talk to friends. But we can hardly charge ahead with the investigation, because it could be that a Chicago hit man did it, and not one of our neighbors.”

  “So you want me to cease and desist, just like the police.”

  “No, but your direct approach may not be the best. How would you like to do it another way and see what information we can pick up?”

  She put her hand on his arm. “You mean surveillance?”

  He laughed. “Just a little walk in the neighborhood after dark. We’ve done it before, haven’t we? Not too long ago we found some good information that way.”

  “Yes, when Madeleine Doering’s killer was out there. So you do mean surveillance. All right!”

  “Eat up,” said Bill. “Then we’ll change into some clothes that will help us disappear into the night.”

  It was ten-thirty, and only night owls were still up in Sylvan Valley on this weeknight, for tomorrow was a work day for most adults. The evening was hot and moist, but a trace of a breeze came and went and relieved the steam room effect. The furtive moon dodged behind a fat lid of clouds. Louise realized the Washington monsoon season would soon be at hand with its big soaking rains. The cloud cover produced utter darkness, so that she and Bill could hardly see their hands in front of them. They walked in the street, lest the aged sidewalks with their jagged edges trip them up and send them flying.

  They headed first to Phyllis Hoffman’s house, which lay almost a mile down the road at the edge of the neighborhood. Here, trees were not the soaring, 110-footers as in the central part of the neighborhood, but sparse and small.

  “Do these houses remind you of something?” asked Louise.

  “No,” said Bill. “What are they supposed to remind me of?”

  “The outlying slave houses near a plantation.”

  “Huh,” said Bill, chuckling. “That’s a bit of a stretch, considering that people have to pay a few hundred thousand for them.”

  “They’re so much plainer than the houses closer in.”

  “It’s the relative lack of trees. Sylvan Valley is a strange place. It’s not every neighborhood where prestige is measured by how many trees crowd your yard.”

  She gave his arm a gentle tug. “We turn down this cul-de-sac. Phyllis lives in the third house on the left, I hear.”

  “Let’s be careful now,” murmured Bill. “Peter Hoffman lived here after leaving the mental hospital. He could have put in an alarm system. And keep your scarf ready to pull up over your face in case anyone approaches.” She’d worn the only dark scarf she owned, a silk one embroi
dered with her initials. Her husband wore a jaunty visored dark cap.

  As they entered the yard, Bill used a pinpoint flashlight in short bursts, so its light could have been mistaken for a firefly’s. He whispered in Louise’s ear, “I think we can approach the house without fear. Just don’t touch anything.”

  They eased up to the side of the house, where a light was shining, and pushed their way cautiously through a row of hemlocks that Phyllis must have planted for privacy, or to get more into the original spirit of Sylvan Valley. Peeking through open blinds, they saw a small study lined with file cabinets. Standing in front of an open file cabinet were two harried-looking people.

  “Bingo,” whispered Louise.

  Bill grabbed her arm and pulled her back a few steps. “We don’t want them to hear us. There they are—Phyllis and Mort Swanson.” Phyllis, in shorts and sleeveless blouse, was busy rummaging through the files. The tall, slim Mort stood beside her. On a desk near them was a ring containing a dozen or more keys. “God, Bill, Mort looks so tired.”

  “Yes, he does, but the search is on nevertheless. What do you suppose they’re looking for?”

  “Maybe an alternative will,” she said. “Mary mentioned that Phyllis was grumbling about the will—”

  “Phyllis undoubtedly knows now how it reads. Maybe they’re looking for one that gives her a better deal.”

  “Wow,” said Louise, taking another step back. “That would be something.” Her foot landed on a branch, and to their horror they heard its loud crack as it broke from her weight. Nearly losing her balance, she started to fall into the scratchy arms of the hemlock, until Bill pulled her straight. They saw Phyllis and Mort start at the noise and approach the window.

  Bill held her close to him in the hemlocks. Louise pulled her black scarf over her face. “Hold still and they won’t see us,” he said. They froze in place while Phyllis and Mort stared out the window straight at them. When they turned away, Bill hissed, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He guided her carefully away from the house and across the yard. They sprinted out of the cul-de-sac and onto the main road. Not until they were blocks away and under the safe cover of the deep woods did Bill slow down.

  “Louise,” he said, “we’ve got to be more careful than that if we’re going to case the neighborhood.”

  “Sorry, darling.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t enough noise to make them deeply suspicious. I hope not, because that scene inside Phyllis’s house could be significant.”

  “How so?”

  “Maybe Mort is more than a legal counselor... .”

  “Could Mort have helped Phyllis arrange to have her husband killed?” finished Louise. “He’s always been one of the most unreadable men I’ve ever met.”

  “He bears watching. What’s our next destination, the Swansons’?”

  “Yes,” said Louise. “Let’s see what Sarah, and for that matter her visiting intern Hilde, does when Mort’s out spending his time with Phyllis Hoffman.”

  Avoiding the tentacles of the pricklier trees and shrubs, they made their way through the thick plantings until they reached the house. Though they peeked in several windows, they saw no sign of Sarah or Hilde. “I bet Sarah’s reading in bed,” said Louise. “Hilde could be anywhere.”

  Bill sighed, and she sensed her husband had had enough window peeping. He said, “Now where to?”

  “Back to our own Dogwood Court. We’ll see what the locals are up to.”

  Once they’d breached a thick cluster of scrub trees, it was easy to see into Sam Rosen’s house. A wall of windows would reveal the domestic scene within, but set in front of it was an array of cedars, not a difficult barrier to get around. “Isn’t it strange,” said Louise, “that Sylvan Valley folks think a clump of trees is as good as a drawn blind?”

  Bill laughed. “How wrong they are.” They stood and looked at their neighbors. Sam and Greg were sitting on separate couches in the dimly lit living room watching a large high-definition TV screen. Each held a drink in his hand and was studiously drinking it. Greg Archer was a man of considerable beauty, with his chiseled features and his blond hair glinting in the lamplight. Louise realized then why he was so attractive. He looked the way Bill had looked ten years ago. Sam and Greg exchanged only the most desultory conversation. It was as if they had been forced to sit there together.

  “Not a happy pair these days, are they?” said Bill. “Though they probably don’t look any different than other couples sitting in front of mindless television, not connecting, zoning out ...”

  Louise felt a twinge of guilt about the two men, as if she were responsible for the cooling of their relationship. “Let’s move on. We can go through the backyards of the Mougeys and the Radebaughs.”

  As they made their way through the Mougey yard, Louise couldn’t help but peek at their friends Richard and Mary. The view here was obscured only by a little grove of see-through amelanchiar trees. They were cuddled on a couch in the family room, Richard’s morose head in Mary’s lap, watching a rerun of Law & Order.

  “They look like newlyweds,” murmured Bill.

  “They know how to do it,” said Louise.

  “Do what?”

  “Do marriage.”

  “So, don’t we?”

  She squeezed his hand. “Of course. That’s taken for granted.”

  “Just don’t take me for granted.”

  She drew closer to him, pushed his cap back on his head and gave him a soft kiss. “I try not to, honey.”

  “Mmm,” said Bill, nuzzling her neck. They approached the Radebaugh backyard, but there was no sign of the occupants, Ron and Nora. Louise pointed to a dim light in a room whose draperies had been drawn. “That’s the master bedroom.”

  “Damned good sign,” said Bill. “Keep your fingers crossed for my friend Ron.”

  “We can skip the Kendricks, I think,” said Louise. “I saw Roger and Laurie go out for the evening. They’re probably not home yet.”

  “Fine. Then that just leaves your quarry—Mike Cunningham and Lee Downing.”

  She aimed an elbow at him as they continued through the woods. “It’s annoying sometimes how well you can see through me. But I also thought it was good that we looked in on Phyllis Hoffman.”

  “Indeed,” said Bill in a droll voice, and she couldn’t tell whether or not he meant to tease her. “We snooped in on a woman consulting a lawyer.”

  “And rifling through files. Don’t forget the files.”

  “So, here we are at Cunningham’s house. Which way d’you want to go in?”

  “Let’s stay in back,” said Louise. “It’s safer. Head for that light. It’s faint, but it’s a light.” With Bill again using the small flashlight, they carefully approached the house.

  They slid their way through some thick scrub brush until they were ten feet away from the room with the light. They could just barely make out the shapes on the couch, turning, writhing. Suddenly, one shape sat up and turned up the dimmer switch on a nearby table lamp. Now the couple was in plain sight. Hilde Brunner’s long hair was strewn carelessly around her face, her bronzed legs in short shorts intertwined with the legs of Mike Cunningham. Cunningham’s hair, too, was disheveled, and his shirt halfway out of his pants. Hilde leaned against Cunningham, ruffled his hair further and appeared to be laughing at him. The attorney made a move with his hand toward Hilde’s breasts, at which point she leaped from the couch and threw her hands up in dismay—the classic damsel-in-distress pose.

  “We’ve seen enough,” said Louise.

  Her husband mumbled. “Let’s go home.”

  Louise realized later what a mistake it was, but at the time it seemed logical to continue around the back of Cunningham’s house and exit through the front yard. When they got there, they heard the front door slam and saw Hilde run down Cunningham’s front walk, apparently heading for her studio apartment at the Swansons’.

  Unfortunately, Louise hadn’t known what was going on behind Cunningham’s newly i
nstalled Leyland cypress hedge at the front of the house. She and Bill were making their way through the darkness and had only twenty feet to go before reaching the sidewalk when Louise bumped into something hard. The whole world appeared to be falling, including her. She could feel the black scarf ripping away from her neck as Bill grabbed her before she toppled over with a concrete object.

  It stood almost as tall as Louise and Bill on top of a pedestal of some kind and fell to the ground with a crash. Bill dared a quick glimpse with the pinpoint flashlight. “We’ve totaled a classical statue of a lady in loose garments.”

  “Oh, no,” said Louise, “it’s a fountain.”

  Bill turned the light on the broken statue once more. “I think we’d better get out of here. We can settle up later with Cunningham, maybe make an anonymous donation to pay for the thing.”

  They scuttled across the cul-de-sac and into the confines of their own deep woods. Putting her hand to her throat, she realized her scarf had been torn off. She decided not to tell her husband.

  Once safe in the tall sweet gums, they turned and looked across the street. The noise had brought Mike Cunningham to attention. His front porch light was on, and although they couldn’t see him through the trees, Louise guessed he was standing there viewing the damage to his concrete work of art.

  A little voice inside her said, Serves him right for bringing such a tacky ornament into our neighborhood. To Bill, she said, “Let’s go in and not worry about it tonight. He’ll be calmed down by morning. I doubt he’ll recognize the scarf.”

  “The scarf?” They made their way up the flagstone path to the front door.

  “Um, yeah, it was torn off back there at his house.”

  “Louise, that has your initials on it. I know. I gave it to you.”

  “Sorry, honey.” They slipped into the house and went to the kitchen, where Louise poured each of them a glass of cold water and handed one to Bill. “Or would you rather have sherry?”

  “Yeah. Sherry would be good.” He reached down into a cupboard and got the bottle, and she handed him a small glass. Slumping against the kitchen counter, he took a sip, then ran a tired hand through his blond hair. He pursed his lips as if thinking carefully about what he wanted to say next. “Louise, the idea of surveillance is to slip quietly through the neighborhood without people knowing you are there, not to knock things down. I have a real problem now. I hate to pull rank, but I’ve just been elevated to a higher position at State: special U.S. liaison with the IAEA.” He grinned and shook his head. “You might say there’s a certain discrepancy between the dignity of my professional life and the degradation of my personal life at the present time.”