Mulch

by Ann Ripley

  It all took its toll.

  Right now, it was keeping Phyllis happy that mattered. He had taken so long to answer her again that she looked at him with suspicion.

  He tried to make his voice steady and ordinary. “EUR stands very simply for the Bureau of European Affairs.” To gain time, he sat back, took off his thick glasses, and wiped under each eye with his forefingers. He peered at her myopically. “He’s one of that precious crew of foreign service officers who get stationed in London, Paris, or Rome—livin’ the high life while we American taxpayers foot the bill.” He was interesting her; she’d forgotten his strangeness. “Yeah, the State Department crowd: a bunch of incompetents. They do second best what others like the NSC do best. They ought to be out of business.” His tone turned conspiratorial: “You know what this Eldridge really wants?”

  “What, darling?” She looked interested.

  “He wants to look me over.” Peter sat back, relaxed now, confident, over the rough spot. “He wants to see me close up, one of the bad boys of international arms but good at inventing war toys. He could be a spook.”

  “A spook?” asked Phyllis, her eyes wide. She loved spy thrillers and mysteries; he would play to her strong suit. “You mean a spy?” She sat up straighter and wriggled a little with excitement.

  “We’re talking The Third Man here.” He gave her a quick smile. “Maybe more like George Smiley without the paunch, or one of the sexier guys out of a Ross Thomas novel.” He looked into his wife’s face. “Dead giveaway: There’s no reason for him to invite me over to dinner. Nobody from the State Department ever holds a dinner party that isn’t job related. So he’s probably not State Department.”

  He could tell she wanted more. He gave her more. “I hear Eldridge’s very attractive: You’ll probably get all hot over him.”

  “Really, Peter.” She shoved him away in mock anger but could not repress a pleased smile. “Am I that transparent? But I’ve met his wife at two swim club meetings—you were at one of them, you remember. Tall. Perhaps a little ungainly. She isn’t that bad-looking, but she ought to know women over forty shouldn’t wear such long hair.”

  Peter remembered meeting the wife there, too—Louise, or some such name. The hair fantastic. Big hazel eyes, terrific legs, soft-looking breasts, a concave belly. And with that freshness that Kristina possessed: a perennial innocence. It always blew his mind.

  At the thought he felt himself hardening. He reached over and thrust a hand under Phyllis’s fuzzy sweater to surround a thin, exercised breast with his large hand. He put the other hand between her muscular thighs. Not a soft body like Kristina’s…. No, he had to forget that.

  “Darling, I didn’t know you still cared,” said Phyllis. She smiled her little coy smile. Playing games with him. Never sincere.

  He leaned near her, playing with her breast, feeling the nipple harden despite herself. He said, “What I want us to do at this party of theirs is play the part well. The acceptable candidate and his faithful wife. This bastard Eldridge has something to do with Paschen; you can bet your life on that.”

  With scant attention she murmured, “You mean the president’s in on this?” Her breathing was shallow and she was intent now on Peter’s caresses, directing his hand to where she wanted it to go between her thighs.

  “Only indirectly. Fairchild doesn’t give a damn about anything but my military expertise. Tom Paschen’s the one—he hates my guts. He’s using this argument that I’m some sort of a barbarian who isn’t even acceptable with the Washington power elite.”

  “Darling, since I’ve known you, you’ve never bothered to even try to be acceptable.”

  He rubbed his nose against hers and growled suggestively. “Maybe it’s time your Peter grew up and learned how to act like a little gentleman. Shit, I could charm the pants off the Congress, the joint chiefs of staff, Sally Quinn, Ben Bradlee, or anyone else in Washington they have that needs impressing—and most certainly, the esteemed Bill Eldridge.”

  “But don’t start just now,” she said breathlessly, and wrenched her sweater over her iridescent hairdo to give him more room to work.

  19

  Mary

  LOUISE COLLECTED THE MAIL AT THE CURB, AND wandered back to the house. Armed with a fallen branch, she poked and prodded among the leaves but knew well she would find no green in late November—no little magical rosettes of emerging plants to cheer her sober heart. She quit her futile search, and scanned the woods. All was beautifully in place—the trio of robust rhododendron, waiting for spring to belt out their beauty, like three Italian tenors. The two free-growing amelanchier for balance. The carefully placed camellia, and the new little cluster of plants near the path. The craggy witch hazel, waiting to give forth its spidery yellow flowers. Scores of bulbs hiding beneath the ground, waiting to come up. Only the Concord grapes had not worked out, so the pergola was still bare.

  Despite this perfection, her yard seemed neglected. Truth to tell, she hadn’t been out here, not even to shoulder up the oak leaf mulch around the plants, hadn’t had the heart to do a thing outdoors since that Sunday a month ago when they un-bagged the leaves. Humps of leaves dotted the back corner, left whatever way the police had left them. She hoped they did not smother the skunk cabbage, but did not have the will to go and look. Anyway, she had an inkling that skunk cabbage was as tough, underneath, as she was.

  Somehow the murder had spoiled this place for her. Working outdoors gave her bad vibrations. But she had no time for that kind of self-introspection right now: She had a writing job to finish, and finish soon.

  As she turned to walk back in the house, she saw a bright figure across the cul-de-sac. Walking a little closer, she saw it was Mary Mougey standing at the curb. When Mary beckoned her, she welcomed the excuse to stay outdoors a moment longer.

  They met in the middle of the cul-de-sac, and Louise did a double take.

  “Why, Mary …” She stopped, not wanting to offend her neighbor. From being a rather colorless person with graying blond hair, Mary appeared to be almost a new person.

  The smile was the same, or was the smile different, too? “Ah,” Mary said with satisfaction, “you noticed, I’ve gone and done it—had my hair colored—as well as a few other, uh, amenities. Face-lift, actually.”

  “It looks—very nice.” Combined with her stylish winter white sports outfit and shrugged-on car coat, her neighbor suddenly had become high fashion.

  Mary shook her head, as if regretting the whole thing. “You don’t have to approve. I didn’t want to do it, myself. I have always deplored bottle blondes and face-lifts, but fifty comes and goes, and then sixty looms ahead.” She stepped closer to Louise as if sharing a confidence. “If you want to know the truth, I did it for the children.”

  “The children?” said Louise. “You mean …”

  “I mean, my dear, the big donors are a funny bunch. They live lives wrapped in cotton—you know, only going to certain places, clubs, stores, vacation spots, to their fourteenth-floor offices in the district, or their fortieth-floor offices in the suburbs. Most mingle with—and are used to looking at—people who have gone to a great deal of trouble about their appearances.

  “So,” she added briskly, “I decided an upgrade of my image as graying earth mother was in order. And here I am. Same person underneath, just shinier on the surface. Now—are you up for lunch? How about going with the new me for barbecue at the Dixie Pig?”

  “I’ve seen it while driving by, but must admit I’ve never been there.”

  “Then you know it’s only a couple miles from here—one of the wondrous attractions of Route One.” Mary’s eyes twinkled. “Route One also includes high-rises, brothel motels, fortune-tellers, and those ghastly new condos that eventually will elbow out all the good old stuff like the Pig.”

  She told Louise she needn’t change out of her garden clothes, and when they arrived at the restaurant, Louise could see this was true. Its welcome sign featured a porky pig and would have discourage
d anyone wanting to keep their figure, she decided. Sure enough, entering the restaurant just ahead of them was a vastly overweight family, father, mother, and son, mouths obviously watering for the barbecue. The sunny booths were filled mostly with men in work clothes who had not bothered to remove their billed caps.

  “Richard and I come here sometimes on Saturdays,” Mary told her. “We love their barbecue sandwiches. Barbecue brings out the South in me.” It turned out she was from North Carolina, but living in many different parts of the world had subsumed her Southern accent and left her speech with simply an anonymous softness.

  Mary had clout here, and Louise had a suspicion that was true of the finest Washington restaurants as well. To the cheery waitress behind the counter, she said, “Can we please sit in the bar? We’re having—a sort of meeting.” The waitress hesitated a moment, then responded to the golden smile, and took them and two plastic-protected menus into a tiny bar room at the front of the place. She flipped on a set of dim lights, and said, “Sit anywhere. Want your special, Mary?”

  “Yes, please.” Mary smiled, looked at Louise, and said, “Trust me?”

  Louise nodded, and Mary said, “Make it two.”

  When the waitress left, her neighbor folded her arms in front of her on the wood table, and said, “I have important matters to talk to you about. I’ve been home for two weeks, recovering from the effects of my face-lift.” Her hand went out and gently touched her check near the hairline. “It’s given me time to organize things around my house, which heaven knows gets very little attention, except when the cleaning woman comes, bless her heart. Two things, Louise, involve you.” She smiled, with her face and her eyes. “One is just fun: I’m thinking of getting fish and a pond to put them in, come spring, and I need your input. But I wonder if Richard and I are really fish people.” She cocked her well-coiffed head. “Do you know anything about fish—and will it be as much trouble as having a dog, for instance, or a kitty? For, you know, we travel quite a bit, and it isn’t as if one can drop them off at a vet—or can one?”

  “You know, Mary, I don’t know very much about them. Do you mean koi, those Japanese kind?”

  “Exactly,” said Mary enthusiastically, and then put out a hand in a stop gesture. “But that’s all right—I’ll research the fish. Richard and I talked about it, because we saw some at a friend’s this summer, and they were so tranquil and beautiful; they quite captivated us. But it was a big party, and we never had a chance to talk pescatore with our hosts.”

  Louise chuckled. “If you like them, I’d go for it. I could baby-sit them when you go away. I can’t believe they would be any bother.”

  Mary’s face changed, the smile gone, the focused look restored. Her voice was quieter, no longer laced with the delight that it was when she was talking about fish. “The other matter is the mulch murder. Louise, the police just have not solved it, have they?”

  “No.”

  “I saw you, Louise—” She broke off her sentence as the waitress brought in their drinks; both had ordered tea. When she left, Mary resumed. “Staying home gives one time to observe one’s neighbors. When you got out of Bill’s car the other day, you were all dressed up in boots and things, but you looked so unhappy. If you’d had a dog, you would have kicked it. Then, a couple of nights later, I saw Bill come home, all flustered, and storm up the walk. From then on, I have done nothing but worry about the two of you. This is the first day I have been out since my operation—otherwise my swollen face would have scared people—and I was just on my way over to visit when I saw you in your yard.”

  Louise well remembered the day she failed hypnotism and then fruitlessly retraced the trail to houses where she’d picked up leaf bags. “All I can say is, I’m glad I have a writing job to distract me.” She told Mary about her assignment from the garden editor. “It helps balance out those bad days.”

  Her neighbor frowned. “Do you have lots of bad days like that? Why is this all falling on you two? It is outrageous that the police can’t do any better. Surely, someone is missing!”

  Louise looked at Mary, and a small epiphany sounded in her head. She leaned forward eagerly. “Yes, yes, that’s the whole point. Someone is missing, and why can’t they find out who it is? I told you the last time we talked that I was being hypnotized. I think they thought I was going to solve the crime. Well, I failed to go under, and the police were very disappointed in me, according to what they told Bill: He’s the only one who has talked to them recently. Detective Geraghty told him, quote, ‘Otherwise, the trail is cold.’”

  Mary looked at her intently. “I’m fascinated. Why weren’t you hypnotized?”

  Louise hadn’t known for sure until this moment why. “Because the man was a fraud, and I didn’t trust him.”

  Mary looked up, to see the waitress arriving with two large platters, each holding two barbecue sandwiches bulging with meat, a paper cup filled with coleslaw, a rash of french fries, and half of a dill pickle.

  “Wonderful,” exclaimed Mary, and the woman left them alone. She gracefully gathered up one of the sloppy sandwiches, and said, “Pork: You’ll love it,” took a bite, and chewed happily. Then she said, “Now, Louise, tell me some details. Exactly what did those, uh, pieces of the body look like?”

  Louise looked down at the barbecue extravaganzas on her plate and could barely restrain herself from gagging. “Uh …”

  Mary smiled apologetically. “I’m so sorry. Let’s eat first.”

  When they had finished most of their food, Louise reluctantly continued. “I saw—the arm, and a piece of the leg.” This was what she had avoided: putting a whole body together from the parts she had seen. First, Nora, and now Mary, was forcing her to bring the dead woman to some sort of reality as a person.

  “It must have been ghastly,” said Mary. “What did they look like, these sections of the body—lots of tannin in the skin, or light, like me?”

  Louise stared off into the gloom of the tiny bar and tried to remember. “Actually, there were freckles on the arm—sort of pink-looking freckles against pale skin. It was a small, shapely forearm, minus the hand.” Pictures of that bloody body part flashed through her mind. “And the leg—it was very—finely turned, you might say.”

  Mary leaned forward, cradling the heavy teacup in her hands. Her eyes were broody. “Too bad you didn’t see the torso. Did they find any of the torso?”

  “Part of it.” She sucked her breath in, remembering that gruesome talk. “Geraghty told Bill it was a, quote, ‘well-formed’ female.”

  “That means good breasts, knowing men. Ah, just 50.” Mary sat back in satisfaction. “I am beginning to develop a theory.” She leaned forward again toward Louise. “Finely turned leg. Petite arm. Pink freckles, but not obtrusive freckles. Well-formed breasts, most likely. What does that say to us?”

  “Good-looking woman,” Louise offered. “Maybe a redhead.”

  Mary pointed a graceful finger at her. “More than that: It says mistress. After all, no wives are missing, are they, or the police would have found out by now. But ‘mistress’—the woman the man keeps in the background, in a secret apartment in SoHo …”

  “All right. Hidden mistress. But where does that get us? When I drove around the other day to all the houses where I got the leaves, it was lunchtime, and I saw a surprising number of people home, or coming home. And believe me, Mary, they all looked as innocent as lambs.”

  She told her of the elderly couple, of the children entering another house, and then they laughed about the suburban mom who might actually have been a murderess.

  “There’s nothing much we can do about those outlying mulch bag addresses,” said Mary. “That’s up to the police. But closer to home, why, I can think of at least six men who live in Sylvan Valley who could have had a mistress.”

  “No, really?”

  Mary nodded. “I’ve lived there for almost twenty years, and it is surprising: You would have picked up these same vibes if you knew them as long as I had
.”

  “Gosh. Who, for instance?”

  “This is strictly between the two of us, and I’m not accusing anyone of murder, mind you. But Eric Vande Ven, for one. Mort Swanson, that wonderful Sarah’s husband, for another. Frank Stern, maybe—simply because he is such an unknowable quantity and has been ever since I first met him. Do you know him?”

  “I just met him once—he’s away a lot overseas with his electronics business. But I’ve known Sandy since we moved here. We started playing tennis together at the club. I like Sandy.”

  Mary stretched out a hand and squeezed Louise’s. “My dear, let’s try to separate the personal from the practical. I’m just talking husbands.” Then she went on to mention three more Sylvan Valley men.

  Louise came to a realization that made her skin tingle. “Do you realize Eric and Mort are in the poker club with Bill?”

  “How interesting, and how handy.”

  “You’ve not mentioned Roger Kendricks. Or Sam Rosen.”

  “Clean, I’d say,” declared Mary with a hard look in her eye that seemed out of character; but she had obviously stepped into the detecting business with relish. “Of course we can’t be certain about anybody. I’d even mistrust that Peter Hoffman over on the edge of the neighborhood, but he’s freshly married and so new around here that I doubt he’s had time or inclination to get a mistress.” She looked at Louise, and almost broke into a giggle. “Aren’t we the snoops?”

  Louise couldn’t help smiling. “So what do you think we should do?”

  “Unfortunately, I’m packing up for another trip, this time to the West Coast, but I’ll be home for your dinner party.” She gestured toward Louise. “That party, for instance, will be a splendid opportunity to do background work. And while I’m gone, you can do a little casual surveillance—I believe that’s what they call it….”

  Louise sighed. Surveillance. If Mary only knew that she wasn’t as naive about all this as she thought she was. She had sat with her husband Bill and done surveillance on at least half a dozen occasions, in various parts of the world. It was no fun—getting hungry, uncomfortable, struggling to keep one’s eves open, having to urinate, but not being able to do anything about it.