Death of a Political Plant (32 page)
Read Death of a Political Plant Online
Authors: Ann Ripley
Tags: #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction
“I’m sorry, Ms. Gordon,” said Geraghty, “we’re taking you in for questioning.” Then, Lannie saw Louise. The woman gave her a long look, as if she were pleading with a friend who had shown her sympathy in the past. It seemed as if they were the only two in this crowded house.
“
Louise
,” she moaned. Louise’s heart wrenched, and impulsively she took a step toward her. Then the red-haired woman sagged and began sobbing uncontrollably.
Louise slowly approached. The woman was torn apart by whatever she had done: betrayed her husband to a killer, or murdered him herself, it didn’t much matter.
Geraghty stepped in front of her. “No, Mrs. Eldridge, please: I don’t want you talking to a suspect,” and with a pointed finger he indicated she should go back across the room.
Then the big detective turned to Lannie Gordon, reading her her rights as the patrolmen escorted her outside. Once the
woman was gone, he returned to the living room and beckoned Louise over with a nod. He looked down at her curiously. “I thought you didn’t know Ms. Gordon.”
“I didn’t, until yesterday.”
“So, that was just a rush of sympathy, is that what you’re saying?”
She looked into Geraghty’s eyes. “I don’t know,” she said bluntly. “Do you believe she killed Jay?”
“Her showing up here is pretty incriminating.”
“I think she did it, maybe accidentally, but I’d guess in anger. I’ve got Jay’s computer disk, and when you read his story, you’ll find out she has a motive: She has serious problems with the law.”
“There you got an edge on me, Mrs. Eldridge,” he said dryly. “You’ve found the disk, huh, and read the story?”
The guilt came rushing back again: She could have told Geraghty all this much sooner. She took a deep breath. “I’ll turn it right over to you. But I think Lannie did everything for the sake of her career and her daughter. It must have driven her crazy to think one story could ruin her whole life and send her to jail. Now she’s sunk so low—she’ll lose everything, including her daughter.”
“We don’t know yet whether she killed Jay McCormick,” Geraghty corrected brusquely, “but we can hold her for questioning. And based on what’s gone on here, we’re going to search her Great Falls house. Meanwhile, let’s talk about him.” He turned his attention to Ted French on the floor.
French was shaking his head, as if to plead for someone to take the tape off his mouth. Geraghty stooped down and with surprising gentleness did so. He asked Louise, “Do you know this man?”
“He’s Ted French. He works in the Goodrich presidential
campaign.” She laughed bitterly. “I saw him only today in the Capitol, eating lunch with Congressman Goodrich.”
“Looks like he’s wounded. Know if he’s hurt bad?”
“He has a couple of gashes, that’s for sure.” Her heart was not full of sympathy for Ted French.
“He broke into your house.”
“And he was armed. So I guess you call that breaking and entering with the intent to do great bodily harm.” She said that for the man’s benefit; French gave her a walleyed look in response. “His gun is lying right over there.” She pointed to the black weapon that had flipped under a nearby chair. “We all tried not to disturb the crime scene.”
The tape was off now, and French cried, “I want my lawyer.”
Geraghty shook his head. “Just a minute, buddy.” He turned again to Louise. “He tied you up, and I see he roughed you up pretty bad, too.”
She merely nodded, all the time staring at French and remembering how brutal he had been.
“And those people in there,” Geraghty said, nodding to her P.P.S. friends, now herded into the nearby dining room by a patrolman, “were they all witnesses?”
Louise looked over at her friends.
“Yes,” said Tessie, stepping forward in her familiar role as spokesperson. She summarized everything in rapid-fire fashion. “We got here and came around back for reasons I won’t go into now. We could see through a crack where Louise’s drapes didn’t quite meet. We were horrified: We saw him slapping Louise. So we grabbed some garden tools from the nearby shed and raced around as fast as we could to the front door.”
“How did you get in?” asked the detective.
Barbara spoke up: “Louise has a key in a fake rock.”
Geraghty nodded. “Oh, you knew that? Heck, the whole world probably knows that. Well, you did her a darn good turn.”
“I always said we like to help a body,” declared Tessie.
He took Louise’s elbow and helped her back to her feet.
“I’m glad you’re all right; you have good friends there. Better get your face washed first; there’s some abrasions there. We’ll take care of this man French, and then we need statements from you and the others. So, tell your friends to stick around, okay?”
Louise smiled. “Sticking around is no problem with them.”
Geraghty bent his white head down toward her. He said, “And I think you have some evidence for me.”
W
E ARE STILL SHARPENING AR
rowheads, so to speak. The use of tools has been traced back to the earliest ancestors of man, who have been busy perfecting them ever since. Amateur gardeners love tools, and can be found in the tool sections of stores in record numbers every garden season, mulling over their choices. Gardeners can go cheap or expensive, but these days, many are choosing to go light. They are buying light shovels, light mowers, light cultivators, light grass trimmers, light ladders. It makes sense, since about half of adult Americans complain of a bad back, and
many gardeners are women with less upper-body strength than their male counterparts.
Take the lightweight rototiller, for instance, which can till the soil in a path as narrow as six inches and cuts ten inches deep: It weighs about 20 pounds, instead of ISO to 300 pounds. Of course, the larger tiller is still the favorite of many people, who feel it takes deeper bites and handles better.
Or consider the fine, lightweight English shovel, which weighs about a third less than the ordinary kind. Since it is our most used tool, it pays to get a good one, and most serious gardeners have to have at least a couple: with pointed end, and square end.
Quality, not weight, also comes up with the subject of loppers and pruners. They are probably the second-most-used tools; some believe it is worthwhile to choose the top of the line, fashioned of Finnish or Swedish steel, while others do just fine with what they buy at the neighborhood hardware store. Anvil-type pruners seem to work better than the scissors type, which are apt to get dull faster.
How many of us have run around the yard on a hot summer day, sweating and wrestling with a gasoline-powered string
grass trimmer as if it were a resisting lover, cropping grass edges and sometimes girdling young trees in our wild, abandoned desire to have a neat yard? Polluters that they are, their use shouldn’t be encouraged. If they are used, buy a compact one that weighs less and by the same token emits fewer fumes into the environment. It will safeguard your back as well as your tender tree trunks.
Hoes are a favorite tool of the gardener. The stirrup hoe and shuffle hoe | both work on the concept of slicing right through the soil and weeds—as well as unsuspecting plants, if you make a misstep. If you’re in the market for a lawn mower, buy one with a mulching attachment, for we know now that we can save on fertilizer by leaving grass clippings on the lawn as natural nutrients.
Buying a wood chipper takes some thoughtful consideration, rather like deciding whether or not to buy a blue-chip stock: Wood chippers are expensive. Once you are familiar with the rate at which your trees sluff off limbs, you can decide whether you need one. (Remember, if you have a natural yard, fallen limbs make great homes for little animals, so leave the bigger branches on the ground.) Wood chippers seem cumbersome, but those who own them swear by
them. They are low-maintenance when used correctly, but then, isn’t everything?
There is absolutely nothing like the old-fashioned wheelbarrow to make us feel like lowly beasts of burden. Wheelbarrows are classics, but do we really need those cumbersome beasts with inflated wheels and wooden handles? Another choice is the lightweight cart with bicycle wheels. It is easier on the back, because the wheels are nearly centered under the load. But beware: Large-volume carts can buckle under too much weight, which is why many people swear by the old-fashioned brontosaurus type.
Incidentally, some people, when discussing lightweight tools, preface them with the adjective “lady’s”: lady’s shovel, lady’s wheelbarrow, lady’s tiller. And yet there are many men weary of bodily injury who like these products just as well.
Pliers with wire cutters for trellis work, hammers, a file to use on a regular basis so the tools don’t get dull, and a fiberglass ladder are other valuable additions to the toolshed. Wooden and aluminum ladders are less hardy than the newer, more expensive fiberglass variety.
And then there is the indispensable hand trowel, with which we dig small holes and plant smaller plants. There are
even tools for the growing number of people with carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. “Fist-grip” hand tools keep the wrist straight in use, and trigger-grip varieties are becoming a common sight in garden shops. Another idea to make garden work easier is to attach foam rubber pipe insulation to the handle of your hand cultivator or trowel. This will make the tools easier to hold, and cushion the impact of digging.
The first tools that a beginning gardener should buy are a hand file and an electric grinding wheel for sharpening the other tools. A few strokes of the file will keep many tools sharp, avoiding a bigger job later. And clean your tools. Use a soapy scouring pad to shine up tools after you’ve rinsed off the dirt, then always rub them with oil to protect them from rust. Don’t forget: Cleanliness ranks right up there with Godliness and sharpness.
“W
HAT I CAN’T UNDERSTAND IS
how you knew something was wrong”. Louise was slumped luxuriously onto plump cushions her friends had arranged against her back, and feeling that euphoria experienced by survivors of near-death and mayhem. She was sipping a small glass of dry sherry Tessie had pressed on her.
“We nearly rang the bell.”
“What stopped you? If you had,
French would have laid low until you went on your way again.”
They were sitting in the recreation room. Tessie had slid by the police in the living room to get ice, water, and a box of cheese crackers, in order to set up a little bar there. The police were still busy in the adjoining room, releasing Ted French from his duct-tape mummy wrappings.
Gil Whitson was bent over Louise, gently dabbing antiseptic on her facial scratches. As gently, she was sure, as he would have ministered to an ailing koi.
“It was simple, really,” said Donna, sitting quietly composed in a straight chair. “We came up on the porch, and really, Louise, I don’t like to say it, but the light on that porch really could stand more wattage…”
Barbara put a restraining hand on Donna’s arm. “Don’t tell the poor woman what to do right now. Hasn’t she had enough? Tell her what we saw.”
Donna self-consciously smoothed her straight blond hair, which already lay as smooth as Lancelot’s. “We saw those perennials you got from the convention all kicked around.”
“A real mess,” chimed in Gil, as he selected a bandage from the box. “Plants toppled over, fallen out of their pots. Not something we thought you’d do.”
Barbara said, “We knew you were such a gardener, and such a neatnik besides, that you would never treat plants like that. So we realized someone came in your house unexpectedly. First, we thought it could be your hubby”—she smiled broadly, and gave her curly, graying hair a little shake—“and we didn’t want to interrupt any big romantic homecoming.”
Tessie continued the story. “So we just decided to take a
little
peek through that crack you always have in your curtains.
That put us into action. Gil, bless his heart, ran to the tool-shed and quick as lightning pulled out some weapons for us.”
Louise looked at him fondly. His yellow, catlike eyes were concentrating on sticking the adhesive onto her cheek.