The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery (23 page)

“I have no wife, Louise,” he had told her. “Once I was married, but no more.” It seemed strange to her that such an attractive man of property wouldn’t even have a girl-friend. But then he hadn’t
said
he didn’t have a girlfriend. He probably did.

Since Pete’s studio was near the courthouse, she stopped there first, grateful to enter its air-conditioned gloom. She wanted to check on the deaths of Baby Henry and Beloved Bonnie, but was told both birth and death records were available only to relatives. The Carnegie Historical Library had records from the
Daily Camera
that would probably help her, the clerk told her cheerfully. The library was an old building in classic style, only a few blocks away. Inside, the huge, south-facing windows turned it into a huge, golden oasis of information. A motherly, gray-haired librarian sat Louise down at an oak table and pointed out the large old books that held obituaries of yesteryear.

She told the woman she needed help in another area, too. The script for her Porter Ranch program had a little detail on the ranch’s beginnings, but not as much as she would have liked. “Do you have any books that describe how the big ranchers around here came into such large tracts of land?”

“Some families wrote down their history,” said the librarian, “and often in glowing terms. I’ll get you some of those books.” She smiled. “But there’s others that liked to keep their business to themselves, and they’d no sooner write a family history than they’d fly. Who are you interested in?”

“The Porter Ranch—and the Bingham Ranch, right next to it. I assume it was the great-grandparents that did the homesteading.”

The woman readjusted her wire-rimmed glasses, and nodded. “I know a bit about them—
private
types. They settled up there before 1876, which was when Colorado became a state. The Homestead Act of 1862 provided each farm family living west of the Mississippi with one hundred and sixty acres of land that would be theirs if they could work it for five years.”

“That’s how Jeremiah Porter—Jimmy Porter’s great-grandfather—got started, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. The cost for these settlers was next to nothing—one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. Jeremiah Porter probably began his ranching on a small scale, then began to pick up homestead acreages around him from less successful ranchers and farmers. Some sold for profit, and others couldn’t take the hard life. Some were disappointed when they found the land wasn’t good for agriculture. But it was perfect for cattle ranching. Once he acquired a larger holding, Jimmy Porter’s great-grandfather, if he was like the others, would have turned around and sold some—”

“Maybe to Bingham?”

“Probably. Then he would have been able to retire his own debt and keep himself afloat. Yep, that’s how the big ranches came into being—and Jimmy Porter’s forebears were darned good at it.”

“And the Indians didn’t claim the land around here?”

“No, but they used it. The Arapaho used to do their summer hunting near Lyons. By 1870, there were only renegade bands of Utes roaming the area, as well as some very tough white outlaws. Settlers had to deal with them with nobody’s help. You can see when you get inside some
of those ranch houses what the families faced. They even built special passages as escape routes.”

Louise thanked the librarian, then dove into the obits, and soon understood the diversity of Boulder County’s residents. Some were country folks, some mountain dwellers, some city dwellers.

But she caught her breath when she came to Bonnie Porter’s obituary, remembering that she had
seen
this woman’s simple grave. Bonnie’s death was dramatic, in a class with the more grotesque stories: the miner impaled by a support beam, the farmer pierced through with a pickax, the Boulder father of five who smashed himself to bits in his car on a locally historic cottonwood tree, and the ranch hand who died of pneumonic plague after cleaning mouse droppings from a barn. Bonnie died in a barn.

Mrs. Porter died of burns covering the entire body, as a result of being unable to escape from a burning barn on Porter Ranch west of Lyons
. An accompanying, one-inch-long news story said the sheriff’s office was investigating the possibility that the fire was arson.

Louise read on, about the deaths of the children Jimmy and Bonnie Porter lost. Mary Porter, the firstborn, died at the age of four from diphtheria. Nathaniel Porter, the second-born, succumbed to whooping cough a year after Mary, at the age of three. Louise stared with dismay at the story of the third child, Jacob, born the same year Nathaniel died. He lived the longest, but died at the age of eight from lockjaw. She remembered what Herb’s wife, Ellie, had said:
Why, can you imagine holdin’ your lil’ son in your arms while he shook to death in a crazy fit?
She shuddered.

The significance of the three deaths finally sank in, and her heart thumped harder in her breast. Diphtheria, lockjaw, whooping cough: DTP. Three scourges of childhood before the advent of vaccines. Why on earth, at the midpoint
point of the twentieth century, hadn’t Bonnie Porter seen that these children received DTP shots?

Louise flipped through the P section of the worn book to find the details about Baby Henry. Nothing was recorded. She was disappointed, having acquired an empathy for the baby who “couldn’t cry.” She decided to go on to the Bingham obituaries.

But here she found the answer, in a forty-year-old death notice.
Henry Bingham, son of Harriet Bingham, born July 9, 1958, died July 14, 1958, of oxygen insufficiency. Father, unknown. Other survivors: Henry Bingham, Sr., grandfather
. Disbelieving at first, Louise read the words again. The death notice of the grandfather, Henry Bingham, Sr., was on the next page. He passed away just months after his grandson, of “unknown causes.”

The mountain’s secrets were being unlocked. The lines were fuzzy, indeed, between the Porter and the Bingham clans. In their cozy little mountain cemetery, they had not wanted to make distinctions between the two families, even about whose baby was whose. Deaths, births, and tragedies such as fires seemed to belong to them in common. Private matters, that needn’t come to the attention of the rest of the world.

Louise thought about old Harriet Bingham. Incredible that the spinster had given birth. And then to have her father perish so soon afterward in a mysterious way. Could there have been incest up in that mountain safeness?

But why hadn’t Ellie remembered that Harriet Bingham had had a child? After the original printing of that obituary, Louise guessed the matter was swallowed up among the other secrets on that mountain.

Louise sat in the glow of the golden room and stared out the immense library window. Funny: The Porter and Bingham ranches were disappearing, after these families had inhabited them for one hundred thirty years. How
would these beautiful lands be described from now on? As a new town? An annexation to Lyons? Or an enormous public park? And somewhere in this maze of land ownership and family history, could there be an answer to the deaths at Porter Ranch?

L
OUISE HAD FIFTEEN MORE MINUTES
to kill before she met Pete for dinner. She wandered slowly back to the mall, where large crowds streamed back and forth on the wide sidewalks. The stores filled with clothes, gifts, and art didn’t attract her. It was when she turned onto a side street that a sign caught her eye:
HERBAL REMEDIES FOR ALL AILMENTS
. She wondered if there were one for loneliness, for all at once she sorely missed Bill.

She ducked into the shop, and into another world. The walls were painted
pale mossy green with mauve trim, and hung with abstract watercolors in pastel tones. There was a strange smell in the air—herbs, no doubt—that was quite pleasant to the nose.

Signs on each basket of delicately bottled substances told of their use: A shampoo guaranteed to increase health of not only the hair, but the entire body. Flower derivatives—echinacea, goldenseal—that mended sore throats, and which Louise had tried on occasion. Powders in various subtle hues said to encourage sleep, energy, and even “sensitivity.”

But her attention was soon drawn to the pair at the cashier’s counter. The proprietor was a woman with no makeup, long, dull red hair drawn back in a pony tail, braless body encased in a tan sack dress that bagged at the derrière. She looked at the world through a pair of concerned brown eyes. She was talking to an excited blond woman in a tennis outfit who held a cat in her arms.

The cat, fat and white, seemed somnambulistic to Louise, and she wondered if it were drugged. No, the conversation revealed, but it was on the verge of being drugged.

“So my neighbor lets
his
cat out of the house” complained the blond customer, “and it immediately comes over to my yard and attacks my Freddie. I can’t tell you how many vet bills I’ve had.”

The proprietor’s voice was low and remedial. “Your Freddie does not defend himself, I gather.”

“Look at him,” cried the woman, and grasped Freddie’s impassive cat face to show her the scratches.

The proprietor peered at the cat through half-glasses, then floated over to a mauve-colored counter and pulled out a big drawer underneath it. “The solution is right here.” Louise, fascinated now, could not tear herself away from the scene. The proprietor was pouring liquid from two bottles into two smaller vials. She returned with the
vials and set them on the counter before the woman and her cat.

“You must give Freddie three drops daily from
this
container. It will make him into more of a man—”

“Oh, please, no!”

The woman was apparently afraid Freddie might take on unpleasant manly habits, such as spraying the family furniture.

“Not to worry. Freddie is fixed, and in no way will he become unfixed. This potion will make him just a tiny bit more dominant.” She held out the second vial. “Then, you must give this to your neighbor and persuade him to administer three drops daily to
his
cat, whatever its name is—”

“He calls it Toughy,” said the woman in a disgusted tone, “and believe me, the name fits. So what is this stuff, a tranquilizer?”

The woman in the tan sack dress smiled. “So to speak. It’s vervain mixed with vine and beech root. It will make Toughy less dominant. Isn’t that nice? You see, you’ll be meeting in the middle.”

“Both cats, meeting in the middle?” The customer was straining to understand.

The proprietor smiled, a magician’s smile. Louise suspected alchemists used to smile like that back in the fourteenth century. “Both cats, my dear, are having their behavior modified, so that they can come together in peace and love.”

Louise was stifling a great urge to laugh, and her mouth had already broken into a silly grin. The proprietor looked over at her, a challenge in her eyes. Louise tried to pull herself together and stuttered, “I—I couldn’t help overhearing. That’s a—a splendid solution.”

It was as if the shop owner had paralyzed her with her
earthy, brown-eyed gaze. “You sound a little skeptical. But that’s how we do things here in Boulder.”

That put Louise in her place. The only thing left was a speedy retreat. Forget buying that powder that increased sensitivity—though God knows she needed it. She waved weakly at the two women and said, “Well, ’bye, now,” and hurried from the shop.

Chuckling as she hurried down the street to the pizza parlor, she did not go unnoticed by the mixture of locals and tourists she passed. They probably thought that this middle-aged, middle-class woman had gone loco. And between secretive mountain people, snipers, and roving pumas, maybe she had.

Pete Fitzsimmons was standing with his tall frame draped against the wall near Zeeno’s front door. “Well, Louise, what’s so darn funny?”

“How can you tell something was funny?”

He smiled. “You’re like Pooh-Bear—as if you’ve found a pot of humor. It’s all over your face. So, shall we eat in or out?”

It was a beautiful, balmy night, which meant anyone in their right mind would choose an outdoor table. Yet she and Pete had serious things to talk about—after all, why else were they having dinner?