The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery (27 page)

With relief, she spied a rocky outcropping, a baby hogback, that was a splendid highway marker for her when she first arrived in this strange place. She now knew she was only a few miles from the turn-in to her rented house. Then a car pulled up alongside her. It was Reingold.

She felt the fool. This crafty man had used the same tricks that her spy husband, Bill, had employed, and actually taught her when she had occasionally helped him on stakeouts. Reingold had played “possum” back in that parking lot, pretending to leave, but actually hunkering down and waiting until his adversary was dumb enough to shoot out of the lot.

Now, she was in trouble, for they were cruising side by side at fifty miles per hour, and he was edging his Jaguar into her lane. “Oh, God!” she yelled, and swerved to the right. There was a deep gully, and he was forcing her into it. Her heart leapt. This was the very reason Pete called Route Thirty-Six “Death Highway,” for many had lost their lives in these picturesque roadside ravines. She’d be damned if her name would be added to the list of those who’d died here.

Surely, this man would not want to crease the side of his expensive vehicle! Louise refused to give way, but then the road narrowed even further, and a series of highway reflectors limited her ability to maneuver. She checked Reingold—the man was going to smash her right over into the deep gulch, dented car or not. Ahead on the right a driveway appeared, and she skidded into the turn and drove in. In the distance she saw the lights of a ranch house.

Would she be safer there, trying to roust out a frightened country family, or was she safer simply confronting the man? In the end, there was no contest, because she
hesitated. Like a small tank the Jaguar bumped past her and cut across her bow, leaving a swirl of dust to rise in the moonlit night. She swerved to a halt.

Groping quickly in her purse, Louise found the pepper spray, then locked the car doors and let down the driver’s side window four inches. Now she was ready.

Reingold walked slowly to her car. The bulge under his dark suit told her his handgun was still strapped to his shoulder under his suit coat. “Louise Eldridge, my dear.” It was as if they were meeting after a long absence.

She looked at him and didn’t speak. If he wanted to shoot her, he could. He could have done that on the highway, and he could do it here. No glass window would keep her from dying on the spot.

He leaned both hands against her door and examined the car as if seeing it for the first time. “You hid from me in the parking lot of that cheap bistro.” He stared down at her through his black metal glasses, and she saw eyes that were not kind.

She smiled coolly. “Did you like Jeremy?”

“That creature,” he sneered. “Part of America’s trash. But, Louise”—his voice was like a cat’s purr—“you act so suspicious of me. You come to my house to snoop, then you flee like a criminal down the mountain and into the arms of sleazy people. What am I to conclude? If you had just announced yourself, you could have come in and had a drink.”

“I was merely curious about where you lived. I meant no harm.”

In the bright moonlight, she could see he was giving her one of his debonair smiles. A bit of a waste, she thought. “Then why didn’t you stop, instead of fleeing? You acted like a spy in a cheap thriller.”

She dared to look at him, so close to her beyond the
glass window. “It’s because you scared me. As if it were a crime, or something, to pass your house.”

Emboldened because he had not threatened her, she added with a shake of her long hair, “And it must be a special house, to be guarded with a high-voltage fence.”

That was going too far. He grabbed the handle of the car door and would have opened it if it hadn’t been locked. And done what—pulled her out and shaken her like a rag doll? Throttled her?

“I could—” he warned.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said, and raised the pepper spray. He stepped well back from the window, aware of how painful the spray could be. His hands on his hips now, he swiveled his head and scanned the area, as if deciding what to do next. Here they were, two cars with headlights on, only thirty feet or so from a nearly deserted highway. A little suspicious on the face of it, provided anyone noticed. Hope sprang in her breast.

He raised a warning hand. “Don’t try to release that spray at me. Stay out of my affairs, Louise. My house is my castle, as Colorado law provides. It is very private, and I have quite a collection there.”

She couldn’t believe it. This was like something out of a thirties movie. Reingold pulled a slim gold cigarette case from his breast pocket, opened it, and offered her one. Long cigarettes of some kind. When she declined, he selected one for himself and lit it with a lighter that shot the flame out sideways, defying the frisky little zephyrs that otherwise would have made lighting a cigarette a major undertaking.

“First,” he said, in his smooth voice, “I see you with Pete in the theater. Were you watching me as if I were doing something outside the bounds of the law? That, my dear, is nonsense.” Big exhale, and pause. Cigarette smoking seemed to turn people into actors.

“Next, you follow me to my house—which is clearly marked
No Trespassing
. I must warn you I cherish my privacy. I am not the only wealthy man to do so.”

Louise had been keeping an eye on the rear view mirror, watching the desultory traffic coming north on Route 36. A car had slowed; it was a white van with red lights on top. A sheriff’s department vehicle. She put her hand on her car horn and kept it there, until the van turned around and drove into the rutted dirt driveway.

Reingold hissed at her, “All right, here’s the sheriff’s car, but this is my last warning, Louise. If you spy on me again, or if you try to bring charges against one of the most respected businessmen in Boulder County, you will regret it.”

She realized that he was quite right. He held every advantage. She opened her window further and kept her hand on the horn, giving Reingold the dirtiest look she could muster. “If you’re lucky, I’ll tell the deputy how you were trying to help me with my stuck horn.”

By the time the sheriff’s department car was parked behind them and a figure had emerged with gun drawn, Reingold had on the million-dollar smile that had brought him so far in life already.

It was worse than she thought. The deputy knew Reingold. He gave only one suspicious look at the way the Jaguar blocked her smaller car on the dirt road, and then believed the logistical story the man cooked up. He also swallowed the story of the car horn, and offered to follow her home to see that the horn didn’t repeat its malfunction. Louise declined his offer, and thanked both of them, treating Reingold like a helpful stranger who had merely stopped on the highway to assist her.

The woman was
eindringlich
. Reingold liked the long swing of her hair, to say nothing of die muscular movement of her hips and legs. But all that aside—she could be terrible trouble, he thought, with that inflated ego she developed from having helped solve a couple of petty crimes. It was inconceivable that a woman like her could seriously affect what he had worked so hard to achieve.

Still, he had to find out everything he could about Mr. and Mrs. Louise Eldridge. He sped the Jaguar up the mountain road, taking the tight switchbacks like a race car at Indianapolis. Soon he pulled into the underground garage of his Boulder Heights home and raised a hand to check his wristwatch. Nine minutes. That was nearly a record.

He went into the house, took a chilled bottle of 1993 Ratzenberger Beerenauslese from the steel refrigerator, and opened it. With his glass of wine in hand, he walked back out to his porch with its fantastic view of the mountains, and looked to the north. All that beautiful land up there would soon belong to him. When it did, he intended to build a new house, on the highest and the best site on those thirteen thousand acres.

By the time Louise was settled in her own house, she was exhausted. She didn’t know what to make of Josef Reingold. Was he a killer or not? He could be involved in the Porter murders—perhaps putting Eddie up to it, with little or no trouble—and still not have wanted to kill her on a public roadway. After all, if she had been found dead, Jeremy the stripper easily could have fingered Reingold as the killer.

For the first time since arriving in Boulder County, she had to admit to herself that she was in too deep—with no family and no neighborhood full of friends to help. It was a
little like teasing a mountain lion, or bear, and expecting nothing bad to happen. And it appeared that she had teased both a mountain lion
and
a bear.

She wished she could talk to Bill. She missed him, and felt guilty that she had even
leaned
into Pete Fitzsimmons with romantic intent. And she desperately wanted to tell him that she was seriously over her head in the Porter Ranch affair.

Tonight, she took no chances against intruders of either the two-footed or the four-footed variety. She went into the bedroom and placed the pepper spray beside her bed. Fearing that was inadequate, she went through the house and jammed a wooden kitchen chair under each door. Knowing Reingold, and having seen some of the electronic contrivances at his house, she was sure he knew how to disarm a simple thing like a house alarm system. Dislodging the chairs would at least make enough noise to waken her.

Tomorrow, she would borrow that shotgun from Herb. A gun would be a great equalizer if Reingold, or anyone else, tried to attack her. As her daughter Janie might say, a gun ruled.

L
OUISE ROSE SATURDAY MORNING
with the sun. And when she did, she rued the fact that she had missed all the Colorado sunrises up until now by sleeping too late. Sunrise was a spectacular show in a place surrounded by foothills on three sides. Dramatic bands of deep rose clouds, like magma from an erupting volcano, filled a notch between the hills to the east, while a milder rose—the color of a Betty Pryor hybrid tea—was reflected onto the filigree clouds that floated in the West. She wondered how she could
go home to northern Virginia and live without these glorious skies.

With a jolt, she realized her stay in Colorado was coming to a close. As she looked out into the bright day, nothing seemed as desperate as it had last night. There was no need for her to borrow Herb’s shotgun after all, for within a few days she would be out of here, and the Porter murders would be left for someone else to fret over.

And there was Janie to think about. Louise had nearly forgotten she had to collect the girl tomorrow, the closing day of the wilderness camp. She called the YMCA Center in Estes Park, but was told by some person in the know that Janie and her campers were out climbing Long’s Peak. Long’s Peak—the very one in whose shadow they had taped one of the programs, and which had cried out to Louise, “Climb me.” She was glad somebody in the family was answering the challenge.

The person in the know—youth, or woman, she couldn’t tell from the high voice—had more to say. “Oh, yes, Janie Eldridge. A fine young woman. She knows a lot about the environment for her age. Quite a lecturer on the subject. She has made great contributions here at camp.”