The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery (31 page)

A
NN’S EYES GREW WIDER, AS
she ate her Cobb salad and listened to Louise’s stories, Reingold at the movie, Reingold at the topless bar, then Reingold in the car chase. When she came to the part played by Jeremy the stripper, her companion bowed her head and hastily swallowed before breaking into a fit of laughter that caused a couple at a nearby table to look over at them curiously.

The young land officer said, “That’s going to be a great story to tell your grandchildren—if you live long enough
to have any.” Then, mortified, she realized what she had said. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be so glib. Being chased on that road must have been terrifying. You take a lot of chances.”

Louise had lost her appetite for her soup, which constituted lunch today. “Reingold didn’t harm me, but he was absolutely furious to think I was spying on him. The man is a mystery.”

Next she related the scene in the kitchen of Porter Ranch with Eddie and Frank. “I still have an uneasy feeling about Frank’s safety. It’s a toss-up as to who is more suspicious, Josef Reingold, with Eddie as his possible accomplice, or the combination of Mark Payne and Earl Tatum.”

Ann said, “Developers—every one of them—profit no matter
who
killed Jimmy and Sally Porter. If Sheriff Tatum and Mark Payne are partners of some kind, and it looks like they are, they needn’t have committed the crimes themselves. In fact, any one of them could have hired someone else to do it.”

Louise looked carefully at Ann, and wondered if what she said next would be going too far. “Do you want to tell me what happened between you and Mark Payne?”

Ann bit her lips together, then seemed to make a decision. “I was wondering when you’d ask. We’re not on, well, good terms. It wasn’t too long after his wife died in the accident. He came around and softened me up so I’d go out with him. It was fun for a while—we skied and hiked, and that part was good. But he does drink, and that’s when things got impossible. So I told him I wanted to end our relationship.”

“How long had you been dating?”

“Oh, six months. And, you know, sleeping together…” Her face turned red. “After I broke it off, he came over one night when I was all ready for bed and
insisted on coming in. To ‘talk’ I let him, not knowing how loaded he was. And then we had a terrible fight and…”

“He … forced you?”

Ann leaned forward, her lips trembling, but in the end she couldn’t say the words. She only nodded.

“Oh, Ann!” Louise reached over and gripped her friend’s hand. “Did you … what did you do?”

Ann pulled her hand away and sat back. After a moment she said, “It’s what I didn’t do. I didn’t bring charges. I couldn’t. There I was, recently promoted to senior land officer for Boulder Parks and Open Space—”

Her voice shook. “How could I bring charges against my lover, when he was the biggest builder in the county? The terrible thing is, I’ve always regretted it, even though I know it would have injured my career. I would have been that raging, illogical female who ‘consented’ for six months, and then changed her mind.” Her breaths came heavy and uneven, her chest heaving.

“Ann, I’m so sorry,” said Louise. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. But I did it for a reason.”

Her companion nodded, silent for a moment as she tried to regain her composure. Finally, she said, “I know why. You wonder if Mark Payne is a man who could kill in cold blood. Louise, I’ve never forgiven him. I
do
think he could. After what happened to me, I even wonder about that accident that killed his wife …”

“You mean, he could have set it up?”

“When he’s drunk and high, he has this monster inside of him—and I think it’s still there.”

They fell silent as they turned back to their food. Louise realized there were now four strong suspects in the Porter family murders. Josef Reingold, Earl Tatum, Eddie Porter, and Mark Payne. A moment later, she acknowledged that she must add a fifth. Pete Fitzsimmons.

She smiled sadly at her companion. “You realize I won’t be around when all this is finally cleared up. I leave the middle of next week.”

Ann’s face fell, as if she were going to cry. “I know. I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too. I’m off to my next stop on the West Coast, and then home to confront real life. Our older daughter, Martha, will be home from her latest internship, but just briefly. Then her college term begins. Bill will be back from his latest assignment—” Her brow furrowed as she thought of her unresolved problems with her husband.

The tawny eyes were examining her closely. “I’m having difficulties in my personal life, too.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” replied Louise, in a voice with as little emotion as if Ann had just disclosed she had a rip in her jeans. She patted her lips with her napkin and reached for the check. She had known Ann had some kind of trouble in her marriage, but she had no desire to hear intimate details, any more than she would have shared such details with another woman herself. Furthermore, how did this woman know that she and Bill were having problems?

Ann said coolly, “We’ll split that bill, okay? And don’t you worry, Louise—I’m not about to dump more details of my sex life on you.”

She had seen right through Louise and her up-tight Presbyterian background. Louise realized what a hypocrite she was, encouraging Ann to spill her guts to her—about everything but her marriage.
No sex talk, please: I’m a prude
. “Look, I didn’t mean—”

Ann interrupted. “It’s okay. Actually, it does have to do with sex—but it’s strictly clinical. Luke wants me to quit work to undergo in vitro fertilization again.”

There was relief in Louise’s voice—this was indeed clinical, and wouldn’t involve strange positions, practices, or partners. “Oh, I see. That’s unfortunate. I’ve read that
low sperm count is a problem in all the developed nations. But you—you don’t want to try it—again?”

“No. You may not know how traumatic it is. You and Bill were lucky. You just went ahead and had children in your early twenties. But if you’re like me, with the biological clock ticking, it’s totally—”

“Unrelaxing?”

“More than that. It’s tyrannical, trying to get pregnant. When to do it, when to hold off. Fertility pills. We’ve tried in vitro a couple of times. We could spend fifty thousand or more and still not have a baby. I have several friends who’ve failed at it, too.” Ann’s anguished eyes sought some answer in the ceiling. “Now he wants me to quit my job so I can make a total commitment to the process.” Tears sprang to her eyes.

Louise knew well how Ann loved her job. “Oh, Ann.”

The waiter, observing that their conversation had a new lease on life, wandered over and refilled their water glasses. When he left, Ann continued. “There’s more to it than just the anxiety,” she said. “I think even childless people can have a purpose. I adore my job, and I know it helps thousands of people, including children. What I really hate is what happens to some of these women. Acquiring a baby is
everything
to them. They’ve labored so hard to come by a baby that it’s as if the baby is a mirror of themselves—you should hear them.”

She looked around, to be sure that no one at a nearby table fit this category. “One in particular I know. She talks to her baby in this low voice, telling the child all these things that relate to the mother, as if she’s inoculating that baby with her ideas. So that the little creature can grow up and be just as wonderful as the parent!”

“In other words, she’s very proud of her new possession.”

“Exactly,” said Ann, delighted that Louise seemed to
understand. “Now, my dad and mom were great. I remember them for what they
didn’t
do. They held me on a loose rein, although, on the other hand, they wouldn’t have let me crash and burn…”

Louise looked across the table into the intense, yellow-green eyes, and could not imagine Ann crashing and burning, for this woman was tough as nails. Beyond that, she didn’t know Ann Evans any better than she knew the other principal players out here. Why was
Ann
totally free from suspicion? Louise sensed that, under the right conditions, the woman could be quite ruthless. And why not now? She had just lost an opportunity to provide the public with a wilderness park almost as large as the city of Boulder!

A quick scenario played through her mind:
Jimmy Porter is gunned down. Frustrated by the loss of her multimillion-dollar open space deal, senior land officer systematically kills, first, Jimmy’s turncoat daughter Sally … next, the reckless son Eddie, and finally, Jimmy’s wrong-thinking fiancée, Grace … leaving good son Frank to do the right thing
.

Louise pulled herself from her reverie, feeling cheap. The fact that she suspected Ann indicated the pathetic quality of her investigation. Unable to get the dirt on genuine suspects in the case, she’d reached out frantically to find a new one. Next she’d think Harriet Bingham was tottering around with a shotgun, offing people just for pleasure.

Ann was saying, “My parents stayed out of my business, and that’s all I asked, even when I did things like climb the toughest rock face at Eldorado Springs. They were silent, and silence, to me, meant support. My dad, who’s a lawyer, could have told me how disappointed he was when I went into environmental studies, but he kept mum.”

She gave Louise a radiant smile. “And my career has worked out so well.”

“But now, Luke wants the two of you to have your own child.”

“Yes. I’m thirty-eight, and if we don’t do it now, I’ll be too old. What’s worst of all about this is that I don’t agree with the original premise that we must have children of our own to be a perfect family. We can adopt.”

Louise admired Ann, but the woman certainly had odd taste in men. First, she got mixed up with the violence-prone Mark Payne. Then, she married a man who insisted on a child of
his
blood, just like a European monarch. Yet Luke couldn’t be that intractable. After all, he did like gardening and flowers. He’d probably come around to the idea of adoption.

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what more to say to him. He’s off on a long business trip”—she blushed—“and I’m hoping maybe the reunion when he comes back will be the time something happens. Then I’ll be off the hook. Otherwise…”

“I know what you mean. I have a problem I can’t make up my mind about. It’s just like yours.”

“How could it possibly be?”

“Your argument is not about a baby. It’s whether you or your spouse is going to determine your future.”

Ann sighed. “You’re right.”

“It’s the same with Bill and me. I love him about as much as a woman can.” She pushed a strand of long chestnut hair back from her face and gave Ann a glance, wondering if she were revealing too much to a person she didn’t know very well. Yet she could hardly stop in mid-story. “It’s about his taking a job overseas. If he does, my career suffers just when it’s going so well. I don’t know if I’d … ever feel quite the same way about him again.”

“I wonder if there’s a happy solution for either one of us,” said Ann. Then, she tried to lighten the conversation.
“But it may not be so serious for you—you don’t pay much attention to what your husband says, anyway.”

The words crowded in on her.
You don’t pay much attention to what your husband says
… “What do you mean by that?”

“The Porter murders. You’ve gone right ahead and investigated them, even though you told me Bill didn’t want you to…”

Louise frowned, for what Ann said held at least a kernel of truth. She needed a rapprochement with Bill. Suddenly one came to mind. Maybe she could work out a deal with WTBA-TV to spend part of the time in the States, and the greater share with Bill in Vienna. Maybe her cohost John Batchelder could step up and shoulder half the program. That way, she would not have to give up her job or her marriage. Of course, Bill might not like this plan, either.…

These interior thoughts completely occupied her, until her companion brought her back to the present.

“Louise, are you all right? I didn’t mean to upset you by anything I said.…”

Louise moved onto a safer topic. “What were we talking about—investigations? You know, this hasn’t been much of an investigation, Ann, just visiting the ranch with you, doing a little searching through records … Maybe I should have done more.”

“What did you do to help solve those other murders?”

“Not that much. Sometimes Bill and Janie and I did a little surveillance. Without physical evidence to check out—and the police have to do that, usually—you just kind of wait, and maybe nudge a little, and something happens.”

“
Nudge
—and then something happens? And then what?”

“You can try to stay out of the way, but if you find
yourself deep into it, you have to use all your wits. It becomes a question of who survives the final battle.”

Ann shuddered. “Good grief, Louise, that sounds awful! A final battle?”

“Believe me, Ann, nothing like that’s going to happen. I’m talking about a couple of situations that got out of hand. What happened then could never happen again.”

As they left the Rattlesnake Grill, she and Ann made arrangements to go to the wake together. Ann would pick Louise up; that way, the land officer would have a chance to talk to the Porter brothers and do a little persuading. And Louise might be able to get in a private word with Frank Porter about using the ranch for location shooting.