The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery (33 page)

He looked relieved. “ ’Atta girl.”

“And then, I’m pullin’ out of here Wednesday morning, and I must say that I’ll be glad to be going.”

L
OUISE HAD TO HURRY TO GET
dressed for Jimmy and Sally Porter’s wake. As she did, a jumble of conversations ran through her head. Conversations, things she had seen.

She took out a fresh, long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and heavy leather belt, and put them on. For a moment she debated pulling out her leather-tooled cowboy boots, then thought better of it and put on her comfy hiking boots. No one around this part of the world got very dressed up, or cared if others did.
And tonight, at this wake, was no time to prance around in heels and a dress.

Over her shirt she put on a man’s fake suede vest she had picked up at the Boulder mall. She slipped Bill’s cellular phone into its inner pocket. Then, as an afterthought, she stuck her pepper spray and Swiss Army knife in the opposite pocket. Bulgy, but well balanced. Not even as heavy as Steffi Corbin’s silver squash-blossom necklace, and a heck of a lot more useful.

Louise stood still for a moment, all her senses on the alert. She felt a new revelation coming, lurking just below the surface of her consciousness. If she were Simenon’s Maigret, she would retreat to a table in the window of a small café, drink an aperitif or two or three, and brood heavily. At the end, all her thoughts would coalesce, and she would know the identity of the murderer!

But there was no café handy, and she was not Inspector Maigret. Besides, there wasn’t time for sitting and cogitating. She needed to put on her makeup and get going.

By the time she had applied a little foundation and lipstick, however, the many fragments had been refiled and resorted, with a different emphasis. While she had been playing detective again, zestfully searching for motives and suspects, she had ignored one significant avenue of approach.

It was a long shot, but what was there to lose?

No one had solved the murders yet, certainly not the sheriff, who didn’t seem to
want
to solve them. The long shot involved the oldest motive of them all. Either that was the answer, or there was a conspiracy behind the ruthless killings on the ranch—and someone she was very fond of could be right in the thick of it.

The wake was the place where all of this could be sorted out. All the players would be there.

But her talk with Sheriff Tatum had left her feeling
defenseless. Tatum had warned her to stay out of the Porter matter. She was afraid that if she did get into trouble tonight, she couldn’t count on the sheriff to help. Then she remembered there was help at hand. Sergeant Rafferty in Lyons.

She called the Lyons substation, and her mood lifted when a woman’s voice answered…“Sheriffs Department, Sergeant Rafferty.”

“This is Louise Eldridge. I need to talk to you about a touchy situation. I know Sheriff Tatum is your boss, but—is there any way you could help me?”

They talked about the wake that night, and Louise’s suspicions. Sergeant Rafferty asked a few questions, pausing as if she were writing something down.

“Let me think about this for a minute.” Louise waited in silence for what seemed like an eternity before the woman spoke again. Her words came out slowly and carefully. “I think it’s only right that the sheriff’s department be represented at the wake. So, why don’t I plan to meet you there?”

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

It was the lull between the lunch and dinner shifts. Louise knew she had to be quick, or Ann would be sitting in her driveway waiting. She leaned close to the screen door of the Gold Strike Café, and only then could she see Ruthie Dunn in her faded flowery cotton dress, sitting to one side of the kitchen, her stockinged feet propped up on a three-step folding ladder. Her glasses were resting in her lap and she was staring into space, while a blatting radio voice emanated from the restaurant proper. It was a conservative talk show that Ruthie disliked, but left on for her customers. The woman herself claimed to be a liberal Democrat, which Louise teased her about, saying it made
her part of a vanishing species. The show had at least one good point. It had effectively put the old woman into a relaxing daydream.

“Ruthie,” she called softly, not wanting to startle her. The white-curled head shook a little, as if the old woman were waking from sleep. She put on her glasses and peered at the door. “Louise, come in. No, better still, I’ll come out and we’ll sit in the afternoon cool.”

She slipped on her tennis shoes and carefully tied them before joining Louise on the porch. The woman looked tired, and still faced a hectic evening shift of tourists and locals who depended on her for the evening’s sustenance. Louise wondered how much longer she could keep up this very full-time job as restaurant owner, manager, and chief cook.

“Ooh,” Ruthie said suddenly, in a tone that indicated a moral failure on her part, “I didn’t get us anything to drink.”

“I don’t need it,” Louise assured her, “unless you need something.” She urged Ruthie to sit in the metal lawn chair. “I’ve come to bother you only for a minute—and, incidentally, thank you for putting in a good word for me with Sergeant Rafferty.”

“Oh? Did you need the sergeant?”

“You never know when you might need the law to help you,” Louise said, and let it go at that. “Ruthie, do you recall saying that you couldn’t remember much about the past?”

“Yeah, and that’s God’s truth. I put bad things out of my mind.”

“Ruthie, suppose I told you that your brain is like a computer, and that it stores millions of bits of information—sort of files them away. Things Sally Porter might have mentioned to you recently. Things from years ago.”

Ruthie chuckled. “I’ve heard that, but it doesn’t help me remember things I’ve forgotten.”

“Let’s assume that you have more stored in your head about Porter Ranch than you think,” said Louise, and smiled engagingly; she was giving Ruthie her strongest sales pitch.

“Well, I guess I probably do, but how to get it out?”

“First, of all, are you comfortable?”

“Sure am,” said Ruthie, rocking a little in the old metal chair.

“Why don’t you take off your glasses? You don’t have to see, you just have to remember.” She looked at the tennis shoes. “Want me to loosen your shoes?”

The woman chuckled. “You sure are a determined one, Louise—like a dog with a bone. Naw, my feet are just fine the way they are.” But she took off the plastic-framed glasses and laid them in her lap, then put her hands on the arms of the chair and tipped her head back a little. “Next you’ll be telling me to close my eyes.”

“Good idea—close your eyes and relax, like a limp dish towel.”

There was a smile on the old woman’s lips, but she closed her eyes and looked completely at ease. “Now, just exactly what do you want me to
retrieve?”
she asked in her friendly twang. “What are these things filed under?”

When she returned home, Louise paused only to put her purse in the house and note that she still had half an hour before Ann arrived before heading down the road toward the creek. Daisy the llama and Herb’s horse stared at her curiously as she passed. “Hi, Daisy, hi, Horse,” she called self-consciously. The horse whinnied.

No one answered Dr. Gary Rostov’s bell, but Louise would not be thwarted so easily. She went around the lowslung
green house to find him. He was sitting on an old bench with his half-glasses perched on his bald forehead, sipping something from a mug and staring into the fast-moving stream. He seemed oblivious to all around him, the cliff above which two eagles soared, looking for prey. The tumult of butterflies gliding back and forth with the skill of aviators. The congregation of clouds that would have sent artists rushing to their easels. In his lap was a pile of periodicals, all opened, as if he had sampled them all at the same time. Nearby was a weathered little table with a celadon teapot.

Dr. Rostov had not yet detected Louise’s presence, and she was reluctant to break into this moment of unusual peace. Finally, she said, “I hate to interrupt you—it’s so utterly peaceful here.”

He turned slowly to observe her. He did not seem startled. “Hello,” he called. “I would venture that you’re the woman Herb told me about—the television personality.” She recognized a Boston accent.

He stood up and stretched to his full height of more than six feet, extending a slim hand. They introduced themselves. “I was just sitting here, enjoying my licorice-root tea. Will you join me?”

She did, and with very little encouragement, Dr. Rostov gave her a thumbnail sketch of his background. How he had become interested in the field of post-traumatic stress thirty years ago, when the term was not even formulated, and his current research on survivor guilt.

“It’s Greek to me, I must admit,” said Louise. “All I have is a pop view of the subject, which could be quite inaccurate. But I have some candidates for post-traumatic stress disorder—actually, several of them. I wanted to test them on you—you know, give you a set of life circumstances, and ask you if these people could be suffering from this problem.”

“And just what do they have to do with you, Louise—if I may call you Louise. Is it something work-related, or something to do with your family?”

“Neither, I’m afraid. Actually, it could have something to do with the Porter murders.”

His eyes behind his glasses were confused, and he looked very much the absentminded professor. “I—I’m terribly sorry. I just flew back to Colorado after a six-week teaching stint in Los Angeles. Have there been
murders
around here? My word! And that name is faintly familiar. Why? Porter. I
know
I’ve missed something. But do tell me all the particulars, and then maybe I can give you some clue as to whether or not your candidates fit the profile of one who is suffering post-traumatic stress.”

And so they sat by the river, dark and beautiful as it tumbled over the rock rubble from the nearby mountains, watching butterflies and talking about the somber side of human behavior.