The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  “Really?” She thoughtfully stroked her chin and peered over her dark sunglasses at him. He’d already warned her to keep her sunglasses on, lest she burn up her eyeballs. Now, he had a cure for her dry skin.

  “Heck,” he said, shoving his hat back even further on his curly head, “I’m the kind of man who has solutions for everythin’. Got any female problems y’need advice on?”

  She gave him a dirty look.

  So much for letting her guard down. The man was certifiably crude. She could either fight with him, or ignore him. She decided to ignore him, but it was hard to do, especially since he kept shooting her looks. He was amused at her outfit—her “location” clothes that she’d unfortunately decided to wear: white cowboy hat covering her long brown hair, scratchy new plaid shirt, western neckerchief, too-tight denim pants with flashy belt and dangling Swiss Army knife, silly-looking tooled cowboy boots that tilted her forward like a butt-thrusting hussy. She was painfully aware of how Nouveau West she must look.

  As for him, he was one of those tall, craggy-faced men in worn clothes who blended in out here like a clump of sagebrush—a huge contrast to the men with whom she usually associated in Washington. Louise gave a resigned little sigh. Washington, at the moment, seemed a million miles away. Men in the nation’s capital, in their uniform of suits, ties, and leather dress shoes, would appear silly to this ruffian. But they had charm. He had none. They had manners. His were nonexistent. No, Pete was obviously a different sort of person. He would never be a politician, since he seemed to care nothing for the impression he made on people.

  She did concede that he could be called handsome, with those incredible eyebrows, the faded blue eyes, and the curly hair—although he badly needed a few extra pounds. With him, faded was definitely in, bright was out. Many washings had reduced the plaid design in his shirt to a shadow. His old-fashioned, many-pocketed fisherman’s vest was old enough to have been inherited from his grandfather; it made her think of her own worn, many-pocketed gardening shorts. His filthy felt hat with its ratty sheepskin sweatband around it most likely seldom left his head.

  As for the age of this ill-mannered, scrawny cameraman, she guessed early forties, like her. That’ll make for a fair contest, she decided.

  Probably to test whether she’d made progress conquering her acrophobia, he hurled the truck around the corrugated edge of another curve. This time, she rode it out with her eyes closed and said nothing; her pride wouldn’t let her.

  He gave her an approving look. “Good girl. By the time we wind our way over the top of these foothills, you’re gonna be cured of your silly fears.” He reached a sinewy arm across her to the glove compartment box and snapped it open. “Look in there,” he said, “and grab those soda crackers. They’ll help settle your stomach.”

  She found the little package, unwrapped it, and took a grateful bite of a cracker. Then she shot him a glance. “You think I’m not at home out here in the West, and you’re right—I’m not.” She quickly gobbled down a second cracker. “It may be hard for you to understand, but I prefer Washington any day. It may be a steam bath, but it’s not like this—so hot and dry that it parches your skin. The land there gently undulates; it doesn’t leap up at you in big lumps and cliffs.”

  “Sorry ya feel that way about the West. Maybe you’ll change your mind.” They bumped along in silence for a few moments, and, despite all odds, her stomach began to feel better. Then Pete drawled, “Y’know, Louise, just the other night I happened to see that TV commercial you’re in—the one about a mulching lawn mower. Man, was it corny!” He chuckled at the memory of it.

  How many times had people laughed at that commercial? For the umpteenth time, Louise explained. “It is a little embarrassing, prancing around that mower and proclaiming its virtues like a circus barker. But you’d be surprised how well they pay me.…”

  He rattled on as if he hadn’t heard her. “You do okay on your gardening show—ya got that edgy, East Coast delivery, but it comes across real well.”

  Edgy, East Coast delivery, “Thanks, Pete. You’re generous with compliments.”

  “You’re welcome. I thought I’d get off on the right foot with you since we’re shootin’ packages for six Gardening with Nature shows.” His smile seemed sincere. “WTBA-TV must love you—syndicatin’ you all over the place. Your family come out with ya?”

  Louise ignored the way her stomach clenched again. “Um, almost. My husband has some business out here, but isn’t here at the moment. And our daughter Janie is spending some time as a counselor at a wilderness camp in Estes Park.”

  “So that’s the story. Well, for a nice family woman, you sure have a lurid past. I’ve heard about those murders you solved.”

  She remained stubbornly silent; she had no obligation to provide people with gory details.

  Pete appeared unfazed. Now he was reaching back into the jump seat, one hand on the wheel, the other rummaging through an open camera bag labeled Domke. He explained happily to Louise, “I want to take a few shots. The light’s perfect. It just matches your smile.” He retrieved a Nikon and held it in one hand, expertly fiddling with it as if subduing a small animal.

  “Did I hear the word murder?” It was a soft voice from the back seat. Ann Evans had apparently decided to join the conversation; the senior land officer set aside her papers and leaned forward to catch up, the motion causing a hank of beautiful, straight hair to fall over her sincere face. Louise took her first close look at this woman decked out in tan safari shirt and shorts, and saw surprising lines of care in her face. Ann was older than she had first thought, maybe somewhere in her late thirties. As blond as sunshine, she was wearing no makeup, and had green eyes like a cat’s. The world would have considered her a beauty, if only she had thought she were one.

  “Oh, just a few situations where I happened to be around,” said Louise with a gesture of dismissal. “I didn’t do much.”

  “Those murders up in Connecticut,” said Pete. “I know you helped solve them. And when your TV buddy was killed, you caught that guy, too, didn’t you—or was it your teenage daughter?” The camera was up to Pete’s eye now, whining again and again as the film advanced.

  “What are you doing!” Louise cried, involuntarily putting a hand up to her face at the same time the car swerved. Pete calmly pulled them back from the edge of disaster and grinned. “Sorry, folks. Can’t miss the opportunity to take a picture. That golden backlighting—man, it hit your face just right.”

  Like every cameraman she had known in her two years in TV, Pete was obsessed with light. Good light meant you turned your attention from anything else you were doing—even driving on a steep road with no sissy side rails—and started shooting pictures.

  Louise looked at Ann Evans in dismay. Surely this young county official didn’t want to die, either.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured them, “I’m almost done and I won’t scare y’all again.” This time, Pete simply held the camera in the air and without drawing it to his eye got off a couple more shots. Then he unceremoniously dumped the apparatus back into the carryall. “Now tell us more about those murders, Louise. Was it you, or your family, who caught the killers?”

  She gave him a stony glance. “If you keep both hands on the wheel, I’ll tell you.”

  “Promise.”

  “We did it together,” she said shortly, then pressed her lips together, like a stubborn child.

  “That’s it?”

  Ann, the diplomat, stepped in to mend the breach. “Gosh, I’d like to hear about that some time, but maybe not now. Louise, your TV show is doing so well. I’m glad you came out here to do programs. It’s terrific publicity for our open space program.”

  Louise smiled. “Finally, because of support for the idea from the President, people are beginning to understand what ‘open space’ means.”

  “And once they see your Gardening with Nature program, they’ll know all about the tracts of land purchased or donated to the counties, to keep
them out of development,” Ann enthused. “It’s worked beautifully in Boulder. Thirty years ago, the city fathers decided they wanted to keep these foothills untouched, and they succeeded.”

  Pete chimed in. “Now you have a pretty lil’ mountain town surrounded with enough land to make two more cities of the same size. Pretty darned luxurious, if y’ask me. Boulder sits on, say, sixteen thousand acres. But encircling it is over thirty thousand acres of parks and open space. And that’s just the city of Boulder. The county’s out there, too, buying open space land like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Darn right,” said Ann, her pretty bottom lip stuck out defensively. “Fifty-four thousand acres.”

  “That could be three more cities,” grumbled Pete.

  Louise ignored him. This boorish cameraman sounded like a developer. She turned to Ann and said, “Marty Corbin has always wanted to do a show out here. Open space issues tie in so well with my being a member of the National Environmental Commission—”

  The cameraman chuckled. “Man, that must make you a pawn of every owl-eyed environmentalist that ever lived.”

  “Pete.” Ann shook her head, as if to intimate that Pete could not be taken seriously.

  Louise went on. “Of course, we’ll still talk about flowers and trees, but we want to expand the show a bit to touch on things like preserving wilderness, saving habitats, creating wildlife corridors, and finding new ways to purify water. Boulder County’s right in the middle of all that.”

  “You’ll love doing a show at Porter Ranch,” gushed Ann. “It has everything: meadows, valleys, cliffs, special rock formations, little lakes, even marshes. About the best assemblage of flora on the Front Range of the Rockies—as well as some pesky weeds we’ll see today while we’re up there. And the animals, we have all sorts of animal and bird species—elk, deer, raptors, jackrabbits. And, of course, bears and lions—”

  Pete skinned a look back at Ann. “Okay, slow down there, pardner—you’re speedin’. Are you gonna tell Louise the dark side, how lions’ve been killin’ people?”

  Ann made a gesture as if to minimize his statement. “Now, Louise, don’t you worry. There have been only three deaths from mountain lions in Colorado in the past several years.”

  “Yeah,” said Pete drily, “only three. Includin’ a skinny twelve-year-old boy hiking with his parents in Rocky Mountain National Park a month ago. He was only a hundred or so feet from his family when the lion selected him for his dinner. Ripped him apart before they even rounded the bend.”

  Louise had thought her stomach was settled, but now it rumbled threateningly. Janie—“Surely that was a fluke.…”

  “Two things are happenin’ out here, Louise,” he said. “One’s the new folks tryin’ to meld in with the old settlers who farmed and mined the land. The other is the new folks disturbin’ the hell out of the wildlife.” He shot a glance back at Ann. “She calls what’s happened to these animals ‘loss of habitat.’ Translated, that means the yuppies now share space with wild creatures. So rattlesnakes are biting the kiddies in the backyard, bears are walkin’ in people’s back doors and stealing their Entenmann cookies off the counters, deer are eating their best landscape bushes, and the occasional lion nabs a dog or a baby—”

  The county officer admonished him from the back seat. “Pete! Don’t make it sound worse than it is! No babies have—”

  “Baby dogs, is what I was gonna say. Hey, look, Ann, I’m only telling Louise the facts—nothing more. Of course, there is die trade-off. We may suffer the occasional slaughter by wild animal, but we don’t have a helluva lotta drive-by shootings.” He paused to let that sink in. “The fact is, the newspapers don’t even bother to report the death ofpets any more. They get eaten by the dozens.”

  His face darkened, and Louise realized that suddenly the issue had become personal. “I tell you, if my cat gets eaten, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  “Hell to pay?” said Ann. “Just what does that mean?”

  “I’ll sue the city of Boulder for not controlling the wild animals around here, that’s what.”

  Ann made a skeptical noise. “How about just blocking the cat door,” she suggested in a condescending tone.

  Pete shook his head. “Aw, I couldn’t do that to him. He’s too wild. It would kill his spirit.”

  Louise gave Pete a long look, and saw the flashing pale blue eyes, still full of mischief. Devilish mischief. Not only would he rejoice if she finally got sick, but he was also trying to scare her witless before she even got started. Well, he wouldn’t succeed. She turned back to Ann to talk about more positive things. “About this Porter Ranch. Are you the one who persuaded the rancher to sell his property to the county?”

  Ann blushed and could not help smiling. Louise smiled with her, and even included Pete in the smile, since he was driving more carefully now. “Yes,” said the land officer, “but I was assisted by, well, Cupid. Old Jimmy Porter-he’s a darling; I love him myself. There’s just something about him. What was I saying? Oh, yes. He fell in love with a schoolteacher he’s known for years, and decided to live in town after his wedding. That made selling a lot easier for him.”

  She pointed a finger out the window. They had reached one of the highest points on the road. The snow-capped back range of the Rockies had come into sight, while in the foreground, cattle grazed on a downward-slanted meadow. It looked just like a postcard Louise had seen in a Boulder drugstore when she’d bought a value-size bottle of aspirin. “Almost thirteen thousand new acres of open space,” Ann was saying in a reverent voice. “There’s no question that this is the best thing I’ve been able to accomplish—to make all this land available to the people, so they can enjoy it, walk it, ride horses or bikes on it…”

  As Louise gazed out, her own hand relaxed on the handgrip above the door. Her stomach was no longer demanding her attention. How could she not like this beautiful place?

  Pete had subsided into silence but was keeping a close eye on Louise. Just why he had to do that, she didn’t know. She curbed a sigh and reflected that this wasn’t the only weird cameraman she had met since she got into the television business two years ago. And it probably wouldn’t be the last.

  Then they pulled over the top of the ridge, and she gasped. They were descending into an enclosed mountain valley, skirted by a rapidly running branch of the South St. Vrain River. Amid clusters of pines, lush meadows, and granite outcroppings stood a ranch house in time-stained brown wood. Around it was a scattering of outbuildings, and a few horses grazing in one of many corrals. Beyond the ranch house Louise saw a rock ledge that apparently marked the dropoff to a lower tier of land, and a vast woods that partially obscured a second ranch house.

  One might have thought the fierce chaos that accompanied the prehistoric upthrust of the Rocky Mountains had left this wild array of cracked and fissured cliffs, flattened plains, and swift-running stream. But Louise knew millions of years of erosión from wind and water, heat and cold, had played their part in creating this complicated beauty.

  Jimmy Porter’s great-grandfather had found this place the perfect refuge for his ranch, his cattle, and his family. What she was looking at was a picture of self-sufficiency: she knew all this from the piles of careful research for the program, piles that she had spent the last few days poring over. And now it was here before her. A ranch house with its own barn, toolshed, chicken coop, hayfield, and hay storage shed. An irrigation system of pipes and flumes as intricate as, but more workable than, a Rube Goldberg invention, to bring water to fields, vegetable garden, and house. A nearby abandoned sawmill and blacksmith shop that had enabled the construction of buildings and maintenance of animals. A pioneer family had lived and thrived here with little help from the outside world.

  “Told ya,” said Pete jubilantly, as the pickup slowly glided down into the valley. “We got here in one piece.”

  Three weathered wooden poles, two verticals connected by a crossbar, formed the classic ranch entrance. From it hung an old
sign that emitted a high squeak as the wind gently pushed it. It read PORTER RANCH, and looked as if it could have been put up a century ago.

  Where the fence joined the ranch entrance, the rancher’s wife had decided to improve on nature, and succeeded. She’d established a perennial wildflower garden that created a stunning picture. The flowers grew lavishly around an ancient farm wagon, now rusted with age, that was the garden’s folksy centerpiece. In the peak of bloom, the brilliant perennials spanned the color spectrum: yarrow for gold, Mexican hat for orange; poppies for red; coneflower, bee balm, and liatris for purple; columbine for blue; wild phlox for lavender.

  “Oh,” said Pete softly, as the truck passed through the entrance. But it was not the marvelous flowers he was looking at. They all saw the horrible sight at once. The fencing that extended from either side of the gate ran through the open meadow into a cluster of pine trees at each end. Something was sprawled over the fence and hanging above the perennial bed. Something that, at first glance, looked like a bag of bones, or a diminutive scarecrow wearing faded shirt, jeans, and well-worn boots.

  As they drove closer, Louise could see blood splattered everywhere—besmirching the perfect perennial garden.

  “My God, it’s Jimmy!” Ann grabbed for the door and started to open it.

  “Hold it,” growled Pete, twisting around to face her. With a long, muscular arm, he pulled the door shut. “That man’s head is blown apart. Who knows where the killer is? Ladies, hit the floor, now. We’re getting out of here!”

  Louise slid down on the floor and braced herself against the door as Pete ducked his head and wheeled the vehicle in a tight circle. As they sped away from the ranch house, she wondered what kind of cruel joke this was—to encounter a murder in the most beautiful landscape she had ever seen. It was almost like a dream. That bag of bones on the fence was a man, granted, but a complete stranger to her. Then she stared up at Pete Fitzsimmons, crouched at the wheel beside her and driving like a madman again, away from danger; The horrid dream became real, and so did the shriveled corpse on the fence. Jimmy Porter had been a real man, probably a rugged, lusty man, like Pete. He had lived and loved, worked, and raised a family, and for his troubles had had his head shot off right there in his own yard.