The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  But it had been an early start, because it was Thursday now, and they were running out of time. Marty Corbin’s extra days off had succeeded in condensing the shoots into four days, and they had a lot of work to do.

  Louise had made a major mistake. She had overslept and not had time to eat breakfast. Now, she was famished, and had a fantasy of reaching down to scrabble for roots, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. For more than an hour, she and Marty and the crew had stumbled after the farmer through the furrows, with their agrarian informant yelling, “Take care, folks, not to step on those tomatoes.” They followed this tiller of the soil over ditches, up hill and down dale, and across a rickety two-by-twelve plank spanning a roaring stream.

  When Pete greeted her today, he looked grim and had none of his usual quips. He told her, “I’ve been tonkin’ real hard about Sally Porter’s murder.”

  “Pete, they’re not even sure yet—”

  “Aw, c’mon, Louise, face it. She was just plain run off that cliff. If that isn’t murder, I don’t know what is. Sally Porter wasn’t one of those flatlanders who are always falling to their deaths because they’re too dumb to know that a mountain is up in the air.”

  “I agree with you—I was just trying to tell you what Tatum said.”

  “Tatum.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ve done my best for Earl. I gave him a blowup of the picture of the person in the woods.”

  “And?”

  The cameraman’s chin jutted out defensively. “‘Inconclusive,’ the dumb jerk tells me.” Louise could tell it was more of an insult to his photographic abilities than to any detecting skills he might have; he had probably nurtured the hope that his photo, as in the movie Blowup, would disclose the killer. He told her, “Stop by my studio in town. You can see what you think. Whoever it is probably killed both those people.”

  She looked at him and wondered: Were she, Pete, and Ann the only ones who suspected that the deaths were a sinister, connected plot?

  They had taped at two locations in the fields, and were now doubling back to the pumpkins, huge, orange-red spheres that looked as though they came out of an illustration of a Mother Goose rhyme. The farmer dropped back in step with Louise, who could feel her body sagging in the heat. He was lean, handsome, and sunburned, and she thought he could have been a movie star, or a model, had he not dedicated his life to something infinitely more worthwhile: growing healthy food for people to eat.

  He looked down from his handsome heights at her sad-sack appearance. “Hungry?”

  “Famished. No breakfast.”

  He reached down, plucked a tomato off a vine and thrust it in her hand, then strode over to a nearby row of corn, grabbed an ear, ripped the leaves down, and brought it back to her. “There. They’ll keep you for awhile.”

  “Eat raw corn?”

  “Hell, we eat it all through the corn season, Louise. Believe me, you’ll like it.”

  She took a bite out of the pearly white rows, and it tasted delicious. Next, she chomped into the warm flesh of the tomato, and realized this was one of the best breakfasts she had ever eaten.

  Following the line of the furrow, she lagged behind the group, slurping down the last of the tomato. It took some doing to keep the juice off her shirt.

  Suddenly, sharp noises rang out and she realized her hat had blown off.

  She was surprised to see the farmer and her crew running toward her. Transferring the tomato to the hand that held the corn, she walked over and picked up the hat. There were two neat holes in the crown that went in one side and came out the other.

  The hand holding the hat began to shake, as the message about what had just happened was transmitted from brain to nervous system. There seemed to be nothing better to do than slump down between two rows of tomatoes. Their tendrilled arms seemed to reach out to protect her, their pungent scent like a comforting anesthesia. As if turning off a switch, Louise let her muscles relax and simply lay there. She began to feel a part of the earth, this good-smelling earth, so crumbly and rich to the touch. She picked up a handful of it and ran it through her fingers.

  At least it prevented her from thinking about the fact that someone had just tried to shoot her head off.

  Louise’s producer and her cameraman were crouching over her. The farmer stood by looking agonized, and she realized they were trampling his crops. He would have yelled, “Mind those tomatoes!” had not a murderer just tried to finish the location shooting for the day.

  Pete’s face was tense. “I tell you, Louise, you’ve got to get some protection. This has gotta have somethin’ to do with the Porter murders.”

  “Look, pal,” said Marty, “don’t scare the kid any worse than she’s already scared.” And he pulled Louise up from the ground, putting an arm around her to guide her back toward the trucks. “We’re gettin’ outta here,” said the producer.

  She halted and pushed a mass of tangled brown hair back from her face. “Marty, no. Whoever did it has probably gone.” She strained to think of a solution. “I know—a kid. It’s probably a teenager with a gun who’s bored and ready to go back to school. What do you think?”

  The farmer had limited the wooded bluff to see if he could catch sight of the shooter. He came back shaking his head. “I think the person drove right onto that bluff. He disappeared by the time I got over that fence and up the hill. I caught the tail end of a car leaving the drive.”

  “What kind of car?” asked Marty.

  “An old white pickup—the kind kids might drive, actually.”

  “Oh, no,” moaned Louise, “not a white truck!”

  They put in a call to the sheriffs office. Twenty minutes later the sheriffs vehicle arrived and drove imperiously into the farmer’s field, bumping over the crop rows and coming to a stop close to where Louise waited in the tomato patch. She was surprised to see Earl Tatum himself step out.

  He looked grim as he walked around the area with Marty and Louise. “Could a been kids,” he agreed. “Now, I told you, and I’ll tell your producer here, too, Mrs. Eldridge, you have to be careful, and not get into things. This coulda been a prank, and coulda been something else. Just try to—”

  Her voice was ironic. “Mind my own business? What if I said I’d been doing that?”

  He threw his hand out in an exasperated gesture. “Well, then, that’s the best you can do.” Just then Louise looked down and saw that the front quarter panel of the sheriffs car was scratched and dented. And was that blue paint, the color of Sally Porter’s car? With thumping heart, she watched him climb in the driver’s seat, and reflected on how hard it would be to implicate this lawman even if he had murdered Sally. But what was she thinking? Surely her recent brush with death was behind these rampant suspicions.

  When Tatum had departed, leaving a team of deputies behind to complete the investigation, Marty wanted to call off the day’s shooting. His cowboy hat was shoved back, revealing a mass of worry wrinkles on his forehead. The producer’s new western outfit was broken in like hers, but he had guessed wrong in size, so he looked like a potbellied cowboy who had almost grown out of his clothes. “Damn it, I’m scared for you, Louise, and that half-baked sheriff doesn’t seem to want to help. What’s Bill going to think of you being in danger?”

  She looked around at the rich farm fields, and then up at a cloud-flecked sky that reminded her of a blue-and-white spatterware bowl. It was hard to think that a killer had just been here in this beautiful place. Nevertheless, the last thing she wanted the producer to do was hover around her; she could take care of herself. “I doubt I’m in danger. I think the person picked a target and tried to have a little fun.”

  That sounded plausible, didn’t it?

  “And Marty,” she continued, “I don’t want Bill to know about this. He’ll be back in a few days, and I’ll tell him then.” She finally persuaded him to continue the day’s camera work in the pumpkin patch. Then, they broke for lunch and drove to a water treatment plant in the city of Louisville, east of Boulder
.

  Watching the swirling brown residue floating and foaming in the sluiceway at the plant, Louise was overcome with a gut sense of how primitive life really was, with its cycle of birth and death, and the functional activities in between.

  She had to struggle to focus on the words she had learned in her script. She looked into Pete’s camera, telling her audience that the biosolids that remained after purifying human waste were like gold in the garden. Except for the caveat about how some could contain injurious metals. Did everything have a catch?

  “It’s a wrap!” called a jubilant Marty.

  During the shoot, Louise had forbidden her mind to wander off to the universal questions, such as, “What is life all about, really?” And, “Who wants to kill me?” Now that the shoot was finished, she gave way to her emotions.

  Turning to her producer, she said, “Being shot at really pisses me off.”

  “Now, Louise,” warned Marty, taking her arm and lowering his dark brows in a worried manner, “I wouldn’t want you to do anything…”

  “I promise you, Marty, I won’t do anything rash.” Not unless, Louise thought to herself, it helps me catch this open space murderer.

  As a safety measure, Marty wanted Louise to stay and have dinner with him and Steffi and spend at least one night with them at the Hotel Boulderado. She assured him that her rented house was safe, especially since it had an alarm system. She finally extricated herself from her fussy producer and drove north on Route Thirty-Six, past the turnoff to her house, straight to Lyons. She would get a bite of dinner at the Gold Strike Café and then go home and get a good night’s sleep.

  Despite Ruthie Dunn’s warm welcome when she entered the little log cabin restaurant, she immediately regretted not going straight home. There, straddling a stool at the counter, was Eddie Porter, eating his meat and potatoes. He saw her as soon as she walked in and gave her a disgusted look. To her dismay, her only choice of seats was a stool next to him, or the table behind him. She chose the table. On it sat a bud vase with a pale pink rose, which gave her some solace. She called out her dinner preference to Ruthie, and was quickly served the roast chicken special. She’d only eaten a few mouthfuls when Eddie stirred, turning on his stool to fix her with unfriendly eyes.

  “Done anybody any more favors lately, Mrs. Eldridge?”

  Louise felt put upon. Here she was, a lonely woman in a strange community, tangled once again in murder, and possibly the target of the murderer herself. A murderer who could, in fact, be this turkey.

  She said, “I’ve had a hard day, Eddie.”

  “Hard day out on location at that farm, huh—you television people have it real hard, I bet. How about me? I got lots a’ pressure—from all sides. I mean, who could be feelin’ more pressure than me, losin’ my dad, and then my sister…”

  Louise went cold. How could Eddie Porter know the crew’s shooting schedule?

  Ruthie, white hair straggling a bit tonight in the heat, knew when an umpire was needed. Wiping her hands on a towel, she said, “I see you two, uh, know one another.” Then she reached over and put her hand on Eddie’s rough one. “This boy is suffering. But even so, Eddie, don’t take your grief out on this nice lady.”

  He pulled his hand away and forked up the last bite of his dinner. “Don’t tell me how to live, Ruthie.” He threw some money on the counter and stomped out. Louise looked out the plant-filled window and saw him slam himself into his red pickup truck, gunning the motor until the restaurant was filled with noise and fumes. Then he drove away in classic redneck style, the squealing tires raising the sandstone dust on Lyons’ High Street. His departure reminded Louise that she had forgotten to tell the police about the white truck on his property.

  The elderly proprietor heaved a big sigh. “Sorry, Louise. I’m afraid Eddie’s just plain rude. When you’re done, why don’t you and I talk.” She cocked her head toward the tiny kitchen. Louise couldn’t finish the heavy meal; the encounter with Eddie had probably turned her stomach for a week. She got up, and Ruthie, with her clientele properly cared for, ushered her into the clean space where food was prepared. “Let’s go straight out back,” said Ruthie, in her rich twang. “It’s too darned hot in here.”

  They sat out on the back stoop of the restaurant, on springy metal lawn chairs that had been new in the 1930’s. Beyond the porch, lit by the antique store’s tall floodlights, was a casual profusion of plants, vegetables, and trees, including some heavy with fruit. In a far corner on a rise was a graceful clump of aspen trees with round chartreuse leaves and pale trunks, looking like a corps de ballet ready for action once the main players went offstage. Ruthie’s garden was rimmed with dill, rosemary, and parsley, and overlaid with a sprawling bower of the pink roses. “What a classy garden. Do you grow some of the food for the restaurant there?”

  “Yes. Know how that started? It used to be little more than a junkyard, years ago, when we bought it. We covered the junk with dirt to make that aspen hill. Then, I threw out some cherry pits and got me some cherry trees out of it. That’s where our pie cherries come from. Course, there’s boysenberries out there, too—that waterfall of green over there.” She pointed a pudgy finger to a mass of plantings. “Then, I decided we needed a few rosebushes, so there they are, growin’ over everything. Next, I thought, we ought to be able to harvest our own peppers”—she indicated a lush growth of green, yellow, and red—“and there they are. Hot, not so hot, mild. Then I always have a little patch of garden for peas, broccoli, zucchini, whatever I feel like doin’ of a given year.”

  Immediately a program came to Louise’s mind. She would call it, “The Spontaneous Garden,” perhaps, or “Gardens Can Sprout Up Anywhere.” She would propose it to Marty tomorrow.

  They sat there in companionable silence for a moment. “You like Eddie Porter, don’t you, Ruthie?”

  “Oh, yeah, I like Eddie.”

  “You treat him sort of like a son.”

  Ruthie dismissed this with a gesture of her hand. “Well, you know, I treat everybody that way, no matter how hinky they act sometimes. Sally Porter ate here, too, sometimes, and I treated her like I do you”—her face broke into a fond smile—“kinda like a daughter. I feel real bad about how Sally fell off that road up there. And for that matter, about Jimmy getting his head shot off.”

  The old woman shook her head hopelessly. “But Louise, I’m so unfussy about people. I mean, I never expect people’re going to be perfect. I just withhold judgment—leave that to the sheriff, or the Lord. Eddie? I don’t know if he’ll ever make it in life. Eddie’s always messin’up.”

  “I’ve met a lot of people in the last few days,” said Louise, “and it’s interesting and sort of spooky how they all fit together. Eddie’s right there with them.”

  Ruthie pulled a pair of glasses out of her apron pocket, put them on, and looked over at Louise. “Now, my dear, you’re a nice person. There’s two people died up on that ranch now. I sure hope you’re not gettin’ involved.”

  Sorry, Ruthie, Louise thought. Too late.

  But she said, “Trying not to,” with a shake of her head that bordered on a shudder. “Tell me, can you remember any more about the things that happened up at Porter Ranch years ago?”

  Ruthie rocked a little faster. “As I recall, Jimmy Porter’s wife died suddenly. Then, that baby died—such a tragedy. But Bonnie Porter lost several children.” She took her glasses off and rubbed her tired eyes. “I tell you, Louise, I’ve been in business here for sixty years. I’m used to speakin’ no evil—and anyway, I’m gettin’ so I don’t remember things so good.”

  Louise could see that discretion was bred into this woman’s bones. Like other folks around Lyons, she had a philosophy of forgive and forget.

  That was very Christian indeed, but it didn’t help Louise demystify the Porter murders, of which she now felt uncomfortably a part. She was sure that no amount of Gold Strike Café comfort food was going to cure the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  As
she left Ruthie and headed for her car, Louise recognized Sergeant Rafferty as she pulled up in a sheriffs department cruiser. She slowed her steps. This was the woman who handled things so well the day Jimmy Porter’s body was found slung over the fence.

  The sergeant, holding an armful of outgoing mail, approached quickly, and when she saw Louise, gave her a big smile of remembrance. She was tall and athletic, with brown hair bundled back in a no-nonsense ponytail. But little tendrils had escaped around her face, and these and her big brown eyes softened her severity. In a staccato voice, she said, “Hello. You’re the woman with the TV show. Louise, is it? How’re you doin’?”

  “Great—”

  “I won’t shake. My hands are full, and I have a load of work at the station. Ruthie Dunn’s told me all about you. Foreign service wife. Two daughters. Lives in northern Virginia. Is a real nice gal.”

  “That’s awfully nice of Ruthie. I’m doing—okay,” said Louise, figuring she’d better leave out such details as having been abandoned by her husband, intimidated by a dead rattlesnake, and shot at with a high-powered rifle. She knew she had to get to the point. “So, you’re stationed in Lyons?”

  “Chief of the Lyons substation, yes.”

  “Any news on the Porter, uh, deaths?”

  With the sergeant cradling the mail like a baby, they stood on the sidewalk and surveyed each other. “I’m afraid not.” The sergeant talked lightning fast, but with lots of expression. “But I couldn’t share peak attention information with you, anyway—I’m sure you realize that—peak information being that information known only to the perpetrator and the police. What about you?” she said. “Learned anything? I heard you visited the ranch a couple of days ago.”