by Ann Ripley
She took the shortcut up the slight rise to the house, threading her way through the trees and ending at the big front windows. She peeked in and was not surprised to see Nora. She was sitting on a couch, her bare feet tucked under her, wearing white flowing slacks and a white gauze top. She appeared to be writing in a notebook. The poet at work. No matter what happened in the world, no matter what downswings her personal life with her husband, Ron, took, Nora never stopped writing poetry and had the bylines to prove it in various poetry magazines.
Louise knocked on the window, then realized this was not a good idea after a crime in the neighborhood. But Nora was not fazed. She merely looked up, smiled in recognition and signaled with a cock of the head for Louise to go to the front door.
When she entered the cool house, she heard the low sounds of the stereo playing Brahms and smelled the faintest aroma of furniture oil in this cleanest of houses. Nora enclosed her in a long embrace. “Louise, my dear” was all she said, and it was sufficient. They went to the kitchen, where Nora prepared green tea in a pot that was so streamlined that Louise thought it must have come from an art museum store. They settled in the living room on a big sofa.
Carefully balancing her teacup so as not to spill, Louise relaxed into the softness of the sofa pillows. “Nice teapot. Museum of Modern Art?”
Nora smiled. “Tar-jay.”
“Wow, Target?” said Louise, incredulously. She’d missed a large beat in discount store merchandising. “Nora, I came over here because I need your help.”
Her friend’s gray eyes were all sympathy, but her mouth curved in a smile. “I know the police suspect you of the killing. Do you know I’ve already been importuned to help by your lovely Martha?”
Louise pursed her lips. “You mean Martha’s been here already?” Why did she have the faint feeling that Number One daughter was taking over her and Bill’s life?
“Yes,” said Nora, and reached a hand over and grasped Louise’s. “Martha needs to talk, just like you do. And she’s always confided in me, you know . . . and even more so in Mary.”
How well Louise knew this, that both Martha and Janie, when facing big decisions, ran across the street to her side-by-side friends Nora and Mary. Of course, she usually discovered this well after the big decisions were made. Should I take this internship in Guatemala, or would it be better to spend the summer working with the poor in a Chicago ghetto? Martha would ask. Would it be a good thing if I dated other boys besides Chris, since he’s in college, and I still have another year of high school? Janie had asked this of Mary Mougey, and Mary had passed it along. The whole situation left Louise feeling that she’d failed as an authority figure. The girls treated her more as a sister than a mother. And she had no clue as to how she could gain more clout with her daughters.
Nora was talking now about their putting their ideas together. “Maybe if we all work together, we can find the person who did this rotten thing.” She stared out the front window. “In fact, on the premise that three heads are better than two, let me ring up Mary. She’s just pulled into her driveway. I know she fled the house for a while.”
“What for?” said Louise.
“My dear,” said Nora, shoving her short, dark hair away from her face, “to get a little peace. You mustn’t underestimate the impact of this crime on the neighbors. We’ve all been interrogated by the police, of course, and now the newspaper and TV and radio people are out there like a pack of sharks that smell blood. I personally got rid of them by telling them I had a virus that they wouldn’t want to catch.”
Louise colored. She thought back on recent years and started to count. What was it, three or four times when murders had encroached on the peace of greater Sylvan Valley? And each time, unfortunately, Louise had been right at the center of the trouble.
“What do we think of Phyllis as a prospect?” said Louise.
Mary Mougey, who had joined them in the living room, crossed her legs, and Louise noted that she wore red Prada sandals. Louise had seen them in a catalog and would have bought a pair herself had they not been so pricey. They went well with Mary’s navy-trimmed white pantsuit, a notch down from the elegant clothes she wore for her high-profile Washington job.
“Wait a moment before you start,” said Nora, unfolding herself from the sofa and going to a sideboard. She held up a stenographer’s pad as she rejoined them. “Martha and I each made notes when we talked earlier this morning.”
Mary smiled. “Dear Martha. How is she handling this?”
Nora said, “Very well.” She hastened to add, “ But of course Louise can tell you better than me.”
Louise shrugged. “As Nora says, very well. She has everything including Bill and me under control. Even the wedding plans.”
Mary clasped her hands in delight, for she hadn’t yet heard the news. Louise had to fill her in on the impending nuptials.
After a few moments, Nora eyed her two companions and said, “Now, let’s get to this little list that Martha and I made.” She flipped open the notebook. “Your daughter insisted it be alphabetized; she’s very well organized. I myself would have just written it in shoddy quatrains.”
“Who’s on the list?”
“Mike Cunningham, Lee Downing, Phyllis Hoffman and ... Mort Swanson.”
“Mort Swanson?” said Louise. “Don’t tell me.” Wasn’t being faced with his own mortality enough without also being thought of as a possible murder suspect? “I’m not sure I see his motive.”
“Louise, this list is just academic,” said her friend. “The killer could well be someone we don’t even know, but we have to look at the local people, and that includes Mort. I can’t believe either that he would do such a horrible thing. But he was Peter’s lawyer for a great share of his business affairs. We can’t ignore him.”
“And how did you and Martha come up with Lee Downing?”
Nora gave Louise a careful look. “Martha said Bill mentioned it to her this morning. Downing just finished buying Hoffman Arms two days before Peter disappeared.”
“Oh.” Louise hadn’t known that her daughter knew as much as she did herself.
“Mike Cunningham’s name is here because he defended Peter and seemed to have a close relationship with him as his attorney. Who knows what went on between them over the past few years?”
Mary leaned forward toward Nora and gestured with a graceful hand at the pad. “Why don’t you put a name at the top of that list: ‘A’ for Archer, Greg Archer.”
Louise said, “Greg Archer? Did Greg even know Peter Hoffman?”
“I have no knowledge of that, Louise,” said Mary. “But what I’m telling you is that darling-looking blond man is terribly aloof when I try to talk to him, possibly because I have a bird’s-eye view of him snooping.”
“Snooping?” said Louise.
“Yes, and in your yard. He pokes around there when you’re away, even rides that little cart around through both yards, though rather awkwardly.” Her eyes widened. “I bet he’s told police things that might even have helped implicate you, my dear. Just jot the name down, Nora. We’ll try later to find a tie between him and the deceased Peter Hoffman.”
Nora turned thoughtful eyes toward the woods beyond the living room. In a quiet voice, she said, “I’ll put my money on Phyllis right now. If I were Phyllis, I would have killed him long ago.”
Silence greeted this statement. Louise looked at her friend and saw it was not meant as a joke, for Nora’s face was unsmiling. Louise chuckled as if it were a joke, but the levity sounded a little phony. “It might have been a hard thing to do, since he’s been living in a mental hospital. What would you have done, slipped him poison cookies?”
Nora relaxed back in the sofa and said, “I’d like to think I don’t mean that. But with his alley-cat ways, Peter demeaned women in public more fiercely than any man I’ve ever seen. He crassly killed, decapitated and—”
Louise bent her head. “Oh, stop. I agree with you, but don’t say any more.”
/> Nora said, “I regret bringing that up, Louise. Forgive me. Let me just say that Phyllis does have a personal motive. Not only did Peter cheat on her time and again, but as soon as he was hospitalized, he put Mike Cunningham in charge of his financial affairs. It changed Phyllis’s lifestyle overnight. Mike immediately sold their big house and informed her that she needed to get a job to help support herself. She’s had to handle almost everything, including rent on her house, on a sales clerk’s salary.”
Mary smiled knowingly. “Maybe she thinks she’s suffered enough and was anxious to be a rich widow.”
“And now she is, I guess,” said Louise, “or is she? We don’t really know where Peter’s money is going, do we?”
“No,” said Mary, “but I dearly hope the police find out, or perhaps Phyllis will tell me. She phones me frequently at work, which is quite inconvenient at times. The woman must have no close friends. I am really no more than an acquaintance.”
Louise said, “Let’s go back to this Lee Downing. Since we’d barely met him before we left on our vacation, I have no idea what he’s like.”
Nora nodded. “He’s another of those men with a wandering eye. I’m sure he has a wife back in west Texas where he came from. But since he arrived on Mike Cunningham’s doorstep a month ago, he and Mike have been acting as if they are Washington’s most eligible bachelors.”
“What do they do?”
“They’ve had people over to Mike’s house several times, which is perfectly fine, of course, but the female guests are a dead giveaway—young-looking, over-painted and overdressed.”
Mary Mougey made a comical wry face. “Ladies of the night, in Sylvan Valley? It adds a new tone to the neighborhood.”
“How come I missed all of this?” said Louise. She couldn’t imagine Nora peeking out her front window. She was too caught up in her inner world, writing poetry or musing over her difficult marriage, to snoop upon others.
Nora smiled. “You missed it because your living room faces the woods. I missed it too, but Ron tends to be outside gardening in the early evening. He’s seen them arriving in Downing’s car. I try to avoid the two of them, for as you two dear friends know, I have my own domestic issues.”
“How are you and Ron doing, Nora?” asked Louise. “Um, are you going to that awareness conference in California?”
“Actually, Ron and I are doing much better. Things improved three weeks ago, the night of the party that Peter crashed. I so admired the way that my Ron handled that intrusion.” A radiant smile passed over her face, and Louise saw again how beautiful her troubled poet friend was. “I told him that night how I admired him. And it was as if a burden fell off our shoulders. We were able to ... come together like new lovers.”
The three women fell silent in the cool house, and Louise suspected they were all thinking about new love. Her friend Mary, she noticed, had sorrowful lines on both sides of her mouth, despite the expert application of makeup and creams. No wonder: Mary and Richard’s lovemaking probably was on hold because of his deep depression.
But it was no better for her and Bill. Things hadn’t been quite the same in the bedroom since the night that the loathsome Peter Hoffman had invaded their home. Louise had to admit that, since then, she had been a distracted and disengaged lover. Unlike Nora, who sometimes told her two friends more than they wanted to hear, neither Louise nor Mary was about to share any of these marital woes.
Louise gave a little laugh, and her friends looked at her as if grateful for the distraction. “Not to change the subject, but it’s been two hellish days since Peter Hoffman turned up in my garden. I really need exercise if I’m to stand the least chance for new love. Anyone for a swim at the club?”
16
Martha was sprawled on one end of the living room couch. “I sure do miss Jim.”
Janie, propped against pillows at the other end of the couch, put down her book and flipped her long blond hair back from her face. In Martha’s opinion, she should have left the hair where it was, for her uncovered face held an unpleasant pout. “What do you think? I miss Chris just as much.”
Martha slanted a glance at her younger sister. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say you didn’t. Bet you can’t wait till he comes home from Baltimore. Talked to him in awhile?”
“ No.”
Martha laughed. “Why don’t you phone him and see if he’s cheating on you?”
Janie roused herself from the couch. “Not a bad idea. What’re you doing tonight?”
“I need to walk a little after all that shopping we did today.” Shopping for hours, and finding nothing, not a wedding suit or a maid of honor dress that the two could agree upon or that wasn’t outrageously overpriced. Martha sauntered across the living room and eased out the front door, leaving Janie safely behind.
She’d kept an eye on the neighborhood for the past hour by little walks in the yard and frequent glances out her bedroom window. The Kendricks had departed in dressy clothes for what probably was a dinner party. Sam Rosen and his cute friend Greg Archer had also left. Nora and Ron Radebaugh and Richard and Mary Mougey were spending a quiet evening at their respective homes, as were her own parents.
Unaccounted for were Mike Cunningham and his house guest, Lee Downing. Those were the two people in whom Martha was interested. She was determined to get to know them, but she didn’t want her younger sister tagging along. From the stories Nora Radebaugh had told her, Cunningham and Downing were acting like overaged lotharios—not the kind of men to whom the annoyingly attractive Janie should be exposed. In fact, Nora had told her that she was sure Downing was married and just playing the role of a single man during his stay in Washington.
Martha was wearing the skimpiest of clothes, short shorts and T-shirt she’d carefully preserved from her days in junior high school, and well-worn running shoes. People who saw her would guess she was out for an early evening jog in the sultry evening air. She decided to position herself in the Mougeys’ plot of woods, which would make it logical to assume she’d just come in from a constitutional on Rebecca Road, a favorite route for joggers.
She hoped the Mougeys wouldn’t spot her skulking in their woods. Fortunately, there was a sweet gum stump to sit on. After a few minutes’ wait, she saw car lights swing into the cul-de-sac. It was Mike Cunningham’s green Jaguar.
By the time he’d maneuvered into his driveway, Martha had jauntily run up the curved sidewalk and right by the front of his house, which sported a new evergreen tree hedge. He stopped the car. His car window slid down, and he called, “Who’s that? Come back!” Just about what she’d expected of him when a girl in tight shorts and T-shirt with a really good body bounced by.
She pirouetted, ran back and leaned down to smile at him. Since she’d only met him on the fly two days ago, this was the first good look she’d taken of the man.
She had to admit Cunningham was kind of cute, but in a few years he’d have jowls. And what was with that hair? Did he think he was a game-show host?
She shoved a hand in the car. “Hi. I’m Martha Eldridge, Bill and Louise’s daughter from Chicago. I met you when we got home from the beach Thursday night.”
“Great to see you again,” said Cunningham. “You’re lookin’ good.”
She straightened and looked at his house through the gathering gloom. “So you bought this place. How do you like living in the woods in this naughty liberal neighborhood?”
“C’mon now,” he said in a scoffing voice, “those old stories about wife-swapping ... I bet they aren’t even true.”
“Now don’t spoil the image of Sylvan Valley,” she said, laughing. “Modern houses plunked in the middle of all of this northern Virginia tradition ...”
“I’m adding a little tradition to my modern house. I’m having a fountain built in the front yard. It’s going to have one of those Aphrodite statues holding a pitcher of water.”
Martha smiled. “That should be interesting. There’s a dearth of garden statues in Sylvan Valley. No metal
bird statues or concrete squirrels or gnomes, no statues of Mary or pagan goddesses.” She grinned at him. “What’s the next step? Classical columns for the front porch?”
He gave her a long look. She could tell by his shifting expression that he’d decided she was being humorous and not putting him down. “You are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you?”
Martha shrugged. “Maybe. Is that a good thing?”
“Not always, but, hey, I’m not going to carp. So the neighbors might not like my statue, but I’m not that crazy about pure modern. It’s meaningless.”
“You think so?” asked Martha. “My guess is that back in the fifties, the people who built a house in Sylvan Valley believed in something, and their beliefs were reflected in the architecture of their homes.”
Cunningham cocked his head at her. “You sound like some kind of urban historian.”
Martha leaned closer to him. “I am. Urban studies is my specialty at Northwestern. I’m getting a combined degree there—B.A. and master’s.”
“Oh. We’ll have to get together and talk sometime. Actually, this house is just for convenience, a place to sleep when I’m in town. The place I really call home is out on the bay—a big old place on the water. And if you really want to know, the thing I’m doing next on this house is to install a security system, because though you think this is a liberal neighborhood, liberal doesn’t equal safe.” He looked in his rearview mirror. “But wait, now. Yeah, here comes my ... friend. I’ve got to get going. Do you know Hilde Brunner? She’s in the neighborhood too.” He laughed. “She’s more your age than mine, but I’m hoping that doesn’t matter.”
