by Ann Ripley
Steffi shopped slowly. She had gone to the dressing room to partially disrobe. Louise could see the saleswoman-owner of the store, a sober beauty with long, dark hair, showing her how to tie the sarong just above the breasts in order to cleverly disguise the figure flaws that waited below.
“That looks nice on you, Steffi,” called Louise. Then, bored, she began investigating a dark corner. Crowded at the rear of a shelf of wood sculptures was one of the strangest objects she’d ever seen.
It was the stylized figure of a horse, about four feet long, woven of straw, but with real horse hair on the mane and tail and decorated with white and red paint. Louise squatted down and peered closely at it.
“You’re not buying that, are you?” asked Steffi, suddenly appearing next to her like a large, electric blue pillar in her nicely arranged sarong.
Louise shrugged. “What can I say? This thing is so odd that I can hardly resist it. Besides, I bet Bill will love it.”
Steffi shook her head. “I hate to say it, but it’s weird.” The Corbins’ home, Louise knew, was done in Danish modern. To Steffi, buying such an odd object would be out of the question. Louise returned to the front counter. To the proprietor, who in Louise’s eyes had become Jungle Girl, she said, in a quiet voice, “Tell me about the horse,” and cocked her head at the corner shelf, although that was unnecessary since there was no other horse in the store.
It was from Thailand, said Jungle Girl. Possibly used for a religious ceremony, though she wasn’t positive about that.
“Hmm. Could we come to a better deal on this?”
Jungle Girl could. Louise ended up paying $70 for it, or $15 under list price, and arranged to have it shipped home so that she didn’t have to wrestle it onto the plane. While she was occupied with artifacts, Steffi fell for an expensive pearl ring. After laboriously discussing its merits with Louise and other Jungle Girl shoppers and flashing it back and forth on her finger in the subdued light of the shop, she bought it, moaning about how Marty would complain about its cost. They left the shop happily with their purchases in shiny bags. If the horse arrived home before she did, it would provide Bill with a nice surprise.
Next, because they needed to replenish the energy spent while shopping, they stopped at an ice cream shop and bought mango shaved ice cones. As they strolled down the sidewalk toward the rental car, Steffi frowned. “Louise, you and Bill have such a nice house. Why would you ever put that horse in it? I don’t understand. Where will you put it? You don’t even have a basement to relegate it to.”
Louise took a bite out of her mango ice. “I used to be the kind of person who would never buy a thing like that. But something’s changed in me, Steffi, since the murders last summer.” How well she remembered that month of terror and tragedy and the culminating moments when she realized someone was trying to kill her.
She sighed and took another lick of her cone. “It’s fairly easy to talk about it, now that six months have passed. But at the time, I was so scared that my hands wouldn’t quit trembling for days at a time.”
Steffi put a gentle hand on Louise’s forearm. “Oh, my dear, it must have been awful. I wish I’d been able to help you more during that period.”
Steffi Corbin had been of no help, because she lived twenty-five miles away from Louise around the crowded Washington, D.C., beltway and because they only realized what good friends they were on those rare occasions when they were thrown into each other’s company. Or perhaps Marty had discouraged Steffi from phoning; her producer had been embarrassed with Louise’s involvement in another murder scandal that could affect the ratings of her TV show.
“I learned something last summer,” she continued. “I learned that living is dangerous and that life is precious. The experience has made me feel like living more freely and enjoying every moment. Part of it is buying something fun like that horse, which I will never in my whole life come across again. Unless I go to Thailand, which I probably won’t.”
Steffi said, “You mean it came from Thailand?”
“Yes, Jungle Girl told me that it may have been part of a religious ceremony there.”
“Hah,” hooted Steffi, “you’ll believe anything.”
Louise grinned. “You’re probably right and I’ve been sold a bill of goods. But it sure was fun. We’ll have to go back. I really like that candle chandelier.”
“The one hanging in back of the counter, in front of that red dress with the uneven hem?”
“Yes.” In her mind, Louise measured it. It hadn’t been that big, possibly fourteen inches wide and dripping with fake crystals and metal curlicues in the shape of vines.
“Now, Louise,” said Steffi, in her most grounded voice, “where are you going to put that thing?”
“Not in the house. Maybe out on our patio, on calm summer nights when we’re entertaining friends.”
“Suspended from what, the moon?” Steffi laughed robustly, one of her most endearing qualities, and tongued a dab of ice off the side her cone. She seemed to be finishing hers more quickly than Louise. “I must say it’s interesting shopping with you. You’re so quick—you’re like lightning! But you can be a real spendthrift. Why, that chandelier was marked eighty dollars.” She fluttered her well-manicured fingers in the soft, balmy air. “On the other hand, I saw one in the Neiman Marcus sales catalog for fifteen hundred. So who knows? Maybe that one’s a bargain.”
Louise rolled her eyes knowledgeably at her companion. “It will be. Jungle Girl will give me a deal.”
6
Late Thursday afternoon
It was four o’clock and they’d all ordered drinks. But Louise knew right away it wasn’t going to be anyone’s idea of a fun cocktail hour.
Marty had wanted a brief run-through of Thursday’s production schedule, so he’d asked the Three Tenors to meet “for cocktails” with the WTBA-TV crew in the hotel’s orchid garden lanai. Around them were masses of fragrant orchids of transcendent beauty. This setting, thought Louise, ought to put anyone in a euphoric mood, especially a clutch of botanists. But not Bouting, Flynn, and Reuter, who’d reputedly spent all day battling over ideas during the conference sessions and looked as if secretly they’d like to kill each other. Adding insult to injury, they’d been forced to sit side by side at the round table, since they’d arrived later than the TV people.
Dr. Bouting, she noticed, was creating even more trouble at this cocktail-party-gone-wrong as he clumsily extracted his minicomputer from a black leather carryall. This was the computer he reputedly took with him on exploring trips to record horticultural notes. With his jousting elbows he managed to intrude into the space of both Charles Reuter and Matthew Flynn. They stared at him in silent irritation as they inched their bodies away.
Seeing the three men gave Louise a moment of guilt. She had not gotten acquainted with them, since she hadn’t attended one moment of the conference. She hoped at least to attend the final wrap-up session on Saturday. Then, she figured, everything the botanists had been snarling about for three days would be reduced to a couple of hours of hard-fought pronouncements.
Representing WTBA-TV at the table, besides Louise and Marty, were John Batchelder and Joel Greene, the young associate producer on whom the success of this shoot might hinge. John, she noted, had lost some of his élan, his handsome hair disheveled, his shoulders sagging. Was it because Joel took over the planning of the last-minute shoot featuring Tom Schoonover? Louise felt a rush of sympathy for her colleague, but couldn’t think of any right way to express it.
Dr. Bouting finally settled down, his computer at the ready. Louise hadn’t seen him since she had met him swimming in the lagoon yesterday. The man looked entirely different when dry. His clothes were an expensive flowered shirt and tan pants with a razor crease; his white hair was handsomely combed. The knee in the tan pants told of his inner mood: it jerked nervously up and down without stopping.
The much younger Dr. Matthew Flynn was the picture of relaxation. He sprawled back in his chair and sipped his drink, t
he boredom on his well-tanned face masked with a vacant half-smile. With his light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, he was the handsomest of the three scientists but also the most rumpled looking. Not more than forty-five, guessed Louise, and in his wrinkled short-sleeved shirt, old shorts, and battered boots, he could have been a derelict who’d pulled up on the beach in a boat. Probably his years of working in the Amazon had left their mark on him and it was not the mark of a fancy traveler.
In contrast to Flynn, Dr. Charles Reuter, a thin-faced man in his fifties, sat ramrod straight in his chair. He was of medium height and with sparse brown hair. Like Flynn, he wore an old cotton shirt and shorts that revealed the most muscular part of him, his legs. Around his waist was a belt with a couple of hanging tools in cases. Louise noted that his heavy shoes were clogged with the familiar red alkali dirt of Kauai, which told her that this University of California professor must have gone hiking once the afternoon conference session was done. She could imagine him frowning with alarm at the non-native plant species crowding this lush island, for he was the foremost champion of controlling and eliminating the so-called exotic, or foreign, interlopers in order to restore native habitats.
In a surly tone, Reuter led off the discussion. He said, “So what’s the deal tomorrow—we stand in the botanic garden and fight? That’s okay, I suppose. No different from the last two days.”
Marty Corbin was at his most accommodating. Spreading his big arms wide, he said, “Dr. Reuter, we intend to have more action than that. As per the letter I sent you, our cameraman will tape you as you walk through the grounds where the native Hawaiian plants are clustered . . . the, ah”—Marty consulted his notes—“the endemic species, I guess y’call ’em.” Marty might be the producer of the very successful Gardening with Nature. But what he told Louise more than once was, “Just because I produce a good TV garden show doesn’t mean I know diddly about gardening.” Obviously, endemic did not come trippingly off his tongue.
Bruce Bouting, exuding largeness with his tall, solid frame, stared at the diminutive Reuter through narrowed eyes. “The guy you want to fight with is me, Charles, why don’t you admit it? You don’t exactly deal fair and square. You call businessmen like me to task publicly in your writings in Nature Magazine and other venues, simply because we seek out new species and we never get a chance to rebut your arguments. You’ll never understand that plant diversity is where it’s at—there’s no way you’re going to turn back the clock and restore the land to the way it was one hundred, or two hundred years ago. Look at these very islands we’re visiting—why, there are thousands of introduced species in Hawaii and some are darned good market winners.”
“You and your ‘market winners,’” said Reuter. “The imports to these islands have not done the place an iota of good, just the reverse. So don’t use Hawaii to try and prove your point—there are a higher percentage of endangered species here than any other place in the world. In your ignorance, you keep traveling the world and co-opting naive, third world officials . . .”
“Not always,” grumbled Bouting. “China’s no longer a third world country.”
“—co-opting officials of third world and other countries into letting you take home their prized native species.” Reuter’s eyes blazed with dislike. “Then you introduce them here under totally different climatic conditions, where they take their nod from kudzu and spread like wildfire.”
“Wait a damned minute!” cried Bouting, so loudly that people at neighboring tables turned and stared, including an amused couple within easy earshot. Louise realized how out-of-place a frenzied cry was in the midst of this relaxed paradise, with its burbling waterfalls and orchid-perfumed air. “We test every plant in our research labs and fields—for months, sometimes years, to assure that they’ll not become invasives. Furthermore . . .”
“Months, maybe,” countered Reuter, “not years. You couldn’t afford to test them for years. It wouldn’t be economically feasible. No, you hurry them onto the market and into gardens all over North America.”
Marty laughed and put his arms out again, as if he were trying to stop a runaway train. Sweat beads appeared on his forehead. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please . . .”
Bouting slapped a hand onto the table top, but then gazed up in confusion, his eyes with a faraway look. “Damn it. I had a rejoinder, Charles, but it’s temporarily slid out of my mind. So I have nothing further to say at the moment, but don’t think I forgive you for those ridiculous attacks.”
If Bruce Bouting had nothing more to say at the moment, Matthew Flynn did. He plopped his muddy boots off the chair onto the floor and sat forward, stretching out his browned bare arms on the table. “Hold on, everybody, I want to throw in my two cents. Not to dis you, Bruce,” he said, turning to Bouting, “but I’m in Charles’s camp on this.” He nodded at the University of California professor.
Charles Reuter sat forward. Louise saw on his thin face a look of pure hatred. She couldn’t decide who Reuter despised the most: Bouting or Flynn. “Dr. Flynn,” he snapped, “you may be in my camp, but I’m not in yours and don’t think I am. I have utter disrespect for the way you trammel those Indians there in Brazil and Peru. You treat their plants, their national treasures, as if they’re yours and yours alone. Who do you think you are? You’re no better than Bouting. You only pretend to be!”
Flynn arched back in his chair, caught off guard by this attack. Bending his head, as if he were enduring a great wrong, he slowly turned to his critic and said, “Charles, I think you’re ignorant of the way I work. Whenever I retrieve a valuable plant species from a tribe, there’s always a payback. I make it a policy to educate the indigenous people as to the plant’s capabilities, so that they, too, can benefit from its widest use.” His steady gaze then returned to Marty Corbin. “What Charles already knows, and what the world needs to know, is that we have to preserve species. And that’s what I’m doing. Every chance I get, I’m out there looking for more specimens. And it’s not easy working in the jungle—I’ve even picked up malaria, which I can’t shake and which sometimes lays me low. I’m collecting plants, I’m talking to the tribal shamans who know how the plants are used, then I’m bringing them back to my lab for thorough scientific analysis.”
Flynn’s pale blue eyes fastened on one, then another, until he’d made contact with the six other people at the table. Even Charles Reuter was now listening. “My dear people, we cannot let deforestation and civilization and roads and gold mines destroy the thousands of plant species that remain to be identified. Why, they’ve existed for hundreds of thousands of years on this planet.”
“Hear, hear,” exclaimed Marty Corbin. “Dr. Flynn, you’re great.” He quickly turned to the other two scientists. “And, Dr. Bouting, Dr. Reuter, you two are wonderful. Do just what you’re doing right now—uh, you can leave out the pejorative comments, or else we’ll have to remove them in the editing room—but you’re on the right track. Lou here—Louise, I mean—will be with you every minute. She’ll feed you a few questions.”
“And me,” said a small voice. It was John Batchelder.
“Oh, yeah. And John Batchelder, Gardening with Nature’s cohost. John also will fire a few questions at you.” Marty gave John a little smile. “Sorry. I forgot you for a minute.”
Bruce Bouting was leaning forward, his arms balanced on the table. He turned to Marty Corbin. “Mr. Corbin, you may think this presumptuous, but I seldom give interviews. Our company, privately held, flies under the radar, you might say. That’s why I want to make this interview as complete as possible. So I want you to include two of my aides in the—what do you call it—program.”
“The shoot?” said Marty. “You don’t mean add people to the shoot?” He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and looked at Louise imploringly, as if she might help him out of this problem.
Bouting sat back and beckoned to the couple sitting nearby. They’d obviously been poised for this moment of introduction. “Come on over, you two. The wor
st thing that can happen is that you’ll end up on the cutting room floor, as Cecil B. DeMille used to say.”
With two strides, they arrived. Bouting introduced the woman as Anne Lansing. Louise sat forward, for she knew the name; Lansing was one of the most important new garden writers in the country. About forty, Louise guessed, and tall, with a leggy look, carrying a big, stylish carry-all. It didn’t hurt to wear such a short jean skirt when one’s legs were that muscular and shapely, nor a blouse knotted at the waistline when one’s waist was that slim. Her dark brown hair was cut in a retro bob. And she hadn’t forgotten to add bright red lipstick, which went well with the flapper look of the hair. Beyond all this she had striking, large yellow-green eyes.
“I hope this isn’t too nervy of Bruce,” Anne Lansing said in a low, euphonious voice. She gazed at Marty with an angelic look that begged his forgiveness.
Marty stared back raptly. “Uh, probably not, my dear.” Louise knew Marty was susceptible to pretty women; this had led to occasional rough patches in his and Steffi’s marriage. Secretly, Louise believed a marriage “patch-up” was another reason why he brought his wife on this business trip to Hawaii.
“Anne’s in charge of my new plant research,” Bruce Bouting went on, “and knows almost as much as I know about our new plants.” He patted the top of his black computer. “Though I do hold lots of secrets close to my vest.” Anne Lansing rewarded her boss with a look of filial devotion. This woman, thought Louise, knew how to manipulate men with a look and a smile.
“But she’s also known for her horticultural books,” continued Bouting, “which our company, of course, publishes. I bet you’ve all read them. The Secret Life of Gardens was a huge seller. Passion in Planting is her latest.”
“Indeed we have read your books,” said Louise, sending her an admiring glance. “They are very good.”
“Thank you,” said Anne, flashing a radiant smile.
Bouting’s male assistant was younger, a large, slightly overweight blond man who stared out at the world through thick glasses. Whether justified or not, it lent him an aura of quiet intelligence, in no way diminished by his turquoise ball cap and loud Hawaiian shirt in orange with big blue flowers on it. For some reason, he reminded Louise of a wise, giant baby.
