Death in the Orchid Garden

by Ann Ripley

  She’d gotten pregnant with daughter Martha on her and Bill’s honeymoon. It was something that caused her mother-in-law, Jean Eldridge, to count carefully back over the weeks once the baby was born. Martha had not cooperated and had been born ten days early. Jean’s raised eyebrows had never lowered during Louise and Bill’s twenty-two years of marriage.

  She smiled and went back to her book and thought about her wonderful Martha. She’d never regretted the early arrival of that baby.

  After a few minutes of solitude, she heard a new voice through the bushes. It was intense, though not excessively loud. “Either one of you is capable of murdering Matt,” said a man. “Chris hated it when Matt beat him out on that China trip. You disliked him on general principles, even though you pretended you were friends. What I can’t figure out is why you couldn’t leave the man alone, always bad-mouthing him every chance you got, trying to destroy his reputation.”

  The voice belonged to George Wyant.

  “Killing Flynn would have been a tempting possibility,” said another man. His voice was off-hand and cold. “Matt could be a nice guy, I’ll admit that much, but he was a thief. He stole other people’s ideas and ran with them. That’s what he did with me in China, but he did it to others, too. Somebody just got ticked off enough to get rid of him, that’s all.”

  Louise could scarcely believe it, but the person talking was the seemingly shy and mild-mannered Christopher Bailey.

  A woman spoke next; it took only a few words before Louise realized it was Anne Lansing. “How clever you are, George, deflecting suspicion from yourself onto Christopher and me. Ask yourself if any of those petty issues you’re talking about constitute a reason for killing Matt. Conversely, you had every reason. With him out of the way, you have your magic plant discovery all to yourself. You no longer have to share credit with Matt.”

  A few profanities from George Wyant, then a momentary silence. Wyant apparently walked off, while Christopher Bailey and Anne Lansing remained behind. They conversed in such low tones that she couldn’t understand a word of it.

  Louise had been totally relaxed in the hour between John’s hurried departure and the arrival of these three bitter adversaries. Now, all was quiet beyond the green tree barrier, but she was a bundle of nerves, just the way John Batchelder would have liked it.

  Though she hadn’t wanted this to happen, all her detecting instincts had been activated by the conversation beyond the trees.

  She closed her book. Mike Davis’s account of the catastrophic ecology of California had lost its charm. It was time for a swim in the lagoon. Maybe it would get her back into the vacation mode she longed for.

  She slipped her blue swimming goggles around her neck, leaving the rest of her possessions near her chaise longue, and walked out of her woodsy alcove to the edge of the water. With relief, she saw no one. She had shaken off Bruce Bouting.

  Putting her goggles in place, she dove into the water, which she knew was deep in the center, and swam vigorously across it and down the waterway that led to the next pool, then across that pool and into another channel. Not wanting to run into Bouting, she returned the way she’d come. Once back in the greenery-shrouded surroundings of the first pool, she saw another swimmer preparing to come in the water. For a moment, she was dispirited, certain that Bouting had finally caught up with her. She pulled her blue goggles off her eyes to see better and was relieved to find it was someone else. Nate Bernstein.

  Nate stood on the edge of the pool in a stylishly baggy swimsuit pulled dangerously low on his hips by the contents of the suit’s huge cargo pockets. As he busily unloaded a water bottle, two paperback books, his cell phone, and a slim wallet, Louise thought he looked like a young, hip model out of a sports ad. But the effect was ruined when he glanced down at her and opened his mouth to speak. In a petulant voice, he said, “I don’t know why you want to talk to me.”

  “I want to talk to you?” she asked, treading water in the middle of the pool. “Who told you that?”

  “That guy John. He said you’re some kind of detective and you’d want to talk over the, quote, ‘murder’ with me.”

  “Oh, no, I wish he hadn’t said that.” What could she do with her audacious colleague, John? “Uh, the talk of an alleged murder has put him in an investigative mood. I’m so sorry. It really has nothing to do with me. John’s a little overeager. But he means no harm.”

  Bernstein gave a wry laugh. “Then you’d better tell him to shut his big mouth. He talks a big game, all about how Dr. Reuter and I had reason to hate Flynn and did we know who might have wished him harm? He’s as tactful as a stone. What gets me is that Dr. Reuter and I wasted so much time with you TV people. We gave so much and are going to get so little. I bet you won’t even use the segment, will you?”

  “I’m afraid that’s true. Surely you can understand that. And it’s a shame, because Dr. Reuter did so well in that tape.”

  “Matt Flynn gets exactly what he deserves, but everyone else has to suffer.”

  She swam a few idle strokes and turned to face him. He waited patiently on the steps. “That’s harsh. What do you mean, exactly what he deserves?”

  “Chickens always come home to roost. Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

  She swam a few strokes closer to where he sat. “That is so violent.”

  “It’s just that Flynn ravaged the environment under the guise of saving it. Now the environment’s ravaged him.”

  “Another glib phrase, but not very accurate.” Here she was, drifting in the middle of this beautiful pool and getting angrier by the moment. “The environment didn’t ravage him, Nate. Some person knocked him hard in the head and threw him off that cliff.”

  Nate Bernstein looked triumphant. “I knew you knew the real truth. He didn’t have an accident at all. Why, a guy I met on the beach said his head was nearly—”

  “Stop,” she warned, “I don’t want to hear the myth of the severed head again.” She ducked under the water and swam away, as if she could wash off all the idle statements.

  When she came up for air, she was at the far edge of the pool and Nate Bernstein had entered the water and was swimming toward her. A little intimidated, she did a couple of backstrokes to put some distance between them.

  “Hey,” laughed Bernstein, “what’s the matter? You’re not frightened of me, are you?” Actually, his large brown eyes level with hers were a scary sight. “Look, Mrs. Eldridge,” he said in a wheedling tone, “you’re not a bad sort. Maybe you can understand this—did you ever think that Flynn’s demise carried out a greater good? Maybe it was his bad karma that was his downfall.”

  “Whose greater good are you talking about?”

  He swam away, but called back before turning the corner out of sight. “I didn’t say, did I?”

  Louise’s relaxing swim had been spoiled. She got up and sat on the big gray stone steps, deciding whether to return to her private reading spot by the tree or to the hotel. She glanced at Nate’s little pile of possessions. The paperback on top had an intriguing title: The Shape of Water. She was tempted to examine the other title and to peek inside the slim wallet, but only briefly. Then her love of nature set her straight, as her gaze was caught by a nearby hibiscus bush. It was overburdened with magenta flowers. She strolled over and surreptitiously picked one—to relieve the weight on the branches, she told herself. Stashing the flower near her towel, she looked up guiltily and saw that someone had observed the theft. Nate Bernstein had silently plied his way back through the channels and pools. He climbed up and sat beside her, glancing at his possessions to be sure they hadn’t been disturbed.

  “Stealing flowers, huh?” he said, smirking.

  “I’m sure no one will miss it,” she said.

  “I really don’t care,” he retorted, resting his head on a hand and staring morosely out into the pool. After a long pause he said, “Louise, I’m not as bad a person as you think.”

  She looked at him curiously. “I’m glad to
hear that.”

  “The fact is, I don’t know quite what’s going on around here and I wish I did.”

  At that moment, a person in swimming cap and goggles rounded the curve of the channel and swam into the pool. Charles Reuter, spying the two of them sitting on the steps, crossed the pool in three strokes and stood in the shallows, his dripping-wet goggles hiding his eyes. Although thin, he was muscular looking and fit. He pulled off his cap and goggles, revealing a tense, lined face. “Having trouble, Nate? Mrs. Eldridge, I bet you’re asking too many questions. The fact is that neither one of us wants to talk to you.” He climbed the stairs and Nate deferentially got out of the way, while Louise sat where she was and caught the splash. “C’mon, buddy,” the professor said to his loyal assistant. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Talk about karma, she thought, meeting those two was the essence of bad karma.

  In fact, her afternoon had been filled with trying encounters. She stood on the edge of the lagoon and dove vigorously and deeply into the center of the cleansing water, this time just barely touching the bottom with her outstretched hands. Then she swam off down the channel again, determined to go as far and as fast as her body would take her, Bruce Bouting and everybody else be hanged.

  24

  Saturday night

  The woman at the back of the line boldly examined Louise, taking in her swept-back hair with a hibiscus blossom tucked behind the ear, the gaily-flowered muumuu, and the silver sandals. Apparently not impressed, she said, “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Yes,” said Louise, adjusting her magenta flower. “I’m with them,” she said, nodding to the Corbins and John Batchelder, deep in conversation ahead of her in the line. “We’re a party of four. Do you have reservations?”

  “Of course,” said the woman, and fastened her gaze in on Louise’s golden-tanned cohost. “This place always takes awhile to seat you, though.”

  “They do seem busy,” said Louise. She looked out at the restaurant’s charming garden. “A lovely garden, isn’t it?”

  The woman waved a hand on which reposed a large diamond ring. “It’s like any garden, don’t you think? But this place has excellent food; we come here several times each visit.”

  “So you come to Kauai often?”

  “For a month every year. Have you found any new good places to eat on the island?”

  “We haven’t been around much. We’ve had to stick pretty close to our hotel.”

  “Kauai-by-the-Sea?”

  “Yes.”

  “We own a house in Poi Pu.”

  “How nice.”

  “Kauai-by-the-Sea is nice. But someone fell to their death last night right on the hotel grounds.”

  Louise said, “I believe it happened adjacent to the hotel grounds.”

  “Horrible thing. Maybe the man was drunk. I heard he was drunk. But I also heard the fall ripped his head off. Did you hear that?”

  Louise said, “I don’t know too much about it, but I don’t think his head was quite ripped off. I only know I’m glad to be eating somewhere besides the hotel for a change.”

  “It would be tiresome to eat there too much,” said the woman.

  “I couldn’t agree more. Tell me where you and your husband eat.”

  “One of the best places is in Lihue. Aroma, it’s called. We eat there at least twice while we’re here, once on the way home, because we take the nine-thirty night flight.”

  “I’ve heard of Aroma.”

  “And of course there’s the Gaylord Tavern. And a darling little Chinese place in Kapaa for lunch. It’s right near the Safeway.”

  “Hmm,” said Louise, taking the small notebook from her silver evening purse and jotting the new names down. Exchanging notes on culinary hot spots quite clearly ranked right up there with sunsets as important group activities in Kauai. “We had an excellent breakfast at Joe’s on the Green,” she offered.

  The woman sniffed dismissively, as if Louise had failed a test. She turned her back on her and addressed a couple who’d strolled up to the rear of the line. “Have you two found any new good places to eat this year?”

  “We certainly have,” said the man, but just as Louise was about to get the scoop, Steffi yanked her by the arm.

  “Hurry it up, Louise. Whatever are you doing? Our table’s ready. Use it or lose it.”

  The porch on which they were seated was dark and comforting, with lots of candles flickering here and there. “Isn’t it delightful to be eating dinner in a new restaurant?” said Louise to her companions. “Though I do feel bad about missing sunset on the beach.”

  “Hey, Louise, last time you did that you found the body,” said John. “Maybe you’d better give up sunsets on the beach.” Her cohost had a kind of permanent smile on his face; Louise knew he was waiting for someone to ask him why.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because I’ve had a good day.”

  They gave their drink orders and Louise decided to try her first mai tai.

  Marty congratulated her. “Good, Lou. You’re really going native, dressing native for a change and drinking the native drinks.” Then he turned to John. “What was so good about today?” he asked. He and wife Steffi still were holding hands, so Louise decided they’d had a good day, too. The second honeymoon was still cooking.

  “I’ve talked to just about everybody about the murder.”

  Louise’s heart sank.

  “Oh, so it’s definitely murder?” persisted Marty, running a hand through his curly dark hair.

  “The cops don’t say so, but Louise and I know, don’t we, Louise?”

  She sighed. If only they could talk of something besides what happened to poor Matthew Flynn! “What did you talk to everyone about, John?”

  “I challenged them, told them you and I were doin’ a little investigating. We are, aren’t we, Louise?”

  She shook her head. “No. John, why are you going around ruffling feathers? I ran into Nate Bernstein and Charles Reuter at the lagoon. They were very annoyed and guess who got the brunt of it? Me. What did you hope to learn by egging them on, implying they had a grudge against Flynn?”

  “To get a rise, of course. I did that with everyone.” He sat forward and put his elbows on the table. “But Louise, my pièce de résistance, or whatever you want to call it, was this: I told the cops about George Wyant’s machete.”

  The machete. That was the reference to a knife that she’d tried to remember. Her colleague, she noted, was much quicker at putting these things together than she was.

  “Matthew Flynn told us George Wyant cut through jungles like a knife through butter with his machete.”

  “And you told the police about that?” This morning, she’d felt strangely protective toward young George Wyant. Now she wondered if she’d been wrong to feel that way.

  “Yep,” said John. “I told them I thought he carried one with him. And that it could be the murder weapon. What else better to make a deep wound, as you described it, in the back of Flynn’s sorry neck? I told Chief Hau that if they send divers out there, they might find it off the rock. He told me he was going to follow up on that.”

  Marty, Steffi, and Louise looked at him in silence. Steffi said, “That’s not bad detecting, John, dear. I bet the chief loves you.”

  “He seemed really appreciative. I told him I’d keep him abreast of anything else I turned up.”

  Louise had her nose in the menu. “I’d like to get abreast of a good dinner,” she said, smiling up weakly at her companions. “I’m overdosed on murder.”

  They all ordered fish. To Louise the best part was the dessert, so complicated that just reading about it took her breath away. Baked Hawaii: coconut and passion fruit sorbet on a rich, Ghirardelli dark chocolate brownie encased in a golden baked Italian meringue and flambéed with framboise liqueur served on lilikoi creme.

  John, who ordered double chocolate cake with caramel sauce, begged a bite of hers. “God, I wish I’d ordered that.”
/>   Louise said, “When we come here again, you can order it.”

  “But we’re going home,” insisted Marty. “We oughta be out of here by Monday night, oughtn’t we?”

  Louise said, “I hope so.”

  John walked beside her as they left the restaurant. The woman with whom Louise had talked while waiting in the line was seated with her husband, finishing her dinner. She cast an all-knowing look at Louise. Louise could practically hear what she was thinking. Middle-aged, sex-starved woman gloms onto younger, dashing-looking man. Just as they passed the table, Louise tucked her arm through John’s, looked up at him with a tender expression, and said, “Where’re we going next, baby?”

  Confused and a little annoyed, John nevertheless didn’t let loose of her arm and fortunately didn’t react until they passed the couple’s table. Then he said, “Quit pretending that you feel for me, Louise; I know you think I’m an odd duck. But you just watch, I’m going to show you the stuff I’m made of.”

  When they arrived back at the hotel in their rental car, they ran into George Wyant striding through the lobby toward Options, the hotel’s posh nightclub. Uncharacteristically, he had on long pants and looked like a normal tourist rather than a jungle cowboy. Louise thought he might stop for a word with her. Instead, he swung around and marched straight up to John Batchelder and practically bumped him in the chest.

  Though John was tall, Wyant was a good three inches taller and more muscular as well. “You little prick,” he growled, “going around all day making snide cracks about everybody. Insinuating that I killed Matt, who mentored me and stuck by me even when others thought I was a lightweight and who’s good to his widowed mother and unmarried sisters. You know, a regular, good person with decent principles. You’re the one, aren’t you, who tattled to the cops about my machete? Well, you’ll be happy, you turd, that I’m in big trouble, because someone lifted my machete from my room.”