Death in the Orchid Garden

by Ann Ripley

  Among Louise’s fantasies was one that involved trekking in Nepal—but only up the foothills to a first base camp, certainly not up to the summit of Mount Everest.

  Now, unwillingly, she was training for Everest.

  Her flashlight was crucial. Since it was less than an inch in diameter, she found she could clench it between her teeth. Carefully, she moved a foot up and shifted her weight there, moved her hands and grabbed onto two insubstantial protrusions of rock. Somewhere, she’d read the “rule of three,” that one should have three of the four extremities in place before ascending or descending.

  Having achieved this, she made a tremendous move into midair and brought the other foot up. Now she was on firmer footing, able to lean into the rock so that she could release both hands. The problem was going to be the next leg up: It looked dangerously vertical, with no visible hand or footholds.

  Shoving up her pullover, Louise grabbed at the knot in the length of rope that she’d tied there when she got dressed for dinner. Well, Tom Schoonover, she thought, this is a nice reminder of my visit to Hawaii. With a frantic hand she undid the knot. Aiming her flashlight high up, she carefully checked out a protruding rock above her head, then set the light on a ledge so she could handle the rope. Holding it in three loose loops, she flung it up and encompassed the rock. Giving it a practice tug to be sure it wouldn’t move, she used it to pull herself up those last difficult few feet.

  A sense of relief quickly vanished, and her breathing quickened as she realized what jeopardy she now was in. She was lying on a forty-five degree slope of damp, slippery red earth and could feel her body slowly slipping back down toward the rocks and the churning sea. Instinctively, she dug her fingers into the moist Kauai soil and slowly squirmed her way up the incline, using her fingers like pitons to save herself from falling backward.

  Finally, she reached the path, which was blessedly flat. She lay her head down, exhausted, feeling like a beached monk seal, and fell asleep. After a minute or two—or was it ten?—she regained consciousness and wondered why her face felt wet. She touched it and discovered blood flowing from her temple. It had spread down the side of her face and was dripping onto the ground. She rummaged in another buttoned pocket, brought out her red bandanna and pressed it on the wound.

  Louise got unsteadily to her feet and made an assessment. Fingers raw and scratched from having been used as talons; arms and knees cut and gashed; forehead suffering a serious cut; and the right leg strained with what could be a pulled muscle. She needed first aid. Holding the bandanna to her forehead, she considered returning to the hotel. She sent a final glance back at Kauai-by-the-Sea’s premier suites. The suite where she’d spied on Christopher Bailey was in darkness, but why?

  The possibilities flooded over Louise. Christopher Bailey wasn’t the murderer. It was the person who’d shoved her over the cliff. And that person probably was on the way to the President’s suite. Louise had to go back and have a look, before Bailey became the killer’s third victim. She realized she might already be too late.

  43

  By lying on the dirt incline above the rocks, Louise was able to reach down and unhook her rope from the promontory rock that had helped her to safety. When she got back on her feet, she realized she was not only scratched and bloody, but also stained with Kauai’s famous red soil. She drew up her pullover and carefully wound the rope around her waist once more, knotting it loosely for comfort.

  She walked purposefully toward the corner suite, looking about frequently to be sure no one was following. Again, she rounded the corner of the low-slung building and threaded her way through the same garden in which she had stood before. The curtains were drawn. Had she made the trip for nothing, or did she dare go up on the lanai to peer in the front windows? A flashlight would have been useful at this point, but she realized she’d left hers back on the rocky ledge.

  She heard a small sound. Gasping, she turned to bump straight into Christopher Bailey. She stared up into his scary, big face. “No,” she cried, just before he slapped a big gloved hand across her mouth. As she groaned loudly in protest, he forced her to walk to the stairs of the lanai. “Up we go, Louise,” he told her and shoved her up the stairs and into a large room, closing the door behind him. He flipped a switch, and two huge table lamps lit up a room decorated with plush couches and chairs, a wall-sized flat TV screen, and an antique games table with four chairs.

  Looking at her in the light, he made a grimace of disgust. “Hah—what have we here? A real mess.” She was aware that her pullover and cargo pants were smeared with dirt and blood, as were her face and disheveled hair. “And what’s here?” he said, staring at her waist. He shoved up her pullover and saw the rope, one end of which had become partially untied and hung down. “Okay, that might come in handy.” He unwound it from her waist and set it aside. You’ve got to walk,” he muttered. “Put your hands out,” he ordered. When she did, he pulled out a roll of gray duct tape and bound her wrists together in front of her.

  She stood uncertainly, looking at the young scientist. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright behind his thick glasses. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked him. “People will be looking for me. I just happened to be taking a walk when I looked in that window. I want you to let me go.”

  “Let you go?” said Christopher. “You gotta be kidding. You’ve been snooping. If you hadn’t done that, no one would have bothered with you.” Noting her bleeding forehead, he said, “We can’t have your blood in here.” He ripped off a couple more strips of tape and covered her entire forehead. “There,” he said. “Now there’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Through the door of the adjoining bedroom walked Anne Lansing, in her black linen dress accessorized with latex gloves. These two intended to leave no prints behind. Anne smiled when she saw Louise and came over and sashayed in front of her, a frivolous little twirling dance step, as if mocking her own image as a dignified botanist. “Oh, precious Lord,” she cried, examining Louise from head to toe, “are you ever a mess! And your face—you’re beginning to look like a mummy. Are you a mummy, Louise?” she teased.

  Louise decided she’d get nowhere by acting like a scared rabbit. She stared back at the woman and slowly shook her head. “No, I’m not a mummy, Anne,” she said in a calm voice. “ And yes, I’m onto your game.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you knew I was in on this?” said Anne.

  “From the moment you got up in the Lanai Room and revived your father from the dead.”

  Anne tossed her dark bobbed hair. “Oh, of course—I’d told you on the plane back from the Big Island that Daddy was dead.” She smiled. “I’d forgotten that little piece of embroidery.”

  “You played the distressed mourner again when you got up and sang that song, ‘Precious Lord.’ What a piece of acting that was.”

  Anne laughed. “I succeeded, Louise, dear. That whole room felt sorry for me and my deceased boss. Why, your friend Steffi was crying—and she wasn’t the only one. Too bad you had to pry. You signed your own fate.”

  “You tried to get rid of me out on that cliff,” said Louise.

  “But you do have survival skills, don’t you? We’ll do better next time.” Anne turned to Chris. “Didn’t I tell you she was onto me?” She looked at the tape that Christopher still held in his hands. “We’ve talked to this woman enough; it’s obvious she’s alone. Let’s shut her up.”

  With a swift move, Anne took the roll from his hands and ripped off a long strip. First, Louise trembled, as all the television images of dead bodies with taped mouths came flooding over her. A taped mouth was the beginning of the end, she knew. Then she became angry at the audacity of this woman. She could feel a welcome rush of adrenaline replacing her fear. With every part of her being she concentrated on the approaching enemy.

  Anne moved quickly, the tape poised in both hands. Louise swung her body far to the left and bunted her head against her assailant, causing the tape to fly back and entang
le in Anne’s hair and hers.

  “Ow!” cried her assailant. With venom in her voice, she said to Christopher, “Hold onto her.” While he clasped her shoulders in his big hands, Anne roughly slapped the tape over her mouth. Her eyes stared into Louise’s. “How about another strip?” she asked, as she ripped off another length and shoved it onto her face. Now Louise could hardly breathe through her nostrils.

  Anne turned to her cohort. “Don’t let her just stand there—do something. Sit her down and show her who’s boss.”

  Christopher grabbed Louise’s rope and came over to her, shoving her into one of the chairs positioned around the card table. He wound the rope around her and tied it so tightly that it hurt her arms. Leaning his face so close to hers that she could smell his sour breath, he quietly said, “Don’t even try to move from here.” Then he slapped her face with such force that her head snapped back on her neck. The pain filled her head and light rays shone all around, as if she were in the center of a star. It traveled through her body like an echo, while tears came to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks and over the duct tape. But fortunately she was not unconscious.

  From now on, though, she would be acting. She closed her eyes and dropped her head down on her chest. Through her nostrils she pulled in small, short breaths, the way she suspected an unconscious person would breathe.

  “Oh my God,” said Anne, “you’ve overdone it, Chris. We still have to get her out of here. How’s she going to walk?”

  Chris put a hand on the pulse on her throat. “I didn’t hit her that hard. Or I didn’t think I did. Anyway, she’ll wake up. Come on now.”

  Through a slit in her eyes, Louise could see him put his big arms around Anne. Anne turned her head away from his face and said, “Not here, Chris, please.”

  Dropping his large arms abruptly, he said, “If not here, then where? For God’s sake, Anne, what are you?”

  Anne headed for the adjoining bedroom and he followed her. As soon as they left, Louise bent her head down and reached up and with her bound hands to try and pull the strands of hair from under the duct tape, for the pressure was giving her as much pain as the slap to the head.

  She was grateful they didn’t bother to close the bedroom door, for she could hear them clearly. “What am I?” said Anne. “I am just what you think I am, Chris, your devoted fan.”

  “My fan?” he said, incredulously. “After all your promises today, you’re keeping me at arm’s length? What do you do, tempt men and then kill them? Don’t be cute. I know you slit Matthew Flynn’s neck and shoved him off that cliff; I knew it from the minute I heard about it. And Bruce—there’s no way that man was dumb enough to fall into a pool of lava unless he had a good shove from someone who knew he was on to them.”

  Anne’s voice was cool and reasonable. “Chris, darling, stop and think. I would never have done these things if I hadn’t had to. Matt made such a fuss. Matt was smitten with me after that conference last year, but then it all turned sour and I dropped him. Once we’d arrived here in Kauai, he threatened to tell Bruce about me. Can you believe it? He was going to say that I’d promised him I’d steal Bruce’s secrets.”

  “Huh,” grunted Christopher, “you mean Flynn thought he’d get both you and Dr. Bouting’s special plant info?”

  “I suggested that as a possibility. But Matt acted as if he were appalled. Who would have thought that man had scruples?”

  Christopher said, “Be straight with me. He dropped you, not vice versa.”

  “Oh, no,” Anne hurriedly assured him. “After the argument over whether or not I’d get into his computer secrets, I knew Matt and I weren’t a good team, so I dropped him.”

  “Have it your way,” said Christopher Bailey, his tone loaded with sarcasm. “Anne, you are a piece of work! Do you ever make promises that you keep?”

  “Of course,” she said, in a mollifying tone, “the ones I made to you. Now, Chris, don’t get all bent out of shape.”

  “Oh, honey,” he said, in a softening voice, “why did you have to murder him?”

  “I didn’t intend to. We had a plan to meet on Shipwreck Rock. And then things escalated and he told me a decent guy like Bruce deserved better than me. So I hit his head with a convenient rock.”

  “And then you got out your clippers and slit his neck and made sure he was dead. Or did you conceal George’s machete up there and use that?”

  “The clippers worked fine—the top blade, you know, very good for gouging into the foramen magnum. George Wyant seemed like the perfect fall guy. That’s why I threw his machete off the cliff the night before.”

  “My God.” Christopher Bailey made an unpleasant gargling noise, as if he were close to vomiting. There was a long moment of silence. Finally, he said, “That was premeditated.”

  “Well, maybe it was. But Chris, I couldn’t have Matt ruining everything for me. Everything was for us, because you know if I went down, so would you. The old man viewed us as an unbeatable business team.”

  “Look, Anne,” said Christopher, in a voice so soft that Louise had to strain to hear, “I guessed it was more than business with you and Bruce.”

  Louise leaned far out in her chair, hoping to see them. Only a small light emanated from the room. Anne Lansing and Christopher Bailey were sitting together on the edge of the bed.

  She was amazed at the thought: Anne Lansing was not Bruce Bouting’s daughter figure, she was his mistress. Had John Batchelder found this out? Was this what he’d meant that it was “all for love”?

  “I suppose you couldn’t help suspecting,” Anne said, “though Bruce and I were terribly discreet. I fell out of love with Matt and fell into love with the old guy. Frankly, he was the best lover I ever had—and he was a free thinker. He didn’t give a damn if I had affairs with other men. He got a kick out of me and I got a kick of out him. Chris, I’m . . . just a little bit pregnant with his child. He was going to marry me!”

  “You’re pregnant with his child? Then why did you shove him into that lava?”

  “Because he was just too smart. He’d had a whiff of my romance with Matt, not that he cared, of course. But he became suspicious that I was the one who killed him and that bothered him. In the end he was this righteous old throwback to another age. You know good and well that it was all he could talk about on that plane, in his indirect way.”

  “It must have been a cinch, having a guy with a lame leg to deal with . . .”

  “Going down to view the lava was my opportunity. But I swear to God, Chris, I’m really sad about it.” Her voice was breaking with emotion. “You know how much I respected and cared for him—and I am carrying his baby. I didn’t want to kill him.”

  “You could say he was dying anyway,” said Christopher in a thoughtful voice. “He was losing ground, day by day. Frankly, I’d thought of it, but I didn’t do anything . . .”

  “I know you thought of it, because you were more impatient than I was. I could see it in your eyes. It’s bittersweet, seeing a brilliant man like that and knowing what’s happening to his great brain. Only you and I can understand this.” The words were soft and tender.

  Louise peeked in again and could no longer see them. They apparently had fallen back onto the bed and she heard rustling sounds of clothing. She realized it was a pragmatic move on Anne’s part, offering her partner in crime her body—as pragmatic as it must have been becoming pregnant with the millionaire Bouting’s baby. But Bouting was gone now. From now on, Anne Lansing’s future was tied to Christopher Bailey’s.

  She dropped her head again, as if unconscious, figuring that once their tryst was done they would come hurriedly out of the bedroom.

  It was a brief intimacy. To Louise’s ears it was strained on one side and an explosive release of tension on the other. At last, Christopher Bailey had gotten laid; now there was a new bond between the two. They were talking quietly, as lovers did after sex.

  Little patches of conversation came through.

  Anne: “. . . take h
er as far from here as possible, so this suite has no connection to her death.”

  Louise wondered where they intended to take her.

  Christopher: “. . . then come back here so we can chill out and you know . . .” One bite of the apple—and a little bite at that—obviously was not enough for him.

  Anne: “. . . and the password . . . try again . . .”

  Christopher: “. . . better to wait until we get back to the office and outsmart those dimwit IT people . . . the server room unlocked during coffee breaks . . . we’ll access his stuff any time we want.”

  Anne: “. . . one more detail—John whatever-his-name is . . . so why don’t you take her. And I’ll wait . . .”

  Louise could feel her muscles tighten. They wanted to dispose of her. After that, they were going after the helpless John Batchelder, lying in that Lihue Hospital.

  Unexpectedly, the loud voice emerged from the bedroom, followed by the man who uttered them: “I don’t want to do it!” Tugging to adjust his pants, Christopher came out of the bedroom and straight over to Louise. She had closed her eyes again.

  “Look at her, she looks comatose,” he said. “How are we going to get her out of here?”

  Anne came up beside him. “You did that.”

  “No, I didn’t. She was all right for a minute after I hit her.”

  Anne said, “Concussion, I bet.”

  “I don’t care,” said Christopher. “I don’t intend to lead this lamb to slaughter—you’re the expert—you do it.”

  Louise groaned, pretending that she was regaining consciousness, though her head continued to droop on her neck. Anne pointed to her and said, “Look, she’s all right; she’ll at least be able to walk. All right, I’ll go with you and help get rid of her.” She went up to Christopher, to give him what Louise saw was a little more sexual reinforcement. Caressing his cheek and then running her hand down his chest clear to his groin, she said, “Remember, we’ll have some fun when this is done. Also, remember that we’re in this together now, as of our conversation this afternoon.”