Death in the Orchid Garden

by Ann Ripley

  As she passed a tall pile of rocks, a man’s voice called out. “So I see you’re still among the living.”

  It was Bobby Rankin. She could hardly see him lying in a shady crevice between the rocks, his body propped on one elbow. Wearing only tattered tan shorts and a hat that years ago was white, he looked as if he might be an encrustation attached to the ancient rubble. She slowly approached him.

  “It’s all due to you, Bobby,” said Louise. “I found out that the reason I’m among the living is because you have sharp eyes. That’s why I came out to find you and thank you.”

  His face broke into a semblance of a smile. She felt free to come closer.

  He patted the sand beside him. “Come into my den. Sit down. Make yourself at home. Now that the murders are solved, you ought to relax.”

  She laughed as she eased down next to him. “I marvel, Bobby, at how fast you get the latest news.” Looking up at the twelve-foot-high monoliths on either side of them, she said, “Is this one of your favorite spots?”

  “I gotta say it is.” He cocked his head toward the rough, black walls with their myriad pockmarks. “Actually, I have a few things stashed in here where folks can’t find ’em.” He uncurled from his recumbent position and sat up. His face was drawn and sad. “I was here last night, Louise. That’s why I saw you being dragged off.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I can never thank you enough.” She couldn’t help feeling pity as she looked at him. A wreck of a man, she thought, with bloodshot eyes, brown curly hair going every which way under that disreputable hat, bare bronzed shoulders held in an attitude of dejection.

  He slanted a look at her. “You were worth saving. Though I guess I’d have done it for any good-for-nothing son-of–a-bitch, because I always have believed in the ultimate goodness of people. I’m excluding, of course, the gal who killed Matt Flynn and Dr. Bouting.” He shook his head. “People like her have no regard for anyone but themselves. Selfish people kill others, one way or the other—they cause some of us to want to drop out altogether.”

  Louise knew this vague remark was as close as Bobby would ever come to telling her what happened to him twenty years ago, before he came to Hawaii.

  He picked up a small shell and scraped it idly through the damp sand, all his concentration on this meaningless activity. Sliding another glance at Louise, he said, “Didn’t it give you pause to think someone was tryin’ to kill you?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “Gave me a turn, too, said Bobby. He stared out into the waves. “It got me thinking about what I was doing here. Did I tell you I’ve been here for twenty years and three downturns in the stock market?”

  “You mentioned you once were a broker but you didn’t mention the downturns in the market. Are you beginning to rethink your lifestyle?”

  Frowning, as if the idea were repellent to him, he said, “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it since I woke up awhile ago.” He leaned closer to her and held out the thumb and forefinger of one hand, pressing them so close together that they nearly touched. “Louise,” he said in a husky voice, “that’s how close you came to dying last night.” His tortured eyes sought hers. “That’s because I was stoned out of my gourd. The only reason I saw you was because I had to get up to pee. I struggled out of my little cubbyhole and there the three of you were, trotting down the path, with you draggin’ your feet. I went back in here and thought about it for a while, trying to sort it all out. When the search party came by, I knew I’d seen what I just imagined I’d seen.”

  “Oh, Bobby,” she said. She reached out and put a hand on his arm. “I’m eternally grateful to you. But let’s say you hadn’t figured it out and they had pitched me in the ocean—it wouldn’t have been your fault.”

  He groaned. “Just the same, I can’t help thinking about it. It makes me want to go straight, or at least a little straighter than I’m livin’ right now. Maybe do a little more for people than I’ve been doin’. I’m thinking I might take up my buddies’ offer.”

  “What did they offer you?”

  “Part ownership of that surf shop on the beach where you probably rented your snorkel equipment. I’ve made a lot of friends since I landed here and I give my closest friends advice on investing. You know, ‘get into techs, my friends,’ and then, ‘get the hell out of techs, my friends’ . . . They got out in time: they’ve done real well with my advice. Now they want to show me their gratitude.”

  “That sounds perfect for you. It won’t involve too much change.” Louise realized she was slipping into a familiar role—the caring mother validating her child. Ironically, Bobby was older than she was, but he seemed to need validation.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know the surf shop business; it isn’t that hard. And I have a business head. I didn’t leave that behind when I came here from the mainland.” With a sigh of regret he added, “I could even move into a house, I suppose, though that’s a pretty radical step.”

  “Maybe one step at a time. Take over the job and then see if it suits you to, uh . . .”

  “To come in from the beach, like the spy who came in from the cold? Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.” An ironic, soft laugh. “Unlike Alec Leamas, I hope no one shoots me when I climb over the wall.” His gaze returned to the ocean, as if it had all the ansers for him.

  Louise stole a glance at her watch. “I have to get going, Bobby.” She stood up and brushed sand off her bare legs, then came out of Bobby’s cubbyhole in the rocks. He scrambled to his feet and followed her, his eyes squinting as he walked into the sunlight.

  “I’d like to stay in touch,” she said. “Can I write you at the surf shop?”

  He smiled down at her, a real smile this time. “Sure. Pretty soon I’ll have an e-mail address, like six billion other people on the planet. I’ll drop you a line.” He reached out a big, rough hand and clasped hers. “You take care, Louise, you hear? And stay out of trouble, now.”

  On the way to see John in the hospsital, she, Marty, and Steffi stopped first in Lihue at Hamura’s Saimin Stand for a bite of lunch. It was one of the restaurants that Matthew Flynn had recommended; just as Flynn had predicted, the food was delicious—and also cheap.

  When they reached the hospital, John had just wakened from a nap. The three of them sat around his bed, happy to see his dark-lashed eyes wide open. “So you’ve heard my story,” he said, in a weak voice.

  Marty said, “Just the bare bones, John. Are you strong enough to give us the whole skinny?”

  “Some of it, Marty.” He turned to Louise and explained. “It was on the plane that I decided Anne Lansing had something to do with Matthew Flynn’s death.”

  “Yes,” she told her cohost, “so we heard.”

  “Dr. Bouting was so agitated—he only whispered to Chris Bailey, but I could hear it as I stood there. It was stuff like, ‘I know she did it.’ Then Chris whispered that she wouldn’t do it. Then he said, ‘I know she did it, because she loved him.’ Didn’t use her name, but who else would he be mumbling about? Fortunately for her, Anne got out of her seat with a pill in her hand and as soon as the old man saw her coming, he clammed up. So when we got to the Big Island, I decided to stick with Anne. But then, after awhile . . .” His partially bandaged face flushed with embarrassment.

  Louise said, “She co-opted you?”

  “Yeah, I quit suspecting her. I think Bouting quit suspecting her, too.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Louise said. “She co-opted me, too.”

  Steffi Corbin chimed in, in the injured voice of someone who had been double-crossed. “Anne did that to all of us. She especially tried to cultivate me. I thought she was such a sweet girl. Now I’m worried about what she’ll do with that baby she’s carrying.”

  John looked blankly at Steffi. “Baby? She’s pregnant?”

  Marty leaned toward John and patted him on the hand that wasn’t bandaged. “Just tell us your story, buddy.”

  “By the time we got down to the volcano action,” he said, “I’d pr
etty much lost all my suspicions and I was just enjoying her company. Why should I be suspicious, when old Bouting was treating her like he usually did, you know, like a beloved daughter? Right at the outset—you must have seen it, too—the old man wanted to be by himself, so he told Chris to get lost. I went off with Anne up toward the vent, but she shook me. A little later, I caught sight of her following Bouting. She shooed off one of those Kauai cops who was hovering around, probably telling him that she’d keep an eye out on the old gentleman. So I followed the both of them.”

  “Good man,” said Marty.

  “They got to a lonely spot in the middle. Not much action was going on, the hot lava just crackling its way down the hill toward the ocean. You may not know it, but Bouting really got into that volcano stuff—you should have seen him sitting there in the snack bar watching the videos of volcanists standing on the edges of the orange flows. So maybe it didn’t take much for Anne to coax the old fellow inside the torches. Once in there, though, she throws his cane on the ground, then hurries him over—probably said something about a closer look—and gives him this gigantic shove. It lands him right into the lava. I shouted at her and, God, she came at me like a wild tiger. She shoved me toward the heat, but I fought her and she ran away, half choking to death. I got down and tried to pull Dr. Bouting out of that awful stuff. And then . . .” His wide eyes began to tear up.

  Louise said, “You don’t have to tell us any more, John.”

  Blinking away the tears from his eyes, he said, “No, I want to finish. I grabbed his hand and a big gust of smoke laid me low, literally. I couldn’t hardly breathe or get up, much less pull him away from that fire. It was so hot . . .”

  Louise bowed her head. She’d had no idea of her cohost’s true character. “Oh, John, you’re a hero, trying to save someone you hardly knew.” Impulsively, she leaned over and hugged him.

  He grinned. “I like that hug. I think you really meant it. I didn’t plan to be a hero, you know. And look where it’s got me—my future in television may be affected. I may be scarred for life, despite what a plastic surgeon can do. I think it’ll be okay with Linda, though. She likes used dogs and little animals, so a scarred fiancé probably won’t creep her out.”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “Another thing, too, Louise,” he persisted, “I’m givin’ up detecting. I don’t think I’m suited for it.”

  “I’m not sure about that, John. You did pretty well. Next time, just don’t talk about it so much.” She remembered Tom Schoonover’s warnings. “And there’s also a certain, um, self-restraint that one needs if one is detecting. Maybe we both need to learn it.”

  “You mean, so as not to end up in the hospital.”

  “Yes,” said Louise. “A little less hubris, a little more forethought. And don’t worry about your future in TV. With those scars, you’ll look handsomer than ever on camera.”

  A GARDENING ESSAY

  TROPICAL PLANTS ARE VERY HOT

  Tropical plants have been a hot topic among gardening aficionados for a decade now. And we must ask ourselves: In an era of periodic drought when practical experts drum in the message that we should plant regional and xeriscape plants, why do we still love tropicals?

  It’s a fact that there is a place inside all of us—a gene, perhaps—that causes us to love jungles. That’s why so many of us leave snowy climes to take vacations in places like Hawaii, Costa Rica, and South and Central America; they are top tourist destinations, as any travel agency will tell you.

  Perhaps this exposure to lavish plants under the ideal condition of being on vacation is why we like to bring the jungle home to our backyard gardens. The dramatic architecture of the plants with their huge leaves and serpentine branches and the vibrant color and form of the flowers please our eye and pique our imaginations. We think to ourselves, “Why settle for asters and roses when I can lift the garden out of anonymity with a few wild purchases?”

  Ironically, when we go tropical, we’re using plants like taro—elephant ear, it’s called—cordyline and banana that were not admired for their beauty, but used as food mainstays to keep early residents of the Pacific islands from starving to death. Taro, cordyline, and banana and all the gorgeous horticultural goodies of Hawaii can now be found in your local nursery: gingers, bromeliads, orchids, birds-of-paradise, strappy-looking phormiums from the color black to yellow-and-green stripe, fluffy ferns, and stalwart, vertical bamboos.

  In fact, there’s a treasure trove of lush, warm-weather plants there for the buying. They’ve been bred and bred again and come these days with stripes, speckles, and spots, black leaves and maroon leaves. Their flowers appear in brilliant primary and secondary colors. If you go tropical, forget pastels, or at least use them sparingly.

  Interestingly enough, nursery owners the country over have recently been advised that there’s also a treasure trove of profit from selling tropicals. Many of these plants end up on the compost pile by the end of the season; that means that the gardener will come back the following spring and buy more.

  The reality is that a tropical garden is not an easy thing to winter over. Lots of weary gardeners decide in the fall to discard these tender plants instead of taking the trouble to save them. Consider the banana, for instance, which was one foot tall when you bought it in the spring for $15. By September, you may have a ten-foot-high plant on your hands, with a huge root. You can ball it up in burlap and put it in the basement, but it isn’t that easy and these roots have been known to turn to mush over the winter season.

  Hard work also is involved in saving your cannas, dahlias (if you can be persuaded to think, as some people do, that they’re tropical), elephant ear, and caladium. All these roots must be dug and carefully preserved in peat moss, some with different levels of dampness in the mix. For instance, keep the elephant ear on the dry side, but not too dry.

  For some clever gardeners, the work is less. They bring the majority of these delicate beauties—taro and phormium, bird of paradise, cyperus and ginger plants—inside and use them as houseplants. They root cuttings of their begonias and coleus for a supply of new plants for the next season. Of course, there are some varieties that don’t like this treatment. The datura, or Angel’s Trumpet, for instance, prefers hanging out in a dry, cool basement during winter.

  If the gardener has room, there is one challenging plant, the agave, that is an architectural wonder. This century plant is only hardy to zone nine. But a new five-foot variety might make the effort of over-wintering well worth it. Called Agave vilmoriniana, it has a personality of its own, with its curling, twisted, gray-green leaves reminiscent of an octopus.

  Once spring comes, these delicate specimens are kicked out of the house. They will love the out-of-doors, undergoing a period of readjustment and then growing robustly until early fall when they can resume their identity as houseplants.

  And then there are the smartest gardeners of all. They read up on plants and build their basic tropical-flavored garden from “doppelganger” plants. These are plants that look tropical but aren’t tropical at all, but rather hardy down to zone four or five. There are quite a few of such plants: winter-hardy bamboo, with its great vertical look and delicate leaves; yucca, with strong, sword-shaped leaves; hosta, whose smooth leaves come in many colors, from blue to chartreuse and even green and white stripes; ferns, both big and small; crocosmia, which has graceful, long-lasting hot-colored stems of flowers in red, orange, or yellow; fat-blossomed hibiscus; round, leather-leaved bergenia; and red-hot-poker plant with its fiery blossoms. Some gardeners even view the flared-cup daylily as a tropical lookalike. But nothing frail about them: they are so sturdy that they might well outlive the gardener.

  Locate these clever plants near other hardy and huge-leafed plants such as Crambe maritima, leaves three feet wide, and Gunnera manicata, with its eight-foot-wide leaves, and you immediately attain the tropical look that you want. The crambe, or sea kale, is incredibly dependable and each June rewards the gardene
r with clouds of small white flowers on stems hovering above massive leaves. Be sure to include some plants that lots of people don’t realize come in hardy brands: the guava and the cactus. These two varieties have a definite tropical flavor.

  Any combination of these plants can form the backbone of your tropical paradise. For more height, you might include a fat-leaved catalpa tree, which has dramatic leaves, flowers, and seedpods—how can you get more tropical than that? Ginkgo, Japanese maple and katsura trees, all with interestingly-shaped leaves, are other good choices for this garden.

  When spring comes, the rest is easy. The hardy plants outdoors will be leafing out. You only need to retrieve the banana, phormiums, cordylines, taro, and the nonhardy bulbs and put them out to complete the scene. Many gardeners keep these tender plants permanently in pots.

  Not all plants in this tropical milieu will be huge, for the understory must be taken care of. Chartreuse euphorbia goes well in the foreground, as do some shorter grasses. A plant or two of frilly white baby’s breath can be a refreshing relief from the more intense colors.

  To add the ultimate touch, combine the various “stories” or levels of plants by interplanting exotic annual vines. Two ipomoeas are easy to grow and would be particularly attractive in a tropical theme. One is the moonflower with huge white blossoms, Ipomoea alba, and the other, Ipomoea lobata, or Spanish flag. Flowers of the Spanish flag are a range of red, orange, yellow, and ivory on long, curved stems; they look enticing twined among blossoms of like or contrasting colors. The mandevilla is another spectacular vine. Mandevillas have large, funnel-shaped flowers of pink, rose, red, or white and will eagerly grow upward among the tree ferns and bamboos, to unite the garden “stories.”