Death of a Political Plant (28 page)

Her head was swimming with possibilities and scenarios: Willie Upchurch with his ruthless flunkies? Ted French, acting alone, and probably not for the first time? Or Franklin Rawlings, with his amiable public face and Machiavellian ways? Both Rawlings and Lannie Gordon were stripped of probity through this journalistic expose; Louise was sure Lannie had played some vital role.

Gil Whitson had to fit in somewhere, for no matter how good-willed he seemed, his behavior had been suspicious. And then there was that distasteful fellow, Charlie Hurd: He had a very good reason to remove Jay McCormick, provided he could have found the story afterward. Whoever killed Jay must be furious at the loss of the disks. And now, she sat here with both copies of the incriminating evidence. If anyone figured that out, she would become the target of the killer. A shiver ran through her. She needed to get out of the hut. It was too vulnerable.

As she quickly gathered up her things, Louise reflected on the irony of being loaded down with information, and with no one to talk to. She had an overwhelming desire to spill it all
out to Detective Geraghty, Again, she felt guilty about the big detective: She could even picture him, working after hours in his dingy little office in the Fairfax police station on Route One, fretting over the case just as she was doing. But with less to work with than she had.

But Geraghty would get his evidence soon enough. What she needed were just a few more pieces to put this mystery together. If she didn’t find them, she wasn’t sure anyone else would.

D
ROPPING THE TRAY OFF IN THE
kitchen, she grabbed some plastic Ziploc bags and took the two disks outside to the patio garden. These precious objects were going to rest in two separate hiding places, just to be safe. The memos occupied a third. If lightning struck her, she knew, Jay’s story would go to the grave with her, for her hiding places were impeccable. Dear Jay, she thought,
you would be proud of me
. But she did not expect
anything to stand in the way of giving over all this information to her astounded husband in less than four hours. Bill would be proud of her, too, solving a murder, or at least providing clues to the solution of a murder, without getting her own self in serious trouble for once.

Her activity left her a little sweaty and breathless. When she entered the house, she had phone messages, just as she expected. She was surprised they didn’t include a message from the Fairfax PD.

Bill had called from the airplane to say they had departed late from Vienna and would arrive at eleven or twelve. She slumped against the counter and sighed. Now she would have to wait even longer to talk over all the things she’d learned about Jay’s murder.

Martha had phoned from Detroit. “
Ma, now I’ve read another little squib about Jay McCormick’s murder in the Detroit Free Press. This is just a little call to remind you to lock the doors, and don’t talk to strangers or do anything rash until Dad and Janie get home. I love you. ’Bye
.”

Louise smiled. It was kind of fun being mothered by her elder daughter. And Janie was coming home tonight, and so was Bill, and family life would get back to normal. Life would soon get back to normal.

But she was kidding herself. Nothing was going to get back to normal. A gray cloud of anxiety had hovered over her ever since she found Jay’s body in the fishpond, and when Bill learned of his death, he would be just as disturbed as she was. There would be no peace until the murderer was found.

The last message on her machine was from Tessie Strahan of the Perennial Plant Society. In the stress and turmoil of the past two days, Louise had almost forgotten her plant friends. But they were still down at the Hilton, talking about plants,
listening to lectures from starry-eyed plant hybridizers, and taking tours of commercial and private gardens in the Washington area.

Tessie sounded exhausted: “
This has been some convention, Louise” she began in her staccato style. “Too bad, dear, you couldn’t have attended these past two days, though we know you have had this sad occurrence with the death of your friend
.”

She said nothing about whether the police had talked to Gil Whitson, but knowing Detective Geraghty, Louise bet they had. And if they had, Tessie probably put the blame at Louise’s feet, for her loyalty to Gil Whitson ran deeper than her new friendship with Louise.

It was a chatty message. Tessie said, “
Gil’s gradually getting the van loaded, and we’re leaving for home tonight, but we wanted to come by your house to say good-bye. But just my luck, there may be a subcommittee meeting of growers before we leave, and if there is, it will be too late afterward to come by. So we’ll see which way it goes. But we all wanted you to know what a great hostess you were the other night. And don’t forget, Louise—next year you must attend again, no matter where in the country we hold it, because we can’t be without the Plant Person of the Year at the convention
!”

This was just another blow. Since they were leaving town tonight, it meant Louise couldn’t enlist Gil to go over and look at the koi. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would call a veterinarian, if she could find one who made house calls on fish.

It was seven, and she had at least four hours to kill, maybe five. The house suddenly seemed unbearably hot and close. She felt suffocated in here, or was it because of the disappointment of having resolved nothing about Jay’s murder? She went to the bedroom and threw off the jogging suit and put on her gardening outfit. Certainly the gardens had been pampered enough because of the P.P.S. visitors, but she could always
find one more thing to do out there. Anything was better than staying inside.

But first things first: She grabbed the kitchen scraps and went out into the Washington evening. The air was still moist—good for growing slugs, she thought wryly. Gathering her shovel and pruners from the toolshed, she buried the garbage, then stepped across the garden to prune her new deciduous azalea.

If plants had souls, as some fey people thought, this azalea was trembling at her approach. She had already trimmed it once since she bought it last spring. This time, she went easy, pinching a few inches off a branch to give it better balance or rather, imbalance. She often pruned woody perennials and shrubs asymetrically, since, as she had confessed to Tom Paschen during their White House grounds tour, her standard for flowers and gardens was “irregular and wild.”

As she worked, she heard someone call. It was Roger Kendricks, her neighbor, far out in his woodsy backyard.

“Louise, I need to talk to you.”

Oh yes, she thought, do let’s talk. Her desperate need to share her day came surging forth again. She could talk to Roger, the brilliant, circumspect newsman, a man who dropped out of newspapering now and again to lend his brains to Washington liberal think tanks. Roger would keep her confidence, too, in case she let slip more than she intended.

She came across the woods to see him struggling to cut off a one-inch limb with his pruners. “God, Louise, what a sight for sore eyes you are. What am I doing wrong here? We’re supposed to go out later, but right now I’ve been sent out here in lower Siberia to cut off ‘deadwood,’ as Laurie puts it. I’m not too good at it.” He scowled at the swamp oak.

She pointed to the branch. “If you save that until tomorrow, I’ll come over with my loppers and help you with it.”

He breathed a sigh of relief and wriggled the tool loose from the branch. “Gladly.” Roger wore shorts and a sweaty T-shirt that emphasized his potbelly, and now he turned to her and she could see his worried eyes under the thick glasses. “Louise, I have to talk to you. Can you come and sit on the patio for a minute?”

“Sure.” She trudged after him to the rectangular expanse of flagstone and they settled down into comfortable metal lawn chairs. She held her pruners in her hands and made an effort to relax.

He looked at her seriously. “So you’ve had a terrible loss, Louise, your friend dying suspiciously in the fishpond like that. Laurie tells me he was your old buddy from college days.”

“I hadn’t seen him for years, but he stayed with Bill and me for a week before he went over across the street, and we had a chance to remember old times.”

“I’m genuinely sorry.”

“Thanks.” She stared down at the pruners and wondered if that was all Roger had on his mind. She could hardly contain herself, she was so anxious to get to what was hanging so heavily on her conscience. “Roger,” she said, “first, let me ask you a tough question.”

“Go ahead. You know I’m geared for tough answers.”

“I’ve had a harrowing couple of days, with this murder….”

He leaned back and crossed his hairy legs, seemingly willing to give her time to get out her story. “You think it’s murder, too.”

“Haven’t the papers said that? Or are they still calling it ‘a
suspicious accident’?” She shook her head. “I haven’t paid attention to the news.”

“Louise, you must know the Post is getting on this story. In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t caught up with you yet, because … Well, you go ahead. Give me that tough question.”

Just how much should she tell him? “Apparently the police haven’t revealed this, but Jay’s computer was stolen. And, presumably, his disks.”

“I gather your friend didn’t tell you much about his story when he stayed with you.”

“He was very close-mouthed about it. It was extremely frustrating, if you want the truth. But now, I’ve found something and it leaves me in a dilemma. So this is my hypothetical question: Suppose you had found some—evidence regarding a murder, really important evidence. And suppose the evidence, if you should give it to the police, wouldn’t exactly prove who murdered the person—that person being your friend. So, are you entitled to keep the evidence for a while to see if you can uncover more clues? Or are you obligated to turn the material directly over to the police?”

She looked closely at his face to see his reaction.

He chuckled knowingly. “Are they garden clues, like the changing color of tulips? The police might ignore them, like the last time around.”

“Not garden clues,” she said firmly. Just a clue found in the garden, she thought.

He hunched forward. “First of all, let’s see what we know about this case: The Post called McCormick’s paper out West and his editor doesn’t think his death was any accident, any more than the police apparently do. McCormick had some kind of inside story about Goodrich and his sleazy campaign.”

“I know.”

“So, let’s assume people in Goodrich’s campaign would have a strong motive to get back that story—even to the point of killing the writer.” Roger shook his balding head. “Not out of the question—we don’t know how many murders there have been to further the aspirations of a national political candidate. But if there isn’t some hard evidence at the scene—and believe me, outdoor scenes like the Mougeys’ backyard must be hell to work with—your friend’s assailant may never be caught. I don’t like that Upchurch gang, and there’s one in the bunch I distrust more than the others: Ted French. Heard of him?”

“I’ve even met him. In fact, I saw him just today.”

He was surprised. “You saw him? Well, there’s a loose cannon; French is almost a joke, like Gordon Liddy used to be, except one has to take these jokers seriously. He’s the kind of guy who would be capable of violence like this. I think Franklin Rawlings got a tiger by the tail when he acquired French, and now he doesn’t know how to get loose. But we mustn’t discount Rawlings for reaching the depths of political corruption all on his own.”

Her scalp tingled as she heard these unrelenting words. “Rawlings. I saw him, too, and he seemed pretty upset with Ted French about something.” What had Jay written about the opposition campaign manager? That he was the commanding general of the reckless dirty tricks campaign. Well, one of his lieutenants appeared to be out of control.

Roger said, “I see you’ve been around. Rawlings is a man who is always protesting his innocence about everything. And if you’ve ever met him, you know he is well met: about the friendliest, most amiable, most available guy there is. That’s why the press loves him, by the way. But the man is unscrupulous.
Just between the two of us, the Post is investigating that senatorial campaign out in California.”

“Oh, is it?” She didn’t tell him that Jay McCormick had beaten the Post to the punch.

“The only thing Franklin ever really regrets is being caught. And he removes himself three layers from everything, so he seldom gets his name attached to the seamiest deals. If he’s behind this murder, believe me, no one will ever prove it. He will have sent someone else to do it. Someone else will be the fall guy.”

She thought back on Jay’s story, and it came to her clearly: Of all the key figures in it, Rawlings probably had the most to lose, and therefore the greatest motive to murder Jay McCormick. By the same token, Rawlings was probably the most able to avoid disclosure.

And who had the most to gain? It came to her in a flash.

“Roger, do you happen to know a reporter around the Washington area named Charles Hurd?”