The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery (9 page)

“Oh, no?”

“First off, there aren’t any poachers up there. Why, Jimmy Porter would have blown their heads off, and poachers know it.” She shook a sturdy finger at Louise. “Porter’s ranch, after all, is private property—and there’s
more than one mountain biker who strayed back there who has the buckshot in his pants to prove it. No, the poachers are up around about Rocky Mountain National Park.” Her white eyebrows elevated. “Know what other reason I’ve got for thinking that?”

Louise shook her head.

“There have been other deaths back on Porter’s ranch that’ve never been explained.” She wagged her head just a little, girlishly, and grinned. “So this is just one more, isn’t it?”

Ruthie straightened up. Louise could see her rounded back was tired. “Well, I gotta close up now, Louise, but you’re welcome to come back tomorrow.” Her voice was quiet, but louder than before, as if it would be all right now if someone overheard her. “Life in the mountains is kind of different. It attracts all sorts of people who don’t like to do things the way other people do them. What d’you call that, now—non-conformists is what I mean.”

“Yes. But Porter Ranch isn’t really in the mountains—”

“Foothills or mountains, it doesn’t matter,” said Ruthie. “It’s five-six miles back, and that’s all it takes to give ’em a mountain mentality. Mountain living is good for people on the edge of the law—course, I wouldn’t mention names. They’re also people who want total privacy.” She laughed heartily. “Why, Lyons is
civilized
in comparison to some of those mountain towns. And in some people’s opinion, Lyons is gettin’ way
too
civilized, judging from all the wealthy people movin’ in. Why, sometimes you can’t park on High Street for the BMW’s clogging the spaces.”

At that moment, a heavyset man of about forty clumped in the door. He had thinning brown hair with a cowlick at the crown of the head that gave him a faintly comical air,
almost like a baby. His scuffed, square-toed boots made a noisy statement as he swaggered to the end of the counter.

“Eddie,” said Ruthie patiently, “you know we’re closing.”

The man seemed distracted. He tapped his fingers impatiently on the counter and cajoled the woman, as if she were his mother. “Gosh darn, Ruthie,” he wheedled, “all I want is a couple of quick ham sandwiches and some coffee and chips.”

“Oh, well, I can do that much for you. How about some pie?”

“Y’ forgot I don’t care for sweets.”

“People change their minds all the time about things like that,” said Ruthie, smiling, as she turned to make the sandwiches.

Eddie’s glance took in the remains of the crowd, finally landing on Louise. He didn’t smile.

The proprietor brought the food to him in a small paper bag. “Awful sorry, Eddie, about your loss.”

“Well, somebody killed’im, and we don’t know who,” said Eddie, and dropped some bills on the counter. “Anyway, thanks.” He slammed the screen door on his way out.

Ruthie smoothed the bills with competent fingers, rang open the cash register, and put them in. She leaned closer so only Louise could hear her next words. “Well, as I was saying, some people are always on the edge of the law.” She cocked her head toward the empty door. “Jimmy Porter’s boy there, Eddie, for one. Can’t help feeling a little sorry for him. The other two kids, Sally and Frank, they’re, well, they’ve had their problems, too. Why, they didn’t start socializing with other kids ’til they were way up in their teens. But they’re not as
rough
as Eddie. Frank’s turned into a fine man. Sally, now, she comes in here now and then, sits right where you’re sittin’, and has her piece
of pie—apple. I think Sally’s never had much fun in life, maybe because she doted on her dad too much. Not so unusual, seein’ as how her mom died when she was little, but too much of a daddy’s girl doesn’t get you anywhere. I’m sure she hurts bad right now. I feel sorry for her.”

She turned back to the grill and scraped the grill with her spatula, then turned back to Louise to continue her story. “But Eddie, well, what’s wrong with Eddie is partly his father’s fault. Now, I don’t want to talk bad about a dead man, but I can tell you some things from personal experience.” Still holding her broad spatula in one hand, Ruthie made a wide gesture with her arms, as if doing the breast stroke. “Jimmy spread out his charm like a big net and captured every lady he ever met. I’m not saying
womanizer
, but don’t think he was the paragon of virtue he wanted people to make out he was—and
that’s
why he got shot. A flirty man, and a hard man at business to boot.” The way Ruthie said it, “hard” had three
r
’s.

“Now, Jimmy’s wife, Bonnie,” she said, “she died in a fire up there, y’know—maybe forty years ago. She was a honey. Had a wonderful perennial garden there in that mountain valley that Jimmy still maintained, I hear, just out of habit, I guess. But Jimmy had his enemies.” She shook a finger again at Louise. “Mark my words: If that lazy sheriff ever finds who did it, it’ll turn out to be someone Jimmy wronged some way or other.”

Louise was thinking about Ruthie’s words and how on earth anyone could pass up a piece of that pie as she headed for home on Route Thirty-Six, so at first she didn’t notice the wind. Suddenly, her car started veering left off the road, as if a giant hand were slowly pushing it onto the plains. She took a firmer grip on the steering wheel then
and paid attention to her driving. So this was what they meant by a chinook.

When she reached her house, branches of the big cottonwoods surrounding it whipped dangerously back and forth, and she was thankful for the protection of the carport. She unlocked the door, finding it hard to pull open. When she finally got in, she was startled to hear a wail. It took her an instant to realize it was the house wailing, sounding for all the world like a woman in pain. Then the sound broke into several tones, like a choir gone mad, as gusts pushed through every crevice and opening.

For a moment, she thought about fleeing. She could gather up some of her belongings in a suitcase and speed to Boulder and get a room at the Boulderado. Then, she and Marty and Steffi could hang out—maybe in their room, or maybe in one of the hotel’s funky but stylish bars.

She put her head between her hands and gave herself a shake.
What am I thinking? It’s just the wind!
She went to the windows and pulled the drapes closed. They were heavy, and designed, no doubt, to prevent chinooks from breaking and entering.

She grabbed an old Indian blanket from the couch, and pulled it around her shoulders. Now she knew what it was for. These winds somehow made one feel cold, even in the heat of a summer night. She curled up with a book she had found on the living room table and tried to concentrate, but was distracted. She glanced frequently toward the windows, wondering if they could stand up to the heavy gusts.

Finally, the book grabbed her. It was entitled
Emily: The Diary of a Pioneer Woman
. Emily was an unfortunate woman who lived on her own in the West near the turn of the century, and endured unbelievable drudgery and poverty. Louise was appalled at some of the deprivations Emily suffered. Suddenly she felt spoiled.

L
OUISE WAS WEEDING IN THE
yard of her rental house. It was Tuesday, an agreed-upon day off so that Marty and Steffi could tour the mountains. She wasn’t in the mood for reviewing scripts, which left her with little to do. The fact was that with Bill gone, she had a dangerous amount of free time, and she was trying to fill it wisely. First, she had gone through the entire rental house, removing a layer of fine, red sandstone dust from the furniture. Then, she scrounged up some
garden gloves and tools in the utility room off the kitchen and went out to do the garden.

She couldn’t keep her mind off the murder that happened ten miles up die road, any more than she could keep her hands out of these weeds. If Bill had been around, he would have warned her against getting involved. But he wasn’t—so he hadn’t.

It was damp in the yard, since she’d turned the sprinkler on for more than an hour. This watering, together with the recent rains, had almost restored life to the adobelike ground and the buffalo grass trying to survive in it—it also made her weeding task considerably easier. This was a pleasant, wild place, she decided, accented with moss rocks, dotted with piñón and ponderosa pines and a few big clumps of ornamental grasses. Here and there were rugged apache plume plants that still held onto a few of their butterflylike white blossoms. The
Nepeta
“Six Giants” was in full cry, resembling two dozen delphiniums in bloom, with a cluster of white yarrow another relief from the predominant gray-green colors. Then, against a backdrop of sages and other native plants, was a stand of red-hot poker plant, rough-leaved, but with glowing yellow and orange popsicle-shaped blossoms. Quite enough bloom, she thought, for a native garden. She approved. It was a shame the owners had let the weeds get ahead of them. She got down on her hands and knees, the better to confront them.

If only Ann would call, she thought, as she gouged out a bindweed plant, they could discuss the compelling question of Jimmy Porter’s death. It was obvious Pete Fitzsimmons and Ann Evans both suspected someone other than a poacher. Even Ruthie, the café owner, was incredulous of Sheriff Tatum’s theory. If Louise were to learn anything, she should visit the ranch again. Besides which, she really needed to examine those roadside mountain weeds she and
Ann had talked about, to see if it was worth doing a segment on them for her program.

Like an answer to her prayers, the phone rang, and she rushed indoors. Ann Evans said, “Want to check out weeds?”

Louise rubbed a muscle in her aching back. “I’ve become quite close to weeds in the past couple of hours—but if you’re talking about weeds up at the ranch, I’d love to.” It was as if she and Ann were talking in code; both understood they intended to do more than scope out fields of thistle. “But would we bother the Porters? Can we steer clear of the ranch?” She remembered that mysterious figure in the woods that Pete had caught in his photograph, and she knew they had to exercise care.

“We’ll go by the back road. It runs right above that house you’re renting. It’s a little steeper”—Louise’s stomach lurched to hear this—“but it’s simply wonderful. They have a real weed problem along there.”

“Great,” said Louise.

“Oh, but wait, my car’s in the shop today, and Luke parked the other at the airport when he left town on business. Can you pick me up? I’m not that far away from you.” When Louise indicated agreement, she added, “Come any time. I’ll just be doing a little practice climbing in my backyard. I live under a cliff, you see.”

Louise didn’t exactly like the idea of driving that road, but she could hardly say no. Ann Evans, and the world in general, would think she was a wimp. It turned out that the senior land officer lived only a few miles away, up Left Hand Canyon Road. The house was new, large, and stylish; it probably took two professional salaries to pay the mortgage—Ann’s, plus her lawyer husband Luke’s. As she drove up the long driveway, Louise thought back to that tortured conversation the day Jimmy Porter died and wondered just what was wrong with Ann and Luke’s marriage.
At the top of the rise, she could see the gray wall of rock that rose up from the earth on the edge of Ann’s property.

When she got out of the car, she could see Ann near the top of the cliff, suspended from ropes. She was rappeling down the precipice as if it were child’s play, her long, tanned legs expertly playing against the rock. “Hi,” she called. “I’ll be right with you.”

Louise met her at the base. “How handy to have a cliff in your own backyard.”

“It’s fantastic,” said Ann, flushed and happy, and a little breathless. “This is granite, a lot better than the sandstone around here, which is really trash rock with a lot of vertical and horizontal jointing. Sandstone tends to snap off on you. The cliff is why we bought the house.”

“It looks terrifying,” said Louise, as they walked back across the big yard to the house. “Of course, I’m not so good with heights.”