Death in the Orchid Garden (11 page)

 

F
or the past half hour, Louise had been obsessed with Kauai's beautiful assortment of multicolored fishes slowly swimming among the half-submerged rock outcroppings. But the pull of the water caused a warning bell to go off in her mind. Her fears were confirmed when she put her webbed feet down and stood in the surf. It had the strength of a giant and was attempting to shove her into the deep, or else cause her to collide with one of the volcanic rocks that peppered the ocean floor.

Hurriedly removing her snorkeling mask, she glanced ashore in alarm. She saw that rough sea warnings had been posted. A lifeguard holding a rescue raft stood on the edge of the sand and yelled a message through a bullhorn at a swimmer who'd ventured out too far.

It took her minutes to struggle the twenty-five feet to shore. Once there, she readjusted the top of her flowered bikini top, then warily examined the beach. She'd been safe from Bruce Bouting as she'd paddled about, head-down, admiring the fish. Now there was no sign of the scientist, but she still had to get to her lagoon-side hiding place without being seen.

She hadn't recognized the man standing directly in front of her on the sand. “
Aloha
,” he called. “We meet again.”

It was the beach oracle. His brown body, clad only in swimsuit, was canted jauntily at an opposite angle to his worn surfboard, his hair a disheveled mop of brown curls, his eyes crinkled almost shut in a cheery smile.

“Well, hello,” said Louise. “It seems you're always somewhere on these beaches. Maybe it's time we introduced ourselves. I'm Louise Eldridge.”

He bowed his head. “Bobby Rankin at your service. The beach is my home. I make my living here and I sleep here.”

She glanced over at the sumptuous luxury of Kauai-by-the-Sea. “You live right here?” she blurted out.

He gave her his sleepy grin. “I sure do. And I eat here—lots of breadfruit, mangos, papayas, bananas . . .” He raised a brown arm and pointed like Poseidon toward the rough Pacific. “I catch lots of fish right off those rocks. That's why I was close enough to heed the call of the sirens last night. I saw you trying to revive Matt Flynn—I don't think you noticed me.”

“I must admit I was pretty out of it last night.”

“There was no saving him, was there? What a mess his head was.”

“It sure was,” she said and knelt down to store her snorkeling equipment in her beach bag, apply a dry bandage to her hand, and put on her “Kauai-by-the-Sea” hat.

As she completed these tasks, Bobby Rankin said, “The saltwater must have stung that wound like the devil.”

“It did at first,” said Louise, “but it doesn't take long to get used to.” Getting back to her feet, she looked at him and said, “Have you ever seen anyone take a dive like that off the rock?”

“Sure. Lots of kids dive off Shipwreck. I've done it plenty of times myself.” He loomed above her, a dark silhouette with an aura of light about him because of the sun at his back.

“You teach surfing, I guess.”

He nodded. “Yeah. And deep-sea diving on occasion. Work by day, party hard by night. All the time, for the past twenty years.”

Observing as closely as she could without seeming rude, Louise saw that the man's skin was leathery and lined and realized he was probably fifty or more, older than she had first thought. “What did you do before that? Did you live in Hawaii?”

“No. Twenty years ago I dropped out of real life on the mainland—Chicago, to be exact. I was with Smith-Barney. Traded options on the CBOT.”

“CBOT. Uh . . .”

He translated for her. “Chicago Board of Trade.” Bobby gave long, low laugh. “It was making me plain crazy.”

She chuckled companionably. “You must see a lot, living on the beach.”

“I do. I meet a lot of the people who come to Kauai, one time or another. I see plenty of people doing foolish things in the ocean. Once in a while, I aid in their rescue, sometimes I'm there when they drown. We have fifty to sixty drownings every year.”

“On
Kauai?”

A big shrug. “On all the islands. You know, people who unlike you don't pay any attention when they see swim warnings posted. Locals don't like to talk about the stats. I guess they figure it will hurt tourism. But back to Matt Flynn; I've got to say, I've never seen a body in worse shape than that one. Usually, they're bloated and blue.”

She stood up and smoothed her bare stomach with her hand, restraining a desire to gag. “I don't need to know more.”

“Sorry. Didn't mean to gross you out.” He fell into stride with her as she walked back toward the hotel.

“You knew Flynn, didn't you?”

“Yeah, a little bit.” He flicked a guarded glance her way. “Flynn was a great surfer, you know.”

“No, I didn't know that.” A stab of sadness made her heart ache for the dead man, who'd been a surfer, a jungle cowboy, an Eastern University professor, and a lover of life.

Bobby said, “I guess the police haven't said whether it was an accident, or something else. You and I know, though, that was no accident. Somebody really
spilt
the back of his head. I'll give you money they'll be searching for a weapon off the rock by end of the weekend.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because it's a good place to throw a weapon. The murderer probably thinks the water there descends like a mountain. I mean, folks read the guide books and picture a huge, twenty-five thousand-foot tall cone that is the underwater base of this island. But I happen to know that there's a shelf down there about eighteen feet. Some big, gougy knife—I figure that's what the killer used—could have been flung down there. It wouldn't slide all the way from here to eternity, like some gullible murderer might think. It's perched right down there, ready for some diver to retrieve.”

Louise was tugging to retrieve a memory of something said about a big knife . . .

They'd reached the mouth of the path leading to the hotel's lagoon. The surfer said, “You take it easy, now. Will we see you at sunset?”

She shook her head, already missing the thought of the quasi-religious sunset ceremony. “As much as I enjoy those streaks of green, my colleagues and I are going off campus tonight.”

He waved. “I may be busy at sunset, too. You have a good time and stay out of trouble, now.”

She glanced at his tall, muscular figure. The man who was always on the beach, at daybreak and at dusk, who'd turned up just moments after she'd discovered Matthew Flynn's body; surely he had been questioned about Flynn's fall. The police probably knew the man, for he was as much a fixture here as beach umbrellas and hotly contested beach chairs.

Approaching the lagoon, she saw that the coast was clear. No Bruce Bouting lurking about. Dropping off her beach bag in the shady alcove, she walked back to the family beach, found a big, white chaise longue, and dragged it the considerable distance to her hiding place.

She adjusted the longue and looked up. The monkeypod tree let through only dappled patches of sunlight, but just for good luck she slapped sunblock on her face, shoulders, chest, stomach, and legs. Then, hoping to take a quick nap, she adjusted her hat over her forehead and lay back. Before she could close her eyes, however, she glimpsed a nearby Sago palm, which brought her wide awake again. She sat up straight and stared at it.

The plant was a beauty, its repetitive, curving leaves a masterpiece of order. Louise knew little about fractals, but conjectured that this palm was an example of fractal geometric design in nature.

She lay back on the chaise and quietly groaned. Would that her life had such order! A wave of depression swarmed over her, as powerful as one of the salty ocean waves she'd battled. Instead of order, she realized, her life often verged on chaos. Why was it that she was continually drawn into crime? It was never of her volition. Nonsensically, the words of poet Emily Dickinson came to mind:
Because I could not stop for death / He kindly stopped for me . . .

Death had
unkindly
stopped for her more than once. Last summer, she'd had no desire to find two corpses buried in her own backyard garden, nor was it her wish to stumble upon Matthew Flynn's body last night while viewing a Hawaiian sunset.

Her husband was right: At all costs, she needed to stay out of the police investigation or she'd end up needing that rest cure. With this thought, she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

C
old drops fell on her calf and she leapt from sleep into wakefulness. “What!” she cried, sitting up suddenly so that her book fell to the grass.

“Gotcha,” said John Batchelder, standing over her and grinning like a kid. His 7UP was poised over her leg.

He plunked down beside her chair. “You were dead to the world, Louise.”

She gradually relaxed again and rested her head back on the chaise, her hat tilted far over her eyes. “John, I'm exhausted. You've interrupted my sleep.”

Her ebullient colleague had no regrets. “You're the one who said I could find you here. So here I am, loaded with ideas.”

“Ohhh,” she groaned and shoved her hat back so she could get a look at him. It was shocking, for she'd never seen this young cohost of hers without his clothes on. The reverse was also true, she realized, as she reclined there in her brief, two-piece suit.

Besides his handsome face and outstandingly attractive golden eyes, John had a body with surprisingly wide shoulders and slim hips. She was relieved not to have a view of anything more—his bathing suit was an old-fashioned boxy style that might have been popular in the fifties. Since she knew he'd seen her turning her laser eye on him, Louise admitted as much. “John, you've got a very nice body. I hope your fiancée Linda appreciates that.” She tried not to smile.

“She does, she does, I swear she does,” said John. Louise realized he was in one of his manic moods. She'd read about hypomania in the
Times
, which had published a chart on the subject. She'd diagnosed her compatriot as being an “occasionally” manic type without the tendency to get depressed. Since she noticed the same qualities in herself, she'd concluded it was a positive and not a negative. “Louise,” he said, giving her a sincere look, “let's not dwell on how beautiful my body is, though I sincerely enjoy the compliment. What I want to talk about is the murder.”

“You're sure it's a murder?”

“I'm pretty sure. I could tell from that little bit you told us last night, before the cops advised you not to tell us any more.”

“Well,” she said, “aren't you the smart one.”

“Yes, I am,” he said and pulled a notepad out of his beach bag. “I've got notes, Louise, lots of notes. I've been taking them all morning.” He fastened his gaze on her again. “Look, we've got to investigate.”

“Why?”

“Well, we're right here. We've gotten to know all these people. It had to be one of the people we've been dealing with for three days or so. Here, let me read this.” He flipped open the notepad. “Number one; George Wyant—who looks awful, I might add—has had some big fights with the dead man.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me himself after that police briefing. It was like he was in a confessional. ‘I feel so bad because I'd just gotten in a big battle with Matt over how to proceed next with something-or-other-research on something-or-other plant.' Didn't get the name of the plant.”

“Maybe it was the plant the two of them were hoping would be a medical breakthrough.”

“Yeah,” said John, “that was it.”

“It's the subject of George Wyant's doctoral dissertation.”

“Well, there you have it—one suspect in Matthew Flynn's murder.”

Louise couldn't help smiling. “I think we're getting ahead of the police.”

“It isn't going to hurt. I don't think they have that many cops out here, Louise. There's not much crime in the islands, you know.”

“I suppose not.”

He flipped over another page. “Here's what I've got on Charles Reuter. Want to hear about that?”

“Sure,” said Louise. She pulled her hat farther over her eyes and closed them.

“I heard, from Chris and Anne—you know those two—that Charles Reuter has waged a print fight in
Nature
and magazines like that with our Dr. Flynn. Reuter, and by extension, you might say, his man Bernstein, hated Flynn's guts.”

“That's what Chris Bailey and Anne Lansing told you, hmm?”

“Yep. Dr. Reuter is one of those who takes seriously the fact that third world countries have been ripped off forever by botanists coming in and stealing their plants. He apparently accused Matthew Flynn of hypocrisy in the way he operates in the Amazon.”

“So that's enough motive to kill a person?”

John shrugged his expansive, golden shoulders. “I don't know. What do you think?”

“In the interests of full disclosure, I guess I'd better tell you what Dr. Bouting told me this morning.”

“You'd better,” replied John. “He's a smart old coot and he's sure been around.”

“He told me of several instances where Dr. Flynn beat out someone else while plant hunting in foreign lands. For instance, Flynn's discovery of a cattleya orchid right here in Hawaii. Bouting thinks either Tom Schoonover or Henry Hilaeo would be sore over that.”

“So we have Wyant, Reuter, Bernstein, Schoonover, and Hilaeo. Of course, we can't limit the suspects to just them. There's also the Bouting crowd—Bouting himself, or Chris, or Anne. But what would their motive be?”

“Chris, as you call him now, was outmaneuvered by Matthew Flynn when they were both hunting for a species of mum in China. So, incidentally, was Dr. Ralph Pinsky. That plant grab took place in Turkey.” She pointed to his notepad. “You'd better jot down Pinsky on your list, if you insist on making a list. On the other hand, the Bouting Horticulture people don't seem to have a reason to kill. Their company's making money hand over fist. Christopher and Anne and their boss seem to get along well. Why ruin everything by committing a murder?”

“I see your point,” conceded John.

She waved her hand in the air, warming to the topic at last. “We have to remember something about people who murder—most of them only do it once. And the person wouldn't kill lightly, just for the sake of killing. The person would have had to have a good reason. I'm not sure these motives we're talking about are strong enough. On the other hand—”

She didn't want to share this with her colleague, but her husband back in Washington, D.C., might shed light on the question of motive. She ought to hear back from Bill before the day was over.

“On the other hand what?” asked John.

“On the other hand, it's very responsible of you to be so concerned. Murder is an insult to us all. That is, if it
is
murder.”

“Quit saying that, Louise,” rebuked John. “You know darned well in your heart—” He had been hunched forward, his arms clasped around his bare legs, staring out into the ocean. Suddenly, he sat up straight and slapped a palm against the side of his head. “Of course,” he said, “
that
could be the weapon . . .”

He leaped up and shoved his beach bag onto his shoulder. “I've just had a brainstorm: I know where the murder weapon is and I'm gonna go tell that police chief all about it.” He loped off across the lawn. Louise took a deep, relieved breath and soon drifted off to sleep again.