Death in the Orchid Garden (25 page)

 

“I
really feel fine,” lied Louise, as she sat in the small white clinic. Actually, her head ached and so did her bruises and cuts. But she feared if she told the truth, she'd end up in the hospital in Lihue. Instead, she was back in the basement medical clinic of Kauai-by-the-Sea, with the smiling, gray-haired doctor pointing a light in her eyes.

This time, she took a closer look at him. Around fifty, he was the picture of happiness and good health, with a deep suntan on his face and muscled arms. Louise decided he was another escapee from the mainland. The nurse efficiently took a few X-ray photos and within minutes the doctor reassuringly reported that she had no broken bones.

He snapped off the light and said, in a faint Southern accent, “There's no doubt, Mrs. Eldridge, that in the course of your adventures you've suffered a slight concussion. But look at it this way—you're not nearly as bad off as the man I treated this afternoon. He was swimmin' out too far and got shoved up against some lava rock; suffered both a serious concussion and a broken leg.
He
ended up in a cast and traction.”

“Good heavens,” murmured Louise, “that's terrible.”

“Not the worst I've seen, either,” said the doctor. “I'm always busy. The ocean brings me lots of business.”

“There are quite a few drownings, I hear.”

“You wouldn't believe how many. People who don't pay attention to those discreet warnings posted on the beach. Actually, they ought to print them in one-foot letters. This land isn't always paradise, you know.”

He cocked his head and surveyed Louise's droopy eyes. “Now, my dear, I'm warnin' you: if you go to sleep right now, which I know you want to do, it could be dangerous. You might never wake up again. But if you stay up for an hour or two, you'll be just dandy. You have friends here with you, I understand.”

“They're waiting for me upstairs in Options.”

“Good,” said the doctor. “The police chief, who insists on asking you more questions, and those friends ought to keep you up long enough. Be sure to eat somethin' and drink a lot of liquids, but lay off the mai tais. Now let's take care of your wounds.”

After getting a booster tetanus shot, she was washed up and stitches and bandage applied to her forehead. Her lacerated hands were wrapped until they resembled white gloves. Finally, she was released. “Remember,” said the doctor, “you take it easy tonight, Mrs. Eldridge. And that's no kiddin'. Tell that police chief not to be too hard on you. And check in with this office tomorrow mornin' to get new dressings.”

Louise went upstairs to the police chief's borrowed office and slumped down in the nubby lime green chair. She told him everything that had happened since she left the Lanai Room party less than two hours ago.

Even to Louise, it sounded barely credible, more like the Perils of Pauline—“
I was window-peeping, then I was thrown off a cliff, taped and bound like a UPS package, slapped around a bit and dragged up to the top of a cliff where I was supposed to be thrown off into the sea
. . .”

The more she talked, the more uncomfortable Police Chief Randy Hau looked. In the next thirty minutes while answering his questions, she discovered that this terrible nightmare she'd suffered was not over.

D
espondent and wanting nothing more than to go to sleep, Louise had gone instead to Options and found her friends sitting in a dark corner of the nightclub.

“We thought that after what you'd been through that you'd appreciate privacy,” explained Steffi. Apparently noting her long face, her friend added, “Are you going to be all right?”

“I need to eat,” Louise said. “Then I can talk.” Marty, Steffi, and Tom Schoonover had a second nightcap, while she gobbled down snacks and hors d'oeuvres—little spare ribs, pot stickers, small wraps filled with cheese and artichoke, potato chips and nuts, all of which she could handle with her awkward bandages. Her companions occasionally reached over and shared.

Louise figured she could last another hour if she kept busy eating and talking. She had to remain awake at least that long to guard against, as the doctor said, “going to sleep and never waking up again.”

After giving her a few minutes' reprieve, Marty said, “Lou, I'm sorry this happened to you. I knew you were in trouble five minutes after you left the Lanai Room. I'm only sorry the cops wasted twenty minutes scouring the hotel and checking your room to be sure you weren't there. Now tell us how this all unfolded.”

She said, “I have so much to tell you that I hope I keep it straight. I'll give you the latest news first. It's hard to believe this, but Christopher Bailey denies everything. They found him in his hotel room about a half an hour ago. His ‘time line,' as Randy Hau calls it, doesn't coordinate with mine. He says he left the party because he was bored. He allegedly went to the men's room, then here, into Options, and got himself a drink. That's all for sure, because I followed him here.”

Tom Schoonover said, “You did? You certainly put yourself in danger.”

She shrugged. She didn't want to think right now of how impetuously she had acted. “Bailey's told the police that he hung out for a half hour here and after that craved some exercise. He says he walked around for a while outside the hotel, then went back to his room about an hour ago. That accounts for all of his time, but it doesn't agree at all with what I told the chief.”

“He was lying,” said Marty.

She nodded. “He was in and out of this place in five minutes and went directly to Bruce Bouting's suite. But there's someone way more important than Bailey—Anne Lansing. She's missing.”

“Oh, God,” said Steffi, “I don't like the sound of that.”

“Some policeman saw her leave the party and take the elevator up, as if she were going to her room. After you found me on Shipwreck Rock, they checked her room. There's no sign of her.”

“But you said she's the killer,” said Steffi, her big brown eyes wide with concern.

Louise pulled in a breath. “She is. And she's dangerous. At least the police realize that and have taken steps to protect John in that hospital. I'm betting he saw something to tie Anne to Bruce Bouting's death.”

Tom said, “I gather they need proof of your story.”

“Yes. And there isn't much proof at the moment. The duct tape they slapped on my face and hands won't have prints, because Bailey wore latex gloves. Bouting's suite will have Bailey's and Anne's fingerprints all over the place, but it's natural that they would be there because it was Bruce Bouting's office away from home, so to speak.”

She looked at her friends self-consciously. “I told the chief to try the bed—the two of them had a sexual interlude on the bed. But he said that wouldn't prove anything, either.”

“Wow,” said Steffi. “They had sex while you were there?”

“Yes, but they didn't take much time with it. My presence didn't stop them, or her, from saying or doing anything. Anne told Christopher exactly why she had to kill the two men. She was romantically involved with both of them, but more recently with Bouting. But Dr. Flynn threatened to tell him just what kind of a girl she really is.” Louise looked at her table mates with sorrowful eyes. “To understand what kind of a girl Anne really is, you should know that she threw George Wyant's machete off the cliff the day before she killed Matthew Flynn.”

Schoonover shook his head as if in disbelief. “That's premeditation. If not the machete, then how did she . . .”

Louise bowed her head. “This is the worst part. Once she knocked him out, she used her pruning scissors and gouged them into his neck.”

“How horrible,” said Steffi, putting the remains of the potato chip she was munching back on her plate.

Louise gave her companions a few moments to digest these grisly details before she continued, “There's one thing I can't understand—the note that Matthew Flynn wrote me. He had it in his pocket when he died.” She told them its contents and Flynn's admonition to “check out the equipment” if something happened to him.

Steffi said, “Whose equipment were you supposed to check out?”

Suddenly, the words didn't register. A wave of fatigue coursed through Louise and her mind went blank. Vacantly, she stared out into the pale green dimness of the nightclub, where a few dark-silhouetted figures, looking like part of the hotel's art deco motif, moved stylishly about the dance floor to the music of Frank Sinatra. Through the shadows, she saw what looked like an angel in a nearby booth. With a start, she realized it was the golden-haired Joan Clayton. The singer was sitting with three others, chatting and eating like an ordinary mortal. No one seemed to care. This was private time, for she had done her gig for the night, just as Louise had done hers . . .

“Louise,” said Steffi, shaking her by the shoulder. “Are you all right? Here, take a sip of water. You're not drifting off, are you?”

“I guess I was,” said Louise, swallowing several big gulps. “Sorry.”

“What I asked you is, what equipment was Matthew Flynn talking about?”

“I honestly don't know. Maybe Matt had a premonition that someone was out to harm him. He knew each of his fellow scientists walked around armed with a weapon in the form of a sharp pruning scissors. Then, there was George's machete, handily stored in their open hotel room for anyone to take.” She heaved a deep sigh. “I could tell sometimes that he was wary of the others. When he heard I'd helped solve a few crimes, he must have had this need to tell me about his worries.”

“How right he was,” said Marty. “Someone
was
out to harm him.”

“When are they going to arrest Anne Lansing?” Steffi asked. “I personally do not feel comfortable knowing that this vicious woman is at large somewhere on this little, tiny island.”

“If they could find her,” said Louise, “they certainly would hold her for questioning. Like Christopher Bailey, she'll probably deny everything.”

Tom Schoonover played with the swizzle stick in his bourbon and water. “I get the feeling from what you've told us, Louise, that everything hinges on you as an eyewitness.” He focused his unblinking gaze on her.

She nodded. “That's true and it doesn't make me feel very good. They need evidence from that suite. The rest of it happened in the out-of-doors again.”

Marty Corbin threw a couple of almonds in his mouth, chewed noisily for a minute, then said, “I never realized that crimes outdoors are not as easy to solve as ones indoors, where some dumb perp lays his hands on things and leaves fingerprints and then stashes the murder weapon in, for instance, his closet in a plastic bag.” He chuckled. “And leaves his bloodied running shoes with their distinctive pattern in a trash can near his home.”

Schoonover looked at the producer and absently scratched his curly gray hair. “We've all seen too many
Law and Order
episodes. I think in actuality there's a high percentage of murders that are never solved.” He turned to Louise and said, “Be that as it may, let's let the authorities handle it from now on. You did a great job, Louise, of ferreting out those two.”

“It wasn't very scientific, Tom. I wasn't testing a theory, as you suggested. When Christopher Bailey left the party, I'd already decided that Anne Lansing was in on these murders. So I asked myself, what was Bailey doing, running around looking guilty?”

“So, what's the answer?” said Marty, reaching over and taking a sparerib. “How'd he get in on it? He wasn't involved in murdering Flynn and Bouting. Or was he?”

“No,” she said. “From their conversation, I gathered that Christopher was suspicious of Anne, but that he only came right out to talk about it with her this afternoon. As I told the chief, he was dying to get his hands on Bouting's computer program—he was searching for passwords. I saw him puttering with the computer but I didn't know what he was doing. He hadn't had the nerve, but when he discussed it with Anne, it was clear she wanted the same thing. Later, they decided to wait for an opportunity back at Bouting Horticulture—something about outwitting the ‘ITs.'”

“The information technology people,” translated Tom. “They're the company's computer nerds. He may have outwitted himself. In a sophisticated computer system, there'll be a record of those unsuccessful searches.”

Steffi said, “You didn't really explain this to us very well. Why did she murder those two?”

“Start out with the fact that Anne and Bouting were lovers. Actually, Anne is what she calls ‘a little bit pregnant, ' and Bouting was going to marry her.”

“Really,” said Steffi widening her brown eyes. “She was sleeping with that old man? I bet she got knocked up just so he
would
marry her.”

“Possibly,” said Louise.

“Then where does Matthew Flynn enter the picture?” asked Tom.

“Matthew Flynn was her former lover. When they arrived here on Kauai and Flynn saw how close Anne was to Bouting, he threatened to tell him about her and how she'd intended to run off with Bouting's secrets.”

“You mean,” said Steffi, “she loved Flynn and then switched her affections to the old man?”

“Yes, Steffi, that's about it. The cause of her breakup with Flynn was because he didn't approve of her stealing her boss's prized plant information.”

Tom said, “I for one am glad to revise my view of Matthew Flynn—the man did have a sense of honor and justice in some arenas.”

Steffi shook her head in distaste. “Imagine that young woman with that old guy.”

Louise wondered if Steffi knew that Bruce Bouting had been sixty-six, only seven years older than her own husband. In seven years she doubted that Steffi would look on Marty as an “old guy.” She proceeded to eat more spareribs, feeling better the more she ate.

“And what did she do for him?” persisted Steffi. “Didn't you say he had early Alzheimer's? It's quite a bit for a woman of whatever age she is—thirty-five, forty, something like that—to take on that responsibility.”

Louise paused to swallow a mouthful of tangy meat. She said, “I had the impression she really loved him and he loved her; she fulfilled more than one role for him, daughter figure and lover as well as smart business partner. He'd given her a ring—I saw it on her finger one day. It sounded like it would be an open marriage, but a marriage nevertheless. I don't know if she would have stuck around through all his final days, but I'd guess she would—there's a huge inheritance to be had.”

“I get it,” said Marty. “This wasn't really about plant secrets, was it?”

“No, dear,” said Steffi, reaching a hand over and pressing her husband's hand. “It was all about love—sort of.”

Marty waved his free hand in the air. “A dame who promises every guy she fell in love with something a little different—that's a very dangerous sort of dame. Good thing you left that trail of petals, Lou, and that Tom caught on to it. He was pretty systematic, the way he had us looking for you. He even had the good sense to realize that zoned-out beach bum probably saw something.”

She looked at Tom. He smiled and said, “I'm glad you were able to make use of that lei.”

“You sent it?” she said. “I don't know what was more useful, the lei or the rope.”

“Or the pepper spray,” added Steffi. “A girl can't have too much equipment,” she said and held her drink up. “Marty.” It was an order.

Marty beckoned the waitress at Options to come and get some fresh drink orders. “And more nuts, please.” He looked at Louise, still eating, then told the waitress, “And what else can we get more of? How about if we look at the menu again?”

He turned to Louise. “If we have to hang with you, Lou, we might as well eat. Don't you think so, Tom, Steffi?”

Tom grinned. “I do.”

Steffi said, “Let's get more of those darling little artichokes and cheese numbers. Not good for the figure, but this is a special night.” She gave Louise a fond look. “Our Louise is safe.”

Louise glanced at Tom Schoonover. He was looking down at the table, pursing his lips, his worry wrinkles in play. She knew he didn't consider her safe—not yet.