Death of a Political Plant (30 page)

S
HE WAS IN HER OWN YARD
, passing the bamboo garden outside the family room, when she felt the stalk through her heavy workboot. It had emerged from the rich, leafy mulch of the forest floor, recently bolstered with rain. She stopped and crouched down and felt a strong, invincible baby bamboo emerging from the ground.

A thrill of fear ran through her. This was just what Bill had warned her about,
a year or more ago. One rainy day, perfect for transplanting, she had dug up and dragged these clumps from the far reaches of the yard to this site near the house. Bill had predicted that the bamboo would escape the little circular plastic barriers she installed around them.

From her squatting position, she looked up at the beguiling effect the bamboo created. The plants were set on a small hill against a partial stone wall that was a graceful platform for cascading jasmine. But the garden was not more than fifteen feet from their recreation room door and it was becoming just what Bill said it would become—a threat to the very foundations of the house.

She put a hand up to her damp brow. Didn’t she have enough to contend with? Not nature going against her, too! As she straightened up, she felt her limbs trembling with fatigue; she was too tired to even think about the invasion of the bamboo.

She slowly crunched her way to the recreation room door, standing wide open. She realized dusk had fallen and it was time to do as Detective Morton and her daughter Martha had warned: Lock up. She stood in the gloom of the empty family room and felt an acute sense of being watched. Roger’s warning had left her on edge. Quickly she went to the windows and twisted the wand that closed the Levolor blinds. Then she flooded the room with light by turning on the lamp to its full wattage.

Looking around, she realized with a sharp thud of her heart that someone could have sneaked in here: The house had to be searched before she locked up. With a false bravado, she strode through the rooms, turning on lights, throwing open closet doors. Finally satisfied that she was alone, she secured the locks and closed the curtains, fussing vainly with the gap in
the ones that fronted the patio. As she approached the kitchen, she heard the somehow comforting beep of the answering machine.

Geraghty’s phone call had come in just moments ago. She wasn’t surprised, since she’d known the detective wanted to talk to her just by observing him when he and Morton departed the neighborhood this afternoon. And he might even have heard from someone of her investigations—after all, she appeared to have stirred the pot if people were inquiring at the Post.

“Mrs. Eldridge, I need to see you again.” Geraghty’s tone was abrupt, completely devoid of warmth. “
It would have been one thing if you had a little evidence of one kind or another that you picked up around your own house, but it’s quite another thing to obstruct justice by slipping under the police tape at the Mougeys’ and taking God knows what out of the scene of a crime
.”

She could hear the growing anger in his voice. “
You were seen by neighborhood kids, whose parents called up and told me. Described you to a T. You know how kids are—they see everything, they know everybody. I mean, you have one yourself, that Janie, who along with her friend Chris are better detectives than you are
.”

This hurt. Why did he think she considered herself a good detective? And why was he slamming her? Because he knew she was withholding something.

“
So you get back to me
pronto,
Mrs. Eldridge
.” There was a sharp click and no good-bye.

With fingers made awkward by exhaustion, she fumbled through the Rolodex cards until she found the facetious card janie had made for her; it said “FAIRFAX FUZZ.” Holding the well-worn card, she tapped in the number and took a few deep breaths to compose herself. With her free hand, she
opened the refrigerator and got out the container of milk and poured herself a glass. Then, she took the plastic chocolate syrup container out of the turnabout cabinet and slowly squirted chocolate into the milk.

“Detective Geraghty has been called out on an emergency,” said the police dispatcher. “Do you want me to take a message, or shall I give you his voice mail?”

She hesitated. Here was a chance to buy more time. “His voice mail, please.” Maybe before Geraghty returned her call, the proverbial lightbulb would go on in her head and she would suddenly know who the murderer was.

“Detective Geraghty, I, uh, apologize for going over to the Mougeys’, but I needed to feed the fish: I’m babysitting them for the family, you know.” Lying was coming so easily to her these days that it frightened her. “Actually, I’ve had an amazing day, and I’ll be glad to tell you all about it.” She sighed, hoping he would hear it and recognize how fatigued she was. “I’d rather come in early tomorrow morning than tonight, because Bill arrives late tonight. But of course that’s up to you.”

Then she collected her book and her milk and went to the couch, spreading a washable cotton throw to protect it from the grime she might have collected from tramping through the woods. She was too tired to bathe right now; she just wanted to curl up, read a few pages, and take a nap for an hour or two.

Knowing she would turn everything over to police tomorrow should have made it easy for her to relax, but there was some unfinished business still nagging at her consciousness. What Roger said hadn’t been conducive to her inner peace. But in addition to that, there was something bugging her.

She had forgotten to do something. What was it?

Her mind was so exhausted that it would hardly function. Too exhausted even for reading. She swigged down the milk, then put her tousled head back on the pillows and immediately drifted off to sleep.

It was not a light sleep, and when the noise awoke her, she saw by her watch it was almost ten, and realized she had been unconscious for nearly two hours.

It was just a brief sound, emanating from somewhere out in the hall.

She had searched the house: She could hardly be locked in the house with an intruder.

Then she heard another sound, and her body went cold.

It was incredible: She had done so much, stumbled across the crucial evidence that the killer had wanted, and then done the right thing by promising to turn the evidence over to Geraghty in the morning. She put herself in this danger because she was too anxious to solve the case of Jay’s death on her own, for fear others would muff it.

She continued to listen, but there was no further noise; she began to relax again. Those were just little house sounds. They could be laid to any number of things: a plant in the guest room, dropping one of its leaves; or a book, perhaps, falling off a ledge in one of the bedrooms.

Then, there was a squeak right behind her and she leaped up from the couch, but not soon enough. Someone pulled her arms back painfully and pinioned them beneath an arm that seemed as strong as steel. Then came the familiar noise of tape being ripped from a roll, though she didn’t know how the
person did it one-handed, and realized it was with great difficulty, and by holding one end in his teeth.

For it was a man, a big man, she could tell, frantically wrapping her hands tight. She could hear him breathing heavily from the effort. Once her hands were secured, he let out a big breath, and out of the corner of her eye she could see him readjusting something—his face mask.

Then he pushed her before him over to a small antique table and pulled out a sturdy, straight-backed Detroit chair with a cane seat that her grandmother had given her. Without speaking, he shoved her into it and stood in front of her. He was tall and muscular, wearing an oversized black pocketed jacket, as if to make himself appear even larger, and jogging pants. Over his face he wore a Frankenstein mask. “Sit still,” he hissed, and he bound her to the chair with more gray duct tape.

“Who are you, and where on earth did you come from?”

He continued his harsh whisper. “I hid in your smelly little closet, if you must know. And I want what you have of McCormiek’s.”

“But I don’t have—”

“Don’t lie,” he rasped. “We know you have to have it. Tell me about your amazing day, just like you were going to tell that cop.”

She shook her head. The neighborhood Christopher Robins may have seen her in the Mougeys’ yard, but this man couldn’t know that. And no one had seen Melissa hand over her father’s backup disk. “You overheard me—well, you’ve made a mistake. I didn’t have much to tell the police. Maybe they know something, but I don’t.”

The man paused and looked uncertainly about. She realized
he was considering whether he should continue searching, or work on her.

Her hopes sank when she saw that she was his first choice. Had he only spent more time searching the house, Bill and Janie and Chris might have arrived to save her. She sat very still while he approached her, and even though she thought she was ready, it was a surprise when his rubber-gloved hand struck out like a snake and gave her three sharp tracks against the face, knocking it to and fro as if it were on springs. It was with such force that it wrenched her neck and left her head wobbling.

After finessing a number of dangerous situations, she had finally gotten herself in a position from which there was no escape. The man had enormous strength, all focused on her. Who knew what he would do next? Her head felt as big as a cantaloupe, throbbing from the blow.

A small curl of hope remained inside her. It came from the fact that he had whispered so she couldn’t recognize his voice: This implied that he intended to leave her alive, even if seriously injured.

It was surreal, as Louise looked from the spooky mask, down to the alert boxing stance of the man. He was dancing back and forth in place on his toes as if he were facing an opponent instead of a helpless woman tied in a chair.

She steadied her head and gave him the most hateful look she had ever given anyone in her life. It said, “If I ever get the chance, I’ll return the favor.” After all, it was too late to whimper, far too late to try to talk her way out of this mess.

Apparently, he didn’t like her unspoken insolence. She could tell by the way he was approaching that he was going to hit her again. This time, she thought of the resources at hand: her grandmother’s chair, with its flexible bend from years of
use. Her body, healthy and rested. They weren’t much against a two-hundred-pound male. And yet…

When he was about two feet away, she shoved the wobbly chair back with a strong movement of her hips, then rocked it forward again. With her right leg, she struck out at his private parts with her steel-enforced garden boot.

The man screamed and retreated, falling back on the couch and clutching his groin.

Gasping and sweaty from the effort, Louise smiled weakly, experiencing the mastery of it. Then, with a sinking heart, she realized she had made matters worse. The attack on his male parts would only madden him further.

She deep-breathed to try to restore her calm and ready herself for the next attack. The man, still grasping his privates, sat up a little.

“You bitch. You’re going to get it now. It doesn’t pay to piss me off like that.”

“What do you expect,” she hissed back, “that I’m going to sit here and let you kill me?”

And yet she was afraid to provoke him too much, as he sat there cursing softly and trying to overcome the pain. He was bestial enough without further baiting.

After a few minutes, he rose slowly from the couch and lurched over and retrieved the roll of duct tape. “You won’t do that again,” he said, and she noticed he was forgetting to whisper, and it sent new fear into her heart. Now, she would be bound like a mummy. He would knock her about all he wanted, with no threat of reprisal.

Her body felt extremely heavy, as if it were made of lead. Only one other time in her life had she had this feeling, the feeling that she was going to die. It was on a storm-ridden night with lightning bolts surrounding their plane. She and Bill
and the girls had been traveling from the continent to London. The plane bucketed violently up and down until even the flight attendants were frightened out of their wits. Bill had held her and the girls’ hands and said, “The odds are that we’ll get through this all right.” Tonight, the odds seemed much worse.