The Perennial Killer: A Gardening Mystery (18 page)

Willows and wildflowers grew rampant on the land near the river, with Eddie’s wood-and-sandstone cabin set just a little higher, in case of flood.

It was one of the prettiest pieces of land Louise had seen out here.

The only trouble with this paradise, at least from the aesthetic point of view, was the trash. The property was festooned, as far as the eye could see, with homely outbuildings, decrepit freestanding farm equipment, aging cars, canoes, and fencing—both metal and wood. But that was only the start of it. There were also sloppy piles of bricks, flagstones, cut wood, and gravel, as if Eddie might have wanted to open his own building supply store out here. The net effect was dismal, in Louise’s opinion. It dragged “paradise” down to “trash dump.”

She had dropped in at the Gold Strike Café, ordered up a piece of pie, and easily extracted from Ruthie Dunn the information about where Eddie lived. When she arrived, Louise parked her car on the road and hiked in. Under no circumstances did she want to meet the man. Once on the property, she had ho problem—even though she felt a little silly—hiding behind outbuildings and pieces of junk. She didn’t know if she had enough nerve to enter the utility building and the shed she saw, but both had their doors hanging open, so she didn’t have to worry about the “breaking” part of breaking and entering.

In search of something of more interest, she made her way to a corner of the property that lay below the looming sandstone cliff. So far, so good: no sign of Eddie. Sitting
behind a pile of old barn wood—which Louise suspected was now very valuable—was a large, beat-up trailer. Crouching, she worked her way behind the barn wood to get a closer look. Behind the trailer, shoved against the cliff, was an old white pickup.

Louise’s heart speeded up as she went over and examined the front fenders. First, she had a feeling of great elation, but it quickly passed. There were paint marks, all right, on both the left and right front fenders. It was as if Eddie had used this car as a battering ram, for there were streaks in several colors, including blue, the color of Sally Porter’s vehicle.

She shoved her cowboy hat back on her head and stood, arms akimbo. Eddie was a liar, that much was true, for not owning up to his possession of a white car. Now, it would be up to Louise to squeal to somebody in law enforcement that Eddie Porter, as usual, was not telling the truth.

Had Eddie run his sister off the road to give himself better odds? Now, it was two against one. He and Grace Prangley against Frank.

That was when another stray thought nagged at her: There was someone else who drove a white car—one with “Boulder County Sheriff” emblazoned on the side.

When Louise went home, she was tired. It was too late to nap and too early to eat. Cocktail time. But not only was she alone, she didn’t do cocktails well. She thought glumly of the two-day-old chicken parts in the fridge. She needed either to cook them, or to throw them away. At the moment, the thought of raw chicken made her gag.

The events of the day had left her with a sense of discomfort; it was as if she were slogging through a marsh of dark water, trying vainly to reach the shore—trying to sort out the developers, the lawman, the bickering and
suspicious family members. If only she could talk the whole thing over with Bill. She took out the emergency number he had given her, thought it over for a moment, and decided not to call.

To heal both her spirits and her complexion, she smoothed some Bag Balm on her face, finally having found some for sale in a Boulder supermarket. The balm made her face tingle, as if something good were happening. Maybe there would be an improvement in the “prune” factor of her skin.

She would set aside her black thoughts and put off drawing conclusions—just as the sheriff had advised. She fetched herself a bottle of spring water out of the refrigerator, grabbed her book about Emily, and went out on the porch to read.

The story of this frontier woman’s troubles helped her forget the nagging shadows created by the Porter murders. Because she was convinced of it: Sally Porter had been killed, just like her father.

T
HEY WERE ON AN ORGANIC
farm east of Boulder, with the early morning sun giving Pete Fitzsimmons the kind of light and shadow he cherished for his camera work. It was an idyllic spot only five miles from the busy city, rimmed with tall trees and a high wooded bluff. The planted fields were edged with a large pond that attracted animals and birds like a blue-mirrored magnet. Acres of tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, herbs, sunflowers, squashes and pumpkins were spread out in the hot morning sun. The crops
grew without chemicals. Only chicken dung and cow manure touched them.

But it had been an early start, because it was Thursday now, and they were running out of time. Marty Corbin’s extra days off had succeeded in condensing the shoots into four days, and they had a lot of work to do.

Louise had made a major mistake. She had overslept and not had time to eat breakfast. Now, she was famished, and had a fantasy of reaching down to scrabble for roots, like Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone With the Wind
. For more than an hour, she and Marty and the crew had stumbled after the farmer through the furrows, with their agrarian informant yelling, “Take care, folks, not to step on those tomatoes.” They followed this tiller of the soil over ditches, up hill and down dale, and across a rickety two-by-twelve plank spanning a roaring stream.

When Pete greeted her today, he looked grim and had none of his usual quips. He told her, “I’ve been tonkin’ real hard about Sally Porter’s murder.”

“Pete, they’re not even sure yet—”

“Aw, c’mon, Louise, face it. She was just plain run off that cliff. If that isn’t murder, I don’t know what is. Sally Porter wasn’t one of those flatlanders who are always falling to their deaths because they’re too dumb to know that a mountain is up in the air.”

“I agree with you—I was just trying to tell you what Tatum said.”

“Tatum.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ve done my best for Earl. I gave him a blowup of the picture of the person in the woods.”

“And?”

The cameraman’s chin jutted out defensively. “‘Inconclusive,’ the dumb jerk tells me.” Louise could tell it was more of an insult to his photographic abilities than to any detecting skills he might have; he had probably nurtured
the hope that his photo, as in the movie
Blowup
, would disclose the killer. He told her, “Stop by my studio in town. You can see what you think. Whoever it is probably killed both those people.”

She looked at him and wondered: Were she, Pete, and Ann the only ones who suspected that the deaths were a sinister, connected plot?

They had taped at two locations in the fields, and were now doubling back to the pumpkins, huge, orange-red spheres that looked as though they came out of an illustration of a Mother Goose rhyme. The farmer dropped back in step with Louise, who could feel her body sagging in the heat. He was lean, handsome, and sunburned, and she thought he could have been a movie star, or a model, had he not dedicated his life to something infinitely more worthwhile: growing healthy food for people to eat.

He looked down from his handsome heights at her sad-sack appearance. “Hungry?”

“Famished. No breakfast.”

He reached down, plucked a tomato off a vine and thrust it in her hand, then strode over to a nearby row of corn, grabbed an ear, ripped the leaves down, and brought it back to her. “There. They’ll keep you for awhile.”