Death of a Political Plant (31 page)

T
HIS TIME, WHEN HE APPROACHED
her, he came from the side, so as not to get in the way of her mulelike kick. With an iron grip he held her legs down and began winding the tape about them and the two front stanchions of the chair. With every turn of the tape, her hopes faded further.

The macabre masked head bobbed close to her as he knelt beside the chair. “Now, my clever Mrs. Eldridge, save
yourself by telling me what I want to know.” The voice was familiar: She had heard it this very day.

“You’ve already searched the house,” she argued. “You’ve had hours to go through our things, and you know you haven’t found anything.”

“Shit!” he cried in disgust. “You’re not dumb enough to leave it in plain sight, and if you’re not going to cooperate, then you obviously want more of this.” His big hand came up in the air.

And then she heard the sounds at the front door. So did her attacker, and she became terrified with the thought that it was Bill and Janie. She screamed a warning: “Stay away!” He reached in his pocket and whipped out a gun.

“No!” she yelled. “A gun!”

He was leveling it at the darkened end of the living room, when the figure rushed forth from another quarter with the long-handled cultivator. But it wasn’t Bill. It was a small but solid avenging angel who had dodged down the hall and outflanked the man by emerging from the shadows of the kitchen. Tessie Strahan struck with the cultivator just as the gun went off, knocking the bullet’s trajectory askew. The sharp tines of the cultivator drew blood; the masked man howled. The gun careened across the room. Barbara McNeil came from the direction of the living room with a triangular-shaped hoe and delivered a vicious blow that dug into the man’s muscular shoulder, and the howl turned into a scream. Meanwhile, Donna Moore used her heavy iron shovel to whack his legs, and he tripped and fell heavily to the floor.

Tessie’s neat bun of dark hair came undone and streamed around her shoulders, giving her a witchlike aura. With the imposing Barbara and muscular Donna, they made a terrifying trio standing over the prostrate man. And all armed with her
garden tools. Gil Whitson hovered behind with an English pitchfork.

“Don’t you dare move, or you’re a dead man,” growled Tessie.

“Looks like Frankenstein has a few extra gouges beyond the normal,” noted Donna, in a detached sort of way.

“Let him bleed a little, I say,” commented Barbara.

Louise cried out to them, “Don’t trust him—bind him with duct tape!” She cocked her head to indicate where it lay on the floor near her chair.

Tessie picked it up, looked at Louise’s swollen face with its cuts and the clear mark of a hand. She said, “Oh, Louise, honey, what has he done to you?”

“No,” cried Louise, “don’t bother about me. You must bind him up quickly: He’s strong as an ox.”

Even from where she sat across the room, she could see the bulky man inching up, trying to sit. But Barbara stood there, five feet ten at least and probably one hundred seventy-five pounds, and as befitted a warrior queen, holding the wickedly sharp hoe poised over his head now, ready to strike. “Stay, you sonofabitch,” barked Barbara, “and hurry, Tessie—get his hands first.”

Louise noticed, as Tessie worked frantically to secure first his hands in front of him, and then his feet, that Gil Whitson added a formidable but misunderstood presence. He stayed mainly in back of the women, and Louise guessed he was frightened silly. But his face had become very red and his cat’s eyes looked wild. He presented a frightening looking enemy, holding the wicked pitchfork with its three narrow, sharp tines. The masked man probably was terrified that, if he decided to rise up and try to overcome the three women, the
lone man, Gil, would administer the coup de grace with that traditional farm implement.

The intruder was now undergoing a more mummifying experience than Louise. “Do you have enough tape to tie him to the leg of the piano?” Louise asked. The antique Knabe weighed about half a ton.

“I think so,” Tessie said, and once this was done, they came over and took care of Louise. Tessie cut the duct tape from her arms and her legs, all the while muttering imprecations about the man who had done this. “And we saw it happening through the crack in the drapes. That’s when we grabbed those tools and ran in to get you.”

“Thanks. What would I have done if you hadn’t come?” She rubbed her legs to try to restore the circulation.

Barbara laughed. “You’re lucky we’re the sort who never leaves town without saying good-bye to our friends.”

She resisted her friends’ attempts to dress the bleeding cuts on her face and went over to look at the prone man. “First thing we have to do is find out who this guy is, because he can’t be Frankenstein.” She bent down beside the attacker, ready to rip off the mask.

Barbara intervened. “Let me do it, Louise,” and with one of her sidearms, a linoleum tool with a curved blade, she sliced down the middle of the plastic face, as the man inside it made an agonized groan, and divested him of his mask as neatly as she might divest a perennial plant of its plastic pot.

Lying there, tied like a boned roast, was Ted French. Louise let out a little cry. “We meet again, Mr. French.” As if showing off a prize, she stretched a hand toward him and said, “Folks, this is Mr. Ted French, a member of Congressman Lloyd Goodrich’s presidential campaign staff.”

“
No
kidding,” exclaimed Gil Whitson.

French looked up at Louise, his blue eyes blazing. “You—bitch.”

“Have it your way,” she said calmly, “but maybe it would be better for you if you didn’t piss me off.” She leaned over and methodically went through his jacket pockets, finding his cell phone. She turned to her plant society buddies, now all gathered around. “This is what I was looking for.”

She leaned back over French, having a great desire to give him a good slap, or maybe a head clubbing with his own phone. But she refrained, not wanting to take on the face of the enemy. She whispered to him. “So first you send a thug out here to my house to spy on Jay McCormick.”

“Yeah, we did,” muttered French. “He didn’t hurt anybody—
you
nearly broke his leg with your damned trash cart!”

“And then you killed my friend Jay.”

In the background, Donna gasped.

Tessie said, “A murderer: I knew it.”

“The
hell
I did,” contended French. “I don’t know how he died. I just came here to do someone a favor: to get his disks. He was a fuckin’ spy! We gave him a job, and he skulked around after hours and he fuckin’ spied on us. He had no right to whatever story he got. He got it through false pretenses, and we’ll damn well sue.”

“If you didn’t kill him, who did—Rawlings?”

French’s expression became instantly guarded. “Hell, how do I know?” he snarled.

“Tell me more about Jay McCormick,” Louise said, sitting back on her haunches. She looked up at Gil. “Listen carefully, now, to this story.”

“He called himself John McCormick. He infiltrated our campaign. Wrote Goodrich some damned good speeches. You already know that, since you called campaign headquarters and
weaseled the information out of some dumb phone volunteer.”

“Yes? Go on.”

Five people hovered around him, and his eyes moved nervously from one to another. It was as tough as any vigilante mob he might meet. “No way. I’m not saying more until I get an attorney.”

“That’s all right, Ted. We have enough.” Louise handed Gil French’s cell phone. He crouched down beside her. “Why don’t you press the redial button and we’ll see what comes out of the woodwork. Somehow, I don’t believe he’s the principal player in all this.”

“What will I say?”

Louise pondered. “Make it a half whisper so it won’t be easy to tell you aren’t really Ted French. Tell whoever answers that everything is safe and under control, that you’ve got the disks, and you need them here. And then ring off, before the person can ask more questions.”

“Okay.” He looked at the prone man, struggling now against his bonds, and said, “What if he mouths off?”

“Simple solution,” barked Tessie. She looked like a longhaired avenger as she ripped off a couple more strips of duct tape and slapped them enthusiastically across French’s mouth.

“And stop wiggling,” commanded Barbara, standing primly now beside French and holding her hoe much like Little Bo Peep held her staff, “or I’ll happily give you a little poke.”

Gil pressed the redial button. The call was answered quickly, and his eyes widened in surprise. For a few moments he seemed paralyzed. Louise caught her breath; she saw the whole plan dissolving before her eyes. How could she have suspected for an instant this man injured Jay McCormick?
Why, he didn’t even have enough nerve to make a phony phone call.

Then, with a little nervous shake of his head and body, like a dog shaking off water after a bath, Gil rose to action. He spoke the brief message in a hoarse whisper, and a fair imitation of French’s voice. French’s eyes blazed up at him.

Gil turned off the phone and gave Louise a brilliant smile. “They even answered me. Said, ‘Okay, be there in less than three minutes.’”

French groaned, a long, hopeless lament. Louise glanced at him coldly.

“How did the person sound?” she asked.

“Like me: nervous and whispery,” replied Gil.

Tessie looked at Louise in disbelief. “Three minutes? Listen, folks, we have a problem: How many more people do we have to subdue tonight? How do we know this guy doesn’t have three other guys with him?”

Louise jumped to her feet. “You’re right, Tessie. We shouldn’t have done that. Now we have to act fast. We need the police, and while I’m calling, Gil, move your van from in front of the house. Park it far into the Mougeys’ driveway so whoever’s coming can’t see it. And hurry: You don’t want them to get here and see you.”

Giving her a terrified glance, he ran out the door. Suddenly, Gil was having to do all the gutsy things, and she was pretty sure he was not used to that role.

She was connected almost immediately with Detective Geraghty, who apparently was working late. Quickly she told him the bare facts about her friends capturing an intruder, and about redialing the man’s phone and reaching an accomplice.

“Had to do it yourself, huh?”

“I hadn’t intended to.”

“Since you made that call, there’s no time to debate this, Mrs. Eldridge. I want you to do exactly as I say. And don’t you and your friends try to be heroes, understand?”

“I understand.”

Moments later, he rang off and she spoke to Tessie, Barbara, and Donna. “The police want us to turn off some lights and leave just enough on so whoever comes isn’t suspicious.” She looked at them, standing there with their garden weapons. “And they want all of us to ‘safeguard’ ourselves by going into a bedroom and letting them capture the guy.”

Gil burst back in the front door, his eyes wide with fright. “Should I leave the door unlocked, or should I lock it?”

“Leave it unlocked, Geraghty says. Let’s go. He wants us out of the way.” She smiled. “But we’ll still get a good view.”

She led them to the guest room; all of them brought their garden implements in case something went wrong. She slid the window open so they could hear, and the soft sound of the cicadas floated in and reminded them there was a peaceful night world out there. Then, she took Bill’s binoculars from the closet shelf and proffered them to the others. “Does someone want to use these?”

Barbara took up the offer, training the glasses on Louise’s driveway. Not more than a minute later, she cried, “Here comes a car into the cul-de-sac, but, God, Louise, I haven’t seen any police.”

“Well, then, we’d better be ready to defend ourselves,” Louise said. Donna patted her back and reassured her. “They’ll be here. You said they’re just a couple of miles away.”

The car without lights pulled into the driveway, far enough
so that it was under the canopy of trees and outside of the immediate sight of passersby.

Louise had a moment of panic: If the police were delayed, they would have to defend themselves again with primitive tools against what would undoubtedly be guns in the hands of their opponents.

“Why don’t they get out of the car?” asked Barbara.

“Shhh,” scolded Tessie, “they might hear us.”

For almost two agonizing minutes, nothing happened. Louise’s neck ached from her encounter with French. She wished she had accepted her friends’ ministrations—at least a couple of aspirins and a glass of water. Tessie took the opportunity to twist her hair back into its tight little bun and secure it with hairpins. Gil paced nervously in a tight little circle.

Tension in the guest room grew, until finally the car door opened and out stepped a single figure. Barbara gave a second-by-second report. “Only one so far. Walking into the woods, away from us. Probably wants to avoid the light on the path. He’s nearly out of sight.” She dropped the glasses from her eyes.

Then, a glare of searchlights clicked on and probed the yard. They quickly converged on the figure, now close to the house. A deep voice shouted through a megaphone: “Police! Stop right where you are!” Louise thought she saw a flash of red. She and her friends rushed from the bedroom to the entrance of the living room, not wanting to go farther until the police gave permission.

A cadre of officers brought a half-stumbling, handcuffed Lannie Gordon into the house. Geraghty followed close on their heels.

“My God,” murmured Louise. “I should have known it. So many motives.”

“Is she the murderer?” asked Tessie.

In a low voice, Louise answered, “I think so.”

Lannie looked like a wild woman, her red hair in disarray, her face smeared with dirt, as two officers held her on either side. Although she wore a smart taupe jogging outfit and Mephisto tennis shoes, she probably never had felt so far from the comforts of her private country club.

What brought the woman to a stumbling stop was the sight of Ted French, lying on the floor, tethered to the piano like a calf at a rodeo. She spat it out: “Idiot!” Then she straightened. Turning to Detective Geraghty, in a shaky voice she said, “I am Lannie Gordon and I am an attorney. You have made a terrible mistake, and you need to release me right now. Otherwise, there’s going to be no end of trouble for the Fairfax police.”