Authors: Ann Ripley

Summer Garden Murder (9 page)

BOOK: Summer Garden Murder

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Geraghty silently reached over toward Louise, as if to give her a little comforting pat on her shoulder. But he withdrew his hand before he touched her and followed the lead detective out of the house.

M
artha was on the patio by herself, slumped in a chair with the cell phone at her ear, her feet propped up on another chair. The woods were loud with birds chirping and insects making a huge racket. She hoped Jim could hear her. When he did, he wouldn't like what she said.

“I'm glad you're coming back this afternoon,” he said. “I've missed you so much, Martha.”

“I'm not coming, Jim. I've had to cancel the flight. We have trouble here.”

“What trouble?”

“You know that big creep, Peter Hoffman, that I told you all about? Well, he was missing for almost a week, and last night my mother found his body in our garden.”

“Bummer. I'm sorry, Martha. I'm really sorry. Who put him there?”

“That's the bad part. The cops have been busy snooping around Ma's garden shed, taking fingerprints, et cetera, and they just came over and told her that she's a suspect. I think she's their only suspect.”

“I thought she was the police department's best little helper.”

“She was. She is.”

“Tell me more.”

Martha went down the evidence list, piece by piece.

“That sweatshirt's not good, Martha,” concluded Jim. “It probably has Hoffman's blood on it. Someone's got it in for her.”

“Mike Geraghty probably agrees with you. He's the detective who used to run things at the Mount Vernon station. It's mainly this George Morton who acts like she belongs in jail. They say they'll arrest her by the end of next week if they can't come up with some evidence that someone else did it.”

“Should I come out there?”

“How are you going to run for public office if you're in northern Virginia?”

“It's not a good time, I'll admit. And someone's just attacked me for something my great-uncle did thirty-seven years ago. But I'll come if you need me.”

“I'd like to help out here as much as I can. Usually it's Janie who has to help Ma get out of her scrapes. I'll tell you what. Give me a few days. If things don't get straightened out by then, maybe you'd better fly out here and lend your keen Cook County crime nose to saving her.”

“I can't believe the police are serious. I sure don't want my future mother-in-law in jail. You'll need to call me every night and tell me how things are going.”

“I will, darling.”

“Did you tell them about things?”

“Yeah. Ma and I had a chance to talk this morning before the police came and laid their big trip on her. She's accepted my conversion to Catholicism okay. The wedding dress thing was a little harder.”

“What did she want, for you to wear a white dress with a train?”

“I think so.”

“Is she going to accept the fact that you're wearing jeans?” he said, chuckling.

“Jeans,” said Martha, “or a few cuts above that.”

Janie came out of her bedroom in her pajamas, surprised to see it was only eight-thirty. She groaned. Five hours' sleep wasn't enough for her. She went into the dining room and stared out into the yard. There was her family in its entiretyâfather, mother and sisterâplus a couple of guys in navy uniforms. More police. But these two looked browbeaten, and she could see why.

Her mother appeared to be scolding the man with a shovel in his hand. The other held what looked like a pole digger. Apparently, they were probing around in other gardens on the theory that her mother was a mass murderer.

In disgust, she went into the kitchen and found the bagels and lox. Though she didn't drink coffee, she looked at the Chemex pot, shaped like a beaker from her chemistry class, sitting on the warmer. A residue of deep brown liquid was in it. She decided to try it. After all, her mother could never exist for a day without her usual allotment of four or five cups. Janie, who didn't drink soda, was tired enough to experiment.

She poured half a cup to start, lacing it with cream just as Louise did. When she thought about her mother, she always thought of her as “Louise,” although she still called her “Ma.” One of these days, she'd just grow up and call her by her name.

She sat down and found she thoroughly enjoyed this more mature version of breakfast. Heavens knows she needed a boost, for it was dÃ©jÃ vu all over again with that yellow police tape around the yard. Back when they found those gory objects in the bags of leaves, it had embarrassed her practically to tears and made her the object of teasing at school. If she hadn't had Chris Radebaugh as a good friend then, she would have been lost. Though she was too old for tears now, it still was embarrassing.

She wished Chris were here and not in Baltimore. Her boyfriend's summer internship ended soon at Johns Hopkins. It couldn't be soon enough for Janie.

She paused in eating and took another sip of coffee. No wonder her mother loved it so. It had a real kick and an engaging aftertaste. She chuckled. Now that she herself was a coffee-drinker, she was sure she was mature enough to get married.

Her mother was in trouble again, no doubt about it. Janie knew it from sitting around the Mount Vernon substation last night with her sister. Louise was a suspect. Why else would they have questioned her for three hours?

Janie knew her mother was innocent, but she also knew that if she had had the gumption to kill anyone, it would have been Peter Hoffman. She'd hated the man, and for good reasons.

Through a haze of half-sleep, she'd heard the detectives arrive this morning and could make out a few things, mainly her mother's exclamations of innocence. It seemed as though they were staying for a long time.

Instead of just helping Martha plan a wedding, Janie would have to see what she could do to get Louise out of this mess. Too bad her sister was bailing out and returning to Chicago today. Maybe the two of them could have figured out how that body got into the azalea garden.

She looked out again and saw Martha hanging right there by her mother's side. Her sister didn't act like someone heading out for a noon flight to Chicago. Of course, she thought. She's cancelled her trip. As if telepathic, Martha came to the big plate-glass window and peered in at Janie with a sweat-beaded face.

Janie put her coffee cup down and made a ring with her index finger and thumb. Martha did the same.
Okay,
it meant, in sisterly code, “
let's get on this
.”

It was hot and humid on the patio, and Louise knew her long-suffering husband would have much preferred being in the house, checking out the
Washington Post'
s take on the disastrous news from the Middle East rather than out here while she kept the evidence technicians in line.

“Bill, go inside. Believe me, I can handle these two.”

“No, darling, I'll stay.”

She turned her attention back to the technicians. They were on their knees on the hard flagstone now. She'd handed them each a trowel and told them exactly how to proceed. “Now, officers,” she said crisply, “without using those shovels, you can see for yourself that no one has tampered with this garden.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said one. First, he rummaged around with his hand, encased in a white polyurethane glove, then worked the trowel about, encountering fairly solid soil. “You're right so far, Mrs. Eldridge.” Casting her a wary glance, he got up and moved down two few feet and repeated the probes. The other technician was at the far end of the circular garden, coming toward the first man. Intermittently, Louise went to inspect and see that he followed her ground rules as well.

Her husband had collapsed in a patio chair. “Let me know if I can help,” he called to her.

Louise looked over at him, her expression distracted. Two weeks ago, Peter Hoffman had entered the house and traumatized her. Now, he'd shown up dead in their garden and, incredibly, she was the police's best and probably only suspect. She was so insulted that she could hardly see straight, much less focus on the worst-case scenarioâthat she might go to jail and miss her daughter's wedding. All she could do right now was to be sure that these two officers left her flower beds as sacrosanct as when they found them.

Bill, his head lolling on the back of the chair, called to her. “Honey, why not come and sit down while they finish?”

She apparently surprised him by doing so, for he gave her a big smile. She smiled weakly back at him. “What are you thinking?” she said. She felt anything but relaxed, her body bent forward in the chair, elbows on her knees and hands supporting her head.

“I'm thinking about Phyllis Hoffman,” he said. He chuckled. “Though I should be thinking of how I can help ease this international crisis in the Middle East.”

She sighed deeply. “Bill, forget the damned Middle East for a minute. Are you saying that Phyllis could have murdered her husband?”

“I'll bet she had plenty of motive.”

“But how could Phyllis Hoffman move his body? My cart would have helped her, but it still took strength. Could she have done it?”

“Someone struck him down, then dragged him onto your cartânot an impossible task for a woman. Maybe she's not the one, or maybe she had an accomplice.”

Louise slanted a glance at him.

“Okay,” said Bill, “you don't buy that. I have a better idea, though. I intend to pursue it as soon as I can break away and go downtown.”

“What's that?”

“I'm checking into Hoffman's business dealings. Money's a major motive for murder. The question is, who profits from his death? Mort Swanson might help us, if he isn't too defensive about once being mixed up with Hoffman. Mike Cunningham won't divulge anything; he had a lawyer-client relationship with the sonofabitch.”

“Bill,” said Louise, “you're great, doing all that work when I know your mind is on other things. One other thought: should you still call Peter a sonofabitch now that he's dead?”

“Damned right. Once a sonofabitch, always a sonofabitch.”

T
he Hoffman murder had landed on Charlie Hurd's desk, and rightly so. He was the
Post'
s number one crime reporter. Anyway, it was in his territory.

Now he was trolling. He was keenly aware that with his close-to-bronze suntan, reasonably good looks and red Porsche, he ought to come up with at least one good fish.

He drove slowly down Rebecca Road, one of Sylvan Valley's main drags, and then turned right at the bottom of the hill. Larch Road immediately climbed uphill again. Weird neighborhood, this Sylvan Valley. One hill after another until he got to the flat bottomland where Louise lived. But the Eldridge yard was inaccessible, with cops combing the ground inside that yellow police tape. And Louise wasn't answering the phone, even though he'd left three messages, damned good ones, too, the kind that sometimes pressured her into calling him back: “
Louise, what's the matterâyou trapped inside that house? What's the big problem answering the phone? I've heard all about how they found that louse Hoffman tucked in your back garden. Hell, you act like they've charged you with the crime. So, how did he get buried there? You gotta know something. And if you don't know, all the more reason to call me. You can depend on your old friend Charlie to help you find out who did it!
”

While hovering at the mouth of Dogwood Court, Charlie had seen a car pull out of the Eldridges' yard. It was Bill Eldridge's Camry, if memory served him right. When the car passed him with the sunroof open, he did a double take. At the wheel was a young gal with long chestnut hair glinting in the sun. At first he thought it was Louise, and then realized it must be her daughter Martha, a dead ringer for her mother. In the passenger's seat was the blond daughter, Janie, who'd turned into quite a dish.

The two of them had been so preoccupied talking that they hadn't noticed the guy parked in a red sports car. He was sure that if he'd had a chance to talk to them he could have squeezed out good information for a story that was due by seven this evening. So far, he had diddly, nothing much beyond the meager facts divulged by the Fairfax cops: “Body of Peter Hoffman found in yard of the woman who'd tagged him as a killer four years ago.”

Poor old Louise
, thought Charlie,
she's gotten herself into another mess of trouble. She's really going to need me.

After bugging the cops for as long as was practical and striking out on reaching Hoffman's wife, he'd resorted to slowly circuiting the neighborhood to see what else he could come up with. His sharp eyes behind his sunglasses had been seeking out prey, and now he spotted one. Charlie, being slighter than other guys and disinclined to sports, had never developed his hunter-fisher instincts. They were latent there inside him, though, because right now every hunter-fisher nerve in his body was tingling.

A lithe young woman wearing the skimpiest sundress he'd ever laid eyes on, thereby exposing a dynamite pair of athletic, tanned legs, was wending her way down a steep, hilly yard filled with plants and trees, looking as if she were out for a jog.
Pretty as a picture
, thought Charlie, then almost laughed at himself for being such a bloody romantic. He slowed the Porsche, then brought it to a stop and lowered his front window all the way. She was coming straight for the sidewalk, after carefully sidestepping a vicious-looking shrub.

“Hi, there,” he said. “You make a pretty picture.” He decided he'd tell the simple truth and see where it got him.

She liked it and smiled. “Hi, there, yourself,” she said. She had an accent, maybe German. She paused momentarily on the sidewalk, then came over, leaned down and put an arm on the open car window. This put the tops of her round golden breasts so close to his face that he could hardly breathe. Or maybe it was the exotic perfume emanating from her lush skin; he couldn't tell which. “I'm Hilde,” she said, opening her eyes wide. “And who are you?”

Charlie knew then what it meant to drown in someone's eyes. Hilde's eyes were green, with lots of depth, so they truly were like pools, but with sharply defined small black irises. And they were kind eyesâor was that only a look of patience in them? He decided he'd put his cards on the table right away, so he pulled out his press pass. “Charlie Hurd.
Washington Post
. I cover crime.” He didn't add that he covered suburban crime, government and all sorts of screwy feature stories, and had been locked in this goddamned Fairfax county suburban corral for too effing long.

“Oh, a journalist,” she said, in a slightly mocking voice. “How exciting.” The green eyes narrowed. “Let me guess. You are here with the other media because something terrible has been found in the Eldridges' garden.” She was so right. The other media were either parked in Dogwood Court or trolling as he was.

Charlie whipped off his sunglasses and widened his own eyes. “You've heard about the body being found.”

“Of course I've heard. The neighbors, we neighbors have been, oh, how do you say, gathering in the street, once we knew police cars had arrived in the middle of the night. Some of us were even interviewed on TV.”

“I'd love to talk to you. You probably know the Eldridges. So do you want to hop in the car? I'll even take you out for a cup of coffee, if you like.”

She turned her head and looked up at the big glass-fronted house on top of the hill from which she'd exited, as if she might have business up there. Then she smiled, and without saying a thing, slipped around the front of the car. Charlie barely had time to reach over and open the passenger-side door before she arrived there, slid in and fastened her seatbelt across her delightful chest. “Ready, I think,” she said, beaming over another smile.

Charlie felt as if he were in hog heaven. Not once since he'd been assigned by the
Post
to the suburbs had he encountered such a beauty. Now he had to remember why he'd picked her up. Oh yes, the Hoffman murder. The package in Louise's garden.

As he drove back up Rebecca Road, the delightful Hilde looked over at him. “I could be hungry, also,” she said, laughing, and then spread her hands out. “But I didn't bring a purse. So would you buy me a sandwich for lunch?”

He grinned sappily. “Of course, Hilde. I think we can find a place.” But this was a problem for him. Where the hell was there a decent restaurant around here?

His passenger put her hands together with a small clap. “I know a place.”

“Sure. Where is it?”

“It's called the Dixie Pig.” She pointed a long finger. “It's just the way we're headed right now.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, trying not to sound dispirited. The Dixie Pig was the last place he wanted to go. Talk about lowbrow, the restaurant was Southern trash transported to suburban Washington, D.C.

“I like the barbecue,” she explained.

“The barbecued pork sandwich. Sure.” The Dixie Pig was famous for its gross barbecue sandwiches, obviously fattening, since most people he'd seen exiting the place were vastly overweight. How could a fantastic beauty like this, who from the sound of her hadn't been in this country for long, have developed an affinity for northern Virginia's weirdest restaurant?

Charlie had to admit the barbecued pork wasn't bad. It was delicious, in fact. He had the red barbecue sauce all over his hands to prove it. And there were, he was pleased to see, a few other thin people in the establishment at this late lunch hour. Maybe, he thought, thin people ate later because they weren't as hungry as fat people.

“See, you do like it,” said Hilde, utterly luminous as she sat across from him in the red leather booth, the one clean and shining thing in this place in which all else seemed sheathed in a thin layer of grease, and where the air conditioning unit throbbed so noisily it overtook the country music playing on the kitchen radio.

Hilde was handling her messy sandwich with the flair of a fine lady, or, in her case, a fine artist. He'd gotten the lowdown on Hilde. She was interning until October with Sarah Swanson, a “magnificent” potter of whom he'd never heard. Hilde picked up the huge pickle in her refined fingers, taking discreet bites, and popped in the French friesâshe'd nearly demolished the huge pile they'd served herâas if they were little invisible threads. Such class, he thought. How did she do it?

He paused in mid-sandwich and wiped his hands, finally realizing he couldn't spend this entire lunch hour trying to make time with this girl. He needed to pry from her whatever nuggets of gossip she might know, which probably wasn't much. “So I suppose you've met Louise Eldridge.”

“Oh, yes, but only briefly. And her husbandâI've also met Bill. And I have caught glimpses of their daughter, who I believe is named Janie.” She bent her head and peered up at him with those green eyes. “I also met the dead man.”

“Oh-ho,” he said hopefully. “You met Peter Hoffman before someone offed him?”

“Yes,” she said in a sober voice. “He appeared at a neighborhood party the day after his release from the mental institution that held him.”

“So what did you think of Peter?”

“He was very forward, I thought.”

“Huh,” barked Charlie. “I bet the guy came on to you, didn't he?”

Her gaze dropped demurely to the tan formica tabletop. “Oh, yes. Of course, that is not unusual. But he also seemed to be making an appointment, maybe you'd say a date, to meet Louise. We all heard it. Later that very night, he did meet her at her house, and I heard from ... someone, that she attacked him.”

“Louise? Attacked Peter Hoffman?”

“Rather viciouslyâor rather, that was what I was told.”

“So who told you that?”

“Another neighbor who was at the party. But I don't mean to gossip about anyone.”

“Oh, you're not gossiping. You and me, we're friends. Friends can tell each other things. Who was it who told you that Louise attacked Hoffman?”

“Greg Archer.” Hilde's face had a guileless expression. This woman, Charlie exulted to himself, was a pure, uncensored font of information. “He lives with Sam Rosen, who is in the corner house next to the Eldridge house. I believe they saw the attack.”

“No kiddin',” said Charlie. He mentally filed the name. Yet the whole thing didn't track. “I can't figure out why Louise would want to meet with Hoffman in the first place. She wouldn't even talk about that guy.”

“Maybe she was trying to set her heart at ease,” said Hilde, putting her hand on her superb breast in the approximate location of her heart. “Trying to get rid of her hatred or whatever terrible emotions were in here. After all, Peter Hoffman came out of that hospital to rejoin society. She would have to confront that truth some time.”

Charlie was very distracted by that hand on Hilde's breast. “So what else do you know about these characters? Who else do you know around here?”

She withdrew the hand. “Not very much, Charlie. I recently arrived from Zurich. I've just met the people in the cul-de-sac who came to the party and neighbors on either side of the Swansons. I spend most of my time working very long hours in Sarah's studio, or walking in the neighborhood. We have a large order to fill.”

“Order for what?”

Hilde smiled, as if to vanquish all the pettiness in the world. “It is for Hecht's, a department store. Do you know it?”

“Sure,” said Charlie.

“You must first know that Sarah is a wonderful artist, and creates beautiful sculptures in clay that win prizes in art shows. What I am working on is Sarah's very popular small vase in the shape of a cat, with big eyes, and to which, on each one, I must attach a set of black whiskers. This is my cross to bear at the moment.”

She gave him a look of mock dismay, and he laughed, then signalled to the waitress for the check. “Hilde, you are as refreshing as a day in spring.” He could kick himself for lapsing into corny again, but this chick really had him going. He hardly knew what he was saying.

He tried to remember that after he dropped her off, he needed to nail down Greg Archer or Sam Rosen, or both.