Death In The Orchid Garden

by Ann Ripley

Genres: Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Filming her public television garden show in Hawaii, Louise Eldridge, sipping mai tais amidst the hibiscus and plumeria, has a date with murder when she discovers the body of an arrogant botantist and must weed through a wealth of suspects to catch a killer.

Release date: November 1, 2006

Publisher: Kensington

Print pages: 352

Sample

Late Wednesday afternoon

Louise Eldridge floated on her back and gazed up at the rustling dead fronds of the palms overhead. In this state of casual dishabille, the trees looked like ladies who’d failed to comb their long, tan hair. She smiled contentedly, for her favorite daydream had always been floating in a lagoon in a tropical jungle. Now here she was, the daydream a reality. Except this lagoon was put together like a Hollywood movie set, one of the amenities of Kauai’s premier luxury hotel, Kauai-by-the-Sea, where she’d checked in a scant hour ago.

The heart of the lagoon was a big, shallow pond with a man-made sand beach designed for families with small children. From it branched out several isolated channels and deep pools. She’d sought out and found the most remote one for her solitary swim. Around her arose an imported jungle of palms and lacy casuarina trees, Norfolk pines as tall as a five-story building, giant-armed monkeypods, blazing philosophy trees, and snakelike cactus growing on random walls. Ringing the lagoon itself were splotches of croton, ginger, plumeria, guava, ficus, and hibiscus.

She knew all the plant names, because she’d studied them before she left home. It was her business, since she was host of the PBS garden show, Gardening with Nature, in Washington, D.C.

Louise turned over and dove far down into the water’s green depths, emerging in the middle of the pool. In her high-cut navy blue speed suit, she easily crossed the pool in six strokes, then headed down a connecting stream into still another breathtakingly beautiful tropical scene. From the promotional literature at the check-in desk, she knew that she could swim two miles in this serpentine waterway that lay between the Art Deco–style hotel on the one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. In all, she traversed three serene, flower-bedecked ponds without meeting another swimmer. She swam back to the first pool, then flipped over on her back again. Floating as if dead, she closed her eyes in total relaxation and nearly drifted off to sleep.

Suddenly something slammed hard into her shoulder. The impact threw her underwater and for a moment she was filled with terror. Had she run across some large sea monster that she hadn’t been warned about when preparing for her trip to Hawaii?

She reemerged sputtering and flapping her arms to regain her balance. “Augh!” she yelled and looked into the amused blue eyes of a big, barrel-chested man. Masses of white hair stuck to his head like bits of plaster. Even his massive white eyebrows were in disarray, looking like dollops of meringue. He reached out his huge arms to help support her and they trolled together in the middle of the lagoon like two bobbing tops.

“My dear, I’m so terribly sorry,” he boomed. “Are you hurt?”

She was still gasping for breath. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I wasn’t paying the least attention to where I was going,” he said. Despite the water cascading off his well-formed face, she recognized him from the photos sent to her with his vitae. The sea monster was Dr. Bruce Bouting. He was a plant explorer and owner of Bouting Horticulture, the biggest company of its kind in North America. His presence here at this elite botanical conference was one of the reasons she’d come to Kauai.

“Dr. Bouting?”

“Yes, my dear. And you are . . .”

“I’m Louise Eldridge,” she said and noticed that he still held her with his ham hands. “You can let me go. I’m all right.”

Bobbing on his own now, he pointed a finger at her and gave her a slightly puzzled look. “Louise Eldridge? I’m beginning to recognize you, too. You’re the TV garden show lady.”

“Yes. My producer and his wife and my cohost are already at the conference cocktail party on the terrace. But I needed a swim more than a drink after flying five thousand miles.”

“Aloha, my dear,” and he reached out a big hand and shook hers, formally, as if they were at the party going on a few hundred feet and a few artificial waterfalls away. “I’m so looking forward to being on your show . . . uh, what’s it called?”

“Gardening with Nature. It originates from WTBA-TV, in Washington, D.C. But it’s aired on most PBS stations every Saturday morning.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, nodding his head vigorously as he treaded water, then broke into laughter. “I was told all that but forgot for a moment. And you have some other botanist wonder boys from our conference appearing on your show. Matthew Flynn. Isn’t he one of ’em?” Again, a big laugh, but a barely masked undertone of disrespect.

“Yes.” They swam slowly, side by side, in the warm, salty water.

“Huh,” he said. A polite but noncommittal “huh.” Bruce Bouting, she knew from his bio, was famous for making plant discoveries in the farthest reaches of the globe. The story on him was that he co-opted foreigners easily with that charm and coaxed them for plant samples and seeds. She was curious to know what he thought about the flamboyant Eastern University professor, Dr. Flynn. Flynn couldn’t be more different from Bouting: He spent months at a time in the Amazon, looking for plants that promised a cure to mankind’s diseases. Flynn tested the plants and pitched them to American drug companies.

“I do not wish to be unkind, my dear Louise,” said Bouting, “but I was told this conference was to talk about ways to promote and preserve tropical plants. Dr. Flynn’s set the conference on its ear with his outrageous claims and we’ve been arguing about that instead of what we came for.” His quiet voice turned into a bark. “Shaman, indeed—the man’s a sham. Why, he gives a bad name to ethnobotany.”

Louise must have looked dismayed, for he quickly added, “Don’t worry. I’m just fed up with the fellow after a whole day of his bragging. That’s why I’m being frank with you. Whatever else I am, I am a consummate professional. I can get along with him through a four-day botany conference and the filming of your show. Who else is on the roster for this program? I believe I heard it was going to be Reuter from UC Berkeley.”

“Yes, Dr. Charles Reuter.”

Another skeptical “huh!” straight from Bouting’s barrel chest. “So I guess Reuter represents your environmentalist view.”

“He’s an outspoken environmentalist and I admire him. I’m sure you’ve heard him speak, or read what he’s written on preserving native species. He’s a tiger on that topic.” She took several strong strokes and opened the distance between them.

“A purist, my dear,” Bouting bellowed, splashing in an awkward Australian crawl until he caught up with her. She gave him a break and turned on her side and did the sidestroke.

Once he’d caught his breath, Bouting said, “Reuter’s one of those priggish, angry pedants who wants non-native plants relegated to the scrap heap! Rotten point of view. The man’s on the wrong track entirely. I told the conference that today and I intend to reiterate it over the next couple of days. We ought to amend the conference’s mission statement to read, ‘to promote and preserve tropical plants and to make some of them into market winners.’ You see, dear, I’m all for market winners: That’s what makes me the biggest frog in the North American pond.”

Louise paused to be sure she chose the right words, for she realized she was dealing with a giant ego. She flipped over onto her back, drifted slowly backward, giving him a confident smile. “We know with all your strong and sometimes divergent views, the three of you will make a great program.”

A grin spread over Dr. Bouting’s face. “You’re a little politician, aren’t you? As long as you understand you’ve got yourself three divas. Sparks are bound to fly.” Just for fun, apparently, he flapped an arm as if it were a flipper and sent a crest of warm saltwater into the air. “But what the heck, you people are masters in the editing room. You can cut out the rough stuff.”

“Yes, thank heavens for that,” she replied with the same casual air. She looked at the sun, which seemed to be hurrying toward the horizon. “Now I see I’d better go and get changed to meet my friends. People at the hotel say it’s de rigeuer to watch the sun set when in Hawaii.”

“Indeed it is. Now, you hurry off. It was a pleasure, Louise, to swim a few strokes with you. See you at tonight’s session?”

“I’d like to, but I’m not sure. I’m a little weary.” She swam quickly to the edge of the pool. Pulling down the sides of her bathing suit, she climbed up the underwater stone steps to the short-clipped emerald grass. As she turned to bid another good-bye to her pool mate, she saw he was still treading water in the middle of the lagoon, staring at her figure as if he’d never seen a half-clad woman before.

“Good-bye, Dr. Bouting,” she said, in a firm voice.

The man snapped out of his trance and moved his gaze from her buttocks to her breasts. “Aloha, Louise. See you soon, I hope.”

Wednesday evening

Once in her hotel room, Louise realized that if she were going to see the sun set, she had time only for one of what her husband Bill called her “lightning transformations.” But first, she noticed the French doors opening onto a lanai. They provided a panoramic view of the hotel grounds and the ocean. She went out but dared not linger for more than a few moments, for dusk was descending on the colorful world outside—and on the mass of flowers that sent their perfume up to her on the second floor.

Reluctantly, she came in and locked the door and went into her routine.

Thirty seconds in the shower, thirty seconds to dry. Five minutes to blow dry and brush her shoulder-length brown hair with its alarming occurrences of gray strands. Then only two minutes to jump into a brief beige linen dress and beige sandals and dab lipstick on her otherwise makeup-free face. As a final fillip, she slipped her flat gold necklace around her throat.

She knew she’d pass in this fancy hotel, even though it was like a movie set, with its grand entrance, million-dollar view of the sea, swaying palms, beloved talking parrots in cages, lily-motif chandeliers and other 1920’s architectural touches, waterfalls and lush gardens and lagoons and streams. But its cast did not live up to it. Quite unlike a scene in The Great Gatsby; quite the opposite, in fact. The guests she’d seen so far were laid-back to the point of drabness. Sunburnt men in short sleeves and shorts strolling along with women in T-shirts and pedal pushers. She’d seen only one woman so far who was like a throwback to fussier days—or Washington, D.C.—garbed in a sheath, jewelry, and, heaven forbid, stiletto heels. This was Hawaii, where casualness ruled. Louise was going to like it here.

Strolling through the lobby and the terrace, she failed to find her producer, Marty Corbin, and his wife. He’d brought Steffi along on this trip so that they could have a little rest and recreation in the islands and recover from some health scare that Steffi had recently overcome. Louise’s good-looking cohost, John Batchelder, also was nowhere in sight.

In the meantime, the sun threatened to set without any of them viewing it—a virtual crime, she’d been told. She hurried out of the hotel and strolled down what looked like the most direct path to the ocean. Once in sight of the beach, she saw a small crowd gathering and hurried to join them, ignoring the sand in her sandals.

Stepping closer to the water, she felt a tinge of discomfort as she spied what looked like yellow police tape attached to poles. Had a body washed up on shore? Louise had barely recovered from the shock of two violent deaths in her northern Virginia neighborhood of Sylvan Valley. Surely, it would be an unkind trick of fate for death to follow her here to this tropical beauty spot.

Within this de-marked space lay a form resembling a small hill. It was dark brown, with a smooth skin. She asked one of the gawkers, a white-haired man in a windbreaker, “What is it?”

“A monk seal,” he said. “They’re endangered, you know. We can’t disturb it. Apparently they come in to shore because they need the rest.”

Louise chuckled. “At least it doesn’t have to pay hotel prices.”

He grinned. “He’s luckier than we are. It costs a lot of money to take a vacation in paradise.” Putting his digital camera to his eye, he said, “I’m sure this guy won’t mind if I snap his picture.”

She watched the little crowd respectfully ring the yellow tape barrier and bestow proprietary looks on the exhausted sea creature. They delighted in its continued existence, despite the adversities it faced. She guessed that they’d have this same ownership feeling when they took boat or car trips to view the whales, currently in the neighborhood, mating; or the other fish and mammals that played and regenerated their kind near this lovely island.

But the big moment was here—sunset. While she could have watched it from the hotel terrace, here she was, alone with a bunch of strangers on the beach. They were all of one mind, worshipping the sun god as if they were ancient Egyptians.

A bronzed man with curly brown hair and a sleepy grin stood near her, balancing a surfboard. He was in shorts, sleeveless shirt, and bare feet. “At the very moment the sun hits the Pacific,” he told the little crowd, “you’re gonna see a green flash. It only lasts an instant, so don’t take your eyes away.” Silence fell and so did the sun.

“See, there it is,” cried the surfer. As the crowd “oohed,” Louise was amazed to see the green flash, like a bar of green. She had never heard of this phenomenon, but it made her feel a sense of unity with those early Hawaiians who must have thought this streak of color part of the gods’ magic. Looking around at her awestruck companions, she thought, Not much has changed. As if his job were done, the barefoot man wandered off and the others slowly dispersed.

As she turned to head back to the hotel, her gaze lit upon a large rock cliff hanging about forty feet over the water. Though Kauai was a sea of lush green grass, vines, plants, and towering trees, this seaside promontory, like many other unusual rock formations, was a reminder of the island’s volcanic origins. It was a basalt shelf, she realized, built five million years ago when the island was formed, an earlier version of the new land being built at this very moment with the fresh lava flows from Kilauea on the youngest island, the Big Island, one hundred miles southeast of here.

The rocky cliff beckoned to her. She hoped that John and she could climb up there tomorrow, though her cohost was scared of heights. This was made clear by his nervousness during the long flight over here.

She would have taken another final look at the monk seal, but decided not to. The yellow tape and the recumbent body reminded her too much of a crime scene.

Louise returned to the hotel in the gathering darkness and found her party already seated on the terrace. John Batchelder held the center of attention at the circular dinner table. He was tan and handsome in chinos and a glistening white shirt rolled up at the sleeves. She’d noticed his pale golden look on the plane trip here, realizing that he’d frequented a Washington, D.C., tanning salon before reaching Kauai. In the candlelight, the tan was even more enhanced. But what was even more compelling were his satyrlike, amber-colored eyes, which danced with excitement as he talked. He was so caught up in telling them about his hike up Shipwreck Rock that he could hardly eat, contented instead to sip his mai tai during pauses to catch his breath. Apparently, he’d gone up the rock while Louise was in the lagoon meeting her “sea monster.” She was bemused by the thought of someone who was afraid of heights arriving in Hawaii and immediately ascending a cliff.

She and John and the Corbins had been placed at a prime table under the stars. Lighted torches helped them see their dinners. Marty and Steffi were shiny faced and dressed in bright resort clothes. Big people already, the clothes made them look even bigger. Marty was in a shirt embossed with palm trees and Steffi in a sleeveless gown festooned with cockatoos, bamboo stalks, and hibiscus. Louise, feeling almost dowdy in her beige outfit, realized that the first thing the Corbins had done on arrival was to hit the trendy shops in the vast marble-and-carpet halls of Kauai-by-the-Sea. The clothes were quite in character, thought Louise, for Marty was talented, flamboyant, and sometimes over-the-top. His wife was just as colorful. Equally in character was the drink they’d both ordered, called a “Lava Flow,” a creamy pina colada with a dramatic swirl of red crushed strawberries running through it.

“So that’s the skinny on that big old cliff out there,” said her producer.

“Yep, Shipwreck Rock. I wouldn’t have done it, but the concierge told me it’s a pussy-cat of a climb and it was,” enthused John. “There are a few volcanic rocks to clamber over midway up the trail—you’re on all fours then. But man, what a view when you reach the top—you can see for miles. And it gives you this feeling—”

Marty waggled his brown-haired head and laughed. “—that it might all collapse and you’d fall into the ocean?”

Faintly rebuked, Louise’s enthusiastic cohost turned his amber eyes to her. “Louise, you’ll love it. We’ll go up there tomorrow, okay?”

“I’d love to.” She thought about telling them about the monk seal on the beach, but decided not to take attention from John’s story.

Marty said, “Glad you enjoyed your climb, John. That’s what we’re here for—relaxation—part of it, anyway. Maybe we’ll listen in on this botany conference—anyway, you can, Lou, you plant maven, you.” He grinned at her. “We’ll just swim and relax . . .”

“And shop,” added Steffi, turning her big, dark eyes Louise’s way. “Louise, when will you be free tomorrow to shop? We need to go to Koloa, and we’ll stop at the Poi Pu Shopping Center on the way.”

Unlike some women, Louise thought of shopping as a punishment, not a pleasure. But she said, “I’ll be free in the afternoon.” Steffi was a good-hearted woman whom Louise didn’t know that well, but enjoyed on those occasions when they did get together. She didn’t envy Steffi for having to live with Marty, for not only was her producer temperamental, but he hadn’t always been true to his marriage vows.

“You ladies go off any time you get a chance,” said Marty, “but first, let’s get down ’n dirty and review what we came here for. So we’re going to the National Garden.”

“National Tropical Botanical Garden, it’s called,” Louise said. “Or you could shorten it to NTBG.”

Marty waved a big hand. “Yeah, whatever.” They’d already been given a heads-up about the shoot from the PBS associate producer from KHET-TV in Honolulu; he’d scouted the site for them. But Marty always liked to review preparations.

“Joel Greene is our so-called ‘associate producer,’” grumbled Marty. “I don’t how he’s gonna work out. He’s a film major from the University of Hawaii and probably gets paid squat. He doesn’t sound like he’s more than twenty years old, though he does come highly recommended by Bob Squires, the guy who runs the Honolulu station. Heaven only knows who they’ll send as shooter and audio engineer. Well, it seems first Joel had this great guy to interview, but he’s much in demand and something came up and then he didn’t have him. But now Joel has him again.”

“Has what great guy?” asked John, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“You must mean Dr. Tom Schoonover,” said Louise, “another of our reasons for coming to Hawaii. He’s the foremost expert on Pacific Island plants. So Schoonover’s back in the picture?”

“That’s what Joel says,” said the producer.

“We’ll get him walking through the garden, showing us all the endangered species,” said Louise. “Nobody could know their way around there better than he does.”

“Yeah,” affirmed Marty. “It seems Schoonover just got back from one of his plant explorer trips to the southern Pacific. Apparently the guy’s pretty famous.”

John raised an officious finger. “I’ve only heard this mentioned as a possibility. But since he wasn’t in the plans initially, we need a separate program segment—or maybe he could be our lead-in to the program. Show him taking a solitary walk down the botanic garden trails as he describes the fate of all those, uh, species.”

Marty, who’d almost demolished his mahi mahi main course, sat back, his large brown eyes twinkling at John. “Just what Lou said. Have her walking with this guy through the gardens and descending cliffs to capture orchids or somethin’. Then you and Lou together will be handling the ‘Three Tenors’ and their conflicting agendas.”

The Three Tenors. That was Marty’s cynical moniker for the trio of Doctors Bruce Bouting, Matthew Flynn, and Charles Reuter, the stars of their upcoming shoot. They were not expected to be easy to deal with; Louise had already confirmed that in her conversation with Bouting while swimming in the lagoon.

“Now here’s what else I would propose . . .” continued John.

Louise took a bit of square-cut seared ahi, dipped it into a delicate sauce, put it in her mouth, and let her mind wander. Later, she learned it was a mistake to daydream when John Batchelder was talking.

When Marty had called two months ago with the long-awaited confirmation of the trip to Kauai to produce two Gardening with Nature shows, Louise had been busy. She’d been peering into a mirror in the harsh light of a January afternoon. To her surprise and horror she had discovered a change in her face.

“So the trip’s set,” she’d said to Marty, while still examining this unsettling change.

“Yeah. “You, me, Steffi, John Batchelder—we’ll all go together.”

So Marty’s phone call had been a double whammy. At the same moment that she’d found that down line—that wrinkle—on the left side of her mouth, she’d heard that her younger cohost was coming on this location trip, the most important one in her four-year career as a TV garden show hostess.

Louise was forty-seven—almost forty-eight—and married with children. She wouldn’t have cared about the wrinkle if she weren’t a TV personality with a video camera trained on her face. Not that she was a sex goddess by any means, but even garden show hostesses were supposed to uphold some standard of good looks, except for the occasional British crone who made it big on TV on the basis of outrageous quips and a deep knowledge of horticulture.

Leaning into the mirror, she had taken three fingers and shoved the down line upward in hopes of banishing it forever. Then she’d remembered she was talking on the phone with her producer.

“Marty, sorry,” she’d said. “I got distracted.”

“Hey,” Marty had said in an injured tone, “wassamatta wid you?” Marty was born and raised in Philadelphia and hadn’t bothered to change his way of talking just because he’d moved to Washington, D.C. “I was gonna hang up on ya. Where ya been anyway?”

“I’m right here, thinking. I thought you said John Batchelder wasn’t coming. Why does shooting two shows on Kauai require his presence?”

“We don’t use him that much and I thought it only fair to give him a perk. God knows, as a part-time employee, he gets few enough perks. And he’s newly engaged to some dame named Linda. That makes him anxious to get ahead.”

Suddenly, Louise had known the truth. “He threatened to quit on you, didn’t he?”

“As a matter of fact, he did,” said Marty, “and I didn’t find it handy for him to do that right now. But Lou, dear, don’t get your nose out of joint because he’s honed in on this trip. We’re gonna have fun. We can even take a little side trip to the Big Island—I hear there’s lots of lava action developing over there. And the programs are all about your favorite kind of people, plant explorers.”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “The last time I met one, he was murdered immediately afterward.”

Marty had given forth a big, uncertain laugh. “That can’t happen this time, can it?”

“How do you know that? We’re featuring three prima donna botanists.”

“Tough,” said Marty. “Bouting, Flynn, and Reuter will just have to learn how to get along. The ones I’m worried about are yo. . .