Garden of Evil (4 page)

The house, an architectural gem from the twenties, was
a two-story DeGarmo, painted white with green shutters and a coral-rock facade. The look was charming old South, with a slight air of neglect. Dead fronds dangled from the stately royal palms lining the driveway. Oak trees shading the east and west sides of the house needed trimming, as did bamboo clumps along the property line. An aging Cadillac sat in the shady driveway. Rust bubbled its cream-color finish and had begun to erode its way around the windows.

I rang the doorbell but heard only distant strains of classical music. Rang again. Listened. Nothing. Paint was peeling and some of the screens needed to be repaired. I knocked, rapping my keys on metal.

Was she lurking inside, watching? Wondering if it was really me?

“Ms. Moran?” I wondered if she might be in the backyard.

“Who is it?” the voice, startlingly close, came from just inside the foyer.

She opened the door after I identified myself and slid my business card inside. “Hope you weren't out here too long. The doorbell stopped working. I have no idea what's wrong with it.”

She was the woman in the photos, fighting time and Mother Nature: the clear blue eyes a bit faded now, hair still blonde but poorly cut, figure still good, though heavier. In her casual slacks and matching blouse, Althea Moran could have passed for the mother of the young beauty with the crown and scepter.

Smiling graciously, she offered iced tea, and bustled off to the kitchen.

The house smelled slightly musty, hinting at roof leaks temporarily stayed by the drought. A twelve-foot brick fireplace dominated the great room. Hanging over it was a large framed portrait of Orange Bowl Queen Althea Albury, expression expectant, as though anticipating a regal future.

I was studying it when she returned. “Richard took the best artwork with him,” she said good-naturedly. We both gazed up at her youthful image. “That's when I reigned over the parade. Now somebody's raining on my parade.”

We talked in an enclosed porch at the rear of the house. She called it the reading room. A ceiling fan, a floor fan, and shady landscaping made it tolerable. The classical music came from a radio on a small corner table. I settled on a wicker love seat, notebook in my lap, and she sat in an armchair across from me, a smoke-colored cat with a red leather collar rubbing against her ankles.

“Okay, what's happening?” I asked cheerfully. “What makes you think you're a target, that somebody wants to kill you?”

She looked self-conscious for a moment, then spoke softly. “In the light of day, in this sunny place, listening to Vivaldi, the birds singing outside, my cat purring in my lap, sometimes I can almost make myself believe it's not happening.”

I nearly spit up my iced tea. Was she saying she imagined it? That it was all a bad dream? That I came out here for nothing? Maybe she should meet Ryan's war hero. They could stroll into the sunset trying to top each other's stories.

“But that's denial, wishful thinking,” she went on. “The sort of attitude that could prove fatal.” She looked directly at me, hands folded properly in her lap. “The first incident was nearly two months ago. Here, in this house. But it's odd, I think it actually began sooner. I had a peculiar feeling for several days, as if something was about to happen or that I was being watched. Sort of an instinct that something was wrong. I'm no psychic, but I've been right about such things over the years. Call it woman's intuition. I knew at once when Richard was unfaithful—and they say the wife is always the last to know….

“There is only one night a week that I arrive home after dark. I volunteer at the county hospital several days
a week, helping to feed and nurture the AIDS babies. They're short-staffed and those babies need attention, cuddling, and holding. Many are abandoned at birth, just left by their mothers. The nurses are too busy, and the work is fulfilling. I enjoyed being a mother. It's been a long time. On Wednesdays, we go out to dinner afterward, several of us volunteers, nothing elaborate. We go to a diner nearby or grab a pizza.”

She leaned forward, her expression serious. “I would have come into the house alone as always, but that night, as I pulled up, the Adlers, my neighbors down the street, were out walking their dog: Emma, her husband, Arthur, and their son, Kenneth. He was visiting from New York. I hadn't seen the boy for years. He and my daughter Jamie grew up together. I wanted him to see pictures of her baby, so I invited them in for a glass of wine.

“The house was quiet. We were talking and laughing. When I arrive home, I always come directly to this enclosed porch to feed the cat. Instead, I went to the kitchen, got out the wine and the good glasses, then dashed out here for a decanter on that shelf.” She indicated a shelf that held several decorative platters and a pot of flowing ivy. “I wanted to decant the wine,” she said, lowering her voice, “because what I had in the house was not exactly a prizewinning vintage. I haven't entertained in some time.

“I walked out here without turning on the lights, took the decanter off the shelf, and then I saw him, standing right there.” She indicated the corner next to where I sat. “He was wearing one of the those black Boston Strangler—style knit masks, with eyeholes.”

A chill rippled down my spinal cord, raising gooseflesh on my arms as she went on.

“I screamed and dropped the decanter. It shattered on the tile floor; it was crystal, Waterford. We'd had it forever, a wedding gift, I think. My guests called out, then came running. I simply stood there, frozen, as he fumbled
at the door, trying to unlock it. I'd been having a problem with it. It sticks. I think the wood is warped. For a moment I thought he was going to smash his fist through the glass panel, but then he did manage to open it—and ran.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing, not a word.”

“The others in the house, they all saw him?”

She nodded. “Kenneth wanted to chase him, but his mother screamed and hung on to him. She's the nervous type. She kept saying, ‘What if he has a gun? What if he has a gun?'”

“Did you see a gun?”

She shook her head.

“What happened next?”

“We called the police.” She shrugged. “Two officers came. They said we had surprised a burglar and frightened him off. There have been burglaries in this area, they said, though not on this block. A detective called a few days later. He asked me more about the man's description. There wasn't much I could tell him.”

The black mask sounded ominous. I had written several stories about a rapist striking just east of the Gables, in Coconut Grove. He wore a black ski mask. His MO was to break into houses and wait for his victims to come home alone. Was that what the detective was thinking about when he called?

“Did they say they had any suspects?”

“No. But later, particularly after the second incident, I began to think about it…. The intruder took nothing. The police assumed we had surprised him moments after he broke in. But that isn't true. He expected me to be alone. He had been inside, waiting for some rime. Waiting for me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He had come in another way; he didn't know the porch door would stick. I saw his panic when it didn't open. Worst of all, I discovered later that a knife from the
cutlery block in the kitchen was missing, the sharpest one. It was there that morning. He must have had it and was waiting for me with it in the dark. He took it with him.”

“You're sure it wasn't missing before?”

“Absolutely. I always felt safe here. I must say I haven't felt the same about this house since. But I believed it was an isolated incident, until it happened again, a week later. I've always grocery-shopped at the supermarket here in the Gables, but prices are higher, and I had some cents-off coupons only redeemable at Dixie-Mart, so I went to the store on Coral Way, in Miami. I finished shopping and was walking to my car. It was twilight, just before the floodlights go on in the parking lot. I thought I heard footsteps, someone running, but when I turned I saw no one. As I put the bags in the car, a man's voice suddenly said, “Excuse me.” When I looked up, he was right on top of me. He grabbed me. He wore the same ski mask—”

“It was the same man?”

“I believe so. He was the same height. The mask looked the same. I dropped the groceries, struggled, and tried to call for help from a driver who had pulled his car up right behind mine. I thought he had seen what was happening and was coming to my rescue. But the driver hunched over, and when he came up he was also wearing a mask. The first one had me in an armlock, dragging me toward the car. The masked driver opened the door. I struggled, trying to hold on to my own car, screaming, ‘What are you doing? Let go of me!' Something like that. That's when the other one jumped out of the car and came running. He wrenched my hand free from the door and twisted my arm. They were dragging me into their car.

“I saw the look in their eyes, Ms. Montero. They were going to kill me. They didn't want my purse. They wanted
me.
”

She blinked back tears. Sensing her distress, her cat sprang into her lap, where it curled up, fixing a baleful amber-eyed stare on me.

“One put his hand over my mouth, and I bit him. We scuffled, bouncing off both cars, with me yelling as loud as I could. That's when a stranger, a woman in a car, started blowing her horn and screaming at them to stop and an old man with a grocery cart shouted, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?' And then a bag boy came running, yelling, ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!'

“Somebody set off a car alarm, and a little old lady blew her police whistle.

“With all the commotion, they let go of me and I fell, broke the heel on my shoe, and landed among the groceries scattered everywhere. I was crying, scratched up, nails all broken, bruised for two weeks. The bag boy got their license tag number as they pulled out of the parking lot. The Miami police came.”

“What did they say?”

“The car was stolen. They said it's not unusual for stolen cars to be used in—what did they call it?—an attempted strong-arm robbery. They insisted that the men were thieves trying to rip the purse off my shoulder. They said that women often get dragged that way when the strap is sturdy and doesn't break. I could not get them to believe that those men were not after my purse, they wanted me.” Anger tightened her voice.

I understood her frustration. Police used to ask which way the bad guys went and tried to catch them. Now, even if witnesses point and say, “They just ran around that comer!” cops will first ask for the victim's name, address, and social security number. The only cops I've seen actually run after anybody lately were performing for
COPS
or
America's Most Wanted.

“I was furious,” Althea was saying. “I showed them my purse, gave a weak little tug, and the strap tore. It was an inexpensive little vinyl knockoff, not some well-made leather bag like a Coach or a Gucci.”

“What was their reaction?”

“I believe they took me for a hysterical woman.”

The cops didn't buy the story, and I wasn't sure I did either. Why her? It all boiled down to motive. There was none. Richard was apparently happy as a clam with the younger woman he had dumped Althea to marry. They had a new baby, almost the same age as Althea and Richard's recent grandchild by their daughter, Jamie, who had also married a doctor.

“It's wonderful to have a grandchild,” Althea told me wistfully, “but we don't get to spend much time together. Jamie and her husband are much closer to her father and his new family now. Richard,” she said, “has the money and the power. My son-in-law is on staff at the same hospital. Richard's new wife, Moira, and our daughter have so much in common. Nearly the same age, with new babies. They socialize, even go skiing together.”

Richard was apparently too busy reliving his youth to be trying to kill his ex-wife. If anything,
she
should be gunning for
him.

“A lousy deal,” I said.

She shrugged bleakly.

“What else has been going on in your life?”

“The only thing out of the ordinary is that I served on a jury in a big drug case in criminal court a few years ago, a fascinating experience. In fact, I saw the jury foreman again just recently, bumped into him at the post office.”

“You think the defendant might be out of prison and stalking members of the jury that put him away?”

“No, we acquitted.”

Money was no motive. She had none. The divorce settlement awarded her the house and her car, but her monthly alimony was not nearly enough to maintain them. Her pride wounded, angry at being dumped, she had not demanded more, naively believing she could make it on her own. She'd been wrong.

“It's not so easy to land a job when your only work experience in the last thirty years is riding a float.” She
laughed ruefully. Richard's checks often came late; his new wife kept forgetting to write them. Althea used to donate her old clothes to the Junior League Thrift Shop; now she shopped there. She was taking a computer course, hoping it would lead to a job. She was barely getting by.

I thought about my own mother, widowed when I was three.

Althea Moran did not seem the type to inspire murderous passions. She agreed.

“I do not go to bars at night to pick up strangers,” she said quietly. “I don't quarrel in traffic, drive fast, or argue over parking spaces. I don't take foolish risks. But I saw it in their eyes—they wanted to kill me. You're my only hope,” she pleaded. “No one else will take me seriously.”

I wasn't sure what to believe.

On the way back to the office I thought about how both Althea and the crown of Orange Bowl queen had been phased out. The tradition died when women invited to join the Orange Bowl Committee found the queen and her court demeaning. I never understood their objections. What's demeaning about being queen? The world has always had goddesses. Hell, I wouldn't mind riding a magnificent float down Biscayne Boulevard, waving Happy New Year to thousands of cheering celebrants. I could suggest half a dozen more important issues for feminists to fix, but nobody asked me. Althea had been phased out by feminists, her unfaithful husband, the cops, and the world in general. I wished life were kinder and that fairy tales always had happy endings.