Summer Garden Murder by Ann Ripley Page A

change from the city.”
    â€œWell, you know me, Ma,” replied Martha, really meaning You don’t understand me at all. She was a bit impatient at her parents’ lack of understanding of her urban preferences, but of course she and her mother had less contact with each other the past few years, so how was she to know how fiercely Martha espoused a different set of values from the suburban upper-middle-class values of which her parents reeked. “Give me a high-rise any day. I favor cities. Chicago. Zurich. Prague. Rome.” She paused, then added, “Paris, of course,” and couldn’t help chuckling.
    Louise looked at Martha over her sunglasses. “You’re laughing at me because I bought those French accessories for the kitchen. But that rough tile inspired me. I feel like I’m in a European kitchen now.”
    Martha couldn’t resist the dig. “Maybe so, but I doubt a Frenchwoman would spread a towel reading ‘Grand Hotel’ behind her new faucet. Or have a pitcher with ‘Paris’ written on it sitting on the counter.”
    Her mother smiled. “I don’t care. I love my gadgets, just like you love your cities. That’s obviously why you majored in urban studies.”
    â€œAnyway,” added Martha, ready to end this discussion, “I saw all this countryside on the way here.” Behind her sunglasses, she shot a sideways glance at her mother, wondering if this was the time to drop her bombshells. She had to do it soon, because she had a flight back to Chicago the next day. Martha had decided to suspend her studies at Northwestern for a year and marry Jim Daley. She was twenty, almost twenty-one, with her combined B.A.-M.A. degree a year from being finished, while Jim was twenty-five. He already had a bachelor’s and a law degree from DePaul University and was working as an assistant district attorney in Chicago. He was straining like a horse in a stall, ready to gallop forth and launch his political career.
    Jim had pushed her to tell the folks some time during this unexpected family vacation. “It’s the ideal moment,” he’d said in a private phone conversation while the rest of her family was out looking for shells on the beach. “Just lay it on ’em. Everybody’ll be laid back and just accept it. Anyway, your dad loves me.” She told him she’d have to gauge the situation and decide when to break the news. Their plan was for them to marry soon so Martha could help Jim in his campaign for city alderman. After that, win or lose, she’d resume her own university classes.
    Each day at the beach house, Martha had waited to see her mother return to normal so she could relate the news. The “normal” Louise Eldridge, her daughter knew, was a feisty, attractive woman who hadn’t collapsed just because she’d passed the age of forty-five. Martha was secretly pleased that she resembled her mother so much and liked the idea that she might wear as well as her parent did.
    But this parent still wasn’t herself after that creep Peter Hoffman had done his damage. Her mother wasn’t sleeping well. Martha knew it because she herself was a night reader and she heard her mother prowling the ocean cottage at all hours.
    And her hands shook. Today was the first day they appeared to be steady. When have my mother’s hands ever shaken before? Not even those other times when she was in some crazy jam, the kind she always seems to get in.
    Finally, at the beach house, Martha had lassoed Janie to help, and they’d taken over the obvious chores like cooking and setting and clearing the table to spare her mom the embarrassment of fumbling with cooking equipment and silverware.
    Now her mother grabbed her arm and pointed out the car window. “Look, Martha, at that flock of birds. There must be thousands of them. I bet you can’t see that in the city.”
    â€œPretty cool, I’ll