This clean, well-lit place is the far-below-ground-level workshop in the Bank of America Tower in New York City. The building engineer was as proud of this space as any he showed us during our tour of NYC's most energy-efficent office tower. He also explained, not at all defensively, that even though a recent news article had said New York's third tallest tower consumed twice as much energy as the Empire State Building, that did not account for the fact that there is a lot more going on, and a lot more people working in, the Bank of America Tower.
Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Final Chapter
Sparky here. This is the final chapter of my story about how Gerry Ringbold met his untimely end. The story starts here.
The
last person I would have expected to see standing behind the counter at the Starbucks by the ravine was Marriba, but, there she was, big as life. She seemed happy to see me.
After
I ordered and sat down with my vente decaf skim iced latte and cranberry scone,
Marriba joined me at my table.
What
are you doing here?” I asked her, leaving unstated the second part of the
question, which was “I thought you’d been banned for life from the entire
service sector.”
“New
medication,” she snapped, ”I feel a little fuzzy and stupid at times but I am
much calmer around people and can perform the meaningless tasks the job
requires. It keeps me out of the house and that is far to be preferred.”
She
looked hard at me, and the scratches and bites on my arms and face.
“What
has happened to you?”
I
told her about my day’s adventure in the ravine and why I had gone there in the
first place.
I
showed her the jar.
She
grabbed it out of my hand.
“I
knew she stole it!”
“Who?”
“Carol!”
“Is
that how you lost your job at the Gardens? You kept asking Carol about the
jar?”
Marriba
looked a little puzzled.
“No,”
she said. “They told me they could not renew my contract. I never asked why. I
was happy to leave.”
“Did
you ever ask Carol about the jar?”
“Yes.
Many times. I asked everyone about the jar. Some one had stolen it. Carol stole
it!”
I
stopped her.
“Did
you ever tell Carol that you had put hand cream in the jar?"
“No.
What was in the jar was not the point. The point was I had the jar and then it
was stolen!”
I
told Marriba about my theory about how Carol or Dubs may have put hogweed sap
into the jar. They wouldn’t have known that Marriba rinsed it out and replaced
it with hand cream. They had the jar with them when they went into the ravine.
“I
have no idea what exactly happened to them in the ravine, but they must have
run into Gerry.
“Otherwise,
they would have retrieved the truck after it broke down. They could easily have
explained what two tree specialists were doing in the ravine. But, when they
found out the next morning that Gerry was dead, they went back, tipped it off
the path and covered it up and let the police think it was lost forever. The
only reason they would do that is because they thought if the police knew they
were in the ravine, they would have been implicated in Gerry’s death.
“It
has something to do with that jar.
“When
I started asking questions last summer about hogweed Carol stopped talking to
me. When you wouldn’t stop asking questions about your jar you suddenly
couldn’t work at the Gardens anymore.”
“But
there was nothing in the jar to hurt anyone,” said Marriba.
“Yes.
But Carol and Dubs didn’t know that.”
Marriba
took a deep breath.
“You
think that Carol and Dubs stole the gardeners’ truck and ran into
Gerry Ringbold in the midst of drug dealers and prostitutes. Then these three had some kind of adventure that included an offer by Carol or Dubs and the acceptance by Ringbold of what
was thought to be a toxic substance disguised as sunscreen. Ringbold
then applied this to his person and thoughtfully returned the jar to his
tormentors. Some time after this our suspects drove away deeper into the ravine
until the truck broke down while Gerry made his way into the Gardens, got as
far as the gardener’s shed where he collapsed and died of a heart attack that could
not have been related to the hypothetical application of a substance that was not toxic.”
“Well,
when you say it like that, it seems far fetched,” I said, “but I imagine
something like that did happen.”
“If
so,” said Marriba, “Then it is not a murder. It is just a natural death dressed
up with lots of silly details.
“It
has been nice to talk with you,” said Marriba, “Good luck with the rest of your
research.” And she got up from the table
and went back to work behind the counter.
Epilogue
When
I started this story about the mysterious death of Gerry Ringbold, the case was
still open and I had not yet gone into the ravine. I imagined that I had it all
figured out and would find everything I needed to know in the ravine to complete the story,
but, I didn’t. So I did the next best thing.
After
my chat with Marriba, I phoned in an anonymous tip to the police about where they
would find the gardener’s truck. Dubs and Carol were arrested and confessed
shortly after that. The lead on the truck unlocked some unanswered questions
the police had not disclosed to the media about tapes missing from the security
cameras.
It
turns out Dubs and Carol had run into Gerry in the ravine. There was a short,
mostly verbal fight and Gerry collapsed. When Dubs and Carol loaded him into the
truck he was still alive, but, by the time they got him to street level, he was
dead.
They panicked, fearing they would be blamed for his death, dropped his
corpse in the garden shed and high tailed it back through the ravine. They drove
until they had a reasonable distance between themselves and the Gardens,
ditched the truck and went for a coffee to establish an alibi.
Other
than stealing the truck, and removing the tapes from the security cameras, Dubs and Carol had committed no actual crime but they lost their jobs anyway. There’s a new chief arborist
in the Thompson Gardens and a new lead botanist in the Palm House.
As
for me, I’m heading into second year law school. Next year I’ll spend my
summer either at a law firm or maybe as an unpaid intern at a local media
company. I’m done with the Thompson Gardens.
