Summer Garden Murder Read Online Free

forkful of food poised in midair, “to think he could have committed such a hideous crime and then come back, assuming his old neighbors would accept him as if nothing had happened.”
    Mort was picking at his beef tenderloin as if it were unpalatable and not the delicious gourmet treat that Nora had prepared for them. He laid down his fork and said, “You made that quite apparent in there, Sarah. But like it or not, Mike Cunningham’s right: the man paid his debt. And no matter what we think, we can only hope that the doctors down there at Western State are bright enough to know whether he is stable enough to be released.”
    Louise shook her head and exhaled audibly. Then she looked at Mort and saw the attorney rather than the friend. No wonder Mort could accept the man. He was also with Wilson and Sterritt. And he used to manage affairs related to Peter’s armament company in Old Town Alexandria. Though it was Cunningham who had defended Peter in the murder trial, Mort might well have helped devise Hoffman’s clever legal escape from hard time.
    Louise put her fork down. “Mort,” she said, “that starts with the whole wrong premise, that the insanity defense was justified. To think that a man who deliberately killed and dismembered a woman is insane is just plain wrong.”
    Across the table, Hilde raised her head and gasped, her eyes stricken with fright. Louise met her gaze and stopped. What a way for the poor girl to be introduced to the details of Hoffman’s crime.
    Mort sat back and fussily began to clean his eyeglasses with his handkerchief. He obviously didn’t realize the impact his words had on Hilde. “Sounds like an insane act to me. It’s far from his normal mode. After all, he was a highly successful businessman.”
    â€œArms dealer,” his wife interjected in a sarcastic voice.
    Mort slid his glasses back on his nose and gave Sarah a patient look. His gaze then turned to Louise. His expression said that neither his wife nor she could fully understand the situation. “He was not only a businessman,” he continued, “but also a candidate for assistant secretary of defense of the United States. And ladies, allow me to go back a tick. Manufacturing and selling arms in this country is perfectly legal. Peter fulfilled many large government contracts. He’s now selling Hoffman Arms Company, a perfectly honest business, to the man who’s Mike Cunningham’s house guest. You’ve met Lee Downing, haven’t you?” He nodded his bald head at the silver-haired man at the next table. “Now, just because Peter flipped his lid a few years ago—”
    â€œOh, my God,” Louise exclaimed, sitting forward. Her pulse was racing. “This was not just one rash act.”
    Bill put his hand on Louise’s arm and said, “Honey, calm down. Let’s not go over all that old ground. We haven’t dwelt on this in years.”
    Sarah rushed to Louise’s defense, but Louise hardly heard her. Mort Swanson’s remarks had awakened a deep anger in her. She loved Sarah Swanson, who was like a saint, had Louise believed in saints. But she had trouble accepting Mort as a good friend. His lawyerly equivocations made him practically a devil in her eyes, had she believed in devils. But being a pragmatic Presbyterian, she refrained from judging either of these extremes.
    Hilde, sitting across the table, was eating again, her eyes on the plate. Louise could see why men were attracted to her. Not only was she a handsome young woman with tanned, silky skin, but she used her mane of rosy brown hair like a weapon. It now fell charmingly around her face as if to shroud her from the harsh realities of the conversation. She brushed it aside as she looked up and said, “I would never have guessed when Mr. Hoffman walked in, for he seemed so friendly. An air of the Renaissance man about him, I