Death of an Orchid Lover Read online

  “How about Helen Gartner?”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “I know you chased her into the parking lot last night. Why was that?”

  “Let’s say I hadn’t. Why’d you think of her?”

  Good question. One with no answer, other than some tenuous business association. “If you tell me what you talked to her about last night, I might be able to give you an answer.”

  “Fat chance. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She can account for her whereabouts.”

  I jerked a thumb toward Laura’s apartment. “Her alibi’s lying in the kitchen in there.”

  “So you’re willing to think the story of them being together could be bull if we’re talking about the Gartner woman, but not if we’re talking about—” His turn to hook a thumb at Laura’s place. “Her.”

  He had a point. But it got me thinking. What if the dinner story was an invention? What if Helen Gartner had killed Albert, and somehow gotten Laura to cover up for her? And then, when she thought Laura might crack and blow her alibi, she did away with her too.

  Casillas snapped his pad shut and called over a young uniformed officer. “Take Mr. Portugal here into the station for a statement.”

  “This way,” she said.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “What?” Casillas said.

  “I have questions.”

  “You’re not allowed to have questions,” he said. “You’re the civilian, I’m the cop.” He turned away to speak with the guy going over the Accord.

  “This way, sir,” the officer said.

  Another cop, a robust guy with a walrus mustache, came out of the building carrying Monty the cat at arm’s length. “I found this in the closet,” he told the world at large.“What should I do with it?”

  The two kids burst from the crowd. “We’ll take him,” said the bigger one. “We take care of him sometimes.”

  Casillas looked them over. “Why not?” he said.

  The cop dropped the cat into the shorter kid’s arms. He took it and gently cradled it. The other one petted Monty’s head. It was funny. They’d seemed surly little boys, but you could tell from their faces they loved animals. Maybe there was hope.

  Casillas saw me. “You still here?” he said.

  I’m going, “I’m going.” I had to wait around at the station for a while. Once they got to me, the statement took just fifteen minutes. I basically dictated what I’d told Casillas. I signed what they shoved in my face and was on my merry way.

  I stopped at home, changed clothes, got up to the Kawamura at a quarter to two. Eugene insisted on telling me more about his ice-skating adventure with Sybil two nights before. “I kept falling down,” he said. “And she would help me up, and I wasn’t embarrassed about falling down. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “It sure is. Listen, I’ve got a visitor coming up in a little bit, that I’m going to show around. Hope you don’t mind. It won’t take long, and then I’ll get to the euphorbias.” I didn’t say anything about Laura. It would invite a conversation I didn’t want to have.

  He was miffed that I didn’t want to continue reviewing his date. “Yes,” he said. “The euphorbias.” He stalked off.

  Sharon showed up precisely at two. She was back to black jeans, along with a lightweight knit top that clung nicely to her breasts.

  “There’s some bad news,” I said.

  “I heard it on the radio.”

  “It’s on the radio already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the radio say I discovered her body?”

  She registered the appropriate degree of surprise. “No. How did that come about?”

  I told her.

  “If you don’t want to play tour guide now,” she said, “I’ll understand.”

  I shook my head. “It’ll be good for me. Get my mind off Laura.”

  “Should we get started, then?”

  “Yes.” I swept an arm around the conservatory. This is it. “Second-biggest succulent collection in the greater Los Angeles area.”

  “It’s very impressive,” she said.

  Actually, it was. Eugene and a cadre of CCCC volunteers had dumped most of the dead plants, cleaned up the live ones, and generally spiffed up the place. We’d ripped out a bench against the east wall, amended the soil, and put a bunch of specimen plants in the ground. Three big agaves—century plants—one against the far wall, two at the near corners of the plot. A dozen columnar cacti, a mix of North and South American species, formed a border in the back. Big mounds of mammillarias, cacti with tiny tubercles instead of ribs, were more or less artfully arranged among some rocks liberated from someone’s yard. A few of the mams were in bloom, with rings of white or purple flowers around each of their many heads. An assortment of leafy succulents filled in the gaps. Echeveria setosa, for example, a pale green rosette of furry leaves, whose blooms mimicked pieces of candy corn.

  Another major improvement: The plants on the benches were now arranged by families. Cacti had been segregated to the west end. The aloes and other lily relatives congregated in one area, the ice plant family in another. The euphorbias, the so-called succulent spurges, were jammed in on the ground in a corner, awaiting transfer to a new bench Eugene had built to replace one that had rotted.

  “Are all of these cacti?” Sharon said.

  That’s where it usually starts when you’re showing non-succulentophiles around the conservatory. “No,” I said, pointing. “Just the ones down at that end. And some of the ones in the ground.”

  She picked up a pachypodium seedling. “This looks like a cactus to me.”

  “It’s not. It’s actually in the oleander family.”

  “That’s a bit hard to believe.”

  “If it were in bloom, you’d see the flowers are very similar to an oleander’s. It’s all in the flowers. And the areoles, or lack thereof.”

  “Areoles?”

  I grabbed a notocactus, a big ball of not-too-sticky yellow spines. “See how the spines come out of the white spots on the stem?”

  “Sort of.”

  “The spots are called areoles. Only cacti have them. The flowers come from them too, and new stems.” I put down the notocactus and took the pachypodium from her. “If you look at the spines on this, they’re just an outgrowth of the skin. So it’s not a cactus.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “Madagascar. An awful lot of succulents are from Madagascar.”

  “Orchids too.”

  “Not cacti, though. They’re New World plants. Except there are a couple of species of rhipsalis, which are epiphytic cacti, in Madagascar, and in Sri Lanka too, but they think birds brought them there.”

  “‘They’?”

  “The cactus gurus.” I grinned. “The succulent equivalent of orchid judges.”

  She wandered down the bench, stopping here and there to inspect a flower or lightly touch the surface of a plant. There’s a big sign near the entrance that says not to do that, but it’s there mostly for kids. I could steer her away from the occasional plant with white powder on the leaves that you really could mess up by handling. “I didn’t want her to think I was an anal personality whining Don’t touch that,” at the slightest provocation.

  After a while I got the feeling she was wandering aimlessly. “You don’t have to look at any more,” I said. It’s like me with the orchids. “You don’t hate looking at the plants, but you don’t really—”

  My words degenerated into a shriek. My arms windmilled around my head. Two definite signs that Joe Portugal has encountered a wasp.

  It was a yellow jacket, the first one of the spring in the greenhouse, and it had picked a hell of a time to show up. It buzzed by my head once, twice, and zoomed off to bang itself against the roof.

  “It was just a bee,” Sharon said.

  “Actually, it was a yellow jacket,” I said, trying to gather my dignity. Bees I don’t have trouble with. Bees are our friends. “I just have this thing about wasps.” I not
-so-subtly checked up above to see if it was going to make another run at me.

  She shrugged, came to me, put a hand on my shoulder. “We all have our fears.” Even through my shirt, my skin felt tingly where her fingers lay.

  “Still, it’s embarrassing.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Her hand gave a little squeeze and departed.

  This was good, I told myself. She’d seen me at my worst. Anything else had to be an improvement. “Where were we? Oh, yeah, you were about to tell me you’d seen enough.”

  She smiled. They are interesting, and I mean that literally. And beautiful. “It’s just that—”

  “Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

  “Maybe not one. But after a couple of dozen, they all look alike to me.”

  “I understand.”

  “I haven’t hurt your feelings?”

  “Of course not. I appreciate your coming up here to see them.”

  “Though you know that’s not the only reason I came up.”

  “Oh?”

  She paused, seeming embarrassed, glancing up as if inspiration floated somewhere above. Then she looked right at me. “There does seem to be something going on here, doesn’t there? Some sort of … attraction?”

  “Well, yes, now that you mention it.” I cracked a smile. “Yes, Sharon, I’m attracted to you. That’s why I’ve already asked you out twice. Let’s go on a Real Date.”

  She sucked in her cheeks. “Yes. Let’s do that.”

  “You seem uncertain.”

  “I’m certain.”

  She wasn’t. There was something going on, some doubt about the advisability of going out with me. “How about tomorrow night?” I said. I wanted it to be that very night, but I already had plans with Gina. Besides, I didn’t want to seem too eager. Great. I hadn’t even gone out with her, and already I was playing games.

  “Tomorrow?” she said.

  “Yes. Tomorrow. Wednesday.”

  “Tomorrow will be fine.”

  “We’ll have dinner. A time-honored first-date tradition.”

  “All right.”

  “It’s set, then.”

  “Yes. All set.”

  I had a Real Date. What a concept.

  We got the details out of the way, and Sharon said she had some errands to get to. I walked her to her car, a Ford Tempo, which she’d parked in a handicapped spot. She saw me looking at the blue marking on the pavement. “I couldn’t find another spot anywhere that wasn’t a mile away.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “You think less of me now.”

  “Stop it. That’s ridiculous.”

  One of the Ten Warning Signs of Infatuation: not caring if the other party exhibits behavior you customarily hate. Ordinarily, normally abled people who park in handicapped spots piss me off. But I was willing to overlook Sharon’s transgression. Because when you’re just getting into someone, you hide their faults, put them away in a little silk purse in the back of your head, to be opened only when the affair has ended disastrously and you’re looking for things to make you say, “I should have known.”

  She got in her car, rolled down the window, leaned on the door. “Are you okay to talk about Albert for a minute?”

  “Did you think of something?”

  “She nodded. It has to do with Yoichi.”

  “Yoichi Nakatani?”

  “How many Yoichis do you know?”

  “Good point.”

  “He had a phragmipedium hybrid. Like paphiopedilum, the slipper orchids that made you uncomfortable, but the petals hang down two feet.”

  “No way.”

  She nodded. He was very proud of it. He brought it to the judging a year or so ago. Albert was one of the judges, and his score was considerably lower than anyone else’s. “Enough to bring the average down to an HCC.”

  “Remind me again.”

  “Between seventy-five and eighty. The lowest award. Yoichi thought it deserved more. He confronted Albert.”

  “Sounds terribly déclassé.”

  “It’s definitely not done. But Yoichi is a bit of an enfant terrible of the orchid world.”

  I tried to think of some more French, but the only thing that came to mind was soixante-neuf. “So what happened?”

  “There was some yelling in the hallway. Yoichi said some very bad things to Albert.”

  “Like what?”

  “He said he had the eyes of a newt.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “And the judgment of an ass. It was awful. It was like listening to a train wreck, if I can mix a metaphor.”

  “Did Albert get mad too?”

  “No, he just said that Yoichi would do better next time. Yoichi kept saying it was a glorious plant and Albert said, yes, it was, but it didn’t show enough of one parent’s influence. And it was clear that Yoichi placed the whole blame for the score on Albert.”

  I remembered Sam mentioning such behavior to me, though not with any particular grower’s name attached. “But how could he know? Aren’t the scores secret?”

  Her look said, Boy are you dumb, Joe. “They let you in to watch.”

  “But I didn’t have an interest in any of the plants. Surely they don’t let the entrants watch their plants being judged.”

  “They do. For instance, the judges are growers too. Sometimes they have plants in.”

  “They get to vote on their own plants?”

  During the preliminaries they’ll just keep quiet. If a plant of theirs comes to their table for final judging, they’ll step away, or not turn in a sheet. “But generally the aides know enough to keep the plants away from the table where the submitter is.”

  Wait. I thought you said Yoichi didn’t come to your club. “That he went to one in Orange County.”

  I said usually. “That night, he brought his own plant in.”

  It’s a little hard to believe Yoichi held a grudge since then, enough of one to shoot Albert. “And it doesn’t say anything about Laura’s death.”

  She fastened her seat belt, started the engine. You’re probably right. “It’s not much.”

  “It may not be much, but it’s one of the better leads I’ve come across.” Leads? Who was I, Joe Friday? “I’ll follow up on it.”

  She reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “Be careful if you do,” she said, and drove off.

  Eugene and I had gotten all the euphorbias nicely arranged. The Madagascar ones were together, with the shade-loving dwarves getting some cover in the shadow of a big yucca. The medusa-heads were grouped, as well as the tall ones, the shrubby ones, the leafy ones. Eugene seemed satisfied.

  He walked me to my truck. He seemed reluctant to let me leave, commenting on trivial things, inventing questions for me to answer. “Finally I said, You want to talk about something?”

  “How could you tell?”

  “You’re acting weirder than—you’re acting weird.”

  “Oh. Yes. I want you to tell me how not to lose Sybil.”

  “What makes you think you’re going to lose her?”

  “Isn’t that what happens with boyfriends and girlfriends? Don’t most people go through a bunch of them before they find the right one?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “It’s taken me so long to find the first one. If I lose her I’ll be alone forever.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I don’t know what to do to keep her.”

  “Just be yourself. That’s what attracted her in the first place.”

  “But—”

  “What makes you think I’m such an authority? Have you ever seen me with a girlfriend?”

  “You know your way around women.”

  “Like I know my way around Watts.”

  He stared at me, not knowing what to make of such a stupid analogy. Frankly, neither did I.

  “Look,” I said, “whatever you’re doing is working. It’s no good to try to change it, because if there’s one thing I have learned about
women, it’s that they want you to be yourself. But stop worrying about this stuff. You’ll drive yourself crazy. Just enjoy the thing while it lasts.”

  “While it lasts? Does that mean you think it won’t last?”

  “Eugene, get a grip. She likes you a lot. Anyone could see that the other night. Go with the flow. And, speaking of going, I’ve got to.” I slipped into the truck and escaped, leaving him standing there, baffled and inept when it came to women and their whole unfathomable world. Just like I was.

  13

  I DROVE DOWN WESTWOOD BOULEVARD, UNWILLING TO dare the freeway. I finally let my mind deal with what it had been unable to tackle for the last couple of hours: the gun by Laura’s hand.

  Had she really killed Albert, and then herself? Hard to believe. Somehow, even if she had murdered her boyfriend, the Laura I knew, the one who had lived through two or three decades of scrabbling to make it as an actress, didn’t seem like the kind of person to take her own life if things got rough.

  And if she had indeed knocked off Albert, why on earth would she ask me to look for the murderer? She would have enough trouble with the cops; why bring a wild card like me into the picture?

  Now my agreement—and there was another est word for you, agreement, they tossed it around like confetti—to investigate Albert’s murder loomed larger. With Laura dead I felt a responsibility to do what I’d said I would, try to track down Albert’s killer, even if it turned out to be Laura herself.

  And there was another thing. If the culprit was somebody else, I was probably the only one around with the slightest interest in clearing Laura’s name.

  I needed to get my mind back into an investigative set. I’d been distracted by my attraction to Sharon. And while I could rationalize and say my time with her was useful because she had lots of insights into the orchid people, I knew it was time to talk to someone else. But who?

  There was Bob from the meeting, but I didn’t remember his last name and hadn’t the slightest idea how to get in touch with him. I supposed I could—

  Of course. Dottie Lennox. If it has to do with orchids around here, I know about it, she’d said.

  She’d also said, Come anytime. I dug in my wallet for the scrap of paper she’d given me. I consulted my Thomas Guide and braved the freeway after all.