Death of an Orchid Lover Read online

  “Joe Portugal.”

  “Who?”

  “Laura’s friend.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She opened the door just enough to peer out. Her face looked older and her hair was dirty. I could hear the boys hollering somewhere inside.

  “I hate to bother you again, but something’s not making sense. You told me that the night Laura’s boyfriend Albert was killed you fed Monty. That Laura called and she asked you to feed him and you did.”

  “So?”

  “So are you sure?”

  “I guess.”

  “Because you told me she called during Nash Bridges”

  “So?”

  “So Nash Bridges is on Friday night, not Saturday. He was killed on Saturday.”

  Confusion reigned on the other side of the door. “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

  So she must have called you to feed the cat Friday night. “Not Saturday.”

  “I guess.”

  “And are you sure you didn’t feed the cat last Saturday night also?”

  “I don’t think so. Wait. Wasn’t that the night they ran Harley Davidson & the Marlboro Man on Channel 13?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me look.” She disappeared, returning shortly with the previous week’s TV Guide. “Yeah, that was the night. The phone never rang.”

  “You sure?”

  “I took it off the hook. Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke both. I didn’t want to be interrupted.”

  “Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”

  “She smiled. I have?”

  “Yes. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Donna.”

  It seemed to fit. “Thanks, Donna.”

  “You’re welcome. Come back sometime when I’m feeling better, okay?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I turned from the door. I didn’t hear it close until I’d reached the bottom of the stairs.

  The fact that Donna hadn’t fed Monty the cat Saturday night didn’t necessarily mean Laura did. But, judging from his not yowling at Laura and Gina and me when we came in early Sunday morning, somebody had. He certainly hadn’t fed himself. Maybe Laura had called Donna from Helen’s, gotten a busy signal because the phone was off the hook, come home to dish out the food before heading up to Albert’s. I could ask Helen about that. Though who knew if she’d tell me the truth. Maybe I could get Burns to check the phone records. But were there records of calls that didn’t go through? It seemed unlikely.

  There was another possibility: a second cat-feeding neighbor. But that was a can of worms I didn’t even want to consider.

  I hadn’t seen Mrs. Vela in two or three months. She’d had Gina while still in her teens, and, with a new shorter hairdo and the loss of ten pounds … “You look like Gina’s sister,

  Mrs. V. Not her mother.”

  “You are so nice, Joey,” she told me. “You are a wonderful boy. You will make someone a good husband someday.” She directed a pointed look at Gina. “Someone with a brain in her head.”

  “Ma,” Gina said. “Can we go through just one evening without someone suggesting how perfect Joe and I are for each other?”

  Mrs. Vela shrugged. “Fine. But when you’re old and alone like I am, don’t go crying to me.”

  We piled into Gina’s Volvo and headed over to Dad’s. Mrs. Vela joined Catherine and Elaine in the kitchen. Elaine was carting around two-year-old Miles. His teenage sister, Lauren, was in the living room, playing gin with my father. She informed me that Dad already owed her eleven thousand dollars. I couldn’t help staring. When I wasn’t looking, she’d turned into a beautiful young woman.

  I stuck my head into the backyard to say hi to Leonard and Wayne, Elaine’s husband. They were arguing about Israel. “You’re Chinese,” I heard Leonard say. “What do you know about the Middle East?”

  After an hour we sat down to eat. I’d managed to keep the conversation away from Albert and Laura, but halfway through the soup Catherine asked me what was going on with the investigation. Immediately, everyone bombarded me with questions. It was clear they’d all been saving them up. I told them as little as I could get away with.

  Then they all went off on dead people they’d seen. Catherine shared how one of her childhood friends got run over by a steamroller. Mrs. “Vela told of some guy who’d been shot by the police in the East L.A. neighborhood she grew up in, inserting the phrase leaking blood like a stuck pig” several times. “Leonard recounted the epic saga of shooting some Jap” during World War II. “He looked over at Wayne and said, Sorry, to which Wayne said his ancestry was Chinese, not Japanese, and Leonard said, Same thing.”

  Only Dad was silent during this activity. He didn’t want to discuss any dead bodies he’d seen.

  Almost midnight. Leonard had gone to bed. Catherine and Mrs. Vela had driven off in search of swing music. Elaine and her family had gone back to their home in El Segundo.

  I was in my father’s bedroom. He’d asked me to come in while he got ready for bed. While he took care of his bathroom activities, I wandered around, looking at all the pictures of my mother and of me and of Elaine’s kids, the closest to grandchildren Dad was ever going to get.

  The room was a mess, with clothes and papers scattered everywhere. I absently began straightening up. I was experiencing the role reversal psychologists talk about, where I was the parent and my father had slipped into the child’s position. I hadn’t been prepared for it to include picking up his room.

  I hung some things in the closet and sat on a chair with a row of tacks up each arm. Its leather was cracked but incredibly soft. I remembered it sitting in my parents’ bedroom, right about where the canaries now lived.

  The toilet flushed. Dad came out of the bathroom. He had on a white T-shirt and boxers, and carried his pants and shirt in his hand. He gave the closet a cursory look and dropped his clothes on a huge stack of issues of Modern Maturity.

  “How many times have I told you to keep your room neat?” I said.

  “You never told me that.”

  “It was a joke. Because when I was a kid—never mind.”

  He shook his head, as if wondering why God had given him such a lunatic for a son. He turned off the overhead light, leaving the room lit by the lamp on his nightstand. It had a wood base, carved into the shape of a Chinese man with a huge vase on his shoulder. Or maybe he was Japanese. Same thing, if Leonard was to be believed. The lamp had been beside Dad’s bed since I was old enough to know what a lamp was. Its mate, a woman hoisting some gardening implement, had graced my mother’s nightstand. Now it stood on mine.

  Dad plumped up a couple of pillows, climbed under the covers, sat up against the headboard. He reached over to his nightstand and picked up something by Isaac Bashevis Singer. He read a line or two, seemingly oblivious of my presence, then looked up and patted the bed beside him. “Come, sit.”

  I sat.

  “So tell me about your new girlfriend.” I felt like a teenager. Susie’s okay, Dad, but we just go out in big groups. Of course, I’d never had that kind of conversation with my father when I was a teenager, because he was in prison. “She’s nice.”

  “Nice? All you can say is nice?”

  “I don’t want to spoil it. I don’t want everyone to get all excited about her, because then if it doesn’t work out you’ll all feel sorry for me, and that’ll make things worse.”

  He put down Isaac Bashevis Singer and took my hand in his. I want you to be happy. “To be married.” He left the and give me grandchildren unspoken.

  “Someday, Dad.”

  “I worry about you and women, Joseph.” Uh-oh. Secret code phrase. “I thought we put this to bed a long time ago.” “I worry.”

  “Dad, I’m not gay.”

  “No one said you were.”

  “You were thinking it.”

  “Get married, I’ll stop thinking it.”

  “Is this what you dragged me in here for?”

  “No.” He let go my
hand, picked up his Singer again, leafed through as if unsure of his place, put it down. “You’re in danger. I can feel it.”

  “I’m not in danger, Dad.”

  “You don’t understand.” A long sigh. People who kill will kill again. “You are like nothing to them.”

  “I’ll be careful. That’s all I can do.”

  “You could stop your playing detective.”

  “I can’t. I gave Laura my word.”

  Another sigh. “That’s what I thought you’d say.” He shook his head. “Don’t give me any heartache. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.” I got up to go. When I reached the door I turned, but he was already buried in his book. I found Gina and we went out into the night.

  24

  WE’D DRIVEN A BLOCK OR TWO WHEN GINA’S CELL PHONE rang. We both reached to pick up her purse. “Keep your hands on the wheel, Gi,” I said.

  The phone shrilled again. I grabbed the purse. I had to dig around under her gun to get to the phone. “I pressed the button. Hello?”

  “Joe?”

  “Hermann?” Great. Now I was on a first name basis with a plant smuggler.

  Yes. “I have the information you want.”

  “And?”

  Your suspicions are correct. “Mr. Nakatani is indeed involved in my profession.”

  “Gina was making a who?” face. I mouthed Schoeppe’s name and motioned for her to keep her eyes on the road.

  “How so?” I asked Schoeppe. Make that Hermann.

  “He serves as a conduit to the United States for one of the orchid men.”

  “Is there a name?”

  There is, but I cannot provide it. I can, however, tell you that he is from the Czech Republic and he does most of his work in Madagascar. “Will there be anything else?”

  “No.”

  “I had to call in favors to find out this information. I hope you are properly appreciative.”

  “I am,” I said. “I owe you one.”

  “As you promised, you will not use this information against him. It would put me in very bad stead with my colleagues.”

  “Only if it turns out to be a motive for murder.”

  “That seems appropriate. And now, I must go. The rates, you know. Be careful. There are many bad people about.”

  We said our goodbyes and I slid the phone back in Gina’s purse. My hand brushed up against the gun again. I couldn’t suppress a shiver.

  I noticed something else in there too. A little square cardboard box. I frowned and closed the snap.

  “So?” Gina said.

  I filled in the side of the conversation she hadn’t heard.

  “So he’s a smuggler,” she said. “That doesn’t mean he killed anybody.”

  “But Albert was involved in plant conservation. So there’s a motive right there. And you found out Yoichi’s alibi for last Saturday was lousy. So there you are.”

  “Where I are?”

  “He’s a bad guy. We should go down there and tell him what we know.”

  She pulled the car to the curb and switched off the ignition. “Why don’t we tell the cops what we know?”

  “Because I promised Schoeppe that if Yoichi wasn’t mixed up in the murders, I wouldn’t expose him. So we have to do it ourselves.”

  “What if he’s not there?”

  Then we’ll sneak around his place in the dark. “Remember how much fun we had at Brenda’s last year?”

  Yeah, but we had a key then. “And you still nearly got busted and I had to hide in the bathroom with Brenda’s ghost.” She shook her head. I’ll go down there, but only if he’s there. “No breaking and entering.”

  Fine. “I got the phone back out, found Yoichi’s number in my wallet, dialed.”

  “Hello?” He sounded wide-awake.

  “Is Otto there?” My German accent had improved. Must have been the exposure to Schoeppe.

  “You have the wrong number.”

  “I’m very sorry.” I hung up. “He’s there.”

  “So I gathered.” She started the car again and pulled into the flow of traffic.

  We found him in the greenhouse, under weak fluorescent lighting, watering some gallon-size angraecums, the Madagascar orchids with the long nectar spurs. I’d always thought you weren’t supposed to water at night. It promotes fungus growth. But maybe things were different with orchids. There was so much about them I didn’t know.

  He saw us and nodded, like our showing up wasn’t any surprise. I introduced Gina. “He regarded us quietly, then said, Darwin.”

  “The naturalist, or the city in Australia?”

  “Yes,” he said, inscrutably, like the mysterious scientist in an old Republic serial. He turned and indicated the plants with an open hand. When Darwin found these angraecums, he postulated the existence of some insect with a long proboscis. A very long proboscis. “One that would be inserted all the way into the nectar spur to ensure pollination and the continuation of the species.”

  “The Continuation of Species,” I said. “The sequel to The Origin of Species.”

  He eyed me. “Enough jokes.” He touched one of the nectar spurs almost lovingly. “No such insect was known. None was found until forty years later, when Xanthopan morgani praedicta was discovered. A moth, with a proboscis twelve inches long. Long enough to reach the end of the spur.”

  He watered one more angraecum, passed the hose over a trayful of tiny plants with marble-like pseudobulbs, laid its end on a bench. It sat there a moment; then water pressure twisted it up and snapped it to the ground like a rubbery green snake. He stepped to the faucet and turned it off. “Darwin knew sooner or later the moth would appear. I am no Darwin. But I knew sooner or later you would appear. Although I did not expect the lovely companion.” He headed for the door. “Come into the trailer with me.”

  We crossed the orchid-strewn yard. He stopped with one hand on the trailer door. “By the way,” he said, “Otto stopped by. He was sorry to have missed you.” He shook his head and went in.

  We followed and took seats. He shuffled around for a minute or two, offered us iced tea. We declined. He poured himself a glass, conjured up a stool, sat across from us. “So,” he said. “What have you found out?”

  “About you and the Czech.”

  “The Czech?”

  “The biggest orchid smuggler in Madagascar,” Gina said. Schoeppe hadn’t said he was the biggest. Sometimes Gina’s given to hyperbole.

  Yoichi’s smile was rueful. “Indeed.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why? I don’t actually know.”

  “You don’t make enough with the stuff you propagate yourself?”

  “It’s not a matter of money.” He inspected his tea glass, found an invisible spot to wipe off. It started almost by accident. A shipment of Aerangis became available. Some rare species, seldom seen. I bought it. I knew there was a possibility its provenance wasn’t quite legal. But the plants …oh, the plants. The people in the clubs love those plants. I don’t think they know they were collected illegally. Or perhaps they don’t care. Many of them don’t, you know. Many of them don’t even know about CITES. “Many are content to grow their plants and not worry about the environment.” He shrugged. “I help make those people happy.”

  His attitude matched that of Hermann Schoeppe exactly. People want the plants, I provide them. The environment can look out for itself. End of story.

  “And after that shipment?” Gina said.

  “I bought more from the person who sold me the Aerangis.” He shrugged. “It continued from there. You don’t need to know the details, do you?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “He rubbed his lower lip with a fingertip, asked, oh so casually, Now that you know, what are you going to do with this information?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether or not you killed Albert Oberg, Laura Astaire, or both.”

  “You still think some imaginary altercation upset me
so much that I exacted revenge?”

  It was interesting that he was still denying the argument. At this juncture it seemed pointless to do so. “No. Not anymore. But Albert was a big CITES supporter. Always working to stop illegal trafficking in plants. Maybe he found out about you and—”

  “And what? I killed him for it?” He smiled indulgently, shook his head. “I am not a violent man. I assure you, I did not kill Albert. Nor Laura. I barely knew the woman. Only through—” A tiny head shake.

  I stood and leaned against the stove, such as it was. “See, here’s the thing. Gina checked into your alibi for the night Albert died. It doesn’t stand up.”

  “Oh,” Yoichi said. “You did, did you?” It seemed he’d been prepared for me to figure out his smuggling connection, but not for me to find out his whereabouts the previous Saturday were imaginary.

  “Yes,” Gina said. “The board meeting, dinner, whatever, got canceled. So where were you really?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You have to say,” I told him. “If you don’t, I’m going to do two things. First, I’m going to send the cops down here to question you. This will be a big pain in the ass and not very good for business. And they might find out about your smuggling connection, except they won’t have to do that because the second thing I’m going to do is contact the customs service and turn you in.”

  “And, if I tell you where I was that night, you won’t do any of this?”

  It had sounded good up to then. But what if he did tell me? Should I go ahead and turn him in anyway? An interesting moral question.

  “No,” I said, glancing at Gina, then back at Yoichi. “What we’ve learned won’t go beyond this trailer.”

  He nodded, sighed, slumped on his stool. “I was with someone.”

  “That’s good,” I said. That’s the best kind of alibi. “Who were you with?”

  He squeezed the words out. “My lover.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Is this absolutely necessary?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked me in the eye. “Very well. My lover is Helen Gartner.”