Death of an Orchid Lover Page 24

  Sharon was wearing a red blouse open at the neck to show the barest hint of cleavage. Farther down was a black skirt that revealed several inches of thigh. Her earrings resembled little African sculptures. Her hair seemed to have a bit of extra body. Its gray color wasn’t intriguing anymore. It was just … gray.

  She looked out at me, made sure I was alone, opened the door wide. That’s when I saw the gun. I thought it was Gina’s. I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t actually seen it in a while, just had my hand on it a couple of nights before.

  Sharon took a step back, waved me in with the gun, looked out into the darkness, closed and locked the door.

  “Where’s Gina?”

  “It was that Dottie Lennox, wasn’t it? That’s how you found out.”

  “Yes. Where’s Gina?”

  “I knew I should have been more careful when I first got to L.A. Done a little more research beforehand. But I didn’t really have a plan then. Only an intention.”

  “Where’s Gina?”

  “Please, Joe, don’t make any more loud noise.” We don’t want to attract attention. Gina’s in my bedroom.

  I ran down the hall. The light in the bedroom was off, the curtains drawn. I groped on the wall for the light switch, cursing when I couldn’t find it. At last I did.

  Gina was on the bed. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving. She had duct tape across her mouth, and her wrists were tied to the headboard with rope. Some more looped around her ankles and stretched down somewhere under the bed.

  And there was blood on the side of her head, and blood on the pillow, and some on the blue comforter.

  31

  I RAN TO GINA, FELL DOWN ON MY KNEES, TOOK HER FACE IN my hands. She was pale, but she wasn’t cold, and even as I touched her I saw her chest rise. I looked more closely at the side of her head, grabbed a corner of the comforter, ineffectually swabbed the area. There wasn’t that much blood after all. It had just been smeared around.

  “It’s ruined, I suppose,” Sharon said. “The comforter, that is. Oh, well. Couldn’t be helped. It is down, by the way. Not that you really care. That’s not why you were staring at the bed last night.” She laughed a nasty little laugh, moved to her nightstand, switched on a nondescript earthenware lamp, turned off the overhead. “Much better.” She pointed to Gina with her free hand. “Your little friend there’s really as gullible as you are.”

  I looked at her over my shoulder. The lamp painted her face in harsh shadows. “I’ve got to get her to a doctor.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a little bump.”

  “I’ve got to—”

  “No.” She gestured with the gun. “We had a nice cup of coffee before I hit her,” she said. “I told her how very sorry I was for my behavior, and that I thought you were someone special and that I hoped she and I would be good friends. At first she was suspicious, but I’m such a good actress that I got her to fall for the whole thing.”

  I turned back to Gina. Her eyes fluttered open.

  “You see,” Sharon said. “Nothing to worry about. I really didn’t hit her that hard. Just enough to make it easy to drag her in here and tie her up.”

  Gina’s eyes were fully open now, wide, fearful. A corner of the duct tape was loose. I slowly peeled it away. “Careful, Sharon said.” “Don’t want to cause her any pain.”

  The tape came free. A tiny spot of sticky residue remained along Gina’s jawline. She licked her lips, uttered a couple of nonsense syllables. “I’m sorry, baby, she said at last.” “I should have figured her out.”

  “There was no way you could, Sharon said.” I’m simply too good an actress.

  I began picking at the ropes binding Gina’s wrists. Sharon watched me closely, but didn’t move to stop me. I got the first one off, reached over to work on the other.

  “You know,” Sharon said, “it was so much fun leading you around by your penis that I would have done it even if I wasn’t trying to distract you. Good to know that they agreed on what I was being led around by.”

  I worried the knot on the second piece of rope until it came undone. Gina struggled to sit up. I pushed her back. “Stay. Rest.”

  I had to stall until I could come up with something. I looked back at Sharon. “I know the part about the hospital was true.” Why don’t you tell me what else was?

  She shrugged. “I don’t see why not.” She made herself comfortable in a soft chair across the room from us, crossed her legs at the ankle. “I like embellishment much more than total fabrication, don’t you? I suppose I could have made it all up, but I like a mixture of truth and lies. Gives the whole performance more texture.”

  “How much was the truth?”

  “My years in New York. The play. Getting hit by the cab. All of that, sad but true.”

  “Made you a little crazy, did it?”

  “Crazy? I don’t think I’m crazy. Getting revenge on someone who ruined your life, that’s not crazy.” She smiled. “Albert had to pay eventually for not letting me get to the theater. I really wasn’t hurt badly. It was only a little fracture.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gina said.

  I threw Sharon a look, turned back to Gina. “Sharon was about to get her big break and got hit by a cab. Albert was the doctor who kept her in the hospital—for her own good, I might add—and prevented her from playing her opening night.”

  “I tried very hard to get out,” Sharon said. “But he gave me a shot. For the pain, he said, and so I wouldn’t hurt myself worse. It knocked me out. I couldn’t escape. Do you feel it yet? The helplessness of not being able to escape?”

  I thought back to the day the whole thing started. Albert’s den full of medical diplomas. Why hadn’t I realized he’d been a doctor before he retired and moved to L.A.? Why hadn’t I found that out before? If I’d just dug a little deeper, I might have—

  Might have what? Remembered Albert was a doctor when there was a hospital in Sharon’s story, and magically made the connection? No. Not a good thing to beat myself up about. And this was no time to be beating myself up about anything, not when I could better spend my energy trying to get us out of the mess we were in.

  Gina was sitting on the bed, working the leg bindings loose. I knew if one of us came up with something, the other would follow their lead. “How come it took you so long to—to do something?”

  “You know what they say, whoever they are.” ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ I kept track of Albert, and when he retired and moved to Los Angeles, I did too. I was following him one night, just a few weeks after we both got here. He came to an orchid society meeting. So I developed a sudden interest in orchids. It seemed a good way to keep close to him. She gave me another of those wry smiles she was so good at. “And it was kind of serendipitous, because I found out that I really did like the plants. I’d never had a hobby before, and now I had one, and as an extra added bonus it was the perfect way to keep tabs on Albert. Although I have to admit, I’m not really that fond of a lot of the people in the orchid society. Like that old bitch Dottie. I suppose I’ll have to deal with her too.”

  Gina swung her legs over the side of the bed, sat beside me. “Didn’t Albert recognize you?”

  “I didn’t look the same. I wore glasses when he saw me, but I got contacts before I moved here. I changed my hairstyle and let the gray come out. You like the gray, don’t you, Joe? You think it’s sexy, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Besides, it had been two years. I’d been just one of thousands of patients, and he saw me for only a few minutes. Just enough to ruin my life.”

  “Oh, please,” Gina said.

  “Don’t mock me, dear.”

  “Okay, I said. I get the part about serving revenge cold. But, what, eight years? That’s a long time to hang around waiting to kill somebody.”

  “Ten years actually, counting the time before we both moved here.” She smiled triumphantly. “The day I killed him was ten years—and four days, that pa
rt was the truth—from the day my play was to open. Just as much as the time I spent in New York trying to make it as an actress. A nice bookending effect, don’t you think?”

  “Very clever,” I said.

  “And I have to say, I couldn’t have picked a more difficult day. I couldn’t get him alone. That stupid party early on, and in the evening he was with Laura.”

  So. When she was supposedly with Helen, before she went home to feed Monty the cat, Laura was with her boyfriend, Albert. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best one.

  “I waited outside for hours,” Sharon said. “Finally, Laura came out. She told him she’d be back within forty-five minutes. That’s when I realized what was going on between the two of them, and what a lovely suspect she would be. After she drove away, I knocked on the door and told Albert I had an orchid question. He let me right in. I announced that I was going to shoot him, and why. It was pathetic, the way he put his hands up in the air, like I was a Wild West stagecoach robber.” A short, harsh laugh. “I knew Laura would come back and find him and the police would think she did it.”

  “But your frame didn’t work out,” I said.

  “No. Our dear Laura had a story all made up about where she was all evening. And she had Helen to back her up.”

  “And,” Gina said, “you couldn’t tell anyone it was a story because that would show you’d been there that night.”

  “Very good, dear. See, Joe? I didn’t scramble her brains at all.” She stood and began pacing the room, never letting the gun leave us. “I expected after a day or two Laura would blurt out that she hadn’t really been with Helen. But she kept to her story, right to the end.”

  A residual effect of Laura’s est days, I suspected. The keeping-your-word thing. If she told Helen she’d cover for her, she would cover for her.

  “Then you showed up, she said.” “And Laura had asked you to look into Albert’s death. I suppose she thought her alibi was going to fall apart at some point, so the more people she had looking for the real killer, the better. At the very first, I thought your appearance on the scene was a nice piece of luck. Maybe you’d find out Laura wasn’t with Helen that night. But that didn’t seem to be happening, and I got a bit concerned you might stumble on the truth. So I redirected your efforts. It was rather easy.”

  “Was it?”

  “Setting you to work on Helen and David. David has such a temper, and of course there’s that thing about the Japanese. I thought he’d make a fine suspect for you. And if you spent your energy on the two of them, you might unearth the fact that Laura and Helen weren’t together that night. Have you found out where Helen really was, by the way?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “The story about Yoichi and the judging. You made that up too.”

  “Out of whole cloth.”

  “But why’d you shoot Laura?”Gina said.

  Sharon made a face like, isn’t it obvious? “Eventually I realized Laura wasn’t going to tell the truth about that night anytime soon. So I had to make it seem as if she really did kill Albert. So I shot her too.”

  “And tried to make it look like suicide,” I said.

  “I knew the police would find out it wasn’t, but it was a simple enough thing to do, and it gave them something else to think about.”

  I looked at her, waiting for more. There wasn’t any. I said, “Why did you act like you were interested in me?”

  Sharon smiled. “You were obviously going to be a thorn in my side. The only way to keep track of you was to play on your obvious need for a little romance.”

  “Was it that obvious?”

  “From the moment I met you. The way you looked at me. It didn’t matter then, but when you wouldn’t go away, it was time to become your perfect woman.”

  “It was all an act.”

  “That’s what we actors do, isn’t it? Yes. I decided what I would need to do to control you, and I did it. It was partly planned—I even made notes—and partly improvisation. It was marvelous. After all those years away from the stage, it was wonderful to be able to spend hours with you playing a woman who didn’t exist.”

  She absently brushed her hair back. “The improvisation was my favorite part. Remember, I told you I was good at making things up on the spot. Like that story about being involved with my director, and how it had ruined me romantically. It made me seem terribly vulnerable, didn’t it?”

  I didn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer.

  “But my favorite fabrication was not being available Saturday night. I knew you would get crazy when I told you that. Your kind always does.”

  My kind? What kind was I? “But if you were trying to be my ideal woman, why the twists in the road? Why let me wonder if you’d go out with me? Why the big show when you found Gina at my place?”

  “Because your perfect woman is one who gives you grief.” You wouldn’t know what to do with a relationship that went smoothly. Things have to be twisted for you to be interested. You should have seen your face the other morning. I almost felt bad about making you think you’d queered things by having Gina stay over. She shook her head. “To think I would care whether the two of you are fucking. Are you, by the way?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” Gina said.

  Sharon chuckled. “One of you is lying, and do you know what? I don’t care which.”

  Again she pushed back her hair. “Much as I was enjoying things, you were becoming a bit of a nuisance.” I thought with your fumbling around you might discover something significant. Then, when you told me yesterday morning you’d resurrected Laura’s alibi, I knew what I had to do. She shook her head. “‘We need to talk.’ I knew saying that would make you crazy again.”

  I looked for something to say. Nothing came to mind.

  “Then, my show at the big tree. Part improvisation. Part truth. It would make things more of an acting challenge if you knew some of the truth. And it was a little bit of living dangerously, letting you know something significant, setting you up for last night.”

  “For what last night?”

  She looked at me with something resembling pity. “The script was that you came over, had your way with me, then confessed that you’d killed Albert and Laura, and told me you had to deal with me because I was getting too close to finding out. But I would have somehow managed to get the gun away, and to shoot you in self-defense.”

  “But why would I have done it? I’d never met him, hadn’t seen her in fifteen years.”

  “Because when you met Laura again after all those years, you became infatuated with her. And you went up to Albert’s that night and killed him to clear the field for yourself. And when Laura wouldn’t have you, you shot her too.”

  “That’s preposterous. Besides, I was with Gina that evening.”

  “Ah, yes, Gina.” “Sharon shifted her eyes to her.” “I have to admit, she was very clever, finding me on the Internet.”

  Gina looked sheepish. “One of the things we talked about before she slugged me.”

  “I suppose I should have changed my name when I came to L.A.,” Sharon said. “But, as I said, I really had no plan at that point. You know, I’m actually glad you burst in last night, because it made me realize you were just as much of a problem as Joe. So I decided to postpone things a day, and deal with you both at once. And, as an extra bonus, I wipe out Joe’s alibi for when Albert was killed.”

  She smiled. She was very impressed with herself. “So I invited you over, Gina. And you came, like a good little girl. And then, Joe, I was going to call and tell you, yet again, that I forgave you. And you would come over expecting to finally get some, and then I could deal with you both at once. But you ruined that by finding out I’d shot Albert.”

  “And the police know too. I told them. They’re on their way.”

  She whipped her head toward me. “I told you, no—oh. You’re lying. I can tell just by looking at you.” She shook
her head. “But it doesn’t matter that you found out. The end result is the same. You and I will be on the verge of consummating our relationship when your jealous little friend will burst in and shoot you. And then I’ll get the gun away from her, and that will be that.” She waggled the weapon. “It was so considerate of you, Gina dear, to bring this with you.”

  My eyes went to the gun. Sharon noticed. “I had one ready, of course. Just like the one I used on Albert and Laura. That’s the one I would have used last night. But, with this scenario, Gina’s will be so much better.”

  She smiled at me. “Now it’s time to set up the denouement of our little drama. Would you please take off your clothes?”

  32

  EVEN WITH ALL THE WEIRDNESS, HER REQUEST DUMFOUNDED me. “What for?”

  “It will make it much more realistic if Gina bursts in on us when we’re already in the throes of passion.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  A tiny movement of the gun. “Just do it.”

  I slowly unbuttoned my shirt and dropped it on the bed.

  “The shorts too,” Sharon said. “And the shoes.”

  I took off my Reeboks and stood up. I undid my shorts and let them drop. When they hit the hardwood floor I heard a tiny clunk, muffled by the fabric.

  I reached down, picked up the shorts. Sharon looked me up and down. “Not bad,” she said. “A bit out of shape, but certainly not a ‘stack of flab,’ as you so cleverly put it the other night.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  “Now your underwear.”

  “Come on, Sharon, this has gone—”

  “Do it.”

  I turned away to drop my shorts on the bed. Not that I particularly cared about being neat, or about being modest, but I had the germ of an idea.

  I caught Gina’s eye. She knew I was up to something. And, somehow, that I needed a diversion. She got up and headed for the door.

  “Stop right there,” Sharon said.

  “What if I don t?”

  Sharon gestured with the gun. “I’ll use it.”