Death of an Orchid Lover Read online

  I thought of the Jefferson Airplane poster in my hallway. “Because they mean something to you. A remembrance of things past.”

  “Well put, Mr. Proust. And that’s exactly why Werner’s still up there. That was an important time in my life. I’m not going to repudiate it because I’m not into those things anymore.”

  She came back in, got rid of her cigarette, stood close to me. “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you throw me some lines?”

  “Didn’t get enough work with your scene partner?”

  “He got an under-five on The Young and the Restless and couldn’t make it. We’re putting the scene up in class tomorrow, and I feel if I don’t work on it at all today I’ll lose my momentum.”

  “I haven’t read anything but commercial copy in years.”

  “I just need to hear the lines. If we can run it a few times, I think I’ll be all right until tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Wonderful.” She picked a Samuel French script book off her tiny dining table. Actors are always carrying them around. Any play that ever gets a semi-significant production eventually ends up in one, or one by French’s competitor, Dramatists Play Service. Many were the hours I spent at the French store on Sunset Boulevard, scanning the shelves for interesting material.

  I looked at the cover. Chapter Two. “CORNS?” I said.

  “I’m perfect for Faye.”

  GORNS. Good Old Reliable Neil Simon. Let the artsy types scoff. “So I must be Leo.”

  “Right. This is the scene where he and Faye almost sleep together. Here, let me show you where it starts.” She found the place and handed me the book. I smiled when I saw the penciled-in cuts, the pink-highlighted Faye lines, the places in the margin where Laura’d made notes to herself. Take a beat. Let him come to me. Just like snarvx. At least it looked like snarvx.

  “You’re supposed to have your shirt off,” she said, smiling. “But I think we can skip that.”

  “If it would help …”

  “No, that’s okay. Let me just get ready.”

  I was afraid getting ready would entail much fluttering of eyes and elephantine breathing sounds, but all she did was take a couple of deep breaths. “Let’s go.”

  I read off the first line. She responded. We traded back and forth. As Laura invested the lines with the sadness behind the laughs, I remembered how good an actress she’d been. Now, with more years of tedious life experience behind her, she was wonderful. When we finished the scene, I told her so.

  “You helped a lot,” she said.

  “No, I—”

  “Stop it, Joe. I don’t know why you quit. Can we go through it again?”

  “Okay. You want me to do anything differently?”

  “No. You’re fine. You’re perfect.”

  We did the lines again. I was able to raise my head from the script a bit more, give her more eye contact. When we were done she said, “Can I tell you something?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You’re already better in this scene than the actor I’m working with in class.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Believe it. I mean, he has the lines down, and he knows the blocking, but I’m really getting more out of you than I ever do from him.”

  We went through it twice more, then took a break. We discussed her motivations in the scene, and then we were off onto pacing and nuance and back story.

  We started up again, and ran the scene until a warning light went on in my head. Danger, Will Robinson, point of diminishing returns approaching. It always happened; you’d do a great run-through, but the next would be slightly less satisfying, and after that nothing useful would come out of the rehearsal. Eventually you’d both give up, and sit around munching pretzels and badmouthing people.

  So we tried a time or two more, but it was pointless. Out came the pretzels. Laura began telling me about some of the plays she’d been in since I’d known her before. It was time to deal with what I’d come there for. “Have the police been by lately?”

  She seemed startled that I wanted to discuss Albert’s murder. “A couple of calls to clarify things, but that’s it.”

  I nodded. For a guy who wanted to ask a bunch of questions, I was having trouble deciding which ones to ask. “So how did you and Albert get together?”

  Monty the cat materialized in her lap. She stroked him absentmindedly. “When I met him at an orchid club meeting, I thought he was a big bore. Talking about his hybrids all the time. But one day he talked me into coming up and visiting his greenhouse. Then I stayed for dinner. It all happened rather quickly. I think we were both surprised.”

  “You do make, keeping up the Neil Simon theme here, an odd couple.”

  “You’re speaking of his appearance.”

  “He was a fair amount older than you.”

  She shook her head. “I know what you mean. He was a big man. Fat.”

  “But that didn’t bother you.”

  “No. He cared about me.” She pointed at a miniature orchid sitting on a windowsill. It had a dozen tiny orange flowers. “And he showed me beautiful things.”

  “Did you ever hear about any business dealings between him and Helen and David Gartner.”

  “Helen? And David? Gartner?”

  “Yes. You’re friendly with Helen, having dinner with her and all. I thought she might have told you something.”

  “No.” She was looking down at Monty, and he up at her with a big contented cat smile. “There’s nothing.” She glanced, too casually, at her watch. “Look what time it’s getting to be. I’ve got a movement class at two.”

  “It’s not even one.”

  “It’s in Santa Monica. You know what traffic is like.”

  She stood, I stood, Monty jumped to the floor. Laura got some clothes from her closet and went into the bathroom, shutting the door partway behind her. “Look on the coffee table,” she called out a moment later.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “The orchid society’s newletter. It’s cerise. You can’t miss it.”

  It was far more elaborate than what my cactus club managed to get out, twelve pages, nice fonts, pretty pictures. “Okay, I’ve got it, now what?”

  “There’s a meeting tonight. The address is on the front page. Maybe you can go.”

  I found the meeting notice. 857 Iliff Street in Pacific Palisades. One of the cactus people lived on Iliff. Nice area.

  “Maybe I can.”

  She emerged a minute later wearing her leotard. She saw me looking and smiled. “Not bad, eh?”

  “You look great, Laura.”

  She threw a sweatshirt around her neck, grabbed her Day-Timer, herded me to the door. As I reached to open it, she put a hand on my arm and spun me half around. “I want you to do something.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Come to my scene study class tomorrow.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I thought you might want to get serious about acting again.”

  Joe Portugal, hero of several dozen commercials, returning to the stage. What a ridiculous idea. “That sounds good,” I said.

  “Wonderful.”

  “Where and what time?”

  “It’s on Santa Monica Boulevard, at the Richmond Shepard Theatre. That is, it used to be the Richmond Shepard, and that’s how I still think of it. Ten o’clock. You live where again?”

  “Culver City.”

  “Why don’t you come by at nine-thirty, and we’ll go together.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Co to the meeting tonight, would you?”

  “Are you going?”

  She shook her head. “There are auditions for a new show at the Tiffany. One of the parts is perfect for me, if you can believe what they say in Drama-Logue.”

  “Break a leg.”

  “Thanks.”

  She gave me an est hug and we went out
. She got in her car. I was right about it being the Honda.

  9

  I GOT HOLD OF GINA AND CAJOLED HER INTO GOING TO THE orchid society meeting with me later on. Then I drove over to my father’s house in the Fairfax district. Dad’s housemate Leonard answered the door. He’s legally blind, though slightly sighted. As usual, the blue yarmulke in the middle of his bald spot hung there by some special dispensation from God.

  He ushered me in. “Your father’s in the back with Catherine,” he said. “He’s planting posies again. Me, I’m watching MTV. You know that Carmen Electra? She’s a hot one.” He returned to his position six inches in front of the screen, tossed some popcorn in his mouth, fashioned a rusty lascivious smile.

  Out back, Catherine, the third member of the household, sat at the teak table reading the paper. She was dark-haired and feisty and looked more than a little like my mother, something my father continually denied. She said hi and went back to the sports page.

  Dad patted the soil around his latest patch of impatiens, pushed to his feet, came and gave me a hug. “So,” he said. “What’s the big special occasion that brings my son to see me?”

  “No special occasion, Dad. It usually isn’t.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Not much. I went to a plant show yesterday.”

  “A cactus show?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What kind, then?”

  “An orchid show.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Oh?”

  “No, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that my son should be getting interested in orchids at this time. Does it surprise you, Catherine?”

  She looked up from the paper. “Stop picking on the boy, Harold.”

  “Picking? Who’s picking?”

  “What are you getting at, Dad?” I said.

  “This.” He plucked the Times Metro section from the table, leafed through, pointed at a headline. DEATH OF ORCHID AUTHORITY STILL A MYSTERY. Dad cleared his throat and read to us. “‘Police refused to say if actress Laura Astaire, 53, who discovered the body, was a suspect in the murder.’” Fifty-three? Laura was older than I’d thought. “This Laura Astaire, she wouldn’t happen to be someone you know.”

  “As a matter of fact, I was just over at her place.”

  “Wasn’t nearly getting killed once enough for you?”

  “I’m not doing anything dangerous. Just asking a few people a few questions.”

  “I’m sure he’s being careful,” Catherine said.

  “Please, young lady, this is between my son and me.” Catherine gave him a look and went into the house.

  “She’s right, Dad. I’m being very careful.”

  “You were being very careful last time. Then the guns came out.”

  What could I say? He was right. The guns came out and suddenly my little investigatorial game became a matter of life and death.

  “You think you know about murderers,” he said.

  Uh-oh. Here it was. I’d broached the subject back when the Brenda business happened, and by unsaid agreement we’d sealed it back up after the crime was solved. “Do you really want to talk about this?”

  “I can tell you’re not going to give up this cockamamy thing you have about playing policeman. So I need to remind you about murder again. It is not a game.”

  “Don’t go there,” I said. But he did.

  I first figured out my father was a criminal when I was ten, after a week of two-a-day Highway Patrol episodes. He was involved in truck hijackings, among other things. He was a smalltimer, never making that one big score, not even pulling in enough to keep the family going. But my mother had a part-time job at the May Company, and we got by.

  One day in 1966 things went awry. Another gang of bumblers picked the same truck on the same night. There was a scene that, from what I’ve pried out of Dad and Elaine, would have been comical if it weren’t so tragic. When it was over, one of the other band of hijackers lay dead, and my father had the murder weapon in his hand.

  He spent thirteen years in prison. When he got out, I was twice as old as when he went in. He came back to our house for a while, before moving up to Fairfax, “where the Jews are.” As far as I could tell, he’d stayed on the straight and narrow.

  “Murderers are dangerous people, Joseph.”

  “I know that.”

  “Even the ones who are honest all their lives, and then they kill someone, they’re dangerous. Like that—”

  “I remember.”

  “So you think you’ll just ask your questions, and if one of the people you ask them of is the murderer, they’ll just say, oh, he’s just poking around, he’s harmless, I’ll just let him go on his way.”

  “What else am I going to do?”

  “Let the police handle it. Trouble is their business.”

  It was tempting. Laura would understand if I backed away. She was overwhelmed when she asked me to take a look into things. Not reasoning properly. She didn’t really expect me to uncover anything, at the orchid society meeting that night or anywhere else.

  And I’d make my father happy, wouldn’t I? So there was no reason not to drop the whole thing, was there?

  “I can’t give it up,” I said. “It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something, that I’m doing something useful instead of sitting on my ass collecting residuals and playing with my cacti.”

  He watched my face silently for a good thirty seconds. “I knew you would say that,” he said at last.

  I said nothing.

  “Do you want a gun?”

  “No. What would I do with a gun?”

  “You might need a gun. In case by some chance you trip over the actual killer.”

  “I don’t want a gun. And if I need a gun, Gina still has hers, and she knows how to use it, which I don’t.”

  He stuck out his lower lip. He put it back in place. “You want to help me plant some posies? And after, you can stay for dinner.”

  “Posies, yes. Dinner, only if it’s early.”

  “Dinner can be early. But tell me why it has to be early.”

  “I’ve got to go to Pacific Palisades to an orchid—”

  “Stop. I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “You just told me to tell you—”

  “Joseph, you’re old enough now, you should know when to lie to your father.” He walked toward the house. Just before we got inside, he stopped and turned. “You’ll—”

  “Yes, Dad,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

  10

  THE PALISADES ORCHID SOCIETY MET AT A METHODIST church, leading me to wonder if all their events were held at houses of worship. This one was in the middle of a neighborhood of houses that probably went for a million or more. It resembled one of the missions, with a big tower and white adobe walls and thick wood beams all over the place. It seemed more Catholic than Methodist. Not that I knew much about Methodists.

  The meeting was in a community room on the second floor. At least seventy people milled around, more than I’d ever seen at any succulent function. A typical garden club crowd, with orchid modifications. Lots of old folks, in couples and in singles of both genders. A fair dusting of sturdily built middle-aged women. Some Asian-Americans, and a couple of guys who fit the gay cliché.

  To the right of the entrance, near a table full of plants, a tall skinny woman with a buzz cut was selling copious quantities of orange tickets. A raffle. We’d tried it in our cactus club and it flopped.

  Speaking of the cactus club, the plant display put ours to shame. There were well over a hundred blooming plants on the table. They were mostly in plastic nursery pots, black gallon ones and smaller green ones, with a few baskets sprinkled through. Quite unlike the cactus folks, who had a mania for presenting their show plants in bonsai pots and other fancy ceramics.

  Though one guy stood at the table with clipboard in hand, it didn’t look like the judging extravaganza Sam had led me to expect. I mentioned this to Gi
na. A voice at my shoulder said, “It’s downstairs.”

  It was Sharon Turner. She had a sundress on, all pastel colors and soft lines. I introduced her to Gina. They swapped appraising looks. I asked Sharon about the judging.

  “Do you want to see it?” she said.

  “Can I?”

  “If you can behave yourself.”

  “I will, Ma, I promise. You coming, Gi?”

  Gina shook her head. “I think I’ll hang around up here. Cover more territory that way.” She walked off toward the raffle table.

  “Territory?” Sharon said.

  “She’s helping me out with my helping Laura out.” Dottie Lennox cruised up. “If it isn’t my new friend.”

  “Hi, Dottie.”

  “You taking good care of him, Sharon?”

  “I am.”

  “Good. He doesn’t know anything about orchids. He needs someone to teach him. You remember, dear, how it was when you joined the club. How you didn’t know anyone, and how I had to take you by the hand.”

  “Of course, Dottie, but we have to go now. We’re going to watch the judging.”

  “How boring,” Dottie said, and rolled off.

  I turned to Sharon. “Didn’t you say a friend brought you to your first meeting?”

  “I did. Dottie’s a little bit, well, dotty. Come, let’s get downstairs.”

  At the bottom of the steps she stopped. “Look, about yesterday—”

  I shook my head. “Forget about it. I’ve gotten turned down before.” It came out more spiteful than I’d intended.

  She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She shut it and walked down the hall, stopping at a gray metal door. When we got there she said, “Some of the judges are pretty uptight. Just follow my lead, all right? Supposedly the judging is open to anyone who can keep their mouth shut, but—”

  “My lips are sealed. And look, I didn’t mean to sound so nasty a minute—”

  She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I probably deserved it.” She pulled the door open.

  The judging took place in a utility room with cinder block walls and an unadorned concrete floor. Overhead pipes dangled from brackets, with valves and red handles here and there. A fan on a pole in one corner more or less pushed the warm air around. Four long tables sat under fluorescent fixtures, with six or eight people around each. One of the men caught my eye. Rather, his bad toupee did. Along with the thick black mustache inhabiting his lip, it made him look like Josef Stalin.