Death of an Orchid Lover (24 page)

I did the serious theater guy thing, putting on shows and occasionally acting in them, dealing with lighting people and program printers and a myriad of others. Then, after seven years, it got old. I pictured myself at sixty, still painting sets and fixing toilets, and hearing the conversations between the ingenues. “Oh, that’s Joe,” one would stage-whisper. “He’s been here forever. It’s his whole life.” I didn’t want the theater to be my whole life, at least not a little ninety-nine-seat house like the Altair.

Two years later I left the place. I traded it in for my “career” as a TV commercial actor, and I’d been rolling along with that ever since, associating with other actors only at auditions and shoots. Now, suddenly, after talking with Diane about her play—and Laura about her class—I was feeling an urge to tread the boards again. And being reminded of the Altair threw me into a funk. What had I done with the last decade?

I went home and called my father. I hear you’re planning a family thing Saturday night. “When were you going to get around to telling me?”

“Today maybe. Or tomorrow. I knew you could come.”

“Why do you assume I have nothing better to do on a Saturday night than hang out with my family?”

“Do you?”

“Don’t rub it in.”

“Do you want to bring the girl?”

“What girl?”

“You sound funny. There has to be a girl.”

“As a matter of fact, I am seeing someone.”

“Seeing? What’s that mean?”

“Dating. Going out with.”

“Do you like her?”

“No, I hate her. I just go out with her because she gives green stamps. Of course I like her.”

“My son, the comedian. You should bring her Saturday.”

“Oh, right. That’d be the end of the relationship for sure.”

“Relationship? This is a relationship already?”

“No. Not yet. Which is why I’m not ready to have her meet my family. Too much pressure. We’ve only been going out for—” Hmm. We’d only been going out for one day. “For a little while.”

“Makes sense. You don’t want to burden the girl. You tell me when you want us to meet her.”

“I will, Dad. I will,” I said, and signed off.

I sat on the couch, thought about Albert and Laura and all the supporting players, found myself getting nowhere but sleepy. I took off my shoes and lay down. My eyes kept fluttering shut. I tried to keep them open, couldn’t, said the hell with it and let myself nap.

My eyes opened. They focused on the VCR. It was blinking 12:00. In many households this is a normal state of affairs; in mine it isn’t. I looked at my watch. Just past six. I got up off the couch, checked in the kitchen. The clock on the stove said twenty till. There’d been a power failure. Not that uncommon
in my part of Culver City. I fixed all the clocks and went out to the Jungle.

I felt like crap, worse than just the dry mouth and general sweaty feeling I always experience when I wake up from a nap. And the crappiness wasn’t just physical. I was undergoing depression and dread and a bunch of other negative emotions I couldn’t put names to. I knew it was time to confront something I hadn’t been ready to deal with: the fact that I felt responsible for Laura’s death.

The thought had come inching into my consciousness at various times over the last two days, and I’d always pushed it away. But while I was asleep on the couch, it had worked its way to the forefront. I had the inescapable feeling that if I hadn’t agreed to look into Albert’s killing, Laura would still be alive. Someone knew I was sticking my nose in, knew who I’d been seeing, and felt if such contact continued they might be exposed. So they took care of that possibility.

And there was more. Maybe the killer suspected I now knew something he or she didn’t want me to, and was going to deal with me as well. They just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

Monica Shriver, the little girl from two houses down, yanked me from my contemplation. She drove by on her Big Wheel, headed directly for a VW Thing in the wackos’ driveway. I jumped up and dashed to the rescue. As I grabbed the Big Wheel a car pulled up. I half expected someone to jump out with a tommy gun and mow me down. Little Monica too. Or maybe just Monica. I’d be guilt-ridden forever.

Then I recognized the car, and someone did get out. “I’m early,” Sharon said.

I pointed Monica in the right direction and she pedaled toward home. I looked at Sharon. “I know.”

“I got free earlier than I expected, and I was looking
forward to seeing you, and—well, here I am. I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Of course not.”

She walked up and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re sure I’m not too early? I can go wait at a coffeehouse.”

“Come up on the patio with me.”

“All right.” She passed in front of me, and I put my hand to my cheek and held it there, as if some trace of magic had been deposited and I didn’t want to let it get away.

I followed her and brushed off a wicker chair. A daddy longlegs fled down its side, scurried across the planking, dropped over the edge into the shrubbery below. “Here,” I said. “Have a seat.”

She did, and I regained mine. She was wearing a sleeveless top like the one she’d had on the first time I met her, this one pale green. Her legs—at least, all I could see of them between the hem of her cotton skirt and her white canvas tennies—were slim and nicely tanned.

“I call this the Jungle,” I said. “I keep a lot of epiphytic plants here, stuff that needs a fair amount of shade. It’s a south exposure, which you’ve probably figured out already, but that big elm shades it most of the day. Maybe I could grow some orchids here.”

“Maybe. You know, you don’t look very good. Your face is pale.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Don’t tell me it’s nothing. It’s something. Tell me.

“I hardly know you. I don’t want to lay heavy stuff on you so soon.”

“Go ahead and lay.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Here goes. I feel responsible for Laura’s death.”

“How so?”

I have a feeling the killer thought she either told me or was going to tell me something incriminating. So they offed her. “And if I hadn’t been sniffing around, no one would have been threatened, and she’d still be alive.”

“You’re still thinking it wasn’t suicide.”

“No one’s said for sure one way or the other.”

“I see. All right, then consider this. What are the chances she told you something she didn’t tell the police?”

“I’m not sure where you’re leading.”

Where I’m leading is, if she was murdered because the killer thought she would say something incriminating, it would have happened whether you were around or not. Because who would expect her to reveal something to you that she hadn’t told the police? “No offense meant, but you’re not exactly a professional detective.”

“Maybe you have a point.” I shook my head. “Do you know anything about her funeral?”

“I was talking to one of the other people in the club this morning and found out she’s being cremated, just like Albert. After the police are done with her body, I suppose. That sounds so macabre. Her body.’ There’s no service. I think Albert must have convinced her that was the way to go.”

We were silent. There was a light scent in the air, something very springtime, floral but not cloying. “I like your perfume,” I said.

“You do? I don’t often wear any, but tonight I—oh, I should just shut up.”

More silence. Once or twice she looked over and smiled, before turning back to watch the sycamores across Madison waving in the breeze.

“Finally I said, Where are we going tonight?”

She turned her chair a few degrees toward mine. “I worried about that all day. After the nice place you came up with last night I wanted something special. But nothing seemed right.”

“We don’t have to go to a restaurant.”

“We don’t?”

“We can order in. We can stay out here and then have someone bring food.”

“Let’s do that. Let’s stay here.” She inched her chair closer, reached out a hand. Nicely manicured, no nail polish. “Are you feeling better?” she said.

I took her hand. “Yes, thanks.” We were still too far apart for efficient hand-holding, so I shuffled my chair toward hers until they were a few inches apart. I looked over and smiled. She smiled back. Suddenly the world was very smiley.

W
E TALKED ABOUT MY NEW COMMERCIAL.
W
E TALKED
about plant shows, sharing stories of paying too much for plants at auctions, of finally getting specimens we’d nurtured for years to bloom. We managed not to mention Albert or Laura, though they hung over the conversation like the alien spaceship in
Independence Day
over New York.

At seven-thirty we went inside, consulted the menu for the local Thai place, called, and ordered. They said the food would arrive in thirty to forty minutes, which was what they always said, whether it was the middle of a weekday afternoon or eight o’clock on a busy Saturday night.

Thirty-five minutes later, a Hyundai pulled into the driveway. Sharon paid the driver. We took the food inside and I dished it out. “I’ve got a couple of trays,” I said. We could use them in the Jungle. “Or we could eat inside.”

“Do you have a blanket? Like a beach blanket?”

“I believe I do.”

“Let’s have a picnic.”

“It’s a little dark in the park. It’s a good neighborhood, but, still—”

She was shaking her head. “In your backyard. Wouldn’t it be nice to eat our dinner under the stars?”

“I’ll get the blanket.”

I didn’t really have a beach blanket, but when she suggested it I didn’t want to put the kibosh on whatever groovy idea she was working on. So we sat outside on the extra blanket from my bed, the one I hadn’t used since the weather started improving. The night was a fair amount warmer than the one before; the ground still retained the day’s heat. I found us a couple of sweatshirts, and they were enough to keep us comfortable.

We agreed that the
pad thai
was the best of the three dishes. We sat there eating prodigious quantities of it and the
rad na
and the stuffed chicken wings. When we were done, I ran inside, put the scant leftovers in the fridge, and came out with some fruit for dessert. We knocked that off too, and sat around moaning about how full we were.