“Sure, and then I did Dick so it would look like a serial succulent killer. Joe? Are you okay with this?”
“Why shouldn’t I be okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m fine. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
She shrugged, a kind of shrug I’ve come to recognize as I don’t really know and I don’t want to figure it out and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I told her again everything was fine and I hugged her and when she drove away I stood in the street watching her taillights recede. Gina and Brenda. Who would’ve thought?
12
FRIDAY MORNING THE JUNE GLOOM WAS BACK. I WOKE AT eight but thought it was earlier because it was so dark outside. I flipped on the TV while I made my tea. The weather lady on Channel 6 was jabbering about the marine layer and the Catalina eddy. They were always talking about the Catalina eddy. Someday I’d have to find out what it was.
After my greenhouse communion I pulled out the Nor-dicTrack, intending to do half an hour, ten minutes more than usual. I’d been missing quite a few mornings, and I was feeling guilty. I slid Volume One of Rauh’s Succulent and Xerophytic Plants of Madagascar off its shelf and carefully balanced the huge book on the rack I have hooked up to the machine. Nothing like a little light reading with your exercise.
Within thirty seconds Rauh was on the floor with a big ding in his corner. I climbed off and picked up the book. I glanced over at the NordicTrack. I looked back at the book.
The book won. The exercise gods would forgive me if I slacked off until the Brenda business was done.
I gathered some Grape-Nuts and half a cantaloupe and took them out to the Jungle, along with both volumes of Rauh. I’d bought them when they came out, at over a hundred bucks a pop, looked through them once, and promptly put them back on the shelf to gather dust. They intimidated me. More than two thousand photos of the island’s plant life and an endless stream of descriptions.
Now I scanned the pages for anything about Euphorbia milii. The books’ arrangement frustrated me; they were laid out by region of the island, so that to look at euphorbias you had to go to one area, find them there, move on to the next, find them, et cetera, et cetera. It took me an hour of page-turning to satisfy myself that there was no picture of a Euphorbia milii with stripes.
But there were other books. The same publisher had produced a ten-volume set called the Euphorbia Journal, and CCCC’s library had most if not all of the volumes. Sometime today I’d have to get hold of our librarian, Austin, and convince him to turn them all over to me. Normally a member couldn’t get so many books at once, but I figured my position of authority in the club entitled me to some perks. After all, with Dick gone now, I was the highest-ranking officer, and—
“Holy shit,” I said.
I ran inside and called Gina. “Boy, am I glad I caught you.”
“I’m just on my way out the door. What’s going on?”
“Brenda was president of the cactus club.”
“So?”
“Dick was vice president.”
“Mm-hmm. What’s your point?”
“I’m the secretary. I’m next.”
“Next in line for the leadership? Congratulations. I’m glad you called to share this with me, but—”
“No. Next in line to be killed.”
Silence on the other end.
“Gi? You there?”
“Sure. Now, look. What do you think are the chances that whoever’s behind this is systematically knocking off the leadership structure of your cactus club?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Not to anyone I know.”
“Maybe it’s a disgruntled member.”
“And what? They’re going to kill off the whole board of directors? Oh, and then they work their way through the appointees. Let’s see, you’ve got the person who’s in charge of the refreshments, the—”
“Okay, stop already. I guess it is pretty far-fetched.”
“There’s got to be a connection between Brenda and Dick besides being club officers. Hey, look. I know it sounds weird, but maybe they—”
“Stop right there. If you knew Dick and Hope, you’d know how ridiculous the idea is.”
“Meaning?”
“I have never seen two people so in love. Even after all those years of marriage, they were always holding hands, whispering sweet nothings, all that kind of stuff. Trust me on this. There’s another connection. Maybe I was right. Someone really is going after all the officers.”
“If they plan to knock you off, why would they be setting you up for the other murders?”
“Because it’ll look like, filled with remorse, I did myself in. It’s a perfect scheme.”
“You think that’s how it works?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how criminals’ minds work.”
“Maybe it’s time you found out.”
I knew what she meant. I knew it like I knew where she got the gun from. I knew it like I always know when she’s talking about my father. “He wasn’t into this kind of thing.”
“Are we in heavy denial today?” She let me think it over. “He’s a good resource. You should use him.”
“Maybe I’ll run by over the weekend.”
“‘Maybe you should run by this afternoon.”
“Don’t you want to go?”
“I think you should see him alone. Mano a mano. You can talk about babes, and football, and killing.”
I glanced down and discovered I’d twisted the phone cord into a brainlike mass. Impenetrable, like the murders. “I’ll go over there this afternoon. I promise.”
“Do that. Look, I have to get off. You know how those boys in the showrooms get their panties in a knot when people are late.”
“Gina, if we’ve going to keep hanging out together, you’re going to have to stop with the homophobic remarks.”
“I’ll watch myself. Keep me posted.”
“Okay, see you—wait. Did you get any more interesting e-mail?”
“No. But I did find out they’ve got all the old messages archived, going back several years. You think it’s worthwhile downloading them?”
“Sure. Download away.”
“Okay, I’ll do it tonight while I make myself pretty for my big date with Carlos.”
“Carrying coals to Newcastle again?”
“You’re sweet.”
“Gi?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Sure, why?”
“I just wanted to make sure there were no aftereffects from the Cygon.”
“Not that I can tell. If I grow another head I’ll let you know. And now I really have to get going. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I wanted to ask somebody about the striped milii. Sam would have been my best bet, but he was out of town. I’d gotten Brenda’s itinerary from him but stupidly forgotten to get his. Lyle seemed like a good alternative. I could tell him about my kill-the-officers theory too. He was the treasurer; he ought to know. I gave him a buzz at work, but he was in a meeting. I left him a message.
I thought about heading up to the Kawamura and remembered I had nothing to head up there in. Why hadn’t I let Gina drive me to my truck last night? Sheer idiocy was the only answer that came to mind.
After a brief flirtation with calling a cab, I decided to walk. I took Venice Boulevard, passing a string of South American and Caribbean restaurants and dozens of the ubiquitous two-story apartment buildings with fan palms or giant birds of paradise or yuccas with elephantine bases out front. I hoped the repeated impact of my feet on the pavement would jar a clever idea from some crevice in my brain. It didn’t happen.
The overcast began to burn off. At Inglewood Boulevard a car backfired, and I jumped a foot up in the air. When I came down a couple of Latino teenagers across the intersection were in hysterics. They had shaved heads and long T-shirts and baggy shorts. I threw them a weak smile. “Too much café man,” o
ne yelled.
By the time I reached Centinela Feed and Pet, I could see my shadow. By the time I turned north on Beethoven, I wished I’d worn shorts, and by the time I crossed Rose, my shirt was stuck to the small of my back and I was panting like a puppy.
I got to Dicks at a quarter to eleven. A length of yellow police tape littered the lawn. I wondered if such trimmings were still apparent at Brenda’s. Or if it were opened up now, so her sister, Amanda, could go in and gather effects, so someone could collect the canary supplies and take them to whatever new home the birds managed to find.
All the aloes fronting the Kawamura Conservatory had been torn out of the ground. A couple of broken-off leaves were the only hint they’d ever been there.
The front door wouldn’t budge, so I walked around the building in search of another entrance. A chain-link fence, about six feet high, followed the buildings perimeter, I guessed to keep vandals from breaking the glass and wandering around inside. Around back, additional fencing lined with vertical redwood slats outlined a sort of patio under a slanting Plexiglas roof. The gate into it was open, and I went in. Plastic pots sized from two inches up to five gallons formed neat stacks along one side. Sacks of soil and amendments were piled along the other. A bag of pumice had fallen on its side, and the eighth-inch particles formed a little white mountain where they’d spilled out.
At the far end of the supply area, an open door led into the conservatory. I stuck my head in. “Hello?”
No answer. I carefully made my way in through a corridor between two fifteen-foot plant benches topped with vertical lathwork. Vining cacti had overgrown the lath, forming a tangled nest of snakelike stems. Selenicereus, the “queen of the night,” along with the rest of the royal court. Some had reached the top of the lath and been trained over to the other side, forming a living arbor. New buds thrust, and spent blossoms drooped.
I moved down to the end and stuck my head around the corner. “Hello? Anybody here?”
I knew what I would find. I’d make my way over to the euphorbias and discover Eugene Rand lying there, his eyelids knitted together with tiny spines. An old hollow euphorbia stem would pierce his jugular. His blood would stain the gravel.
Resisting the urge to flee, I continued between the benches, throwing a hello out here and there, always making sure I had an escape route.
The place looked like the world’s biggest botanical garage sale. Dozens of pots hung from a peaked roof. Succulent plants of all shapes and species, in various stages of neglect, cloaked the benches. I spotted a multiheaded mammillaria—a nipple cactus—that had rotted from within. All that remained was an exoskeleton of hooked spines. Over near the wall a whole tray of sansevierias had turned to tufts of brown. It was supposed to be impossible to kill a sansevieria, but there you were.
Within the green hodgepodge, though, you could find some gems. Amidst a cluster of gallon pots holding what looked suspiciously like poinsettias, I spotted the biggest Pachypodium decaryi I’d ever seen, with several four-foot stems poking out from a football-shape and -size caudex. Big oval leaves and oleanderlike white flowers burst from the tips.
Although the vents just below the roof were wide open, the air was hot and humid. The first was good, the second hot. Fungi love succulents. I located the exhaust fans; they sat motionless.
I worked my way over to a concentration of euphorbias, craning my head, looking for bodies. Just as I realized I’d reached a dead end, I heard a tiny noise behind me. I whipped around and jumped back. “Go away,” I shouted.
Eugene Rand’s reaction was a mirror image of my own. “Ack!” he cried as he leapt backward.
He wore thick leather gloves and in them clasped a three-foot chunk of Euphorbia ammak, one of the tree species from Africa. Thick half-inch spines studded its four-sided stem. He held it like you would a baseball bat, if you’d never played baseball before. When he sprang back, the tip clobbered a hanging pot of rosary vine. It removed itself from the water-line it hung from and smashed to the ground at his feet. Strings of heart-shape leaves detached and scattered. “Ack!” he repeated. Again the ammak smacked a pot overhead, but this one, a foot across and filled with the spindly leafless stems of Euphorbia antisyphilitica, merely swayed alarmingly.
“It’s me,” I told him.
“Me, who?”
“Me, Joe Portugal. Remember? I was here the other day.”
He squinted mightily. Just before the tip of his nose reached his forehead, he recognized me. “You.”
“Right. You want to put your bat down before you destroy any more foliage?”
He stared at his club like he’d never seen it before. Then down at the rosary-vine wreckage. Then back up at me. “Right,” he said. He leaned the euphorbia up against a bench. It promptly slid to the floor. White latex oozed from multiple wounds. “You can’t be too careful.”
“No,” I said. “You can’t.”
“First Dr. Belinski, and now this McAfee fellow—I’ve just chosen to prepare myself.”
“And you’ve done it well. That’s quite a bat you’ve got there.”
“I have several distributed throughout the conservatory. The parent plant is rather unattractive now, but it’s a small price to pay.”
“Speaking of euphorbias, did you ever have an abdelkuri inhere?”
“We did, and we still do.”
“How about a milii with stripes? Ever seen one of those?”
“A milii?”
“Yes.”
“With stripes?”
“Yes indeedy.”
He squinted again. I could almost hear facial muscles contorting. “No.”
“Word is that Dr. Belinski was working on a striped milii.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
I thought he did. “Word is that she had several specimens right here in the conservatory.” It was nice to know my new talent for making it up as I went along hadn’t atrophied overnight.
“Word is this, word is that. Everyone says they know the word about Dr. Belinski. Even the people on the television. They don’t know anything about her. You don’t know anything about her.”
Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of being a prick. Not often, but when I choose to do so, I do a real good job of it. “Oh, I’d say that isn’t true. I know a fair amount about her. I used to sleep with her, you know.”
Every muscle in his face distorted. His jaw slid down. His nostrils flared, once, twice. His ears wiggled. “You bastard,” he said. “You perfect bastard.” He snatched up the euphorbia bat.
This was why I’m not a prick very often. It always gets me into trouble. “It was a long time ago,” I said, mounting a conciliatory smile. “And only a couple of times.”
“You weren’t good enough for her.”
“Yes, you’re probably right. I wasn’t good enough for Ker. She thought so too. Which is why the whole thing never happened. I made it all up.”
He swung the euphorbia. He had a swing like a rusty-hinged barn door, but when your bats a spiny, virulent-sapped plant, that’s not necessarily a liability. He missed me by three feet and moved in for another try.
I needed defense. I spotted a length of pipe under a bench, bent, grabbed it just as he swung again. This time he was closer. A foot and a half.
Trying to remember everything I’d ever learned from Jackie Chan, I held the pipe at arm’s length in front of me, parallel with the ground. Rand untwisted himself and prepared for another pass. I fixed my eye on his weapon. Once more he wielded it. The tip flew by, mere inches from my face. It continued down, smacked into the pipe, and fractured.
The tip went flying one way. Rand let go the rest and it glided off in another. Sap flew. I instinctively closed my eyes. It sounded like Eugene Rand had not. He was screaming.
I opened my eyes. He had his hands over his. He whirled around and around, certain to crash into something. I dropped the pipe and rushed over to him. “Your eyes?” Joe Portugal, master of the obvious.
<
br /> “Yes,” he wailed. “Help me. Please help me.”
I threw my arm around his shoulders. “Is there a hose? A sink?”
He stuck an arm out. “A sink. Over there.” Unfortunately, he was pointing at a blank wall.
“Right.” I got him going and moved up an aisle. Down another. Eventually I found the sink, almost hidden by some epiphytic cacti. I maneuvered him over there, turned the water on, and stuck his face underneath. “Keep the water on your eyes,” I said. “I’m going to get help.”
“Aeonium,” he said.
“Whatever you say. Hold on tight.” I straightened up, ran halfway out, realized what he had said. I scurried back. His wailing continued. “Where is it?” I asked.
“Outside. With the first-aid kit.”
I ran out and found it in the pot-storage area. A mangy little cluster of leaves in a three-inch plastic pot sat atop the first-aid kit. It was missing its label, but the pale green rosette said aeonium to me. And, unless I missed my bet, it was Aeonium lindleyi. Supposedly a treatment for euphorbia sap. I grabbed it, ran back to him, snapped off a couple of leaves, and poked him in the eye.
I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Within seconds his agonized writhing ceased. His eyes were red and raw, but he had no trouble keeping them open. I broke off another leaf and prodded some more.
“I guess I shouldn’t react so strongly when someone admits to being one of Brenda’s lovers,” Eugene Rand said. He’d given up the pretense of calling her “Doctor.”
We were sitting on a couple of cheap plastic lawn chairs in the shade of the Kawamura’s toolshed. Rand held a piece of aeonium leaf between his fingertips, and every little while he’d jab himself in the eye with it.
“Not that I’ve ever taken after anyone with a piece of euphorbia before. It’s just all the pressure, the killings and all.” He poked his eye again. “It’s not like she was promiscuous, you understand. But she was never without a man. When she was done with one, she would move on to the next. Before I would ever have a chance to make my intentions known.”
The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) Page 10
