The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal)

by Walpow, Nathan

  Vicki offered me breakfast, and I took her up on it. When the kids left a little later, Austin asked if I wanted a joint. I turned him down. I didn’t smoke dope anymore. What had happened the night before was an aberration. I hoped.

  It was pleasant being there with them, talking about things other than Brenda and Dick, idly paging through the books. One of the Rauh volumes, before getting into the plant stuff, had a section on Malagasy culture and showed a picture of a Mahafaly tomb similar to Brenda’s. Something gnawed at my brain when I saw that, but I couldn’t zero in on it.

  Eventually I checked my watch. “It’s nearly two,” I announced. “And I haven’t gotten anything done today.”

  “What is it you want to do, man?” Austin asked.

  “Track down clues.”

  “Bring us up to date.”

  They were fascinated about Sunglasses Guy, and Vicki wove intricate webs with which I could entrap him, all highly imaginative and utterly impractical. Then she said, “Maybe he isn’t a cop.”

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe Casillas is telling the truth. Somebody else is following you.”

  “Who else would be following me?”

  Austin picked up the thread. “Could be the same guy who killed Brenda and Dick.”

  “No way.”

  He shrugged. “Seems as likely as the cops.”

  Once they got me started on that, it seemed perfectly logical. I’d been an idiot. The killer had been stalking me, and I didn’t even know it. In fact, I’d chased after the guy like I was the hero in a Hitchcock movie.

  No, that was ridiculous. It had to be a policeman who was following me around. “This Brenda business,” I said. “It’s just too complicated. I can’t get a handle on it.”

  “See,” Austin said, “there’s your problem. You keep calling this the Brenda business. You’re ignoring Dick.”

  “But can we be absolutely sure the murders are related?”

  “Of course they’re related, Pollyanna,” Vicki said. “And I don’t believe for a minute that someone is working their way down the list of officers. There’s some link between Brenda and Dick, and as soon as you find it the whole thing will fall into place.”

  “But—”

  “There’s no buts. Shut up and think about it a minute.”

  She was right. I’d been so bent on avenging Brenda that I’d been ignoring a whole other path of investigation. So I picked up the books and went back to the city to look up Hope McAfee.

  Traffic on P.C.H. can be brutal during beach weather. I got stuck around Chautauqua and didn’t get home until nearly four. I checked the machine. There wasn’t anything there, from Gina or anyone else. I called her but didn’t get an answer. I didn’t leave a message.

  I tried Hope, and she answered on the first ring. “Yes?”

  “Hi, Hope. Its Joe. Joe Portugal. I’m sorry about your loss.”

  “Thank you, Joe.”

  “I was also calling to see if you needed anything.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. As fine as anyone could be, given the circumstances. Now that we’ve put Dick’s ashes to rest I’ve been able to start—Oh, who am I kidding? I’m miserable. Everyone’s gone and left me by myself.”

  “Let me get you out of the house.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll come over and take you for a drive.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I think it is.” I hung up before she could protest further.

  Hope waited out front, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and jeans. Most of the color was gone from her face; for the first time since I’d known her, I could believe she was a sixty-year-old woman. She wore sunglasses, which hid most of the redness around her eyes.

  As she approached the truck I gathered the euphorbia books into a semineat pile on the floor. “Anywhere special you want to go?” I asked when she got in.

  “I’d really like to go to the beach. That’s where you’re supposed to go to think about things after the loss of a loved one, isn’t it? But I don’t think I could stand all the volleyball players and the children with pails and shovels.”

  “I have just the place.”

  Dockweiler Beach consists of several miles of sand south of Playa del Rey, and sometimes, before the really hot weather sets in, some sections are nearly deserted, especially late in the day. I took Hope down there, found a place to park, led her down to the water. We found a spot where there wasn’t anybody around for thirty yards. “How’s this?”

  “It’s perfect.” She sat on the sand just a bit above the high-tide line, drew her knees up close to her, locked her arms around them. She gazed out to sea. Out on the horizon I could just make out a tanker. Above us a gang of gulls squawked and soared.

  “Dick never liked to go to the beach,” she said.

  I dropped down beside her. “Why was that?”

  “He said the salt air gave him headaches. And that he didn’t want people to see his scrawny chest. What I wouldn’t give to see that scrawny chest again. What I wouldn’t give to hear his mumbling again.” She looked at me, indulged in a little smile. “After the first ten years I got to the point where I could make out just about everything he said. It gave me a kind of perverse pleasure watching other people try to understand him.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Yes it was, Joe, and you know it. Do you have any idea who killed Brenda yet? Oh, don’t give me that look. I know you’re nosing around. Lyle told me. And that nice boy who came by, Eugene Rand.”

  “Eugene Rand came to see you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That seems to surprise you. Why is that?”

  “I didn’t know he knew Dick.”

  “He knew him from the club. That’s what he said.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “No, something’s wrong here. Tell me what it is.”

  “I don’t want to upset you.”

  She put a hand on my forearm. “Do you really think anything you say could make me more upset?”

  “All right. You’ve been to club meetings. Have you ever seen him at one?”

  “No, but I only go to one or two a year. I went last Tuesday to give Dick moral support in dealing with Brenda’s death. Succulents really aren’t my thing.”

  “Rand isn’t in the club.”

  “Of course he is. Why else would he say he is?”

  “I’m the secretary. I know who’s on the list. He’s not.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t actually mention the club.”

  I grabbed onto that. “Yeah, that must be it. He must have known Dick from other succulent stuff. I just never saw them together.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me, Joe.”

  I sighed. “Do you think Dick’s death and Brenda’s are related?”

  “They would almost have to be, wouldn’t they? Although it’s hard enough for me to understand why anyone might want to kill my Dick, let alone both of them.”

  I thought about turning the conversation another way. Why make anyone else suspect Rand if I had only nebulous reasons to suspect him myself? But if I was going to get to the bottom of this, it wasn’t going to be by dropping things whenever the going got a little sticky. I’d seen how that worked in my love life. “Rand had a huge crush on Brenda.”

  “How would that connect to Dick?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. I really don’t have anything else on him. It’s simply that I don’t know why he would come to see you unless he was involved in some way. Eugene Rand’s a bit socially backward. I can’t see him making a condolence call for someone he knew barely, if at all.”

  “He seemed nice enough. Although he was awfully quiet. Sat in the corner. There were a lot of people there at the time.”

  Two runners passed by, a man and a woman, both prime specimens. The man nodded a greeting and I waved one back. “You didn’t happen to get a visit from a man named Henry Farber,” I said.

  “No, I don’t reme
mber that name.”

  “Good.”

  “Who is he?”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. Hope, I got into this thing because Brenda was a very good friend of mine. Dick and I were never what you would call close. I need to get an okay from you to dive into that end.”

  “Please, Joe, whatever you can do. The police certainly don’t have any good ideas.”

  “What do they have to say?”

  “They asked me a lot of questions Thursday night, after you and your girlfriend discovered Dicks—”

  “Did you tell them anything they seemed excited about?”

  “No. As far as I know, Dick didn’t have an enemy in the world. His competitors all respected him. His employees loved him. The nursery is a union shop, something Dick was very proud of, and the employees are well-paid and have a health plan and all. We’ve closed down for a few days, but we’re reopening Tuesday. You can come speak with people if you want.” She ran her hand under the surface of the sand, let it drift down between her fingers. “No, I had nothing to give the police. They call each day to see if I’ve had any thoughts, and I haven’t. They tell me there are some leads they’re following up on, but I assume they always say that.”

  “What leads?”

  “They didn’t say. I got the feeling it wasn’t anything very significant, that the person who did this was very careful about fingerprints and such.”

  “Do you know of any connection, any at all, between Dick and Brenda?”

  “Only club things, and you would know about those far better than I. They worked on the annual show together, of course, and they had their board meetings. But we certainly didn’t socialize with her. I don’t remember ever seeing her at the house, except when we had a board meeting there. Wait. She did come over once. Two or three years ago. Right around Christmas, I remember, because she brought us a poinsettia. But they started talking about plant things and I left them alone.”

  “You don’t know what kind of plant things?”

  “No.”

  “Did Dick ever have e-mail?”

  “Several years ago he subscribed to America Online for a while, but he found electronic mail too impersonal and gave it up.”

  “Did he ever say anything to you about a Euphorbia milii with striped leaves?”

  “Oh, dear. That’s the plant they found on his head, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “If he did, I don’t remember. But I must admit, sometimes when he went off about his plant collection, I tuned out. I think all married couples do that after a while. You get to know when its important to hear every word your spouse is saying and when it isn’t.”

  A tear ran out from under the edge of her sunglasses. Her face crumpled. A couple more drops made their way down her cheeks. For the tiniest second the reaction seemed forced. These could be crocodile tears sliding down her face. Hope had done it, wiped Dick out for God knew what reason, after treacherously killing Brenda to deflect suspicion.

  God, I was getting paranoid. Hope killing Dick? About as likely as me offing Gina.

  I scooted over and awkwardly slipped an arm around her. She cried for just a minute, reached into her purse, and pulled out a tissue. “What were you asking me about again?”

  “Its not important.”

  “Of course it’s important, or you wouldn’t have asked it. Oh, of course, about that plant. He might have mentioned such a thing, but, as I said, much of what he said about his plants went in one ear and out the other.”

  “Do you mind if I take a look in the yard when we get back?”

  “It will be dark.”

  “Not if we leave now.”

  “I’m not ready to go back yet. There won’t be anyone there. Lyle is dropping Magda off at eight. She’s going to spend the night.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I have a flashlight in the truck. I can use that.”

  Neither of us said anything for a long time. The sun got bigger and redder and tinted the sparse clouds pink. Off to our right two sea gulls had an altercation about some scrap. They resolved it without my intervention. The salt air got cooler, the ocean smell more noticeable.

  The two runners went by in the opposite direction, the only people I’d seen in a while. I looked around. Fifty yards away a young couple was shaking out their blanket. Twice that far, parents waited while their kid got in his last splashing of the day. And back on the path, near where our car was parked, someone sizable was watching us through a pair of binoculars.

  “Stay right here,” I told Hope. She tried to get up, but I pushed down on her shoulder and she dropped back to the sand.

  “Joe, what in heavens going—”

  “Just stay there, okay?” I ran toward the figure. The sand sucked at my sneakers, making me bounce back and forth like one of the aliens from that fifties sci-fi movie Invaders from Mars.

  I reached yelling distance. “Stay right there! I want to talk to you!” This clever action motivated the watcher to drop the binoculars from his eyes, indulge in an exaggerated take, and head for his red Malibu.

  By the time I reached the path, he was in the car. I kept coming, dodging an Accord to get across the road, and I actually got a hand on the rear fender before he spun the wheels and pulled out from under me. I chased him up Vista del Mar, because in the movies the hero can outrun a car. This wasn’t the movies. He disappeared around a bend.

  I angled over onto the sidewalk, put my head down, and wheezed. Next I rubbed the stitch in my side. By the time I’d finished that activity, Hope had caught up with me.

  “I told you to stay put,” I said, a bit unkindly.

  “Was that man involved in Dicks murder?”

  “I don’t know. He was at B rendas funeral, and I’ve caught him following me several times since.”

  “Not a very good surveillance man, is he?”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t they supposed to stay hidden?”

  “Jeez, Hope, I don’t know the rules for this kind of thing. I know he’s supposed to see me. Whether or not I’m supposed to see him isn’t on my instruction sheet.”

  “Did you get the plate?”

  “The plate? What plate is—Shit. What kind of moron am I? There I was with his license plate three feet from my face and I didn’t get it.”

  When I got over being pissed at myself, I herded Hope back to the truck. As we drove back I found myself wondering if Austin and Vicki had been right. What proof did I have that the guy following me was a cop? He did sort of look like a character from a Martin Scorsese movie. Maybe the Mob was involved. They’d horned in on plant smuggling, and I was getting in their way. Soon I would sleep with the fishes.

  21

  WHEN WE ARRIVED AT HOPE’S, LIGHTS BURNED IN THE LIVing room and someone moved about in the kitchen. “Looks like Magda let herself in.”

  “Yes. We exchanged keys years ago, for vacation emergencies and such.”

  I escorted her inside, swapped greetings with Magda, and took my flashlight out back. It took ten minutes to spot some red and green stripes at the periphery of the flashlight’s beam. Two leaves only, one half brown, the other relatively healthy. The plant itself was two feet tall, unbranched, in a rusted-out coffee can.

  I went into the garage. The Buick awaited a restoration that would probably never come. I found a cardboard box, slipped the plant in, carried it into the house. “You mind if I take this with me?”

  Magda gave me a funny look. Hope said, “That stick? Be my guest.”

  “Thanks. Anything else I can do?”

  She came over and gave me a little hug. “No, Joe. You’ve done enough. If I can just make it through the memorial service, I’ll be all right. You’ll be there?”

  “Yes, though I’ll probably be late. I have an audition.”

  “That’s fine, dear. Do what you have to do.”

  “I could cancel if you want. I could—”

  “Joe.”

  “Yes?”

  “You h
ave to make a living. Go to your audition. Dick would want it that way.”

  When I got home I put the euphorbia in the greenhouse and went into the kitchen to scramble a couple of eggs. I’d just cracked them into the bowl when the phone rang. I rushed to pick it up. “Hi!”

  “Joe Portugal?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Willy Schoeppe.”

  “Oh.”

  “You seem disappointed.”

  “Sorry. I was expecting someone else. What can I do for you this evening?”

  “I am calling to tell you that you can eliminate the plant smugglers as the possible murderers of our mutual friend.”

  “How did you come up with that conclusion?”

  “I have been in contact with them.”

  “You have? All of them? You’ve been in contact with all the plant smugglers in the entire world?”

  “You seem upset, young man.”

  “I’m sorry. I get like this when I haven’t had my dinner. Please, tell me everything.” I dropped down onto the floor with my back against the back of the couch.

  “I have been on the telephone all day. I finally tracked down my brother, Hermann, in Nairobi. He, in turn, contacted his colleagues. They are very upset.”

  “What do they have to be upset about?”

  “That suspicion has been pointed at them. They assured my brother they had nothing to do with Brenda’s murder.”

  “And you believe them.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are a more trusting soul than I, Mr. Schoeppe.”

  “Consider the circumstances. These people do not wish to have attention brought to themselves. A murder would certainly do so.”

  “What about that guy who got macheted? I suppose they had nothing to do with that too.”

  “I have told you that incident did not occur.”

  “I see. Thanks for the information. It’ll help me concentrate my efforts somewhere more fruitful.”

  “You are certainly welcome.”

  “Maybe we can get together again before you leave.”