Death of an Orchid Lover

by Nathan Walpow

  “She didn’t have dinner with Helen?”

  “No, not that part. I mean after, when she supposedly went home to feed her cat.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  I told her about my encounter with Laura’s feline day-care providers. Halfway through the story our somosas came. They’d made special ones, with just a bit of cauliflower mixed in with the potato, and they were excellent.

  I brought Sharon up to date on my visit with Yoichi. When I told her he said the argument with Albert never happened, she shook her head. “He must be practicing selective memory. I heard it with my own ears.”

  “I’m not doubting you. I’m just reporting what he said. You know, I’m getting the opinion everyone in the orchid club is hiding something.”

  She gave me a look.

  “Present company excepted, of course.”

  We shelved the talk of murder when our entrees came. We discussed plants and movies, El Nino and the president’s tribulations. She told me she lived in Westchester, near the airport, and I asked if the noise bothered her, and she said you got used to it. I told her about how I’d somehow stopped using my NordicTrack during the past year, and how I felt I was turning into a stack of flab.

  Somehow we got onto the subject of her hair. She said it had all gone gray when she was in her late twenties, and she’d colored it until she’d come to L.A. eight years before. She couldn’t find her regular color, kept putting off locating a substitute, finally decided she was fine with the natural shade. I told her I liked how it looked, and she thanked me, and we had Meaningful Eye Contact until I developed a sudden interest in the chutneys.

  We got into my theater days. She wanted to know if I’d ever gone to New York to try to make it in the big time. Then we went further back, to my childhood. I came close to telling her about my father’s prison stint. But I didn’t. I knew infatuation was taking its toll on my judgment. I suspected if I told her such things, I’d regret it later.

  She told me about her kid days too. She’d grown up near St. Louis, gone to Yale, then moved around the country for ten years chasing a career. I asked what kind of career and she said, “Oh, you know. High finance stuff.” She burned out on that and settled in Los Angeles because she was sick of cold weather. She worked at Kasparian’s, an electronics repair place on Pico Boulevard, doing the books and helping customers and performing some of the simpler repairs.

  “Quite a comedown from the world of high finance,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I feel like I’m doing something useful now. Working with real people. I really wasn’t cut out for a high-pressure field like the one I was in.”

  “And when did you join the orchid club?”

  “Shortly after I moved here.”

  “The friend that brought you in, have I met her?”

  “No, she moved away a few months later.”

  Eventually I looked down at my plate and discovered all the food was gone. I hardly remembered eating any of it. We ordered dessert. Sharon wouldn’t eat the foil on her kheer, which is a rice pudding-like concoction, so I ate it as well as my own. When the waiter came to clear the table and discovered I’d absorbed two doses of foil, he gave me a big impressed look. I asked him why. He said the foil gave you great sexual prowess.

  He walked away. Sharon looked me straight in the eye. “Interesting stuff, that foil,” she said. “Maybe I should try some.”

  “Maybe.”

  She took my hand. Hers was nice and warm. “But that comes later, doesn’t it?”

  “What does?”

  “Sex, silly. We don’t know each other well enough for that, do we?”

  Was this a test? Did she want me to play big macho man, jump up and say, Yes, we do, come home and do it to me now? “No. We don’t. Not yet.”

  She smiled and nodded. Yes, it had been a test, and, yes, I’d passed. Richard Dawson was yelling in my head. “Good answer, family. Show us, ‘No. We don’t. Not yet.’” I got a hundred points and the audience was screaming, “Joe, Joe, Joe.”

  Sharon withdrew her hand and pulled out a mirror and touched up her lipstick. Usually it bugs me when women check their makeup at the dinner table, but this time it didn’t. If the romance went sour, I’d look back on that moment as another one of those I-should-have-knowns.

  With just the slightest of arguments—“All right, but I get the next one”—she let me pay the check. We went outside. I was ecstatic that she was already thinking in terms of the next one.

  We walked on Washington, toward the beach. After a couple of blocks I thought it might be appropriate to hold hands. Or even put my arm around her. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do either. I felt fifteen again, not knowing what was appropriate, not wanting to screw things up by asking for too much too soon. This from a guy who had been checking condom viability earlier.

  We reached the beach, but it was too cold to walk on it, so we turned back. We got into the truck, drove home, got out, stood there awkwardly. “Do you want to come in?” I asked.

  “What for?” Not the expected answer.

  “I could make some tea, or coffee if you like. We could sit around and chat some more.”

  She just stared at me with that same peculiar half-smile she’d had on the first time we met.

  “We could watch reruns of Seinfeld on Channel 5. Look, I don’t know the answer to the question. You go out with someone, when you get back to whoever’s house you started at, you invite them in.”

  “Are you sure tea and TV are all you were thinking of?” “What do you want me to say?” “Say what you’re thinking.”

  “What I’m thinking? What I’m thinking is I’m very attracted to you and, much as I know how stupid it is to rush into physical stuff, part of me wants to get you in there and jump your bones.”

  The other half of the smile was gone. I’d blown it. Whatever made her think she wanted to be with me had been as ephemeral as a discocactus flower. Richard Dawson yelled, “Show us, ‘Jump your bones,’” and the big red X appeared and Dawson said, “Bad answer, family,” and the studio audience moaned, “Awwwwww.”

  It was like it had always been, all the way back to my teens, seeing a date go wonderfully until one thing went awry, and suddenly things turned mushy and I ended the evening alone, wondering if I’d ever see the person again. I felt like someone was playing a cosmic joke on me.

  “I can’t come in tonight,” she said. “I have to be up early.”

  “Does not tonight mean maybe some other night?”

  “Let’s just play it by ear.” I knew what that meant. It meant she was trying to get rid of me as quickly and with as little fuss as possible.

  She walked to her car and unlocked the door. I could hear the bubbling sound as the whole evening went down the drain. She slipped in and fastened her seat belt. “Are you free tomorrow night?” she said.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “The day after today.”

  “Yes, I’m free tomorrow.”

  “Do you want to go out again?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. But this time I pick the place. I’ll come by for you at seven.” She blew me a kiss, started the engine, pulled away from the curb, and left me standing in the gutter like a bewildered adolescent.

  18

  MORNING. THE CRAZY PEOPLE NEXT DOOR WOKE ME. They’d moved on from Iron Butterfly to African drums. Loud ones, played with no discernible sense of rhythm. I dragged myself out of bed, did my bathroom stuff, went in the kitchen for tea. The ants were back, eight or ten of them in a ragged trail originating somewhere behind the refrigerator. I considered dealing with them, decided to give them one more chance to leave the premises of their own accord.

  Out in the greenhouse, every cactus bud I looked at was infested with aphids. Some of the ants’ handiwork, perhaps; they liked to tend the aphids, protecting them from predators in exchange for tiny bubbles of honeydew. The aphids didn’t seem be doing any damage; their wee green bodies merely
performed that peculiar little dance aphids do. Call Olsen’s,” I said. “Get ladybugs.” I amused myself greatly.

  Before I could split my sides too much, the phone rang inside. It was Elaine. “You got it.”

  “The toilet bowl commercial?”

  “The toilet bowl cleaner commercial.”

  “That’s what I meant.” I grabbed a pencil and paper. “All right, when does it shoot?”

  “Tomorrow. At Riverrun Studio in Sunland.” Way up in the foothills.

  “I have to go to Sunland to shoot a toilet bowl commercial?”

  “Twice. You have to go up today for a costume fitting.”

  “Costume? What costume? Why can’t I wear my nice suburban dad clothes?”

  “They didn’t tell me. Is there a problem?”

  “No.”

  She gave me the details of where I had to be and when I had to be there. Then, “I’ve got a million calls to make. See you Saturday night.”

  “You will? Where?”

  “At your father’s. Our big family gathering.”

  “What big family gathering?”

  “He’s having us over. He hasn’t told you about this?”

  “No. He’s getting forgetful.”

  We ended the conversation. I put the handpiece down. Something occurred to me. If I was with my family, it would preclude having a Real Saturday Night Date with Sharon. If a Real Date was a big deal, a Real Saturday Night Date was an order of magnitude bigger. No work that day, so you’re not worn out. No work the day after, so you can stay out as late as you want. Then, if you get lucky, sleep in the next morning. Or, at least, stay in bed. With the person you were with Saturday night.

  I glossed over the fact that since I had no real job, I didn’t have to worry about being anywhere most any morning. And that Sharon had mentioned she worked Saturdays, thereby negating the not-worn-out factor. She’d switched her day off the week before to attend the orchid bash.

  Didn’t matter. The principle held.

  I took stock. It was Thursday already. What made me assume Sharon would be free Saturday?

  And, if she were, why would I let being with her interfere with plans with my loved ones?

  Of course, I could make the family thing part of my big date, the one that hadn’t been arranged. But I didn’t want to do that. I hated when the family met someone I was seeing. Because then, when the inevitable breakup happened, they delighted in telling me how much they liked her and how sad they were that I wasn’t seeing her anymore.

  Gina and I were back at French Market for breakfast. In celebration of my latest commercial triumph, I was buying. Gina began quizzing me the minute we sat down. “So how was your big date last night?”

  “pretty good. Though I nearly screwed things up at the end.”

  “What, you tried to score and she didn’t like it?”

  “No.”

  “Did you score?”

  “What is this, the boys’ locker room?” “Did you?”

  “No. I really didn’t try very hard.”

  “When are you seeing her again?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” I took a sip of water. “Gi?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know your theory?”

  “Which one?”

  “That when I get mixed up in a murder I get horny.”

  “Oh. That theory.”

  “Yes, that theory. I think you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right.”

  “It’s not only Sharon. Yesterday I was viewing Burns’s butt with lust in my heart.”

  “It’s a nice butt, all right.” “You remember her butt?”

  “Bisexual Woman remembers all butts. Boy butts, girl butts—all fodder for my libido.”

  “Fodder for your libido?” “It has a certain ring, doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  The waiter came and took our order. When he left, Gina said, “Do you think Laura did it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And I keep coming back to, if she didn’t do it, why would she lie about being at her place feeding the cat? Damn it, I wish I knew if the police had decided whether she killed herself. Because if she did …” I plucked a sugar packet from the dispenser. It had a picture of Grauman’s Chinese on it. Sorry, Mann’s Chinese. Part of a chain now. “I kind of want to drop the whole thing. I want to go back to my orderly life.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because I promised Laura.”

  She picked up her purse and pulled out a tissue. There was something odd about the way she was handling the purse.

  “You’ve got your gun in there, don’t you.”

  “Yes, and now the whole restaurant knows, thank you very much.”

  “Given that you’ve armed us, it doesn’t sound like you think I should give up my detective work.”

  Considering the orderly life that’s the alternative, “I’d say the murder thing’s a lot more exciting.”

  “But is that reason enough to keep doing it?”

  “That’s a decision only you can make.”

  But, of course, I’d already made it.

  Gartner’s Tires was on a depressing strip of Reseda Boulevard. The mix of businesses was similar to the one in Hawthorne, but here everything was more tawdry, more used-up, more sad. Car dealerships, new and used, with tattered colored flags snapping in the breeze. Fast-food joints, both chains and locals. Nail parlors. Property managers. Martial arts places. It was at least ten degrees hotter than it had been in West Hollywood. The air was motionless.

  Gartner’s was on a corner, an L-shaped building that surrounded a parking lot in which a half-dozen cars waited with numbered magnetic hats on their roofs. A big sign announced WE CARRY ALL BRANDS. Hundreds of old tires were piled into mountains in the empty lot next door.

  As I pulled up, a fat guy wearing a light gray shirt and pants strolled out to the parking lot. He squinted at his clipboard, using a finger as a reading aid, got into a giant Mercedes with ridiculous mag wheels, and squeezed it into one of the stalls inside the building. He got out, spotted me, grabbed a car hat, came over. “The embroidery on his shirt told me he was Ronnie and that he was the assistant manager. Those front tires look pretty bad,” he said. He knelt beside the Datsun. His knees cracked. He face registered concern, whether for my tires or his knees I couldn’t tell. He whipped out a tiny ruler, measured my tread, shook his head. “Only two-thirty-seconds.”

  “Or one-sixteenth, as we say on my planet.”

  “We got a special today, Pirellis, special purchase, special price. Two for fifty-three fifty, plus balancing, of course. And valves, of course.”

  “And tax, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sounds like a good deal, Ronnie, but the tire money in my budget doesn’t break loose until around the Fourth of July. I’m really here to see Helen. Or David. Or both.”

  “The cops stop you with tires like that, they’ll—”

  “Look, I’ll think about the tires, okay? I really need to see the owners.”

  He stood back up, emitting a groan, and shrugged. “It’s your truck. Helen’s in the office. David’s somewhere.” His customer radar sensed the VW Cabriolet turning into the lot. He rushed off to push Pirellis.

  I shouldered open one of the twin glass doors and went in. Tire paraphernalia surrounded me. On one wall hung a tire that had been cut through to show its interior construction. Next to it a display proclaimed one tire was GOOD and another was BETTER and another was BEST. A fourth was FOR RV’S, as if this were some measure of quality better than BEST. Across the way a poster showed the horrible things that could happen to your tires if they weren’t properly balanced. Another, a decade old, informed me Goodrich was the one without the blimp.

  A couple of customers sat on low black couches. The vinyl seating surface was about a foot off the ground, making it easy for them to select from the pile of Tire Retail
er Gazettes and out-of-date People magazines on the chipped wood-grain table before them.

  The office area was visible through an interior window. “I cruised by the displays to the adjoining door, knocked, heard a woman’s voice say, Come in.” I opened the door and stepped through.

  The walls inside bore minimum wage statements and OSHA reminders. A calendar from some tool jobber featured a pneumatic babe in a 50s-style two-piece bathing suit, a porkpie hat that said Snap-on, and a big fake smile.

  There was a desk clad in the same phony wood laminate as the table in the lobby. A red-flowered phalaenopsis sat on it, and Helen Gartner sat behind it. A Y-shaped necklace with purple stones rested on her nicely filled white blouse. Whatever else she had on was hidden behind the desk.

  I walked over and offered a hand. “Joe Portugal. I’m an old friend of Laura Astaire’s.”

  She took my hand. Yes. I saw you at the orchid club the other night. Well, any friend of Laura’s, et cetera, et cetera. I’m Helen Gartner. “But you must know that.”

  I nodded. “Sad about Laura.”

  “Yes. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “You were close?”

  “Fairly.”She gestured toward one of the olive-green leatherette chairs across the desk from her. “Have a seat.” After I had, she said, Now that we’ve gotten the clever banter out of the way, what can I do for you? “I’m guessing you’re not here to talk the price down on a set of tires.”

  I shook my head. “I’m looking into Albert Oberg’s murder,” I said. “And now, Laura’s too.”

  “I see.” She made a notation on a yellow legal pad, tapped the pen against the fingertips of the opposite hand. “And why don’t you just leave that to the police?”

  “I promised Laura.”

  “Ah,” she said. And again, “Ah.”

  “I hate to see her under suspicion, and—”

  “And now that she’s dead you feel someone needs to protect her name. Is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Do you think she had something to do with it? I can assure you she didn’t. I was with her when Albert was killed.”