The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) Read online

  I went over and checked her out. “You still smell a little.”

  “I stood under the shower for fifteen minutes,” she said. “Mrs. K. kvetched about me using all the hot water, so I got out.”

  “Who’s this?” asked Officer Jones. I explained. We all stood around staring at each other. I picked up a magazine. “Don’t touch that,” Benton said. I put it down and went to sit. He gave me a look. I stayed on my feet.

  Ten minutes later a short Hispanic man in a navy blue suit strode through the front door. A solid-looking African-American woman followed immediately behind. They quizzed Benton and Jones before heading for the bathroom. When they came back fifteen minutes later, the woman returned to the patrol officers, and the man came over to Gina and me. He looked to be about fifty, with a complexion a shade darker olive than Gina’s. Most of the hair was gone from the top of his head; what remained was near black. His deep brown eyes wore half-glasses and had that seen-everything look, and the bags under them were grayish.

  He silently inspected me, with that look I get a lot where somebody thinks they’ve seen me before. He caught me staring at his tie, a maroon one patterned with little cannons. I caught him catching me, and we played eye games until I looked away. He’d obviously played before.

  The woman walked up. “I’m Detective Burns; this is Detective Casillas. I’ll be the primary investigator on this case.” Like she was telling us she going to be our waitress at California Pizza Kitchen. She was in her late thirties, I guessed, and wore a tan linen pantsuit over a white blouse, and from the way it fit and the way she moved, you could tell she took care of herself. She had superlative posture, and that made her seem taller than her height, which was no more than five-four. Eyes nearly black in a long face. A strong mouth. Her black hair was medium length, her earrings small gold hoops.

  Casillas stood poised with a pocket-size leather-bound notepad and one of those pens you buy for $9.95 at the mall, the ones with a wood inlay that look like a great deal until you examine them closely. Burns had a more utilitarian pad but an identical pen. Maybe they’d gotten the quantity discount.

  Burns consulted her notes. “You’re Joseph Portugal?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tell me about the dead woman.”

  “Can’t we call her something besides ‘the dead woman’?”

  “Yeah,” Gina said. “It gives me the creeps.”

  Casillas butted in. His voice was high and reedy. “Homicide gives everybody the creeps, Miss—” He checked his book. “Miss Vela.”

  Two men and a woman popped through the door, carrying cases and cameras and other items I assumed were crime-scene paraphernalia. Burns directed them to the bathroom. Casillas said, “Okay, talk to us.”

  “What about?” I asked. Stupid, but I was nervous.

  “Jesus,” Casillas said. “Are we going to have an attitude? Look, we can do this here or we can do it at the station. Most people’d rather not go to the station.”

  “Joe, be nice to the nice detectives,” Gina said.

  “If you insist, dear.”

  “Detective Casillas,” Burns said. “Why don’t you interview Ms. Vela in the kitchen?”

  He threw her a slightly dirty look and led Gina off. Burns turned back to me. “Go ahead, please.”

  “Brenda taught at UCLA. Professor of botany. Been there over twenty years.”

  “Seems young for that.”

  “She was older than she looked. She’ll be—she would have been—fifty next month.”

  Burns made notes in her little book. When she wrote, her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth like a three-year-old’s. “Go on.”

  “She was supposed to be on her way to Madagascar,” I said. “I was taking care of her birds.”

  “What’s in Madagascar?”

  “Brenda had a thing for everything Madagascan. Or Malagasy, to use the right adjective, which few people do. I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

  “You’re doing fine. Please don’t be nervous, Mr. Portugal.”

  “Sorry. I’ve never known anyone who was murdered before.” I took a deep breath, let it out. “She first went to Madagascar twenty years or so ago and has been there maybe a dozen times since. Recently it’s been yearly. She loves the people, the culture…and the plants. She was real active in the succulent world.”

  “The succulent world?”

  “Succulent-plant collectors. You know, like cacti.”

  “Like the one in her mouth.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not a cactus. It’s Euphorbia abdelkuri. Different family entirely. That plant’s more closely related to a poinsettia than to a cactus.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “Africa, probably. Euphorbs grow all over the world, but most of the tall succulent ones are from Africa.” I told her a little about the plants and their nasty sap. Then I said, “Wait a minute.”

  “What is it, Mr. Portugal?”

  “Brenda has the biggest abdelkuri I’ve ever seen. Six or seven branches, over three feet tall. I wonder if that’s a piece of it.”

  “Where is this plant?”

  “Should be in her greenhouse.”

  “Show me.”

  I led her out back and into the greenhouse, which was jammed with euphorbias of every shape, size, and origin. I spotted the parent of my E. viguieri but didn’t think taking the time to check the label would sit well with Detective Burns. A bit later I tracked down the abdelkuri. None of it was missing. “That’s funny,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “That Brenda would have another abdelkuri around. She was always complaining how she didn’t have enough space in the greenhouse. So whenever she got a plant that was better than one she already had of the same species, she would get rid of the old one. She’d bring them into club meetings sometimes and auction them off and give the money to the club. So maybe—nah, it seems too stupid.”

  “Let me be the judge of that, Mr. Portugal.”

  “Maybe the killer brought the plant with him. Or her.”

  “Why would he or she do that?”

  “How do I know?” I laughed weakly. “I’m not the killer.”

  “No one said you were.” She jotted something down. “You mentioned a club. Which club would that be?”

  “The Culver City Cactus Club. She was the president.”

  “And you’re a member of this club.”

  “I’m the secretary.”

  “And Miss Vela?”

  “No. She’s thinks plant people are crazy.”

  We went back inside. A skinny Asian guy walked by, carrying what looked like a giant meat thermometer. “What’s that?” I asked.

  Burns glanced over. “Liver thermometer. To determine time of death.”

  “They’re going to stick that in … in …”

  She nodded. “Anything else you can tell me about the victim?”

  “Huh? Oh, sorry. Let me see. She was in charge of the Kawamura Conservatory, up at UCLA. Second-biggest succulent collection in southern California, after the Huntington.”

  “What was the purpose of the victims current trip to Madagascar?”

  “She was looking for new plants. A lot of the species there don’t grow anywhere else, and there’s still lots of new ones to be discovered. Lots of euphorbias there. She was also going to check up on habitat destruction. They’re really tearing up the place there, and lots of plants—and animals—are endangered. And she was going to look into plant smuggling. Brenda was active in trying to enforce CITES.”

  “What’s that?”

  It took me a few seconds. “Convention on something, something in Endangered Species. International Trade, that’s it. It’s a treaty concerning commerce in endangered plants. Animals too.”

  “People smuggle plants?”

  “I hear it’s big business, Detective. There’s people out there making a lot of money smuggling plants. Brenda could have stepped on some toes. Maybe they came after her. You might want to
follow up on that.”

  She let me have a little smile. I was glad I was amusing her. “We’ll be following up on everything you tell us. Do you have the names of any of these people?”

  I shook my head. “I think they’re mostly Europeans. Germans. Czechs, maybe.”

  “Can you think of anybody else who might have had a reason to kill Ms. Belinski?”

  “No one comes to mind.” I shrugged. “But Brenda could be abrasive. She would get really irritated when people didn’t know stuff she thought they should, or when she thought they were wasting her time. Maybe she pissed somebody off enough to …” I let it trail off.

  She wrote another few words. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Portugal?” I’m an actor.

  Her expression grew dubious. I knew what she was thinking. Everyone in Los Angeles claimed to be an actor. Unless they said they were a screenwriter. Or both. I waited for her to ask what she might have seen me in, but she refrained. “How well did you know the victim?”

  “She was a friend. Probably my second-best.”

  “A lover?”

  I looked in her eyes. No prurient interest there, just a cop doing her job. “A long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  “Four years.”

  “Who ended it?”

  “She did, more or less. Look, Detective, that was four years ago. You think I waited around four years for the perfect opportunity to stick a plant down her throat?”

  “Any other relationships you know of?”

  “A few.”

  “Names?”

  A gave her a couple. She wrote them down. “Any family?”

  “My dad. He lives in the Fairfax district.”

  “I meant the victim. Does she have any family to be informed?”

  “Oh. Sorry. Her parents are dead. She’s got a sister, but they weren’t close. She lives in Wisconsin, I think, some university town.”

  After a few more questions she said, “That’s all for now. Well probably be looking you up, but in the meantime …” She gave me a pair of business cards. I checked them over. Her first name was Alberta; his was Hector.

  Casillas was done with Gina too. We headed for the door. I stopped and got Officer Jones’s attention. “What about the birds?” I asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Who’s going to feed them?”

  “I don’t know. Hey, Detective Casillas, what about the birds?”

  He regarded her balefully over the top of his glasses. “What about ’em?”

  “They’ll need to be fed,” I said. “I could take Muck and Mire with me, of course, but the ones in the bedroom—”

  Casillas rushed up and waggled a surprisingly well-manicured finger under my nose. “You’re not taking anything out of here. They could be evidence.”

  “How can birds be evidence?”

  “Maybe they saw something. Maybe we should take them down to the station and show them mug shots. Hey, Benton.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Round up all the birds and bring them—”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “You got a problem?”

  “You’ll traumatize them.”

  “So what? They’re only birds.”

  “But—”

  “You eat chicken, don’t you?”

  “That’s different. That’s—”

  “Keep your pants on. Someone will take care of the birds.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. Tell you what. Because you’ve been so cooperative, when we get the guy you can take them home.”

  “Me? What am I going to do with eight canaries?”

  “How the hell do I know? That’s your problem.”

  Outside, yellow crime-scene tape roped off a portion of the front yard. Beyond it a crowd of onlookers gaped, Mrs. Kwiatkowski among them, in a chartreuse outfit identical to Gina’s but for the color. We waved at her, made our way to my pickup, and drove away from the scene of the crime.

  THE JACARANDA HAD BLOOMED LATE. EVEN ON MEMORIAL Day a purple haze billowed over every block. Off to the west, ruffled clouds reflected shades of violet and pink. The air, stripped of pollutants by the previous night’s rain, smelled strangely clean. Kids played ball, while their parents watched them with half an eye. All was right with the world, except someone I knew was dead.

  We stopped at Hurry Curry to pick up a couple of combination plates and got back to my place around eight-thirty. The motion-detector light in the driveway didn’t go on. Whoever’d offed Brenda had disconnected it. He was lying in wait for me. He had a master plan to kill off all the succulent-plant collectors in Los Angeles in order to win all the trophies at the Intercity show.

  I made it through that fantasy and we went inside, where I jumped in the shower while Gina dished out the food. I was rinsing off when I heard her say, “Anybody dead in here?”

  I poked my head around the shower curtain. She’d ditched Mrs. Kwiatkowski’s polyester and had on my Procol Harum T-shirt and my purple sweatpants, all bunched around her calves. “Very funny,” I said.

  “What do you want to drink?”

  “A beer,” I said. “Beer goes good with Indian food.”

  She nodded. “I’ll have one too.”

  “You don’t drink beer.”

  “Ill make an exception.” She disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Five minutes later we were arrayed on the couch. I sniffed. Either the Cygon smell had worn off or I’d gotten used to it.

  Gina’s method of distributing our food had been to place each Styrofoam container on a plate and cut off the tops. While we ate we exchanged summaries of our interviews, after which she said, “Do you really think she was murdered?”

  I downed a forkful of lentil curry, took a sip of my beer. It was the only thing I could taste. “Even given Brenda’s fondness for cylindrical objects in her mouth, I don’t think she put this one in.”

  “Whoever did picked a particularly weird one.”

  “It is more bizarre than most, isn’t it?” I got up, took Succulents: The Illustrated Dictionary down from the bookcase, and leafed through until I found E. abdelkuri. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “It says here it’s from Socotra.”

  “Why is that an uh-oh?”

  “I told that lady detective it was probably from Africa.”

  “I don’t think being wrong about that is a felony. You did say ‘probably’ Where is Socotra, by the way?”

  “The Middle East somewhere, I think.” I grabbed an atlas and riffled pages. “It’s an island off the coast of Somalia, although it looks like officially it’s part of Yemen.”

  “That’s more or less Africa.”

  I was already back in the succulent book. “This also points out that the latex is yellow, which I noticed when we found Brenda.”

  “Latex?” Sap.

  “So what if it’s yellow?”

  “Most euphorbia sap is white.”

  “Is this significant?”

  “How the hell do I know? I’m just making observations.”

  “You’re supposed to know these things. I’ll give you another chance. Do you think she was poisoned to death, or did she strangle on that thing? Or what?”

  I shrugged. “We succulent people are always talking about how euphorbias are poisonous. How you shouldn’t get the sap—”

  “Latex.”

  “—in your eyes or in an open cut. This book makes a point of saying abdelkuri’s is poisonous.” I scanned some other euphorbia entries. “It doesn’t point that out on any of the others. So maybe abdelkuri’s is especially bad. I wonder if the killer knew that.” I put the book away and returned to the couch. “Gi, I don’t have any idea how it killed her. Maybe it got in her stomach and was digested and poisoned her blood, or maybe it just closed up her breathing passages, or—”

  “Enough already,” she said. “The whole thing gives me the creeps.”

  “To quote our friend Casi
llas, ‘Homicide gives everybody the creeps.’”

  I ripped off some nan, wadded it into my mouth. A little burned piece tumbled from my lips and fell in my lap. I brushed it off, pursued it into the crack between the cushions, pushed it out of sight. “You know, it’s hard for me to deal with the fact that somebody’s dead.”

  Gina nodded.

  “Somebody I knew.”

  Another nod.

  “Somebody I slept with.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “You do? How could you?” I went to the kitchen and returned with a container of Cherry Garcia and a couple of spoons. Gina’d taken her shoes off and propped her feet on the coffee table. She’d turned on the TV; Jean-Claude Van Damme was doing the splits to avoid some menace or other.

  I flopped down next to her, handed her a spoon, dug in with my own. My taste buds were back on duty. I took another bite and turned over the container. “So who do you think did it?” I asked.

  She ran the spoon around the inside of the container, removing little overlooked driblets. Ever precise, my Gina. “My bets on those CITES people. I don’t trust those Germans.”

  “Bigot.”

  “Okay, I’m kidding about the Germans. But not the rest. Plant smugglers makes sense to me.”

  “Plant smugglers makes more sense to you than one of B rendas boyfriends?”

  “Call me a romantic.”

  “You think an angry plant smuggler is more romantic than an angry boyfriend?”

  “Romance ain’t what it used to be.”

  I grabbed back the ice cream, dug out a couple of chunks of chocolate, let them roll around my tongue. “Tomorrow night’s the CCCC meeting,” I said. “I’m going to have to tell all those people about Brenda.”

  “Wont they read about it in the paper?”

  “Will it be in the paper?”

  “She was pretty well-known in her field, wasn’t she? It seems like the kind of thing you see on page one of the Times Metro section, PLANT KILLS UCLA PROFESSOR, something like that.”

  She shoved me toward the end of the couch. Wouldn’t give up until I was squashed up against the arm. She lay her head in my lap, fixed her gaze on the TV. “Maybe one of the club people offed Brenda.”