Breakdown, p.11
Breakdown, page 11
“All right, ready for this? She thought she was her own mother.”
“That is a new one.”
“Even for you, huh? Well, that’s reassuring because it totally threw me.”
“What exactly did she—”
“That her mother was a movie star who’d disappeared when she was a kid and she’d just reappeared by inserting herself into Zelda. After Zelda had her baby. What made it even bizarrer was how calm she was when she said it. Like ordering an omelet. Then she starts poking different parts of her stomach and telling me ‘Mommy’s hugging and warming me here, here and here and here.’ ”
“Did she ever mention her mother’s name?”
“Nope, just ‘Mommy’ or maybe ‘Mother,’ can’t remember. Oh, yeah, she also said something about blood and dirt, made these scooping motions with her hands. Like she was digging something up. Not gonna lie, Doc, it weirded me out. After that I kept my distance.”
“Did other people on the set avoid her?”
“Hmm…Zelda was never a big socializer. Honestly, I don’t know what was in anyone else’s head. Like I said, we weren’t a close-knit bunch.”
“Did her behavior have anything to do with the cancellation?”
“Oh, no, she did a fine job once the tape was rolling. We got dumped because the show was crap and people stopped watching and the network had better prospects. You were her kid’s shrink, I assume you knew she had her own shrink. Some older guy, every so often he’d show up on the set, just hang back, not doing much. Zelda never said who he was but everyone knew because that’s the way it is on a show. No one thought anything of it, she wouldn’t be the first person to bring her therapist to work. Anyway, you should be talking to him.”
“Dr. Sherman,” I said. “He’s the one who referred Zelda’s son to me. Unfortunately, he’s deceased.”
“Oh. Too bad. So I’m last resort, huh?”
“Sometimes peers know things therapists don’t, Steve. Did Zelda ever bring her son to work?”
“No, never. Never tried to wangle a part for him, either, far as I know. That’s my Mommy Dearest thing kicking in. My old lady never got closer to the industry than being a script girl on commercials, convinced herself I’d be her golden goose. And I was. Not that I ever saw a penny of it.”
“The Coogan Act didn’t help?”
“The Coogan Act says kids get a guaranteed percentage, but it’s small and can also be spent for the kid’s benefit, meaning any damn thing the guardian decides. My maternal figure decided a five-year-old needed trips to Hawaii where he’d be left alone in hotel rooms while she partied.”
I shook my head.
Beal said, “Don’t bother feeling sorry for me, Doc. My life’s fantastic.” He finished the croissant, pointed. “That one’s yours.”
“No, thanks.”
“A man with willpower. Doesn’t life get boring?”
“Any idea where Zelda lived when the show got cut?”
“Nope. Don’t the cops know her current address? You might find the boy there, with some caretaker.”
I said, “She was a street person.”
“Oh,” said Beal. “Shit, that’s why you’re worried about the kid—crazy woman, who knows what she’d be capable of. I’d like to be able to tell you no way, Zelda would never hurt anyone. But I can’t, people can’t be predicted anyway, let alone psychos.”
“Did you know Zelda changed her name?”
“I didn’t, but no big shock, everyone reinvents themselves.” Teeth flashed. “I was born Stuart Henry Russmeisl.”
He reached for his wallet. I got to mine first and put cash on the table. His nod said proper procedure had been followed.
We left the café together and when I headed to the Seville, he said, “Nice wheels, what year?”
“ ’Seventy-nine.”
“My mom had a ’76, painted it pearlescent pink and dyed the vinyl top eggplant. Original engine?”
“Third.”
“So you’re a loyal guy.” He grabbed my hand, shook it. “I hope you find the kid and he’s okay.”
Wide, sunny grin, spasmodically sudden. “And if you’re looking for a nice place in Tarzana…”
CHAPTER
16
Beal’s account matched what I already knew: Zelda had displayed symptoms of mood and thought disorder. But he had lent some clarity to her Mommy-talk.
A vanished actress, blood and dirt.
Like she was digging something up.
Had the search for a long-buried mother—a mother whose soul she believed lived inside of her—fueled her incursions into strangers’ backyards?
Had she been driven to excavate?
There’d been no sign she’d disrupted Enid DePauw’s immaculate garden, but sudden death could’ve gotten in the way.
Had she been clawing earth when discovered on Bel Azura Drive?
Then again, her initial arrest had resulted from a far more mundane motive: stalking an ex.
And what was the point of applying logic to psychotic behavior? Even if I came up with a “reason” for Zelda’s trespassing, what did it matter?
The only worthwhile goal was finding an eleven-year-old boy.
First step: backtrack to Jane Chase. Or whatever her real name had been.
I phoned one of Milo’s sources, a clerk at County Records named Linus McCoy always happy to “facilitate data access” in return for a bottle of twenty-one-year-old single malt, a nice Cabernet, or a caviar sampler from Petrossian.
“My fellow gourmet,” Milo calls McCoy, though his own bent is for quantity rather than quality.
McCoy answered his office phone sounding sleepy. “Oh, hey, Doc. How’s Dirty Harry? Haven’t heard from him in a while.”
“Detecting as we speak.” I gave him my request.
He said, “Sir, that information is public access.”
Click.
A minute later, he called back. “Sorry ’bout that, I’m on my cell now.”
“Your work phone’s monitored?”
“Probably not, but the county’s been sending in snotty little MBAs to audit a bunch of agencies and one was passing by my desk. Anyway, you don’t need me to look for a name change, formal requests aren’t necessary anymore, people can call themselves whatever they want.”
“I know that, Linus, but this change would’ve happened a while back.”
“Got it. New name and approximate date of petition.”
“Zelda Chase, at least five years ago. I’ve been told her given name was Jane.”
“Back when she was married to Tarzan? Okay, hold on…found it, she petitioned thirteen years ago. Age twenty-two. Zelda Chase née…uh-oh, Doc, you’re not going to want to hear this. Original name Jane no middle initial Smith.”
—
Robin and I went to a Vietnamese place for dinner. At eight-forty, fortified by spring rolls, pho, and beer, we were already in bed reading, Blanche curled between us, when Milo called.
“I’m over at the crypt, just watched Zelda’s autopsy. Cause and manner of death remain undetermined. But it’s interesting.”
“Nasty word.”
“The nastiest. If you have time, I’d like to come by, run a few things past you. I can be there by ten, no prob if that’s too late, we’ll connect tomorrow.”
I asked Robin if she minded.
She said, “Do I really need to answer that?”
—
He showed up at ten-fifteen, wearing a soot-gray suit vanquished by smog and sweat. Robin hugged him before returning to the bedroom and her copy of American Lutherie, then Blanche assumed leadership of the greeting party, nuzzling his trouser cuffs.
“Hey, there, poochette.” He rubbed her head, plopped down on the nearest sofa.
No beeline to the fridge.
I said, “Something to drink?”
He waved that off. “When I said ‘interesting’ I meant ‘oh, shit.’ As in I was hoping to clear it quickly but forget that. Not a trace of illegal dope or booze in her system, just remnants of Ativan and the pathologist said it wouldn’t have risen to a ‘remedial level’ let alone killed her. He couldn’t tell me if she’d be walking around actively crazy or still suppressed because it’s not just a matter of chemistry, he’d need to know her behavioral patterns. So I’m asking you: Think she was raving her way from Santa Monica to Bel Air? Some manic thing that might’ve caused her heart to whack out? Pathologist says if she popped an arrhythmia, there could be no physical evidence.”
He pressed his hands together, prayerfully. “Please don’t go all academic on me and say anything’s possible.”
I said, “Lou Sherman’s original guess was she was a mixture of bipolar and schizophrenia and nothing I’ve seen or heard contradicts that. When I saw her she was either asleep or lethargic, but something drove her to leave the shelter and trek ten miles, probably on foot. So if I had to bet, I’d say a manic state was more likely than depressed. I talked to one of her co-actors, a guy named Stevenson Beal, and he described extreme and rapid mood shifts back when she was working.”
“The gay fireman.”
“You watched the show?”
“God forbid. I remember Rick working himself up about the character, last thing we needed was another lavender Stepin Fetchit. Beal have anything else to say?”
I described Zelda’s God and mother delusions, my wondering about psychotic archaeology.
He said, “Digging for Mommy in other people’s gardens? Interesting—and now I mean that literally. What if, in the process of getting down and dirty, she ate something toxic?”
“The pathologist found evidence of poisoning?”
“More like question marks, Alex. Her liver and intestinal tract were a mess. Given her lifestyle, his first thought was advanced hepatitis. But that didn’t pan out and her tox screen came back negative. No carbon monoxide, either. I asked him—Bill Bernstein, he’s a senior guy—why look for that, she wasn’t cherry red and she died outdoors. He said I hadn’t established where she died, only where she’d been found. I said there were no drag marks. He said that didn’t impress him and besides, there are cases of people on boats dying from CO when they get too close to the exhaust, he’s thorough, do I have a problem with that? At that point I bowed and scraped and shut my mouth. Then he took a closer look at her guts and found no discrete lesions or obstruction and that bothered him, considering the ravaged state of the tissue. He sent out tissue samples for further analysis. Problem with the advanced panels is if you don’t know what you’re looking for and the culprit isn’t on the list, you’re screwed.”
“Bernstein have any hunches?”
“He’s guessing some sort of alkaloid but that’s as far as he’ll go. If the tests come back negative, the case will remain open and we may never know the truth.”
I said, “If she was a digger, she might’ve ingested some sort of mold or spore—anything that could live in soil.”
“You see any evidence she mucked around in Mrs. DePauw’s flower beds? I didn’t, that place was Home and Garden on steroids.”
“If she plucked a random toadstool, there wouldn’t be any mucking. And now I’m wondering if we could be dealing with pica—eating nonnutritive material like glass, plaster, and dirt. Psychotics exhibit a high rate of it. Did she dig at the house on Bel Azura?”
He pinched his nose. “Don’t know, never read the file. If she did chomp the shrubs up there, it didn’t hurt her.”
“Maybe that was the problem,” I said. “She’d gotten away with it before. Then she didn’t. Also, pica isn’t inconsistent with her former profession. Body image and food issues go with that territory.”
“Actress with an eating disorder, big shock.” He got up and paced, returned to the sofa but stayed on his feet. “Thanks for the hospitality and sorry for putting a damper on your evening.” To Blanche: “That means you, too.”
She followed him to the door.
I told him about my call to Linus McCoy.
He said, “Good old Linus. Jane Smith, huh? It’s like a bad joke.”
“Any new thoughts on finding Ovid?”
“Sorry, insight deficit. Let me sleep on it.”
“Could you help me locate other people from the show? Conventional methods haven’t worked.”
“I’m being asked to engage in extra-legal intrusion into the personal data of law-abiding citizens? Tsk.” He opened the door. “Sure, why not tomorrow? My eyes are crossing.”
He peered toward the kitchen.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any edible scraps lying around? All the talk of poison has gotten me famished.”
CHAPTER
17
True to his word, Milo phoned at ten a.m.
“Snagged you some info on the SubUrban folk. Got a pen handy?”
“I never gave you the cast list.”
“Golly gosh, I discovered something new called the Internet. Ready? The producers you already know. By the way, they’re married to each other. The guy who played the dad died last year, lung disease. The two Nigerians haven’t paid taxes in the U.S. since the show got canceled and turns out they’re not Nigerians, they’re from Ghana. One of them, Robert Adjaho, runs The New Ashanti Theatre of Drama and Dance in London, here are his factoids.”
I copied.
“The Nigerian wife, Diana Humado, I couldn’t locate. Justin Lemarque, the kid who played the son, is a freshman at Brown. His real name is Justin Levine, only address I’ve got is the school. The sister, Shay McNamara, is actually named Shay McNamara. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and does P.R. for that humongous estate they’ve got there, Biltmore. No news on the dog or the fish, here’s McNamara’s office number.”
I thanked him.
He said, “This level of achievement, I’m sending Doritos to myself.”
—
Six-twenty p.m. in London gave me a shot at reaching Robert Adjaho. But all I got at the New Ashanti Theatre was voicemail instruction on how to buy tickets. Next performance: Revisiting Othello, opening in three months.
Shay McNamara’s number at Biltmore’s corporate office was answered by a woman named Andrea. “She’s away from her desk, sir. Can I be of assistance?”
“I’m calling about someone Ms. McNamara used to work with named Zelda Chase.”
“Could you spell that, please, sir?”
Ah, fame. “She was an actress, like Shay.”
“I’ll let Shay know, sir. Have a nice day!”
I gave the producers, Hinson and/or Strickland, a second try. This time, I barely got past my name when the woman on the other end said, “I’m so glad I caught you.”
“Pardon?”
“Doctor, this is Karen Anne Jackson, you knew me as Karen Gallardo.”
“Ovid’s babysitter. Hi.”
“More like a P.A. grunt, back then. My secretary told me you’d called about Zelda and I was going to get back to you but it got pretty hectic. Is it a health insurance matter? Because her policy’s long-lapsed. I wish we didn’t have to be so corporate but after all this time, it’s impossible to give her coverage.”
“This has nothing to do with insurance, Karen. Zelda died two days ago.”
“No! Oh, my God, that’s terrible. Was she ill?”
“Quite.”
“Did she…was it suicide?”
Same thing Steve Beal had asked. “Cause of death hasn’t been established yet.”
“Oh, wow. How’s Ovid taking it?”
“It’s Ovid I’m calling about. Zelda’s been living on the streets but no one’s seen Ovid for a while.”
“And you thought Joel and Greer might know? I’m sure they don’t, Dr. Delaware, they’re my bosses and almost everything gets filtered through me and there’s been no contact between the company and Zelda since Sub stopped taping. You’re really worried something’s happened to Ovie?”
“I’d feel better if I knew where he was.”
“Now I feel horrible about not getting back to you sooner. I just didn’t want to be the one to deliver bad news about the coverage. But this is so much worse.”
“Would you have time today to talk in person?”
“I don’t know what I could tell you.”
“Your impressions of Zelda—that question you asked about suicide, for example.”
“All I meant was, it was pretty obvious Zelda had issues. I really don’t see that I can help, but sure, the idea of Ovie out there upsets me. He was a good kid, now that I have one of my own I appreciate how smart he was. His attention span, those fantastic things he built. I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes, should last until noon. And then two more from three p.m. on—I guess I could squeeze lunch in, say one-thirty? If we stay close to the office.”
“You name it.”
“There’s a place on Washington near Motor, Brasserie Mosca.”
“See you at one-thirty.”
“It’s the least I can do,” said Karen Jackson. “God, I hope he’s okay.”
—
The years that had been so cruel to Zelda Chase had smiled kindly on Karen Gallardo Jackson.
The pallid, anxious minion I’d encountered in the rented house above the Chateau Marmont strode into the restaurant with the bounce of a woman who’d earned her self-confidence.
Thinner but far from thin, she wore a tailored brown suede jacket, a peacock-blue silk shirt, and tweed slacks that made the most of her figure. Burnt-orange lizard-skin boots gave her some height. A brown handbag swayed rhythmically as she walked.
Hair once abused to bristly flat black had grown out to a soft, rusty brown, styled in a layered, jaw-length cut that managed to project competence and softness. Her ring finger bore a platinum band set with a sizable ruby. Matching studs twinkled in each ear. No evidence, not even a pinhole, of the steel array that had once crowded the lobes.
We shook hands and she sat down and ordered a chopped salad and iced tea. I asked for the Italian steak sandwich, medium rare, and water.
She said, “You haven’t changed much.”
I risked saying, “You have.” Her smile said Good Bet.
“That was the plan, Dr. Delaware. I sure needed help.”
“What do you do for Hyson and Strickland?”
“That is a new one.”
“Even for you, huh? Well, that’s reassuring because it totally threw me.”
“What exactly did she—”
“That her mother was a movie star who’d disappeared when she was a kid and she’d just reappeared by inserting herself into Zelda. After Zelda had her baby. What made it even bizarrer was how calm she was when she said it. Like ordering an omelet. Then she starts poking different parts of her stomach and telling me ‘Mommy’s hugging and warming me here, here and here and here.’ ”
“Did she ever mention her mother’s name?”
“Nope, just ‘Mommy’ or maybe ‘Mother,’ can’t remember. Oh, yeah, she also said something about blood and dirt, made these scooping motions with her hands. Like she was digging something up. Not gonna lie, Doc, it weirded me out. After that I kept my distance.”
“Did other people on the set avoid her?”
“Hmm…Zelda was never a big socializer. Honestly, I don’t know what was in anyone else’s head. Like I said, we weren’t a close-knit bunch.”
“Did her behavior have anything to do with the cancellation?”
“Oh, no, she did a fine job once the tape was rolling. We got dumped because the show was crap and people stopped watching and the network had better prospects. You were her kid’s shrink, I assume you knew she had her own shrink. Some older guy, every so often he’d show up on the set, just hang back, not doing much. Zelda never said who he was but everyone knew because that’s the way it is on a show. No one thought anything of it, she wouldn’t be the first person to bring her therapist to work. Anyway, you should be talking to him.”
“Dr. Sherman,” I said. “He’s the one who referred Zelda’s son to me. Unfortunately, he’s deceased.”
“Oh. Too bad. So I’m last resort, huh?”
“Sometimes peers know things therapists don’t, Steve. Did Zelda ever bring her son to work?”
“No, never. Never tried to wangle a part for him, either, far as I know. That’s my Mommy Dearest thing kicking in. My old lady never got closer to the industry than being a script girl on commercials, convinced herself I’d be her golden goose. And I was. Not that I ever saw a penny of it.”
“The Coogan Act didn’t help?”
“The Coogan Act says kids get a guaranteed percentage, but it’s small and can also be spent for the kid’s benefit, meaning any damn thing the guardian decides. My maternal figure decided a five-year-old needed trips to Hawaii where he’d be left alone in hotel rooms while she partied.”
I shook my head.
Beal said, “Don’t bother feeling sorry for me, Doc. My life’s fantastic.” He finished the croissant, pointed. “That one’s yours.”
“No, thanks.”
“A man with willpower. Doesn’t life get boring?”
“Any idea where Zelda lived when the show got cut?”
“Nope. Don’t the cops know her current address? You might find the boy there, with some caretaker.”
I said, “She was a street person.”
“Oh,” said Beal. “Shit, that’s why you’re worried about the kid—crazy woman, who knows what she’d be capable of. I’d like to be able to tell you no way, Zelda would never hurt anyone. But I can’t, people can’t be predicted anyway, let alone psychos.”
“Did you know Zelda changed her name?”
“I didn’t, but no big shock, everyone reinvents themselves.” Teeth flashed. “I was born Stuart Henry Russmeisl.”
He reached for his wallet. I got to mine first and put cash on the table. His nod said proper procedure had been followed.
We left the café together and when I headed to the Seville, he said, “Nice wheels, what year?”
“ ’Seventy-nine.”
“My mom had a ’76, painted it pearlescent pink and dyed the vinyl top eggplant. Original engine?”
“Third.”
“So you’re a loyal guy.” He grabbed my hand, shook it. “I hope you find the kid and he’s okay.”
Wide, sunny grin, spasmodically sudden. “And if you’re looking for a nice place in Tarzana…”
CHAPTER
16
Beal’s account matched what I already knew: Zelda had displayed symptoms of mood and thought disorder. But he had lent some clarity to her Mommy-talk.
A vanished actress, blood and dirt.
Like she was digging something up.
Had the search for a long-buried mother—a mother whose soul she believed lived inside of her—fueled her incursions into strangers’ backyards?
Had she been driven to excavate?
There’d been no sign she’d disrupted Enid DePauw’s immaculate garden, but sudden death could’ve gotten in the way.
Had she been clawing earth when discovered on Bel Azura Drive?
Then again, her initial arrest had resulted from a far more mundane motive: stalking an ex.
And what was the point of applying logic to psychotic behavior? Even if I came up with a “reason” for Zelda’s trespassing, what did it matter?
The only worthwhile goal was finding an eleven-year-old boy.
First step: backtrack to Jane Chase. Or whatever her real name had been.
I phoned one of Milo’s sources, a clerk at County Records named Linus McCoy always happy to “facilitate data access” in return for a bottle of twenty-one-year-old single malt, a nice Cabernet, or a caviar sampler from Petrossian.
“My fellow gourmet,” Milo calls McCoy, though his own bent is for quantity rather than quality.
McCoy answered his office phone sounding sleepy. “Oh, hey, Doc. How’s Dirty Harry? Haven’t heard from him in a while.”
“Detecting as we speak.” I gave him my request.
He said, “Sir, that information is public access.”
Click.
A minute later, he called back. “Sorry ’bout that, I’m on my cell now.”
“Your work phone’s monitored?”
“Probably not, but the county’s been sending in snotty little MBAs to audit a bunch of agencies and one was passing by my desk. Anyway, you don’t need me to look for a name change, formal requests aren’t necessary anymore, people can call themselves whatever they want.”
“I know that, Linus, but this change would’ve happened a while back.”
“Got it. New name and approximate date of petition.”
“Zelda Chase, at least five years ago. I’ve been told her given name was Jane.”
“Back when she was married to Tarzan? Okay, hold on…found it, she petitioned thirteen years ago. Age twenty-two. Zelda Chase née…uh-oh, Doc, you’re not going to want to hear this. Original name Jane no middle initial Smith.”
—
Robin and I went to a Vietnamese place for dinner. At eight-forty, fortified by spring rolls, pho, and beer, we were already in bed reading, Blanche curled between us, when Milo called.
“I’m over at the crypt, just watched Zelda’s autopsy. Cause and manner of death remain undetermined. But it’s interesting.”
“Nasty word.”
“The nastiest. If you have time, I’d like to come by, run a few things past you. I can be there by ten, no prob if that’s too late, we’ll connect tomorrow.”
I asked Robin if she minded.
She said, “Do I really need to answer that?”
—
He showed up at ten-fifteen, wearing a soot-gray suit vanquished by smog and sweat. Robin hugged him before returning to the bedroom and her copy of American Lutherie, then Blanche assumed leadership of the greeting party, nuzzling his trouser cuffs.
“Hey, there, poochette.” He rubbed her head, plopped down on the nearest sofa.
No beeline to the fridge.
I said, “Something to drink?”
He waved that off. “When I said ‘interesting’ I meant ‘oh, shit.’ As in I was hoping to clear it quickly but forget that. Not a trace of illegal dope or booze in her system, just remnants of Ativan and the pathologist said it wouldn’t have risen to a ‘remedial level’ let alone killed her. He couldn’t tell me if she’d be walking around actively crazy or still suppressed because it’s not just a matter of chemistry, he’d need to know her behavioral patterns. So I’m asking you: Think she was raving her way from Santa Monica to Bel Air? Some manic thing that might’ve caused her heart to whack out? Pathologist says if she popped an arrhythmia, there could be no physical evidence.”
He pressed his hands together, prayerfully. “Please don’t go all academic on me and say anything’s possible.”
I said, “Lou Sherman’s original guess was she was a mixture of bipolar and schizophrenia and nothing I’ve seen or heard contradicts that. When I saw her she was either asleep or lethargic, but something drove her to leave the shelter and trek ten miles, probably on foot. So if I had to bet, I’d say a manic state was more likely than depressed. I talked to one of her co-actors, a guy named Stevenson Beal, and he described extreme and rapid mood shifts back when she was working.”
“The gay fireman.”
“You watched the show?”
“God forbid. I remember Rick working himself up about the character, last thing we needed was another lavender Stepin Fetchit. Beal have anything else to say?”
I described Zelda’s God and mother delusions, my wondering about psychotic archaeology.
He said, “Digging for Mommy in other people’s gardens? Interesting—and now I mean that literally. What if, in the process of getting down and dirty, she ate something toxic?”
“The pathologist found evidence of poisoning?”
“More like question marks, Alex. Her liver and intestinal tract were a mess. Given her lifestyle, his first thought was advanced hepatitis. But that didn’t pan out and her tox screen came back negative. No carbon monoxide, either. I asked him—Bill Bernstein, he’s a senior guy—why look for that, she wasn’t cherry red and she died outdoors. He said I hadn’t established where she died, only where she’d been found. I said there were no drag marks. He said that didn’t impress him and besides, there are cases of people on boats dying from CO when they get too close to the exhaust, he’s thorough, do I have a problem with that? At that point I bowed and scraped and shut my mouth. Then he took a closer look at her guts and found no discrete lesions or obstruction and that bothered him, considering the ravaged state of the tissue. He sent out tissue samples for further analysis. Problem with the advanced panels is if you don’t know what you’re looking for and the culprit isn’t on the list, you’re screwed.”
“Bernstein have any hunches?”
“He’s guessing some sort of alkaloid but that’s as far as he’ll go. If the tests come back negative, the case will remain open and we may never know the truth.”
I said, “If she was a digger, she might’ve ingested some sort of mold or spore—anything that could live in soil.”
“You see any evidence she mucked around in Mrs. DePauw’s flower beds? I didn’t, that place was Home and Garden on steroids.”
“If she plucked a random toadstool, there wouldn’t be any mucking. And now I’m wondering if we could be dealing with pica—eating nonnutritive material like glass, plaster, and dirt. Psychotics exhibit a high rate of it. Did she dig at the house on Bel Azura?”
He pinched his nose. “Don’t know, never read the file. If she did chomp the shrubs up there, it didn’t hurt her.”
“Maybe that was the problem,” I said. “She’d gotten away with it before. Then she didn’t. Also, pica isn’t inconsistent with her former profession. Body image and food issues go with that territory.”
“Actress with an eating disorder, big shock.” He got up and paced, returned to the sofa but stayed on his feet. “Thanks for the hospitality and sorry for putting a damper on your evening.” To Blanche: “That means you, too.”
She followed him to the door.
I told him about my call to Linus McCoy.
He said, “Good old Linus. Jane Smith, huh? It’s like a bad joke.”
“Any new thoughts on finding Ovid?”
“Sorry, insight deficit. Let me sleep on it.”
“Could you help me locate other people from the show? Conventional methods haven’t worked.”
“I’m being asked to engage in extra-legal intrusion into the personal data of law-abiding citizens? Tsk.” He opened the door. “Sure, why not tomorrow? My eyes are crossing.”
He peered toward the kitchen.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any edible scraps lying around? All the talk of poison has gotten me famished.”
CHAPTER
17
True to his word, Milo phoned at ten a.m.
“Snagged you some info on the SubUrban folk. Got a pen handy?”
“I never gave you the cast list.”
“Golly gosh, I discovered something new called the Internet. Ready? The producers you already know. By the way, they’re married to each other. The guy who played the dad died last year, lung disease. The two Nigerians haven’t paid taxes in the U.S. since the show got canceled and turns out they’re not Nigerians, they’re from Ghana. One of them, Robert Adjaho, runs The New Ashanti Theatre of Drama and Dance in London, here are his factoids.”
I copied.
“The Nigerian wife, Diana Humado, I couldn’t locate. Justin Lemarque, the kid who played the son, is a freshman at Brown. His real name is Justin Levine, only address I’ve got is the school. The sister, Shay McNamara, is actually named Shay McNamara. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and does P.R. for that humongous estate they’ve got there, Biltmore. No news on the dog or the fish, here’s McNamara’s office number.”
I thanked him.
He said, “This level of achievement, I’m sending Doritos to myself.”
—
Six-twenty p.m. in London gave me a shot at reaching Robert Adjaho. But all I got at the New Ashanti Theatre was voicemail instruction on how to buy tickets. Next performance: Revisiting Othello, opening in three months.
Shay McNamara’s number at Biltmore’s corporate office was answered by a woman named Andrea. “She’s away from her desk, sir. Can I be of assistance?”
“I’m calling about someone Ms. McNamara used to work with named Zelda Chase.”
“Could you spell that, please, sir?”
Ah, fame. “She was an actress, like Shay.”
“I’ll let Shay know, sir. Have a nice day!”
I gave the producers, Hinson and/or Strickland, a second try. This time, I barely got past my name when the woman on the other end said, “I’m so glad I caught you.”
“Pardon?”
“Doctor, this is Karen Anne Jackson, you knew me as Karen Gallardo.”
“Ovid’s babysitter. Hi.”
“More like a P.A. grunt, back then. My secretary told me you’d called about Zelda and I was going to get back to you but it got pretty hectic. Is it a health insurance matter? Because her policy’s long-lapsed. I wish we didn’t have to be so corporate but after all this time, it’s impossible to give her coverage.”
“This has nothing to do with insurance, Karen. Zelda died two days ago.”
“No! Oh, my God, that’s terrible. Was she ill?”
“Quite.”
“Did she…was it suicide?”
Same thing Steve Beal had asked. “Cause of death hasn’t been established yet.”
“Oh, wow. How’s Ovid taking it?”
“It’s Ovid I’m calling about. Zelda’s been living on the streets but no one’s seen Ovid for a while.”
“And you thought Joel and Greer might know? I’m sure they don’t, Dr. Delaware, they’re my bosses and almost everything gets filtered through me and there’s been no contact between the company and Zelda since Sub stopped taping. You’re really worried something’s happened to Ovie?”
“I’d feel better if I knew where he was.”
“Now I feel horrible about not getting back to you sooner. I just didn’t want to be the one to deliver bad news about the coverage. But this is so much worse.”
“Would you have time today to talk in person?”
“I don’t know what I could tell you.”
“Your impressions of Zelda—that question you asked about suicide, for example.”
“All I meant was, it was pretty obvious Zelda had issues. I really don’t see that I can help, but sure, the idea of Ovie out there upsets me. He was a good kid, now that I have one of my own I appreciate how smart he was. His attention span, those fantastic things he built. I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes, should last until noon. And then two more from three p.m. on—I guess I could squeeze lunch in, say one-thirty? If we stay close to the office.”
“You name it.”
“There’s a place on Washington near Motor, Brasserie Mosca.”
“See you at one-thirty.”
“It’s the least I can do,” said Karen Jackson. “God, I hope he’s okay.”
—
The years that had been so cruel to Zelda Chase had smiled kindly on Karen Gallardo Jackson.
The pallid, anxious minion I’d encountered in the rented house above the Chateau Marmont strode into the restaurant with the bounce of a woman who’d earned her self-confidence.
Thinner but far from thin, she wore a tailored brown suede jacket, a peacock-blue silk shirt, and tweed slacks that made the most of her figure. Burnt-orange lizard-skin boots gave her some height. A brown handbag swayed rhythmically as she walked.
Hair once abused to bristly flat black had grown out to a soft, rusty brown, styled in a layered, jaw-length cut that managed to project competence and softness. Her ring finger bore a platinum band set with a sizable ruby. Matching studs twinkled in each ear. No evidence, not even a pinhole, of the steel array that had once crowded the lobes.
We shook hands and she sat down and ordered a chopped salad and iced tea. I asked for the Italian steak sandwich, medium rare, and water.
She said, “You haven’t changed much.”
I risked saying, “You have.” Her smile said Good Bet.
“That was the plan, Dr. Delaware. I sure needed help.”
“What do you do for Hyson and Strickland?”
