Breakdown

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.”