Breakdown

Chapter 19

As Milo copied, the counter-boy came over. “Is everything—”

Bill Bernstein waved him away. “Just as I thought, an alkali, plant-based, extracted from meadow saffron. It shows up in herbal medicines, can also be used for gout and other inflammation, but if my toes hurt, I’d sure as hell take something else. Victim Chase didn’t look like a candidate for gout but you never know, so I checked. Negative. Do you have any knowledge of her self-administering herbals?”

Milo turned to me.

I said, “With her mental status, anything’s possible.”

Bernstein said, “Talk about a politician’s answer.”

“I was wondering about pica. She had a history of trespassing in strangers’ yards so she could’ve eaten something in the garden.”

“You know her to have a history?”

“No, but if she ate dirt—”

“Irrelevant, colchicine’s not in dirt, she’d have to eat the plant. It happens: Back-to-nature morons spot something that looks like a yummy onion, go home and stir-fry it with tofu or organic dandelions or whatever.” He ran a finger across his throat. “You can landscape with the darn thing, it’s also called autumn crocus, has a flower if you’re into flowers. Like oleander — a killer. But they still use it for hedges. All sorts of nasty stuff looks nice.”

Milo said, “There were flower beds but I have no idea if saffron was included.”

“Not saffron, that’s an edible spice, from a different type of crocus. Meadow saffron. Col-chi-cine, write it down.”

“I already have.”

“Then go ask the owner if she’s growing it and if she doesn’t know, look up a picture of the darn thing and go see for yourself.”

“Will do,” said Milo. “Though there was no sign of disturbance in the garden.”

“My C.I. told me it’s a huge backyard.”

“More like an estate.”

“My point,” said Bernstein. “You’re telling me you covered every inch?”

Silence.

“That’s what I thought,” said Bernstein. “Well, my job’s done. Cause of death is colchicine poisoning, whether manner is suicide or an accident is likely to remain undetermined unless you do your job and produce evidence.”

The door to the restaurant opened and Lauren Bernstein danced out, lively, light-footed, smiling. “Hi, guys.” She kissed the top of her husband’s head and rested a hand on his shoulder.

He said, “Lieutenant Sturgis is going to have another sandwich.”

Her eyes widened.

So did Milo’s. He said, “First one was great, I’ll doggie-bag and have something for later.”

“Everyone blames gluttony on their dogs,” said Bernstein. “Easy targets, they’re stupid and can’t talk back.”

“Oh, honey,” said Lauren. “Sure, Lieutenant, coming up.”

Bernstein watched her walk away, muttering “Love her,” as if pressured to admit it. Removing his glasses, he said, “Here’s something else to chew on, pun intended: Victim Chase’s time of death is between two and six hours before the body was discovered. If she ingested a heavy dose, death could’ve been relatively quick, as in within that time frame. But it can also be a drawn-out process. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea that can go on for days and then your organ systems fail. Basically, you fall apart, it’s an unpleasant death, that’s why she had that rictus on her face. In her case, the process could’ve sped up because apart from the candy bar, which was incompletely digested, her stomach was empty. But, still, a homeless psychotic thrashing around in your backyard, you’d think the homeowner would notice.”

“The homeowner was away, in the desert.”

“Working on a melanoma?” said Bernstein. “Okay, so much for that. Anyway, this wasn’t easy for Victim Chase but she probably did it to herself, wittingly or otherwise. FDA can’t get it together to regulate herbals, all kinds of garbage finds its way in. I had a poisoned DB turn up near the court building on Hill and Washington. You know the one, spillover from downtown, not a decent restaurant in sight.”

Milo said, “Mostly warehouses.”

Bernstein said, “Whoever put a court there is a moron. One time I thought of taking a walk, waiting to be called to testify. Idiot gang types lolling around, so much for exercise. Anyone, someone thought it would be a great idea to dump a body there after hours. COD turned out to be a toxic alkaloid, which is what got me thinking about Victim Chase.”

Milo said, “The same poi—”

“Did I say that? Totally different poison. Last one before that, couple years ago, I had a fourteen-year-old girl, stupid parents pay a fortune for private school tuition and go buy her a headache remedy from a moron on Venice Beach. Turns out that particular shipment contained arsenic way above what was needed to kill their kid.”

He shook his head. “Maybe they have a dog to blame it on.”

We left Bernstein standing next to his wife, looking awestruck as she whispered in his ear.

Milo said, “One of a kind.”

I said, “Patients who don’t talk back, he can get away with it.”

He chuckled, turned serious. “What he said about her suffering. That was hard to hear.”

Fools write books about madness being an elevated mental state or an alternative form of creativity. It’s not, it’s anguish.

I said nothing and we walked to our cars.

Milo placed the second sandwich on the passenger seat. “Guess there’s nothing much more to do but concentrate on the kid. Should you choose.”

“I choose.”

“Big surprise.”

Back home I was surprised to learn that Shay McNamara had returned my call from Asheville and Robert Adjaho had phoned from London. Late, across the pond. I tried Adjaho first.

This time a man answered at the Ashanti Theatre, a voice recalling Olivier on a particularly good day.

“Doctor, this is Robert. I’m sorry to hear about Zelda, though I don’t see how I can help you. Was it suicide?”

Same question, over and over. Everyone had known.

I said, “Most likely she died accidentally.”

“From what?”

“Poison.”

“Not self-administered?”

“It looks as if she ate the wrong plant.”

“I see. Actually, I don’t.”

“She’d been mentally ill for a while, Mr. Adhajo. Ended up swallowing something she shouldn’t have.”

“Yes... the reason I mentioned suicide was back when we worked together she seemed extremely troubled. My father’s a psychologist. Don’t want to presume, but perhaps I picked up some knowledge.”

“What troubles did you observe in Zelda?”

“For starts, her fluctuating activity levels. What seemed to be hyperactivity alternating with fatigue. I’d heard my father talk about bipolar disorder — he called it manic depression — and to my layman’s eyes that seemed to fit Zelda. There were also instances where she appeared confused — in a daze. My wife and I — she was also on the show — wondered about drugs. We never saw Zelda indulge but something was clearly amiss.”

“Were people on the show talking about it?”

“If they were, Diana and I never heard it. We kept to ourselves — young love and all that. Looking back, we were pretty obnoxious about it.”

“So no rumors.”

“None that I heard. Zelda may have been odd but she never failed to do her job and that’s all that matters when you’re taping under pressure. Now I have to ask: Why would a psychologist be phoning from halfway across the globe to discuss a deceased person?”

“I’m looking for Ovid.”

“Who’s that?”

“Zelda’s son.” I gave him background.

“I understand your concern but I’m afraid I can’t help you, Doctor. I was aware Zelda had a child, though I can’t pinpoint how I knew. I never actually saw the boy.”

“She didn’t bring him to work?”

“She may have. But not that I observed.”

“Are you aware of other family members?”

“I did notice an older man who came with Zelda a few times. Old enough to be her father but with no obvious resemblance to Zelda, he looked somewhat Asian.”

“Smallish, white hair?”

“That’s the one.”

“That was her psychiatrist.”

“I see. So someone was aware of her problems. But to no avail, ay? Father always said when it came to severe mental illness one couldn’t rely on happy endings. He came to find his profession dreary, ended up switching to an administrative position with the National Health. Have you reached anyone else from the show? Perhaps someone knows more than I do.”

“I’ve talked to Steve Beal and Karen Jackson. His description of Zelda’s behavior is similar to yours.”

“Don’t know her,” said Adjaho. “But Steve, I certainly recall. How’s he doing?”

“He works in real estate.”

“Selling or developing?”

“Selling.”

“I can see that. Good for Steve. And good luck to you.”

Shay McNamara said, “Omigod, Zelda? That’s horrible, what happened?”

I replowed old ground, anticipated her next question and told her I was looking for Ovid.

She said, “Sure I remember him. She didn’t bring him often but he was a cutie. You don’t think Zelda would hurt him or anything? Because of her... situation? I mean I never saw anything like that, she seemed like a good mom.”

“When I evaluated Ovid, she was. What do you recall about him?”

“Not much, he was a quiet little kid, stayed by himself building with blocks. Zelda would come over and smile at him or give him a little kiss. She really seemed loving, Dr. Delaware.”

“What you said about her ‘situation’...”

“Well, obviously from what happened she had psychological issues,” said Shay McNamara.

“What about when you worked with her?”

“She could get a little hyper — no, I take that back. Real hyper. I was a minor myself and my mom would come on the set — she homeschooled me — and she’d watch Zelda and shake her head and say stuff like, ‘That girl is all over the place.’ I didn’t think much of it, not messing up my lines was all I cared about. I don’t miss it. Way too much pressure.”

Justin Levine’s life was a short story on Facebook. The usual friends, party photos, detailed lists of favorite music and movies. He’d grown to be a nice-looking young man who favored baseball hats worn backward. The photos featured him with like-minded males and pretty females, the dominant mood glaze-eyed intoxication. Physics major, interests in rugby, lacrosse, skiing, skateboarding. No mention of his acting days.

I posted a message, asking him to get in contact about Zelda Chase.

Sometimes clearing a path for discovery means eliminating the detours. But my only remaining route to finding Ovid seemed likely to dead-end because it was based on crazy-talk: Zelda’s tale of a disappearing “movie star” mother.

Who happened also to be a deity, burrowed deeply inside her daughter’s viscera.

Tempting to dismiss but I wasn’t ready.

Maybe I was denying but my training had taught me that madmen and madwomen weren’t the cage-rattling ravers depicted in low-rent movies and books. That the transition to psychosis could be subtle, more segue than quick flick of the on/off sanity switch.

I’d also discovered that truth could be embedded in the jumble of skewed perception, illogic, and decimated judgment that plagues a disintegrating mind.

More than that: Truth and logic could serve as springboards for psychosis.

On any back ward, you could encounter an apparently rational human being in a cell-like room and wonder what the hell they were doing there. Sit down with that person, begin chatting about a topic — say geography — and your skepticism grows. This is a perfectly normal human being clearly oppressed by the system!

But as you sit there, outraged, the cerebral short-circuits kick in and the conversation edges off kilter and finally veers into fantasies that grow progressively more florid and bizarre and now you’re hearing about a planet grown flat and overrun with godlings who transmit evil messages straight to the sensors implanted in your co-conversationalist’s head.

Does that matter clinically? Often not, but sometimes yes. Because crazy people are still individuals and learning what’s on their troubled minds can occasionally elevate treatment beyond dosage-calibration.

What if Zelda’s mother really had disappeared and tracing family ties could somehow lead me to Ovid? Because the few facts I had did fit early abandonment: a young woman with no known relatives.

On the other hand...

Only one way to find out.

Vanished actress pulled up a host of fan sites and blogs about women who no longer worked in movies or TV. The reasons for “vanishing” ranged from a series of flops to marriage and motherhood to motives unknown.

Not a promising start but scrolling through pages finally led me to two actresses who actually had disappeared. Both in L.A.

The first, a woman named Jean Spangler, had played small roles in big pictures, dated several organized crime figures, and been embroiled in a custody dispute with an ex-husband.

Provocative, but the time frame was off: She’d gone missing in 1949.

Zina Rutherford, on the other hand, had walked out of her West Hollywood apartment and slipped into the ether twenty-nine years ago, shortly after her thirtieth birthday.

Zelda would’ve been five. Old enough to remember.

Zina/Zelda.

I’d wondered if Jane Smith’s name change had stemmed from identification with another tormented young woman, the unfortunate Mrs. Fitzgerald. But what if it had been an attempt to get phonetically closer to her mother?

She’d listed her given name as Jane Smith, not Jane Rutherford. But that could be explained by adoption. Or a five-year-old girl taken in by a relative.

I looked for everything I could find about Zina Rutherford, which turned out to be nothing but the same sketchy summary on four sites listing unsolved disappearances. No leads, no theories, description of Rutherford as an “aspiring actress.”

I clicked every contact us icon, was rewarded with an instant quartet of out-of-service error messages.

Searching movie databases produced no credits for Rutherford, so aspiring was as far as she’d gotten. Galaxies from the “star” Zelda had claimed. Yet more delusion or pathetic wishful thinking? Or she’d made up the whole thing and had no connection to another actress, alive or dead?

One more try: Hollywood might’ve ignored Zina Rutherford but LAPD could’ve paid attention.

Milo picked up after one ring. “Just about to call you on a couple of things, guess you’re my psychic friend, here’s my credit card number.”

“What’s up?”

“No nasty flora in Enid DePauw’s garden. She wasn’t sure but she referred me to her landscape architect. Apparently, the estate’s one of the landscaper’s crowning accomplishments, ‘classical but updated emphasis’ on roses, azaleas, local sustainable fruit trees and ornamentals, blah blah blah. So herbal medicine is the probable culprit, like Bernstein figured, Zelda got her hands on the wrong batch of whatever. A couple of days and ten miles passed between her leaving the shelter and dying, plenty of opportunity to dumpster-dive for the wrong veggie.”

I said, “I suppose she could’ve scored herbal meds at the shelter.”

“That, too.”

“I’ll let Andover know. No sense someone else keeling over.”

He said, “Good deed for the day? Why not, we can all use cosmic brownie points. The other thing I wanted to tell you is I heard from a Central patrolman, older guy works the desk, used to be on the streets. He remembers Zelda, confirms she was a street person. I checked the time period. Around half a year after her show got canceled, so she slid down pretty fast. He was the arresting officer on the second bust, said there were plenty of other times he could’ve hauled her in but he felt sorry for her, being so young and so messed up. He had no idea she’d been an actress, was pretty sure she was hooking to make ends meet, though he never caught her at it. She didn’t have a particular turf, hung out in that patch of Skid Row near Little Tokyo, flops, shelters, freeway underpasses. The main thing from your perspective is he never saw a kid with her and I’m going to take that as a good sign: She knew she was falling apart and made provisions. Because some psychology savant once told me positive thinking’s good for my health. Now why’d you call me?”

My mind reeled. I focused and told him.

He said, “Zina Rutherford, never heard about that one. If it was filed as a missing person twenty-five years ago, good luck. During the transfer from paper to computer a lot of stuff got tossed.”

“Could you look into it anyway? Positive thinking and all?”

He laughed. “Sure, now go get positive yourself.”

“Meaning?”

“Talk about role reversal,” he said. “Meaning kiss your gal. Poochie, too. Who I thought of while enjoying that second Cuban sandwich from my doggie bag. Because Mademoiselle Flatface likes veal, right? I have a distinct memory of some scaloppine noshed on the sly.”

“Save her any?”

“Hell, no. There’s nostalgia and there’s reality.”