“Save her any?”
“Hell, no. There’s nostalgia and there’s reality.”
Chapter 20
Just as I was leaving my office, my phone pinged an incoming text.
justincabbalerial@brown.edu
inquiring: what about zelda
Unfortunately, she passed away.
no way! u her friend?
Psychologist. Can we talk? I can call you.
here’s the number.
Seconds later, I was giving the details to a soft-spoken young man.
He said, “That’s unbelievably tragic. Zelda was a beautiful person.”
“You knew her well?”
“Not really but she was one of the few people on the set who treated me like a human being. Which I didn’t deserve, I was an utter pain in the ass, never wanted to act in the first place. My parents were kid actors, neither made it beyond commercials so they tried to live through me. When the show ended I stood up for myself and began taking my studies seriously.”
“Interesting rebellion.”
He laughed. “They still have their fantasy that I’m going to be Leonardo and buy them a mansion. Unfortunately for them, I’m a theoretical physics major. Anyway, Zelda was a cool person, said nice things when I came roaring through pulling ollies — flipping my board no-hands. Basically being a show-off dick. It drove everyone else up the wall but she seemed to enjoy it. She went psychotic, huh? I suppose I can see that.”
“You noticed signs.”
“I mean she had problems. Though I never observed anything extreme. Sometimes she’d get really hyper and go off on crazy shit about God or Jesus. But that’s actors, they’re always vulnerable to nonintellectual stuff. I grew up with that, learned to tune it out and tuned Zelda out. To me, she was a hot older chick who didn’t ignore me. That’s kind of perfect when you’re fifteen.”
“Did you ever meet Ovid, her son?”
“She brought him once in a while, he’d just sit and play by himself, I really wasn’t paying attention. Why?”
“We can’t locate him.”
“Maybe he’s with his dad.”
“Who’s that?”
“The only man I ever saw her with was an older dude, he’d come onto the set, have discussions with her, seemed pretty intense.”
“Short, white-haired, kind of Asian-looking?”
“That’s him.”
“Her psychiatrist.”
“Oh really,” said Justin Levine. “I heard she had a shrink. That would explain intense discussions.”
At eight p.m. Milo called. “I keep amassing good deeds, got something for you on Zina Rutherford. Not LAPD, Sheriff’s, she lived in West Hollywood. One of the old-timers remembered the detective who worked it, guy named Otis Ott the Second, they call him Double O. I left a message for him, asking if he’d talk to you. Just got his emaiclass="underline" ‘Yeah, why not.’ Here’s his info.”
“Big Guy, I really appreciate it.”
“That’s why I did it.”
Chapter 21
I called Detective Otis Ott II (ret.).
“This is Dub. You the psychologist?”
“Alex Delaware.”
“Zina Rutherford, blast from the past,” said Ott. “Never heard of any daughter so there’s probably nothing I can do for you.”
“Could we talk anyway?”
“You want to take me out to lunch tomorrow?”
Third case-related meal I’d had in as many days. I said, “Where?”
“How about Spago?” He laughed. “Nah, there’s a deli, Pico near Robertson. Say, eleven-thirty? That way I’ll be ready for an early dinner.”
Otis Ott got there before me, had taken a booth that gave him a full view of the deli’s front door. Classic detective move.
A trim, light-skinned black man in his sixties, he had alert hazel eyes and a wide mouth that didn’t budge much when he greeted me and said, “I’m Dub.”
Like a well-trained ventriloquist. Perfect for intimidating suspects. He wore a charcoal cashmere sweater over a white polo shirt. Coffee in front of him. The deli was half full, mostly older people drinking soup and young mothers trying to eat anything while tending to toddlers.
He said, “I don’t need a menu but you do.”
“Pastrami sounds fine.”
“Twenty years ago it sounded fine for me, too. Now it’s turkey breast. At least here it doesn’t taste like cardboard.”
A Latina waitress came over, smiling warmly. Dub Ott said, “Hola, Elizabeth, usual for me, pastrami for the young guy.”
“Oh, you’re young, Dub.”
“Compared to King Tut. What’re you drinking, Doctor?”
“Cream soda.”
“There you go, keeping to a theme,” said Ott. “We’re doing the ensemble dining thing, Elizabeth.”
She laughed and left.
Ott pushed his coffee mug to the side and favored me with a sharp-eyed scrutiny. “Doctor, explain why you care about Zina Rutherford.”
My recap took a while. Ott listened without interruption — another virtue for an investigator. When I finished, he said, “Mental illness, huh? That’s interesting, from what I was told, Zina also had some problems. But like I said, no daughter came to light. No kin in L.A., period. The one who reported her missing was a brother from Cleveland.”
“Do you recall his name?”
“Something Smith — John, Jim, Joe. Maybe Bob, something common, sorry, it’s been a while and I only had phone conversations with the guy.” He reached down, produced a soft leather case, and drew out a fuzzy photo.
Faded photocopy of an enlarged driver’s license. Zina Rutherford had been a pretty woman. But even accounting for the insult inflicted by DMV cameras, nothing like the beauty Zelda had once been. The license had been issued the day after Rutherford’s twenty-eighth birthday, which was two years prior to her disappearance. Thirty isn’t old, but in Hollywood, it’s way past “aspiring.”
I said, “Can I keep this?”
“It’s your copy,” said Ott. “The original’s all I held on to — for the flyer I put out. Any resemblance to your Zelda?”
“Nothing striking.”
“Too bad, I was hoping for a eureka moment. Not that it would matter, Zina’s never going to be closed. The case was a bastard. For all I know she’s living in Pakistan or Poland or Belgium. On the other hand, she could be buried in some landfill.”
He pinged his coffee cup. “Missing person’s different from other investigations because you don’t even know if a crime’s been committed. So you start way behind. On the other hand, unlike your pal Sturgis, I got to deliver good news to families more often than you might think. My wife’s a nurse, she says I was doing the obstetrics of police work.”
The food arrived. Ott grimaced and said, “Healthy,” and lifted half a turkey sandwich. He nibbled a corner, put it down.
I said, “What kind of emotional problems did Zina have?”
“Her landlady thought she was weird. The brother never spelled it out but I got the feeling she’d always been the problem child. She was the youngest of a bunch of sibs. He sounded pretty conservative.”
“The family didn’t approve of her acting?”
“More like they didn’t approve of her wanting to. Only evidence I found of acting was a couple commercials she did years before, just background, no lines. I suppose if she’d made it, the family might’ve changed their tune. Fame trumps everything. I contacted the Screen Actors Guild and they had nothing on her. Only reason she got called an ‘actress’ in the paper was because that’s what I said to get the story run. The alternative wasn’t suitable for family reading.”