“Thank you, Mr. Linford.”
“Please, call me ‘Lane.’” I told him that I went by “Riley.” The poor fellow looked wrung out. I didn’t figure he was a paragon of posture in the best of circumstances, but his shoulders sagged and his head looked too heavy for his neck to hold upright. The tight-fitting sweater vest wasn’t helping.
“Those are impressive ant farms,” I said in an effort to ease into the conversation. He glanced briefly over his shoulder and looked as if I’d caught him with a Playboy centerfold.
“Just a hobby continued from my childhood. Now, what do you need from me?”
“I’m trying to provide some information to the authorities regarding the chemicals that might have contributed to your grandparents’ deaths. But it might help if I knew just a bit of background about the family.” I set the hook with my best fatherly expression, given that he was about twenty years my junior and clearly in need of emotional support. The patter was mostly manipulative on my part, but I honestly felt sorry for the guy—homely, and now alone.
My non-threatening, non-question gave Lane the chance to tell me how his parents had died a couple years ago in a foggy, fiery crash on Shoreline Highway. He moved in with his grandparents while finishing his degree in business management at Stanford. As the only grandchild, Lane was being groomed to take over HerbalVitae, the family business which had grown from a 1960s storefront operation in Haight Ashbury to a multimillion dollar enterprise. I couldn’t see any motive for him to knock off his elders—especially in a way that would generate negative headlines (Herbal Tycoons Use Pesticides to Kill Selves: Is Your Tincture Tainted?). Maybe Papadopoulos was right. Eventually, Lane’s story wound its way up to the present.
“My grandparents were very suspicious of synthetic chemicals, so the flea infestation upstairs must have been pretty bad for them to call an exterminator.”
“Can you remember the details of the situation?” I asked.
“Not much to recall. Barney, he was their Golden Retriever, had the run of the yard. He apparently brought back a load of fleas which took up residence in their bedroom, where the dog slept. My grandfather tried lavender and cedar oils which made Barney smell good but didn’t kill the fleas.”
“Lots of people try home remedies and then end up calling us.”
“Herbs can provide miraculous results, but sometimes a problem is too intense for a gentle and natural solution.” He made it sound like HerbalVitae was the social worker, and Goat Hill Extermination was the SWAT team. Probably about right.
“Were they happy with our work?”
“Absolutely. Surprisingly so, to be honest. They were impressed with the professionalism of your technician. A Negro. I can’t remember his name, but he was very polite—as it should be.” I didn’t know whether politeness was incumbent upon service workers or black men. Probably both for the Linfords.
“That would’ve been Dennis. He’s a good man.” I let that hang for moment. “So, what went wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“Lane, your grandparents ended up wearing flea collars.”
“I’m not sure what happened. I took a trip to London to set up an import deal. And when I got back after a couple of weeks, my grandparents were convinced that something had infested their bodies.”
“Fleas?”
“No, they said these bugs were tinier, black insects crawling under their skin. I couldn’t see anything, but they were convinced there was a new pest in the house. They blamed Barney and gave him away. Poor dog, he was so loyal and trusting.” Lane shook his head and ran his fingers through his oily hair.
“So what did you do?”
“I sent them to our family physician. He’s very good and very discrete. Doctor Comly couldn’t find anything but gave them calamine lotion for the itching. I don’t think they used it, preferring to formulate their own treatments. Nothing seemed to help. Grandfather started mailing his skin scrapings to the insect experts at UC Berkeley on a regular basis. And grandmother had your technician come back and conduct an inspection. But nobody could find anything.”
“Not to be rude, but it sounds like your grandparents needed a shrink more than an exterminator.”
“Exactly!” Lane said, showing a spark of life. “The problem was that Linfords would never be seen going to a psychiatrist. Imagine the embarrassment if others found out. That’s why my grandparents dismissed the house staff when their condition intensified.”
“I’ve never been able to find a trustworthy butler,” I said. He snorted softly and continued.
“There are plenty of affluent families with members tucked away in facilities recovering from stress and ‘nervous conditions,’” he made air quotes with his fingers. “They’re mostly drying out, but drinking isn’t a stigma. Betty Ford is opening a posh center down in Rancho Mirage later this year. That should be a magnet for San Francisco’s wealthiest alcoholics in need of a tan next winter.”
“But your grandparents wouldn’t qualify for a sunny junket to southern California, I gather.”
“Right,” Lane said, “they were psychotic, not addicted.” I raised a curious eyebrow at his diagnosis. “I did a lot of reading and it became clear that they suffered from a shared psychosis.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning they convinced each other that they were infested. From my research on the condition, it crops up in couples where one person develops a delusion, say of being persecuted, and then the other individual ‘catches’ the insanity. From there, they feed off one another in a downward spiral. Pretty soon, both people are sure that the world is out to get them.”
“Or that itty bitty creatures are out to get them,” I said.
“Exactly. There are medications that sometimes work, but the prognosis is poor.” He then digressed into a lecture on psychoactive drugs, an analysis of how aging affects one’s critical faculties, and finished with a critique of the mental health system in the United States. If nothing else, Stanford had taught the kid to do his homework.
After twenty minutes, Lane leaned back and rocked his head to each side, generating an audible crack in his skinny neck. I took this to be an expression of satisfaction with his lecture, which he punctuated by cracking his knuckles. I was impressed with his knowledge—and suspicious. The young man knew a very great deal about a very unusual condition. Perhaps he was just worried about his grandparents, but his interest seemed deeper than that of a concerned grandson.
“If they were delusional, as you suggest, why did you allow them to continue their mad belief of being infested with invisible insects?”
“Riley, the bugs weren’t invisible to them. They could see the things. And I couldn’t get them to see what they really needed—a psychiatrist.”
“And so you let them concoct various treatments, wear dog collars, hang No-Pest strips, and set off bug bombs?” He looked hurt. “I apologize if that sounded judgmental.” I wasn’t sorry, but I wanted him to keep talking.
“That’s okay, I know how it looks. But they were so insistent, so utterly convinced. And those crazy interventions calmed them. Grandfather could conduct business by phone and fax, and grandmother could visit her friends—at first. It didn’t take long before they became reclusive and obsessed with developing new formulations of herbs and God knows what else.” I knew, at least in part from my bathroom inspection: Lysol, alcohol, vinegar, and kerosene to extract magical cures from every imaginable herb in their personal storehouse. But these concoctions shouldn’t have been deadly. Irritating, smelly, and revolting—but not lethal.
“Did you share all of this with Lieutenant Papadopoulos?” I asked.
“Most certainly not,” he said. “That man was insulting and accusatory. I would never have harmed my grandparents, but the detective was looking for someone to blame. He wanted a simple solution—murder or suicide—rather than tragic madness leading to a horrible accident.”
“Well, I want to understand. It’s a matter of professionalism
and, quite frankly, self-defense. Exterminators are one step below personal injury lawyers these days, as you are surely aware given the surge of interest in all things ‘natural.’ So if my business or products contributed to their deaths, then I need to know and get ahead of any story that might develop. And, of course, I want to protect your good family name.”
“Of course,” Lane said, with a slight smirk. “Go ahead and tell the detective anything I told you that is crucial to his investigation.”
“Of course,” I said, with a conspiratorial smile. We both knew how the game was being played. “Is there anything else that might shed light on this tragedy?”
“There might be, and because I believe we understand each other,” he said, opening a drawer in the writing desk, “I’m going to loan you the key to my grandfather’s study.” He handed me a lever lock key—one of those old-fashioned gizmos consisting of a long brass rod with uneven teeth protruding from one side. I was glad to have the key because lever locks are harder to pick than modern pin tumbler locks. “This will open a door from their bedroom, opposite the walk-in closet. When you’re done, lock the door and leave the key in the top drawer of their nightstand. I’d rather that my grandfather’s materials not become part of the police investigation and public record. So please be discrete with whatever you find, taking into consideration our ...” he paused, “mutual interests.”
I thanked him and headed back upstairs, trying to avoid drawing attention to my movements. I needn’t have worried. The uniformed officers had moved inside to avoid the rain and were far more interested in ogling the house than watching me.
CHAPTER 4
Mr. Linford’s study was like a museum display of an old-time, gentleman naturalist. The room was about thirty feet deep by fifteen wide. One of the long walls featured floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The volumes were arranged by topic and age, from what I could tell by opening a few. There were modern texts about medicinal plants from around the world, along with some intriguing books from the last century such as King’s American Dispensatory which consisted of a monumental list of plants and what they were good for. I checked out the entry on coffee to be sure that the herbalists knew what they were doing. I was informed that, “An infusion of roasted coffee is an agreeable stimulant,” its effects include, “increasing peristalsis, thus favoring a free action from the bowels,” and it can be used to, “overcome the soporific or intoxicating effects of opium, morphine, or alcohol.” Okay, brewed coffee facilitates a good morning crap and helps a bad morning hangover. Fair enough.
The oldest book was too high to reach, so I used one of those fancy rolling ladders connected to a rail along the upper shelves to reach Nicholas Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. The publication date was 1653, which was pretty damned impressive. I climbed down and understood why there was a dehumidifier humming contentedly in the corner, along with some sort of special thermostat on the wall. The winter wetness would turn Linford’s antiquarian literary collection into a mildew farm without some modern climate control. And the books weren’t the only things that would have been a haven for mold.
Along the other long wall was a series of elegant, wooden cabinets. The drawers were about two feet wide and three inches high, just perfect for holding plant specimens mounted on thick sheets of blotter paper. Everything was labeled with a scientific name which meant nothing to me, along with what I assumed was the name of whoever yanked up the plant (only a few credited Linford), the date of the deadly deed (going back to the late eighteen hundreds), and the location (my brief nosing around yielded nearly twenty countries). I was impressed, again. There was an antique apothecary cabinet at the far end, next to a walnut worktable that filled the width of the room.
The table had just enough dings, scratches, and stains to prove that Linford used it, rather than kept it as an objet d’art—a term I had learned a couple weeks ago walking through the De Young Museum with Nina to check out the carvings of an Inuit sculptor (I had also learned that we don’t call them ‘Eskimos’ anymore for some confusing reason that made sense to Nina and other Native Americans). In the center of the table was a Wild Heerburg stereo microscope that would set you back nearly the price of a new car—maybe a Datsun 210, but still. I know because I shopped around for my second-hand scope and still couldn’t touch one of the German models. The krauts know how to grind a lens and make a buck. The table also held what looked to be a desktop model of a torture device, but it turned out to be an old-fashioned plant press with a cast iron plate that could be screwed downward against the base to gently crush an unsuspecting specimen between sheets of blotter paper and force it to confess its magical powers. At least that’s how it worked for witches in Salem. Impressive, but the really interesting items were at the other end of the table.
There were stacks of books about insects. One pile was mostly general texts: The Science of Entomology, Fundamentals of Entomology, and other volumes promising to cover a field, “too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp” according to a character in an Oliver Wendell Holmes novel which I never read. I found the quote on a poster of California insects that I bought for Tommy at the Essig Entomology Museum. There was another stack of medical entomology books including: Insects and other Arthropods of Medical Importance, Entomology in Human and Animal Health, Insects and Hygiene, and the always popular, Scabies—a title sure to generate raised eyebrows and arm’s length handling from the librarian at the checkout desk.
Another pile consisted of back issues of the Journal of Medical Entomology. Linford had bookmarked various articles. There was one about the control of chiggers (dimethoate works well; score one for the organophosphate insecticides) and another about what environmental conditions allow fleas to survive (they like it warm and humid; go figure). I was grimly fascinated by the summary of a study reporting “myiasis”—a four-dollar word for when fly larvae set up house in the tissues of live animals, including the vagina of some poor woman in Texas. I quit reading at that point. Even seasoned exterminators can live without mental images messing up their libidos.
Linford had quite an assortment of stains and dyes, along with other laboratory paraphernalia, all neatly organized. He kept a daily log in a leather-bound book with recent entries such as: “Ask Lane to replace pest strips,” “Remind Lane to mail samples to Cal Academy,” and “Have Lane acquire ointment ingredients” with a bizarre list including sulfur powder, carbolic acid, mercuric iodide, and Crisco. It seems the old coot was shifting from herbalism to chemistry in a desperate effort to treat whatever he thought was afflicting him and the Mrs.—unless Papadopoulos could come up with some erotic interpretation of this nasty lubricant. So it appeared that Lane was lending a hand and not just passively allowing his grandparents to pursue their strange hobby.
I rifled through a couple of two-drawer filing cabinets tucked under the worktable. Mostly there were neatly organized photocopies of scientific reports and magazine articles. But one drawer was devoted to ziplock bags, each placed in a file folder and labeled with the date, the name of ma or pa Linford, and descriptions such as: “swabbing from neck and shoulder,” “brushing from scalp” and “scraping from pubis.” That last one was a point for the lieutenant’s theory, but I seriously doubted that collecting this specimen was arousing. The baggies held clumps of hair, flakes of dried skin, and what looked to be blackened scabs and yellowish crusts.
Some file folders included a note card indicating that a subsample had been sent to a laboratory, most often “UC Berkeley/Essig Museum.” A baggie from two weeks ago had “Proof!” written in bold, black letters along with a note card indicating that material had been sent to the Cal Academy. I took that one, along with a random selection of others. They were easily hidden in the pockets of my bulky jacket. I locked up, put the key in the nightstand, and thought I had about as much information as I could get in one bizarre morning. I was wrong.
~||~
I found the front door open and caught the unmistakable scent of Malcolm M
achalek. Well, not exactly Malcolm but his cigar. There’s nothing worse than the smell of a cheap cigar, but Malcolm smoked only the best—a blend of Dominican and Nicaraguan tobaccos which he claimed put the Cubans to shame. In the soggy morning air, the smoke was reminiscent of leather and coffee with a hint of vanilla. I knew it had to be Malcolm because nobody else would be contemplating a corpse and puffing on a fine cigar before lunch.
The morning’s pondering was over since the bodies were already bagged and being carted down the stairs. So, I followed the odor plume along with a softly whistled rendition of the Toreador song from Carmen. Around the side of the house, I found the grizzled medical examiner contemplating a bloomless rose garden. The thorny branches complemented the winter mood. The rain had slowed to something between a heavy fog and a light mist.
“Riley, you spray-happy, nature-hating bastard,” he said with a gleam in his eye, “what brings you here on this lovely day?” Ever since my forced exit from the ranks of San Francisco’s finest, we expressed our mutual admiration through insults.
“Just thought I’d stop by and see if the body snatchers were willing to brave the weather, knowing how much you and your henchmen like fluorescent lighting and indoor recreation.”
“Fuck you,” he said with a crooked grin. “Really, what are you doing in this neighborhood?”
“Hey, even the rich folks need my services. And Goat Hill Extermination is known for being discrete.”
“Right, so you just happened to come by to gas some roaches only to discover that your customers no longer required your discrete services. You’re full of shit.” He took a long drag on his cigar and exhaled with a sigh of almost pornographic pleasure.
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