Jonathan Kellerman - Breakdown

“Or to someone’s backyard.”

“That, too.”

“I wouldn’t overthink it, Alex. Like I told you, enforcement’s political and people like her don’t get put through Breathalyzers, they just get hauled in. The arresting officers were looking for a charge to pin on her so they called her drunk.”

“So I shouldn’t pub-hop?”

He laughed. “That’s a separate issue. What next, fellow important person?”

Back at the station, we agreed there was little left to do.

Milo would check with Central Division to see if anyone remembered Zelda and Ovid and I’d go “the glam route,” trying to reach someone associated with SubUrban.

After that, it would be time to back away.

He was telling the truth. I, not so much.

Moments after he dropped me off I was compiling a list of California boarding schools that accepted pre-adolescents. Workable list: thirty-nine institutions, with student bodies ranging from the intellectually gifted to kids with special needs — mostly defined as learning disabilities and/or weight problems. The latter I eliminated, which cut the roster by fifteen.

Nearly every school was situated where land was plentiful and scenic. When tuition rates were posted, they were at Ivy League levels. Maybe Zelda had managed to create an educational fund before her breakdown, even hired a trustee to guard Ovid’s welfare.

Or...

I got to work, spinning the same story to receptionist after receptionist: I was Ovid Chase’s uncle, his mother had just been hospitalized for an acute ailment (“Ovid knows the details”) and needed to talk to her son. Reactions were invariably sympathetic but when records were checked and Ovid’s name didn’t show up, confusion gave way to suspicion and I hung up, thankful my home number was blocked.

Two-plus hours of utter failure. I called Kevin Bracht and asked how Zelda was doing.

“No change, Doc, would’ve called you if there was. I could go in and try to talk to her but I figure let sleeping patients lie.”

“Agreed. I’ll be by tomorrow to take her to a placement I found. Anything else I should know, Kevin?”

“Just that it’s extremely weird being here at night. The Hyphen and her secretary leave at four and the building’s locked up tight. I have a key but I’m starting to feel I’m the 5150. So please, Doc. Rescue me.”

“Will do,” I said. “Try to have a good dinner.”

“You bet,” said Bracht. “Found a few fancy places on the take-out list. I’m looking forward to steak and lobster, courtesy of the federal government.”

“Bon appétit.”

“Might as well be bon something.”

Partial episodes of SubUrban were all over the Internet. I was about to view one when Robin came into my office and ruffled my hair.

“Can I distract you long enough for dinner?”

I glanced at my desk clock. Just after eight p.m. “Where we going?”

“Thirty feet away. I barbecued some chicken.”

“Oh. Great, thanks — I’d have been happy to help.”

She smiled. “I looked in on you an hour ago and saw a man possessed.”

I hadn’t seen or heard her. “More like dispossessed.”

“Of what?”

“Progress.”

That sounded like Milo but Robin was kind enough not to point it out. I got up and drew her to me and kissed her. When we broke, she was breathless and laughing. “Nice to be appreciated, but maybe you should wait to taste the chicken.”

The meal was great, my token contribution clearing and loading the dishwasher, then mixing us a couple of Sidecars. “Let’s drink out by the pond, handsome. It’s a nice night.”

Still trying to settle me down.

She’d probably suggest a bath before bedtime. The only person who ever cared much about me. I kept her drink light, tossed extra brandy into mine.

We settled by the water’s edge, sipped and watched the fish create gentle eddies.

I reached for Robin’s hand, said the right things, made the right facial expressions.

When we returned to the house, she said, “I haven’t bathed yet.”

The next morning at eight I caught Milo at home and asked him to get the details of Zelda’s Bel Air arrest.

“Why?”

“Sherry Andover’s questions about violence stuck with me. I’d like to be on solid ground.”

An hour later, he got back to me. “The female resident heard noise in the backyard and went out and found Zelda crouched in a corner. Zelda stood up and began waving her hands and screaming ‘horribly.’ That woke the male up and he overpowered Zelda, who tried to fight him off while his girlfriend dialed 911. Does that change anything?”

“It could be worse,” I said, “but compared with her previous arrests, it’s a step in the wrong direction.”

“Speaking of previous, no one at Central remembers her and there’s no record of her ever having a kid with her. But I was half wrong about no alcohol testing. They took blood from her the second time and she popped a .21.”

“Serious intoxication.”

“Yeah and there’s more. She was also positive for heroin and meth. No needle marks, so she sniffed. That’s a nasty combination, couldn’t have done much for her mental status.”

“I’ll call Andover and tell her. If she turns Zelda down, I’ll come up with something else.”

“You’re really carrying this woman, Alex. Is it something about her or just the kid?”

“Mostly the kid,” I said. “But maybe she’s also gotten to me — the plunge from what she was to who she is now. She was gorgeous, now she looks like a crone.”

“The street can do that to you.”

I said, “I need to disengage, huh?”

“Maybe if you do find out the kid’s okay, it wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“That doesn’t look likely.” I told him about striking out at boarding schools.

He said, “I figured you’d do something like that and I probably shouldn’t say anything, but that’s just the Golden State, there’re are forty-nine others. And what about them furrin countries — isn’t Switzerland full of fancy écoles ? England, too, all those oldy-moldy piles of brick where they cane your bottom for kicks and turn you into a masochistic earl or whatever.”

I laughed. “I know, the whole idea’s ridiculous. The kid would need a trust fund.”

“You’re saying ridiculous but you’re thinking maybe before Zelda went completely nuts she set the kid up financially. One can always dream.”

“I shouldn’t pursue it.”

“My opinion’s gonna make a difference? Good luck.”

SubUrban ’s Wikipedia listing described the show as “a vehicle for lowbrow, often vulgar, infrequently on-spot humor.” Mediocre ratings during the first season hadn’t prevented renewal because the network was searching for “edgy comedy aimed at attracting a younger audience.” Viewership increased a bit at the beginning of the second season but began to taper at the end. Cancellation came with no warning from the network.

The setting was an apartment building in a nameless midwestern city that served as the hub of a dysfunctional social grouping: a grumpy widower named Horace and his two children, a fifteen-year-old would-be lothario named (get it!!) Horner and an intellectually precocious, nunnish seventeen-year-old named (this you have to get!!!!) Virginia. The house pets Lou Sherman had cited were an inert, flatulent basset hound who supplied voiceover wisdom and a goldfish in a bowl who enjoyed faking death. Additional charm was supplied by neighbors: a Nigerian couple named Marvis and Bulski who dressed formally and believed themselves above it all, and a caricature-gay fireman named Chad-Michael-Anthony whose sleep patterns had been permanently destroyed by middle-of-the-night alarms. He’d installed a flagpole in his house in order to “practice my leg lock.”