“Last October.”
“A month after Aaron Carlisle’s death.”
“Yes. Loralee told us at the funeral she was putting the company on the market.”
“Were you and the Carlisles close?”
“Like family. Of course, in the alternative health field we’re all like family.”
“Are you still close to Loralee?”
“We’re good friends.”
“Did she ever mention being uneasy about the circumstances of Aaron’s sudden death?”
“Are you a cop?”
“Definitely not.”
“Just curious.”
“Shara,” I said, probably a little too thin-skinned. “I’ll be glad to meet you later where I can show you my license.”
“Not necessary,” she laughed. She had a low, sensual laugh. “My intuition tells me you’re okay. You learn to trust your instincts, usually. But the truth is, that in addition to dispensing Vita Green products, I’m a certified massage therapist. Well, the law assumes we’re all prostitutes, so….”
“I get it. Sorry.”
“No problem. But since you ask, Loralee was never quite right about Aaron’s death. Not just the suddenness of it. Well, there goes intuition again.”
“Anything she said?”
There was a slight pause. “Let’s see. Let me think.”
“Take your time.”
“We talked business, we talked personally, we talked about other things, and everything was interwoven. Aaron was a marvelous promoter, a hard realist, but also a starry-eyed dreamer. Loralee is a dreamer without peer, but she has an edge of hard realism to her, too. It made a nice, complementary marriage, and it was a good business setup. We all made money, and they were constantly hinting that there were bigger things to come. I believed them.”
“Any specifics?”
Shara paused. “Not really. But—did you know that in the sixties and seventies Aaron made a fortune selling marijuana?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he got out of it because there were some people moving into the business that he didn’t relate to. On both sides of the law.”
“I understand. Not just a home-grown, down-to-earth enterprise anymore.”
“Good lord, no. From the stories he told, it was a wonder he got out of it with his spirit still intact, not to mention his life. But some of those people never really went away. Not that they harassed him, but they just kept hanging around, I guess trying to see if they could find an angle to hang on him.”
“We can’t avoid our past,” I said. “The best you can do is avoid having anything they really want.”
“That’s very good.”
“Thanks, I try. I would guess, though, that Aaron had plenty of what those guys want.”
“Gobs. So they never really went away. Aaron was good at pawning them off, though. And he was always interested in the effects of natural substances on the human mind.”
“Did he take drugs?”
“No. A glass of wine, smoke a little pot at a party, that was it. He was fond of saying how everything originally comes from natural sources. In our product line we’re involved with the overall effects of chemicals in plants on the human body, and it follows, the mind. Mostly, it’s light stuff, no extensive mind altering. But it is impossible to affect the body without also affecting the mind. Check out the difference when you eat a carrot, and when you eat a candy bar.”
“How true.” I was at that moment unwrapping a candy bar.
“We deal with extracts from plants that have favorable results on the body, so they make life more pleasant: St. John’s wort for depression, banana extract for hypertension, chamomile for sleeplessness. Good natural substances, new and old, to make more or less healthy people a bit healthier. We don’t claim to cure anything incurable, nor do we say to avoid standard medical treatment.”
“Okay,” I said between bites. My mental attitude was improving already.
“But all pretty much normal stuff for normal people. Nothing to, let’s say, alter reality.”
“Umm, hmm.”
“But Aaron was interested—deeply interested--even fascinated, by the tendency of human beings to want to go deep into their own minds. Not only in what’s down there, but why people seek what’s in there without knowing if it’s benign or terrible. Why they seek beyond their self-interest, why they take it to self-destructive extremes.”
“So he was involved with something more than just herbal remedies for common disorders?”
“Interested. I don’t know about involved. How would you define involved?”
“More than just idle conversation. Actually doing something. Even just discussing it seriously with people who would do something.”
“He was involved, in the very early stages.”
“Anything specific? Anybody specific?”
“I wouldn’t know. Aaron didn’t let cats out of bags. Loralee might know more about it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t, either. I do know that Aaron was intrigued by the human drive to self-abuse in the hopes of changing perception. And when he was intrigued, he followed through.”
I thanked her and hung up. There were no more voice mail messages, so I ate another candy bar, drank another reheated cup of coffee, and watched the rain. Along about 1:30 I reached for another candy bar, realized how ridiculous this was getting. I made myself stand, grab my coat and umbrella, and walk out of the office.
Two or three doors down there was a lunch room. I got a hamburger, French fries, and a milk shake. Afterward, in a frenzy of guilt I went down a couple more doors to a little market where I picked up a couple cans of tomato juice. Then I went up to my office, made another pot of coffee, and re-occupied my chair.
The phone rang about 3:30, by which time I had definitely concluded it was raining outside. I was listening to the classical station, and news flashes were warning of eminent flooding.
“Hello, Marvin, this is Loralee. How are you?”
“To tell the truth, I’m getting close to an altered state of perception.”
“Huh?”
"Private little joke. Too much coffee. But I’ve been piecing things together. I have some new information and a few more questions.”
“Good.”
“First, Aaron’s name was erased from the County records.”
“Erased? I don’t—“
“Just taken off the memory banks,” I told her. “According to the County, he never existed.”
“That’s—“
“Suspicious? Yeah. So I’ll keep looking around.”
She laughed without humor. “He really did exist, and I can prove it.”
“I know. My guess is that somebody needed to change something, so they took him off the record only for a short time. They didn’t expect you to ask me to ask somebody for information about him, right now.”
“A lucky coincidence?” she asked, sarcastically.
“How well do you know Shara Verche?”
“Very well. We were in business together,