“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, and we’re good friends besides.”
“I talked to her today. She had high praise for you and Aaron.”
“Well, that’s mutual.”
“She mentioned that Aaron had been studying natural means of mind alteration.”
“You think he was back into growing marijuana?”
“No. Although if he was, there might be some natural suspects. I ought to have asked these questions yesterday, but the fact is I had no thought that we would come up with anything. Even healthy people can suddenly have heart attacks.”
“So you expected to just call me in a couple days and say you’re sorry about my grief, but Aaron died, right?”
“Pretty close. I was even ready to give you your money back.”
“I wouldn’t have taken it.”
“But then his name disappeared from the memory banks.”
“Another odd coincidence.”
“Yeah. So now we start looking around. I still don’t know if we’ll get anything. If there was foul play, whoever did it has some pretty big cards. We might be out of luck, finding any evidence of crime. Unless we can find a motive and a method, we could still come up with nothing. But now I’ve got enough to go on, to keep prying."
“Do you need more money?”
“No, I only bill a client when the job’s done. The costs so far have been minimal. And I already had a call in to Shara Verche and the other distributor—“
“Bobby Waldsten.”
“Right. He hasn’t called back yet.”
“He won’t.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t say you were interested in Vita Green, did you?”
“No.”
“Then he won’t call you back.”
“I take it you don’t like him?”
“No. I don’t. I don’t really dislike him,” she said flatly. “But I don’t like him either. In our line we’re all part save the world, part entrepreneur. I relate to the ones who want do something for humanity. Bobby’s the kind who always sees his own enrichment as the ultimate good for the human race. Still, he’s decent, as far as that goes.”
“Would you say he’s greedy?”
“Ambitious. Now remember, Marvin, I’ve never lacked for anything. I came from a good family. It wasn’t ‘Leave it to Beaver,’ but no real family is. I was well-off starting in my late teens. Since my early thirties I’ve been rich. I can’t say where someone else might be coming from.”
“Sounds like the kind of guy I’d really like to talk to. What sort of mind enhancement was Aaron looking into?”
“Oh. I thought we were discussing Bobby. Is this a bait-and-switch technique to get people to reveal secrets?”
I laughed. “No, I’m just not interested in Bobby Waldsten right now.”
“Good, because you know tricksters are the most easily tricked.”
“And liars have to remember. Which I can’t do.”
“So a problem becomes a strength.”
“I suppose.”
“It impressed Aaron enormously that people pursue total destruction in order to change reality.”
“Any particulars?”
“Well….Aaron and I knew, along with our closest friends, that the Great Reality—“
“What?”
“God consciousness. The Over Soul. It goes by many names.”
“Okay.”
“It can be reached in a way that is profound and lasting, simply by practicing the basic principles you find in every religion.”
“What are they?”
“Love your neighbor, love your Creator, love yourself because they reflect both, and honestly try to live by the Golden Rule, which, by the way, is the same in all religions.”
“Go on.”
“But some people try to take a short cut, to ingest something, that brings up a false perception of the Great Reality. Ultimately these methods are superficial, insidious, and deadly. And we know it. Still, people keep trying. They persevere right to the grave.”
“Did Aaron dabble in any drugs?”
“No. He was quite the teetotaler. Not from dogma, but he actually liked being straight. He’d smoke a joint with people because he was selling it. If we had a party, we’d serve beer or wine, but I never saw him empty a glass.”
“And nothing stronger?”
“What do you think?” Her tone could freeze hell.
“I don’t mean to upset you, Loralee. It’s my business to ask a lot of questions. Some of them seem stupid. If you’d like to knock off for now—“
“It’s all right. For some reason I’m a little thin-skinned. I should apologize.”
It was obvious, though, that neither of us intended to apologize. Maybe neither of us needed to. “Okay, I’m going to go from stupid questions to jumping to conclusions.”
“Another bait-and-switch? Or am I just nervous? Please, go ahead, Marvin.”
“It looks to me like Aaron believed that no matter how destructive, dangerous, and even useless drugs, booze, cigarettes, and such things are, people still lust after them. And he probably thought that, with his knowledge of natural herbs and stuff, that somewhere there exits a substance that could do what all the drugs we have now can do, with few if any of the risks. And whoever could discover that would be doing an unbelievably huge service for mankind.”
“And?”
“There’d have to be a lot of money in it. Money interests most people. Some of them might not be the kind of folks you’d like. Did Aaron make any discoveries?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he have any note books, computer files, whatever, stashed away?”
I could hear her sigh over the phone. “The upstairs of this house has been rebuilt. My meditation room and studio is part of that. We have some guest rooms. And Clarissa’s room. Aaron’s office is in another part. It’s chockfull of files and notebooks. He also had an office at the herb farm in Sloughhouse. My son and daughter came over one Saturday just before we sold the farm. Now that they’re grown, they get to see me. We got into our grubbies, Clarissa too, and cleaned out all Aaron’s personal files. Then we put them into a storage cubicle. I’ll give you the key.”
I don’t get paid enough for that. “I might, just in case, but for now I’ll stick with other methods. Was Bobby Waldsten interested in Aaron’s research?”
“Very. In fact he even got a bit rude about it. Aaron finally had to remind him, in his gentlemanly manner as always, that he was in charge of product development, and that Bobby’s job was to sell the stuff as it came out. Bobby