Mile High Murder

by Marcia Talley

  While the rest of our party sprawled in their seats in the back of the limo, smoking weed as if the Feds were going to raid the van and take it all away at the next stoplight, I grilled Austin about his business.

  ‘It’s a family thing, totally,’ he began. ‘Desiree and I were barely making it when we inherited an old shoe factory from her dad. It was a big, drafty, tumbledown ruin. They hadn’t made a shoe there for over a decade.’

  He eased the limo into the traffic heading west on Seventh Avenue. ‘After Amendment Sixty-Four passed, we were sitting around Bell House with friends, smoking a little kush, when Desiree suggested turning the factory into a grow house. And the rest, as they say, is history.’

  As we headed north on Interstate 25, he continued, ‘We planted inside at first, in the area where the sewing machines used to be. Semi-hydroponically, with grow lights. Then Desiree had this brainstorm. We’ve got three hundred days of sunshine in Colorado, she figured – why waste all that money on electricity? So we built the greenhouses you’ll see today.’ He took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at me. ‘She’s brilliant, Desiree. I married well.’

  ‘I read an article, I can’t remember where,’ I said, ‘that one way the Feds track down grow houses in residential neighborhoods is by pawing through utility bills looking for unusual water and electrical consumption.’

  Austin clicked his tongue. ‘Swine.’ After a moment, he added, ‘So, screw them! Now we’ve got one of the biggest operations in the state. Greenhouses, a dispensary, retail shops both for weed and paraphernalia, a rooftop restaurant with an unobstructed view of the Rockies – that’s where you’ll be having lunch. If all goes well, we’ll be breaking ground for a theater and conference center in the fall.’

  Austin slowed for the exit signposted ‘Westminster’ and then steered the limo toward the mountains. ‘Almost there,’ he said.

  We drove silently for a few minutes more, then turned into a parking lot. At eleven o’clock, it was already nearly full. Cars prowled patiently around the lot, looking for the next open slot. ‘Business seems to be booming,’ I said.

  Austin gave the horn a short, celebratory tap. ‘Thank you, Governor Hickenlooper.’

  He eased the limo into a spot marked Reserved. Once parked, he rushed around to my side of the limo, opened my door and bowed like a gentleman as I emerged. Then he released the smokers from the back, although nobody seemed to be in a particular hurry to disembark.

  Colin staggered out first, shaking one leg and then the other, as if trying to figure out how they worked. Claire exited in slow motion, too, but had enough presence of mind to offer Colin a steadying arm, which he took. Mark and Cindy tumbled out next, followed by Josh and Lisa, chattering like school children just released from the classroom for recess, which was certainly true, in a way. Daniel followed, and then Desiree, who herded the group, as skillfully as an Australian shepherd, into a neat huddle near a digital sign that read Next Tour Begins In 10 Minutes. As we waited for the stragglers, the digital number ticked down to nine.

  Austin had been locking up the limo. The number had just moved to eight when he appeared, holding a digital camera. Next to me, Lisa groaned. ‘Oh, no. Not the obligatory group shot!’

  ‘For our scrapbook. It won’t hurt a bit,’ Austin said, waving us into position for the photograph. ‘Tall people in back, please.’

  ‘I wish he wouldn’t,’ Lisa whined. ‘My hair’s a mess.’

  Which wasn’t true. It fell clean, lustrous and shimmering in the sun like spun gold, all the way to its roots.

  Desiree positioned a dozy Colin in front of Lisa, who was still fiddling with her hair. She shifted Daniel to the end of the first row, next to me. After Daniel got into position, his hand shot into the pocket of his trousers and came out holding an iPhone. ‘Here,’ he said, thumbing the phone to life and handing it to Austin. ‘Take one for me, too. I’ll email it to everyone later.’

  This elicited another groan from Lisa.

  ‘Say peaches,’ Austin instructed as we posed, forcing us to smile.

  ‘Follow me,’ Desiree said after the photo session was mercifully over. With a ‘Thank God!’ from Lisa, our hostess lead us past a long line of scowling visitors to a door marked VIP.

  Mark confidently followed. Tottering behind, in strappy sandals with three-inch heels – not my first choice for a walking tour – was Cindy. Her legs disappeared under the skirt of her red-checked sundress and continued upward, presumably forever.

  At a small reception desk, Mark paused with a look that said, Hold on a minute! My wife! and waited for Cindy to catch up.

  Desiree killed time shuffling paperwork while we all signed the guest book, and each of us was issued a clip-on VIP visitor badge. ‘Ready?’ Desiree asked.

  Behind the desk, two rustic barn doors hung from overhead rails. Desiree grabbed a handle and slid one of the doors aside. I don’t know what I expected to see behind, but an industrial-strength steel door with a security pin pad attached to the wall wasn’t it. Desiree swiped the ID that hung round her neck over the pad and I watched the door swing silently open. ‘We take security seriously here,’ she said. ‘This is a water, fire and bomb-proof door.’

  We followed our hostess down a long, narrow hallway painted a soothing off-white. Cindy’s heels clattered on the hard concrete floor as we passed door after door, before Desiree paused in front of one labeled CLONES.

  ‘It’s like something out of Star Wars,’ Colin muttered in an awestruck voice.

  Inside the room, boxes of cuttings, each about four inches high, sat on chest-high tables in rooting trays covered with raised plastic lids. ‘After they root,’ Desiree explained, ‘we let them grow for a week, a week and a half, then they get transferred to individual pots.’

  ‘What kind of medium do you use?’ Mark asked.

  Desiree smiled mysteriously. ‘The nutrient combination is a trade secret, I’m afraid.’

  Further along the hallway, we entered a vast space where row upon row of individual marijuana plants were growing in one-gallon pots. Tubes about the diameter of my arm snaked around the room, providing irrigation for the young plants. ‘At this point,’ Desiree said, ‘each plant gets tagged. We take MITS seriously, too.’

  ‘MITS?’ Lisa chirped.

  ‘Above your pay grade, honey,’ Josh muttered.

  She shot shrapnel into the back of his head with her eyes.

  Desiree rattled on as if she hadn’t heard the exchange. ‘It stands for Marijuana Inventory Tracking Solutions,’ she said. ‘Each tag contains our retail or medical marijuana license number, a product serial number and a secure ID chip that can be scanned by a scanning gun using radio-frequency identification or RIFD technology, similar to that used by a grocery store clerk.’ She paused to let that information sink in.

  ID chip, I scrawled.

  ‘A true seed-to-sale system.’

  ‘Ah …’ Daniel said, sounding wise.

  ‘As you can see,’ Desiree continued, ‘the plants closest to us have been growing for about a week.’ She stood on tiptoes, waved an arm and pointed. ‘The tall ones in the back there, for about four. At the four-week point, they get replanted in three-gallon pots and …’ She paused. ‘If there aren’t any questions, please follow me.’

  We straggled after her, with Colin bringing up the rear, touching plants along the way as if to make sure they were real and not made out of plastic. I smiled when he paused, adjusted his cap, held up his iPhone, grinned and took a selfie.

  After he’d caught up with us, Desiree led us to another secure door, a double one this time, swiped her ID badge and, as the door swung open on silent hinges, grandly announced, ‘Welcome to Disneyland.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Josh exclaimed.

  Mark grabbed Cindy’s hand and said, ‘A preview of coming attractions, cupcake.’

  ‘Shee-it,’ Colin breathed.

  My feelings exactly.

  We had entered the Flowering Room, a vast gree
nhouse the size of an aircraft hangar, filled with flowering marijuana plants of infinite variety. It was a dense jungle. Some plants were over ten feet tall, heavy with fist-sized blossoms drooping over string netting that struggled to hold them erect.

  It was the humidity that hit me at first, like a wet towel. Then came the overpowering odor of skunk I associated with the plants themselves, followed by overtones of damp earth.

  ‘We grow one hundred and thirty varieties here,’ Desiree was saying when I tuned in again.

  We wandered down a long row. Surprisingly, she allowed us to touch one of the plants, its buds glistening with crystals. My hand came away sticky with resin.

  ‘Marco!’ she yelled suddenly. A man popped up from behind a row of five-foot plants. He wore chinos and a polo shirt, and had a shower cap over his bald head, like the guy who makes sandwiches in my local deli. Turning to the group, Desiree said, ‘This is Marco, our grow guru. Marco, please explain to our guests what happens to the buds from this point on.’

  For the final leg of the greenhouse tour, we followed Marco into the drying room, where harvested plants hung upside down like tobacco for about two weeks before being trimmed and the buds laid out in single layers on screen trays. ‘Next stop for these babies is the retail store,’ Marco concluded, and led us through another door into a clean, ultra-modern shop.

  ‘Just like Disney,’ Claire complained. ‘Climb off the ride and it disgorges you into the gift shop.’ Grumbling aside, however, she left me in the proverbial dust as she hurried off to check out the Happy Daze wares.

  ‘I dream of the day when we have choice like this in Maryland,’ Claire was saying to the budrista when I caught up with her. She sat at a counter on a tall, aluminum barstool. ‘Tell me about that one,’ she said, leaning in and pointing to one of the bud-filled glass jars neatly arranged on clear-varnished pine shelves behind the bud bar. ‘I’m interested primarily in the indicas for my nausea.’

  While Claire considered a baffling array of indicas, sativas and hybrids with whimsical names like sour diesel, train wreck, moon rocks, screaming gorilla and the ‘legendary’ Alaskan thunderfuck, I browsed nearby glass cases where cannabis paraphernalia was displayed, bathed in pale purple lighting. Grinders, vaporizers and vape pens. Body products like oils, salves, soaks, patches, toothpaste, shampoo and lip balm. Cannabis suppositories for menstrual cramps. I could even purchase cannabis-infused coffee pods for my Keurig. Who knew?

  ‘Skywalker is good for nausea,’ the girl was explaining to Claire. ‘And stress.’

  ‘Hell with that,’ I heard Colin say as he elbowed his way up to the bud bar. ‘Give me something that’s loaded with THC. I’m here to get high.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but this lady was ahead of you,’ the budrista scolded. She took a step in my direction. ‘What would you like?’ the girl asked, looking directly at me.

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ I said, with an apologetic smile directed at Colin, although he didn’t deserve it.

  She gave me a suspicious so-what-are-you-doing-here look, so I added, ‘I’m the designated driver.’ I paused. ‘But I might consider the lip balm.’

  Claire was still shilly-shallying over the menu, so the budrista unlocked the cabinet in front of me, reached in and handed me a pot of Goodwitch lip balm. ‘All organic,’ she added.

  What else? I said to myself as I took a moment to read the label.

  ‘No way!’ Lisa’s voice cut above the hum of casual conversation and the soft music wafting in from speakers artfully concealed in the paneling.

  I turned. On the opposite side of the room, Daniel stood with Lisa and Josh next to a bank of cabinets, their functional glasswares attractively illuminated with museum-quality lighting.

  Lisa cocked a hip and folded her arms across her chest.

  Josh’s arm snaked around his wife’s waist and drew her close. He rose on tiptoe to speak directly into her ear, but whatever he said, she wasn’t having it. She shook her head defiantly.

  Daniel leaned in, too. His lips moved, but I wasn’t close enough to hear.

  Again, Lisa shook her head, so vehemently this time that the chandeliers dangling from her ears bounced against her neck. She shook off Josh’s arm and stalked away. What was that all about?

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ I told Claire.

  I left the lip balm on the counter and followed Lisa down a long hallway and into the ladies’ room. She wasn’t in a stall, as I expected, but hanging over a sink, checking her makeup in the mirror.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ I asked.

  ‘Just a little panicky, is all. Pot does that to me sometimes.’

  ‘I just saw you talking to Daniel.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You didn’t seem happy.’

  She flapped a hand, waving my concern away. ‘Oh, that!’

  ‘What do you know about Daniel?’ I asked.

  She dabbed her finger into a small pot of blush and rubbed it into her cheeks. After what I’d seen that day, I wondered if the blush had cannabis in it. ‘Not much,’ she said.

  ‘What does he do?’ I asked.

  Lisa shrugged. ‘Says he teaches agriculture at the University of Georgia.’

  I laughed. ‘Marijuana Cultivation 101?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask him.’

  So I was right in thinking he looked like a professor.

  ‘Are you heading up to the restaurant for lunch?’ I asked.

  ‘I really need a smoke,’ Lisa said, ignoring my question, ‘but I guess it will have to wait until we get back to the B and B. Josh bought me some Blackberry Kush. Supposed to help me chill.’ She held the blusher between her thumb and index finger, then dropped it into the mouth of her open handbag. ‘Don’t have a clue what that other shit was.’

  ‘See you later, then,’ I said, and headed into a stall.

  ‘Bye!’ she said as the restroom door closed behind her.

  When I returned to the shop for my lip balm, Claire and Colin had moved on, their places at the counter taken over by Mark and Cindy. The budrista held the couple in thrall, extolling the benefits of a hybrid weed named Girl Scout Cookies. I smiled, and had to eavesdrop. Girl Scout Cookies, it seems, were good for PTSD, but why anyone would consider a combination of sweet pastry, wood varnish and diesel fuel with subtle overtones of lemon Pinesol a plus, I simply couldn’t imagine. Still smiling, I paid for the lip balm, then went off to find the restaurant, where I’d been promised organic food, locally sourced. What else?

  SEVEN

  The windows were covered with blankets and a single electric bulb flickers through smoke so dense you can barely see across the room. A dozen persons around a penny-ante poker game. They range from boys of 16 to men in their late 20s, all in a state of dazed exhilaration. There are only a few rickety chairs and the table for furnishings and the gang lolls about the room, some chasing cheap whisky with long muggles drags, others content to smoke, laugh vacuously and ‘walk on air.’

  St Louis Star-Times, February 4, 1935.

  The chance to interrogate Daniel Fischel didn’t arrive until later that afternoon, when our merry band of weed pilgrims and medical refugees gathered for happy hour in the solarium.

  Slightly more than twenty-four hours had passed since Claire and I had landed in the Mile High City, and the novelty of recreational pot had already worn off, at least for me. At four-fifteen, Marilyn appeared and laid out the hors d’oeurves: baked brie, shredded wheat crackers, toast points and paté, assorted olives and frozen seedless grapes. There was Mark loading up his plate as if no supper was in his future. Lisa and Josh were experimenting with the matching glass pipes they’d bought at the weedery that afternoon. Claire was continuing to roll and smoke her own, seeming to enjoy the ritual of it. Daniel was sucking on his vape pen. I was holding a glass of wine. Relax, have a good time, laugh at stupid jokes in a no-shame zone. Wasn’t that the point? It all seemed so natural.

  Add Desiree in the next room, pound
ing out Scott Joplin rags on the Steinway.

  It didn’t get more civilized than that. When I made my report, I hoped I could convince the senate committee to see it that way.

  I waited until Daniel got his hands on the wine bottle, then sidled up, held out my glass and requested a refill. After he’d refilled his own glass, too, and taken a sip, I asked, ‘So, what brings you here, Daniel?’

  ‘I’m working on background for Georgia State Representative Allen Peake,’ he said. ‘Bill Sixty-Five recently passed the house and it loosened things up a bit, but some don’t think it goes far enough.’

  ‘Bill Sixty-Five?’

  ‘Medical marijuana,’ he clarified. ‘Recreational’s a long way off in Georgia. They still throw you in the slammer.’

  ‘I keep thinking you look familiar,’ I said. ‘Are you a reporter?’

  ‘Hardly!’ He seemed genuinely amused by my question. ‘Just a lowly Professor of Agriculture at the university.’ He patted his breast pocket. ‘I’m taking notes.’

  My acquaintance with the man had been short, but I saw no evidence of note-taking paraphernalia. No notebook like the one I carried. No tape recorder, unless he was using his iPhone. The only thing in his breast pocket was his vape pen. I’d just watched him take it out. Maybe he was depending on memory. At Bell House? Good luck with that.

  ‘I noticed you talking with Josh and Lisa back at the weedery,’ I said. ‘She didn’t seem too happy.’

  He shrugged, as if he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

  ‘You look more like a Shakespeare scholar than a corn, wheat and soybeans one,’ I said, changing the subject.

  He laughed. ‘Had quite enough of the Bard in high school, Mrs Ives. “Where the bee sucks, there suck I, in the cowslip’s bell I lie” and all that.’ He considered the painted ceiling dreamily and sucked on his vape pen. ‘Have you ever been face-to-face with a cow, eye to eye?’

  I had to admit that I had. ‘My sister-in-law raises Dexters in southern Maryland.’

  He nodded sagely. ‘Ah. Wonderful animals. Trustworthy, honest and straightforward. You never have any doubts about a cow’s intentions.’