A Discount for Death (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

Estelle turned the county car off Grande onto Escondido, and for a few yards, before the intersection with Guadalupe to the right, the neighborhood looked unchanged since the first time she’d seen it two decades before. Bill Gastner’s sprawling adobe was just visible through enormous cottonwoods overshadowing the narrow asphalt of Guadalupe.

What had been five acres of scrub, brush, and crowded trees behind Gastner’s old adobe was now home to the Posadas Clinic and Pharmacy. Despite the grandiose wishes of the architects, Francis Guzman and Alan Perrone had prevailed. The clinic was low, dark brown adobe with turquoise trim around multipane windows. As many trees as possible had been untouched during construction, and the bulk of the parking lot was behind the building. The result was a new facility that didn’t overwhelm the old neighborhood.

Estelle slowed for the driveway and turned into the packed lot. As she idled the car through the lanes, she saw that nearly a third of the license plates were Mexican. Francis would be swamped. Estelle knew that it was wishful thinking to expect that he could break away for lunch.

The west end of the building was a pharmacy, and she entered there, knowing the back door behind the prescription counter would let her skirt the crowded waiting room, entering directly into the hallway leading to the physicians’ private offices and the lab.

She saw the top of Louis Herrera’s head as the pharmacist concentrated, bowed over his workstation. At the pickup window, one of the girls was explaining something about a medication in Spanish to an elderly woman, and Herrera looked up, interrupting the girl. Even as he talked, he lifted a hand in greeting as Estelle slipped past.

“I think he just got back,” the pharmacist said in English to Estelle. He lightly touched the old woman on the back of the hand as if to keep his place in that conversation, stepped across to the door, and swiped a card through the lock. He pulled the door open and held it for Estelle. “I just saw his car drive in.”

“Thanks, Lou,” she said.

He grinned at the drug reference book as she passed. “You planning to go to work here soon?”

“Not on your life,” she laughed. The door closed behind her with a well-insulated thud and the click of the electronic lock.

As if one door had triggered another, she saw her husband step out of his office down the hall. He stopped, hand on the knob as she approached, and then opened the door for her. “Perfect timing,
querida
. I’m headed for the war zone.”

“I was going to take you to lunch,
Oso
, but I can see that’s not going to happen.”

He laughed. “I wish,” he said. He followed her into the office and closed the door. Estelle thumped the heavy volume down on his cluttered desk. Before he had a chance to take a step, she wrapped her arms around him in a ferocious hug. “Whoa,” he gasped. He put a hand on either side of her head, trying to turn her so that he could look into her eyes. Instead, she drove her face hard into his white lab coat, ignoring the pen that pressed into her cheek. The physician locked his arms around Estelle and held her in an “Oso” hug, both of them silent for several minutes.

“I’m turning cyanotic,” Francis said finally.

“Too bad.” Estelle’s voice was muffled in his coat.

“Good morning, eh?”

“Spectacular,” she said. She lifted her head and looked up at him, brushing his lips lightly with hers. “Tell me what you did this morning.” She tightened her grip and Francis smiled.

“The really exciting part was getting called out to do an emergency appendectomy.”

“On who?”

“Her name’s Kittie Wheeler. Ernie’s niece.”

“She’s doing fine?”

“She’s doing fine,
querida
.” He reached up and moved a stray strand of hair to one side of her forehead.

“Was she at school?”

Francis grinned. “Yes…she was at school. And as the current generation is fond of saying, ‘and this is important becaaaause?’ ”

“I don’t know why it’s important,
Oso
. I just need to know.”

“Well, that was the highlight of my morning, especially the ten minutes it took to convince the kid that the appendectomy scar wouldn’t show when she wears one of those midriff things. Otherwise, it’s been a steady stream, in one door and out the other. There’s a little community down past Tres Santos that has some water problems, I think. We’re seeing a bunch of nasty gastro stuff that sure reads like they’re drinkin’ something they shouldn’t be.”

Her arms began to ache. She loosened her grip and straightened his collar.

“I really need to get out there,” he said and glanced at the book. “What’d you bring me?”

“Do you have time for a couple of questions?”

“Por supuesto, señora.”

She clutched a fistful of coat fabric and led him over to the desk. “George Enriquez had this on the shelf of his office at home,” she said.

Francis tilted his head and glanced at the cover of the pharmaceutical survey. “Ooookay.”

She opened the book to the Post-it. “He has this section marked with this,” and she tapped the note. “Or at least, this was stuck
in
this section. I was thinking that maybe the numbers he has listed here refer to page numbers?”

Francis leaned over, both hands on the desk, and frowned at the note. “Okay.”

“So they could?”

“Well, of course, they
could
.” He lifted a hand and riffled to the beginning of the gray section. “This section begins on page 305 and ends…on page 346. His list begins on 311, with the highest number 341.” He shrugged. “As good a guess as any.”

“There’re eight numbers,” Estelle said.

“I see that, Holmes.”

“Would it be possible to look at each page and see if there’s anything they have in common…or some kind of connection?”

“You don’t have any idea what you’re looking for?”

“No. Or even if I
am
looking.” She reached out and brushed the right side of his face. “It’s just that I’m curious. Anyone can own one of these books, for a million reasons. I’m curious, that’s all.”

“Por querer saber,”
he said. He glanced up at the wall clock and grimaced. “There’s going to be a riot here soon.” He opened to page 311. “Inhalers, stuff.” He tapped a bicolored capsule. “Petrosin’s a big seller. Fluoxetine hydrochloride? For depression. Anybody facing a grand jury probe would probably want several cocktails of that every day.”

He frowned and leafed to page 315. “All kinds of neat stuff here. And that’s wrong.” He bent down, hands on either side of the book. “Which edition is this?” He lifted the front cover. “Okay.” Flipping back to 315, he tapped a pill. “Some do prescribe a lot of this.”

“Bicotin Six,” Estelle read. “What’s it for?”

“Pain reliever. It’s just a mix of aspirin and codeine phosphate. There’s a Bicotin Three, which has thirty milligrams of codeine, and Bicotin Six…which has sixty.” He wagged his shaggy eyebrows.

“Okay.”

“The problem is,” and he slipped his hand into the page and flipped back to 311. “The problem is that Bicotin Six isn’t yellow as it shows here.” He bent closer. “And Petrosin isn’t a yellow capsule, either. That’s why I was wondering what edition this was.” He glanced at the Post-it and then flipped to the next page. Estelle waited silently while her husband thumbed through the section.

Finally he straightened up. “Interesting stuff. On each page that’s written down here,” and he jabbed at the note, “you have what I’d call a popular drug listed. And in each case, the drug’s yellow instead of white, or at least partially yellow.”

“So he marked a particular drug, then. That’s all.”

“I guess. Talk about too much free time on his hands. But that’s an interesting list. It’s like a list of best-sellers, Estelle. Prescription best-sellers. I don’t think George would be taking all those, at least not the oral contraceptives.”

“Mrs. Enriquez said he was taking Somdex.”

Francis shrugged. “That’s just a muscle relaxant. For aches and pains. Like I said, he must have had a lot of free time.”

“How so?”

“He’s going to sit there with this book in his lap and use a yellow Hi-Liter to paint drugs new colors?”

He turned the desk lamp on. “Look at that,” he said, and bent down so he was looking across the page at an acute angle. “You can’t even see where he slopped over the lines. This guy must have been a master with crayons when he was in school. I couldn’t do that if I worked at it.”

“So the yellow drugs on those pages…from that list…are prescription drugs that are popular. Is that the only connection you can think of?”

“
Sí, corazón
. What’s this guy doing, going into the supply side? I guess I should say, what
was
he doing.”

“I don’t know. It’s just odd, that’s all.”

“You might talk to Louis. He works with this stuff on a day-to-day basis. Hourly, in fact. He might be able to give you some ideas.”

“I might do that.”

Francis closed the book and glanced at his watch. “I gotta go,
querida
.”

“Do you mind if I stay here a while?” she asked, and he smiled at her serious expression. He reached out with his thumb, gently trying to erase the wrinkle between her thick, black eyebrows.

“Much more of this, and you’ll need some Petrosin yourself.” She hugged him until he laughed. “Come on,
mi corazón
. If you don’t let me go, I’m going to have to hang a stethoscope around your neck and make you deal with all the little snot-faces out there…and what’s worse, their mothers.”

She released him instantly. “I don’t think so.”

“See you
anoche
, then?”

She nodded and watched him go. Like a magnet, the huge book filled with a world of wonder drugs drew her back. She settled in her husband’s chair, breathing in the faint aroma of him that lingered. After a moment, she pushed his dictation equipment to one side and spread the massive book out in front of her.

For several minutes, she studied the book, leafing back and forth from index to product descriptions until she’d read each entry that had been marked. On impulse, she pulled open the center drawer of Francis’ desk, but found no Hi-Liter.

Leaving the door ajar, she left the office and returned to the pharmacy. In less than a minute, she was back in her husband’s office, a Hi-Liter in hand. She spread the book open and selected a large white tablet of Trilosec on a page that George Enriquez hadn’t noted. The instant the ink from the marker hit the page, it clumped and bunched, as if she were trying to write on waxed paper. Yet, when she drew the marker across the pill, the photo of the product turned an even yellow. With her finger, she wiped off the ink; it disappeared from the waxy surface, leaving behind a perfect, yellow pill.

“Caramba,”
she whispered. “That’s neat.”

For the next several minutes, she highlighted a variety of medications. In every case, the result was the same. The ink wiped off the page just as it would wipe off waxed paper. But in each case, it left the yellow color intact on the product.

“Neat, neat, neat,” she said. “That would appeal to George’s tidy nature.”

She reached out and picked up the phone, and dialed Frank Dayan at the
Posadas Register
.

Chapter Twenty-three

Frank Dayan met Estelle at the counter before either of the two girls who worked the front office could stir in their seats. She could see Pam Gardiner, the newspaper’s editor, in one of the back cubicles, deep in a telephone conversation.

“Well, good morning,” Dayan said heartily. He wore his habitual white shirt and narrow tie, looking like someone fresh from the ’60s. He smiled as if Estelle had come to purchase a full-page ad. “We’ve got a whole slew of questions to ask you,” he said.

“Frank, thanks for giving me a few minutes,” Estelle replied. Dayan frowned at the massive book that she rested on the counter.

“Let’s go back to the office,” he said, and led her through the welter of activity.

“This is a bad day for you, I know,” she said.

“Every day is a bad day for us,” he laughed. “Come on in.” His office was nothing more than another cubicle, the half-wall partitions providing the appearance of privacy. He gestured at a small chair that looked like a reject from the middle school and sat down in his own swivel chair, one elbow on the desk beside the computer keyboard. “First of all,” he said, and then dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “what’s up with the Kenderman thing? Pam said that when she stopped by the S.O. this morning, she couldn’t find out a thing, other than that he’d been arrested in connection with the girl’s death. Nobody’s talking.”

“We haven’t had time to talk,” Estelle said. “What you heard is correct,” she added. “He was arraigned late last night. Judge Hobart set bond at fifty thousand dollars.”

“Holy smokes.” Dayan jotted a quick note as Estelle watched silently. “So what’s the deal?”

“Officer Kenderman was on duty when he apparently was involved in an incident Monday night. Colette Parker was killed after her motorcycle crashed into a utility pole.”

“We have that part,” Dayan said quickly. “But high-speed chases don’t end in bond and jail.”

“The chase apparently occurred following a domestic dispute.”

“You mean between the Parker girl and Officer Kenderman?”

“That’s correct.”

“How bizarre.” Dayan raised his voice a notch. “Pam,” he called over the partition, “did you hear that?”

The heavy-set young woman appeared as a wavy figure through the Plexiglass. She looked over the top at Estelle. “What prompted all this, anyway?” she asked.

“It’s a domestic dispute,” Estelle replied. “That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

Pam’s eyes narrowed. “So if bond was set, what were the charges?

“Vehicular homicide, at the moment.”

“You mean there may be others?”

“That’s a possibility.” Estelle patted the cover of the heavy book on her lap. “I have an ink question that I need to ask you,” she said. Pam disappeared, and in a moment Estelle could hear the keys of the editor’s word processor.

“An ink question.” Dayan watched her open the book.

“This is really trivia,” she said, eager to think about something other than Perry Kenderman. “But I need to know.”

“It’s hard to imagine you spending your days with trivia,” Dayan said easily, and when Estelle glanced up at him, he smiled broadly.

She spread the book open. “Why is it that when I mark this page with one of these Hi-Liters, the ink sticks to the image, but not the rest of the page?” She slipped the marker out of her pocket and uncapped it, then dashed a line of ink across the page, hitting a row of white pills as she did so. She immediately wiped off the excess ink with her thumb. The pills turned a perfect, even yellow.

Dayan’s smile lingered. “Is this the way your day usually works?” He tapped his skull at the temple. “You must have some interesting tidbits filed away up there. It would make an interesting story.”

“But why this?” Estelle asked doggedly, pointing at the page.

“You know what four-color process is, right? When we run a color picture, it’s actually layered up out of four different plates—four different inks layered on top of the other?” She nodded. “Well, the slick, gray paper here in this book is actually
five
color. The gray tone of the paper is actually an ink wash, a fifth color. It isn’t just gray paper.”

“The white pill has no ink on it?”

“Absolutely correct,” Dayan said, impressed. “The white pills are actually the color of the original paper stock. They didn’t use white ink. Hardly anyone does.”

“The ink from the markers beads up on the gray ink, then,” Estelle said.

“Again, correct. The gray ink—any of the inks—is oil based. So it’s like asking the Hi-Liter’s ink to mark on oil. Doesn’t mix. It beads up. Leave it there long enough, and it would dry. But you wiped it off before it had a chance to dry.”

“And the rest soaks into the white paper.”

“Just so.” He folded his hands in his lap and grinned at the concentration on her face. “It looks like you had this pretty much figured out before you came here.”

“I don’t know,” Estelle said, and snapped the book shut. “But thanks, Frank.” She started to rise, and he held up a hand.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “You can’t do this to me.” He affected a wounded expression, and Estelle smiled. “What’s going on?” he asked. “And don’t say, ‘investigation is continuing.’ Is this something with the Kenderman thing, or with Enriquez, or what? What’s going on?”

“
Investigation continuing
would be the truth, Frank,” she said. She relaxed in the chair and rested both hands on top of the closed book. “When’s your deadline?”

Dayan glanced at his watch. “If we had something within the hour, Pam wouldn’t scream too much. We go to press at one-thirty. Even at this point, we’d have to pull something.”

“Okay.” She looked down at the book for a moment, then said, “The Posadas County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the apparent homicide of George Enriquez, Frank.”

“So it
is
homicide, then.”

“Apparent.” She watched him quickly jot notes. When he looked up, she said, “Enriquez died from a single gunshot wound, apparently from a magnum handgun. The revolver believed to be used in the shooting was recovered at the scene.”

“You know, you should work for us.”

“That’s okay,” she said.

“Motives?”

“Enriquez was currently facing a grand jury investigation, as you know.”

“Stemming from the insurance fraud thing.”

“Alleged improper practices,” she said quietly.

“And can I attribute all this to you, by the way?”

“If you wish.”

“I’d say ‘according to Sheriff Bob Torrez,’ but readers would never believe that.” He chuckled. “The grand jury proceedings were cancelled?”

“Yes.”

“You think somebody shot Enriquez because of some hanky-panky going on in his office, then?”

“I won’t speculate, Frank.”

“Suspects yet?”

“No.”

“Witnesses?”

“No.”

“Who found the body?”

“As I’m sure you’ve already heard,” she said with gentle reproof, “one of his office staff discovered the body yesterday morning.”

“Right there in the insurance office?”

“Yes.”

“How long had he been dead?”

“We believe that Mr. Enriquez was killed sometime between Monday morning and Tuesday morning, when his body was discovered.”

“Was it originally thought to be suicide?”

“There was always that possibility,” Estelle said, and turned when she saw Pam Gardiner’s shadow appear at the partition again. The girl apparently preferred peering over the translucent barrier like some large gargoyle rather than simply taking a step to her left and using the doorway.

“But that possibility was quickly dismissed?” Dayan pressed.

“I’m not sure how quickly, but yes, that’s fair to say.”

He looked down at his notepad, pursing his lips. “Where was he shot?”

“In his office.”

“No, I mean where in the body?”

“A single gunshot wound through the head.”

“While he was sitting at his desk?”

“It appears so.”

“Who does the revolver belong to? Was it his?”

“It appears so.”

Dayan regarded her in silence for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “Wow. You’re heading up the investigation?”

“Sheriff Robert Torrez is in charge,” Estelle replied.

“And what’s he think about all this?” and Dayan immediately held up a hand to ward off the expected response. “I know, I know. I need to ask him. I’d get more out of this desk,” he said, rapping the edge of the desk with his knuckle. “Well,” and he took a deep breath, “this is going to help, don’t you think, Pam? We had a little bit that we put together but no details.” He nodded at Estelle. “We’ll plug this in. Many thanks.”

“You’re welcome. As I know more, I’ll let you know.”

Dayan leaned forward conspiratorially. “So I’ll ask again…what’s with the ink thing?” He watched her get up, hefting the book. “How’s that related to Enriquez—or is it?”

She nodded. “It’s just one of those
investigation continuing
things, Frank.”

“Oh, sure.” He leaned back in his chair, face a study in skeptical resignation. “If anything crops up in the next hour and a half, you’ll let us know?”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded her thanks at both Dayan and Pam Gardiner. As she was making her way back toward the front of the office, she heard the publisher in hushed conversation with his editor. Estelle knew that District Attorney Daniel Schroeder’s phone would be ringing in the next few minutes, and she knew exactly what Schroeder would tell the
Posadas Register
without the least bit of concern about when their deadlines might be.