Rainbow's End (53 page)

“I've been looking for you,” said Melrose.

That
was the understatement of the century.

“Prescription number,” said Jury.

He was in Exeter headquarters, it was after the dinner hour, and the third person in Macalvie's office, a Dr. Sloane, looked as if he'd rather be anywhere else, including down in an open grave silting earth—
anywhere
but sitting in an office with a couple of coppers.

Macalvie creaked back in his swivel chair. He smiled. “I knew it'd be worth it, going to New Mexico.”

Jury fiddled with the photocopied page of the address book. “Give Wiggins the credit. It was his prescription.”

“I called your friend Lady Cray and asked her to check the medicine cabinets. What she found were some of those nitroglycerin patches.”

“Heart condition, I know.”

Macalvie nodded. “Strong stuff. Nothing to fool around with. Ms. Hamilton was taking a hell of a risk, bad smoking habit combined with that kind of medication. After I talked to you, I rang Frances Hamilton's doctor. He'd written a prescription before she went to the States, precisely with the length of this trip in mind. He didn't want her to run out. When she came back here, she got the prescription refilled. In other words, she didn't need to see a doctor in the States.”

“So the prescription—assuming that's what the number meant-—wasn't for her, even though it was written in her address book.”

Dr. Sloane, with an exaggerated look at his watch, said, “I need to go back to the lab, Superintendent.”

Macalvie made some insincere gesture of apology, said, “Tell him what you told me.”

Sloane sighed. “It's all in the—”

“Report. I know. It's just that you tell it so much better.”

Dr. Sloane didn't change his expression, but Jury smiled. Dr. Sloane was clearly a Macalvite, one of those very few whom Macalvie admired. Dr. Sloane let his watch fall backward on his wrist and said: “A toxic dose of nicotine produces tachycardia, mental confusion, convulsions, amongst other symptoms, such as violent nausea. In the case of this victim—” Sloane gestured toward the wash of papers on Macalvie's desk, among them, photographs of the body of Angela Hope—“it would explain one puzzling thing: how she could have fallen into that enclosure at Old Sarum. The Wiltshire police were right; she couldn't have simply slipped. But in the state she'd have been in from nicotine poisoning, the last of her worries would have been slipping and falling. It's unfortunate no one
saw
her and that I didn't have presenting symptoms, but I can see her in my mind's eye, certainly. I can easily believe the mental confusion and convulsions could force her in, if not actually catapult her into that pit. She wouldn't have been grabbing at grass, she'd have been grabbing her own body—”

“You're certain, then, it
was
a toxic dose of nicotine?” As soon as he said it, Jury could have cut out his tongue.

The pause was a mere heartbeat, but it was trenchant with implications of “Stop wasting my time” and “Haven't you been listening?” Since Sloane had the same reactions to Macalvie, Jury didn't take it personally. Sloane pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it across to Jury, who looked at its spiky lines and percentages and drug names with a fair amount of incomprehension.

“Results of a gas chromatogram that give you what's found in extracted blood. The level of nicotine that shows up here isn't surprising, since the victim was a heavy smoker.”

At that moment, like the assistant in a magician's act, Macalvie pulled out an opened carton of Marlboro cigarettes and slapped it on his desk.

Jury looked from Sloane to Macalvie, said, “Sorry, I don't get it. I'm a heavy smoker—
was
a heavy smoker—” he smiled serenely—“too, but I'm not going into convulsions. I hope.”

“Let's hope not,” said Sloane, in his reassuring way. “I was interrupted.” Here a look at Macalvie possibly as toxic as a nicotine overdose. “If you could dispense with the pyrotechnics, Superintendent? At least until I'm out of here?”

Macalvie grinned. It was hard to put him down when he was getting going.

Sloane continued. “A lethal dose of nicotine for humans ranges from about thirty to sixty milligrams. One pack of cigarettes contains around 300 milligrams.” With this, Dr. Sloane let a lingering glance fall on Macalvie's overflowing ashtray, raised his eyes from that to Macalvie, and gave the superintendent a withering smile. “Most is burned off or metabolized, of course. Nevertheless—”

“Cigars are worse,” said Macalvie.

Oh,
you fool
, Sloane's deprecating smile said. He turned to Jury and went on. “Death can occur within a few minutes, in this case, myocardial infarction resulting from valvular heart disease, probably owing to the earlier rheumatic fever.”

“Within minutes? But why did it happen at Old Sarum, then?”

Sloane answered, “Can occur within minutes. But it might be as much as four hours, a more likely time frame—” he shrugged—“one hour. It all depends on the dose and the victim.”

Macalvie nodded. “When Plant talked to the North London boyo—Gabriel Merchant—he mentioned something that he hadn't talked about before, a detail that wouldn't have registered to him as important. When he saw her in that exhibit, she was ‘picking at something.' Like a sticking plaster—”

“The nitroglycerin patch?” Jury frowned. “I thought we were talking about nicotine—”

Macalvie held up his hand. “The printed directions for this stuff tell you to
remove
it immediately if symptoms occur, for one thing. She looked pretty bad, according to what this Gabe told Plant, white, or maybe green—anyway, sick. She left the portrait exhibit in a hurry. Next she shows up, not long after, in the Pre-Raphaelite room. Still looking sick. Sick to death, you might say.” Macalvie leaned halfway across his desk, the blue eyes and copper hair incendiary. “Jury. If you were going to stop smoking—”

“If?”

“—and you'd tried just about everything—”

Details clicked in Jury's mind with the precision of a combination for busting a safe: “I've
tried every bloody thing—pills . . . patches . . . therapy . . . 
”

“—and nothing worked, wouldn't you try a doctor for nicotine—”

“Patches,” said Jury.

Dr. Sloane crossed his arms before his chest as if the February sleet were falling in his office. “What was making the lady sick was nicotine. Administered transdermally.”

“Nicotine patches need a prescription. At least in the United States, they do. You don't get them over the counter. Surely, no doctor would have prescribed a
nicotine
system for a woman who was already dosing herself with
nitroglycerin
—” Jury stopped.

“Now here we've got another woman who can't stop smoking, but who hated doctors—”

“Angela Hope, you mean.”

Macalvie went on: “—and those patches can only be obtained through a doctor.”

“Unless, of course—”

Macalvie nodded, smiling.

“—you happen to have a pharmacist in the family.”

The three sat there, silent, looking at one another. Even Dr. Sloane seemed to be enjoying things now. He said, “A pharmacist could easily inject a toxic dose of nicotine through the paper covering with a very sharp needle. Administered through the skin, one of the most toxic poisons I can think of. And even if the victim
removes
the patch, it's imperative that all of the contaminant be flushed off because if it isn't, the skin continues the absorption process. Nothing to fool around with, gentlemen.” Dr. Sloane rose. “I'll leave the less technical aspect of this to Commander Macalvie.” A chilly smile, here.

“Gee, thanks. Words of one syllable I can handle. Just.”

Dr. Sloane walked out of the room.

Finally, Jury said. “She was right.”

“Who was right?”

“Mary Dark Hope.”

“The kid sister. Let's hope she doesn't advertise it. At least not around Dolores Schell. And here I have to make one of my brilliant imaginative leaps: the nicotine patches passed through the hands of Nell and, I'm certainly assuming, Frances Hamilton. Speculation, but could we assume it was in the address book because Angela Hope asked one or both of them to pick up the prescription? Did they simply take a couple to ‘try out'? More likely Angela gave them some.” Then he picked up the carton of cigarettes, waggled it a few times.
“Found in Angela's room at the Red Lion. Dolores Schell was being helpful, gathered up Angela's stuff, thought maybe police had missed something. Oh, they had. Cigarettes. You look like you don't understand, Jury.”

“I don't. What was a woman who was using nicotine patches doing with a carton of cigarettes?”

“That's the point, she wasn't. The cigarettes were a prop furnished by Dolly. Dolly stashed them in Angela's room in case nicotine turned up in a routine analysis. If there hadn't been any cigarettes and Angela was known to be a heavy smoker, Rush might have wondered. But Dolly worked it out: if she ‘found' a carton of cigarettes, then nicotine in the system would hardly be surprising. Even if Angela hadn't pulled off the damned patch, police would still assume she'd been smoking while doctoring herself with these patches. That's a very dangerous thing to do and would satisfactorily explain cardiac arrest.” Macalvie leaned back, stared at the ceiling. “What's Dolores Schell's motive?”

“She told me she disliked Angela. Although I'm sure she downplayed the extent of her hatred and jealousy. The reason she told me herself was that she thought I'd probably find out anyway, from someone else, and it wouldn't look good. Over the years Dolly had had to watch Angela Hope ‘seduce' everyone away from her, including her own father.”

Macalvie was looking at one of the reports Jury had sent. “Including also this Dr. Nils Anders?”

“Absolutely. When she saw Nils Anders spending so much time in company with the Hope sisters, it was too much. She'd known him long before Angela. I guess it was just too much. Nils Anders—” Jury broke off, leaned over, and pulled one of the phones toward him. “What happens when Dolly Schell finds out she's killed the wrong sister?”

“So what it looks like is one hell of a bent pharmacist, agreed?”

Jury dialed. “What it looks like is a kidjep.”

Macalvie frowned. “A
what
?”

Mary Dark Hope was going to find it even if it killed her.

That number: she knew she'd seen it somewhere. She couldn't recall it precisely, except for the first three digits, which she remembered because it was an Española number; nearly all of the numbers there began with 753. So that meant seven digits all told, and that was a help. The only thing she could think of, and where she might have seen it, was on one of the prescriptions she'd delivered. Or otherwise seen, perhaps out there on the counter where Dolly Schell would place them for customers who had yet to appear.

So that she wouldn't have to turn on any lights, she was using a pen flashlight, held between her teeth. That way she could keep her hands free to search the file cards. If it was such a dim memory, it must have been a prescription filled and delivered some time ago. She gave up on the cards and opened the big prescription book, the one in which she'd seen Dolly write the numbers in. Names, dates, addresses. Mary had her penlight poised over the “Controlled Substances” book. It was the last record left, after the file cards and the “Pres. Entry” book. She doubted she'd find anything there. As she ran her finger slowly down the list of numbers, she heard a muted sound from near the front of the pharmacy. Sunny. Where was Sunny? She looked around the tiny room, past the shelves. Gone again. She should train him—make him answer to commands, to sit and stay. Ha ha. She thought about Coyote. Coyote meant a lot of different things to different tribes. There was a warning: Never look Coyote straight in the eye. That was a pretty useless warning. How would you ever get close enough to a coyote to do it?

Sunny? Mary cocked her head, stopped her finger, listened hard. A slight whistling, sucking sound near the front again. She went back to the record, moving her finger down the neat line of entries. Dolly's handwriting was meticulous, very neat and small. But, then, Dolly was a meticulous person. Everything in the pharmacy was carefully placed, from the rows of shampoos, conditioners, and hair mousses, down to the kachina display, its tall tier inviting catastrophe. People were always just missing running into it, or jostling it and bringing it down. It was odd that Dolly had set it up. Or was that the reason? Was it a subtle way of controlling people?

Actually, the “Controlled Substances” record was rather interesting. Here was arsenic handed out to Mrs. Rudolph Seese. Mary knew her. Somebody had better keep an eye out for Mr. Seese, though. Percaset and Percodan seemed to have been prescribed in large quantities, along with Valium, for an awful lot of people. And Prozac must be propping up half the city. Were all of these drugs the reason that the citizens of Santa Fe were always in such high spirits? She went on, her eye travelling down the page, the bright point of light from the flashlight illuminating it.

Finally, she finished the last record and shook her head. The number wasn't here. Nothing had even the first two digits—75—as part of the prescription number. There were some 78s, 79s, and 71s. No 75s, though. Mary closed the book and stared at it, disappointed. Then she was wrong and it must not be a prescription. Did Dolly make up prescriptions for people in Española? Once in a while, yes . . .

She jumped when the telephone shrilled. In the dark it seemed all that much louder. Someone was very insistent, for it rang and went on ringing. At least, it had brought Sunny out of hiding, or returned him to visibility. Probably, Sunny had taken the tiny explosion of sound to mean Mary was in danger. She reached down her stool to rub him behind the ears. Some coyote.