“Do you have time for a couple of questions?”
“Por supuesto, senora.”
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?”
“Si, corazon. 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 corazon. 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.”