“You sound surprised.”
“I guess I am. Hard to believe he hasn’t come to the attention of someone in the music business.”
“I’m sure he’d love nothing more, except now he’s got three little kids and where would they be if his career took off?”
I experienced a quick flash of Binky gnawing on her doorknob. If Ethan left, her baby heart would break. “That would be very tough.”
“Yes, it would. My opinion, if he was so hell-bent on success, he should have pursued it before he made babies.”
“Probably so.”
Mamie and I went through polite fare-thee-wells. I hung up, wishing I hadn’t agreed to meet. It wasn’t a conversation I was looking forward to. My curiosity about the ex–Mrs. Dace was the only draw.
• • •
On my way to Ralston Street, I took a ten-minute detour, stopping at a Walgreens drugstore just long enough to buy a Whitman’s Sampler, which I didn’t think they were even making anymore. These were the Russell Stover deluxe candies . . . coconut, chocolate-covered cherries, nougats . . . all the kinds I hate. The box had a bird and a basket of flowers on the front that looked like it had been stitched in needlepoint. I could have purchased the sugarfree candy, but why bother? For $6.99, I also picked up a bouquet of daisies, Alstroemeria, and some fluffy green stuff, all wrapped in cellophane.
I got back in the car and rolled down the windows. This was mid-October and the day was sunny. The humidity must have been low because while the temperature posted on the bank marquee I’d passed said it was eighty-five degrees, the air had an autumn feel to it, as though scented with the hint of burning leaves. There was little evidence that the trees were changing colors. From the flora and fauna I could see, the evergreens outnumbered deciduous species by three to one. Beyond a variety of palms, I recognized manzanita, junipers, California bay, and the coast live oak.
The house on Ralston was plain; a dark green one-story box with a modest yard, enclosed by a picket fence. The place would have benefited from the services of a handyman. The front gate sagged to the point where I had to lift it off the sidewalk before it would swing open. The wooden porch steps needed a coat of paint. I wasn’t sure what to expect of Cousin Alice. She’d sounded like a young woman, but telephone voices can be deceptive. I rang the bell. A flat metal mailbox was affixed to the wall near the front door. The printed calling card visible in a small slot read ALICE HILDRETH FIX.
The woman who came to the door appeared to be in her seventies. I suspected she was wearing a wig because her blond hair was too thick and glossy to be her own. She wore it in what in my day was referred to as a flip; shoulder length, with the ends turned up perkily. She wore a yellow crewneck sweater and a gray tweed skirt, knee-high hose, and penny loafers. I wouldn’t have guessed about the knee-highs, except that she’d rolled both down around her ankles to ease her circulation.
“Hi, I’m Kinsey,” I said. “And you’re Alice?”
She opened the storm door. “I am. Lolly’s mother and mine were sisters. Are those for her?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, handing her the bouquet. I held out the candy box. “These are for her as well.”
She took both, saying, “Very nice. Won’t you come in?”
“Thanks. I really appreciate your letting me stop by.”
“Lolly’s in the backyard,” she said. “I’ll introduce you, but I should warn you, ten minutes from now she won’t remember who you are. She suffers dementia and she’s easily confused.”
I felt my heart sink, wishing she’d mentioned this on the phone. My optimism faded as I followed her through the house. I’d be asking Lolly about events that occurred some sixteen years before. It hadn’t seemed like such a stretch when I came up with the plan. Now I wondered if there was any point.
20
PETE WOLINSKY
July 1988, Three Months Earlier
On Saturday, Pete drove over to Santa Teresa Hospital and had a long chat with the medical librarians, doing what he thought of as due diligence. He explained that he was a freelance journalist, working on an article about Glucotace. He said another writer had passed along preliminary notes, but Pete couldn’t make heads nor tails of his handwriting, so he wasn’t sure how the term was used, only that he was expected to cover the subject, which would run as a two-part series.
These two women presided over thousands of medical texts and professional journals. They also had computer resources Pete couldn’t have accessed for love or money. Apparently, no one ever asked for assistance because they were soon falling all over themselves, getting him what he needed. They sat him down at a table and provided him with medical literature from which he made copious notes. He wasn’t entirely clear on some of the language or the medical terms—doctors had to fancy everything up with Latin—but the gist of it began to sink in as he read. Turned out Glucotace was an oral hypoglycemic medication, manufactured by a Swiss company called Paxton-Pfeiffer. The drug had been pulled off the market in 1969, after reports of users suffering serious and sometimes fatal side effects, among them blurred vision, anemia and other blood disorders, headaches, hepatic porphyria, stomach pain, nerve damage caused by excessive levels of porphyrin in the liver, hepatitis, hives, itching, skin rash, and skin eruptions. Pete shook his head. Last thing in the world a diabetic needed was another load of grief.
He moved on. Two recent abstracts suggested that the drug was going into Phase II clinical trials for off-label use in combination with certain first-generation sulphonylureas in the treatment of alcohol and nicotine addiction. One of the librarians returned to his table with additional information, providing him with an abstract of a proposal submitted to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which was part of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. The randomized, double-blind study was intended to develop behavioral and drug-relapse prevention for individuals dependent on both nicotine and alcohol using a combination of Acamprosate, Naltrexone, and Glucotace.
According to the abstract: “The aim of this study is to compare the effect of cognitive therapy in adjunct of three different pharmacotherapies.”
The sponsor was Paxton-Pfeiffer in collaboration with the Santa Teresa Research Institute at the University of California Santa Teresa. The start date, September 1987. Estimated study completion date, September 1989. Estimated enrollment, 40. “This study is currently recruiting participants,” it said. Principal investigator: Linton Reed, M.D., Ph.D. Pete made a note of the eleven-digit clinical-trials government identifier number and then sat and thought about what he’d learned. The subject was still perplexing, but no longer opaque.
When he went back to the main desk and inquired about a Dr. Stupak, first name unknown, they rustled up a Viktor Stupak in an AMA publication that listed his graduation from medical school, his subsequent internship and residency, and various appointments, leading up to his current position as chief of Surgical Oncology, Arkansas Christian Cancer Center, which was affiliated with Arkansas Christian College in Conway, Arkansas.
Out of curiosity, he had them track down a photograph and bio of Linton Reed, which allowed him to trace his educational history as well. Reed had done his undergraduate work at Florida State. He remembered now that Willard had mentioned Florida State as the place where Linton and Mary Lee had met. After Florida State, Reed had been accepted at Duke, where he picked up his Ph.D. and M.D. in successive years. He then completed an internship and began his surgical residency at the very Arkansas Christian Cancer Center where Viktor Stupak, M.D., was currently ensconced. Linton Reed had been there a scant six months. After an unexplained gap, his career history picked up again when he was awarded a two-year fellowship by the National Science Foundation. Pete considered putting a call through to Dr. Stupak but didn’t think he’d have much luck. These medical types could be a close-mouthed lot.