Chapter Thirty
The drive from the sheriff’s office to the clinic on Escondido was scarcely more than a mile, but it took Estelle Reyes-Guzman fifteen minutes. She walked out to her car and then sat in the silent interior for a few minutes, the radio and telephone off, windows tightly rolled up. Her mind refused to focus on a specific direction, instead circling from all points of the compass.
There could be such simple explanations. The boxes under the seat of the van could be innocent gifts, perhaps fragile wood carvings or spicy Mexican candies. George had packed them securely so they wouldn’t be jounced on the rough ride north from Acambaro to Regal. That could be.
George might have been fascinated by the world of medications and read the drug reference guide as a hobby, idly marking various drugs that caught his fancy or that he’d taken over the years. That could be.
He had loaned Owen Frieberg an expensive handgun to take along on a hunting trip or maybe just to blow holes through cans. Frieberg had returned it after a short time, and when he’d heard that the revolver had been involved in Enriquez’s death, had felt compelled to tell police that he’d used the gun earlier…a logical thing to do if he feared his prints would be found on the weapon. That could be.
It could be that beyond those possibilities, the affairs of George Enriquez and Owen Frieberg were not related in any way.
“I can give you Guzman,” Estelle whispered. She glanced in the rearview mirror, as if Enriquez might be walking across the small parking lot toward her at that very moment. “George, what were you doing?” she said.
Estelle started the car and backed out, turning first west on Bustos and then south on Grande. Less than a block down that street, she pulled into Tommy Portillo’s Handi-Way convenience store. With her mind still wandering through the field of “coulds, ” she ambled into the store, purchased a bottle of flavored tea and a package of fudge chocolate-chip cookies. The young man behind the counter could have fleeced her out of most of the change for the twenty-dollar bill that she handed him. She pocketed what he gave her without a glance and left the store.
Back in the car, she opened the tea, took a drink, and grimaced. “Yuck,” she said aloud. She started to open the cookies, and stopped, looking at the package as if surprised that they’d materialized in her hand.
The trouble was, all the innocent “coulds ” might as easily be replaced by sinister ones, and a troop of worst-case scenarios trooped through her mind, with those scenarios focused on the only connection that she could imagine that might involve her husband.
She dropped the unopened package of cookies into the center console, screwed the top onto the tea, and started the car. The dashboard clock reported ten minutes before six. Irma Sedillos would already have started dinner for the boys and Mama. With any luck at all, Francis would be finished at the clinic, with no calls waiting at the hospital. She should have been walking through the front door of her home, before her family forgot what she looked like.
But the itch remained, and she pulled out onto Grande again and turned south. A few minutes later, she saw Louis Herrera’s Mustang convertible nosed into its reserved slot in front of the clinic’s pharmacy, shaded by a grove of small oaks that the bulldozers and various contractors had avoided. She parked beside his car and sat quietly, looking at the oak grove. She remembered them clearly before the construction, when Padrino ’s five acres had been a tangled, scruffy woodlot buffering his old adobe home from the drone of the interstate.
She closed her eyes, almost a flinch as if someone had jabbed her, as the dark possibilities crept into her mind. “Ay,” she said softly and then shook it off. She reached across for the massive prescription-drug text and let its weight fall against her chest as she got out of the car.
Estelle trusted Robert Torrez implicitly, yet she hadn’t shown him the book of drugs. When he knew about it, his agile mind would make the same connections she had, and she knew that she wasn’t ready for that. Why would George Enriquez bother to study a drug book, using a Hi-Liter to mark the best-seller list as if he were studying for an exam?
An elderly man carrying a plastic bag of purchases held the door for her as she entered the pharmacy. The store was bright with wide aisles and low shelves, designed so that no products were either lower than twenty-four inches from the floor nor higher than five feet. The woman behind the register smiled at Estelle.
“I didn’t have the chance to say hello when you were in yesterday,” she said.
“Ella, we were so busy yesterday, I didn’t have a chance to say hello to me,” Estelle replied, and the woman laughed. “I need to see Louis for a minute, if he’s still here.”
Ella raised her short, matronly frame on her tiptoes, looking over the sea of racks and displays toward the pharmacy. “I see his pointy little head,” she said. “Go back there and catch him before he slips out the back door.”
“Thanks.”
Herrera was bent over, both hands grasping the edge of the work counter, a thick ring binder open in front of him. Estelle stood quietly at the end of the counter, watching him as his lips worked. After a moment he shook his head impatiently, looked up and saw Estelle, and immediately brightened.
“Hey, guy,” Estelle said. “You look seriously busy.”
“That’s okay, that’s okay,” Herrera said. He frowned at the big drug reference book that she thudded onto the counter. “You’ve grown a new appendage,” he said. “That thing was stuck to you yesterday, too.”
“Oh si,” she said. “This baby and I are becoming old pals.”
He sighed and straightened up. “Is there something I can help you with, or are you just thinking of changing professions?” he asked, nodding at the book. “We could use the help.”
“I had a couple of questions I needed to run by you,” Estelle said. She opened the reference to the illustrated pages, turning first to page 311. “Francis tells me that Petrosin is a popular drug.”
Herrera frowned and nodded. “Sure. Depression is a popular condition, whether the customer actually has it or not.” He grinned. “He’s thinking of putting you on it, or what?”
“I think I’m getting closer all the time,” Estelle said. She turned to page 315. “And Bicotin Six?”
“What about it?”
“It’s popular?”
“Well, I don’t know that I’d use the word popular, Estelle. It’s prescribed a lot, yes. Both Bicotin and Petrosin are.”
She idly turned several pages, stopping as if at random. “I’ve never heard of this,” she said, and turned the book toward Herrera, pointing at the capsule. “Watrusil?”
“You don’t need it,” he said, with mock severity.
“What’s it for?”
“An appetite suppressant.”
“Ah.”
Herrera watched her with amusement. “And yes. We sell a lot of it.”
She stopped at page 332. “Deyldiol?”
“Sure. Oral contraceptives. Do I get to ask what it is that you’re after?” He glanced at her sideways, half smiling.
“Four more first,” she said, and stopped at each of the remaining highlighted drugs. In each case the answer was the same. Francis had been right. The eight prescription medications topped the list of brisk sellers.
“Now,” Estelle said, and abruptly stopped. “You have some time?”
He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m yours. You’ve only marked the eight?”
“I didn’t mark any of these,” Estelle said easily.
“Well, highlighted, then.” He tapped the last page, indicating the large capsule of Diamitrol. “This is white, not yellow. That’s true of all the ones you’ve showed me.”
“Ah,” Estelle said. “Okay. But that’s not what I wanted to ask. Let’s say I had a prescription for…” and she leafed backward. “Petrosin.” She looked up at Herrera. “How much would that cost me?”