W is for Wasted (Kinsey Millhone 23)

I paused on the path within range of them. “Mind if I sit down?”

Dandy moved his backpack. “Make yourself at home.”

He was nicely turned out; fresh shirt, a sport coat only slightly threadbare along the cuffs. As far as I could tell he hadn’t been drinking. Then again, he held his liquor well and he might have been covering. At least there was no pint bottle in sight and when Pearl offered him the soda can, he declined.

As I sat down, Dandy introduced me. “This is Kinsey. She’s a good friend of ours.”

“They call me Plato, the preacher man,” he said. He doffed an imaginary cap and his smile showed a mouth devoid of teeth. Plato was emaciated, a good sixty-five years old, with a frizzy head of gray hair and a long unkempt beard and mustache. His ears were crusty along the edges as though dusted with powdered sugar. His face had that odd red-brown hue that suggested a life spent outdoors without a proper slathering of SPF 15.

I said it was nice meeting him and he said words to the same effect.

That settled, I sat on the section of tarp Dandy’d cleared for me. The ground was damp and hard and even with a layer of plastic and a sleeping bag on top of that, I wasn’t sure how to arrange myself in any semblance of ease. Nor was I clear on how I’d get to my feet again. “I have news about Dace.”

Pearl said, “Whoopee doo,” twirling a finger near the side of her head.

“You’re annoying, you know that? I didn’t have to drive down here looking for you. Are you interested or not?”

Mildly, Dandy said, “Don’t mind her. I’m listening.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “Dace was sober when he died.”

“Well, that’s a load of horse shit, right there,” Pearl said. “We seen him the day before and he was puking his guts out. I know you’re fussy when it comes to body functions, so I won’t say no more except the stuff looked like coffee grounds. You wouldn’t have wanted to get anywhere near the man.”

“He died of liver and kidney failure.”

Dandy said, “Natural causes in other words.”

“Well, natural if you take into account his heart was enlarged and half his internal organs were shot. He wasn’t drunk. That’s the point,” I said. I turned to Pearl. “Did you talk to him that day?”

“If you want to call it that. I wouldn’t say we communicated. I said, ‘How’s tricks?’ and he mumbled something that made no sense. He was staggering all over the place, and his skin and the whites of his eyes were yellow. He might’ve turned into a werewolf for all I know.”

“What about an odor?”

“You mean did his breath stink aside from puke? Smelled like nail polish remover, but not even Terrence was that desperate.”

“That was the ketoacidosis. And don’t ask me to explain. I’m just telling you what the coroner’s investigator told me,” I said.

Dandy opened the flap of his backpack and rooted through the interior. After a brief search, he pulled out a prescription bottle and passed it along to me.

The pill bottle was two inches high and the cap was an inch across. The vial was sealed in shrink-wrap. “What’s this?”

“His pills. He told me to hang on to them.”

“Why the seal?”

“So it can’t be tampered with. Those are the pills that made him sick, but the clinic didn’t want to hear about it. They wanted them back. Doctor even threatened to come down here after them.”

“A doctor? Who’s this?”

“The fellow who headed up the deal he was in.”

“That seems weird,” I said. I read the label. Not surprisingly, I’d never heard of the drug. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“He said not to. I kept the bottle hid since the day he passed it on to me.”

I shook the container, which rattled lightly. “And these are for what?”

“He had three different meds. One was supposed to knock down his craving for cigarettes and alcohol. Maybe not that particular pill. It could have been the other ones.”

“Like Antabuse?”

“I guess.”

“And he said the pills made him sick?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But that’s how Antabuse works. You have one drink and you get sick as a dog. That’s the point.”

Pearl cut in. “You don’t need to lecture us about Antabuse. We know everything there is to know about that crud. Fact is, Terrence hadn’t had a drink. You said so yourself. So now how do you explain it, Miss Smarty-Pants?”