W Is for Wasted

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