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When I work nights, I often have lunch in the Food Go coffee shop before signing in. On Tuesday, I got there early enough to visit with Denise. Always ready to say what was uppermost on her mind, she began speaking even before I pulled out one of the green plastic-covered chairs and picked up a menu.
"Did you hear about Harry Stokes?"
I mumbled the usual sympathetic words, trying to discern at the same time if Denise looked the way she always did. Despite the heat, her makeup had been carefully applied. As usual, her eye shadow, lavender today, dramatically emphasized pale gray eyes. I saw no sign of tears or a sleepless night, and her makeup wasn't heavy enough to hide any traces of emotional outpouring for Harry Stokes. But I couldn't interpret the slight difference I did read in her expression.
After that quick glance to assess Denise's reactions, my first thought was a selfish one: good, she wasn't really in love with him. I don't have to treat her like a mourner.
Denise leaned over the table to take my order and retrieve the menu, although we both knew that I always had the same tuna salad and iced tea at this time of the year. We were in the middle of the Arizona monsoon season, with temperatures hovering at the 110-degree mark and unusually high humidity. But under pretense of taking the order, she could spend more time talking to me.
"You'll never believe what's happening," she said. "The children want an autopsy."
I stared at her, startled at the news despite Joey's comment. She smoothed the frilly green apron that served more to identify her as a Food Go waitress than to protect her clothes. Denise, always immaculate no matter how busy the coffee shop was, wore a multicolored, slightly flared skirt in shades of violet, orchid, and lavender. Her sleeveless blouse picked up the same lavender as the skirt, both exactly one shade darker than her eye shadow. Although Denise was no taller than my own five and a half feet, with hair the color we used to call dirty blonde, she made me feel nondescript in my pale yellow shirtdress.
Denise clearly enjoyed my surprise. "Betsy won't allow it. Don't you think that's suspicious?"
"You've been reading too many Sue Graftons," I said. "Any wife would be distraught at the idea of an autopsy. I was terrified they'd insist on one for Bob."
"That's different. You told me you couldn't allow an autopsy for religious reasons."
"Even so," I said. "An autopsy's the last thing a new widow wants to think about."
A young couple, in matching khaki shorts and T-shirts advertising a walkathon, went to a table at the opposite end of the coffee shop. While Denise waited on them, I thought about autopsies. Didn't the need for one simply mean the cause of death hadn't been clearly established?
It was just like Denise to dramatize everyday events. Well, maybe a neighbor's death wasn't exactly an everyday event, especially a neighbor she'd wanted. And you, I asked myself, weren't you also looking at him that way? But I told myself that was different because I'd never mentioned my daydreams to anyone; they served only to pass the time.
I was still thinking about those daydreams, unwillingly comparing them to reality, when Denise returned with my sun tea. "Why do people always sit as far away from each other as they can?" she asked. But she was smiling when she said it. Denise never got upset with her customers, even the demanding ones, and I often wished I had her patience.
I didn't comment. I was more interested in the Harry Stokes drama than where people chose to sit in Food Go's coffee shop. "Do his children suspect murder?" I asked, thinking about Joey's suspicion.
Again, I saw something indefinably different in her expression. "Now, who reads too many mysteries?" she asked me.
Although we were talking about the death of someone we both cared about, I found myself grinning at Denise. "It's a natural question. Why else would they want an autopsy?"
"They claim she drove their dad to suicide."
"Suicide!"
"It's not as farfetched as murder."
"Yes, but it seems unlikely when they've been married such a short time."
"I don't know about that," Denise muttered before she left to take care of her other customers.
I sat there, sipping my sun tea and thinking about Denise's comments. Would a seemingly well-balanced man like Harry Stokes commit suicide? What if he remarried and then discovered he'd made a mistake? Even though Arizona is a community-property state, divorce seemed more likely. Denise had told me Harry Stokes was wealthy. Surely, he would have insisted on a prenuptial agreement to protect his children.
Denise returned with my tuna sandwich and I told her what I'd been thinking. "Some people don't want to look foolish," she said.
"Suicide is a rather drastic way to avoid looking foolish." But as I ate, I remembered Harry Stokes' prescriptions for Rogaine and Viagra. Surely a man who was planning suicide wouldn't be getting refills to control baldness and increase his sex drive. I'd have to look up the computer records and see when we'd last filled those scripts.
My watch showed that it was time to get going. I paid for lunch, lost the battle of the tip again—Denise always refused to accept one from me—and went to punch my timecard with five minutes to spare.
Tim Barnard, my staff pharmacist, was working the day shift. He was planted at the computer while Joey took care of customers at the window, answered the telephone, and handled the cash register. I knew from experience that Tim would not move away from the computer unless I forced the issue. He considered it an assault on his professionalism to touch the telephone or the register, and didn't like talking to customers unless he had to.
I got a "Thank God, you're here" look from Joey and a shrug in Tim's direction. Tim, about a dozen years older than the technician and a registered pharmacist, didn't treat Joey very well. For that matter, he was often obnoxious to me, too. He'd been with us about a year, and Joey and I both wished he'd never transferred from a Food Go pharmacy in Tucson.
The day's order from our drug warehouse had come in but wasn't unpacked. I knew better than to expect help from Tim, so I asked Joey to begin while I took over the window. Between customers and phone calls, I went back and worked with Joey.
"You'll never believe what's happening," he said, echoing Denise. He seemed even more disturbed than she had been, but maybe he was just excited about the unusual situation. I wondered if I seemed different, too.
"I know. The Stokes children want an autopsy."
Joey deflated. "Oh, you had lunch in the coffee shop and Denise told you."
I admitted this was true and repeated my reaction to Denise's suppositions. The phone rang five or six times, ignored by Tim, who didn't seem to pay attention to our conversation either. He, at least, was acting the way he always did.
Since I was the responsible pharmacist, I picked up the phone and took down a Vicodin Rx from a local dentist. I handed it to Tim at the computer.
"Someone ought to report that dentist to the State Board," Tim grumbled. "He prescribes too many narcotics for his patients."
Tim was probably right, but I didn't say anything. He complained enough without encouragement. I returned to the back of the pharmacy to work with Joey, who had already unpacked and priced out the over-the-counter items. "Thanks for finishing the OTCs," I said to him.
"But I've been waiting to tell you the really great news. My brother-in-law is working on the Stokes case." Joey's excitement surfaced again.
"How can it be a case if it was a natural death?"
"That's what they're trying to find out. And I'll be in on all the details because of Frank."
Joey's older sister was married to someone on the Scottsdale police force. I hadn't really paid much attention when he'd talked about Frank Moreway and the cases he was on. Dad had so imbued me with the necessity for professional discretion that I found it difficult to understand people who gossiped about privileged information.
"You must never repeat anything you hear behind this counter," Dad told me long before I entered pharmacy college. "You'll learn who's pregnant when they come in for prenatal vitamins. You'll learn who has pneumonia. You'll learn who's using birth control. But all that information is privileged." I still remember how upset Dad was when Winston Churchill's physician wrote a book about his famous patient.
"And it's not just an autopsy," Joey was saying. "Harry Stokes's family has filed some kind of complaint with the police. I don't understand exactly what it is, but they want his death investigated."
This was something new to think about. I stored it in my mind to look at later and returned hurriedly to the pharmacy window to help a customer. Her little boy was crying loud enough to disturb everyone in the store.
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