The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Well, Sylvia!” he remarked when I was about halfway through. “Are you much of a dreamer usually?”

  “No. I almost never remember my dreams. At least, no more than a passing scene, a pink dog or the back of my hand with carrot tops growing out of it or something.”

  He pondered for a few seconds and said, “Well, if it keeps up, we may refer you to a dream specialist. But for now I wouldn’t worry. Chances are it’s just another symptom of the pressure you’re under this week. ‘Nerves are bustin’ out all over,’ hey? Meanwhile, we might as well get it all down, just in case of some dreamdoc ever wanting it.”

  I almost left out the scene with Cagey’s grotesque corpse and Dr. Suttler screaming at me, “Next dime you vill belief her!” But I substituted the name of another friend for Cagey’s and identified the other dream woman only as Katharine Hepburn.

  “Believe her about what?” Dr. Macumber inquired.

  I think I shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Oh, not to me, but I imagine a dreamdoc would insist on figuring it out. Maybe even give you free-association and gestalt to get at it. Just a friendly warning.”

  When I got to the scene in which both M. Coffield and Dr. Macumber had appeared, I used the same trick for the pharmacist that I had used for Dr. Suttler and mentioned only the actor’s name. But Doc Mac in my dream had looked like himself, and I hesitated so long that I saw I’d have to describe his part in the scene without disguise. To my relief, he didn’t seem hurt or insulted at all, only amused.

  “In a Nazi uniform?” he repeated with a chuckle. “Well, the trial of the last of the first-generation Great War criminals happened back when I was still in medschool, back in Twenty or Twenty-one, and quite the lively student discussions we used to have about it. You don’t remember the case, Sylvia?”

  “Not very well,” I confessed. “A doctor in the death camps, wasn’t he?”

  “Medical experimenter during the War. Saver of lives in South America for the next three quarters of a century until they finally caught up with him. I remember telling my classies how my own goal in life was to live as long and look as good as that old Germ did at age one hundred and one. Y’know, Sylvia, one thing about his medical research, he didn’t lack for human subjects back in that time and place.”

  “Only they didn’t consider their enemies human, did they?” I remarked.

  “Nobody ever does in wartime. Doesn’t make ’em any less so. And I imagine the research docs never lost sight of that fact, either, in Nazi uniform or not. Could have made their data invaluable. Too bad so much of it was destroyed. Same kind of thing as burning the library of Alexandria ... Well, well, ‘let the dead bury their dead,’ eh? Remember any more—”

  But just at that moment, a sharp rapping started at the door, accompanied by Dr. Suttler’s light Russian accent: “Dzames? Dzames, you can come?”

  “Busy, Rosy!” he called back.

  “Dzames, I tell you, this is emergency and you must come quickly! It is young M. Randolph who needs our help this moment! I go, you come right now.”

  “Randolph?” Doc Mac repeated. “Our young Aaron?” He looked at me.

  Remembering how the boy had offered his time only yesterday for Cagey’s emergency, I put my own fears of Carmine’s on hold and said, “Please go to him, Doc Mac. I can wait.”

  “Uh ... yes. Yes, bless you for a generous soul, Sylvia.” Striking the “Save” function on his keyboard, he snatched up his prescription pad and scribbled me out a prescription while Peachblossom was saving my data. Tearing off the prescription sheet and handing it to me, he ejected the computer chip and dropped it back into his box, which he then closed and locked—it had an oldstyle revolving thumbprint lock—all the while giving me rapid instructions. “It’s a short order, just one pill for tonight, bedtime. You’d better get it filled first. Arlie—M. Coffield, our own pharmacist—can do it in half a sec, and we might be needing him with Aaron. Then look up Jeb Peters—we shouldn’t be needing him, anyway, not right away—and have him give you your blood test. Here, you’ll need another form for that.” He scribbled it out on a second prescription slip to save the time of calling a form up on the computer. “And make Heather give you a timeslot to see me anytime tomorrow. Again, Sylvia, bless you and oh reverie!”

  He flashed me a circle salute and hurried out. I took one long breath and followed suit, shutting the door behind me.

  Already Dr. Macumber had disappeared. I guessed he had gone down the corridor to the right, where I could hear faint commotion noises even through the soundproofing. I turned left tentatively, on the lookout for directional pointers; but it wasn’t until I reached the fork in the corridor that I found them, and then they confirmed I was heading toward the pharmacy and lab.

  I had so little desire to let Jeb Peters take my blood sample that I might have gone to the lab first and gotten it over with; but Dr. Macumber had advised me to get my prescription filled at once, in case they needed their pharmacist too; and besides, it was important that I see the mysterious Arlington Johnson Coffield, who might or might not be Jan Caulfield Jansen, the druggist who had once been wanted for police questioning in the matter of an alleged outbreak of botulism in an Evanston, Illinois restaurant.

  M. Coffield’s Sunvale pharmacy was around a turn in the corridor, or I would have noticed it the day before: it had a wide window counter open to the hallway. Looking across the counter, I saw a chamber lined with darkwood shelves of antique-style glass jars and bottles, many of them containing brightly colored pills and liquids. Some, I guessed, were for decoration. On the wall directly opposite the corridor, the reflections of wall lamps with milkglass shades winked at me from the glass door of an ornate cabinet showing off a rather large lock.

  Nobody was in the pharmacy room, however. Fearing they might already have summoned M. Coffield to Aaron’s emergency, I slapped the oldfashioned round chime on the counter.

  Almost at once a connecting door from the pharmacist’s consulting room opened, and he appeared. I tried to hold back any sign of surprise. Arlington Coffield was the man who had walked beside Dr. Suttler at Rob’s funeral!

  “Yes, M.?” he said pleasantly. “What can I do for you today?” If he recognized me, he gave no sign of it.

  I handed him the prescription slip while thinking what to say. “Uh ... Doc Mac says we’d ... you’d better not waste any time. They may be wanting you any minute.”

  “Yes? Why might that be, do you know?”

  “Young M. ... Randolph. Emergency.”

  His eyes widened slightly. “Aaron? Dr. Suttler’s ... Oh, no, most likely he’s just fallen out of a tree again. They won’t be needing me on that. Still ...” He glanced at the prescription. “Ah! No trouble here, M. ... Toberson?”

  “Tomlinson. You can read the rest of it, can’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, no problem. It’s only unfamiliar words that sometimes give me trouble. Not that ‘Tomlinson’ will be an unfamiliar word to me next time.”

  I began to see why Cagey had warned me to watch myself around M. Coffield. If only we didn’t have so many grounds for classifying him as a suspicious character! Even ... if only he hadn’t been at Rob’s funeral with Dr. Suttler.

  He went to the glass-doored cabinet, unlocked it, and took out a small bottle. Bringing it to the counter, he rolled one white tablet onto his pharmaceutical scale, tilted it into a paper envelope, moistened the flap with a stamplicker pen, and sealed the envelope.

  “That’s all?” I said.

  “That’s all. These are standard, readymade issue.” He smiled warmly as he handed me the envelope. “The rest is impressive theatrics,” he added as he restoppered the bottle and carried it back to the cabinet.

  I gazed at the prescription slip; but before I could quite translate the thought that I ought to slip it into my pocket, as Cagey would have done right away,
the pharmacist had returned and casually pocketed it himself.

  “It has a tangerine flavor that some people like and some don’t,” he added, opening a drawer and choosing a rubber stamp. “You might try licking it once or twice before you decide whether to chew it up, suck it like candy, or swallow it whole. Chances are this is the only time in your life you’ll ever have a legitimate opportunity to sample this particular dining experience.” He pressed the rubber stamp down on one edge of the envelope, reread the imprinted instructions, and handed me my tablet, adding, “Right before bedtime,” with an even friendlier smile.

  If nothing else, I understood why Miss Woodburn enjoyed consulting him.

  “Well,” I replied, “I hope I’ll have the chance to sample something else from your little shop here, M. Coffield.”

  “I’d hope so too, M. Tomlinson, except that at the same time I hope you’ll never again need any medicine more esoteric than asprik. Of course, I do mold a cough drop that—”

  “Arlie!” It was an assistant I’d never seen until now, a large chocolate-brown woman at the far end of the corridor. “Arlie, can you come right away?”

  With a short look of mixed surprise and regret, he told me, “Oops! Looks like you were right. Excuse me?” He swung the counter open inwards, like a wide half-door, and just brushed me in hurrying past.

  Feeling vaguely dissatisfied, as at a conversation that’s broken off before the really important things get said, I went on to the door marked “LAB,” where the blond young man whom I had seen once before, and who had gossiped his wits out to Cagey last night, sat reading a Follow Your Own Choice adventure book.

  “Hi!” he greeted me, looking up with a grin. “I’m your friendly jack-of-all-trades around here. What can we do for you today?”

  I handed him the second slip of paper Doc Mac had given me and let him stap my fingertip. This time it was a one-drop blood test, less distasteful than I’d feared; all the same, I left Jeb P. Peters as soon as I could. If Cagey told me later that I ought to have tried to draw him into more chitchat, I’d reply that I thought she must have pretty well mined this witness out last night, and he couldn’t have known anything about the new emergency involving Dr. Suttler’s teenage patient, anyway.

  It still seems the greatest mystery of all to me, how all the personnel of that clinic could know so much about what was going on there, as if it went through them by osmosis, and yet never suspect so much else about one another.

  Getting back out to the waiting room, I found Miss Woodburn and an elderly man I had not seen before sitting side by side on two straight chairs pulled close together. The man wore a white suit and held a brown overcoat carelessly bunched in his lap. His face was set in a grim expression. Miss Woodburn held one of his hands, stroking it slowly.

  “Excuse me,” I said, going up to them. “M. Randolph?” At his slight nod, I went on, “I met your grandson yesterday. I hope—”

  “Should never have brought him here in the first place,” said the old man.

  “You must never blame yourself, Mr. Randolph,” Miss Woodburn put in. “The Rooshan female—”

  “Wasn’t Dr. Suttler. It was that other one looked at him yesterday.”

  “I was about to say, the Roosh—It is Dr. Suttler who is seeing him now, and her reputation is of the very highest.”

  “They’re all with him now,” I said, trying to be comforting.

  “What?” said Miss Woodburn. “Mr. Coffield, also?”

  I nodded.

  “There, do you hear that, sir?” she went on to M. Randolph. “They shall soon enough put him to rights now, you may be sure of it.”

  He only grunted.

  “But what happened?” I asked.

  “What happened?” cried M. Randolph, his composure breaking. “What happened? You tell me that, young woman! Sleeping till the middle of the day, dragging around like an old hound dog with two broken legs the best part of the afternoon, and then he goes and collapses, all twitching and jerking at the mouth and…and ...”

  The old man broke down almost completely. He kept sitting up ramrod straight, but he stopped talking and clamped his lips, while tears rolled down his cheeks and Miss Woodburn bent closer to comfort him.

  Sparing time for an upward glance at me, she said, “Thank you for your concern, dear Mistress Tomlinson.”

  “It’s nothing ... I ... Here,” I said, fishing a pencil and a book of matches out of my purse. A pang went through me when I saw the matches were from the restaurant where Rob and I had had our last date; but I opened it, wrote my personal phone number on the inside front cover, and pressed it into Miss Woodburn’s free hand. “I’d like to know,” I added. “I’m ... sincerely interested. Thank you.”

  I really had stopped out of a sincere concern for the boy; the idea of fishing for evidence hadn’t even crossed my mind at that moment. So, understanding that I might be making it harder rather than easier for old Randolph, I murmured one more hope and reassurance that everything would be all right, and left quickly.

  * * * *

  The first thing I noticed when I got home to Warrington House was two identical copies of Calling for Clouseau, by Davis G. Hardiwink, lying on the table in the entranceway. I picked them up automatically and went on to the library, where I found Cagey sitting with her feet up on a hassock, drinking coffee and shuffling through printouts with her bandaged hand, and looking very pleased.

  Don’t tell me you’ve solved it already, Sergeant,” I remarked.

  “What?” She looked up and blinked at me through her glasses, then grinned and shook her head. “Oh, no, not by a long shot, but I’m in the ideal position, anyway.” Lifting her hand from the printout pile in her lap, she wiggled the bandaged fingers at me. “They can come off tomorrow, and then I may go back if I want to, but I don’t have to unless there are what she called ‘undesired developments.’”

  “Oh. Sorry, I thought you were looking ... you know ... smug. Pleased with yourself.”

  “I am. For not cutting my hand up any worse. Oh, there they are!” she added, as I dropped the Hardiwink books onto the lamptable beside her and fell into a recliner chair. “That’s what happened, you see. The kind folk who rushed me to Sunvale Clinic yesterday brought along that first copy I’d just bought, and ta doktora had it there waiting for me. Probably that was how Gospodin Hardiwink got into our conversation yesterday, such as it was. Maybe also another reason she came across to me the way she did. Instant slap on a sore spot. Anyway, it meant she didn’t bat an eyelid when she saw copy two this afternoon. Already prepared for my bad taste in reading matter. Which being as so also meant we got along a little better, even if she does have me down for a rampant hypochondriac as well as a floater with lousy taste in light reading—I got the report back from Verne on those prescriptions she gave me. He says he thinks there really is such a complaint as ‘nervititis jaundiculosis,’ but the green thingies she told me to take for it are pure powdered broccoli. The blue painkillers are Anacin Five ...” Her voice changed completely. “Something wrong? What is it, Tommi?”

  “Young Master Randolph. The fish enthusiast. You must’ve been long gone when they rushed him in.”

  “Not—”

  “No, not dead, but I gathered ... I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. Some kind of seizure ... Oh, Lord, I hope it isn’t Carmine’s! At first M. Coffield assumed he’d only fallen out of a tree again. I guess I just went on assuming that, too, until ... I should’ve guessed it was something else as soon as they called for M. Coffield. They wouldn’t have needed a pharmacist right away for an accident, would they?”

  Cagey thought a moment. “Come to that, why would they need the pharmacist right away for any other kind of emergency, either? You’ve seen Coffield, then.”

  I nodded.

  “Good. That means you’ve got another sample Verne can analyze for us.”

/>   I shook my head. “Just one tablet, and I’ve got to take it tonight. For the test tomorrow.”

  “What? I don’t believe I heard that! Tommi, you aren’t going to swallow anything from that man’s pharmacy before—”

  “Why not? If it wasn’t for what we think we might have dug up about M. Coffield’s past, I’d almost as soon suspect Doc Mac.”

  “But we have dug it up about his past! I warned you about him, Tommi. And with only one tablet—”

  “I’d rather risk the tablet than Carmine’s!” I said. “What happens when Dr. Macumber can’t give me that test tomorrow because I didn’t take the tablet tonight? Or when the test results come out wrong? And suppose I do have Carmine’s? What then?”

  “Tell Doc Mac your dog knocked it out of your hand and it rolled into a ventilation duct. Officer Tomlinson, that tablet is evidence!”

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant, it’s also my health. After all,” I pointed out, “Verne didn’t find anything wrong with your samples from M. Coffield’s pharmacy.”

  “No…and nothing unusual about them, either. But I’ll tell you what Officer Gucchi found out for me today. I had him check it out discreetly with the funeral home and the florists. Those two megabouquets—the one with the ‘Dear Friend’ ribbon was ordered by Suttler, and the one with the ‘Respected Friend’ ribbon came from Sunvale Clinic as a whole. The little tiny el cheapo arrangement was sent anonymously, but Gucchi got a copy of the florist’s business phone recordings—just in time, she was about to erase it—and I’ve listened to it three times. Coffield’s voice.”

  I hesitated only a second. “So M. Coffield didn’t like Rob. Well, maybe M. Coffield is in love with Dr. Suttler, too. I’ve still got to take this tablet, Cagey.”

  “Tell you what. We’ll get Verne to analyze it right away and if it’s some legit preparation, we’ll get you a duplicate by bedtime.”

  “It came from M. Coffield’s locked cabinet,” I argued. I should have known that would make her all the more eager for it.