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.”