Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

The couple looked up. They were both elderly, obviously in their seventies.

“Perhaps you can help me,” said Fred. “I’m looking for Dr. Frank Johnston, but it seems there’s no one at home next door.”

“This time of day they’re both at the Shuffleboard Club,” said the woman. “You’ll find them there.”

“I’m just passing through town,” Fred said, “on my way down the coast to Naples. Thing is, I was at med school with a Frank Johnston twenty-five years ago now, and I heard he’d moved to Florida, so I just thought I’d drop by and see if this Frank Johnston is my old Mend. It’s a fairly common name, might not be him.”

“I don’t think Doc went to medical school,” said the man. “He’s a registered pharmacist, not an M.D. Everyone calls him Doc.”

“My Mend Frank Johnston didn’t finish med school,” said Fred. “It might be him. Fellow about five eight, nine, slight build, he’d be about fifty years of age now.”

“Well, this Dr. Frank isn’t him,” the woman said. “Doc’s sixty if he’s a day, heavyset, hair almost white.”

“Oh — then I’m on a wild-goose chase,” Fred said.

“No trouble,” the man and woman said simultaneously.

“Has he been here long?” Fred asked. “I mean your neighbor. Reason I ask, it’s unusual to have a business like a pharmacy in a residential neighborhood. Wouldn’t be allowed in Naples. We have zoning laws.”

He had touched on a grievance. Both the elderly man and the woman sat up straight and became interested. It seemed Doc had moved in next door only a couple of years ago when he married Marie. It was Marie’s house; she had been their neighbor for ten years or so. She was a widow, very well fixed — her first husband had made a fortune in the liquor business, imported Mexican tequila. Dr. Frank had been her pharmacist. Marie had very poor health. Doc had prescribed miracle drugs for her, made her exercise, keep fit. Everyone was surprised when she married Doc, she had to be a good fifteen years older. Anyway, she had set him up in his geriatric pharmaceutical practice in her guesthouse. They got away with it because it was open only sixteen hours a week. The neighbors didn’t like it, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it.

Fred went back to his hotel and asked at the desk for directions to the nearest bookstore. He walked there and bought the latest copy of the magazine Small-scale Railroader, which contained Olive’s advertisement. Then he walked around awhile, sightseeing, and ate dinner at the best restaurant in town, putting the tab on his expense account.

Shortly before two o’clock next afternoon, Fred again parked his rental car on Gulf Boulevard and walked down the driveway of 5020. There were two cars in front of Dr. Frank’s Pharmacy, one of which was just backing out; its driver was a white-haired man. Fred went up the steps to the pharmacy door, opened it, and walked in.

There was a counter that held two large pharmacist’s jars of colored water in front of an alcove lined with shelves holding bottles and boxes of all sorts. A man in a white jacket was talking to an elderly woman seated in a kind of waiting area near the door. On the wall behind her hung a framed diploma. Frank Johnston was a registered pharmacist in the state of Florida.

“Be with you in a minute, sir,” the pharmacist said. He went behind the counter and began measuring out a prescription. Bent over a tray of small yellow tablets, he counted some of them carefully into a depression that ran along the side of the tray. As he did so, he began a tuneless humming in accompaniment to his work. When he had finished counting, he moved the tablets in the depression to a small prescription bottle and put the cap on. The humming stopped. He came forward from behind the counter and gave the prescription to the old lady. “Now, Mrs. Meade,” he said, “be sure to follow the instructions exactly. No more than one tablet every twenty-four hours, on rising.”

The old lady got up, took the prescription, and handed over a fifty-dollar bill. The pharmacist went back, put the bill in a drawer under the counter and handed over a five-dollar bill in change. “Thank you so much, Doc Frank,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, these sure do hit the spot, make me feel so much better.”

“Glad to help, Mrs. Meade. Say hello to your good man for me.”

“Oh, I will,” Mrs. Meade said, turning to leave. “He’s feeling like a new man with his new prescription. Goodbye now.”

Fred Eagle had been studying the man in the white coat. He was overweight for his medium height, with a double chin and the beginnings of a pot belly. His face had a fringe of white whisker that matched what was obviously a hairpiece; no hairline was visible and the parting looked as if it had stitching.