by Gayle Trent
I opened the middle desk drawer. Not really having time to rifle through its contents, I snapped a photo. Basically, it contained some change, paper clips, notepads, a woman’s gold bracelet, the blank prescription pads Angela had mentioned, and some miscellaneous clutter. Some of the coins appeared to be foreign currency, so I took a close-up photo of them so I could reference them on the Internet later. Maybe they were from the country where Dr. Bainsworth had gone on his mission trip. I supposed maybe they could be from some other country, though. What if Dr. Bainsworth had taken a trip no one else knew about? A place where he’d met the murderous Elvis?
I also took a picture of the bracelet. Maybe it had belonged to some girlfriend we—and maybe even the police—hadn’t discovered yet. Maybe this woman—or her husband—was the killer. There didn’t appear to be any engravings on the bracelet, but it could still be a valuable clue.
The other two desk drawers were completely empty. On a wild hunch, I took the photos out of their frames and looked at the backs of the pictures for any notations. There wasn’t any writing, but the frame holding the photo of him and Angela contained a hotel key card. I snapped pics of both sides of the key and then put it back where I’d found it.
I turned my attention to the trash can. I imagined the police had already gone through the wastebasket and taken anything they had considered noteworthy, but they could’ve overlooked something. I sat on the floor and dumped the contents out in front of me. I unfolded wadded paper receipts, messages, and correspondence. There were several messages from “Mark.” I took photos of everything and then put it all back in the trash can.
I got up and strode over to Dr. Bainsworth’s bookshelves. Besides your normal, everyday healthy-tooth tomes, I didn’t see much of interest. I took pictures of the shelves anyway on the off chance that we’d either need to revisit the shelves later on or that I’d someday find myself responsible for another of Myra’s tooth emergencies and need the title of a good dental reference book. I’m sorry, but that’s how my brain works on half a cup of coffee before eight A.M.
“Nineteen minutes!” Pat called.
I had a vision of the taskmaster in that famous I Love Lucy candy factory episode yelling, “Speed ’er up!” while Myra and I stuffed chocolates in our mouths, under our chef’s hats, and down the front of our aprons.
After looking under Dr. Bainsworth’s desk and the other furniture in the office for some vague clue and finding nothing, I moved on to an exam room. It gave me the willies. All those nasty tooth and gum pictures, the smell of dental stuff, the drill, remembering the sound made by the drill. . . . A quick check of the cabinets assured me there was nothing to see in there. Nope, nothing at all. I didn’t even take any pictures. I mean, who’d hide whatever it was we were looking for in a dental exam room? We didn’t even know for sure that the Elvis—or the hygienist’s ex, or the hygienist, or Bunni, or one of Dr. Bainsworth’s many other women—had even been looking for anything that night.
I stepped outside the exam room and tried to get control of my breathing. I’d always heard you’re supposed to breathe into a paper bag when you’re hyperventilating. But most people use plastic bags these days, or those eco-friendly totes. Could you stop hyperventilating by breathing into an eco-friendly tote?
“Fourteen!” Pat shouted.
“Coffee!” I yelled back. “Is there any fresh coffee here?”
“No. We’re here to clean the place, not dirty it up,” Pat responded from somewhere in the bowels of the building.
“Is there a soda machine?” I asked.
“Don’t know. You’re the one snooping around,” she said. “See for yourself.”
Across from Dr. Bainsworth’s office, there was a small kitchenette. Given my fear of dentist drills, I should’ve explored the kitchenette before venturing into an exam room. But I doubted there was anything in the tiny space except a refrigerator full of rotten food and half a pot of almost week-old coffee. And, unfortunately, I also have a fear of rotten food. Okay, that’s not so much a fear as a strong gag reflex.
As desperate as I was for caffeine, I decided to hold my nose and my breath and open the refrigerator door. I could almost hear the hallelujah chorus when I saw a single, unopened can of Diet Coke sitting there amidst the take-out containers and coffee creamer.
My eyes zeroed in on that refreshing, energizing goodness. I continued to hold my breath but let go of my nose in order to claim my prize. I snatched the soda can off that wire shelf and shut the door. I expelled a breath of victory and popped the top on the can. With the first drink, my eyes burned and I could feel the cold liquid coursing down my esophagus. Sweet, sweet nectar.
“Why’re you lollygagging?” Pat barked from behind me.
I started and dropped . . . the . . . can.
“Humph. Now you can clean that up too,” Pat said.
The insult was nearly as bad as the injury. Nearly.
“WANT TO STOP somewhere and grab a bite to eat?” Myra asked on the drive home.
I shook my head. “I need to get cleaned up and work on the quinceañera cake for Juanita’s sister.”
“Yeah. I need to get cleaned up too . . . and rest awhile.”
Her voice broke, and I turned sharply to look at her. “Myra, what is it?”
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
“No,” I said. “It was good we were able to do some snooping in the dental office. We’ll upload our photos later and see what we’ve got.”
She sniffled. “N-not just today. I’m sorry I got you into this entire mess.”
“It’s not your fault. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.” She was crying now, and I felt horrible. “Do you need to pull over?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “I don’t know how you can try to take the blame for all this, though.”
“Hello? The cashew brittle? Had I made a softer snack, we wouldn’t be in this predicament,” I reminded her.
“Would you hand me a tissue from the glove box?” she asked.
“Sure.” I opened the glove box, retrieved a travel pack of tissues, and handed her one. “Why don’t I fix us some lunch? That’ll make us both feel better.”
“No, thanks. I ought to go home.”
“If you do, you’ll wind up giving yourself a pity party,” I said. “And so will I.”
She sighed.
“We can have ham sandwiches on rye bread, and I can heat up some pumpkin roll I have in the freezer,” I suggested. “What do you say?”
“Are you certain it won’t be any trouble?” she asked, her voice a mixture of self-pity and hope.
“No trouble at all,” I said.
“That pumpkin roll does sound awfully good.” She smiled resolutely. “All right then.”
Even though I had a lot of work to do after lunch, I suggested to Myra that we look at the photos we’d taken in Dr. Bainsworth’s office. I do some of my best thinking while I’m working on cakes. I hoped the photos would give me something to work with so I could make better sense of what had happened to the dentist and why.
We went into my office and I booted up the computer. I sat down at the desk, and Myra dropped onto the sofa.
“Did you see anything in the office to make you suspect why Dr. Bainsworth might’ve been killed?” I asked.
“No, honey, I didn’t. I just figure it had to be something personal,” she said. “Unless there had been cash or drugs stashed somewhere in the office, and the police found and confiscated them, I don’t know what else it could be.”
I plugged the USB cable into my phone and the computer and began uploading the photos I’d taken. “I agree that it was personal. At least, it looked personal to me when we found Dr. Bainsworth lying there on his floor Friday night.”
“He had the nicest smile,” Myra mused. “Of course, he would, being a dentist and all. Who’d go to a dentist with bad teeth?”
“The same people who get their hair done by people with bad haircuts, I guess,�
� I responded.
“I suppose,” she said. “Some of those male hairdressers have especially weird hairdos—Mohawks and such. I heard somewhere it’s like seven hundred dollars for an appointment with that one French guy who has a salon in New York. He has nice hair, though . . . and a nice smile . . . nice eyes. I might start saving up. Think I could get in?”
I smiled. “He’d be lucky to have you as a client.” I nodded toward the computer screen. “Here. See if you find anything weird about the pictures I took.” I stood and offered her the chair. She sat down, and I stood behind her, reaching around and using the mouse to begin a slideshow of the photos I’d downloaded.
The first photo was of the desk drawer contents.
“Oooh,” Myra said, “can you zoom in on that bracelet?”
I did as she instructed.
“Eh.” She grimaced. “It’s fake.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yep. They used to sell those at the mall for ten bucks apiece. It was probably a gift for one of his girlfriends. Or maybe he gave it to one of them, and she threw it back at him.” She chuckled. “Maybe that’s why he wanted to upgrade his jewelry stash.”
“Upgrade his jewelry stash?” I asked.
“Yeah. I found photos of some really nice pieces of jewelry tucked into a book on a shelf in the waiting area,” Myra said. “I took pictures of them. I wanted to show them to you, but I also wanted to find out where I could get a couple of the things. They’re gorgeous.”
“Great,” I said. “Maybe the jewelry is what the killer was looking for. I’ll upload your photos as soon as we’ve gone through these.” Having the photo of the desk drawer enlarged in order to get a better look at the bracelet made me notice something else I hadn’t seen before. I squinted at the screen. “Do you see that?” I pointed at the corner of a flier or brochure barely visible in the photograph.
“I do see it,” she said. “I can’t make out much of it, but I can see EIE.” She turned to look at me. “EIEIO?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “Of course, from this photo we can’t be certain, but it does make some sense . . . especially combined with the Elvis that Hot Lips from the Sunoco saw. But what could the connection be?” I wrinkled my forehead. “I wish I’d noticed this earlier today.”
“Wonder if we could get back into the office,” Myra said.
I shook my head. “Too risky.” I thought a second. “But maybe I could ask Scottie for a brochure. I could tell him I want to put their information on my website with a photograph of the finished Cadillac cake—you know, both to show off the cake and to promote their organization.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Myra said. “Then we could compare the brochure with this image and see if they match.”
“Exactly,” I said.
We flipped through the photographs of the coins—I made a note to try to look up their country of origin later—the books, and the contents of Dr. Bainsworth’s wastepaper basket.
“Do any of those names jump out at you?” I asked Myra.
She shook her head. “No, and none of the messages look all that important either. By the looks of his office, you’d have thought Dr. Bainsworth was boring.”
“Right. Only we know better, thanks to Bunni and Angela,” I said. “There are several messages here from someone named Mark—just asking Dr. Bainsworth to call him back. Wonder what that was about? If it was a tooth emergency, wouldn’t Bunni have simply made the man an appointment to come into the office?”
“Yeah.” Myra chewed her bottom lip for a moment. “We need to talk with that Jill—the hygienist who left her husband and then got dumped. I’ll bet she was ready to kill Dr. Bains-worth after the way he treated her.”
“I agree. Maybe we can look her up.” I frowned. “But how do we go about doing that? ‘Hi, we’re calling to see if you’ve murdered any dentists lately.’ That would be subtle.”
“We’ll come up with something.”
The last photographs on my phone were the ones of the hotel key.
“Where’s this from?” Myra asked.
“I don’t know. There isn’t a hotel name on the card.” I zoomed in on the image. “It must be important, though. The card was hidden in a photo of Dr. Bainsworth and Angela.”
“Weird. Maybe it’s where he had all his flings.” She stood. “Let me get my phone so we can look at my pictures.”
As Myra hurried into the kitchen to retrieve her phone, I sat and looked back through the photos. The bracelet was nice, but it was obvious Myra was right—this was a piece of costume jewelry, not something a supposedly well-to-do man would choose to give a woman he was trying to impress. Granted, the dentist had fallen on some tough times financially after his divorce, but I would have thought he’d either do better than this bracelet or would be better off not buying the woman any jewelry at all.
Myra returned with her phone. I disconnected mine from the computer and plugged hers in. As I downloaded her photos, she paced behind me.
“Didn’t you tell me that Dr. Bainsworth had dated Maureen Fremont at some point?” Myra asked.
“Yes. Why?” I asked.
“I was just imagining how insulted she’d be with that bracelet you saw in his desk drawer,” Myra said.
I tilted my head. “You’re probably right. But just because the Fremonts have money doesn’t mean she wouldn’t understand that the dentist couldn’t afford a pricier piece of jewelry, does it?” I asked. “After all, she’s dating Steve Franklin now. I can’t imagine he can afford to give her many luxuries.”
“Don’t write Steve off that quickly. He lives in the house he grew up in, has a steady job. . . . I’d say he does all right,” Myra said. “Not Fremont all right, but then who does?”
“Maybe I can talk with Maureen. Mr. Franklin made it clear to me that she wouldn’t want to discuss Dr. Bainsworth, but we need to follow up with every lead.”
Myra agreed. Her photos finished uploading, and I started the slideshow. The first photographs Myra had taken were terrible. They were blurry, and her fingers were in the way. Thankfully, she’d finally gotten the hang of using her camera phone, and the rest of the photographs were viewable. Some were just shots of the interior of the waiting room. Then she had photographed shelves. Finally, we came to the photographs of the jewelry she’d mentioned earlier.
“Wow, these are beautiful pieces, Myra,” I said. “But what makes you think they’re real when the one in the desk wasn’t?”
“Well, for one thing, there’s a 24K on the lobster claw of that necklace,” she said.
I leaned in closer. “Oh, yeah. I can make it out now. You’ve got good eyes.”
“And I saw the original photo,” Myra said. “Who carries around pictures of jewelry anyway? A salesperson? Do you think Dr. Bainsworth was planning to start a side business selling upscale jewelry?”
“You never know,” I said. “Were the photos loose or in some sort of binder?”
“They were just loose, individual pictures.” Myra studied the photographs for a moment in silence. “Maybe they’re pieces from an estate sale or something. A few of the pieces look old. Wonder if that earring the police found had anything to do with this jewelry?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the jewelry is Angela’s,” I said, “and she and Dr. Bainsworth had photographed them for insurance purposes. Maybe they kept one set of the photos at home and one set at the office just in case anything happened. It makes sense.” I shrugged. “I’ll try to follow up on that with Angela later this afternoon.”
“You do that,” Myra said. “I’m going to try to track down Jill, the dumped hygienist.”
CHAPTER
Twelve
AFTER MYRA left, I began working on the largest tier of the quinceañera cake. I frosted the cake with rose-tinted buttercream and allowed it to set for fifteen minutes. Once it had, I used a plain white paper towel to further smooth the buttercream in preparation for decorating. I filled a decorator ba
g with thin white frosting and used a tiny writing tip to pipe scrollwork onto the sides of the cake. I find scrollwork easy and repetitive, and it affords me the opportunity to let my mind wander while I work.
Since I was wearing my telephone headset, I went ahead and called Angela Bainsworth to ask about the photographs Myra had found. Angela answered on the first ring and sounded a bit antsy.
“Hi, Angela. It’s Daphne Martin.”
No response.
“I’m Violet Armstrong’s sister,” I said. “We spoke yesterday afternoon?”
“Yes, of course, Daphne. What can I do for you?”
“There were photographs of jewelry on a shelf in your exhusband’s office. I thought maybe the jewelry was yours and that Dr. Bainsworth might’ve stored them in his office for insurance purposes.”
“Well, I don’t know about any photos,” said Angela, “but I can assure you the pieces aren’t mine. I’m not big on jewelry and prefer to invest my money in ways that will return a profit.”
“You didn’t happen to lose a diamond earring in the office, did you?”
“No.”
“I see. Well, thanks for your time,” I said. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
“No bother, Daphne. My suggestion is to simply forget the photographs.”
“You don’t think they have anything to do with the reason Dr. Bainsworth was killed?” I asked. “I mean, what if he’d been trying to sell the jewelry or something, and the buyer decided to steal them rather than pay for them?”
“I think his murderer was either a woman scorned, a jilted husband or boyfriend, or some homeless junkie who’d hoped the office would provide a warm place to sleep that night. That makes the most sense to me,” Angela said.
I stopped making scrolls to rest my hand for a second. “You really think it’s that simple?”