Killer Sweet Tooth

Chapter

Three




BEN CAME over to my house at about seven o’clock that evening and brought dinner from Dakota’s. It’s the only steakhouse in Brea Ridge, and the food is terrific. Ben had a prime rib, and he brought me my favorite, the filet mignon. He’d gotten us house salads, fries, and rolls to go with the steaks. I’d have to spend an extra thirty minutes on the treadmill tomorrow morning, but it was worth it.

I went to the refrigerator and got a Diet Coke for me and a regular one for Ben. “Did you go into the office today? Was everyone talking about the murder?” I asked as I sat down at the table. I noticed he’d changed from the jeans and sweatshirt he’d been wearing that morning into dress pants, a blue and white striped button-down shirt, and a sport coat.

“I went in for a little while,” Ben said. “Neil is doing fine as assistant editor, but he’s still new at it.” He sighed. “Of course, there was quite a bit of buzz about Dr. Bainsworth, but it’s all speculation at this point. The police aren’t giving us much to go on.”

“About Neil . . . don’t you think you might be giving him the impression you’re not confident in his abilities?” I cut into my steak. “You are confident in them, aren’t you?”

“Yes and no.” Ben took a drink of his soda. “He’s a good editor, but he’s young and inexperienced.”

“And so were you at one point. Besides, that’s why you have a cell phone,” I said. “So he can call you if he has any questions. You’re going to have to give him some wings if he’s ever going to fly, you know.”

“I get what you’re saying, Daph, but it’s my name on the masthead. When all is said and done, my name as editor in chief is what people see. I’m ultimately who they blame or who they praise for the paper’s content.”

“Yeah . . . okay.” I knew I was fighting a losing battle, so I began to eat in silence. Ben and I had been over this before. If he’d delegate more of his responsibilities at the newspaper—the responsibilities that had already been assigned to other people anyway—then he and I would be able to spend more time together. Don’t get me wrong. I was glad Ben took such pride in his work and that his job was important to him, but I’d like to think spending time with me was a priority to him too.

“What?” he asked after a few minutes. “Are you mad at me now?”

“No, I’m not mad.” Maybe I was just trying to resign myself to the fact that Ben Jacobs was a married man . . . married to the Chronicle.

That might even explain why he’d remained single all these years. What a dope I’d been to think even for a second that maybe Ben had never gotten over me when we’d broken up all those years ago.

“You are,” he said. “You’re mad. Daphne, you know my job entails working some long hours. I can’t help that.”

“Let’s please not discuss this right now. Let’s just eat dinner in peace,” I said.

Ben huffed. “Fine.”

As we were finishing up, the doorbell rang. I got up to answer it and was surprised to see Scottie Phillips on my doorstep for the second time that day.

“Hey,” he said as he came in the door. He shook off his leather coat and handed it to me.

Okaaay. “Hi.” I hung the jacket up on the rack beside the door.

“Got your message,” he said. “Sorry I had my phone off. Whatever you want to charge for the cake is fine. EIEIO is going all-out for this party. We just ask people to remember we’re a missionary organization.”

“Sure. I’ll . . . uh . . . give you the fifteen percent missionary organization discount,” I said. “Does that sound about right?”

“Sounds good to me.” He nodded at Ben. “How you doing this evening?”

“Fine,” Ben said tightly. “I’m doing just fine.”

“Man, those fries look good.” Scottie looked back at me. “You gonna finish those?”

“No. Be my guest,” I said.

He sat down at the table opposite Ben and dug into my remaining fries. “I love big ol’ thick steak fries. They’re the best.”

“Yeah. They’re good.” Ben glanced at me in exasperation, but I couldn’t very well be rude to a client, the only client I’d had in two weeks besides the Save-A-Buck. It was a work thing. Certainly he could understand that.

“So,” Scottie said to Ben, “are you and long, tall Sally here coming to the performance tomorrow night? The EIEIO will rock your socks off.”

“Sorry,” Ben said, sounding anything but sorry. “I have to cover a council meeting tomorrow evening.”

“My neighbor Myra and I are going to try to make it, though,” I said.

Scottie smiled. “Super.”

Ben merely stared at the man.

After he’d finished my fries and my Diet Coke, Scottie wiped his mouth and hands on my napkin and got up from the table. “It’s been real, folks, but I have to get back to the hotel. We’ve got one last rehearsal before tomorrow’s show.” He kissed my cheek and grabbed his jacket. “See you there, Daphne.”

With that, he was out the door . . . and yet he left behind a silence that was palpable.

“Had you ever seen that guy before this morning?” Ben asked.

“No,” I said.

He blew out a breath as he was shaking his head. “What a jerk! He asks for your leftovers and then kisses you like we’ve all been old friends for years. Seriously, who does he think he is?”

“I guess he thinks he’s Elvis.” I shrugged.

“I don’t like him. There’s something smarmy about him,” Ben said. “Did you have to tell him you’d come to that concert tomorrow night?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. You didn’t leave me a way out—you said you have to be somewhere, not that we have to be somewhere,” I said. “Besides, when I mentioned to Myra today that I had a new client who had invited us to the EIEIO concert, she asked if she could go with us.”

“Then you’re actually going?” he asked.

“Of course I am. I have to. One, he’s my client; and two, I’m the reason Myra lost her filling yesterday and had to go to the dentist; which means that, three, I might be the reason Dr. Bainsworth is dead.”

Ben ran his hand over his face. “How did you get from going to an Elvis concert to killing a dentist in three easy steps?”

“It wasn’t hard,” I said. “Isn’t there any way you can get out of this council meeting? Can’t someone else cover it?”

“I’ll see, but I doubt it,” Ben said. “Everyone else has their own assignments.”

I could’ve pointed out the times since I’d been back in Brea Ridge when he’d had to—or volunteered to—take on the assignments of others, but I didn’t. Instead I took his hand and led him into the living room. “What’s being said about Dr. Bainsworth today at the newspaper? You said the police weren’t giving you much to go on, but do they have any suspects?”

“Besides you and Myra?” he asked. “No.”

“Oh, come on. There has to be somebody.”

“I know, but they don’t have any leads yet,” said Ben. “The police are going over the office, interviewing Dr. Bainsworth’s staff members, and talking with everyone who had appointments scheduled during the past couple weeks.”

“Well, that’s good.” I sighed. “But what if they don’t find anybody? Will they arrest Myra and me?”

“From what I gather, I don’t think so. They don’t have any real evidence against you at this point.”

“But they’re looking,” I said.

“Sure, they’re looking. They’re asking around to see if you or Myra had a prior connection to the man or a motive to harm him. It’s standard procedure.”

“Myra was his patient. Is every patient he had on the suspect list?” I asked.

“At this point, they could be. But the cops aren’t going to find any evidence linking you or Myra to Dr. Bainsworth’s murder.” He squeezed my hand.

“Since I’ve only been back in Brea Ridge a few months, I never even met the guy. What was he like?” I asked.

“I didn’t know him that well either. I go to Farmer—the other dentist. But Bainsworth seemed like an okay guy. I interviewed him for the paper a few times.” Ben stretched his legs out in front of him. “I did an article on him when he moved his practice into a new building—where it is now—because it was in the historical section and he was remodeling. I also spoke with him about the mission trip he took a couple months ago.”

“A mission trip? He wasn’t an EIEIO, was he?”

Ben smiled. “I don’t think so. He was doing dental work for the poor, which was really magnanimous of him given his circumstances at the time.”

“What circumstances?” I asked.

“Well, his wife had left him a few months prior and was in the process of taking nearly everything the two of them had,” Ben said.

“That doesn’t seem very fair.” I leaned back into the sofa.

“He was cheating on her,” Ben said. “Angela, his wife, caught him with one of his hygienists.”

“That bites.” I laughed at my own joke, but Ben didn’t.

“Anyway, the mission trip had already been scheduled, which is why I suppose he still went. Once the divorce was more fully under way, I don’t think he could have afforded it,” Ben said. “That’s a shame too, because from the way he talked he’d really enjoyed helping those people.”


BEN LEFT FAIRLY early since he had to get up and go to work the next morning. I was a little tired but restless. I went into my office to search online for a large model of a 1955 Cadillac I could use to make a template for the EIEIO cake.

As I searched, I wondered about Dr. Bainsworth. Maybe his wife killed him. She could still harbor feelings of hurt and jealousy. Surely the police would check her alibi.

Or since he was cheating on his wife, perhaps the other injured party—the hygienist’s husband or boyfriend—had gone to the office to confront Dr. Bainsworth. But why would he wait so long? From the way Ben had talked, Dr. Bainsworth’s wife had discovered the affair and started divorce proceedings more than four months ago. Wouldn’t anyone entangled in that volatile situation have lashed out before now?

What if one of Dr. Bainsworth’s patients told him something while under anesthesia? What if the dentist confronted the patient about it later, and the patient got angry? That could make sense. But then, even if the police questioned every single one of the dentist’s patients, the guilty person wasn’t going to speak up and say something stupid like “Yeah, I slipped into his office to bash him on the head because I confessed to him that I was embezzling from my company while I was all hyped up on nitrous oxide.”

I wondered if Myra was up for some undercover investigation. Fortunately, before I could dwell on Dr. Bainsworth’s murder suspects any more, I found the car I needed for my template. I printed it out and went to bed, resolving to start carving the cake first thing tomorrow morning. This way, I could give it a trial run. And if the cake went wrong, I could make another in plenty of time for the party.


THE NEXT MORNING, I hurried outside to get the newspaper to see what was being written about the Bainsworth investigation. There was the handsome dentist’s face plastered on the front page with the headline POLICE SEARCH FOR DENTIST’S KILLER. The article related how “two local women, one of whom was a patient of Dr. Bainsworth,” had found the body Saturday night at the dental office. Thankfully, they hadn’t named Myra or me in the article. I didn’t need bad publicity to further drive down the market for baked goods in Brea Ridge.

The Chronicle went on to list Dr. Bainsworth’s attributes before saying that police were pursuing several leads in connection with his murder. They weren’t specific about those leads, but at least the paper didn’t say “especially the patient and her friend.”

After reading the paper, I made myself a task list. Mr. Franklin wanted five football-themed cakes for the Save-A-Buck and five party trays to psych people up for the Super Bowl. I decided I would make one yellow, two chocolate, and two white cakes—all sheet cakes. I’d go with chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and snickerdoodle cookies for the party trays, along with the brownies and some white-and milk-chocolate-covered pretzels.

The phone rang. I hadn’t put on my headset yet, so I picked up the receiver.

“Did you see it?” Myra asked excitedly. “We made the front page of the paper!”

“Was that us? I thought it was Dr. Bainsworth.”

Myra huffed. “Oh, you know what I mean. Did Ben mention anything about the suspects?”

“No,” I said. “Actually, he told me that the police were being kind of cagey on the subject.”

“On Law and Order that always means they don’t have any suspects at all,” she said.

“Not even the two lovely costars who made the front page of the paper?” I asked sarcastically.

“That would only work if one of us had been having a fling with Dr. Bainsworth. I wasn’t. Were you?”

“Yep.”

She blew out a breath. “Oh, you were not. And don’t say you were, not even joking! You’d be arrested for sure.”

I laughed. “I’d better get back to work. I’ll talk with you later.”

“Call me if you find out anything,” Myra said.

“Likewise.”

Before I got started on all that baking, I needed to start carving on the peanut butter and banana cake. I retrieved my template, slipped on my apron, and put on my telephone headset. Then I stacked the three sheet cakes with buttercream between the layers to hold them together, and I started carving.

To be honest, I was nervous about the carving. I haven’t done all that many three-dimensional cakes. But as I carved, I became more confident. The cake was actually starting to look like a car.

I was using a round biscuit cutter to make the wheel wells when the phone rang. “Daphne’s Delectable Cakes, how may I help you?”

“It’s me, Daph.”

It was my sister, Violet, and she sounded exasperated.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I just read about you and Myra Jenkins in the paper. You found the dentist dead night before last? I can’t believe you didn’t call me first thing!”

“How could you tell from what was written in the paper that Myra and I were the ones who found the dentist?” I asked.

“Educated guess. Whenever anything weird happens in this town lately, you and Myra are at the heart of it. Now, why didn’t you call me?”

“Well, I didn’t call you from the jail because you were at Grammy Armstrong’s party,” I said. “How did that go, by the way? Did she like her cake?”

“It went fine, and she loved the cake. Everyone did,” she said. “Don’t change the subject though. Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t get home until almost seven yesterday morning, and then I went to sleep. When I got up, I had to go to the Save-A-Buck and then get started on a cake I’m doing for a new client.”

“The Chronicle said Dr. Bainsworth had been bludgeoned to death with a blunt object. Was it horrible?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “But it wasn’t as gory as all that. In fact, I thought he’d only been knocked out when I saw him. He didn’t appear to be hurt all that badly.”

“Oooh, that’s so scary that it happened just before you got there. I mean if you’d been just a couple minutes earlier . . .”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “Myra and I thought we heard the killer in the waiting area.”

Violet gasped. “What did you do?”

“We grabbed the only things we could find to use to defend ourselves, a tooth and a toothbrush.”

“Daphne!”

“What would you have done?”

“I honestly have no idea,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re all right. Let’s change the subject. So, who’s the new client?”

“The EIEIO,” I said.

“That bunch of Elvis impersonators that have descended on the town? Are you making a cake shaped like Graceland?”

“No; fortunately, the Elvis I spoke with apparently didn’t think of that. He’s getting a pink Cadillac,” I said.

Violet laughed. “Be sure and take pictures. This I’ve gotta see.”

“I will. Hey, they’ve invited me to their concert at the hotel tonight,” I said, going back to working on the wheel wells. “Would you like to go?”

“No, thanks. Once Jason and I were eating dinner in a restaurant in Gatlinburg—it was before the children were born—and an Elvis impersonator started performing. He tried to give me his sweaty scarf. It was sopping wet—and it smelled!” She made a gagging noise. “I’ve never been able to look at Elvis impersonators the same way since.”

“Gee, thanks for getting me all excited about the event,” I said. “I can only hope I’ll be offered a scarf.”

“Sorry,” she said with laughter bubbling into her voice. “Didn’t mean to ruin it for you. Some of those impersonators are really good . . . just not the one we saw.”

“I’m taking Myra. I feel I owe it to her since it was my cashew brittle that caused her to lose her filling and have to go to the dentist in the first place.”

“Daphne, you have to stop blaming yourself for every little thing,” Violet said. “If the filling was in that bad of shape, she’d have lost it anyhow.”

Even though Violet was my younger sister, she often took a maternal tone with me. I guess being a mom had done that to her over the years.

“True,” I said, “but maybe it wouldn’t have been Friday night and maybe we wouldn’t have found Dr. Bainsworth bleeding on the floor of exam room one.”

“You’ve got a point. But still . . .” She trailed off, apparently unable to think of anything to counter my point.

“Ben said Dr. Bainsworth was going through a messy divorce,” I said. “Do you think his ex-wife might’ve murdered him? I mean, maybe it wasn’t even on purpose. They could’ve been arguing over the resolution of their property or whatever, and she could’ve lost her temper and hit him with . . . something.”

“I doubt it. I sold Angela her new house on the outskirts of town, and she seemed like a really nice person,” Violet said. “Plus, despite the way their marriage ended, it appeared to me that Angela and Jim had a pretty amicable parting. The way she talked, he was giving her just about anything she wanted.”

“Of course she was going to tell you everything was rosy, Vi. You were her real estate agent.”

“I think if Angela had been going to kill Jim,” Violet continued, “she’d have done it when she found out about the affair—the first affair, I mean. I could see her acting in the heat of passion then but not killing the guy four or five months after the fact.”

“Wait. You said the first affair,” I said. “There was more than one?”

“Oh, yeah. After the hygienist he was seeing left her husband thinking she was destined to be the next Mrs. Bains-worth, Jim started dating someone else—a patient, I believe.” She thought a second. “Yes, it was a patient. It was Maureen Fremont.”

“Maureen Fremont?” I asked. “I thought she was dating Steve Franklin.”

“She is now. This was before that. Her divorce had just become final, and she was vulnerable and apparently more than a little stupid,” Violet said. “I mean, she had to have heard all the gossip about Jim and the hygienist. Anyway, their little fling didn’t last long either.”

I didn’t want to talk about Dr. Bainsworth anymore. “How are my sweethearts?” I asked, speaking of Lucas and Leslie.

“Hoping every single morning for a snow day. At least, it has them glued to the morning news until after schedule changes are announced, and I can pretend they have a keen interest in current affairs.”

I laughed. “Do you think they might like peanut butter and banana cake balls if I dip them in white chocolate?”

“Peanut butter and banana cake balls?” She groaned. “Maybe. They like to try weird things.”

“It’s the flavor of cake Elvis requested. Actually, I tasted a bit that I carved off, and it’s pretty good.”

“Really? Want the kids to come over one evening this week and help you make the cake balls?” Violet asked.

“I’d love it. Their aprons are by the door waiting for them,” I said. “Does Wednesday work for you?”

“Wednesday is great.”

We said our good-byes and hung up. Well, she hung up. I pressed end on the headset.

Violet’s twelve-year-old twins, Lucas and Leslie, love to make and decorate cakes, cookies, candy, cinnamon rolls . . . you name it. I think they like the eating part better than the baking and decorating these days, but that’s okay too. I love to have them over.

I don’t have children of my own. Given my troubled marriage to Todd, it was a blessing we’d never had children. But at forty, I felt like my chances at motherhood were dwindling. I sometimes wonder what I’ve been missing out on.

My thoughts turned back to Dr. Bainsworth. I tried to picture what he must have looked like when he wasn’t lying on his white tiled examination room floor with a small puddle of blood stemming from a head wound. He’d been tall—I imagine he was over six feet—he had an athletic build, and he had thick, dark brown hair. He looked youngish. I’d have taken him to be in his early thirties. Violet knew of one affair he’d had with a patient. Had there been others?

Three hours and an aching back later, I had finished carving the Cadillac and had covered it in peanut-butter-flavored buttercream frosting. It looked good. I could really envision it coming together. I loosely covered the cake in plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator. I’d tint some fondant pink and cover the car tomorrow.

I made enough batter to make a chocolate half-sheet cake. Cut in half, it would provide the two fourth-sheet cakes—or roughly nine-by-thirteen-size sheet cakes—for Save-A-Buck. While the cake was baking, I cleaned up the kitchen and got ready for my meeting with Juanita.

I keep cake samples in the freezer, and I’d set some out this morning to thaw. I had also found some cake-decorating books with quinceañera cakes in them. With some families, a quinceañera is almost as important as a wedding.

By the time Juanita came at five, the cake was on the island cooling. I’d even taken a shower and gotten ready for the Elvis concert. I didn’t want to call too much attention to myself—Violet’s sweaty-scarf anecdote was still too fresh in my mind—so I was wearing all black. With my dark hair and eyes, I hoped my ebony sweater and wool pants would help me blend into the background. Black boots and a heavy silver braided necklace and matching earrings rounded out my outfit.

“Oh, you look elegant,” Juanita said when she arrived. “Do you have plans this evening?”

“Actually, Myra and I are going to the hotel tonight to see the Elvis concert,” I said. “Are you going?”

“Yes, I am. I don’t want to show up alone, though. Would it be okay if I ride with the two of you?” she asked.

“That’ll be great,” I said. “I spoke with Myra earlier, and she thinks China York will be going with us too. So it’ll be a foursome.”

Juanita put her hand to her mouth and tried to suppress a giggle. “Ms. York? Ms. York is an Elvis Presley fan?”

I smiled. “That’s what I thought, too. But then, Elvis fans come in all varieties, I suppose. Remember that little Hawaiian girl Lilo in that Disney movie?”

“I do.” She shook her head. “Still . . . Ms. York? She doesn’t strike me as the type of person who would go in for Elvis impersonators. Some of them are . . .” She struggled to find the right expression.

“Over the top?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Very much over the top.”

I shrugged. “I imagine we’re in for an interesting performance. For now, though, let’s get to work on your sister’s quinceañera.”

We pored over the three cake books in which I’d found quinceañera cakes. Juanita informed me that her sister, Isabel, would be wearing white and that her damas—the young ladies in her court—would be wearing rose. Juanita finally decided on a cake consisting of seven tiers. The main cake would be three tiers tall and set on a pedestal above a fountain. Two two-tiered cakes would be placed on either side—with dolls representing the damas standing on staircases on the sides of the main cake leading from the main cake to the smaller cakes.

After tasting the cake samples, Juanita chose a white cake with strawberry filling and vanilla buttercream frosting.

She clasped her hands to her chest and smiled at me, eyes glistening with tears. “This is so exciting! Isabel’s party is going to be wonderful.”

“Tell me about your quinceañera,” I said. “What was it like?”

“I did not have one.”

Fortunately, the awkwardness of that moment was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Unfortunately, it was Myra . . . and she had completely and totally lost her mind.