appointments. Why?”
“Oh, just curious,” Myra said. “Tanya said Bunni has a standing Tuesday afternoon appointment, and I wanted to ask her what she thinks happened to Dr. Bainsworth.”
“Wasn’t that just awful?” Peggy Sue asked. “And I heard you and Daphne were the ones who found him.”
“We were,” Myra said. “It was a terrible ordeal. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Dr. Bainsworth. Can you?”
As Peggy Sue was answering Myra, Sienna posed the same question to me about the dentist’s demise.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Do you have any theories?”
“I do,” she said dramatically. “See, I think one of his patients was a werewolf—you know, like in that movie The Werewolf? And that night, he broke into Dr. Bainsworth’s office to steal something—you know, like maybe nitrous oxide so he could get woozy and forget his obsession. And then the dentist came in and caught him by surprise, and so he had to devour him.”
“But Dr. Bainsworth wasn’t devoured,” I said.
“Right, because someone scared the werewolf away.” Sienna smiled triumphantly.
“You might be on to something,” I said. I didn’t believe her werewolf theory, but what if someone had come into Dr. Bainsworth’s office to steal something? I’d been going on the belief that someone had tracked him to the office with the intention of killing him. But if murder was the intent, someone could have just as easily killed him in his home or somewhere else. Why follow him to a public place in order to kill him? “Seriously, Sienna, you might be on the right track.”
Ten minutes later, Myra and I were sitting one seat apart getting our hair done. The seat between us was empty. Peggy Sue sported a fairly large bob sprayed into submission by some type of hair spray that even at a distance was making my nose itch. Pictures of children of various ages were taped to either side of her mirror, and she had a princess crown perpetual calendar on the counter of her workstation.
Sienna had little skulls with pink bows on their heads attached to the top corners of her mirror. On her counter was a white teddy bear in a black leather vest and a framed photo of her and a guy with heavily tattooed arms standing outside what looked like a concert venue.
“So, what’re we doing?” Sienna asked me.
“I’m thinking just your most basic blow-dry and comb-out,” I said. “Nothing fancy.”
She smiled and snapped her gum. “Gotcha.” She grabbed the blow-dryer and a thick-barreled round brush.
At that moment, Myra gave the most exaggerated throat clearing I’d ever heard. I glanced over, and she jerked her head in the direction of the door—no easy task with Peggy Sue’s comb buried in her hair. I saw that a middle-aged, square-shaped woman with a lacquered light-brown bouffant had walked into the salon. Myra placed her front teeth over her bottom lip and twitched her nose before rolling her eyes toward the door.
Did she think her ahem! hadn’t been enough to clue me in that the lady was Bunni Wilson? Still, I nodded, afraid Myra might get up and begin hopping around.
“Hi, Bunni!” Tanya called. “Go on over to the shampoo chair, and I’ll be there as soon as I finish up with Rosa.”
Bunni strolled over to the shampoo area and picked up a tabloid magazine.
Sienna had my hair almost dry by the time Tanya brought Bunni over to occupy the chair between Myra and me. As Sienna turned off the hair dryer, I asked, “Did you see on TV where that actor was caught cheating on his wife? She appeared to be heartbroken.” I was hoping this would give us a segue into Dr. Bainsworth cheating on his wife.
“I know,” Sienna said. “And the wife was so much prettier than that sleazy record producer.”
“She wasn’t the producer,” Tanya chimed in. “The record company belonged to her husband. He was the producer.”
“Then what does that make her?” Peggy Sue asked.
Everyone else—Myra included, to my surprise—averted her eyes and let that question hang.
“I don’t know what makes men behave that way,” Myra said. “It’s not just a Hollywood or big-city problem either. Why, I heard our very own Dr. Bainsworth—rest his soul—cheated on his wife, Angela.”
Myra was at the top of her sleuthing game today.
“I heard that myself,” Tanya said. “And I heard that because Dr. Bainsworth had been caught cheating, Angela was able to wipe him out financially.”
“She did wipe him out,” Bunni said softly. “It’s true that he and one of the hygienists had