Free Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery by Mary Daheim Page B

youth, though given the distortion of California Highway Patrol photo-graphy, it was hard to tell. Judith took another look at the smiling face and shuddered.
    “Just think, she came in here three hours ago, all full of phony nonsense and bright shiny beads…and now she’s dead. Why?”
    Joe was still rummaging in the satchel, extracting hairpins and Band-Aids and paper clips. “Check the rest of the wallet.
    It seems as if she was a nurse at St. Peregrine’s Hospital in L.A. Credit cards, too, mostly for California stores. I wonder what else was in here?”
    “What do you mean?” Judith asked, flipping through the plastic holder with its passports to poverty for Visa, Master-Card, Bullock’s, Robinson’s and several oil companies.
    “I mean,” said Joe, digging even deeper into the JUST DESSERTS / 59
    charred satchel, “that whoever filched this thing must have thought there was something incriminating in it. Not her identity, though. If that had been the case, he—or she—would have gotten rid of the wallet.” He gave the two women a sidelong glance. “There’s no checkbook, you’ll note.”
    “You mean,” said Renie, trying to piece his logic together,
    “whoever found the satchel wasn’t trying to destroy it, they just wanted to ditch it in a hurry?”
    Joe nodded. “The oven was the best place, I suspect.
    Whatever they took out of here is somewhere else in this house. Or has been…” He stopped, his hand still inside the satchel. “Hello? What’s this?” Very carefully, he pulled out a Polaroid picture which had been stuck in the recesses of an inside pocket. The edges were curled and the color had faded, but despite the youthful faces, there was no mistaking the two people who beamed at the photographer into the camera.
    Judith let out a little shriek. “Wanda and Dash?”
    “Or Dash and Wanda. In love, it would appear, judging from the arms wrapped around each other.” Joe turned the picture over. “Just ‘1969.’ That’s all it says, but that’s plenty.”
    “Enough to arrest him?” Judith asked eagerly.
    “Hardly.” Joe put the satchel in yet another grocery bag.
    “But it is evidence. Just about anybody could have sneaked into the pantry and even the kitchen in the past couple of hours. At least after the murder. That trail of flour no doubt led the way, just like Hansel and Gretel’s birdseed.”
    “Bread crumbs,” corrected Judith absently. She gazed at the floor, noting that most of the flour had been tracked up, spread around, or absorbed. In any event, it was virtually gone. She turned back to Joe. “Could you get any prints?”
    “Footprints?” Joe shrugged. “We tried. To be frank, I think the firemen tramped through most of it. Sometimes we seem to work at cross purposes.” He looked faintly 60 / Mary Daheim
    rueful, then squared his shoulders. “Now I’d better talk to Otto before he busts a gut.”
    “Wait!” Unthinking, Judith put a hand on Joe’s arm and brushed aside the thought that it seemed to fit there. “Dash was out on the back porch with Ellie Carver just now. I saw them embracing. Sort of.”
    “Sort of?” The red eyebrows lifted as Judith’s hand fell away. “Ellie?”
    Judith nodded emphatically. “They suggested intimacy.
    And then they ran off after I opened the back door.”
    “Dash must be pretty dashing,” mused Joe. “I’d better run him through the computer downtown.” With the garbage bag swinging from his hand, he strolled out of the kitchen.
    “Here,” said Renie, pouring out the first of the coffee. “It looks like a long night.”
    Judith took the mug and stared with unseeing eyes at the smoke-smudged oven door. “It looks to me like a short career.
    I wonder if I can go back to the library?”
    Pouring out her own mug, Renie didn’t answer right away, but when she did, her voice was unusually somber. “I don’t know about the library, coz, but you know what they say.”
    Her anxious brown eyes met Judith’s