the photos that got cut up?”
Annie took a moment to think. “Miles was very sentimental. He kept thinking his parents would wake up one day and realize they wanted him in their life. He had some pictures with them from when he was small. Robyn was the one who really acted like family, so he had a number of pictures of her. Some alone and some with her boyfriend.” Annie stopped and swallowed. “And he had a picture of me.”
“Why would he cut up the photos?” I said. “Unless—somebody else did. Was there something in those pictures somebody would want to hide?” Annie started to shrug as an answer, then her face lit up.
“The director told me something else. One of the residents thought they saw a stranger in the hall.”
“Did they give any description?” I asked, but Annie said she didn’t know. This time it was my face that lit up. “Maybe the stranger in the hall was the person who shredded the photographs and they did that because they were in the pictures but didn’t want anyone to be able to identify them.”
I mentioned the picture Miles had shown me with the hole next to Robyn and said it was similar to one I’d seen in Robyn’s former office. “It seems the person cut out of the pictures was her boyfriend—or ex-boyfriend,” I said and then asked if she thought it was the same boyfriend who was actually in the other photos Miles had. She nodded, saying they’d been going together for a while.
“Do you know who he is?” When she nodded again, I wanted to kick myself for not thinking to ask her about him before.
I heard her suck in her breath. “You don’t think it was him?”
I took a deep breath and asked for his name.
“His name is Ty Holzer.”
Why did that name sound familiar?
CHAPTER 32
I CALLED DINAH AS SOON AS I LEFT THE PARK. IF I hurried, I figured Dinah and I could meet and do some sleuthing and I’d still be to the bookstore on time. “So what do we do? What do we ask him? Who is Ty Holzer anyway?” Dinah sounded excited and happy to be included in the adventure.
It hadn’t been until I was getting into my car that I put Robyn’s boyfriend’s name together with a face. Not a face really, more like a white jacket and a placard that read, “Ty Holzer, Pharm. D.”
“He’s the pharmacist at Crown Apothecary,” I said to Dinah. “Think about it. Crown Apothecary was the return address on the box of sweetener sent to Robyn. Who better to get drugs than a pharmacist? I’ll be at your place in a few.”
Dinah was waiting outside when I got there. Pulling her long yellow scarf behind her, she got in the passenger seat and shut the door of the greenmobile. “What if Ty got rid of all the photos because someone could identify him as the guy in the hall if they saw them?” she said, continuing our conversation.
“That’s what I thought, too. What’s that cliche about great minds thinking alike?” I said. “So, all we have to do is take a picture of him and show it around to everyone at the halfway house.” Dinah nodded in agreement. “That should be easy,” I said with an expectant smile. I should have known, nothing ever is.
We drove to the Crown Apothecary in Encino. We might have opened the door a little too enthusiastically and the bell rang with a frenzy. Workmen were painting a sign on the glass door that led to the soda fountain. I had hoped it would be busier so we could blend in with the crowd, but there were just a few customers in the store. Someone was waiting by the pharmacy and the others were browsing. The clerk I’d seen before stepped forward and asked if we needed help. I was relieved to see she didn’t seem to recognize us, and I quickly said we were just looking. “This place is so wonderful, I could look for hours,” I said, hoping she would go away and leave us alone.
How do you take a picture of someone without their knowing? Even if I used my BlackBerry, I still had to hold it up, and I wasn’t always so good at finding the button to push when I wanted to take a picture. I was more likely to hit it by mistake. It wasn’t an issue anyway, because the pharmacist was in the partitioned-off area and only visible when he passed the customer window.
When I saw him move from his work area into the consultation cubicle, I held up my phone, but I couldn’t get a shot of his face.
“What about if we take a picture of a picture of him?” Dinah suggested. Next to the shelves with jars of penny candy, there was a framed newspaper article about the store with a photo of Ty. The clerk gave us a hard look, and I was concerned if she looked long enough, she might recognize me from earlier. As a distraction, I grabbed one of the clear plastic bags they had for the penny candy and began to shovel Red Hots into it. When that was full, I took another and began to fill it. Dinah nudged me when the woman walked away.
“Don’t ditch the candy,” Dinah warned as I started to drop the bags near the jars.
“Right, it’ll look better if we buy something anyway.” Since I needed my hands free, I set the bags of candy in the top of my purse. Someone walked by us, and I stepped into the aisle and pretended to look at the array of natural-bristle hairbrushes.
Dinah poked me and pointed to the consultation cubicle. The door was open. “Maybe you can get a shot of him from in there.” We slipped up the aisle and went into the wood-lined enclosure. It was set up so the pharmacist could come in through a glass door that led to his work area in the pharmacy. I noticed that door was ajar and someone was moving in the work area. Assuming it was him, I stepped into the doorway and stuck my arm out with the BlackBerry, hoping I was hitting the right button.
“You can’t go in there,” a voice said in a clipped tone. The clerk had come into the consultation area. “Is there something I can help you find?”
“Sorry,” I said, backing away from the open door. “I was looking for the powder room.” I’d found that saying you’re looking for the restroom was a great catchall for snooping. She apologized and said the restrooms were still under construction. As soon as we got back into the main store, I checked the photo on my BlackBerry. It was just one of the clerks, and it looked like she was putting away stock in the pharmacy.
“This isn’t working. Maybe I’ll try coming back when they close and try to get a shot of him when he leaves,” I said.
“What are you going to do, hide behind his car?” Dinah said with a laugh.
“Well, at least I know which one is his,” I said, thinking back to the night I’d seen him leave Robyn’s. We started toward the front of the store, but before we’d taken more than a few steps, one of the clerks stepped in front of us. “You can’t leave without getting a sneak peak at the soda fountain,” she said in a forced friendly voice. She didn’t wait for an answer, but ushered us toward the entrance. The sign painter had finished and left the door propped open.
Inside, she pointed out the authentic small white octagonal tiles with an occasional green one thrown in. She demonstrated how the stools at the soda fountain really spun.
“Try them,” she said. She left us and went behind the soda fountain. “We’re still waiting for the ice cream, but we have phosphates. Let me get you each a complimentary one.” She grabbed two tall glasses.
She rambled on about how Crown Apothecary was more than just a drugstore. “We want our customers to feel at home here,” she said. I asked for a cherry phosphate and Dinah a lime one. The woman handed us the drinks and started talking about all the services the store offered.
Ty came in and greeted us and he started pitching their pharmacy. “We do compounding,” he said. “Great for kids. We can take the ick out of their medicine with their flavor of choice.
“Come, ladies, bring your drinks,” he said. He nodded to the clerk and she walked away. “Let me show you our consultation cubicle.” Seizing upon the opportunity, I told him the store was so fabulous I’d really like to get a photo of it, and did he mind?
He walked us into the cubicle and the door shut behind us with a click that sounded like a lock. He invited us to sit down in the wooden captain’s chairs and then asked us if we thought there was anything they’d missed in the design of the soda fountain. We both said it seemed they had everything covered and the drinks were great and we thought it’d be a big success. We set down our glasses as we both stood and started toward the door. I stopped and asked about taking the picture. He was agreeable, and I took several. I checked and they’d turned out. Mission accomplished.
This time, I walked to the door and pulled on the handle, saying both Dinah and I had to get to work. “The
