2 Multiple Exposures (4 page)

Chapter Four

I, who loves all things camera, can spot my beloved with my eyes closed. Well, not really, but you get the picture. At various times in my life, I have obsessed over quality equipment that at the time I couldn’t afford. I had never needed nor desired spy equipment, but I had subscribed to various magazines that presented the latest in technology in this field. So, of course, I have seen cameras as small as a shirt button or a lapel pin. I have seen more than one camera pen.

While one part of my mind processed the fact that Dr. Bloomberg may have been using a camera pen, my conscious mind was panicking. Here it went again, another body, another murder. Was I cursed? Did I draw this drama to my life? I don’t mind telling you I am not the kind of woman that craves diversion. I am sufficiently happy with my photography business, Universe. Thank you for the offer! Let us cancel any agreements you think we have.

I backed up from the body and kept backpedaling with no thought in my mind of anything other than putting space between the two of us. I know I was panicking, but I was helpless to stop it. What did curb my escape was bumping into the opposite wall. With my hands behind me, pinned between my bum and the barrier, I froze, eyes wide, mouth agape. I didn’t want to see him or ponder how he passed, what he had been doing just before he died, or anything else. I couldn’t think at all outside of what my eyes wouldn’t allow me to stop seeing.

“Dr. Bloomberg?” someone called down the hall, and the spell was broken. I blinked and dropped my chin into my chest. Straightening and raising my head, I started to calm down as footsteps approached. One of the other assistants appeared, and she frowned at me. “Makayla? Are you okay? What’s the long delay back here? I felt like I was the only one left in the office. Why aren’t you in your room waiting for the doctor?”

She chattered on while I tried to find my voice. At last, I just pointed, and she turned her head to follow the direction. A scream erupted from her, and she covered her mouth. Much like me, she stumbled away from the body. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she shook her head in disbelief. My logic began to return. Maybe I was getting better in these emergencies.

“We have to call the sheriff,” I said. I started to move past her, but she grabbed onto my arm and clung to me as if I were a lifeline. I tried to continue moving, but she was frozen in terror. “The police,” I encouraged her.

Unbelievably, she dumped a cell phone in my hand and mumbled, “Where’s Lissa? Is she okay? Lissa?” she called out, her voice trembling.

We both scanned the hall as if we would discover more heels peeking around a corner. I dreaded finding out. If Lissa was not okay, I refused to be the one to stumble upon her body.

My fingers found the keys to 911 with little input from my brain. A dispatcher came on the line. I reported the death and where we were. Somehow I got the assistant shuffling along the hall. My arm ached where she gripped me. Where was the anesthesia when I needed it? Right after this thought, shame rolled over me. This was a serious situation.

We reached the first hall where I believed my room lay. My suspicion was confirmed when I heard my ring tone behind one of the doors. This particular jingle was the one I had assigned to Spencer. No doubt the dispatcher had already informed him of our problem, and he was calling to see if I was okay.

“Sweetheart, you’re going to have to let me go,” I said, tugging at my arm. “I have to get back to my things, and the police will be here any minute.”

Unfortunately, my words did not penetrate her grief—or was it fear? The doctor’s heels were still visible because we hadn’t turned the corner to get to my room. My ringing phone silenced but started up again right away.

Banging at the end of the hall made us both yelp in alarm, but then Spencer’s voice echoed along the passage. I sighed in relief. Steps tapped the floor somewhere, and I knew right away someone had vaulted through the window in reception to get to the back. A door opened, and then Spencer was coming toward me, tall, muscular, and with silver eyes that melted a woman’s resistance with one look. I didn’t like to put a label on my feelings for Spencer other than simple feminine attraction.

Anger and concern colored his expression. His hand rested on his gun. “You’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said and cut my gaze to the clinging assistant.

Spencer gestured and gave a command. Another officer appeared and pealed my clinger off. The sheriff replaced her with a hand at my elbow and swung me to the opposite direction I had been heading. “Show me where and explain to me why you’re naked.”

I felt my face explode in crimson, and I tried pulling away from Spencer. “Everything happened so fast,” I mumbled. “Let me get to my clothes and—”

“I’ve seen you in less, Makayla. While my officer is questioning that woman, you can show me the body and tell me what happened.”

I realized he wouldn’t hear any other options and snatched the gown tighter around me. I was not feeling very attractive at that moment, but I had no choice. “Down there.” I pointed. “I was waiting for the doctor to come in to see me, but he never came. When I decided to sneak out of my room to see what the delay was, that’s when I found him.”

Spencer’s eyebrow rose. I know what he was thinking. I had a penchant for being nosy, but this wasn’t my fault. “I texted you that I had an appointment. Whatever happened here I had nothing to do with, and no, before you ask, I have never met the doctor face-to-face—even in the grocery store.”

We came to where Dr. Bloomberg lay face down, and unlike the assistant and me, Spencer didn’t react at all to the body. He stooped and checked for a pulse. Next, he went over various points on Dr. Bloomberg’s form.

“Makayla, any particular reason you said ‘whatever happened here…?’” Spencer straightened and faced me. His expression remained impassive, but I could tell he was already in detective mode. I was no longer his lover, or not only his lover. I was now a possible witness to a homicide, but in what might be a built-in mechanism for self-preservation, I was anything but a mild witness.

“Why are you questioning me?” I tried to raise myself to my full height, which wasn’t so bad as I was five foot eight, a good upper average height for a woman. The problem lay in Spencer’s. He was still several inches above me and posed quite an intimidating figure, especially when he was on a case.

“Makayla.” His voice held a note of warning, and my bravado deflated.

I looked away from him, clutching my hands together. “He might have been murdered.”

“Hm, that’s interesting,” he said, and his eyes seemed to barrel into my head to read my thoughts. Why did he bother questioning me if he knew? “Now why would you think he was murdered, when there is no physical evidence?”

That one was easy. “Because of the other two murders.”

Spencer started to open his mouth, and then he clamped it shut. Aggravation that had been present a moment ago disappeared to be replace by sympathy. I gritted my teeth. The last thing I wanted to see. Well, I mean other than an accusing stare.

He allowed himself and me one small touch to my cheek, and then Spencer was back to business. If nothing else, the man knew how to separate work and pleasure better than most. “Is that the only reason?”

I sighed. There was no covering up of the facts. Spencer would learn them eventually. If not from me, then he would somehow produce the writer of the letter. Then he would find out I knew about it, and then things would get complicated. Better for me to come clean now when I was still mostly innocent.

“I got a letter a few days ago,” I said, and Spencer glared at me. He held up a hand to silence me and spoke into his radio. The order for the coroner went in, as well as his forensics person to come to the scene. Spencer barked a few more orders to his men and then escorted me away from the body. I breathed easier the farther we moved, but then I stopped. “Wait, Spencer. I forgot.”

His expression said he doubted me. I held up my hands. My gown ruffled as if it would open, and I grabbed it. Spencer blocked the view from the police fast-filling the hall. “I think you getting dressed is a priority.”

“I will. Trust me, I don’t want to be any more humiliated than I already am.” My cheeks burned, but I forged on. “I think it’s important to know just in case your people miss is. There’s a pen next to the body.”

“I saw it,” he said. “So what? The doctor has to take notes and write prescriptions.”

I peeked around him to see if anyone was nearby. An officer was within earshot, so I pulled Spencer farther away and lowered my voice. “Spencer, that pen is not just a regular pen. It’s a camera pen.”

His eyebrows crashed low over his eyes, and his jaw hardened.

“I’m sure you understand my meaning when I say the gynecologist had a pen that probably ninety-nine percent of his patients didn’t know takes photos and possibly video.”

An expletive dropped from his lips, and his silver eyes darkened. “Tell me about the letter.”

I did in a few words, and he commanded me in a gruff tone to stay where I was. I watched as he stalked down the hall and pulled a plastic bag from his jacket. Did all police carry those bags around with them just in case they came across something that needed to be preserved as evidence? For some reason it put me in mind of the grocery bags dog owners carried when they walked their dogs, and you know the whys of that process.

Spencer produced a rubber glove as well, impressing me further, and picked up the pen. Briefly, I wondered why he didn’t leave it for his forensics guys, but then I could guess. The scandal that would hit soon would be bad enough, but the fewer eyes on whatever might still be on the pen’s memory, the better.

When Spencer was ready, we returned to the exam room where I had been waiting for the doctor. I slipped into my clothes while he spoke to someone in the hall. Just as I had closed the last button on my blouse, Spencer swung into the room.

“Jeez, you could have knocked.”

He ignored me. “Where’s the letter?”

I picked up my purse and opened it. The letter wasn’t where I was pretty sure I had stuffed it. I checked between every slip of paper and even inside my wallet just in case I had had the silly notion of folding it into there. Nothing. “It’s gone.”

“What?” Anger stirred in his eyes. “Are you sure, Makayla? That letter could be a clue to who might have murdered the doctor.”

“So you’re calling it a murder?”

“Not officially until I get the ME’s report.” He reached for my purse, but I snatched it away. “I know how to search my purse. Trust me. It’s not here.”

“It shouldn’t have been,” he shot back. “If you had told me immediately about it.”

“Would you have taken it seriously?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“The writer seemed to think maybe I would need to convince you.”

His glare radiated, but I would not be intimidated. Rather I put my hands on my hips and waited. Spencer had been at his job in his Virginia hometown for a long time, according to him, and the likes of my smart-mouthed self did not faze him one bit, to my personal annoyance. He walked into the hall, and I scooted after him. Before either of us made it far, another officer was headed toward the back and met us halfway down the passage.

“The body’s that way, Pete.” Spencer stuck his thumb over his shoulder. “Make sure you get shots of it and the back entrance. I want a catalogue of everything in that closet. I need to find a long time resident of town and an employee of this clinic, preferably one and the same.”

“Heck, sheriff, I was born and raised here,” Pete offered. “Darn near everybody at the station too. The woman that was here earlier, though, I hear she’s in no state to answer questions.”

“I don’t want to question
you
,” Spencer growled. “Or the guys. You have jobs to do!”

Pete blushed. “Of course, sir. You’re right.”

“The forensics photographer who eloped,” I blurted when I at last realized who Pete was. I had never met him. He and Spencer both looked around at me, but I ignored Spencer and stuck my hand out to Pete. “Hello, I’m Makayla Rose. I took over for you while you were gone.”

His big brown eyes widened, reminding me of a boy half his age, and I saw some of what Reeza must have seen in him to say yes to his proposal. Pete grinned, showing off a great set of pearly whites too. Yup, that’s how he got her, and if he added a sweet personality with it, Reeza, Barbie doll though I remember her being, would have fallen hard.

“Peter Fortner. Nice to meet you, Makayla. I had heard of you, but I never got to meet you before I left town for a little while.”

I snorted. “You make it sound like you had to run an errand or visit a sick friend. You eloped.”

His already pink cheeks burned all the more, and he set his bag down and scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, Reeza and I—that’s my girlfriend, I mean my wife. We just wanted to do things our way.”

“I understand completely, and I hope things are going well between you newlyweds. The mothers aren’t giving you too much stress about defying them, are they?”

“Oh no, not after Mama gave me an hour’s lecture about depriving her and all that.”

I tutted with sympathy. “Well, I for one think it was brave of the two of you to defy what friends and family wanted and to march to your own beat. I wish you all the happiness in the world. And I can’t help adding that I’m glad you’ve come back. I much prefer taking pictures of sweet little ones and their families in a more positive atmosphere.”