I opened the door to the offices of Martin Meyers, D.D.S. The place was deserted, except for a busty blonde receptionist angrily tossing the contents of her desk into a packing carton. Her white nurse’s uniform was near to bursting at the seams, and her bleached hair was tortured into a towering Barbarella do.

I approached her with caution. She looked highly combustible.

“Um. Excuse me. I was wondering if I could see Dr. Meyers on a personal matter.”

She looked me up and down.

“Sorry, hon. You’re not his type. Drop fifteen pounds, get a boob job, and dye your hair blonde, and you might stand a chance.”

I sneaked a peek at her monumental bosoms and wondered if she’d taken her own advice in the breast-enhancement department.

“It’s not that kind of personal matter,” I said. “Anyhow, I need to talk to him. Is he here?”

“No,” she said, yanking her phone from its jack and tossing it into her carton. “The lying cheating turd isn’t here.”

Nothing like a happy employee to make a favorable impression on the public.

“Do you know when he’s coming back?”

“Don’t know, and don’t care.”

I watched, amazed, as she began dismantling her computer and stowing the components in her carton. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in some circles, that might be called stealing.

“I gave that bum the best years of my life,” she said, hurling her keyboard in the big cardboard box. “And what did I get for it?” She looked up at me, her mascara-rimmed eyes blazing with rage. “Zippo, that’s what I got!”

She grabbed a Bose radio and threw it on top of the keyboard.

“He promised he’d leave his wife and marry me. And all along he was cheating on me. First with that decorator bitch. And I just found out he was screwing around with that kid in Laguna, too.”

She reached for a Waterford vase filled with orchids, emptied the water onto a nearby computer, and added the vase to her pile of stolen booty.

Laguna? My mind started racing. Hadn’t Rochelle said something about Marty being down in Laguna the day of the murder?

“What kid in Laguna?” I asked.

“Some bimbo at an art gallery.”

Wait a minute. Rochelle said Marty had been buying paintings at an art gallery the day of the murder, that the saleswoman had vouched for him. But if Marty had been having an affair with the saleswoman, she could’ve been lying to protect him.

What if Marty wasn’t in Laguna that day? What if he was back at his house, doctoring a batch of guacamole to get rid of an inconvenient lover?

“Do you happen to know the name of that gallery?” I asked.