Deadly Sweet Dreams

by Connie Shelton

  “To pay off her blackmailer … to get rid of the loan shark who financed her gambling habit …”

  Sam drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Well, you might have something there. If her need was legit, she would have gone to her parents, right? Her mom seems to be doing pretty well now, and her dad … well, he’d pretty much do anything for her.”

  “Except that, on a cop’s salary, he most likely won’t have a pile of spare savings or anything.”

  “And kids of divorced parents usually have the knack of playing one against the other pretty much down pat, especially when it comes to wrangling extra money from both.”

  “So—she didn’t go to her parents, and we’re back to thinking maybe she had an addiction or something. Gambling, drugs … those are expensive habits to keep up.”

  Sam wandered to the window seat and plopped down, stroking Eliza’s fur as she contemplated the possibilities. The cat stretched and rolled over to present her belly, purring loudly. Sam rubbed the underside of the cat’s chin. “Tell me, Eliza, what’s the answer to our riddle here?”

  Eliza’s body gave a quick twist and she sat up, staring at Sam’s face with her knowing green eyes.

  “She’s telling you something, Mom. She does that to me all the time.” Kelly turned to face them. “Usually when her food bowl is empty.”

  “Come on, cat. Let’s see what you want,” Sam said, standing. “I need to head out anyway. I think I should pay a visit to Sheriff Evan. Good thing we made up.”

  The two women started to leave the attic room, but the cat leaped smoothly from the window seat to the table, where she placed a paw on the open page of the book.

  “Come on, you. I’m closing this door,” Kelly beckoned.

  Eliza stared and gave a quick mrroww, her paw on the page.

  “Now,” said Kelly.

  Finally, the cat jumped to the floor and followed them downstairs. In the kitchen, her food bowl was full.

  Chapter 41

  Evan agreed to see Sam immediately, walking out to the lobby where she was chatting with Dixie the dispatcher, and leading her back to the private office that used to be Beau’s.

  “Must be strange for you, seeing me on this side of the desk,” he said.

  Sam shrugged. She’d become so accustomed to having Beau at home, it would actually feel strange to see him behind the desk again. She told Evan so.

  “I’m guessing you’re here about the Lila Contreras case?” Getting right to the point.

  “I am. Delia Sanchez has asked me to look into a few things, mostly involving Danny’s family and friends, just gathering information for his defense.”

  “You probably shouldn’t be here talking to me about that. Wouldn’t Delia consider it a conflict of interest? You know that whatever I learn has to go to the prosecutor.”

  “Evan, I know. I just want to learn the truth. I feel sure Danny’s innocent, but the reality is that I just need to know what happened.”

  “Fair enough. So … go ahead.”

  She told him she knew Lila had been trying to extort money from three men, including actually stealing more than ten thousand from Danny’s bank account. “So, my natural question is why—what did she want that money for? And since she was so sneaky about asking for it, was it needed for some illegal purpose—drugs, gambling, blackmail?”

  He listened, leaning back in his chair with his hands resting in his lap. When she was finished, he reached for a thick file folder on the credenza behind him.

  “I can pretty much tell you this from memory, but let’s check to be sure.” He paged through the sheets, which were bound at the top of the folder with a long metal brad. “Here’s the autopsy report. It automatically includes a toxicology report where they’ve screened for the most common types of drugs. And, no. Lila had no drugs in her system.”

  “Maybe she was dealing, got into a bad spot where she owed someone?”

  “It’s possible, and that wouldn’t show up in an autopsy.” He was trying for levity but the joke fell flat.

  “Obviously. But it’s something worth investigating. She wanted all that money for something, and the person she was going to pay it to might have become very angry at the delay. Have you checked it out?”

  “Sam, slow down a minute. We just received the two cell phones, which you obviously must know about. Delia Sanchez brought them to me yesterday afternoon and we’ve barely had time to go through them. Once we establish this money trail—the demands or whatever they were—we’ll have some more knowledgeable questions to ask. If it looks like the money is a viable lead, we’ll have what we need to get subpoenas for Ms. Contreras’s financial records, credit card charges, and all that. Most likely the prosecutor will want those anyway, to track her travel here to Taos, establishing when and how she arrived, to build his case.”

  Sam tried not to convey her edginess. She already knew about the phones and the money demands, but she couldn’t very well blurt it all out. Evan was right—his department needed to follow things systematically and put it all together. And that would happen in its own time.

  Meanwhile, all she could do was to thank him for his time and take her impatience home with her.

  She arrived at the ranch to find Beau on his phone, walking back and forth in front of the barn. He put the phone away and waved her over.

  “Want to be a real cowgirl for a few hours?” he asked with a grin.

  “Ooh, a real cowgirl … What does that involve?”

  “That was the driver of the hauler out of Arizona. The guy who’s leasing our east pasture for grazing has shipped me the first twenty head. Getting them unloaded and settled where I want them isn’t impossible for one man, but it’s a lot easier with two.”

  “Sure—I’m in.”

  “Get your jeans and boots on. He’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”

  By the time she’d changed clothes and joined him, he had both horses saddled and ready to go. Sam hadn’t ridden in months, not even a casual evening jaunt around the property the way she and Beau used to do. Her thighs would be screaming about this tomorrow, she thought as she mounted the horse.

  They trotted along a worn pathway that led to the east fence. Here, the truck could pull along the county road and the driver could back up to a gate they rarely used for any other purpose. Beau dismounted and unlocked the padlock and chain, pushing the gate fully open.

  “You miss having Danny around for this stuff, don’t you?” She watched as he tied the gate open.

  “Yeah, sure. We work real well together.” He walked over and stroked the nose of her horse. “What have you heard about his case?”

  Sam told him about the cell phones and Lila’s demands for money.

  “My opinion? The money’s at the heart of it. Just think—what are the usual motives for murder? Love, territory, money—which usually breed jealousy, greed, acquisition. Sure, there are the heat-of-the-moment flares of rage. But premeditated or not, most crimes like this begin with someone’s being jealous over a love interest, or greedy for territory or money or something else they want to acquire.”

  Sam let that sink in.

  “From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t seem like this Lila girl was deeply in love—she was using these guys. And what was she using them for—money.”

  “I think it was also about control. Remember how she was manipulating Danny’s emotional state, how she twisted things he said. And there’s the fact that she showed up here because she wasn’t able to control him from a distance the way she could when she saw him every day.”

  He nodded, one ear cocked toward the road where a plume of dust indicated that the truck was nearing.

  “Okay, so control still relates to one of those things. In this case, I suspect she saw Danny as her territory. She couldn’t bear to have him out of her sight because he was hers. It sounds like manipulating men was practically a sport with her.”

  “And because she wanted their money.” Sam smiled at him from her pe
rch on the saddle. “You are quite the psychologist, my love.”

  “Just an ex-sheriff who saw it all.” He patted the horse’s neck and turned to wave down the approaching truck.

  It took a few minutes for the driver to maneuver the trailer into position, near the open gate. Before they lowered the back ramp, Beau called Sam over.

  “Just sit here at the opening, making sure none of them try to sneak outside the fence. Most likely they’ll stay together and go where I herd them. They’re nervous and skittish after being in the trailer for hours, so we just need to keep an eye on them.”

  She nodded and reined her horse into place. Down came the ramp, and the driver gave a few shouts to get the cattle moving. Once they discovered the freedom of the pasture, they willingly left the confines of the dirty trailer. Within ten minutes, the job was largely done. The driver closed his trailer and drove away, and Beau closed and locked the gate.

  “They’ll stick together for the first couple of days,” Beau said with a nod toward the huddled cattle, “until they get used to the place and the rest of our herd. We’ll drive them toward the water tank and they’ll figure out the rest.”

  Sam followed his lead. It didn’t take much to convince the thirsty cows to gather around the small pond on the property.

  “I’m going to watch them a few more minutes,” Beau said. “You don’t have to hang around if you don’t want to.”

  But Sam was enjoying the soft breeze and the last of the warm afternoon sun. She remained astride the horse, sitting beside Beau and watching as the cattle settled down and began eating the grass near the water source. Once a few of them lay down to rest, Beau seemed content that they would be all right.

  They rode slowly back to the barn and unsaddled the horses. Sam went inside to clean up, after Beau said he would stay and brush them and tend to a few other things.

  The hot shower felt wonderful and she swallowed a couple of ibuprofen to ward off the upcoming muscle aches. Dressed and downstairs once more, she saw a call from Kelly on her phone screen.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she said when Kelly picked up.

  “Doing some research online. I think I might have discovered what Lila wanted all that money for.”

  Chapter 42

  “Tell me more,” Sam said.

  “Something about our San Antonio trip was bugging me and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I walked into Puppy Chic this afternoon and Riki had on an old rerun of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. She watches TV sometimes while she’s brushing dogs. The background noise helps keep the dogs from going berserk every time the door chime rings.”

  “Kel. What?”

  “Oh, okay, so I’m glancing at these ultra-glam girls with all the hair and makeup—and the clothes, oh my gosh. I’m seeing them and I’m thinking about Lila. And it hits me who her role models are, who she wanted to be.”

  “By dating a rancher from Texas?”

  “Wait, I’m getting to that. Mom, I had my hands on the clothes in her closet. Remember, she didn’t own a lot of things, but what she had was quality. That girl liked shopping at the high-end department stores, Neiman-Marcus and such. The shoes, the bags … she had a small fortune in clothing in that small closet.”

  The light was beginning to gleam, but Kelly’s idea didn’t completely make sense. “I don’t know, Kel. Maybe she admired those famous girls and their glamour, but she worked at The Gap and dated ordinary middle-class guys. Her own family … the dad’s a cop, mom’s a housewife.”

  “A housewife who upgraded to a richer lifestyle when she got the chance.” Kelly paused a second. “But I’m getting off topic. I went and did a little research. You remember the girls we met that night at Thrashed? Emily, Taylor, Devon. Well, I had their contact info so I looked them up and followed them on Instagram. What a revealing world that was. Through the friends, I also started to follow Lila, who had a pretty big following, and it’s all the same subject—clothes, makeup, designer labels. Most of Lila’s followers seem younger, the teen girls who idol-worship celebrities.”

  “Interesting.” Sam still wasn’t quite sure where this was going and why Lila would choose the men she chose.

  “To truly live the life of her dreams, Lila needed to move to a bigger city, meet classier—richer—guys. But she wasn’t ready for that yet. She had a plan.”

  “To acquire the clothes and shoes she would need, to fit in once she got to …”

  “She told her followers she had her eye on Dallas or Houston. She’d researched how many millionaires and billionaires live in each of those cities. Seriously. On her Instagram page she gave statistics.”

  “So, you’re thinking …”

  “I think Danny, and possibly this Richard guy, were practice.”

  “Her training ground for the big leagues.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what about S, the guy with the other phone? Maybe another man similar to Danny and Richard, but maybe he was up a few notches. Maybe he lives in one of those big cities, and she was trying to snag him?”

  “It’s possible. I think it’s entirely possible.”

  “Wow. Great research, Kel.” Sam hung up, a dozen ideas floating through her head as she went into the kitchen.

  In so many ways, what Kelly said made sense. Lila was a manipulator—they knew this. Everything from getting her father to fix her traffic tickets and hide at least one DUI charge under the rug, to the way she had treated Danny.

  Sam pulled a container of green chile stew from the freezer, wondering if Lila actually would have gone through with a wedding to the young ranch hand, supposing he’d been agreeable. She thought not, not if Lila’s real goal was a much bigger fish. Most likely, the girl just wanted him to agree so she could get money from him—much the same way she’d coerced both money and the promise of a future together from Richard Potter, simply by telling him she was having his baby. She must have known Richard was going to deploy overseas soon, so he wouldn’t be there to find out she wasn’t actually pregnant. It was almost the perfect test of her powers to get her way.

  Or, Sam realized, maybe the demands weren’t about the money at all. Maybe it was all about establishing her control over the men—if she could get them to relinquish money and make life-changing commitments, she held a lot more control than any of them realized. It would also explain why she was working the scam with more than one man. She needed a variety of scenarios to perfect her techniques before she tried them on a much more sophisticated class of victims.

  Sam’s supposition didn’t quite explain why Lila had blatantly stolen the money from Danny’s account—after all, for her control measures to prove themselves, he should hand over the money himself—but it gave Sam a lot to think about while the chile heated and she made a salad to go along with it.

  Beau walked in, smelling of hay and earth and horses. While he showered, Sam placed a call to Sheriff Richards’ office and was put straight through.

  “I’ve had some more thoughts on Lila Contreras and her financial situation,” she said. “Just wondering if you’ve learned anything new from her credit card and banking records?”

  Evan sounded somewhat impatient. “Sam, I’ve got the warrant but the records themselves haven’t come through yet. Things take time in the real world.”

  “When you get them, I’d like to suggest you look for charges at high-end clothing stores. The lady had very expensive tastes. My guess is that she was spending a lot more than she could have been earning.”

  “Fine. I’ll check. Thanks, Sam, but I’ve got a call right now.”

  She thanked him but the line was dead practically before she had the words out. Okay. Way different than when Beau sat in that office, but she could chip away at Evan Richards until she got what she needed.

  Chapter 43

  When Sam happened to stop by the department the following day, Evan was out. She found Rico in the squad room with an array of papers on the desk in front of him. Rico was a buddy, a youn
g deputy when Beau took over as sheriff, one whose law enforcement skills had increased over time. She wouldn’t be surprised to see him as a viable candidate for sheriff, himself, one day.

  He stood, stretched, and greeted her warmly. “Hey, Sam, what’s up?”

  She covered only the very basics. “I talked yesterday with Evan about some warrants for Lila Contreras’s banking records. Just wondering if they came in.” Her eyes trailed to the cluttered desk.

  “Working on them right now,” he said.

  “Want some help?”

  He shook his head regretfully. “Sam, you’re not a deputy any more. I can’t let you touch anything.”

  “If I promise not to touch, can you tell me what’s in them?”

  “Probably not, legally.”

  “Can we play Twenty Questions?”

  “I kind of think we’re already doing that …”

  “So … did Lila charge things at expensive stores?”

  “Sam, I have no clue which stores are expensive and which ones aren’t. I haven’t seen any charges at Walmart, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How about Neiman-Marcus, Chanel, Coach, Manolo Blahnik …”

  He held up a hand. “Sheesh, I don’t know.” He turned to the papers on the desk, rearranging a few so they sat near the edge, picking up some others. “Look, I need to make a quick restroom visit. I’ll be right back and we can continue this.”

  He had picked up the bank statements but left the credit card bills. Taking him literally at his word about not touching, she kept her hands to herself. Her eyes, however, stayed busy. The front page of one Visa statement showed that Lila’s balance was within mere pennies of her credit limit—good to know. The credit limit itself must have been backed by her parents, or else Lila had lied ferociously when applying for the cards. There was no way a retail shop employee could afford this.

  The itemized portion of the statement showed two of the stores Sam had speculated about, along with a couple of cosmetic and perfume charges and some hair salon bills that nearly took her breath away. No wonder this girl was grabbing for money. She’d had no concept of spending within her limits.