Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  “What do you say, we eat some great chocolate!”

  Crowd roar.

  “What do we do in the kitchen?” Apparently some kind of Killer Chef buzzword.

  “Chop! Chop!” the crowd roared.

  “Yeah, chop-chop!” Day picked up a large knife from the table and swished it through the air twice.

  Sam flinched. How did he get that thing back—? Then she realized he surely owned more than one of them.

  “Where’s my cake?!” he shouted.

  Someone set a paper plate with a small chocolate cake in front of him. He whacked it with the knife and crumbs flew. The crowd went wild.

  “Chop-chop!” they shouted.

  He chopped a few more times until there was nothing left of the poor cake. Sam caught Rupert’s eye. This was in incredibly poor taste, considering the morning’s tragedy. She tilted her head toward the door and he edged out into the hall with her.

  “Thank goodness almost no one here knows that a woman was stabbed this morning,” she whispered. “This little show takes on almost obscene proportions in light of that.”

  Rupert, for once in his life, seemed a little at a loss. “It’s the standard introduction he uses at the beginning of every show. He’ll settle down in a minute.”

  “He’d better. Maybe this is a good time for you to step in and take over as MC?”

  He nodded, crossed the corridor and pushed back into the crowded ballroom. Sam watched as Rupert nearly leapt up the steps to the dais and picked up the microphone.

  “Thank you, Bentley Day! How about this guy, folks? Is he as crazy as on TV, huh?”

  Okay, Rupe, tune all of it down a notch, Sam thought. She walked to the other set of doors, the less crowded end near the kitchen, and stepped into the ballroom. Deputy Garcia stood there, watching the celebrity’s antics with a grim expression. Uh-oh.

  “Looks like there was more than one knife,” she said when he noticed her.

  “That does add another wrinkle to it.” His eyes were scanning the booths, watching each of the vendors, most of whom were riveted to the scene at the head of the room.

  Rupert had edged his co-star away from center stage as he proceeded to give the rules for the contest.

  “As you know, the Swiss chocolate maker Qualitätsschokolade has offered cash prizes for the best desserts made with their products, and we have three esteemed judges here to do the tasting and make the call. All of our contestants have booths here today, so you can taste the scrumptious entries yourselves. Be sure to use the form on the back of your ticket to nominate your favorite for the People’s Choice Award. There is a separate prize for this one, and you will make someone’s day if his or her name is chosen.

  “All contestants will submit a sample of their best recipe today. The top ten will go into a semi-final round. Tomorrow, those entries will be narrowed to five, and on Sunday the top three will be awarded prizes. Third place wins two thousand dollars cash!”

  Applause throughout the room.

  “Second place will receive three thousand dollars.”

  Another wave of appreciation.

  “And the first place entry gets five thousand dollars—”

  This time the cheers caused him to pause.

  “—plus the winning baker will get an appearance on Killer Chef!”

  The room rocked with cheers and shouts. Sam wondered if Rupert had made that up on the spot, hoping to sell the producers on the idea, or if Bentley Day had made the offer before coming up on stage. Whatever the situation, she had to admit that stretching out the judging over several days and the award of the high-profile prize would definitely be good for the charity for which all this fundraising was happening.

  “Contestants ready?” Rupert threw every bit of his enthusiasm into the call. “Get set . . . Here come the judging assistants to pick up your entries!”

  To keep the judging impartial, each baker would place three small servings of his or her entry on a plain white paper plate, along with a number which did not correspond to the booth from which it came. The plate was covered with a napkin until it reached the judging table, theoretically preventing anyone in the crowd from knowing and whispering ideas to the judges. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to circumvent the system, but at least the efforts attempted to give equal footing to all.

  Sam circled to her booth, relieving Kelly who was one of the entry-delivery helpers. While the visitors were enthralled with watching judge reactions to the first few desserts, Sam found herself watching the vendors. Garcia was quietly making his way around the room, speaking in low tones and taking names and contact information from them. At Danielle Ferguson’s booth, he asked her to step outside. Luckily, she had an assistant to take over sales of her elegant tortes.

  Sam wondered what was going on. By now, surely they had removed Carinda’s body. The hotel would certainly want the crime scene tape gone as soon as possible; this could not be good for business. Auguste Handler’s job had just become harder, dealing with the PR nightmare associated with having a murder on the property.

  “You’re distracted, Sam.” Becky was staring at her. “Go. Do whatever it is you’re wanting to. There’s a lull right now—I can handle the booth.”

  What she really wanted to do was talk to Beau. After Becky assured her once again that she would be fine alone, Sam walked out of the ballroom. She stepped out the back door to the garden, didn’t see him among the men who were still gathering evidence, so she went toward the lobby.

  Through the large windows across the front of the hotel she saw a different sort of crowd. The medical investigator’s vehicle disappeared around a bend in the long driveway, and now Beau had a half-dozen microphones shoved toward him. Looked as if the press invited to cover the chocolate festival had now latched onto the crime instead.

  Chapter 11

  Sam’s white baker’s jacket drew looks from a few of the reporters but they quickly realized she was nobody they might be interested in.

  “Sheriff, is it true that Bentley Day is your main suspect?”

  Beau seemed a little startled. “Where did you hear that?”

  The questioner held up her cell phone, on which the Twitter logo was easily recognizable. “It’s all over the place.”

  Sam had sidled toward the group; now she saw messages on several phones. Bentley Day being quizzed by cops showed on one. Is Killer Chef really a killer? blazed across another, with responding messages coming through fast and furiously.

  Where had this started? Sam felt her temper rise. Carinda might have been a pain in the ass and Bentley Day grandstanding and full of himself, but it didn’t necessarily follow that he killed her. Aside from wishing he could swat her like an annoying mosquito, what motive would he have?

  Beau answered nearly every question with something along the lines of “It’s too early in the investigation to make any assumptions” and “We’re in the process of gathering evidence and asking a lot of questions.”

  When the reporters began simply rephrasing the same tired queries, he politely said that he needed to get back to work. He turned away while they were still calling his name. Sam edged away from the cluster of microphones and followed him through the hotel’s tall entry doors.

  Less than halfway across the lobby she realized some of the reporters were following. She spun around and faced them.

  “The festival, Sweet Somethings, is an event to raise money for charity. Unless you are here to cover that angle, you’ll need to leave. Please respect our goal and please let the sheriff get on with his business.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Suddenly, all of them wanted to cover the charitable aspects of the event. Sam could see a two-edged sword here—the additional publicity could very well be a detriment to Beau’s investigation. On the other hand, publicity for the event and the charity could probably be a good thing. She promised a news release later in the day and the chance for their crews to film the prize awards on Sunday afternoon.

 
“Sorry, that’s the best I can do,” she responded when someone asked if Bentley Day would be available for interviews.

  She headed for the ballroom, entirely sure that the reporters would lurk until, one by one, they could catch the celebrity chef and wangle interviews on their own. It was too much to hope that they would respect the department’s methodical investigation rather than push for a high-profile arrest that would make national news.

  She said as much to Beau a few minutes later when she caught up with him and the two had strolled past the crime scene tape in the garden, the one quiet spot on the whole property.

  “We think Myrna Ulibarri started the rumor,” he told her.

  “The police chief’s sister? She’s one of our judges!” Sam remembered passing the judging stand earlier, seeing Myrna typing something on her phone. She felt her teeth grind. “I can’t believe it! Of anyone in the world, families of law enforcement usually realize the harm in letting information out too early.”

  “I know. I know, darlin’. I’ve talked to her, just now. She claims she only meant to send the chief a note to let him know about the murder.”

  “Yeah, right. He’s got all kinds of official ways to learn what he needs to know. She planted that story so her name could be associated with Bentley Day’s.”

  “Most likely. Unfortunately, it’s a bell we can’t un-ring.”

  Oh, man, the harm that could be caused by these things. Sam stared at the trampled lawn near the rose bushes, hoping Beau’s men had collected all the useful information they could get.

  “Sam, I want you to be my eyes and ears inside the festival,” Beau said. “If I send uniformed deputies in there, everyone who knows anything will clam up. Garcia’s doing his best to ask the right questions of the right people, but they’re only going to tell him so much.”

  “And they’ll tell the sheriff’s wife more?” It didn’t seem likely.

  “You are head of the committee and you know them all pretty well. Just try to sort through the gossip and speculation, see if you can get any actual facts that we might miss in our own questioning. That’s all.”

  Sam had her doubts. Surely, there were other things on everyone’s mind.

  “Well, I better get going,” Beau said. “I need to push the forensic lab to get prints from that knife, and then I better talk with the medical investigator. If the local man can’t positively state the cause of death, I’ll have to push Albuquerque to rush the autopsy. They won’t be happy about it, on a weekend, but half our suspects are leaving town Sunday evening and I can’t let this case get cold that fast.” He headed for his SUV and Sam went back into the hotel, wishing she could find a moment of calm before walking into the chaotic ballroom.

  Most of the action was still taking place around the judging stand. With a lull in the delivery of new entries, Bentley Day had stepped down to floor level and was posing for pictures with fans. She crossed to the second aisle, heading for her own booth. Snippets of conversation caught her attention.

  “I’m not at all surprised,” the chocolate chip cookie lady was saying to the one whose wares featured fragile chocolate shavings on cupcakes topped with mounds of thick frosting. “She came along yesterday afternoon at five o’clock, telling me that I had to get all my signs reprinted. I basically told her where she could shove that idea.”

  Farther down the line, Nancy Nash was staring out into space. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she appeared to be doing her best to avoid crying in public. When Sam looked toward her, she turned away and got busy arranging a stack of paper napkins.

  Sam edged past the end of her own table, into the work area of her booth. Before she could ask Becky how things were going, Nancy leaned across the narrow space between them.

  “I wish it had been Bentley Day,” she whispered. “The man is such a jerk, and that woman who was killed—she was no better.”

  Okay, here was a good chance to get some gossip.

  “Why?” Sam asked, mimicking the confidential whisper. “What did they do?”

  Nancy sniffed and blinked hard. “My entry. My family’s favorite recipe? He . . . he . . . laughed when he tasted it. He said it was the worst—oh, I can’t even think about it. The man’s a complete loser.”

  Sam felt for the woman. Clearly, her family either really did love the bottled syrup she used or they’d been too kind in letting her think they did. She shouldn’t have been in a competition with serious chefs, true, but it wasn’t a reason to publicly belittle her.

  “This morning it was Carinda, watching me make my chocolate sauce, rolling her eyes and giving me this . . . this look. I could have—ugh!” She started to make a strangling motion but caught herself and let her hands drop to her sides. “Not that I would actually—”

  “I know,” Sam said, still whispering. “But, you know, maybe someone wasn’t as gentle a person as you are . . . Did you hear anybody else say anything against her?”

  “Yeah, like, everyone. I tell you, nobody liked the woman. But I can’t really imagine anyone taking it that far.”

  Neither could Sam. She would just have to keep asking questions.

  She glanced again at the dais where Bentley was still wowing the crowd with his jokes. At least the public didn’t seem to be aware that a death had happened here this morning, that, or they didn’t care. A quick look at the stock left in her display cases showed that over half their items had sold—and it was early afternoon of the first day.

  “I better call Julio and have him ramp up the baking at the shop,” she told Becky. “We’ll never make it through three days with what’s left here.”

  She stepped out to the corridor, looking for a quiet corner of the lobby to make her call. Jen assured her everything was fine at the shop, a little quiet for a Friday afternoon, but that was probably because half the town was at the festival. Sam spoke with Julio next and gave him a list of things to bake.

  “I’ll stop by this evening or first thing in the morning and pick them up. The show opens here at ten again tomorrow.”

  She hung up and suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion. Two more days of this. Where would she get the energy? Across the lobby she saw people coming out of the restaurant. Sam realized she’d completely forgotten to eat any lunch. She called Becky in the booth and offered to bring her a sandwich or something.

  “I’m good, Sam. Kelly brought me something earlier. Take your time, get off your feet for a little while.”

  As much as she felt like a slacker for doing it, the idea held enormous appeal. She went into the restaurant where a tired-looking middle-aged hostess showed her to a table near a corner that was semi screened off from others by a divider capped with plants. The perfect spot to avoid questions, reporters and festival crises. She ordered a salad and something described as an energy smoothie.

  Midway through her lunch she heard the hostess seat someone else on the other side of the divider. Great. A near-empty restaurant and the only other customer had to be right next to her. Probably something to do with the waitress’s stations or the fact that she didn’t want to walk across the room any more than necessary. Sam crunched a crouton, trying to drown out the sounds of the female who’d decided to place a phone call.

  “I found her,” said the voice. The fact that she was murmuring, an obvious attempt to keep the conversation quiet, caused Sam’s ears to perk up. “But I haven’t gotten the—the other thing. I can’t believe Julia changed it.”

  Sam shifted in her seat. Unable to see the speaker, she really didn’t want to be seen either. The voice was slightly familiar and she had the feeling if it was one of the vendors there would be extra conversation if she recognized Sam.

  “Okay, yeah,” said the woman. “I will. I’ll call you.” She clicked off the call with a disgusted little puh, then called the waitress over and asked that her order be put in a box to go.

  “It’s coming off the grill now. I’ll tell the cook,” said the waitress with one of those impatient tones that said she knew her t
ip would be diminished because of this.

  Sam heard motion behind her as the customer got up and left. She breathed a little easier and finished her salad.

  The healthful meal really had boosted her energy, as well as her mood. By the time she got back to the ballroom the judges were into a new batch of entries and even the antics of the onstage celebrity didn’t bother her so much. She strolled past the booths, gauging moods, making sure the vendors were happy.

  Of the ones who’d given a bit of static the previous day, Danielle Ferguson seemed a lot more subdued today. Sam caught her sending a nervous glance toward Farrel O’Hearn’s booth. Probably worried over the outcome of the competition. Danielle had openly stated that she wanted to win this thing at all cost. Did she mean that literally?

  Farrel, on the other hand, seemed completely wrapped up in her own mini-celebrity status. People crowded around her booth and Sam caught more than one of them raving about the cuisine at her Santa Fe restaurant. Gone were the baleful glares from yesterday.

  And Farrel wasn’t the only one who seemed more relaxed with the temperamental Carinda out of the way. All over the room Sam felt a general air of fun that had been missing earlier. Did it mean that the murderer believed he or she had gotten away with it? Or was this simply because the show was underway and sales were good.

  Even though Sam had committed to donate all of her three-day proceeds to their chosen charity, it wasn’t mandatory and many of the vendors were probably making a good portion of their monthly income this weekend. She decided to relax and not think about the case until she’d had a chance to talk with Beau. She really had no evidence to go on anyway.

  She’d circled the room by now and was about to step back into her own space.

  “Sam, would you and your assistant like an ice cream cone?” Harvey Byron held up an empty cone. “On the house. Any flavor you want, as long as it’s chocolate.”

  He smiled while the two of them decided. Becky took white chocolate raspberry, and Sam couldn’t resist the chocolate chip cookie dough since she knew Harvey used an exotic Mexican vanilla in the recipe.