Sweet Masterpiece

by Connie Shelton

“It was good. Just getting used to being with one person all day.”

  Sam looked over at her daughter, who was busy stirring cocoa powder into a mug. She didn’t detect anything wrong.

  “Oh, Beau said to tell you to give him a call,” Kelly said. She gave a lopsided grin. “I think he’s going to ask you out.”

  Sam caught herself blushing.

  “Mom . . . what’s with the getup?”

  Sam glanced down and remembered she was still dressed in the Mrs. Knightly gear. “Uh, Rupert and I went to this art thing.”

  “Oh.”

  Sam hurried to her room and changed into comfortable flannels and then returned Beau’s call. They made plans for dinner the following evening and he laughingly assured her that she wouldn’t have to wear hiking boots this time.

  They met at the restaurant, a Mexican place just off Highway 64, convenient for her since she’d spent part of the afternoon checking on her ski-valley area property. She’d needed the physical exertion of chopping at underbrush to work off her frustration after the buyer of her truck called to say that he had to cancel. Just couldn’t put the money together. The pickup once again sported its For Sale sign and Rupert assured Sam there was no hurry in repaying him.

  Beau had asked Kelly to do a little evening duty, to stay and give Iris dinner and get her settled in for the night. Sam found herself watching for clues as he talked, but everything Beau said about Kelly’s job performance sounded positive. Apparently she’d begun to form a solid friendship with Iris, and Beau seemed very happy with the arrangement.

  A waiter brought margaritas and took their food orders.

  Once they got all the chitchat out of the way, Sam broached the other subject that was on her mind.

  “Rupert and I took a drive to Santa Fe yesterday. He’s trying to spearhead a move to set up a memorial to Cantone, out at the property where he lived. He thinks Bart should sell a painting or two to finance it.” She caught herself smiling at the memory. “Actually, he’s laying a pretty heavy guilt trip on Bart for the undignified burial.”

  “Good. It really was a pretty crummy thing to do, seeing how well-loved Cantone was.”

  Their plates arrived just then, chile rellenos for Sam and a huge cheese-smothered beef burrito for Beau. They spent a couple of minutes taking the first bites and exclaiming over the good, hot chile before Sam turned the conversation back to art.

  “There are fourteen paintings at Bart’s house. I saw green smudges on six of them. Interesting that not all of them had it. And I watched the others carefully. No one else apparently saw any of it.”

  “Remember that I told you we had a print expert trying to get something usable from Cantone’s body. He was able to get viable prints from the palm of one hand and some partial prints of two fingers.”

  “I’m sensing a ‘but,’ ” Sam said.

  “But nothing matched. Not one of those plant residue smudges matched with anything we got from Cantone.”

  “They don’t match Cantone and they don’t match Bart?” Her fork clattered against the plate.

  “Right.”

  “So now what?”

  “Someone else was in that house. Someone who handled both the poisonous plant and the paintings.” He paused for another bite of his burrito.

  “Have you had the chance to question the neighbors yet?”

  He shook his head. “I think I have some more questions for Mr. Bart Killington, though.”

  Sam had a discouraging feeling that she knew how that would turn out. Maybe she would try to talk again with Betty McDonald, and perhaps Leonard Trujillo, herself.

  They shared an apple cobbler for dessert, with a nice wine, and Beau began to get that certain look in his eye again. When he suggested, “your place?” she knew she was ready.

  She gave the living room a critical look as they walked in, wishing she’d planned ahead, thought to neaten up the place, to have some candles ready, to chill some wine. But in the end, it didn’t matter. Beau took her into his arms and her insides went molten as they kissed.

  She took him to her bedroom and switched on a small lamp. They undressed quickly and found a mutual rhythm of desire.

  Later, as they lay together, he traced a line over her shoulder. “You’re magical,” he said.

  She glanced past him, to the wooden box on the dresser. She hadn’t touched it all day. Any magic tonight had come strictly on her own.

  Chapter 27

  Beau left around midnight and Sam snuggled into her covers. Her body felt alive, sparkling with the combination of great sex, the wine they’d shared after the first time, then the second leisurely exploration of each other. She savored the feeling. She had memories of younger times, other lovers, but nothing like this. Beau satisfied more than her physical needs—he gave emotionally, in a way she would treasure. The years of self-enforced celibacy seemed a little silly now.

  At some point she heard Kelly come in but she registered the sound only as a vague fact, an event without the power to intrude into her dreams. She fell into a deep, pleasant sleep.

  The faraway sound of the telephone woke Sam and she rolled over to glance at her clock. It was well after nine. Kelly had probably gotten up and left for work almost two hours ago. Sam pulled on a robe and caught the phone just before the answering machine took over.

  “Hey you.” Beau’s tone indicated that he was alone somewhere. “How are you this morning?”

  “Completely luxuriating in a lazy morning.”

  “Good. You deserve it. That was amazing last night.”

  She agreed. “Are you at work?”

  “Yeah, actually. Couldn’t get out of it. Although I would’ve loved to.” Again, that ache in his voice.

  Sam remembered that she had work she couldn’t avoid either. The book cake for the Chocoholics was baked but not decorated. She would have to get it to the store by this afternoon. And she hadn’t worked on Cantone’s place in several days. With the recent rains and warm weather, she ought to see if the yard needed another mowing. She didn’t tell him about her idea of talking to the neighbors out there.

  “I’m having Bart Killington brought up here for more questioning,” Beau was saying. “He may not be a suspect anymore, but he knows more than he’s telling. Maybe I can find out who the other person was, the one handling the deathcamas.”

  “You don’t have to go to Santa Fe for that?”

  “If necessary, Sheriff Padilla can have the Santa Fe County authorities pick him up and bring him here. I think I’ve finally impressed upon him that we don’t have a simple accidental death here. Getting Bart away from his own territory might help throw a little fear into him. Make him more talkative. Who knows? He may come willingly.” Some papers rustled in the background. “I’ve got about a dozen reports to finish up, but maybe we can get together later in the day, or this evening?”

  Sam agreed and wished him luck, already preoccupied with her own duties for the day. By the time she’d dressed and grabbed a piece of toast for breakfast, she was feeling the pressure to get the cake done. She quickly iced it with milk chocolate buttercream, piped borders around the edges, then wrote the words “It was a dark and stormy night . . .” in dark chocolate script on the right-hand ‘page’ of the book shape. For the left side, roses seemed too traditional so she made mounds of tiny flowers in white chocolate that became clusters of hydrangeas. She added dark chocolate stems and leaves, and strategically sprinkled dragées and edible chocolate glitter to catch the light. That final step made the entire cake practically glow.

  Sam looked at it with satisfaction. She felt almost the same radiance, herself.

  She popped the cake into the fridge to set while she cleaned up the mess in the kitchen. A tuna sandwich and baggie full of potato chips would serve as lunch, sometime between delivering the cake and mowing Cantone’s yard. The room darkened slightly, a cloud passing across the face of the sun, heralding a shift away from their warm Indian Summer days.

  A subtle c
hill sneaked down her spine when she thought of Cantone. Beau’s words came back. He would be questioning Bart Killington today. Why did that suddenly bother her?

  Sam shook off the feeling and changed to work clothes. As she put her good gold hoop earrings into the wooden box, it sent its familiar warmth into her hands. She hadn’t realized that they were cold as ice.

  She held the box an extra minute, her hands absorbing the heat they needed. When she set it down again she felt her energy return. She paused a moment to let it surge through her, welcoming the power she would put to good use in accomplishing her tasks.

  The white van waited in the driveway beside the Silverado. Soon, she told herself. Soon she would get signs made and Sweet’s Sweets would become a presence as she drove around town. Briefly debating which vehicle to take, she couldn’t resist driving the new one. She set the cake carefully in the back, hitched up the trailer with her lawn equipment and started rolling.

  As always, Ivan Petrenko was effusive in his praise of the new dessert for the Chocoholics.

  “Is reading a gothic mystery this week, for the group,” he said. He showed her the book. “See? ‘Dark and stormy night’ is perfect motif. How do you know?”

  How, indeed? Sam shrugged it off and wished him well.

  By the time she reached Cantone’s property heavy clouds had begun to build over the mountains. She stared upward and gave a nervous chuckle. The changing weather must be the real reason for her ‘dark and stormy’ inspiration.

  Beyond Cantone’s property the house belonging to Leonard Trujillo, the property boundary complainer, looked empty with no vehicles in the driveway. Betty McDonald’s place looked similarly unoccupied. Later, Sam thought, she could catch them and ask questions after she finished her work.

  She lowered the short ramp on the trailer and pulled the mower to the ground as the dark cloud moved closer. Wet grass wouldn’t cut well; she should get it done before trying to question the neighbors anyway. The machine started right up and she made quick work of the areas in front of the house. A patch of the scary deathcamas grew near the steps to the porch and she cut it down without a second thought. Zoe’s description of its effects, the violent convulsing death, haunted her. As the shredded stems flew away from the mower Sam felt an almost physical ache for poor Pierre Cantone.

  Dark gray clouds covered most of the sky now.

  She steered the mower to the backyard, making a perimeter where the lawn’s edge touched the wild grasses and sage beyond. As she passed the dark hole in the earth, where the sheriff’s men had dug up the artist’s body, she again felt that slice of fear up her spine. What had the old man gone through as he ingested the poison, day after day, slowly dying. Did he know he would end up in this corner, covered by the heaps of soil that now lay in dark piles?

  She turned her back, aiming the mower in the opposite direction.

  Calm down, Sam, she told herself. What’s the matter with you?

  A flash of lightning in the distance caught her attention. Great. She pushed the mower a little faster. Doubling back, she concentrated on the work, on making neat rows and refusing to think about Cantone or his death.

  The first drops of rain began to smack the earth. From the depth of the black clouds overhead, Sam knew her work was coming to a halt. She cut the mower’s engine and steered toward the covered carport.

  That’s when she spotted the plume of dust. A dark vehicle roared along the road, kicking up dirt. Someone trying to beat the storm to get home. But as she watched, the shape became a green Jaguar and the car whipped into the driveway right behind her van.

  Chapter 28

  They say you should never kick a wasp’s nest. Sam knew that, from the time she was a little girl. From the moment she watched the Jag roar to a halt in front of the house, she knew that the kick had been sent and that the nest was blazing with fury.

  Bart Killington flung the door open, jumped out and slammed it shut behind him.

  “You bitch!” he screamed.

  Sam kept the lawnmower between them. “Excuse me?”

  “You started this. You sent my life straight to hell!” Thunder crashed, punctuating his statement.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He’d found out. He’d figured out the Mrs. Knightly charade. Knew about her finding the poisonous plants.

  “You are connected to that deputy in some way. He thought he’d haul me up here in handcuffs, didn’t he? Thought he’d found his suspect. Well, listen, bitch. It’s not me! I came up here of my own free will, to try to help. But all he wants is to find somebody to blame. To take away my inheritance and make me suffer.”

  “Bart, calm down.”

  She might as well have invited him to rant on. He continued to scream, louder. She glanced around, hoping that one of the absent neighbors might come by and stop to check it out. Even if one of them were home the other houses were too far away and the rolling thunder was almost constant now.

  A bolt of lightning struck an open field across the road, less than a quarter mile away. Every hair on her body stood on end. She jumped away from the metal lawnmower, standing near the walkway to the front porch. If she could just get inside and lock the door . . .

  Bart stood in the open, daring the lightning, oblivious to the rain that now came down in sheets and pasted his dark hair to his scalp. His eyes were wild.

  Another crash—this time somewhere behind the house.

  Sam ran for the front door. Realized too late that it was still locked.

  By the time she pulled the key from her pocket Bart was right beside her. The roof over the small porch provided no protection and Sam felt the rain soak her cotton work shirt. She dashed back to the cover of the carport, keeping an eye on Bart as he followed her.

  “Bart, calm down.” She reached out to touch his arm. He recoiled as if she’d punched him and backed two steps away from her.

  “I’m not giving up the money from the paintings,” he said. His voice took on a plaintive note. “My uncle left them to me. I came here and stayed with him, took care of him when he was sick.”

  Sick from being poisoned. Sam watched his face carefully as he spoke. Was he actually so deluded as to think that he was doing his uncle a service as he slowly poisoned him to death?

  Movement on the road grabbed Sam’s attention. A dark vehicle slithered sideways on the wet, muddy road then corrected and picked up speed. Losing traction again, it came at the driveway almost sideways and slid to a stop behind Bart’s Jaguar. Carolyn Hildebrandt leaped out.

  Her eyes were intense and ropes of dark hair blew across her face. She grabbed at the strands, pushing them aside, but the wind and blowing rain pasted the hair against her cheeks again.

  “Bart!” she shouted.

  He turned, finally noticing.

  “Bart! What are you doing?” Carolyn advanced on them.

  Bart glanced back at Sam. “I didn’t hurt him. I swear I didn’t.”

  Sam almost believed him, could see what Beau meant about Bart’s convincing manner.

  “Bart, you fool! I knew I couldn’t trust you not to talk to the cops,” Carolyn shouted. “I knew I’d have to stop you!” She raised a pistol.

  Sam froze.

  Her mind went into overdrive. What did she have for defense? A lawnmower? She desperately tried to come up with a plan but her thoughts ricocheted about, refusing to focus.

  “Okay, I wanted the paintings,” Bart babbled. “I wanted the money. I knew they were valuable and my uncle was doing nothing with them but letting them hang in this pitiful little dump. I tried to sneak one out of the house and sell it, but he noticed it was gone.”

  “Bart . . .” Carolyn stood at the edge of the driveway, the pistol pointing right at them. “Shut up.”

  “She told me we could make a lot of money,” he whined.

  Sam muttered under her breath. “Maybe you better quit talking, Bart.” She couldn’t take her eyes off Carolyn.

  “Bart, I’m warning you.” Caroly
n walked a little closer.

  “Sweetheart, don’t do anything,” Bart said. “Let’s just leave. Go back to my place.”

  Movement on the road caught Sam’s attention for a second.

  “You dumb fool,” Carolyn hissed. “I can’t believe how stupid you are.”

  Bart’s eyes hardened. “Wait a minute—you didn’t think I was so stupid when I led you right to a valuable collection of Cantone’s work. You didn’t think I was stupid when I let you start selling them. Carolyn—we love each other.”

  Sam held her breath. The vehicle approaching on the road was Beau’s cruiser. She willed herself not to look that direction as he coasted up to the driveway, blocking Carolyn’s vehicle.

  “You’re more idiotic than you’ll ever know,” Carolyn said. “You actually thought I loved you? You didn’t have a clue that the only reason I stayed with you in this . . . this shack was because I saw that you’d never take what was yours. You would wait years for your uncle to die. And even then you didn’t know that he’d leave his work to you. I had to make up that will and forge his signature. You would have never taken any real action. You’re the kind who sits around and hopes life will turn out the way he wants it to. I—I’m the one who makes things happen.”

  The green fingerprints, Sam realized. Carolyn’s.

  Beau was out of his vehicle now and Sam saw him slowly approach. She was the only one who could see him, and it took a force of will not to stare, not to let her relief show on her face.

  Sam’s attention went back to Carolyn. The art dealer’s expression was pure rage. The woman clearly had gone over the edge and Sam suddenly realized that she had no intention of letting Bart or Sam out of here alive. Again, she raised the pistol, her finger firmly on the trigger. The only minuscule bit of hesitation seemed to come from the decision about which of them to shoot first. Her eyes darted from one to the other.

  Make an impossible target, Sam told herself. She spun toward Bart and shoved him to the left, while she dove for the ground in the opposite direction. She hit, rolled, and came up at the edge of the carport as the shot reverberated.