8 Sweet Payback

by Connie Shelton

  He loaded the boxes into the back of his SUV and decided to take them home where he would have more time to read through them than at the office with phones ringing and deputies in and out all day.

  There, he stacked the boxes beside the dining table, which was still spread with the pages of the murder file he and Sam had been going through. Since the law files were technically only on loan from Gravitz, he had to be careful not to intermix the reams of paper. It took only about fifteen minutes of attempting to balance an open file folder on his lap before he decided to dig up an old folding table he knew was stashed around the place somewhere. He rummaged through a storage closet, found it and wiped off several years worth of dust; he was setting up the table when he heard Sam’s bakery van in the drive.

  “Hey there, handsome Sheriff,” she said, dropping her backpack onto an armchair.

  Beau looked down and realized he’d forgotten to change clothes, and now his uniform was all dusty.

  “I don’t mind,” she said, coming toward him for a hug. “I’m probably covered in flour and sugar myself.”

  Sam glanced at the new collection of boxes. “What’s all this?”

  He explained how he’d taken advantage of the cooperation from the attorneys. “Since we are technically working a cold case, I figured it would be better to keep this out of my office. Plus, this way we can cross-reference their stuff with ours.”

  “You think there will be discrepancies?”

  “There are bound to be. Law enforcement works with the prosecution to catch and put away criminals. Defense lawyers get the defendant’s side of the story, usually a very filtered version, but sometimes these guys will spill their guts to their attorney.”

  “And you can use that?”

  “If their client were still alive or if they refused to release it to me, no. But if anybody in the Starkey family raises a fuss, I’m going to point out that we are trying to catch their son’s killer. I think they will go along with that. Now, as to what can be admitted into court testimony . . . that’s something else. We still need evidence.”

  Sam ran her fingers over the folder tabs in the open boxes. So much paper—where to start? Beau had picked up one that seemed to contain the attorney’s initial interviews with Jessie. Sam opted for a folder with Angela’s name on it. The sheets inside were photocopies of something handwritten, pages small enough that each sheet of copy paper showed two pages side by side. She began to read.

  It only took a few seconds to realize that these were the writings of a teenage girl. By the way they were dated and the casual tone, this was a diary.

  “Beau, we didn’t come across any of this in the department file, did we?” she asked, holding out the small sheaf of papers. “Could this be Angela’s diary?”

  He scanned the top page, thinking furiously.

  “What would the defense team be doing with this?” Sam asked.

  He bit at his lower lip while he put his thoughts together. “A personal item belonging to the victim could have—would have—been collected by our department, either at the crime scene or perhaps in her home. Anything relevant to the case, that is, if the prosecutor intended to use it in court, has to be passed along to the defense team as well.”

  “So, Jessie or Lee couldn’t have given this to the lawyer?”

  “Not likely. The fact that it’s a copy, not the diary itself, would indicate that most likely our department collected the diary and then made the copies for the lawyers.”

  “But you didn’t come across the actual diary, right?”

  “There are still boxes of stuff back in our evidence room. It should have been passed along to the prosecutor before the trial.”

  Sam nodded. “Just checking. Can I go ahead and read some of it? See if there’s anything that could be a clue?”

  “Anything. Definitely.”

  Sam leafed through the pages and soon discovered that Angela wasn’t regular in her journal writings. Dated entries skipped around all over the place, and many of them weren’t dated at all. Sam had been the same way, herself, as a teen. She owned a small diary and had usually only turned to it when life became dramatic or heartbreaking. The mundane details of everyday life in high school just weren’t that interesting. She began reading the pages in front of her.

  I can’t think! I don’t know what to do!!! They say it’s my fault. Molly’s gone—it’s my fault!!! I should have died—I wish I had!!!!! The writing was shaky, the emotion apparent.

  Evidently, a grief counselor had given Angela the book and suggested that she write in order to work through her feelings about the accident. Sam wondered if Althea Brooks had talked with her niece during this time.

  Dr. Jones keeps asking me to think back to that night, to remember what Molly and I did. The police asked if we were drinking—no! I told them we don’t drink. They don’t believe me!! We had Cokes at Molly’s house, really sweet ones—I think they had vanilla or something. Her dad was there—he watched us. He can tell them!

  A few entries later: I guess Molly’s dad did tell them we weren’t drinking. But still, that judge said I have to lose my license for a year. I don’t care. I never want to drive again.

  Poor girl. To have her high school world come crashing down, her best friend gone.

  Dr. Jones wants me to get out more. I should see my friends again. Molly’s dad keeps wanting me to come over and talk. I should be nice to him. He lost his whole family, at least I have mine. When people say things like that I feel worse than ever. I don’t want to leave my room. Can’t they all just leave me alone?

  A dated entry indicated that Angela was still working with the counselor several months later. Molly wanted to leave with her mom, when we were in ninth grade. I should have let her. Why did I beg her to stay with me? Dr. Jones says it’s normal for somebody to want her best friend to always be there. But if I could of let her go. She might be in Kansas now but she’d be alive.

  Kansas. That might be a clue to Heather’s plans. Sam noted it, to ask Althea.

  Maybe I could even go visit. But now . . . I just want to kill myself.

  Uh-oh. Had Angela’s counselor known about this? Sam riffled through the pages, seeing that the writing continued. Whatever transpired immediately after the accident, Angela was still alive—until three years later. And when she did die, it wasn’t by her own hand. Sam blew out a breath and blinked back tears.

  She caught Beau staring at her and told him what she’d just read. “I wonder why this didn’t come up in court?”

  He gave her a weak smile. “Sad as it was, there was nothing really to connect Angela’s trauma of the car accident to her own death, years later.”

  She nodded. True. But what if, in her later writings, Angela had revealed something? Had she remained depressed all that time? Sam continued reading.

  The entries continued in the same vein until one brought Sam up short. My wrists are healing. When I woke up in the hospital last week I was SO mad!! I really wanted this pain to be over. But my mom . . . the look on her face. Matt said mom cried for three days. I have to stop this, feeling sorry for myself. Dr. Jones has said it—I need to get on with my life. I don’t know how. But I’ll try.

  Sam had to get up and walk around. She went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. She’d had her own unhappy moments, growing up in a town where she didn’t fit in, eager to get away the minute she could. But never anything like this. And she’d raised a daughter who was basically a happy-go-lucky kid, a little flighty as a young woman but overall well-adjusted. No wonder the Caynes simply had to get out of this area after Angela was murdered. It was one painful trauma after the other for that poor family. She took a sip of the tea and went back to her reading.

  A couple of almost-empty pages followed Angela’s heartfelt admission that she needed to turn her life around. A few doodles—daisies and puffy-lettered versions of her name—seemed to indicate a brighter mood. When the written entries resumed it was with a more mature hand, and the date i
ndicated that Angela was now nineteen.

  He says he loves me!! He wants us to go away together, to be married! I can’t believe it!! I don’t know . . . he’s older. I don’t know what my parents would say.

  The next entry: I haven’t slept with him yet. It doesn’t seem right. He really wants me and I feel special when he buys me things. But I think my parents would freak out if I tell them.

  Sam checked the date. This was getting close. Angela would turn twenty in May. She would be murdered in June.

  Chapter 24

  Sam dropped the diary pages. A chill passed over her and the lukewarm tea did nothing to dispel it.

  “There was a man, Beau. Near the end of Angela’s life. Did that ever come up in the investigation or trial?” She folded the stapled pages back so he could read the last one. “Someone older. If it was Jessie Starkey, I can see why she would be worried about telling her parents. The teacher dad and the accountant mom weren’t likely to approve of a tattooed rebel with a drug habit.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that.” He read the words on the diary page, then stared off into space. “I don’t recall this being brought up during the trial, but someone recently told me that Jessie had his eye on Angela.”

  He handed the diary pages back to Sam and crossed to the other table, touching pages until he came to the stack that contained the sheriff’s interviews with Jessie Starkey.

  “Let’s see . . .”

  “Or Lee Rodarte? Could he have been the older man?” Sam asked.

  “He was involved with Sophie Garcia at that time; they had a baby together. But, nothing’s impossible. Why don’t you grab those sections over there—his interview questions—see if there’s anything about a personal relationship with Angela at the same time.”

  They read silently for several minutes. Sam shook her head over Rodarte’s Q&A. The sheriff had asked him very little, aside from denigrating his alibi. Mainly, he’d tried his best to get Lee to corroborate Jessie’s confession and implicate himself in the process.

  Beau took his time with Jessie Starkey’s interrogation, reading every question and every answer. “I don’t see where they ever specifically asked if he had a romantic interest in Angela Cayne. They asked if he knew her and he responds, ‘yeah, sure, seen her around.’ ”

  “That doesn’t exactly sound like a man in love.”

  “Or one trying to cover up the fact that he’s been wanting to get into a younger woman’s pants.”

  “I wish we had a video of that interview. It would tell a lot if Jessie blushed or turned away as he answered the question.”

  “Yeah, well. We have them now, but the cameras and recorders didn’t get purchased for our department until pretty recently.”

  A crooked lawman’s way of giving himself room to twist the truth, at his convenience? Sam had heard way too many Sheriff Padilla stories.

  “So, assuming it was Jessie Starkey who was coming on to Angela, could the interrogators have used his interest in the victim to get him to confess?”

  “That, darlin’ could be the big question. I’ll keep reading. The frustrating thing about transcripts like these is that it’s routine to ask the same questions over and over. It could take me awhile to get to that point in the file.”

  “And if the love interest wasn’t Jessie, it could have been anyone,” Sam reminded. “The boyfriend might have showed up while her parents were gone. Wouldn’t Angela have told him that other family members were home? Maybe she agreed to sneak out and meet him later?”

  “Or, maybe he came in, got insistent that things go further. She resisted, he got angry.”

  Sam nodded, acknowledging that either scenario could have happened.

  “The sad thing is that we will probably never know. I just wish Matt Cayne hadn’t been wearing his earphones that night.” Beau set down the transcript sheets. “I never did get the chance to drop in on Roy Watson today. Maybe that’s good. We know a lot more now. I’ll plan to go by his place tomorrow.”

  Sam put the diary pages back into the box where she’d found them.

  “Meanwhile, my lady . . .” Beau held his hand out to her. “I have other plans for you and me.” The wiggle in his eyebrow said it all.

  * * *

  Sam awoke the next morning to bright sunlight from the window where she’d forgotten to draw the curtains the night before. Beau’s arm was around her, his unshaven face rubbing against her shoulder, a contented sigh coming from him when she rolled over. She stroked his bristly whiskers and kissed him. After too much time in crime files where the worst of human nature came out she’d needed last night’s reminder that there were gentle and loving men in this world. He returned her kisses, urgently, and it was another hour before they reluctantly decided it was time to get to work.

  “I’ll be at the bakery, unless you need me to go along with you,” she said giving her lips a swipe of gloss at the bathroom mirror.

  “As long as dispatch or the night-duty men don’t spring something new on me, I think it’ll be business as usual. We’ve had no trouble in Sembramos for a couple of nights.”

  “Which is almost scary, isn’t it?”

  “I just hope things have calmed down there for good.”

  Sam gave him another lingering kiss, then picked up her bakery jacket and headed out. The sunny spring morning only added to her good mood and she found herself humming as she pulled up to the back of the bakery.

  Inside, Julio had already finished trays of muffins, scones and some of the new ultra-cinnamon bear claws that he’d introduced a month ago. A coffee cake sat on the worktable, waiting to be cut into generous pieces, and Becky was piping “Happy Birthday, Isabelle” onto a pink lemonade cake.

  Sam took a little teasing from Becky about the rosy look in her cheeks and, out front, Jen commented that married life was certainly agreeing with the boss. Before Sam could think of a comeback, the phone rang and Jen handed it to her.

  “Is this Samantha Sweet?” a female voice inquired. “I got your name from Mary Raintree. She said you have an unusual artifact that may have ties to the Craft.”

  The moment Sam figured out it wasn’t a recommendation for their pastries, she broke in. “I’m sorry, but that item Mary referred to—it’s gone. I gave it away already.”

  This intense interest in the wooden box was becoming too much. When Mary offered to put Sam in touch with someone who might have known Bertha Martinez, Sam hadn’t expected calls from all these youngsters. She walked back to her desk and rummaged for the note where she’d written Mary’s number.

  The explanation again—that she no longer had the box, so never mind about sending any more referrals—and she hung up with only a twinge of second thoughts. She might be cutting off the possibility of reaching one of Bertha’s friends who could give her some useful information. And, too, if the witch Mary had the power to detect a lie, she may have seen right through Sam’s story.

  “How should I approach this job?” Becky asked, pulling Sam’s thoughts back to the real world as she held up a sketch Jen had made for a customer who wanted a dozen cupcakes to resemble giant strawberries.

  Sam studied the drawing, envisioning the supplies they could put to use. “Bake the cupcakes in red paper liners, for a start. Then I’m thinking red decorating sugar over red icing. They’ll really sparkle that way. And edible leaves and stems of—”

  Jen stood in the doorway, waving for Sam’s attention. She reminded herself that it was good to be needed. “A lady to see you,” Jen said. Then, sotto voce, “I don’t think this one’s a nutcase.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” Becky said, turning back to the cupcake order. “I’ve got enough to get started.”

  Althea Brooks stood at the display case, glancing up when Sam walked in. “My goodness, you’ve got a fantastic shop here! If this had been here when I lived nearby . . . Anyway, it occurred to me that I never asked the sheriff if he needed a photo of my sister, for the search. I guess what really reminded me of it was that
I had a strange encounter last evening.”

  Sam felt her eyebrows rise. “What kind of encounter?”

  “I walked around the plaza yesterday afternoon after we talked, you know, browsing the shops a little. Found a cute pair of sandals. When I came out of the shop a man on the sidewalk came to an abrupt stop and stared at me. He said, ‘Does your old man know you’re in town?’ I’m afraid I had no clue and I stammered out something about how he’d mistaken me for someone else. Well, then as I walked back to my car I got to thinking, I’ll bet he thought I was Heather.”

  “Really?”

  “We look enough alike that I suppose it’s possible, especially if it’s someone who hasn’t seen her in years. That, and the way I’ve started coloring my hair, just a shade lighter than it used to be.”

  She pulled a photo out of her wallet. “This is almost fifteen years ago, so you have to take into account that both of us have aged. A little.” A chuckle.

  Sam gave the photo a quick glance. Heather did look very familiar. The sisters had the same facial structure—high foreheads, prominent chin, straight nose. Heather’s hair was nearly the exact shade of Althea’s, and even the cut was similar. She imagined present-day Heather would look much as Althea did now.

  “The man who saw you, he said something about ‘your old man.’ I assume he wasn’t talking about your father.”

  “He was about my age. I would assume he’s a friend or acquaintance of Linden’s. Someone who has known him a long time, if he knew Heather.”

  That made sense. “Can Beau keep this picture?”

  At Althea’s hesitation, Sam added that she was sure he could scan it or make a copy and get the original back to her. Althea said that would be fine.

  “There’s something else I wanted to ask you,” Sam said, “something that came up last night.”

  A customer walked into the shop, so Sam nodded toward the door. Out on the sidewalk they could talk more privately.

  “We came across something in the legal paperwork, a mention that Heather might have gone to Kansas. Does that make sense?”