8 Sweet Payback

by Connie Shelton

  Althea made a little face, her mouth twisting as she thought. “Not really. We have no relatives there, if that’s what you mean. Maybe a friend from her school days? I suppose if she was planning to leave Linden she could have put out some feelers about jobs. It was before the days where most applications are done online . . . but she might have mailed out some resumes or something.”

  “What type of work was she likely to apply for?”

  “Well, she wasn’t really qualified for much beyond some basic secretarial skills. She’d married so quickly after high school that she never got a degree. And believe me, she’d never have managed as a housekeeper or nanny.” She backtracked a little. “Not that she wasn’t a great mother . . . but raising someone’s else’s children wouldn’t have appealed to her. She never could understand what I loved so much about teaching.”

  “I suppose by now she may have gone back to school and become qualified for nearly anything,” Sam said, musing aloud.

  “But back then? No, I can’t think what would have drawn her specifically to Kansas.”

  Besides this supposed ‘other man.’ Neither of them said it.

  Sam pocketed the photo, promising to take good care of it, and took Althea’s card with her mailing address. She watched Althea get into her car before walking back inside, where she found Becky in a mad search for red sugar.

  By the time Beau called, near noon, she was ready for a lunch break. Remembering the photo of Heather Gisner in her pocket, she told him she would come by his office and they could go from there to eat.

  “Sure, no problem,” Beau said when Sam handed him the wallet-sized picture. “We should enlarge it so we have something to send out to other departments as we make inquiries.”

  He carried the little photo to one of the deputies, with an aside to Sam that this guy was the best in the office with computers.

  “We can’t go really large without losing clarity,” the man said, “but I’ll get you the best image I can. Just take a minute or two.”

  Sam and Beau stood by and watched the computer do its thing, Heather’s face coming up a quarter-inch at a time on the screen in front of the deputy. When the full image was displayed, Sam felt a wave of dizziness. She blinked her eyes. No wonder both Althea and Heather looked familiar to her—this was the woman she’d seen in that eerie vision, the night of the lightning storm.

  Chapter 25

  Lunch went by in a blur, as Beau talked about how he’d been busy all morning in the office and still hadn’t gone by to chat with his retired deputy, Roy Watson. Sam’s attention kept wandering to the printout of Heather’s photo, trying to recall the dream. It wouldn’t come to her. Maybe she needed a little time to let the details come back.

  “You okay, darlin’?” Beau asked, giving her an intent look.

  His plate was empty and she had only nibbled at her sandwich. She nodded in response to his question and took a huge bite. Ten minutes later, she felt better and had eased his concerns.

  “Okay, I’m off to see if I can catch Roy Watson at home.” He handed cash to the server, and while they waited for change Sam made a quick decision.

  “Can I come along?” It wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty of other work pulling for her attention but since he’d brought her this far into the case, she might as well learn some of the answers firsthand.

  Roy Watson answered the door in his undershirt and an old pair of sweats. White hair, a lined face gone jowly, a large gut and sloping shoulders. When he saw Beau in uniform he stood a little straighter and invited them into his modest adobe home. He muted a game show on the big-screen TV and excused himself, leaving the visitors to find seats on furniture that hadn’t exactly been attractive when purchased, at least thirty years ago. Sam perched at the edge of an overstuffed chair that threatened to swallow her if she leaned back.

  “Roy was widowed about a year after he retired,” Beau said in a low tone.

  The layer of dust on the coffee table, the general clutter in the room, plus the two beer cans beside a sagging vinyl recliner pretty well attested to his bachelorhood.

  “Well, sorry, Sheriff,” Roy said when he returned, wearing a pair of khakis and a fresh shirt, patting at his hair. “If I’d known you were coming by . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Beau said, introducing Sam. “We were in the neighborhood.”

  They turned down the offer of something to drink and Roy settled back into his well-loved recliner.

  “I suppose you’ve heard about the recent situation up in Sembramos,” Beau said. He sat forward on the old couch, his elbows resting on his knees.

  “Yep, yep.” Watson nodded. “That went back to the Angela Cayne murder, didn’t it?”

  “It did. New evidence came out and the verdict was overturned. The state freed both men.”

  “Those two didn’t exactly get a warm welcome back home though, did they?”

  “It’s a mess,” Beau admitted. “I’m having to go back and review the Cayne case, in addition to figuring out who’s killed Starkey and Rodarte. Three murders in Taos County is a pretty rare thing.”

  “Well, seems clear that people up there in Sembramos wouldn’t have been happy to see those two come back into their midst, doesn’t it? Your problem in those two killings will be to narrow it down—there must be dozens of possibilities.”

  “The town’s been up in arms, that’s for sure.”

  Sam wondered when Beau was going to get down to his questions, but figured maybe this was just two lawmen’s way of breaking the ice, easing into the subject.

  “I have to admit that I was still pretty new with the department when the original murder happened. The sheriff had me assigned to other things. You remember much about it?”

  “Oh, yeah. I worked the case. I mean, up to a point.”

  From what Beau had said in the past, Sam had a feeling he meant up to the point when the news cameras arrived and the grandstanding sheriff moved to the forefront.

  “I worked the crime scene. Sad one, that young woman. She would have been real pretty. But out in the woods like that, rope around her neck—it was bad. Out in the weather for a couple days, animals . . . you know. I had to pull back the draping and ask the father to identify the body, there on the gurney. You never forget a thing like that.”

  “Jessie Starkey eventually confessed and dragged Lee Rodarte in with him,” Beau said. “But do you remember what led you to bring them in, in the first place?”

  Roy Watson picked up one of the beer cans, started to raise it, discovered it was empty. “Sheriff Padilla said we’d received an anonymous tip. I remember they’d set up a special hotline, wanted information from anybody who knew anything. As usual, there were a lot of callers, not a lot of solid information. The duty officer took that particular call, if I’m remembering this right, passed it on to the sheriff and we picked up Starkey. In the beginning—the part I was there for—that punk didn’t want to admit to anything. But then they brought in a length of rope we’d found in his truck. I can still picture it—yellow nylon. They showed him a picture of the girl with the same kind of rope around her neck. He started to get all confused. I got called away for something else, but next thing I knew everybody was pretty happy that Starkey had confessed. When he named an accomplice, it was the icing on the cake.”

  “The defense attorney told me the rope was the evidence that got the conviction overturned.”

  Watson shifted in his chair.

  “Do you know something about that?”

  “Nothing definite. I do remember there being something about chain of custody on the rope. The length of it found in Starkey’s truck was supposed to be tested at the lab and matched to the murder rope, but something . . . I don’t remember all the details. Something about it didn’t quite jell. I felt like we didn’t ask enough questions before sending the evidence off to the prosecutor. Remember old Guy Robertson? Prosecutor for a hundred years? He was the one who tried this case. I recollect there being long meetings
over it in Padilla’s office, the two of them going over the evidence until they were happy with it.”

  Beau wondered aloud whether Robertson might remember details and share them.

  “Nah. He retired right after this case. Guess it was his chance to go out in a blaze of glory or something. Anyway, he retired, moved to Florida to play golf, died a year later. I tell you, golf is hazardous to your health.” He chuckled at his own joke.

  Beau asked whether there was anything else Watson might remember about the case, anything that would lead them to find Angela’s real killer, but the old deputy shook his head.

  “Be glad to call you if I come up with something,” he said as they stood up.

  Sam thought he looked eager to be somehow back in the game, if he could.

  Beau thanked him and they walked out to the cruiser parked at the curb. Sam gulped fresh air; the image of Angela Cayne out in the woods had been a little too vivid.

  “So, how could the ropes have gotten mixed up?” she asked as they drove away.

  “Hard to say. A lot of mess-ups could have happened. What actually did happen, we’ll probably never know. If you have a minute, let’s stop by and talk to Bill Gravitz, the lawyer.”

  Sam glanced at her watch. She could do this and still get back in time to help Becky figure out the strawberry cupcakes if her assistant hadn’t worked it out on her own.

  The offices of Tanner, Gravitz & Ortiz seemed fairly quiet and the receptionist got Bill Gravitz on the intercom right away.

  “Sheriff.” He held out his hand when they entered his private office.

  Beau did quick introductions and got right to the point. “Just a little follow-up on the evidence you told me about in the Cayne case. One of the deputies who worked that case said there were some issues with custody of the murder rope, and I remembered you saying the rope was the piece of evidence that got the conviction overturned.”

  “Yeah, it was. I don’t know what all happened within the sheriff’s department. But the forensic work on that rope was pathetic. Either no one tested both pieces—the one found on the body and the one found in the suspect’s vehicle—or somebody covered up the findings. We contended that the ropes might even have been switched.”

  Sam gave the lawyer a puzzled look and he turned to her.

  “The two ropes didn’t come from the same source. They weren’t even the same brand. I was shocked to learn that. When Guy Robertson held up that hank of yellow rope in court, then showed the photos of the victim with yellow rope around her neck, he deliberately steered the jury into believing that they were the same.”

  “But—” Beau nearly spluttered.

  “Both ropes were in evidence bags, signed and sealed. We didn’t question that, but we should have. I firmly believe that someone tampered with those ropes, making the evidence fit the case they wanted to build. I don’t know if it happened within the sheriff’s department or at the prosecution level.”

  It was a serious accusation. But the prosecutor was dead now and the former sheriff serving time.

  “At least we were able to have our own tests run and we did prove the innocence of our clients. I’m just sad that it took so many years to work it through the system.”

  So, if evidence had been tampered with and both men likely to have been responsible were out of the picture, who stood to gain by getting rid of Starkey and Rodarte now? Sam let the thought nag at her until they’d left the lawyer’s office. Then she posed it to Beau.

  “I’m guessing it would be the person who really killed Angela,” she said.

  “Unless that person did the smart thing and moved far away from here. Then we’ve just got a regrettable situation where tempers and hotheads took over.”

  “One person in this whole scenario who did move far away is Heather Gisner, or Heather Brooks, or whatever she might be calling herself. Do you think she could have been involved?”

  He debated the possibility as he pulled into his parking slot at the department offices. “I can’t think why. She’d moved away to get out of a bad marriage, not because of a beef with any of our victims—that we know of.”

  “I can’t help but think that she might know something about all this.” Sam opened her door. “I don’t know . . . I can’t think of a real reason she would come back to Sembramos, once Molly was gone. It was just a thought.”

  Her phone rang just then and she gave him a quick kiss before answering it. Beau walked into the building and Sam started toward her van.

  “I haven’t received your invoice yet, Ms. Sweet,” came the voice of Delbert Crow. Damn. She’d intended to do that two days ago. “And be sure to take down the signage, and you can pick up the sign-in sheets. Leave the lockbox. That will be returned to us after the auction.”

  Okay, okay. She added another trip to the big white house to her crowded mental list of to-dos.

  She walked into the bakery, a hundred things whirling through her mind, to find Becky struggling.

  “These don’t look right at all,” her assistant complained. In front of her on the worktable were a half-dozen red blobs that didn’t nearly resemble strawberries. They were more like flat-topped billiard balls. “I can’t seem to get them to do what I want.”

  Sam picked one up and examined it.

  “And the customer is supposed to be here in thirty minutes.” Becky dropped the information with a large dollop of misery in her voice.

  Sam touched the frosting on top of the cupcake that was supposed to be sitting in a nice, high mound. “Your icing is way too soft. Let’s stiffen it up with more powdered sugar.”

  She washed her hands and began to scrape red icing out of the piping bag into a stainless steel mixing bowl. “Grab the portable mixer and the color paste. It may turn too pale once it’s got more sugar in it.”

  She turned to the other side of the room. “Julio, would you mind scraping the wilted frosting off these? Gently.”

  With the three of them on the job, the new frosting began to take shape and held up well on the test-cupcake Sam made.

  “Okay, we only needed a dozen, right? Becky frost, Julio roll the tops in the red sugar. I’ll stick on the finishing touches.” No leaves or calyxes were in sight, so Sam pulled down a tub of green fondant and began rolling out the flexible sugary dough. She’d gotten one cut to a shape that pleased her when Jen walked into the kitchen.

  “Sam?” she whispered. “That young woman is back, the one dressed all in black. She insists on seeing you.”

  Oh, goodie. Zenda, the oddball witch of the west. Could the afternoon get any more complicated?

  Evidently so. Her phone rang as she was wiping her hands on a towel—her mother.

  Chapter 26

  Beau looked up from his desk when he became aware of Rico fidgeting in the doorway.

  “Sheriff, sorry. There’s trouble in Sembramos again. We just got the call.”

  “Did the caller say what’s going on?” This paperwork backlog would never get finished.

  “Not specifically. But they report shots fired.”

  Great. “Okay, you and Withers head up there. Please tell me you have your vests on, and grab extra boxes of ammo, just in case. I’m going to put State Police on alert and I’ll be right behind you.”

  Rico patted the bulky plate under his shirt, then turned to leave.

  Beau strode to the dispatcher’s office. “The trouble in Sembramos—do you still have the caller on the line?”

  “No, sir. The name was Sophie Garcia. She said she was inside the bank. Here’s her number.”

  Beau grabbed the message slip and started dialing his phone as he walked to his SUV. “Sophie, it’s Sheriff Cardwell. What’s going on there?”

  “Lee’s cousin Bono and his friends. They showed up again.” Her voice had a tremor.

  “Someone said there were gunshots.”

  “Yes, I heard two. I’m at work so I didn’t actually see anything, but a customer said there’s a bunch of people at the park. I think
that’s where the sounds came from.”

  “Okay, thanks. Stay indoors and tell anyone you see to do the same.”

  “Nathan’s at school. I’m worried about him. The kids will be getting out any minute now.”

  “I’ll call and order the school to lock down.” He wished he’d put his own vest on before he came out. He could be on the road now. “Sophie? Don’t worry. We’ll get it under control. Just stay inside.”

  A young mother, worried for her child at the school so close by. What were the odds she would obey the order and not run right over there?

  He keyed his radio as he reached into the back of the SUV for his Kevlar vest. “Wanda, get hold of the Sembramos Elementary School. Tell them to go into lockdown. If there are parents waiting outside to pick up their kids, tell the principal to get them inside the building too. There’s trouble in the park, and it’s only a half-block away. Without putting them in a panic, try to let them know I want everyone off the streets.”

  The strap on his vest snagged on his shoulder mike and he cursed at the delay.

  “Wanda, after the school, contact State Police. I don’t know that we’ll need them but put them on alert. Any officers already in the area, I’d like them to be around.” At this point, probably the more official presence, the better.

  He started his cruiser and sighed as he whipped out of the parking slot. This was not how the rest of the day was supposed to go. Hitting the switch for lights and siren, he cleared the town limits in under five minutes. The rest of the normally thirty-minute drive took about half that and he came upon Sembramos to find two state troopers at the edge of town. He gave them a quick wave and headed toward the park at First and Cottonwood.

  Rico’s cruiser blocked the intersection, preventing anyone from approaching the park from this direction. When Beau angled his own vehicle in, blocking the side entrance to the school, he saw that Deputy Withers’s SUV was parked across Cottonwood Lane, near the space between Sophie Garcia’s apartment building and the sad little park. At least a dozen people stood out in the open, mostly male, mostly gathered in two camps that, at a glance, looked like bikers versus plaid-shirted locals. A clump of women and small kids huddled under one of the large cottonwood trees. Joe Starkey’s battered pickup truck appeared to have knocked over a gleaming motorcycle. Had this been the trigger?