Tres Leches Cupcakes

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Oh stop,” Sadie said, trying to laugh off the comment. “You don’t want a divorce.” She kept her tone soft. “You guys just need to find a way to better adjust to a new life. Maybe you can talk to him, really open up about how you feel.”

  Caro shrugged and seemed to blow off the idea. She took another sip of her drink, then stood and took her mug to the sink. “Don’t go unless and until you have to, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Sadie said, wondering how she would talk to Pete about this without betraying Caro’s confidence. “Until then, let Lois know I’m happy to help at the bakery any way that I can.”

  Mexican Hot Chocolate

  2 (12-ounce) cans evaporated milk (or regular milk if you like; it won’t be as rich)

  1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

  Pinch of cayenne pepper

  1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

  In a medium saucepan, whisk together milk, cinnamon, vanilla extract, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper on medium heat. When mixture is hot, but not boiling, add chocolate chips. Stir until chocolate is melted. Reduce heat to low and simmer 5 minutes. Whisk and serve. If desired, dust finished mugs of hot chocolate with cocoa powder.

  Serves 4.

  Note: To cook in a slow cooker, combine all ingredients, cover, and cook on low for 2 to 3 hours, stirring every 15 to 20 minutes.

  Chapter 14

  Wednesday morning, Sadie hid in her room with the lights off until she heard Rex leave for work and Caro leave for her spin class. One bowl of leftover posole—surprisingly good for breakfast—and a clean kitchen later, Sadie texted Margo again. Before going to bed the night before, she’d sent two text messages and then called—it went straight to voice mail and there was no response to her texts. Sadie was eager to find out what Margo had discovered Monday night. Having a goal also helped distract her from the situation with Rex and Caro.

  Pete had finally called Sadie back around ten o’clock, and Sadie told him about Rex’s ultimatum. Pete had wanted to talk to Rex, but she made him promise not to. She wasn’t going to stay where she wasn’t wanted, and she didn’t want to cause more discord between Rex and his wife. Sadie didn’t tell Pete about her conversation with Caro regarding her marital issues—it didn’t seem appropriate.

  Once she was showered, dressed, fixed up, and ready to go, Sadie checked her phone for a reply from Margo. Nothing. However, there was a text from Caro inviting Sadie to lunch and then to Lois’s bakery to help with the cupcakes.

  Sadie frowned. She hated the necessity of creating some distance in their relationship so as to make her leaving easier on both of them. She bowed out of the lunch, but agreed to help with the cupcakes; she loved working at the bakery and needed something to do. If not for having her retirement plans derailed by her odd penchant for murder investigations, Sadie may very well have opened up her own corner bakery.

  Margo’s Land Cruiser wasn’t in the driveway when Sadie pulled up to the duplex, but Sadie went to the door anyway—just in case. She knocked, waited twenty seconds, knocked again, waited some more, and then leaned to the side and tried to peek into the living room. There was the narrowest of gaps between the edge of the window and the mini-blind, but not enough to see much of anything.

  She pulled out her phone and called Margo again, but like the other attempts, it went straight to voice mail. Sadie didn’t bother leaving a message. She put the phone back into her purse, which she hiked up further on her shoulder. Margo had been called back to the dig starting on Thursday. Could she have been asked to start a day early? Was that why she wasn’t home?

  But the unanswered calls and text messages didn’t sit right with Sadie as she headed down the sidewalk toward her car. Halfway there, she paused and turned back to look at the front of the duplex, her eyes moving from Margo’s door to that of her neighbor’s only a few feet to the right. Maybe Sadie wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

  “Hello,” Sadie said to the young woman who answered the door a minute later. She had a darling towheaded little boy on her hip and the quick, ponytail hairstyle of young motherhood. “I’m a friend of Margo’s next door and wondered if you’d seen her around today. I need to get in touch with her, but she’s not answering her phone.”

  The girl shook her head. “I haven’t seen her today,” she said, bouncing her toddler higher on her hip. “Sorry.”

  “Could you tell me when you last saw her?”

  “Our paths don’t really cross much. The last time I saw her was Monday. I was going grocery shopping without my sidekick.” She jostled the little boy, and he smiled shyly while putting two fingers in his mouth. “She was leaving too, and we waved at each other.”

  “Do you know what time on Monday?” Sadie asked, wondering if it was before or after they’d gone to the bar.

  “Um, let’s see, Max was already in bed, so it was after 8:00—maybe 8:30?”

  “Was her Land Cruiser here when you got back?” Sadie asked, already knowing the answer. They were in the middle of a bar fight at 9:30.

  “I really don’t remember,” the girl said with a shrug, but a concerned expression crossed her features. “Is it important?”

  Sadie smiled so as not to worry this girl too much. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, trying to sound flippant. “I was with her on Monday and haven’t been able to get a hold of her since then. I’m just wondering if she’s been around. I’m sure her phone just died or something. I’m Sadie, by the way.” She put a hand to her chest since the screen door between them prevented a handshake, not to mention the fact that the girl’s hands were full. As soon as she said her name, though, she remembered that Margo knew her as Sarah. Oops.

  “I’m Alison, and this is Max.”

  “Hi, Max,” Sadie said, lowering her head to smile at him. He promptly hid his face in his mom’s shoulder. Sadie commented on how cute he was and asked his age—fourteen months. By the time they finished the small talk about the baby, Alison was the one to go back to Sadie’s original topic.

  “Ya know, I hear Margo come and go a lot,” Alison said. “Her front door sticks and the whole duplex kind of rattles when she has to pull it shut.”

  Sadie nodded. “I remember that from when I was here on Monday; those warped floorboards catch the door.”

  “Right,” Alison confirmed. She leaned against the doorway after moving Max to her other hip. “She used to work these crazy hours and left at, like, four in the morning. Woke me every single time, but then I don’t sleep all that deeply these days.” She smiled at Max, and he pulled into her shoulder again. “But come to think of it, I haven’t heard her come or go the last couple of days, and I haven’t seen her car in the driveway.”

  “Nothing yesterday?”

  “No, and I was home all day. Well, I’m always home all day.” She gave Sadie a tired smile that Sadie well understood. Sadie had been a stay-at-home mom until Shawn started all-day school. Those had been wonderfully exhausting years. “And I don’t think she came home Monday night, unless she went in through the back, but she doesn’t seem to use the back door much—even though the front door sticks so bad.” From the way she said it, Sadie could tell Alison found it a little rude that Margo would insist on using the disruptive door when there was a perfectly acceptable alternative. She had a point.

  “Huh,” Sadie said, looking at Margo’s door again and wondering if it was locked. She thought back to the message Margo had left on her cell phone: “This is bigger than you thought.” Where had Margo been when she made that call?

  “Are you sure everything is okay?” Alison asked.

  Sadie turned back to the neighbor. “I’m sure it is,” she said, forcing a soft smile. “I was just trying to get in touch with her. Um, would you mind if I left you my number and then when she comes home, could you call me?”

  “Sure, or I can have her call you herself.”

  “Either way would be great.” Sadie dug in
her purse for the little notebook she always carried and a pen. A few seconds later, Alison pushed open the screen door with her hip and Sadie handed the paper through. They said their good-byes, but as soon as Alison’s front door was shut, Sadie headed back toward Margo’s side of the duplex. There was a six-foot-tall cedar fence enclosing the small backyard; Sadie had seen the patio through a window Monday.

  It took Sadie about three seconds to reach over the gate and open it from the inside. The hinges creaked horribly—proving the gate wasn’t used very often—but no one in the neighborhood seemed out and about enough to notice. She closed it carefully and headed up the back steps, justifying that she’d done the best thing first—she’d talked to the neighbor—before she resorted to breaking and entering.

  She tried the door. It was locked, but she always carried her pick set with her these days, and within thirty seconds, she was working on the basic cylinder lock with a five-pin deadbolt. Tricky, but not too tricky. Though Sadie preferred the pick gun, an electric version that was fast and easy, the whirring noise always sounded so much louder than it really was when she was already doing something she wasn’t sure she should do. But, then again, she was pretty sure she should do this. Sadie didn’t think Margo would be upset with Sadie checking up on her due to the circumstances, and trying to clear this kind of activity through Pete would only connect him to it, so she didn’t bother asking herself if he’d approve. The goal was to find Margo, and Sadie just needed to confirm that she’d come home after the bar Monday night. If she hadn’t . . .

  It took less than a minute to unlock the door and slip inside.

  “Margo,” Sadie called out softly as she carefully shut the door behind her. The back door entered into the kitchen that smelled like old cigarettes and garbage. “It’s just me, Sadie—er, Sarah.”

  The apartment was eerily silent. Sadie moved further into the kitchen, taking in details and wondering if she would know if something were out of place. The apartment was such a mess that nothing stood out to her. The only thing that would likely draw Sadie’s attention was if the apartment were cleaner than it had been on Monday—which it certainly wasn’t. Not for the first time, Sadie mentally thanked her parents for making her do chores as a child so that living like this had never been a consideration.

  The stale smell of cigarette smoke hung heavier in the air as she got closer to the living room, but the smell of fresh tobacco wasn’t mixed in with it. There were a couple dulce de leche bars missing from the plate still balanced on the dish drainer, but Margo could very well have eaten them before picking Sadie up Monday night. The plastic wrap hadn’t been secured after the last sampling, and when Sadie checked, the bars were rock hard.

  Sadie headed toward Margo’s bedroom, her heart rate increasing. She’d been in places where she didn’t belong before, and she’d stumbled onto things she would rather not have seen. In an instant, all those situations flashed through her mind, completely freezing her in place as she thought of how often she’d walked into a nightmare. Reality mixed with a heavy dose of pure fear descended on her like a curtain.

  What was she doing here? Why on earth would she want to invite another horrible situation into her life? Her chest felt tight as she turned around and moved toward the back door, noting how clammy her skin felt and how shallow her breathing had become. All she needed was to have an anxiety attack in a home she’d entered illegally. And what if she had found something? Would she have called Pete and confessed what she’d done while asking him to call an ambulance?

  Her hand was on the knob of the back door, but she stopped before fleeing from the apartment. Running hadn’t worked so well in the past, and she’d learned many things about the power of fear in the last several months. Giving in made it worse in the long run.

  She pressed her forehead to the cool wood of the door. Closing her eyes, she took several deep breaths of the pungent air and began counting her inhalations and exhalations, calming her body down as she allowed her thoughts to catch up with her actions. It took a few minutes for Sadie to talk through what she was doing here and consciously process the facts as she knew them. So far, everything Sadie had seen in the apartment validated the hypothesis that Margo hadn’t come home, but Sadie could still make sure before she left. If there was something ugly to discover, not discovering it wouldn’t make it go away.

  Once in full control of herself—well, maybe not full, but mostly in control—she turned back to the living room and walked slowly to the bedroom, scanning everything on her way there to make sure nothing was different than she remembered it on Monday. Nothing stood out. The mug Margo had been tapping her cigarette ash into was still on the coffee table. The same jacket was thrown over the back of the stained chair.

  The bedroom door was open, and Sadie held her breath as she entered, scanning the floor and letting out a sigh when there was no body to be discovered. “Good job,” Sadie said, complimenting herself on having pushed through the fear. Not finding a body seemed like an adequate reward for her decision. The clothes Margo had worn to the bar were not among the piles of clothing on the floor, but the sweats she’d been wearing Monday afternoon were on the unmade bed, where Margo would have slept if she’d come home that night.

  Nothing stood out in the bedroom or bathroom, so Sadie continued her slow walk to the back door wondering what had happened between Monday night and now. The fact that Margo wasn’t here—and didn’t seem to have been here—thirty-six hours after leaving that cryptic message worried Sadie a great deal. Where could she be? Perhaps the better question was, where should Sadie start looking? Alison would call her if Margo came back here, which freed Sadie to look somewhere else.

  It made sense that the last place Sadie had seen Margo should be the first place she’d start her search—The Conquistador. Going back to the scene of such upsetting events was not an exciting prospect, but the only other option was to do nothing. That seemed a very poor choice to make.

  She thought about asking Caro to come to the bar with her—there was no doubt in her mind that Caro would jump at the opportunity—but she shook the idea away almost as quickly as it had come. She needed to leave Caro out of this, no matter how much she wanted a partner. She was on her own.

  Chapter 15

  Sadie found it a little sad that being open at 11:30 in the morning was a worthwhile business decision for the owner of The Conquistador. Sadie parked next to a dusty gray sedan—one of four cars parked out front—and pushed through the door and into the interior that looked exactly like it had two nights before except not as crowded. Was there a reason people didn’t want to drink with sunshine pouring through the windows and fresh flowers on wrought-iron tables? Maybe a little Josh Groban playing in the background?

  She stood in the entryway for a few seconds, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dimness. The same Mexican music was playing as before, and as Sadie scanned the room, she noticed that the table she’d been sitting at Monday night was gone—had it been broken in the fight? She couldn’t remember. No one had bothered to rearrange the other tables and chairs to fill the empty space. Sadie quickly looked away, feeling guilty for all that had happened—even though it wasn’t her fault. There were still peanut shells all over the floor, and her shoes made sticky sounds as she made her way to the bar where she waited for the bartender to see her. He did eventually, and came her way.

  “What’ll you have, sweetheart?” He had gray hair and a full beard, and his eyes crinkled when he smiled at her.

  It had been a long time since someone had called Sadie “sweetheart,” and it made her smile less forced than it had been. “I’m just looking for some information, if you’ve got a minute.”

  “Well, as long as the crowds stay contained, I can probably give you a little time.” He waved at the six or seven people scattered around the room, and then gave Sadie a wink. “I guess things got a little wild here the other night, so I’ve been asked to keep a sharp eye.”

  “Oh, right,” Sadie sai
d, adjusting her purse strap and glancing at the place of the missing table again before looking back at him. “That’s actually kind of why I’m here. I guess you weren’t working Monday night?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m the day tender for the very reason of avoiding scenes such as that.” He leaned closer. “The day-drunks are much better behaved.” He winked again.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Sadie said while trying to come up with what she could ask him if he hadn’t been there that night. “Do you know how many people ended up being arrested that night?” She only knew about Shel and herself. No other women had been put in the cell with her, but it still seemed like a good idea to make sure Margo hadn’t been taken in after Sadie left, maybe taken to another jail, though that would be strange.

  “I believe it was just the two—the guy and gal who started it.”

  “I’m pretty sure only he started it,” Sadie said, unable to miss an opportunity to defend herself. “I mean, all she’d had to drink was a little Coke . . . I think.”

  “Not what I heard,” he said, shaking his head. “Customers were saying she was already hammered before she even walked through the door. Wasn’t here even ten minutes before she started yelling and screaming and carrying on. Tried to break a bottle over some guy’s head—that don’t work so good in real life. In the movies them bottles is made of sugar, or so’s I heard.”

  “Who told you that?” Sadie responded sharply, then cleared her throat. “I think the story must have gotten exaggerated.”

  “No, they really do use sugar glass in the movies,” he replied. “I seen a video of it on the computer. My granddaughter showed me.”

  “I meant that the man must be the person who started the fight. The woman was probably just defending herself or her friends.”