Sweet's Sweets: The Second Samantha Sweet Mystery ssm-2

by Connie Shelton

  “Whatever you said to him certainly got his attention,” said a voice behind Sam.

  She started. When she turned, she saw a dark page haircut and billowing dark green wool coat. The young woman was standing at the curb, about twenty feet away, her hand on the handle of a blue sedan.

  Sam stepped toward her. “I’ve seen you around. Who are you?”

  The woman reached into a pocket of the coat and pulled out a business card. “Sandy Greene. Santa Fe Times.”

  Sam’s eyes squinted as she stared at the card. “Why has a Santa Fe newspaper sent a reporter here to Taos?”

  “Shouldn’t that be pretty obvious? It’s an election year. We cover all the races in the northern part of the state.” She smiled prettily. “Well, I’m off to get a few more pictures.” She patted the side of a camera case that hung from a shoulder strap.

  Sandy Greene got into her car and Sam watched her drive away.

  Itching to fill Beau in on her new findings, Sam dialed his cell as she walked slowly back to the bakery. She fumed when it went to voice mail but realized that his day was undoubtedly running on task overload. She left a message: “Gotta talk to you. Call me when you get a minute.”

  Sweet’s Sweets was bustling with after-lunch customers wanting cake or pie to satisfy their need for sugar and boost them into their afternoon work world. Sam joined Jen behind the counter, boxing up chocolate nut drop cookies, macadamia nut wafers, amaretto cheesecake, and the new pumpkin spice cake with the ganache icing which they’d had trouble keeping in stock ever since they introduced it.

  By five o’clock Sam felt dead on her feet and Jen remembered that she’d never eaten any lunch.

  “You go,” Sam told her. “Get something to eat and rest up. I’ll get the kitchen in order and head out of here shortly, myself.”

  She locked the front door behind her assistant and turned on the night lights. Daylight was fading quickly by the time Sam walked out and got in her van. A voicemail symbol showed on the front of her cell, obviously something that had come in while she was buzzing around the bakery at such a pace that she’d never noticed it. Beau. She dialed him back.

  “Hey,” he said. “I just got my rookie back on the road to Albuquerque. Your message sounded kind of urgent. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. I got so busy at the shop today that I almost forgot I’d called you.” She filled him in on the fact that she’d learned the name of Carlos Tafoya’s lover from all those years ago, and the name of his illegitimate son. “Kevin Calendar is working for the campaign. I’ve seen him around several times and I’m not sure why I never noticed the resemblance to his father.”

  “But then, why would you?” he said. “Why would anyone? I’m guessing the son never lived around here until recently.”

  “That’s what I’m interested in knowing, too. When did he show up on the scene in Taos? And is his mother also here? Maybe Elena’s fears were justified. Maybe part of the reason Carlos had begun to treat her so badly was because his old lover was back.”

  “It certainly bears asking him some more questions, I’d say. Not to mention that I’d like to get Kevin’s DNA and see what he has to say about it showing up on the bootlace that killed Elena, assuming it’s a match.”

  “Questioning Carlos is going to get nearly impossible, don’t you think? I had the radio on in the kitchen awhile ago and the exit polls are making it sound like he’s pretty sure to go to Santa Fe. Once he’s sworn in as governor he’ll find ways to make himself legally bulletproof, won’t he?”

  “Seems to be that way with these guys, doesn’t it?”

  “I have an idea how you could get to him right away. I happen to have a personal invitation from the candidate himself to attend his victory party tonight. He’s at the Arroyo Grande Lodge.”

  “I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes,” Beau said, clicking off the call before Sam had a chance to utter another word.

  She drove like a bat, skidding the van to a stop in her driveway and dashing into the house, hitting her closet with a vengeance to find something to wear to a party. She settled on black slacks—a dressier pair than her normal work pants—and a sequined top. As she sat at her dresser, rummaging through her jewelry box for a fancier pair of earrings, she took a few seconds to let the wooden box send a nudge of additional energy her way. By the time Beau arrived, still in uniform, she’d run a brush through her hair and managed to slap on a little blusher.

  “Hey, you sure look delectable,” he said, giving her a smile that made her wish they were just staying in, alone and undisturbed by murders and such.

  “Probably too much, huh. I just thought they might not let me in the door in a batter-stained baker’s jacket.”

  “I like it.” He pulled her close for a kiss. “Well, let’s go interview a killer.”

  The Arroyo Grande Lodge’s parking lot was filling quickly. The polls would be closed in another thirty minutes and the excitement was evident in people’s posture as Sam watched them rushing toward the lobby entrance.

  Beau, in his cruiser, ignored the whole protocol of parking and pulled up to the curb out front. While the crowd flowed down a central corridor toward the ballroom, Beau and Sam approached the front desk. He flashed his badge and said that he needed Carlos Tafoya’s room number.

  The young clerk, clearly briefed to never give out a guest’s information, much less that of the future governor, looked bewildered at the sight of the badge.

  “Please get your supervisor,” Beau requested, with just the right amount of charm.

  A little back and forth, and the manager passed a small slip of paper across the desk. They took the elevator, even though there were only three floors in the hotel. Beau tapped gently at the door of Suite A and it was opened almost immediately by none other than Kevin Calendar. The young man looked at Sam, trying to place her. Beau stepped forward, not giving him the opportunity to deny them entry.

  The suite, probably the hotel’s largest, featured a spacious living room decorated in traditional Mexican furniture and brightly patterned Indian rugs. A large flat-screen TV set was tuned to a news channel, where the anchors were making small talk until actual precincts could begin sending their results. Doors, presumably leading to bedrooms, stood closed on either side of the living area.

  Carlos Tafoya sat on a leather sofa beside a thin woman with chin-length yellow hair. She stared at Beau’s uniform, clearly concerned about why the law might be showing up. Tafoya jumped to his feet and started toward Beau.

  “Is there anyone else in the suite?” Beau asked, his right hand hovering near his handgun.

  “No!” said Carlos.

  Beau peeked quickly into each of the bedrooms and then lowered his hand.

  When Kevin circled to stand behind the sofa where the other two had been seated, Sam immediately noticed his resemblance to both parents. With his mother’s fair coloring and his father’s dark eyes and full lips, there was no denying the origin of his genetics.

  “This is really cozy, but sort of bad form, don’t you think?” said Sam. “Your wife died less than a week ago.”

  Jean Calendar flinched, her gaze flicking warily toward Carlos. Kevin glanced toward the door but Sam and Beau stood between him and the escape route.

  “What do you want?” Carlos demanded.

  “I need to ask your son a few questions,” Beau said. “And I’ll need a sample of his DNA.” He pulled one of those little self-contained swab kits from his pocket.

  Carlos looked over at Kevin. “He should have a lawyer.” Sam noticed that Tafoya didn’t bother to deny the statement about Kevin being his son.

  “He’s not a minor, so he gets to make that decision himself. You’re not under arrest,” Beau said to Kevin. “I can do this quickly, right here, or we can take it downtown.” He met the politician’s gaze with a level stare.

  Kevin shifted from one foot to the other. “What’s this about?” He tried to ask it with a show of bravado but everyone noticed th
at his voice was pretty shaky.

  “We’ve found familial DNA markers on a piece of evidence. We’re simply taking samples to eliminate non-suspects.” The way he phrased it seemed to make Carlos relax a bit. He gave his son a nod and Kevin opened his mouth so Beau could swab it. He clipped the container shut and put it in his pocket.

  “Would you rather answer my questions privately?” he asked Kevin, giving a nod toward one of the closed doors.

  “He can speak in front of us,” Carlos said. Jean had not uttered a sound so far, Sam noticed. Kevin nodded agreement.

  Convenient, she thought, that Kevin wouldn’t be able to say anything that his influential father wouldn’t know about.

  “Okay then,” Beau said. “Shall we sit down?” He ushered Kevin toward the other end of the large room, to a dining table of heavy, carved pine. Pulling out one of the four chairs he didn’t give the dark-suited young man much choice but to sit down. Carlos began pacing the floor, glancing now and then at the TV set which was muted now. Jean had begun to chew at her nails, Sam noticed as she parked herself in a side chair near a large armoire-bar setup.

  “Now, Kevin, I need to ask you where you were a week ago Saturday, the night Elena Tafoya died.”

  Kevin stared at the grain on the wooden table. “Uh, I think I was out with friends.”

  “I’ll need their names.” Beau pulled out a small notebook and pen, poised to write.

  “Uh, I really don’t remember who all was there.”

  “Just a name or two?” Silence. “Okay, then, where did you go? A bar, restaurant?”

  “A restaurant. I don’t remember which one.” As Sam watched, a dark blue haze formed around Kevin’s face.

  “You know for sure that you went out that night, but you don’t remember anyone you were with or where you went?” Beau laid the notebook on the table and tapped his pen against it.

  “No! I don’t!” Kevin’s voice rose in agitation. The blue haze became murky, then began to turn red. “I don’t have to explain anything to you! And I don’t give a shit what you think!”

  His eyes were wild now, as he stared at the faces around the room.

  His mother bit furiously at her thumbnail, tears forming in her eyes. She glanced up at Carlos—quick, nervous little pointed looks—but he didn’t notice.

  The politician’s attention darted between the numbers rolling along at the bottom of the television screen and the situation with Kevin.

  “I am not a bad person!” Kevin screamed. He jumped up, sending his chair flying.

  Beau was on his feet, almost in a blur, facing down his suspect with a firm stance. But Kevin was quick, too. He bolted toward his father.

  “You promised! You said we would be a family. You and me and Mom, and we were going to move to Santa Fe—together. But you had her! Nothing was going to work right as long as she was around.”

  “Kevin, I—” Carlos stepped forward, reaching toward his son.

  Kevin shook him off, continuing his rant. “You told me you were filing for divorce. You said you had some kind of evidence on your wife and that she would let you go without a fight. But when I got there that night, she was there, all cozy and comfy in her robe. She wasn’t moving out—she wasn’t leaving you! You liar!”

  “You went to their house that night?” Beau asked. His stance was alert as he watched Kevin shaking his fists at Carlos.

  Spittle formed on his lips as he shouted. “I went to get some papers for the campaign. She wasn’t even supposed to be there. She’d been at that bakery thing, that party. Then I thought she would go to somewhere . . . wherever she was supposed to be living because you were divorcing her. But she was there!” His skin had turned the same muddy red as the aura Sam had seen when his mood began to turn.

  “Kevin, what did you do?” Beau’s voice was icy calm.

  The young man turned on him, staring with crazed eyes. “She said she would get the campaign papers, and then she went into the study. I saw some hiking boots near the front door . . .”

  Sam saw the whole ugly picture unfolding. The bootlace around Elena’s neck as she bent over a desk, her body being dragged into the bedroom, her lovely cashmere scarf around her neck and then draped over a heavy beam at the ceiling.

  Kevin suddenly turned his attention on Sam. “How do you know that?” he hissed.

  Had she spoken aloud? She glanced at Beau and saw that he seemed just as bewildered by the comment as she.

  Movement caught her attention and she turned just in time to see Kevin lunge at her.

  Chapter 25

  In a flash, Beau leapt across the open space and threw an arm around Kevin’s neck. Sam watched, amazed, as he did some kind of kick that took Kevin’s legs out from under him. Pinned to the floor, Kevin flailed until Beau got handcuffs on him. Without a glance at anyone else in the room, Beau keyed his shoulder mike and called for backup.

  Keeping a knee in the middle of Kevin’s back, Beau looked up at Sam. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice came out a little on the shaky side, but Kevin hadn’t actually touched her.

  Beau kept an eye on Carlos, watchful in case the older man should attempt to free his son, but the politician seemed to be more concerned with himself.

  “I didn’t know anything about any of this,” he swore to Beau.

  Jean was openly crying, sobbing into her hands, her body a limp blubbering mass on the sofa.

  Carlos turned to face his son. “I can’t believe—” he stammered. “Kevin? Why would you— Elena?”

  Beau recited Kevin his rights, finally eliciting agreement that the young man understood what he was being told, even as he continued to spew invectives at both Beau and Carlos.

  Sam stood with her back to the wall, stunned at the show going on before her. Kevin’s red aura was fading to a dull burnt orange now; Jean was surrounded by a white fog; Carlos’s was a bright lemon yellow. She didn’t know what any of it meant and was glad when a deputy arrived to take Kevin away. Jean followed quietly, hardly speaking to Carlos, murmuring something about being with her son.

  Carlos continued to plead ignorance of the whole thing, even as he watched his son being hauled away in handcuffs and his former lover nearly becoming a zombie in her own confusion. He poured himself a half-glass of scotch at the bar and stood at the window, gazing down at the parking lot as he downed it in three gulps.

  Beau pulled Sam aside. “I’ll be tied up with the paperwork for awhile . . . He glanced at Carlos on the other side of the room.

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Sam said. “This hotel, the victory party downstairs . . . it’s exactly where he wants to be right now. I’ll call down to the ballroom and get some more of his entourage to come up. We’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “I wonder how many other people know anything at all about what happened,” he said as he left.

  Indeed, Sam thought, looking toward the politician who was now sitting on the sofa in front of the television set, cupping a fresh glass of scotch in both hands.

  “Look at those numbers,” he said, smiling widely, looking around the room as if he were only now realizing that everyone else had left.

  Before his little group gets here, Sam thought, maybe I can get some more information out of him.

  “Carlos,” she said gently, waiting for a commercial break on the TV. “Kevin said that you’d promised that you and he and Jean would be a family. I guess that was pretty important to him.”

  He shrugged. “Kids need to hear certain things. It’s what I do, Sam. I tell people what they want to hear. I had no idea Kevin would ever take his desire that far.”

  Voices sounded at the door just then and Sam opened it.

  An hour later, with the election a certainty. Tafoya’s campaign manager suggested that it was time for him to go down to the ballroom and give his speech. Sam stayed behind in the suite as the rest of them left. She needed a few minutes of silence before being overtaken by the tidal wave of excitement downstairs.
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  A bright yellow banner across the television screen caught her attention and she un-muted the sound.

  “Shocking news from Taos County this evening . . .” The newscaster’s voice held a somber tone as the pictures began to flash on screen. Beau leading Kevin Calendar out of the hotel in handcuffs. How had the media gotten hold of this so quickly? She watched until the story had run out of facts and the journalist began to repeat himself. So far, all they had for sure was that a young volunteer in the Tafoya campaign had been arrested.

  The picture switched again and the voiceover promised live coverage of the governor-elect’s speech, right after the break.

  Sam turned it off and left the suite.

  In the ballroom the mood was frenetic. A band played rock music with a heavy beat and the mesmerized crowd were waving their arms overhead, swaying and chanting to the tempo. She stood to the side, near one of the massive carved doors.

  From the front of the room, a cheer went up, moving through the huge ballroom like a tsunami. Carlos Tafoya stepped from behind a curtain, waving widely and smiling his familiar grin. He took the podium and let the cheers go on for a full three minutes.

  When he finally raised his hands, signaling for silence, Sam was likely the only one in the room who noticed the faint whiteness around his mouth, the haunted look in his eyes. If anyone else noticed it was undoubtedly, after all, because the man had just lost his loving wife this past week, the woman with whom he’d planned to share this moment.

  “Good evening, New Mexico!” Carlos shouted, and the speech was on.

  Sam watched, amazed that he pulled it off. His wife dead, his son going away in handcuffs less than an hour ago, and himself in danger of being pulled into the whole mess. Somehow, she knew the man before this room tonight would come away unscathed, although his unsuspecting son might very well never be free again. A plea bargain—Kevin’s life for an admission of manslaughter—it wouldn’t be the first time something like had happened in northern New Mexico.