Sweet's Sweets: The Second Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  Jerking open the first of the kitchen drawers she rummaged through mismatched flatware and utensils. The next contained two rolls of plastic wrap and a wadded paper napkin and seventeen twist ties. Sam berated herself for actually counting them. The third drawer was the junk drawer.

  She scooped the contents onto the countertop and began to poke around. A scrap of paper, business card, old mail . . . she hoped to come up with something that might provide a connection to wherever the Adams’s went. Delbert Crow had told her that Cheryl Adams skipped around a lot. But the drawer yielded nothing.

  Undeterred, Sam closed that one and started on another promising drawer, crammed full. Her mother used to comment on her tenacity—picking at a thread, she called it. As in, “Samantha, set that problem aside—you’re always pickin’ at a thread.”

  But this drawer, too, contained only kitchen stuff, the detritus of old bottle caps and plastic devices that only the inventor of such could name—was it an egg separator or a measuring spoon? No one seemed to ever go through these little rat-stashes and throw out any of it.

  Giving up on the kitchen, Sam went into the master bedroom where a dresser showed promise. The top two drawers were empty—at least the lady had taken her necessaries along with her. The next drawer contained a collection of t-shirts and pullover tops, most of which were worn so threadbare it was easy to see why they’d not made Cheryl’s cut in the choosing up of which clothes to take with her. Sam rummaged through them but found nothing other than the battered clothing.

  She hit the jackpot with the bottom drawer, apparently the place of Cheryl’s filing system, such as it was. A couple of envelopes with Final Notice stamped in red lay on top of the hodgepodge. Both were still sealed, one from the electric co-op and the other from the mortgage company. Beneath those were other notices from the same, each with increasingly dire warnings about how they better get some money, and soon. Obviously, Cheryl Adams had gotten her fill of being chewed out in writing and simply chose to ignore everything after a certain point. Sam stacked the pages neatly and set them aside.

  Below the nasty past-due notices were a collection of pay stubs, which Sam gathered, noting that the most recent was dated back in June. If Adams had been out of work that long, it certainly explained why she couldn’t pay her bills and why she felt compelled to walk out on her mortgage.

  The rest of the drawer’s contents consisted of important things like a two-year-old TV Guide and four restaurant takeout menus from Seattle along with random bits of memorabilia—a small diary like an adolescent might keep, birthday cards, news clippings, a Christmas ornament, a snowflake cut from paper and sprinkled with glitter and a blue baby bootie. Surprised that Adams hadn’t taken those things, Sam pushed the little items to one corner and picked up the diary.

  As she might have guessed, the early pages of the book were filled with the looping handwriting of a teen and the entries consisted of things like “School was a drag today” and “Had a huge fight with Sandy. I hate her!!!” After twenty pages or so, the rest were blank. As Sam started to drop the book back into the drawer a small bit of newspaper slipped out of the back of it. She picked it up.

  A marriage notice: Cheryl Tercel wed to Dan Adams. No photo or real write-up, just the simple announcement that probably came from the county records of some unnamed place.

  Sam picked up the other two clippings that had been among the assortment of papers. One was an article about Hudson County Rodeo and the naming of that year’s queen and princesses. One of the princesses in the court was a Sally Tercel. There was no Hudson County in New Mexico, so this came from somewhere else. The other clipping also contained the name Tercel in a story about a man killed in a car accident, just outside a town called Andersonville. Sam had no idea where any of these places were but maybe Beau could use the information to track down the Tercel family and somehow find out Cheryl’s current location. She added the newspaper bits to the stack with the past due bills and closed the drawer on the rest of the clutter.

  Another thirty minutes poking about the many cubbyholes in the house but nowhere did Sam come across the name Bram Fenton nor any mention of a private investigator, outside of one Sue Grafton novel, coated in dust, under a living room end table.

  Gathering the small stack of envelopes and clippings she’d found in the bedroom, Sam locked the place up again and headed out to her truck. She speed-dialed Beau’s cell phone and filled him in on the findings at the house.

  “I can bring you the papers I collected, if you like.”

  “Any chance I could take you to dinner tonight?”

  The hope in his voice tore at her. She’d certainly been the neglectful one in the relationship in recent weeks. But exhaustion was quickly overtaking her.

  “I’ve got an early morning tomorrow. First day for Sweet’s Sweets and all that.”

  “How about I meet you at Michael’s Kitchen in fifteen minutes? Mama’s had her dinner already and she’ll be perfectly happy in front of the TV for an hour or so. You bring the papers and we’ll call it an early dinner.”

  An image of the stuffed sopapillas at Michael’s came into her head and she could almost smell the green chile. Practically salivating, she agreed. Maybe it’s just what I need, she thought as she started her truck.

  When Beau walked into the restaurant, two minutes behind her, she knew she’d made the right decision. He lit up when he saw her. When the model-handsome deputy sheriff first showed an interest in Sam she couldn’t understand the attraction on his part. Any woman under eighty would be drawn in by the ocean-blue eyes, the dark hair with touches of gray at the temples and the smile that tilted upward at one side. It had taken some sweet Southern talk for him to convince her that she—chubby, graying, and five years older than he—was attractive to him. Since they’d begun dating early this autumn she’d finally begun to believe his sincerity.

  “Hey there,” he whispered as he leaned close to give her a kiss beside her left ear. He took a seat across from her and reached over to take her hand. “I’ve missed you.”

  “We just had dinner the other night,” she reminded.

  “It’s not the dining room where I’m missing you.” His eyebrows wiggled.

  A young Hispanic waitress appeared and they placed orders without having to look at the menus.

  “Busy week,” Sam said as the girl walked away. “But I can’t believe how much we’ve gotten done.” She told him how many friends had shown up this morning and how quickly the shop was shaping up.

  “How is this being a retail baker going to affect your schedule?”

  “Let’s just say that early dinners may become a way of life for awhile. I’ve hired an assistant who will work the sales counter, but most of the baking has to happen early in the mornings. If things go well, I’ll hire another baker—soon, I hope—and then I won’t have to put in the really early hours.”

  He squeezed her hand again and let go as the waitress brought their glasses of iced tea.

  “Oh, before I forget . . .” Sam rummaged in her pack and brought out the banded stack of papers she’d taken from Cheryl Adams’s house. “I don’t know if these small clues will help.”

  “Anything’s better than nothing,” he said. “It could put us that much closer to finding her.”

  Their plates arrived and a few minutes of silence passed as they cut into the steaming mixture of sopapilla, meat, beans, cheese and chile.

  “How did anyone figure out that frying a little square of bread could turn out so delicious?” Sam mumbled through a bite.

  Beau’s eyes actually rolled upward as he savored the heady blend of flavors.

  “I have to stop to breathe,” Sam said, setting her fork down after a few minutes.

  “I stopped by the office and read Fenton Bram’s autopsy report.” Beau had paused to take another sip of his tea. “The fatal wound wasn’t caused by his fall from the bridge. He had a nasty gash on the side of his neck that hit the carotid artery. He was bleeding
heavily before he ever made the leap.”

  “How could he . . .?”

  “Get out to the middle of the bridge and jump off, when he was probably getting weaker by the second?”

  She nodded.

  “No idea. But the mystery gets deeper. I had them compare DNA in that trench coat with the vic’s DNA. It’s a match. So, a guy is bleeding out, but his coat manages to get hung up in a closet on the south side of town, while he’s standing on the gorge bridge on the northwest side of town.”

  “He was wearing the coat when he got this fatal cut?”

  “Almost certainly. It’s a lot of blood. But he didn’t have the coat on when he hit the bottom of the gorge. Obviously.”

  “So there was someone else with him? Who?”

  “That, darlin, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question.”

  Chapter 10

  Sam took up her fork again and picked at her food. Suddenly, her appetite seemed to have waned.

  “I went through the Adams house pretty thoroughly this afternoon. Didn’t find anything with Bram Fenton’s name on it, no papers referring to an investigator or a legal case or anything. How would his coat end up at her house if they had no ties whatsoever?”

  “We don’t know that they didn’t,” Beau said. His own appetite seemed fine, Sam noticed. He was more than halfway through his meal. “They might have been friends or one-time neighbors . . . people can know each other in the most obscure ways.”

  She gave that some thought. “Lovers, maybe? Remember, there were other items of male clothing in the house too.”

  “And love relationships gone bad are always good motive for murder.”

  “True.” Thinking of the many ways in which people who profess to love each other end up doing harm, she wondered if that was just one more reason she’d avoided falling in love, all these years.

  Beau glanced at his watch. “Well, my unofficial dinner break has to come to an end. I don’t dare take the chance that Mama would try to get out of her wheelchair alone.”

  “Me too. I’ve got a kitchen full of baked goods that have to be packed up and ready to arrive at the shop by six in the morning. And I have a feeling that our first day will reveal all the glitches and little forgotten items.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Come by for a cup of our signature coffee in the morning and have a pastry. It’ll look good to have some cars out front.”

  “Even if it’s a sheriff’s department cruiser?”

  “I think we can handle that.” In a town this size it had to be pretty common news that the baker was dating the deputy sheriff. And whoever didn’t know about it already would be in on the secret after the bakery had been open a week.

  They walked out to the parking lot together and indulged in kisses that became longer and more intense by the minute. Just short of a full make-out session, and saying to hell with their other responsibilities, they came up for air.

  “I really better be getting home,” Sam said.

  “Maybe I could call you later? At this point even phone sex probably wouldn’t be half bad.”

  She laughed and ran her hands down his chest. “Nope. I’m going to be sound asleep by the time it’s dark.”

  Beau’s Explorer turned left and Sam watched him round the curve in the road in her rearview mirror. Darnit. He’d stirred up her hormones again.

  A five o’clock alarm is an awful thing. Sam sat up in the dark and hit the button, going against every instinct in her body. What on earth was she thinking, getting into a business that required such ungodly hours?

  Her feet dragged her toward the bathroom where she took the chilliest shower she could tolerate and then swished her mouth with the strongest mouthwash in the house. If that didn’t wake her up she didn’t know what would.

  She began toting boxes of cookies and cheesecakes out to the van while coffee brewed. The new, fancy coffee machine at the bakery had not even been put through a trial run yet but she needed her vital first caffeine of the day, right now.

  With the van loaded and a travel mug filled with French roast, Sam drove the few blocks and parked her traveling billboard right in front of the shop. Until her regular signage was installed this was the best way to attract attention. Within five minutes Jennifer arrived and the two women began carrying everything inside.

  “Look in the back room,” Sam said as she began arranging pastries onto trays on the wire shelves inside her display cases. “I have some generic Grand Opening banners that we can put in the windows to replace those paper ones that say Coming Soon.”

  Jen was back in two minutes and began switching the signs. Sam was glad to see her new assistant take the initiative, without further instruction. She started the coffee maker and set up more filters and beans for subsequent batches. Meanwhile, Sam cut a couple of slices of each cheesecake flavor into small sample-sized pieces and arranged them on a plate near the register. At seven, sharp, they were ready to turn on all the lights and open the doors.

  Jen had no sooner hit the light switch than a woman appeared at the door. “Are you open for business yet?” she asked.

  Sam and Jen exchanged smiles. “Absolutely!”

  The lady came in and immediately asked for some of that heavenly coffee that she said she could smell from the street. While she browsed the muffins, Sam noticed that Beau had pulled up out front in his Department SUV. The woman took her coffee and a cranberry muffin to one of the tables, pulling out the morning newspaper and settling in.

  Beau gave Sam a discreet thumbs-up when he saw that he wasn’t the first customer. He made a lot of noise over the cheesecakes, and another customer who’d just stepped inside immediately ordered a slice of each flavor, to go. While Jen boxed them up, Sam signaled Beau to step into the kitchen.

  “So far, so good,” he said.

  “Exciting! I hope it keeps up like this for awhile. Jen’s doing a great job at handling the counter and I need to start on the plans for the gala opening party on Saturday. You’ll be here?”

  He nodded and reached out to squeeze her hand.

  “And bring Iris.”

  “Absolutely. She’s your biggest cookie fan out there.”

  “Hang around awhile if you’d like,” she said. “Get some coffee—”

  “I wish I could stay awhile, but duty calls.”

  “Hey, take a box of those mini-muffins for the office. My treat. Just tell everyone where you got them.”

  “Deal.”

  They walked back into the shop and Sam loaded a box with muffins and cookies. Cheapest form of advertising, she thought, remembering that she still needed to give the ad rep at the radio station a call today. By the time Beau left, six more customers had come and gone, according to Jen. A muffin here, a croissant there—it was beginning to add up.

  At nine, when Mysterious Happenings opened, Sam had made up a plate of cookie samples and taken them over to Ivan to hand out to his customers throughout the day. And she took another plate to Riki at Puppy Chic. “Just tell everyone where you got them,” she repeated to each of them.

  By midmorning things settled a little out front and Sam went into the back room to make some follow-up calls. First to the fixture company where the man answering the phone assured her that his crew was on the way to Taos and should be arriving anytime. Fuming a little, Sam had no choice but to hope that was true. Her next call was to the radio station’s ad representative. He played the first take of her ad over the phone and she was pleased with the way it sounded. One small change of wording and she okayed it to begin running on Thursday before the Saturday gala.

  She was jotting down names for a guest list when she heard a large truck drive up behind the building. At last!

  Two hours and a few swear words later, after dealing with all the joys of installing modern appliances in an older building, the delivery men left. Now it was up to Darryl and his crew to plumb the water lines for the sinks and hook up the existing gas lines to the ovens. Technical
ly, a town inspector had to check the work and sign off on everything before she could prepare food here, and Sam was beginning to fret over that since the death of her oven at home, but Darryl came to the rescue.

  In true New Mexico tradition, the burly contractor phoned the uncle of a brother-in-law of one of his crew, who just happened to be the inspector they needed. Sam left the room, nearly in despair, when she overheard the part about the guy’s schedule being backed up for a minimum of two weeks. She absolutely could not deal with this!

  She speed-walked around the block, letting the chill October air blast through her thin shirt, her reward for stomping out without remembering her jacket. The frigid air cleared her head enough to remind her that she better pursue repairs to her home oven.

  When she got back to the shop, hands tingling and lips nearly blue, Darryl informed her that the inspector would be there in thirty minutes.

  “Don’t ask,” he said.

  She closed her gaping mouth and just let him proceed to direct his guys in the final few steps to complete the installation. A call to the appliance repair shop netted a vague promise that someone could probably get out to her house by the end of the week.

  Don’t stress over things you can’t change, she muttered to herself.

  “What?” Jen called from the front of the bakery.

  Sam found her assistant wiping the tables with disinfectant spray, taking advantage of a small lull in the traffic.

  “Nothing,” Sam said, placing an arm around Jen’s shoulders. “Thanks so much. You’ve been a real godsend to me today.”