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

by Connie Shelton

  “We’ll be looking into it.”

  They’d circled the plaza now and Sam could see a half-dozen cars in front of her shop.

  “I better get back,” she said. “Hey, thanks for filling me in. I promise I’ll sleep better tonight and I won’t call you in the wee hours.”

  He pulled her close and stepped into a tiny alcove where two old buildings came together. The kiss was brief but nice.

  Sam walked back into the warm, sugary air inside Sweet’s Sweets, puzzling over the implications of the MI’s findings and the increasing complicatedness of Elena’s life. Sadly, she realized that she really didn’t know much about her new friend despite the fact that they had hit it off so quickly. Elena’s startling confession to an affair and a murder might well be just the tip of the iceberg.

  Those thoughts continued to plague her as she handed out frosted cookies to the costumed kids who bombarded the store.

  “Aren’t they cute?” Jen whispered as a tiny ballerina left with her older brother, a ferocious vampire.

  “No kidding—I remember being so excited over Halloween as a kid,” Sam said. “Look at this next group.”

  She handed cookies to a space alien, a teddy bear, a clown and a cowboy. As that bunch filed out a taller girl stepped in, replete with flowing black robes and a rubber witch face, including a green complexion and warts.

  “Ooh, you look pretty scary,” Sam teased.

  The witch came in close, holding her hand out for the cookie. Her husky voice came out in a ragged whisper. “The signs . . . will fall into place . . . Give them heed. The evil ones must pay but the seekers are in danger.”

  “What—?” Sam leaped back and stared, her heart pounding as the witch accepted the cookie.

  “Thank you,” said the little witch in a completely normal child’s voice.

  Sam opened her mouth, but the witch had spun around and disappeared out on the sidewalk. Her hands shook as she noticed a fresh group of kids waiting for their treats. She handed out cookies absently. Warnings from ten-year-olds?

  “Jen!” she called out the moment she had a break. “Did you notice that witch? The girl with the scary costume?”

  “Sorry, no, Sam. I’d stepped into the back and the phone rang. We just got another order.” She waved a printed form she’d carried from the kitchen. “Birthday cake for a ten year old, princess theme. I guess she’s a princess until the price goes over thirty-five dollars.”

  Sam shook off the eerie feeling and took the form Jen handed her.

  “One of the little princess’s friends had the Cinderella cake, wide skirt with lots of flouncing . . . I guess ours wants the same thing. By five o’clock, if possible.”

  “Take over Halloween detail?” Sam gave Jen the cookie tray and walked into the kitchen, her mind still reeling. The warning voice had sounded uncannily like Bertha Martinez’s.

  She stared at the princess order, pulled the cone-shaped pan from the shelf, and told Becky to mix up chocolate batter and get it in the oven. She had pink and lavender buttercream already made for the baby carriage cake and she could easily use part of it to do Cinderella’s ball gown at the same time.

  “Becky, while you’re at it, we better bake up some new fabulous thing for the Chocoholics group. If you have any brilliant ideas on that, I’ll let you run with it. I’m a little stumped for them this week.”

  Focus, Sam. You can’t take a kid’s prank seriously.

  “Sam? Earth to Sam . . . I was thinking—instead of cake,” Becky said, “what about a triple chocolate cheesecake? Dark chocolate crust, creamy chocolate filling, mocha drizzle over the top . . . I saw something similar in a magazine and I think I could tweak it a bit, add some special touches . . .”

  Sam forced her attention to focus. The Chocoholics. “Go for it. They’ll love it.”

  Sam left Becky to that creation while she turned her attention to locating a doll form that would sit atop the elaborately draped skirt-cake. She made sure to include a few full-blown roses around the base of the cake as she put the finishing touches on it—what kid didn’t love to pop a big old frosting rose into her mouth and swallow it down? And what mom didn’t regret all that sugar, when bedtime found the little tykes still bouncing off the walls? The image brightened her mood considerably.

  “What do you think, Sam?” Becky asked. “I practiced my roses earlier today. I think a big chocolate one in the middle of the cheesecake would kind of balance it nicely.”

  “Beautiful—you, kid, have a knack for this!”

  Becky beamed at the praise.

  “You can go ahead and deliver it to Ivan next door as soon as it’s done. Their meeting isn’t until tomorrow but I’m sure he would accept it today. Our fridge space is getting a little tight right now with the carriage, and I have to leave room for the Tafoya victory cake in there too.”

  The reminder of Elena caused Sam’s smile to fade as she watched Becky working at the oven. She would have to ask Beau how the renewed investigation was coming along.

  She got the chance to bring it up at dinner that night. She always loved driving out to Beau’s small ranch on the north side of Taos. The open fields, green during the summer, were now fallow and dry, the view quickly dimming now at dusk. The two horses grazed in the distance; Sam had noticed that they normally stayed nearer the barn in the early mornings, awaiting the feed Beau scooped out for them. She still didn’t make staying overnight at his house a regular routine, feeling a little strange about facing his mother clad only in one of Beau’s shirts. And she definitely wasn’t ready to call the relationship permanent enough to move some of her own clothes to his place.

  This evening, he’d promised the stew that he’d made yesterday, along with cornbread and honey from a neighbor’s hives. Anything she didn’t have to bake, herself, was always appealing to Sam.

  Ranger, the black Labrador retriever, and Nellie the border collie greeted Sam at the gates, trailing along behind her van as she negotiated the driveway up to Beau’s impressive log house. He waved from the kitchen window and she walked in.

  “Umm, smells good in here,” she said.

  He reached around her waist and pulled her close, savoring a long kiss. “Don’t worry, Mama and Kelly are in the den, finishing a heated game of gin rummy,” he whispered. She let herself enjoy the second kiss even more.

  Voices from the living room distracted them. Sam took the basket of cornbread and Beau lifted the heavy tureen of stew.

  At the dining table, Iris greeted Sam warmly and Kelly headed toward the kitchen to bring a green salad she’d made earlier. Sam noticed that Iris ate only a few bites of the hearty beef stew and her earlier vitality seemed to fade as full darkness set in. The elderly woman held out for a slice of apple pie but began yawning as the dishes were cleared.

  “I’ll get her set for the night,” Kelly offered.

  “Any news on the investigation?” Sam asked Beau, once they were alone in the kitchen again, loading the dishwasher.

  “I finally got the judge to issue the search warrant I need on the Tafoya home,” he said. “I’ll tell you, maybe it’s just my last name being so damned Anglo but it’s not easy to get around the politics in this county.”

  “In this entire state.”

  “True.” He handed her another dessert plate and she bent to put it in the dishwasher rack. “Anyway, after some real teeth-pulling I got the warrant signed. In the morning I think I’ll have enough officers to properly execute the thing. I need at least two besides myself, three would be better.

  “Can I help somehow?” she asked.

  “That probably wouldn’t be a good idea. The house is a crime scene now. We have to be careful with everything. I don’t know why I’m saying that. Tafoya has had time to remove anything he wanted to, after all.”

  “Yeah, but would he? As far as he knows, everyone has bought into the story that Elena’s death was a suicide, right?”

  “That’s all I can hope. We’ll get an early start—hop
e to catch him in that pre-dawn defenses-down time of the day. I heard that he was in Roswell today—speeches and all that. And we know he was busy with the memorial service yesterday. With any luck, he’ll be off guard.”

  “So he’s definitely a suspect then?”

  “No more than anyone else. I have to keep an open mind to everything I might find there. I just don’t think it’s really likely that he did it. Why would he risk his career right at this moment? He wants to be governor so bad he can taste it.”

  “Maybe he went into a rage. Struck out when he found out about the affair.”

  “But he was in Albuquerque that night. To sneak away and drive home and back is very premeditated.”

  Sam chewed her lower lip.

  “His wife’s affair would be a whole lot smaller scandal than her murder, wouldn’t it?”

  “And I guess her suicide almost works in his favor, right? Man hit by tragedy, the sympathy factor and all that?”

  “Probably. Who knows what goes through the minds of the voters this week?”

  Sam shook her head. She’d always wondered what went through the minds of the voters in this state—governors with horrible reputations for corruption, state legislators who had multiple drunk driving offenses, towns with local embezzlers and outright cheats—and they all managed to get reelected over and over again.

  “We’ll be looking for clues about Elena’s state of mind. Who she might have been in contact with during her last days, anyone who might have threatened her, someone angry enough that they would have killed her.” He looked at Sam. “She didn’t say anything to you along those lines?”

  “I’ve thought about that a lot,” she said. “And I can’t come up with anything specific. But I have to admit that I was so shocked by her confession to killing the man who’d followed her that I probably missed other things. My mind was racing all over the place, knowing that it was Fenton she was talking about. Remembering the book with the coded pages we’d found at his place, thinking about the tests you’d ordered on the blood-stained coat.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I really hope I didn’t miss something important.”

  “Hey, it’s fine. The conversation probably wouldn’t be admissible in court anyway. I’m just looking for someplace to start. I still have to come up with evidence.”

  Kelly peeked into the kitchen. “Hey you guys. I’m going to head home now. Iris is in bed, reading a large-print Agatha Christie. What time do you want me to come in tomorrow, Beau?”

  He glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to leave before dawn but I don’t see any reason for you to be here that early. Mama will sleep until eight or so. Just come at your regular time and make her breakfast like you usually do.”

  Kelly gave a little salute and left.

  “I better get out of here, too,” Sam said. “You need to make an early night of it.”

  He agreed reluctantly and saw her to the door. “I’d sure like more time with you. Maybe after the election my boss will actually put in some time in the office, and we can convince Kelly to stay a whole weekend so we get away somewhere.”

  “Sounds nice.” Sam kissed him and then pulled her fleece jacket tightly together in front against the bitter breeze that came down from Taos Mountain. He watched as she got into her van and gave a little wave as she drove out.

  Kelly sat in front of the TV with a reality show blasting away as the contestants traded foul-mouthed quips with each other. Sam made herself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table to total her day’s receipts and write up a bank deposit slip. She intended to browse her recipe files for new ideas but after nearly nodding off for the third time she gave up and headed for bed.

  Darkness enveloped Sam and a stiff breeze howled upward, coming off the river at the bottom of the Rio Grande Gorge, carrying a sickly smell. She looked down and saw that she was wearing a dark green trench coat. She struggled vainly to shrug it off but the garment felt sticky. Her hands came away coated in blood.

  Chapter 20

  Sam woke from the dream in a sweat, although her bedroom felt freezing cold when she flung off the covers. She padded to the hall and checked the thermostat. It seemed all right and a quick touch on the baseboard register told her the heater was running just fine. A full moon lit the living room and kitchen, revealing dark lumps of furniture in all the right places. Sam gave it a glance and returned to her bedroom. Now, the temperature seemed fine.

  On her dresser small dots of light winked in the darkness. Blue, red, green. They sparkled a few times and gradually blinked out. Odd. She’d never noticed the stones on the old wood box glowing, except for the times when Sam herself had picked up the object and held it. Had some unearthly spirit been in the room with her?

  Goose flesh prickled at her bare arms.

  The moon dimmed, throwing the room into complete darkness. A shiver coursed through her and she dashed for her bed. Silly, she told herself. A bad dream, a hot flash, a trick of the moonlight. It was cloudy outside. That accounted for the moon glowing brightly and then disappearing. There are no ghosts, no visiting spirits, no brujas. She repeated it twice more before she relaxed. Calm, perhaps, but not tranquil enough to fall asleep for a long time.

  Sam stood behind the counter when the first of the customers came in the next morning.

  “I don’t know what you put in those cookies yesterday,” said a young woman with a baby on her hip.

  “What?”

  “My five-year-old, Damon. I tell you, he was bouncing off the walls after school. All that Halloween candy. I didn’t want him to have more sweets but he got his cookie here and had half of it eaten before I could jump on him.”

  Sam held her breath. Oh, shit, what kind of lawsuit was coming her way?

  “He calmed right down. At dinner he ate all his veggies, went to bed without a fight . . . So could I get a dozen more of those cookies?”

  Sam gave a nervous chuckle. “I really didn’t do anything special with them.”

  “I don’t care. Whatever it was, it worked a miracle.” The woman pulled out her wallet and pointed to the display.

  “I only have three left.”

  “That’s fine—I’ll take them!”

  Sam bagged the cookies and told the woman they were complimentary. The lady smiled widely and turned toward the door.

  “I’ll definitely be back!” she said.

  After the fourth parent who commented on remarkable changes in their kids behavior, Sam called a staff meeting. Becky and Jen looked at their boss with wide eyes.

  “Did either of you put anything—”

  “Sam, no!” Becky protested vehemently. “I have kids. I would never—”

  Sam held up her hands. “I’m not accusing. I just can’t figure it out.”

  “We used all our standard recipes,” Becky said. “Flour, sugar, butter . . . there was not one unusual ingredient in those cookies.”

  “And the food coloring came from a bottle we’ve used before,” Sam mused, remembering that she’d tinted the frosting herself.

  “I’m baffled,” Jen said. “But, hey, maybe it was something else. Maybe the kids just had a fun day at school.”

  Sam didn’t believe for a second that a school Halloween party explained a streak of sudden good behavior, but she wasn’t about to voice her real suspicions. The mystical happenings that had surrounded some of her caretaking jobs now seemed to be spilling over into the bakery.

  She let the girls know she wasn’t upset with them and sent them back to their work. The Halloween cookies were gone now and there was nothing she could do to change the facts. She would distract herself by trying a new recipe.

  She had come up with a pumpkin cake recipe and she would use a cream cheese filling and a glossy chocolate ganache icing. Today, she wanted to see how her regular customers liked it. Meanwhile, the ovens were full of cupcakes and muffins and cheesecakes. She chafed at having to wait for oven space. She really needed to work on test projects at home, in the evenin
gs. The repairman was supposed to come this afternoon and Sam hoped that this time he really would show up.

  The entire time she was trying to concentrate on accurate measurements and proper pan size, her mind echoed the warning from yesterday. The mask of the child-witch kept intruding into her thoughts. The seekers are in danger. That might refer to herself, but it surely meant Beau.

  He was out at Tafoya’s house today with his warrant, searching for the clues that would tell him what happened. Now that the medical examiner had found evidence that Elena’s scarf had not killed her, Beau was intent on finding out who and what did. Some other person and some other device committed that crime. Not suicide. Murder.

  She finally got the pumpkin layers into the oven, then managed to botch the ganache. Too distracted, she set the baked layers in the fridge and vowed to get back to it later. She dialed Beau’s cell number.

  “Hey there,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Oh ,a pint-sized witch spooked me yesterday and now I’m worrying that you’re in danger, so much so that I can’t even blend up a decent frosting. “Just thought I’d check and see how the search was going.”

  “Interesting . . .”

  “Someone else is listening?”

  “Exactly.”

  “How about if I meet you later? I just . . . it sounds silly, I know, but I need to know that you’re safe.”

  “So far, so good,” he said cheerfully. “I should be back in my office in another hour or so. I’m hoping to get out of there by five. No guarantees, though.”

  “I know you can’t really talk. I’ll catch up with you at some point. Maybe you can give me a call when you’re free?”

  He mumbled a half response, obviously distracted by someone else who was talking to him. They barely said goodbye before the line went dead.