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

by Connie Shelton

  “So, does that give you enough evidence to question him?”

  “Probably. But there’s no way Padilla is going to let me do that right now. Election’s tomorrow. If Tafoya loses, it’ll be no problem. I’m sure we can bring him in and there would hardly be a flicker of interest. If he wins, that’s going to be a whole other story. The new governor . . . a murder investigation . . . hell, at this point Padilla isn’t even letting us release the news that Elena was murdered. He’s letting the press and the rest of the world believe the original suicide story.”

  Sam set her pack on the kitchen table and shrugged out of her jacket, maneuvering the cell phone from one ear to the other.

  “Beau, there’s something else I forgot to tell you earlier.” While she filled the tea kettle, one handed, she told him about the phantom man she’d seen in the Adams house that morning. Bless him, he didn’t laugh.

  “You said he was standing in front of the closet in the master bedroom?”

  “I heard the scrape of hangers against the rod. That’s what made me look into the room in the first place.”

  She could hear him take a deep breath and imagined that he was wrestling his unfailing common sense against the fact that he knew from the past that she sometimes saw things other people couldn’t see.

  “And he just vanished, right before your eyes?”

  “I didn’t believe it either. I rechecked the whole house.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “No. I only saw him from the back. He was about my height, kind of pudgy, wearing dark clothing and some kind of cap. Just when he started to turn toward me is when he disappeared.”

  Again, a long pause. “I’m not quite sure what to do with this information, Sam. I can’t very well put a bunch of people in a lineup based on this, can I?”

  She laughed. “I guess not.”

  “At least you still have your sense of humor about it.”

  “At least you’re not calling me a nutcase or sending the psych ward folks after me. Are you?”

  This time he laughed. Turning serious again, he said, “I just wish we had some idea how the evidence—the bootlace, the journal, the bloody coat—ties together.”

  “And how to build the case against Carlos Tafoya.”

  “As much as I think that’s how it’s going to go, remember, Sam, we can’t pick our suspect and then make the evidence fit.”

  “But who else could it be?”

  “Elena admitted to you that she’d had an affair. What about the lover? A jealous rage because she wouldn’t leave Carlos? We still don’t know who this mysterious D is. We just don’t have a lot to go on.”

  Sam pondered that after Beau hung up. Clearly, no matter how closely he might be tied to Elena’s or the private investigator’s deaths, making a strong case against the leading candidate for governor wasn’t going to be easy.

  Chapter 23

  Kelly brought dinner home that night, leftover stew from Beau’s house. “They’d eaten it three nights in a row over there,” she explained. “Iris practically begged me to take the rest of it away.”

  Sam checked her email and found two new bakery orders from the website that Kelly had designed for Sweet’s Sweets. She sent them to the printer queue and the little machine was chugging away when her phone rang again.

  “Sam, please take me seriously on this,” Beau said. His earlier playful tone was completely gone. “I know I should not be giving you inside information, but someone has to know and impartial people in this department are scarcer than hen’s teeth, as I discovered when I tossed Tafoya’s name into the suspect pool today. Looks like everyone in the this office is planning to vote for the man.”

  “Beau, what’s going on? What aren’t you supposed to tell me?”

  “I got a call from the technician I’ve been talking to at the state crime lab, the one who said he would expedite the DNA test on the bootlace. The markers are very close to Carlos Tafoya’s.”

  “So that’s the evidence you need! That’s a good thing.”

  “They’re close. But not an exact match. It’s someone related to him.”

  “And you don’t want to make a huge issue of this because of the timing?”

  “Well, yeah. Plus, I think the evidence is right. It’s not Carlos. I’ll probably have to start looking at his extended family. It’s male, so a brother or his father . . .”

  Sam flashed on an image of Victor Tafoya, her landlord. The crusty old man was known for being fairly ruthless in business, but he had to be in his seventies. She couldn’t picture him strangling Elena and then managing to hang her body to look like a suicide. Maybe he helped, though. Handled the bootlace or something.

  “Beau, that’s not all though, is it?”

  “No, it’s not. I got a threat.”

  “What! Personally? Who’s threatening you?”

  “I don’t know. An anonymous call.”

  “Because of the call from the crime lab?”

  “Probably. I told the guy to call me on my cell, not the office line. But he forgot. Called the office first. He admitted that he’d left a message for me there before he reached me on my cell.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did the anonymous caller say?”

  “Just that I better back off and stay out of this.”

  “Isn’t that essentially what Sheriff Padilla said earlier today?”

  “Yeah, but not exactly in the same words. And it definitely wasn’t his voice.”

  “Beau, remember how I told you to be careful? Well, that wasn’t just idle conversation. I had a warning.” She didn’t mention the source. “It was a warning to ‘the seekers’. In this case, I think that might mean anyone who is trying to solve this crime.”

  “Maybe the warning was meant for you, Sam.” He paused. “Damn it, I shouldn’t be involving you in this thing at all.”

  “Don’t think that way, Beau. You’re the visible one on the case. And now you’ve gotten this threat.”

  He assured her that he would take extra precautions, but she hung up uneasily. It felt like something bad was about to happen but she had no idea what. And she didn’t have the benefit of a fresh dream from the old bruja to give new insight at the moment.

  No portent came to her during the night, only a series of anxious dream vignettes, punctuated by twisted blankets and thrashing limbs. She woke at dawn with a headache and no answers. The wooden box glowed softly when she picked it up, easing her headache and warming her hands.

  Her spice-scented shop was quiet in the light of the Taos sunrise, a little oasis of peace before Sam began the day. She brewed a pot of her signature coffee and helped herself to one of the first cranberry scones to come out of the oven. She relaxed and realized that her headache was completely gone. Worrying was not going to help Beau and it certainly wouldn’t solve his case for him. Everything in its own time, she reminded herself.

  Jen arrived at six. “Whew, traffic is already picking up. Election day and the early risers are out.” She set right to work making more coffee and readying the display cases with the new day’s wares, and before she’d unlocked the front door people were pulling up in front of the shop.

  “Let’s make the most of it,” Sam said. “Go ahead and open early.”

  Becky had taken the day off; with her kids out of school she needed to be at home. But Sam had the kitchen under control with fresh, hot pastries coming out every half hour or so. When a short lull came just before noon, she called Jen away from the counter to help load the victory cake into the back of her van. Sam called ahead to the hotel to be sure she could deliver it early and promised to get back to help Jen with the lunch and early afternoon crowds.

  Jen was right about the traffic, Sam decided as she negotiated her way along the narrow streets near the plaza. Her destination was off Kit Carson Road, down a skinny lane that seemed an unlikely place for one of the town’s more upscale hotels. Luckily, the weather had warmed and
all traces of yesterday’s snow were gone. She wouldn’t have wanted to drive this route if it were icy. The roadway became wider, opening to reveal a tall, stately adobe building with an arched portico at the front, surrounded by ancient cottonwoods that still held a few of their golden leaves. The ground had already been raked clear of the thousands that must have fallen with the storm, revealing neat planters of brilliant chrysanthemums and dark evergreens.

  She bypassed the sweeping entry and found a service entrance at the back, parked the van and went inside to find out where the cake would be set up.

  The ballroom teemed with activity. Hotel staff had already set up tables and chairs for the guests, a podium for Tafoya’s expected victory speech, and long buffet tables that would later accommodate a hefty spread. Campaign volunteers were busily hanging huge posters that sported the now-familiar slogans and Carlos’s smiling face. A compressor hissed air into red and yellow balloons which were then gathered into massive nets. Two of the filled nets already hung from the twenty foot ceiling.

  Sam spotted Martin Delgado, the Tafoya campaign manager, and Kevin Calendar, the young campaign worker who seemed to be everywhere Carlos Tafoya went these days. Both of them would probably land plum jobs in Santa Fe when this was all over.

  A woman with a clipboard noticed Sam’s bewildered expression and approached.

  “I need to know where the cake will be placed,” Sam said after introducing herself and handing the woman her card. “Preferably where it won’t be disturbed once I’ve set it up, and out of harm’s way.” She glanced at the balloons and nets and ladders a little uneasily.

  The woman led her to the back of the room, where the decorating seemed to be finished. “Coffee and dessert will be served from this table. It should be safe here.”

  “And I need a hand, just for a minute, to lift the cake from my van.”

  “Sure.” The woman scanned the room and raised an index finger. “Kevin! Need you here for a moment.”

  He spun at the sound of his name, sending her a look that Sam couldn’t quite read. Dressed in dark slacks, white shirt and tie, maybe he thought he was above doing the heavy lifting. Sorry, kid, she thought. You can’t be more than twenty, so you don’t have a whole lot of seniority here. Too bad for you.

  Kevin walked with Sam back through the kitchen and out the delivery door as she briefed him quickly on what they needed to do. He followed her directions as they placed the large cake on a rolling cart from the hotel kitchen. Negotiating their way through the maze of kitchen equipment proved a little tricky but they soon had it in place on its draped table at the back of the ballroom. Kevin wandered off, on to more important-looking tasks. Sam surveyed the cake placement, deemed it good, and set off to find the clipboard lady so she could get a signature.

  A stir rippled through the room, grabbing her attention.

  Carlos Tafoya swept in, looking very gubernatorial in a designer suit. The young workers tended to blush and lower their gazes as he passed. The clipboard woman approached him with a brief question which he seemed to answer with one word. She slinked off and Kevin Calendar approached the candidate in her place. Tafoya bent and whispered something to the young man, who tensed visibly. With hands clenched he stomped off to the opposite side of the room, glaring at the oblivious woman with the clipboard.

  All at once, a wave of energy roared toward Sam like a riptide. She swayed backward at the force of it. What the—?

  She straightened and took quick stock of the others in the room. No one else seemed to have noticed the nearly-visible energy field. Tafoya was still standing near the doorway, surveying the room, smiling at the sight. Clipboard-lady was speaking to two young women who were sticking posters to the walls with tape. Two reporters with shoulder bags full of recording gear were hanging close to Tafoya, apparently getting background to use for the evening newscasts. Something seemed familiar about one of them, but Sam didn’t immediately make a connection. Before her brain could click, her attention wandered across the room again.

  Kevin, the young campaign worker, had a reddish glow around him. Oh, no. Not this again. Sam watched as the redness deepened and became murky. The guy’s face was nearly obscured by the intensity of it. What on earth—? As she watched, the glow faded slowly to nothing. She searched his face for a sign of strong emotion but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He was merely watching Tafoya, but then so was everyone else in the room.

  Sam shook off the feeling. She’d promised Jen that she’d get back to the shop right away and this errand had already taken longer than planned. She swung through the room, tapping the woman on the shoulder, getting her signature and handing over a copy to add to the stack of pages on her clipboard.

  “Mrs. Tafoya paid for the cake in advance,” she said. “This is for your records.”

  The woman gave her a harried smile, instantly distracted by someone else. As she walked past Carlos Tafoya, he reached out to shake her hand. “The cake looks very nice,” he said. “I thank you for doing it, and for being Elena’s friend.”

  Flattery always worked and Sam found herself automatically smiling back at him.

  “I hope you can attend the party tonight,” Tafoya said. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a slip of heavy paper. “A VIP ticket. Bring someone if you’d like.” He pressed it into her hand and bestowed another of the well-known political smiles. Then his attention was off to the next person who walked by.

  Sam slipped past his little entourage, glad to be leaving the bustling room. She’d reached Kit Carson Road again before she remembered that she really ought to do her own civic duty by voting. The day probably wasn’t going to get any less busy. She called the shop to check on Jen, who assured Sam she could handle it on her own for awhile longer. Sam drove the back streets to the high school, her neighborhood polling place.

  As she stood in the voting booth awhile later she stared at the names on the ballot. Despite her fondness for Elena she would never trust Carlos. She marked her ballot for his opponent.

  She was halfway to her van in the parking lot before she realized that the vehicle parked beside it was Beau’s cruiser.

  “Sorry, officer, I didn’t mean to overstay my parking time,” she said, approaching the window that he lowered as she walked toward him.

  “Well, ma’am, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cite you anyway. The charge is being way too beautiful for a weekday and working far too hard for your own good.” He grinned at her and reached out to run his index finger over her hand.

  “Ha! Beautiful?” She glanced down at her black slacks and white baker’s jacket. “This outfit hardly qualifies as glam.”

  “No, but the lady wearing it does.”

  “Why is it that I suspect you of being more than just a little horny?”

  “Because you have some kind of psychic intuition and you are exactly correct. Maybe tonight we should . . .” His radio squawked.

  Sam drummed her fingers on the edge of the open window, wishing he’d had the chance to finish the thought.

  A static-filled voice came at him and Beau answered with, “I’m there. Ten minutes.” When he turned back to Sam it was with a rueful expression. “I’m wanted at the office.”

  “More hassle with the sheriff?”

  “Not today. He’s out glad-handing the blue-hairs at the senior center. Right now it appears that I have a visitor from Albuquerque.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s an intern from the crime lab. They ask each of them to ride along with law enforcement first responders as part of their training. Usually they get a city officer, somewhere like Albuquerque or Santa Fe, but then it’s also good to observe a more rural setting. So, our department gets them now and then. When I talked with the lab yesterday they warned me the new kid was coming up here.”

  “Ah. Well, good luck with it.”

  “Which reminds me—remember that odd DNA match I told you about? The evidence on the bootlace showing that someone relate
d to Carlos Tafoya handled it? And remember the entry in Elena’s journal, saying that her husband had a child with a former lover?”

  Sam nodded.

  “The office rumor is that the kid is now grown. A grown son with the DNA markers that point to Carlos Tafoya as his father . . .”

  Sam felt her eyes widen. “Carlos Tafoya’s son might have been in their home? Might have—”

  “You got it. It still seems farfetched to think he would go after Elena. It’s not as if he knew her.”

  Sam’s head swam, trying to piece together the bits of information floating around in there. “Can you just question him?”

  “If we knew who it was, we most surely would.”

  “The diary didn’t name the lover or her child, did it?”

  He shook his head. “And I can’t get my stubborn boss to let me question Tafoya.”

  Sam thought of the mammoth party being set up at the Arroyo Grande right now. A lot of people firmly believed that Tafoya would be the next governor of the state. “Time really isn’t on your side here, is it? I mean, once Tafoya wins the election—if he does—he’ll make himself so bulletproof that it’ll be impossible to force him . . .”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, there have to be other ways to find the mother and the son, right?”

  “Oh sure. It’s just that it’s pretty labor intensive to track down friends and neighbors who may have heard rumors, which may or may not check out, all from twenty years ago or more. We just don’t have the manpower right now.”