Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  The sun had gone behind the surrounding mountains by the time she finished, darkening the property and narrow lane with shade. She packed up her gear, rechecked the locks and headed out.

  As long as she was at this end of town, Sam decided she might as well dash by the Cantone property and give things there a quick checkover. It wasn’t more than ten minutes out of the way and there was still daylight once she got away from the steep hills surrounding the ski valley.

  She zipped along the county road, enjoying the fact that she was out of the house, doing something on her own for a few extra minutes. Betty McDonald’s car was in her driveway, Sam noted as she turned in at Cantone’s. Some weeds were sprouting along the driveway but otherwise the property looked fairly neat.

  Inside, nothing had changed. The smell of drywall mud from her little patch job gave the house an air of freshness, like new construction. In the kitchen she found herself staring at the places where she’d previously seen the greenish haze, but it was harder to spot this time. A faint dusting, barely noticeable now. She still wondered about that, whether she should mention it to Beau.

  She locked the front door and turned toward the truck. Beside the driveway were some short plants that she’d never noticed before. They had an odd color, similar to the unusual green she’d spotted inside. On a whim, she walked over and plucked a stem from one. Handling the stem, some of the same substance came off on her fingers. It looked identical.

  That probably explained it. Maybe the plant was something Cantone used to mix his paints. Or maybe it was edible and they cooked with it. She found an old sack on the back seat of the truck and carefully wrapped a few stems of the plant in it. She would ask Zoe, her friendly plant expert.

  At the Y intersection at the north end of town she happened to glance down at her cell phone on the seat beside her. She’d missed a call, probably while she was behind the hills all afternoon. She recognized Rupert’s number and dialed him.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Interesting news flash in the art world.” He paused, obviously waiting for her to beg to hear it. She obliged. “Two Cantone paintings have just showed up at an auction house in New York. I inquired, through Esteban, and word is that they came through an artist rep in Santa Fe.”

  “What, like an agent?”

  “No, I think this is more like a broker, someone who finds art from various sources—sometimes artists or their estates, sometimes owners who want to sell a piece. The rep contacts the big auction houses if the piece might bring a higher price at a national or international sale. The two Cantone paintings are some of his earlier work and are considered very rare. They haven’t been seen publicly in years.”

  “Rare, meaning how much in dollars?”

  “Well over a million.”

  Sam’s breath caught. How could a man who’d created such valuable art live and die in near poverty? When the sale of one painting would have set him up for life, why hadn’t he been able to pay a mortgage on a tiny scrap of property?

  “I wonder how and where this art rep got hold of the paintings,” she mused.

  “No idea. But we can check her out. It’s Carolyn Hildebrandt and she’s got an office in Santa Fe. I’ll call, see what I can learn.”

  “Give it a try,” Sam said. “I’m on my way home. Let me know what you find out.”

  She stopped at the market for a roasted chicken and a couple of deli salads for dinner, then headed home. She found Kelly stretched out on the couch in sweats, with the TV blaring some kind of reality-show contest between teams of twenty-somethings who couldn’t stop jumping up and down and screaming “ohmygod!!!”.

  “Hey,” Sam called out. “I brought dinner.”

  Kelly shuffled into the kitchen, not bothering to lower the television volume.

  “Yumm . . . you remembered my favorite chicken. Thanks, Mom.” She helped herself to a heaping plate and started back to the living room.

  “Let’s eat in here,” Sam said. “Get the chance to catch up on things.”

  She complied but didn’t look thrilled about it.

  First things first, Sam reminded Kelly that she needed her debit card back and expected her to repay the money she’d taken from the account.

  “That wasn’t meant to be an open-ended cash supply, you know. I gave you the card to help with Christmas expenses only, you know.”

  Kelly had the good grace to hang her head, just a little. Then came the charm. “I know, Mom, and I’m really so grateful for that. I didn’t mean to get so far behind on my credit cards. It won’t happen again.”

  “Get the card for me now,” Sam said with the biggest smile she could muster. Two could play at this charm game.

  Kelly left her dinner plate long enough to retrieve her purse from the bedroom and hand her mother the card. Sam slipped it into her jeans pocket.

  “So, what’s going to happen now?” Sam asked. “Job, house in L.A., all that?”

  Kelly took a deep breath and pushed her plate away. “Well, it’s like this. I have no reason to go back to California.”

  Sam pushed her own plate aside now and gave her daughter a hard stare.

  “Real estate has tanked. My house is under water.”

  Sam envisioned some kind of flood, but she went on.

  “It’s worth less than I owe on it. I can’t refinance because the lenders would never take the loss. I can’t sell it because I’d have to come up with two hundred grand to make up the difference. I know I bought too much house at too high a price. Don’t even remind me of that.” She wouldn’t look straight at Sam. “Even if I’d kept my job I was sinking farther behind every month. It was just a matter of time. So I walked away. Everybody’s doing it.”

  Sam wanted to launch into the whole motherly lecture about what if everybody were jumping off the cliff, but that sounded way too much like what her own mother would have said.

  “Everybody? Kell, really?”

  “Okay, not everybody.” She carried the dishes to the sink and dumped the remains of the uneaten food. “Mom, I tried. I really did. I’ve been looking for a new job for months. There’s nothing.” Unshed tears made her voice go ragged.

  Sam could have gone into the whole ‘then why did you leave the job you had’ speech but that, too, was what her mother would have said. She let the silence fill the room.

  “I’ll find something. I know I will. But I need to stay here awhile. It won’t be long.”

  What choice did she have? Give up her privacy and put her hot new boyfriend on hold. Okay, so that versus a homeless daughter—Sam knew she’d let her stay.

  “One month. I want you online every day, looking and putting in applications.” What was she saying? That she’d kick her out in thirty days if she hadn’t moved on? Yes.

  Easy to say, but what would she really do?

  She walked into the living room and switched off the TV and pointed Kelly to her computer on the desk in the corner. Job applications were no longer a nine-to-five proposition.

  While Kelly pecked away at the keys Sam showered and changed into soft flannel pj’s. She got out her calendar and marked check-back dates for each of her properties. She would need to keep the yards maintained until winter set in, plus go back to each and make sure they were tidy and mouse-free until they sold. The cabin she’d visited today would require snow removal by December, and she would have to contract that out to someone else. Most places sold within a month or two, but even their small rural counties weren’t immune to the real estate problems that were hitting other parts of the country. Sam might have more long-term jobs than she’d reckoned on.

  Kelly was still happily tapping away at the computer keys so Sam took a moment to call Beau and fill him in on the situation, given that she’d left him pretty bewildered last night. Once she’d covered her daughter’s circumstances, she remembered the earlier call.

  “Rupert told me today that two Cantone paintings came up for auction in New York,” she told him. “Remembe
r those blank spots and the nails on the walls in his house? I have the strangest feeling that millions of dollars in art might have been hanging in that little place at one time.”

  His question was the same as hers—why hadn’t Cantone sold something and afforded himself a better lifestyle.

  “Maybe he just wanted a simple life,” she said. “Nothing wrong with that. But I still get a weird feeling about that situation, the guy who was living with him. It would have been so easy for some unscrupulous bum to take advantage of the artist, maybe even kill him.”

  “Murder by pneumonia?” he said. “It wouldn’t be the most efficient way to off someone.”

  “Still—I wonder where the other guy went. You know, it’s entirely possible that someone else came along—someone who knew the value of the art—and maybe the roommate was also a victim of foul play.” She remembered Betty McDonald’s gossip about neighbors who didn’t like Cantone. When she mentioned it to Beau he said there hadn’t been time for him to get out there and question anyone else. Other cases were beginning to take precedence.

  “Sam, we don’t know that Cantone was a victim of anything. Probably he was old and simply got sick and died.”

  Still, she just couldn’t let go of the idea that the roommate was out there somewhere, dead or alive. She realized that Kelly’s attention seemed to have wandered toward her conversation. She lowered her voice to say goodbye to Beau. As soon as she clicked off the call she turned to her daughter

  “Any luck?”

  Kelly quickly turned back to the screen. “Mom, it doesn’t quite work that way.”

  Sam paced the kitchen for a minute but doing nothing wasn’t her style. Remembering that the Chocoholics Unanimous group would be meeting again tomorrow, she whipped up a batch of brownies and called Ivan at the bookstore to confirm that she could deliver them in the morning. Then, knowing that Rupert was a night owl, she phoned him to see if he’d learned anything new about the origin of those paintings.

  “Well.”

  Another of his long stories. She checked the timer on the oven and sat down.

  “I called the art rep at her office. Then I got to thinking, what was I going to say? Just blurt it out that we knew where Cantone had been living and demand to know where she got the man’s art? No. I remembered how I handled something like that when I wrote The Jewel Heist—you remember those few mysteries I did?—how it’s always better to confront someone in person rather than over the phone.”

  Sam found herself twirling her hand in mid-air, as if that would hurry him up.

  “So I told the lady that I represent a wealthy woman who is interested in Cantone’s work, and I set up an appointment for tomorrow.”

  “What wealthy woman?”

  “You, my dear. You will be the wealthy client, and that will get us into her office.”

  Sam howled out loud. Kelly stared at her through the doorway.

  “Rupert, how on earth am I going to convince this lady who works with wealthy clients all the time that I’m one of them? There’s not a thing in my closet that came from better than JC Penney.”

  He hmmm’d for a second. “I’ll work on that. I probably have something I can loan you. If all else fails, we’ll go for the grunge look.”

  Uh-huh. Me in grunge, she thought. About as likely as me in Versace.

  He said he’d be over in the morning and they’d take it from there.

  Chapter 15

  Sam had to admit that she didn’t sleep a lot that night. She had one nightmare in which she was about ninety and Kelly, in her seventies, was trying to convince her that she should go into a nursing home. Kelly still occupied the spare bedroom in Sam’s house and by the look of it hadn’t left in forty years. She woke from that one in a sweat.

  Then she began obsessing over how she’d ever pull off Rupert’s little deception with the art dealer. An actress, she was not. There was simply no way he could pack her chunky body into anything designer. Her brain raced through the contents of her closet, the supply of jeans, stretch pants and work shirts, with the nicest thing she owned being a black crepe dress she’d bought for a funeral three or four years ago. And shoes—forget that. She owned three pair of sneakers, the black patent leather pumps to go with the black dress, and some Birkenstock knock-offs from Wal-Mart. Surely Rupert was fashion savvy enough to know that he’d never seen her wearing anything that could remotely fit the role.

  By three a.m. she’d slid into delirium, considering whether the costume shops would be open this far in advance of Halloween. By five, she gave up on sleep and got up. A lengthy reconnoiter of her closet revealed exactly what she already knew. Nothing.

  She brewed some coffee, then went into the bathroom and studied the mirror. This idea was becoming laughable. That face had too many bags and pouches, not to mention years of sunshine without benefit of weekly facials. Any fool could see that no spa had ever spent a day on this wreck. Sam had nearly sunk into despair when Rupert appeared at her back door at eight.

  “Rupe, I . . .”

  “Not to fear, dear lady. I thought about this all night.”

  Please let him say he’s changed his mind, she silently begged. We’re backing out of this idiotic scheme.

  He held up a garment bag. “I have the perfect thing.”

  He bustled into her bedroom, tossed the bag on the bed and unzipped it. “Now, as I recall, you have a nice little basic black dress.”

  How would he remember that? Gay men and fashion sense, she supposed. She pulled it from the closet, checking the tag to be sure it wasn’t left over from two sizes ago.

  “Put it on,” he prompted.

  He busied himself with the contents of the garment bag while Sam shed her robe and stepped into the dress.

  “Now, to top it off . . .” He held up a jacket in vivid turquoise silk, sewn in concentric panels so that the nap created a sunrise effect. She slipped her arms into it and discovered that it fit perfectly.

  “It was a little small on me,” he said. He noticed her expression. “Hey, I had to describe it accurately when I wrote Helena Deveau wearing it in Passion’s Glory. The rogue, Max Everhard, cast it into the river right before he took her, there in the forest.”

  Sam hadn’t read that one, and suddenly was glad of that omission. He cleared his throat and turned back to the bag. From a small silk pouch he produced a white gold Patek Philippe watch with diamonds lining the face (another research expense?) and a tasteful string of pearls.

  “Rupe, this must have cost thousands!”

  “Twenty-five seven. Put it on.”

  Yikes, what if something happened to the thing. Sam double-checked the clasp.

  “The shoes,” he announced. “I seem to remember that you wear a nine.”

  “How do you—?” Never mind. She rummaged in a drawer and came up with hosiery in a new package. No way were her legs in shape to go bare. She re-checked the expensive watch clasp and put her plain-jane digital one into her new jewelry box.

  “What time are we meeting this woman?” Sam sat at her dresser, stroking the lumpy surface of the box. It warmed her chilled fingers.

  He stared at the back of his wrist. “In fifteen minutes. Not to worry, my dear. The wealthy are always fashionably late. If we’re there by ten she won’t worry. In fact, let her worry. She thinks we’re going to spend a shitload of money this morning.”

  “So I have time to drop off a platter of brownies at the bookstore?”

  “Absolutely. Now let’s decide about your makeup.” He walked over to stand behind Sam and looked at her face in the mirror. “Girl, I don’t know what you’ve been doing but your skin is absolutely radiant. Is that new deputy sheriff making your eyes sparkle like that?”

  “No. there is no sparkle between us.” She blushed when he caught the fib in the mirror.

  She didn’t want to admit that she’d scarcely thought of Beau in the last twelve hours, with everything else on her mind. And she certainly didn’t tell Rupert that only an h
our ago she’d felt hopeless over her looks. He was right. The woman staring back at her now was a younger, slimmer version of herself. Glowing. He picked up her hairbrush and with a couple of deft flips, got the shaggy strands to behave perfectly.

  Sam stared at the little wooden box and swore that the colored stones were more brilliant than she’d ever seen them.

  They finally got away from Taos at nine-fifteen, Rupert driving them in his Land Rover. Ivan, at Mysterious Happenings, had stared at Sam, clearly unsure what to make of the changes. She brushed it off by saying that they were on their way to a masquerade. He knew Rupert well enough that he probably believed it.

  By the time they waltzed into Carolyn Hildebrant’s small gallery at eleven o’clock, Rupert had coached Sam sufficiently to set her nerves to rest—let him do most of the talking; if Hildebrandt wanted Sam’s opinion on anything, just say ‘it’s a very interesting piece’ or ‘I’m considering it.’

  “Mrs. Knightly,” the art rep gushed.

  Knightly? Where did—? Sam glanced at Rupert who gave a tiny shrug. What else had he left out of his briefing? She smiled coolly at Hildebrandt, as she imagined someone named Mrs. Knightly would do.

  “I understand you are interested in the work of Pierre Cantone,” Hildebrandt said, leading them to a secondary room where she offered tea and some exquisitely decorated cookies. Sam looked them over and swiped a couple of decorating ideas from them.

  The room was a combination of a private viewing space and study. Deep leather wing chairs faced a wall where one painting at a time could be displayed. Whatever currently hung there was covered at the moment by drapes. Shelves lined one wall, filled with books on art, botany and nature, along with small but pricey objects. One statue of a sleek cat polished to a gleaming black finish caught Sam’s eye.