Sweets Forgotten (Samantha Sweet Mysteries Book 10)

by Connie Shelton

  Sam felt herself bristle. “Are you saying I don’t know when someone’s lying to me?”

  He gave her a long, steady stare. “I’m only saying you seem to have a blind spot about this woman. Maybe you’ve gotten close to Jo because of working together and you’re not seeing the obvious.”

  He was questioning her judgment. She dropped Jo’s keys on his desk and walked out of his office. In the squad room, Lisa the forensics technician was checking supplies in the black boxy kit she carried to all her assignments. Beau came out of his office and handed the key ring and an assignment sheet with the address and details of the tests she was to conduct. Her glance wavered between Sam and Beau before she ducked out the back door with her things.

  “If Jo knew the car was there, why didn’t she try to keep me from going inside with her? Why didn’t she hide her vehicle in a better place?” she said defiantly.

  “For that matter, why didn’t she just go home and let herself in and drive herself to the funeral in her own car, wearing her own clothes?” he countered.

  “Okay, you’re right. None of it makes sense. We’re on the same team here. I would never take someone else’s side against you.” She reached out to touch his hand.

  “The forensic results will tell us something,” he said. “Meanwhile, I thought I’d drop by Zack’s former office again. I overheard Chandler Lane saying something about holding a small gathering at the offices for business acquaintances and customers to stop by for a toast to Zack. The sales team will be back from Vegas, and that could get interesting. Want to go along?”

  Sam called the bakery where Jen assured her everything was fine. “Spend the afternoon with Beau if you want. We’re rolling along and it’s only a couple more hours anyway.”

  Rolling along, but there was still work to be done, Sam thought. The deadline for the big order of chocolates was only four days away. At least she would have Jo’s help again tomorrow—unless Beau decided to arrest her.

  The parking lot at the Appleton Center was full so Beau took a spot at the curb. Voices and waves of very un-grief-stricken laughter filled the vestibule and hallways as they made their way to the second floor.

  “I’d heard that Zack wasn’t well liked. Add booze and maybe his death is a cause for celebration,” Beau said under his breath. “I guess we’ll keep our eyes open for whoever’s celebrating the loudest, huh?”

  “Maybe it’s just a case of everyone showing up for a free party.”

  Beau had pulled out the little notebook he carried, reviewing names he’d been given on his previous two visits. He showed her the list. “Remember, we want to know who might have been angry enough with Zack to have killed him. Formal questioning isn’t going to happen here, but pay attention to conversations and attitudes. The two sales reps were out of town when I came before, so I want to chat with each of them. I’ve spoken with the partner and the bookkeeper but you might see if either of them has anything interesting to say.”

  “Got it.” Sam caught Jo’s name several times as they approached the offices. The missing wife’s sudden appearance today had apparently sparked a lot of talk.

  The double doors to ChanZack Innovations stood wide open and a half-dozen people had stepped out into the corridor. Beau recognized the two programmers he had interviewed earlier; three young women appeared to have the nerdy guys completely enthralled with a story about their favorite club in Santa Fe. The men nodded to Beau as he and Sam entered the office’s reception area.

  “Oh my god, I know, right?” A trilling giggle escaped a teenage girl who apparently had something stronger than soda in her plastic cup.

  From across the room Chandler Lane noticed Beau and shot the girl a strong warning look. Zack’s business partner strode over and plucked the cup from her grasp, setting it on Amber’s desk and signaling to someone else, a woman apparently responsible for the girl’s attendance.

  “Sorry about that,” Lane said to Beau. “Believe me, we do not condone underage drinking. Jamie will see that she gets home safely.”

  “Jamie Phillips?” Beau asked. One of the two company sales reps who had recently returned from the Las Vegas trade show.

  “Yes,” said the woman who approached. She had the build of a waif, with spiky black hair and huge blue eyes. Certainly, she did not appear old enough to be the mother of the teen. She took the girl’s hand with a grip that cautioned her to stay quiet. “I apologize for my sister’s behavior.”

  “I wouldn’t want to see either of you get in trouble for doing anything illegal,” Beau said. His expression remained friendly in a no-nonsense way. “Meanwhile, Ms. Phillips, I’ve been wanting to speak with you. Privately, if possible. It’s about the day Zack died.”

  “Really, Sheriff—” Chandler Lane sputtered a little.

  “I realize this is a social occasion,” Beau said, eyeing the conference room where a large table was loaded with food and a credenza served as a bar. “But please understand that my department is trying to figure out what happened. To your boss.” This last with firm eye contact toward Jamie Phillips.

  “We can go into Ed’s and my office,” she said, smiling at Chandler and steering her young sister into the company of Helen Melrose, the bookkeeper.

  Jamie hit the wall switch and bright fluorescents came on overhead.

  “What a week,” she said, ushering Beau and Sam into the large office she shared with the other sales rep. She shuffled a couple of empty easels aside and found chairs, which she pulled up to a table stacked with poster-board flats. “I just got in from Vegas last night. I apologize that the place is so disorganized.”

  “Completely understandable,” Sam said.

  “Chandler told me you were bringing out a new game?”

  “Yeah—Star Fighter Hotties. It’s a companion product to Infinite Star Fighter. It’s testing really well in the girls’ ten-to-fourteen market. It’s why I’ve brought Cass here—my little sister. She’s given us some decent ideas on how to bring the sixteen-and-up girls into the fold. Basically, we’re going for a game that’s interactive with the one the boys are so crazy about. You know, girls and boys … get them talking about something other than sex and drugs at that age.”

  Sam couldn’t exactly picture how a game called Hotties was about anything except sex, but who knew?

  “Chandler told me Zack had been pretty hard on you and Ed, really pushing to get the ad campaign done?”

  “No kidding. He’s like a tyrant—I mean yeah, he was ... a … very driven man, at times.”

  “To the point of becoming abusive?”

  She shook her head and the dark spikes of hair didn’t budge. “Zack could get loud. He was willing to work 24/7 to get a thing done and he couldn’t see why everyone else wouldn’t do the same. The argument ‘some of us have a life’ absolutely did not matter to him.”

  “So, somebody around here might have gotten sick of his behavior and thought the company would be better off without him?”

  Jamie held both hands up. “I didn’t say that at all. ChanZack pays well—really well when you consider the bonuses and retirement contributions. With that nice paycheck comes the knowledge that you’ll have to put up with some extra shit. That’s all.”

  “Fair enough. But there might have been someone who didn’t look at the situation as practically as you do. Maybe Zack crossed the line with somebody else in the office?”

  Her mouth did a little twisty move as she considered the question. “Sorry, I really can’t think of anyone who would have taken it that far.”

  Beau knew an almost-rehearsed answer when he heard one. He waited, not letting up with his eye contact.

  “Well, J.B. has been stomping around for weeks because Zack rode his case pretty hard.”

  One friend goes under the bus.

  “But, really, I’d look most closely at Amber. There’s no such thing as a purely friendly failed romance, is there?”

  Chapter 16

  Beau dismissed Jamie, asking her no
t to discuss their chat and to send in Ed Archuleta, the other sales rep. Sam busied herself by flipping through the poster boards on the table, wondering how ads that depicted cartoonish avatars with breasts that bulged from their shiny skin-tight suits could possibly make either boys or girls think of anything other than sex.

  “I’m definitely getting old,” she said, showing one of the Star Fighter Hotties posters to Beau.

  Ed Archuleta looked like the male version of Jamie Phillips—young, trendy clothes, bed-head hair.

  Beau posed the same questions and Ed essentially gave the same assurances as Jamie. Yes, Zack was hard on them. He was hard on everyone. You didn’t take it personally.

  Sam noticed despite his salesman smile and all the right words, a twitching muscle in his jaw revealed a lot of tension beneath it all. She mentioned it to Beau after Ed left.

  “Yeah, the guy was definitely selling me on an idea he didn’t fully believe in, wasn’t he?”

  “What about Jamie’s statement about Amber?”

  “The receptionist. Yeah, but I’ve seen Amber and Chandler in the same room. He’s the one on her list now. My guess is that there was probably a little fling with Zack but being married he was too complicated to stay with. Chandler, on the other hand, could be prime husband material and she’ll want to reel him in before he has presence of mind to suggest a pre-nup. She wouldn’t need to get rid of Zack to reach her goal.”

  They left the empty office behind and went to rejoin the party, noticing the crowd was about half the previous size.

  Chandler Lane met them near the reception desk. “Sorry about that little thing with Cass earlier. None of us realized she’d spiked her Coke. Jamie’s taking her home.”

  Beau waved it off. “As long as she’s not driving, she’s the least of my worries right now.”

  “Yeah, mine too, actually,” Chandler said. “Can I offer you guys a drink? Something to eat? We have tons of food in there.”

  Beau shook his head, scanning the remaining crowd with an eye toward whom he could talk to next. Sam edged to the food table and found herself next to a man who was loading his plate with sliced deli meats, cheeses and pickles. Judging by his girth, he probably should have stuck with the cucumbers and carrot sticks.

  “Could have knocked me over with a feather when Jo showed up today,” said a woman across the table from him.

  “Me too,” said the chubby guy. “I really thought she’d finally had the good sense to get out of this town.”

  “Really?” The woman had come to the cookie platter and didn’t seem inclined to leave it. “You know, I always thought she loved Taos, although she did become a little uppity once they moved into that big house.”

  “Me, I was surprised to see her go there.” The man had eaten half the goodies on his tiny plate and was stacking it high again.

  Chandler Lane walked into the conference room, Beau beside him. “Go where?” Chandler asked.

  The chubby man suddenly had a mouthful and wagged his head back and forth with an I-can’t-talk-right-now movement.

  Chandler turned to Beau. “Meet Will Valmora, Zack’s golfing buddy.”

  Valmora swallowed hugely, wiped his hand on his napkin and extended it. “Sheriff. I recognize you from your last election campaign.”

  “Sheriff Cardwell is working with the Albuquerque police to figure out what happened to Zack,” Chandler said.

  “Yeah, wow, what a shocker this was,” said Valmora.

  “You knew Zack pretty well, then?”

  “Golf once or twice a week. Now and then we’d bring the wives. Mine loves golf. Not so sure Jo did, though.”

  “A minute ago you said something about being surprised Jo hadn’t left him,” Sam said, stepping to Beau’s side in an attempt to look more sheriff-wifely than bystander-ish.

  Will gave her a second look, realizing his earlier conversation had probably revealed too much, considering he didn’t know who he was standing next to.

  “Well, yeah …” he said. “I just meant, you know, I felt for her. Zack could be kind of hard on her.”

  Kind of? From Jo’s version of the story, Sam knew it was downright abusive.

  “I imagine the game can get pretty tense,” Beau said. “I never got very good at golf myself, so I sort of understand the pressure.”

  “Oh, it does. Picture a whole bag of clubs being pitched into the pond. Hers. Jo stood there red-faced and didn’t say a word.”

  Public humiliation. Did this move Jo back to the top of Beau’s suspect list? Sam wondered as she picked up a sugar cookie.

  “After that, my wife refused to golf with the pair of them. I considered cutting Zack off and finding another partner but he and I were so evenly matched, it was what made the game fun. When I went on playing with Zack, my wife joined a ladies group.”

  Maybe Valmora had caught a lot of flack at home, but still, golf surely wasn’t a vital enough reason for either Will Valmora or his wife to have tracked Zack down and murdered him. Sam nibbled at the edges of the heavy sugar cookie, privately thinking her own were much better, while she mulled over the possible suspects in what she hoped was the same way Beau would do.

  Valmora’s eyes kept edging toward the platters of food and he had just spooned up a big scoop of crab dip when Beau’s phone rang. Sam saw the name Lisa on the screen. Beau excused himself and walked out to the corridor to take it. Less than a minute later, he made eye contact and gave a nod that he needed to leave. She excused herself and offered condolences all around before joining him.

  “Lisa’s at the Robinet house, gathering evidence from Jo’s car. She wants me to come out there and see something.”

  A knot of dread crept into Sam’s gut. Or maybe it was just the sugar cookie.

  Fifteen minutes later they pulled up outside the Robinet home. Lisa’s department vehicle was parked at one of the garage doors.

  “Sheriff, I wanted you to see this for yourself, not that you wouldn’t believe my report,” Lisa said when she met them at the open door.

  “I trust you.” The tech was young but very good at her job. He’d never found fault with her thoroughness.

  “But still … It’s evidence that will come out in court, so two sets of eyes are better than one.”

  He nodded. Sam stayed near the rear of the parked Lexus while Beau followed Lisa to the open driver’s door and shined her high beam flashlight inside.

  “There are no prints. At all.” Lisa said “You can see where I’ve dusted. Steering wheel, clear. Gearshift, clear. Dashboard, clear. I even did the edges of the leather seats, where a lot of people touch as they’re getting situated inside a car. There’s nothing.”

  “The whole car’s been wiped down.”

  “Exactly.”

  Sam piped up. “If Jo had been in accident she wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to do all that.”

  “No,” Beau agreed. “She wouldn’t.”

  He walked around the car, pulling out his own flashlight to check it. “But this car shows no sign of being bashed or scraped. Even the most minor contact would show up on a paint job like this one. There are suitcases in the back, just like she said.”

  “How does this fit with what she told us?” Sam asked.

  “Maybe she packed her stuff intending to leave. Went to Albuquerque and got rid of Zack. Maybe something he did that day set her off.”

  “She could have packed the car,” Lisa said, “then changed her mind.”

  Sam felt her blood pressure rising. “It doesn’t fit. She was ready to leave an abusive man. She had him fixed up with another woman as a distraction. She would have gotten as far away from here as she could. She said she intended to go to the east coast where she has relatives. If her story about Ray Belatoni running her off the road isn’t true, why didn’t she just follow through and get out of New Mexico?”

  “Good point. But if it is true, why isn’t the car damaged and why aren’t her prints inside it?”

  Lisa had gotten down
on the floor, shining her flashlight into the wheel wells of the car. She scooted around from the front of the vehicle to the back, lying down to face the undercarriage as she reached the rear bumper.

  “I may have something here, boss.”

  Beau got down, craning his neck to see where the light pointed. Sam watched his good pants become instantly covered in dust.

  “Here,” said Lisa, “and there. Those are new parts. There’s no wear on the axle and barely a thin layer of dust inside this panel. The one on the other side has some erosion and flecks of mud.”

  “We had a lot of rain in August and it takes a very thorough undercarriage wash to get rid of all the mud.”

  “Exactly.”

  “This car has been repaired, very recently,” Beau said.

  Sam’s pulse quickened. “Here’s a possible scenario. Ray Belatoni runs Jo off the road and she takes off running. When he can’t catch her he goes back to her car and figures he can cover his tracks somehow.”

  “By enlisting the help of his buddy, Donny Vargas,” Beau said. “The dealership could get replacement parts and make the repairs in just a few days’ time. Vargas and Belatoni are sharp enough to know that they want to erase any trace of their own involvement with this car, so one of them drives it here, puts it in the garage using Jo’s opener, and they wipe down the car completely.”

  “Don’t dealerships have to report extensive damage repairs?” Lisa asked.

  “They usually do, for insurance purposes. But Vargas could have possibly worked on this one after hours, or he fudged the records by making up a story about the owner not having insurance or not wanting the wreck on her driving record. He’s seen it all, believe me. He could come up with something.”

  Lisa had her camera out, capturing photos of all the details under the car.

  “Beau, what do you think?” Sam asked. “Did those two men simply want to cover up a traffic accident, or could this be part of a plan where one of them killed Zack and they decided to frame Jo for the murder?”

  “If Jo’s story is true, Ray Belatoni’s motive was blackmail.” Beau had pulled out a notebook and was tapping his pen against it as he voiced his thoughts. “Vargas, of course, had been angry enough at Zack to do almost anything. His rage might have built until he actually killed Zack. But I can’t quite see how Vargas killing Zack connects to Belatoni running Jo off the road. I need to think about this.”