Spooky Sweet

by Connie Shelton

  “Yes, Beth. Is she talking at all?”

  “Not really. She’s been restless, mumbling a little. The doctor says you can have a five minute visit if you want.”

  With a patient barely conscious? He hesitated, then made up his mind. “I do. I’ll be there right away.” He hung up the receiver and reached for his coat with the other hand.

  His intercom buzzed again. “I’m on my way out, Dixie. If it’s something Rico can handle, pass it to him. Otherwise, I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “Roger that, Sheriff.” The line went dead and Beau wondered briefly if he should have at least asked about the call. Decided not. Rico or Dixie could fill him in later. Right now it was more important that he try to talk to that injured armored car driver.

  Midmorning, and the hospital was bustling with visitors. Again, Beau used his official status to snag parking at the door. There was a definite hum in the fourth-floor ICU when he walked in, a cluster of people hovering near Tansy’s little space. Two orderlies peeled away when they saw the uniform, and a white-coated doctor turned toward him.

  “How is she?” Beau asked, remaining outside the glassed-in space for the moment.

  “It’s the first improvement we’ve seen.” The doctor hugged the patient chart to her chest, tilting her head slightly as she spoke and a wing of her gray hair slid partially over her face. She brushed it back somewhat impatiently. “But it’s a very tiny improvement. She’s drifting in and out.”

  His spirits sank.

  Chapter 19

  Sam found her attention wandering as she set autumn flowers around the tiers on her second wedding cake of the day. Becky worked beside her, piping words onto the blank page of a book-shaped cake for the Chocoholics Unanimous group at the bookshop next door. Chocolate cake, dark chocolate covers, white chocolate pages and deep chocolate writing. A thick fondant bookmark was waiting for placement when the lettering was finished.

  Ever since Sam had taken the cartons of finished candy out to the airport for another Book It Travel order this morning, stopping by the new property on her way back to take muffins to Darryl’s crew, her head had been filled with ideas for the upcoming move.

  The back door opened and Kelly came in, practically bouncing with excitement.

  “I brought you something,” she said, holding out a sheet of heavy paper. “Your new logo. I played around with the photos I took of the Victorian the other day, added some special effects and found a very cool font for the lettering. What do you think?”

  Sam wiped her hands on a damp towel before touching the page. “Wow—nice. I had no idea you could do this stuff.”

  Kelly had somehow isolated the old house from the surrounding tattered landscaping, turned the faded bluish paint to purple and added “Sweet’s Sweets, Candy With a Magical Touch” below.

  “If you don’t like the tagline, I can change that,” she told Sam. “I borrowed from your ‘bakery with a magical touch’ phrase you use here.”

  “I’m still not firm about the name for the chocolates division,” Sam said. “I don’t want people getting confused and thinking it’s the bakery.”

  “Sure, whatever. Changing the words is the easy part.”

  “The illustration is amazing,” Sam said. “Maybe one day the real house will look this sharp and beautiful.”

  “Oh, it will.” Kelly took the drawing and stuck it on the cork board above Sam’s computer where everyone could admire it. “I’ll bet the renovations are coming right along.”

  “Well, it’s only been two days since Darryl’s guys got to work on it but I have to say they are making great progress. I’m lucky he knew the right strings to pull and got the permits almost immediately.”

  “I want to bring Scott by to see it,” Kelly said. “He has asked me about it every day since I was there. He loves historic buildings.”

  “Wouldn’t he rather wait until it’s done?” Sam had moved the wedding cake aside and began kneading fondant for a birthday design, a skier’s paradise cake, which would begin with a steep white mountain.

  “Knowing him, he’d probably rather see it un-fancy. If there are holes in the walls and spider-webby corners, so much the better.”

  “Well, he’d better hurry then,” Sam said with a laugh. “The dirt-and-spider-web show is pretty much over. I suppose he could poke around in the basement and carriage house if he wants to. I’ve barely given them more than a glance but I suppose he might find a ghost or two.”

  “I’ll tell him. Can we stop by after work tonight?” Kelly already had her phone out.

  “Sure. If I get ahead of things here, I’m going around four o’clock so I can check things before it gets too dark.” Sam turned her attention to trimming cake layers to represent mountain terrain.

  “Excellent! Okay, gotta go brush two poodles.”

  Becky looked up from the rack of cupcakes in front of her—six dozen green-faced monsters for the middle school carnival. With Halloween now only two days away, production was ramping up, big time.

  By three-thirty Sam was standing with hands on hips, surveying and mentally totaling the goodies. Cupcakes and cookies for classrooms and parties, check. A generous supply of white-frosted ghost cookies to hand out to trick-or-treaters here at the store Friday afternoon, check. Fourteen custom ordered cakes for parties, plus extra generic ones for last-minute shoppers, check.

  The quirky-but-elegant cake Mr. Bookman planned to fly to Aspen for that CEO’s swanky party had occupied every minute of Becky’s time in the two days since Sam had been back and forth to monitor Darryl’s progress on the new place. The Victorian house, it turned out, had been the perfect inspiration for the cake—square tiers stacked and covered in purple fondant, pressed with a woodgrain tool to resemble siding, fondant shutters and a rock-candy pathway. Becky had outdone herself in creating white decorative ‘gingerbread’ trim out of modeling chocolate and adding details such as carved pumpkins and spun sugar cobwebs. Now to get the whole thing to its destination in one piece since the plan had changed and Sam would have to deliver it to the airport herself.

  Julio and Sam rigged boxes and Styrofoam blocks to enclose and cushion the huge confection for its journey.

  “Okay,” said Sam as they taped the final cardboard flap in place. “I’m getting this out to the airport now. From that point on, it’s up to Mr. Bookman’s best pilot to get it to the party.”

  “Too bad he didn’t want you to fly along and set it up,” Becky said.

  “He did. I had to tell him there was no way I could take the time away from here and still get his next order of chocolates done.” Sam wheeled a cart over to the table. “He’d already told me the hostess has a full catering team on site. They’ll be able to handle the cake too.”

  The three of them transferred the cake to the cart and got it to the van. Sam took a peek inside the box to be sure nothing had shifted. She would do the same at the airport, making certain someone from Bookman’s crew verified the cake had been delivered in perfect condition. After that, it was in their hands.

  An hour later, with a sigh of relief, she left the airport and drove the back route to her new location. Despite the pickup trucks out front and the trailer filled with old wallpaper scraps, plant debris and trash bags, the place was taking on a fresher look each time she visited. A flash of red caught her attention as Kelly’s little car pulled off the road and stopped behind Sam’s van. Kelly and Scott got out.

  “Wow—it really is a nice example of the period,” he said, staring up at the highest turret windows.

  Sam watched in amusement as he walked over and laid a hand on one of the posts which held up the narrow porch roof. With a gentle touch, he proceeded to touch the railing, the house siding and one of the front window shutters.

  “Love the glass here,” he said. “Look at the ripples in it.”

  Sam and Kelly exchanged a smile. “I want to see inside,” Kelly said.

  They stepped past a worker on his way out with an empt
y paint can.

  “What a difference!” Kelly exclaimed.

  The hardwood floors in the foyer, parlor and dining room were spotless now. With the wallpaper gone, the walls sported fresh, pale gray paint and the dark wainscoting was now a soft taupe. Metallic clanking came from the kitchen and Sam led the way to see what was going on.

  Darryl knelt at the spot where pipes emerged from the wall. He’d tapped into the hot and cold water lines and nearly finished soldering the copper pipe where it would soon attach to a faucet. The room itself remained empty, although Sam could envision her new six-burner stove sitting against the west wall where the crew had already mounted a vent pipe. Cabinetry would surround the sink and large dishwashing area where Darryl now worked, and there would be a huge table in the middle of the room for tempering and working the chocolate. Even with all that, there was still plenty of space for a bake oven and cooling racks, should the day come when the small kitchen at Sweet’s Sweets could no longer handle the volume of cakes and baked goods.

  Darryl stood, letting out a small groan. “Sorry,” he said. “This old white beard should be telling me I don’t crawl around on the floor quite so easy anymore.”

  He worked a kink out of his right leg. “So … what do you think?”

  Kelly gushed. “Can’t believe how much you’ve done in two days.”

  “Cabinets and plumbing come in tomorrow. Is your supplier still on target for Monday delivery of the rest?”

  “Stove, fridges, cooling racks and worktables,” Sam said. “If it’s okay, I want to bring some things over this weekend.”

  “Technically, you can’t conduct any business until we get your health department inspection and that can’t happen til the fixtures are installed and operational. What did you have in mind?”

  “Just stuff I want to store, extra boxes, candy molds—making some space back at the shop.”

  He waved it off. “Yeah, that’ll be fine, especially if you store it all away from the kitchen.”

  A noise came from the vestibule leading to the side door, the loading area, as Sam had begun to think of it.

  Scott stepped inside, shook hands with Darryl and complimented him on the job before turning toward Sam.

  “Did you say your landlady’s name is Nalespar?”

  “It is.” The owner’s name, Orinda Nalespar, was unusual enough to have caught her attention. Sam couldn’t actually remember telling Scott or Kelly, but it had been a busy few days.

  “Any relation to the writer, Eliza Nalespar?”

  “I have no idea.” Sam looked toward Darryl but he merely shrugged.

  “If it is,” Scott said, “you’ve got yourself quite a find here. She was very well known in the paranormal genre.”

  Kelly’s eyes got wide. “Ooh—you suppose she got her inspiration from this old house?”

  Chapter 20

  Sam got back to Sweet’s Sweets a little after six. Everyone else had gone home so she plopped down onto her desk chair to gather her thoughts. There wasn’t another order of chocolates for Book It Travel due until the end of next week. So, why not get some of this clutter out of the way in the meantime? She spotted items that could go, moved into action and stacked cartons of shipping supplies near the back door, along with the candy molds and flavorings used only for Bookman’s orders. When the pile became sizeable she carried everything to her van.

  Two more loads and the kitchen began to feel more like a bakery again, less like a shipping department. Removing the second stainless steel worktable would be a good improvement, too, but the van was jammed now and moving the table was definitely a job for more than one person. She locked up and drove back to the new location.

  Darkness had fallen and with Darryl’s crew gone the old house sat in complete darkness. Spooky. She shook off a shiver and took a deep breath.

  “Nonsense,” she said aloud. “It’s a beautiful old building.”

  A car passed on the road and she watched it stop at the neighboring house. See? The area isn’t abandoned.

  She pulled under the side portico, unlocked the door to the vestibule and turned on lights in the kitchen and maid’s room, where she planned to stack her supplies. Within twenty minutes, the task was finished. She walked into the kitchen and looked at its freshly painted walls and shiny clean floors. It was perfect. Perfect for cooking up batches of cacao, butter and sugar to create the special confections her customers loved.

  With Halloween nearly here, Sam knew it would astound her how quickly Thanksgiving and then Christmas would be upon them. She pictured her first Christmas season in business and how crazy the pace had been.

  She walked into the foyer and peered again into the two workrooms, now nearly ready for tables and workers. For a crazy moment Sam thought of continuing as she’d been doing, making all the chocolates herself while Julio and Becky handled the baked goods back at the shop. With the help of the box, she surely could manage.

  Sam, get real. Don’t be a hero. Or a martyr.

  She stopped by the parlor’s front window. Simply having more space didn’t mean she was creating less work for herself. If anything, she would lose a certain amount of time each day driving back and forth between the two locations. No, she had to get a crew started here, keep her existing crew at the bakery, and manage the workload accordingly. She allowed herself a sentimental moment, remembering when she used to bake cakes and cookies from her small kitchen at home, then realizing her dream of opening the pastry shop and how she worked there by herself most of the time. Something about being all alone with the joy of creation brought a veil of peace over her.

  Then things changed. Her business had grown so quickly there’d been no choice but to add help. Her marriage to Beau, wanting a different sort of home life now … it all evolved into what she had today.

  A flash of light across the glass brought her out of her reverie. The car next door had backed out and swung around, heading back toward town.

  I need to put up some sort of window coverings, she thought. If history was any indicator, she would sometimes work nights and she felt a little too exposed here with the lights on, the windows showing to the world at large she was alone.

  A nervous chuckle escaped as the car roared past without pausing. With no other souls anywhere nearby, the concept of being alone was not quite the comfort she’d been cherishing from the old days. She took quick measurements of the windows facing the road and the neighboring house, decided to call it a day, and locked up.

  “Hey, darlin’,” Beau greeted when she walked in the door at home. “I should have called you but had a feeling it’s been a busy day for you. Burgers for dinner okay with you?”

  She saw past him into the kitchen, where he’d seasoned two large patties and already sliced tomatoes and onions. What a sweetheart.

  “That’s wonderful. I’m sorry I didn’t get here earlier. Your hands are full at work, too.”

  She’d intended to ask how his robbery case was going but had completely spaced it out.

  “Hands full, yes. Suspects and arrests, no.” He took her coat and hung it up.

  “Really? No leads at all?” She knew how seriously he took his work, especially this case where the woman driver had been so seriously injured.

  “Very little. We’ve got some decent evidence but no suspects to match it to. Frustrating. But … not your problem. You look like you could use a glass of wine.” He picked up a bottle of cabernet they’d opened a few days ago and she gave a nod.

  While the gas grill heated on the back deck, Sam gave him the nutshell version of her day but she could tell he was preoccupied.

  “Anything particular bothering you?” she asked.

  “Besides all of it? No, darlin’. Really, it’s kind of business as usual in law enforcement.” He set his glass down and picked up the plate with the burger patties. “Well, yeah, one thing is nagging at me. We were hopeful Tansy Montoya was waking up.”

  “Really?”

  “No such luck. She
has completely lapsed back into the coma. The doctor said these things can happen and there’s no way to push a recovery any quicker.”

  She followed him out to the deck and watched as he set the meat on the grill. “But they’re hopeful she will eventually come out of it?”

  “To some extent.” He glanced at the time, monitoring the grill. “It’s me. I’m banking far too much on her being able to identify her attacker and I know, even if she fully recovers, it’s very iffy.”

  “I could go by there again and visit her.” Sam knew he would pick up the gist of her suggestion.

  “Could you? It might help.” He squeezed her hand.

  Chapter 21

  “Miss Cook! Did you hear the question?”

  Sara’s head snapped up with a jerk. Had she heard a question? The incessant drone of old lady Berman’s voice in history class would lull anyone to sleep.

  “No ma’am, I didn’t. I was … taking notes.” The lined paper in front of her had precisely one thing written on it, and it had nothing to do with American history.

  “I asked who was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know.” Why did the woman keep dying her hair that horrendous shade of orange? It wasn’t as if everyone couldn’t see the telltale gray roots every few weeks.

  Ms. Berman turned to someone else, although one dark brown eye stayed on Sara as she thanked Jill Ortiz for supplying the correct answer and went on to assign three chapters and a paper for tomorrow’s homework. Sara wrote it down and envisioned herself ripping the sheet from her notebook and throwing it away the minute she got home. Three chapters—seriously?

  The bell rang before she completed the thought, and she lumped the textbook and her notebook into a pile and scooped them up as she rose.

  “Miss Cook?” Ms. Berman was seated at her desk now. “Sara? Come here a second.”

  Oh, god … a lecture … Sara’s feet dragged as she changed direction and walked toward the front of the room.