Sweet Hearts

by Connie Shelton

  “At double the price. People will love these!”

  “Just price the boxes the same as we did at Christmas.” She let Jen take another heart from the sample plate. “I better get busy on some truffles now.”

  While Sandy and Cathy concentrated on the standard array of breakfast pastries and Becky began assembling and filling layers for the custom cake orders, Sam sneaked the canister of little pouches back into her own work area beside the stove. No one seemed to notice that she’d begun including extra ingredients.

  “Okay, Mom, when were you going to let Riki and me in on the secret?” Kelly demanded, walking up to the worktable where Sam was dipping truffle centers into a bowl of the new chocolate.

  “I just turned out the first batch this morning at six o’clock. Not my fault you didn’t stop by earlier.” She continued dipping.

  “My first break of the morning. Can I take a couple back to Puppy Chic with me?”

  Sam pointed toward the pile of rejects, those inevitable pieces that didn’t unmold quite right or the dipped truffles that weren’t perfectly symmetrical. Usually, she just melted them down or cut them into small bits for samples.

  Kelly immediately popped one into her mouth, did the same eye-roll that Jen had earlier, and then grabbed up two more and wrapped them in a napkin.

  “Thanks, Mom. Short break. Gotta go.”

  “No more soapy-dog emergencies today, I hope?”

  Kelly laughed and headed out the back door.

  Sam had just finished the last of the truffles when her cell phone rang down inside her pocket.

  “Hey darlin’. Almost ready for some lunch?”

  She glanced at the kitchen clock, startled to see that it was after eleven-thirty. They made a plan to meet in ten minutes at the Taoseño, and she rushed to the sales room to be sure Jen had things under control there.

  “Quit eating all the samples,” Sam cautioned, chuckling at the guilty look that crossed Jen’s face.

  “I’m giving out plenty, too. Look, nearly all the boxes are sold already.”

  Uh-oh. Sam scratched a note to herself to order more boxes from her supplier. Clearly, the few remaining in the storage area weren’t going to get them through the week.

  She walked through the door of the popular local restaurant a few minutes late, but luckily Beau had snagged them a table. Her heart gave a little flip when she saw him. God, he looked good in his uniform. Maybe tonight . . .

  He stood and pulled her chair out. “I ordered your favorite burrito. It’s already getting crowded and the waitresses looked pretty busy.”

  “Thanks.” She gave him a long look. “I don’t know if I ever mentioned how absolutely wonderful you are. I mean, not only dashingly handsome but considerate as well.”

  He actually blushed, and Sam realized that it wouldn’t hurt her to be a little more forthcoming with compliments. He really was a treasure.

  He cleared his throat and looked up. Their orders had arrived.

  “Oh, I got the Fresques file for you,” he said after they’d taken a few greedy bites of their food. “Glanced through it.”

  “Is there any new information for Marla?”

  “I doubt it. I got interrupted and really didn’t have time to study it. The gist of it was that no one pursued the case very far because there was no evidence he didn’t leave of his own accord. But feel free to take it home and read through it. Ask questions if you want. Maybe Mrs. Fresques has information that she didn’t provide at the time.”

  “She told me that family members have received birthday cards but they are never signed. She’s convinced that Tito sent them.”

  “Where were they mailed from?”

  “She said a variety of places. That doesn’t seem to make sense with the ‘other woman’ scenario, does it? I mean, wouldn’t he have just filed for divorce so he could be with this woman? Why would he continue to send his wife birthday cards?”

  He paused with his fork midway back to his plate. “Well, it’s odd, that’s for sure. I don’t think there was a mention of these cards in the file. It would be nice if Sheriff Padilla had asked more questions at the time, rather than assuming so much.”

  Sam bit back a comment about the former sheriff. “I’ll see if Marla can tell me more.”

  “Let me know if you come up with anything that would make it reasonable for us to reopen the case.”

  She nodded thoughtfully.

  People were lining up at the door, waiting for tables, so Sam and Beau quickly finished their meal. In the crowded parking lot she hugged the case file to her chest as Beau walked her to her van. She climbed in and powered her window down.

  “Touch base later?” he asked, leaning in for a quick kiss.

  She stared at his back as he walked toward his cruiser. Umm, nice view.

  She pulled out her phone and made a quick call to the bakery. Sam heard laughter in the background although Jen assured her that everything was under control.

  “I need to do an errand before I come back. Call me if you need to.”

  Jen giggled at something someone had said. “Sure, Sam. We’re doing fine here.”

  As long as business isn’t being ignored, Sam thought. A drive all the way out to Marla’s place probably wasn’t the best use of her time right now, but she needed to ask more questions and the week wasn’t going to get any less busy. Plus, her wedding florist’s shop was on that end of town and Sam needed to give him a check for the balance they’d agreed upon.

  It took fifteen minutes to get past the midday traffic clog near the plaza, out to the small flower shop on the north side.

  “I shall order your flowers on Friday,” the diminutive owner said as he reached for her check. “They will arrive Monday, as fresh as can be, and your bouquets will be ready Tuesday morning.”

  “Thanks, Eben. My daughter will probably be the one to pick them up.”

  He handed her a single red rose, nestled beside a sprig of fern and wrapped with green tissue around the stems. “It’s an extra. Enjoy.”

  She carried the flower out to her van, laid it gently on the seat beside her and picked up the file Beau had sent with her. As he’d said, there wasn’t a whole lot to it.

  A report, neatly filled out in someone’s squarish printing, gave the basics. Tito Fresques was last seen by his family members when he left Marla’s house to drive into town for beer. Although he hadn’t stated as much, both Marla and his wife, Tricia, assumed that he would go to the supermarket where the family normally shopped. It should have been a round trip of less than an hour. When Tito didn’t show up after more than two hours, the women became concerned. He’d left his cell phone in the bedroom, his former childhood room, so Tricia decided to take Marla’s car and drive the route, concerned that he’d had car trouble somewhere. There’d been no sign of him or his vehicle along the way or at the grocery store. She’d driven to the other large supermarket in town, with no sign of him there either, then she’d cruised slowly past the few liquor stores. No car. No Tito. At one point she’d called back to Marla’s house to be sure he hadn’t arrived in her absence.

  Feeling a little panicky, Tricia had then driven to the sheriff’s department and informed them of the situation.

  A shadow crossed the page. Eben, the florist appeared at Sam’s window and she rolled it down. “Everything okay, Sam?”

  “Oh, yeah, I just had something to read over. I hope I’m not taking up a valuable parking spot?” It was nice of him to worry about her.

  He assured her that he didn’t mind, then pulled his sweater more tightly across his chest and hurried back inside.

  Two other pages in the file contained notes about phone calls the deputies had made to the hospital and the morgue. Among Tito’s friends who’d been contacted no one said they’d heard from him. Someone had made a note in the file that the sheriff’s department had simply recommended that Tricia Fresques go back to Albuquerque and wait there for her husband to come home.

  Sam close
d the folder and tapped it against her steering wheel, pondering. Pulling out her cell phone she made a quick call to Marla, who didn’t mind at all that Sam wanted to drop by.

  Sam glanced at the time. She could afford another hour away from the bakery. She pulled out of Eben’s parking lot and headed north toward open country. There’d been no new snow since mid-January and the bright February sun now shone on tan fields of stubble. Horses stood in the sunshine, their fuzzy winter coats soaking up its warmth. Flocks of small black birds suddenly abandoned perches in a spiky cottonwood tree, flowing like a dark stream low across a field on her right, landing to pick at fallen seeds on the ground.

  The trip to Marla’s home seemed to go more quickly this time, the miles streaming by pleasantly. Sam slowed the van nearly to a crawl as she passed through Arroyo Seco, watching both sides of the road for any sign of Gustav Bobul. She couldn’t imagine him living so near and not coming to her shop, at least to say hello. But then he was a strange one. Nearly anything was possible.

  Only the one sedan sat in Marla’s driveway today. Sam pulled in behind it and Marla stepped out onto the shady front porch to greet her.

  “Come in, Sam. I’ve made some coffee.”

  Sam handed her the red rose Eben had given her and gave her new friend a hug, noticing for the first time that Marla’s shoulders were so thin that she could feel the bones through her quilted cardigan. Marla led Sam, a little unsteadily, toward the kitchen where she placed her rose into a bud vase then poured two mugs of coffee from a carafe. Her hands were a bit shaky, and she covered by pushing the sugar and creamer containers toward Sam rather than attempting to spoon the contents herself. Sam pretended to ignore Marla’s increasing weakness, turning to remove her coat and hanging it over one of the kitchen chairs. She held up the folder.

  “Sheriff Cardwell gave me this. His department ran out of leads a long time ago, but he said it was okay if I did some asking around.”

  “Thank you.” Marla’s voice came out tight and high. “It means so much to me.”

  Sam bit her lip. “I really can’t promise anything. But I’ll try.”

  Marla nodded, blinking her moist dark eyes twice. “I know.” She sat in one of the chairs at the table, her body sagging as if she’d used every scrap of energy to answer the door and pour the coffee.

  “May I take a look at the file?” She reached toward Sam with her thin fingers.

  “I guess it would be all right.” Sam handed over the folder, giving a short verbal recap of what she’d just read.

  “The list of friends,” Marla said. “We called most of them ourselves. The police wouldn’t even take a report for more than two days. So Tricia and I started calling everyone we knew, hoping he had run into a buddy and got sidetracked.” She shook her head. “No one had seen him.”

  Sam sipped from her mug. The coffee was really good. “Did the Albuquerque police ever investigate?”

  Marla shook her head. “Not really. They said that he’d disappeared in Taos. I think they told Tricia that she could file a separate report . . . I really don’t remember.”

  “I assume she also called friends there? People he worked with, maybe?”

  “Oh, yes. He worked at Bellworth, you know. Very good company, a very good job.”

  Sam recognized the name. Bellworth was one of those huge corporations that did a lot of government contract work, often with agencies at Sandia Lab or Los Alamos. As she understood it, the contracts usually lasted a few years, but then were often renewed, so employment was steady and pay was good.

  “Tito’s training in the Navy was as an electrician. He was well qualified for the work he did at Bellworth and had worked his way to one of the higher pay grades.” Pride in her son was very evident in Marla’s expression. “He and Tricia bought a house in a nice neighborhood. Jolie was still a baby, but they chose the area because of the good schools. They were planning to have more children.”

  She closed the folder and toyed with the coffee mug in front of her. “Sam, Tito didn’t run away. That sheriff, Orlando Padilla, he hinted that Tito had another woman and that he’d run off with her. But that wasn’t true. He would never do that.”

  An excellent character reference, or a mother’s blind love? Sam didn’t know. She did know, however, that Padilla had been lax as a lawman, a product more of New Mexico’s infamous nepotism in government than any outstanding accomplishments on the job.

  “When Tricia died and I brought Jolie here, I sold their house in Albuquerque. Her death . . . losing the house . . . it would have hurt Tito so bad.” She swallowed hard. “But I didn’t see any other way. I used the money to hire a private investigator. I couldn’t keep him very long. There wasn’t much equity in the house, so the money ran out pretty fast. With a baby to raise, I couldn’t go into debt.”

  “What did the investigator say?”

  Marla leaned forward and gripped the edge of the table to stand. “I have his reports. I’ll get them.”

  Sam kept her seat at the table, feeling an ache in her heart for this poor woman.

  Five full minutes must have passed before Marla came back. She had a manila envelope in one hand and a stack of smaller ones—pink, lavender, yellow—in the other.

  “These are the cards my Tito sent me.” She set them on the table in front of her mug, just out of Sam’s reach. She extended the large envelope to Sam. “His name was Bram Fenton, the investigator.”

  Sam knew the name. The man had died this past summer. She took the envelope and bent the metal brads upward. Inside was a small sheaf of paper, maybe ten pages at most.

  “May I take these? I can make copies and get the originals back to you right away.”

  “It’s all right. There’s nothing I can do with them now. Keep it as long as you need to.”

  Marla had taken her seat again and her left hand rested on the stack of personal envelopes. “These, I will keep but you may look.”

  She picked up the topmost envelope, raised the flap and pulled out a birthday card. For Mother, pink with scalloped edges and a small bow formed of ribbon, stuck to a design of pink roses. The printed greeting inside was a heartfelt message of love, but there was no signature.

  “They are all like this,” Marla said.

  She set the card down and handed Sam the envelope. It was hand addressed in neat block letters, no return address. “It’s postmarked from Chicago,” Sam said.

  “Yes. They came from many places.” Marla spread the others like playing cards in a deck. “California, New York, Washington, St. Louis. Here’s one postmarked Santa Fe. That’s the closest he ever got to home.” A tear rolled from the corner of her eye.

  Sam studied the envelope and card intently, giving Marla a moment.

  Marla raised her head. “I know they are from Tito,” she insisted.

  “I’m sure you are right. Maybe, with this proof, I can get the sheriff’s department to reopen the case.”

  Even as she said it, Sam realized how unlikely that was. But it might be worth a shot. Anything she could do to provide this poor, dying woman with a little hope would be welcomed.

  “Yes, that’s a good idea,” Marla said, visibly brightening. She flipped through the cards and chose one. “Take one with you. Show them.”

  Sam could tell that Marla was tiring. She carried their mugs to the sink, switched off the coffee maker and helped the other woman to the sofa in the living room, where Marla lay back against the cushions and pulled an afghan over herself.

  “I’ll be all right after a nap,” she insisted when Sam offered to call someone. She closed her eyes.

  Sam gathered the file and envelopes, shrugged back into her jacket and locked the front door behind her.

  Chapter 7

  Back at Sweet’s Sweets the sales room was full of customers and Becky was inside the walk-in fridge searching for someone’s order. Sandy hit Sam with about a hundred questions the second she walked in the door, and there went all hope of leaving early and spending th
e afternoon at home going through Tito’s case file.

  She helped Becky find the pastry she was after, a set of miniature tiered brownies decorated like tiny wedding cakes for a bridal shower, then she realized that the situation with the gift boxes for chocolates was getting desperate. She sat at her computer and placed an order, springing for the cost of overnight delivery and kicking herself that she hadn’t done it sooner.

  Once that was done and she set Sandy to work happily cutting out heart-shaped cookies, Sam went back to the stove and began work on another batch of chocolate. She remembered Bobul doing something with luster powder in the molds, making the finished pieces glow with a special sheen, so she prepped the molds with dustings of red, gold and silver, then began melting chocolate in the double boiler.

  “We can use more of those out front, the minute you have them done,” Jen said on a quick pass through the kitchen. “I’m down to no cookies, no brownies, and only two boxes of chocolates.”

  Sam sent a harried nod her way and continued filling the molds. While those set up, she unmolded some plain milk-and dark-chocolates she’d started this morning and quickly filled her last few gift boxes with them. Sticking a smile on her face she headed for the front, where she could hear a customer chatting with Jen.

  “Here you go,” Sam said, stacking the seven new boxes as Jen finalized the woman’s order and sent her on her way.

  “Whew—what an afternoon! I guess word is out about the chocolates.” Jen wiped her forehead with a tissue and looked in the mirrored wall behind the counter, straightening the one errant hair that had come out of her neat chignon. “Oh dear, here’s another,” she mumbled, with a glance at the door.

  Sam had turned to check the beverage bar—they were running low on their signature blend coffee—and to pluck a stray sugar packet off one of the bistro tables. The woman who’d opened the door was a stranger. Tall, super-slim in a tiger-print dress, black coat and heels, with chin length red hair which had that purposely bedroom-tousled look, she wasn’t the sort of woman you didn’t notice.