Sweet Hearts

by Connie Shelton

  Moving day. She should be sleeping at Beau’s tonight and every night till death did them part, but she knew she needed to be absolutely sure of what would happen with Felicia before she could do it. She sighed and rolled up on one elbow. There was no way to get the answer to that question at this ungodly hour and decided she could make better use of the time than continuing to twist the bedcovers in knots.

  Her father had always quoted some old saying about idle hands and as Sam tiptoed through the quiet house she decided that huddling in the corner of the couch with endless cups of tea was not the answer. Even though Jen had promised to open the shop and the other ladies would get the breakfast pastries underway, Sam knew she would be more content to be working than sitting around.

  Like some kind of secret Christmas elf, she entered the shop stealthily and got out her decorating tools. Two hours passed as she pulled sheetcakes and layers from the freezer. Filling, frosting, decorating . . . she found her zone. She’d already left the shop well set with stock cakes for the Saturday sales needs. Now she finalized a wedding cake and the last of the proposal cakes. They all went to the fridge, ready for the customers to pick them up in the coming two days.

  At six-fifteen she put away the pastry bags and wiped down the worktable. When the girls arrived at six-thirty, no one need know she’d been there. She locked up and started her truck, heading back home toward coffee, packing cartons and an important conversation with Beau.

  With a steaming mug in hand as fortification, she dialed his home number. No answer. He might be outside with the animals. But his cell went to voicemail as well. He’d taken the day off work to help with the move, but maybe last night’s emergency had spilled over into the morning hours. She’d almost convinced herself to call the department when her phone rang in her hand.

  “Samantha, it’s Marla Fresques.”

  Her friend’s voice sounded small and tired, like she could barely get the words out.

  “Marla, is everything okay?”

  “Not really, Sam. I’m not doing so good. My doctor wants me to be in the hospital.”

  Oh, no. Don’t say this is the end.

  “I wondered . . . did your sheriff friend find Tito yet?”

  Poor thing. Sam realized that Marla had no idea it wasn’t that simple.

  “I’m afraid not, Marla. We’re working on it. I’ve got some names of his old co-workers in Albuquerque.”

  “Can you go there, Sam? Find my Tito and bring him back. I need this. Jolie needs him, very soon.”

  Sam set her mug down. The last thing she needed was to blow this whole day by driving to Albuquerque. She paced as the silence on the line grew longer.

  “I’ll go, Marla.” What am I saying? “You just rest. Do what your doctor says.”

  “Thank you, Sam.” The words came out in a breathless rush.

  She quickly dialed Beau’s cell again, this time leaving the message that she needed to go to Albuquerque on an emergency and would have to delay the packing and moving until tomorrow. She knew she had to act while momentum was on her side.

  Surely she wouldn’t simply go there and come back with Tito Fresques in the truck with her, but she certainly wasn’t having much luck by phoning his friends here in Taos. She found Lisa Tombo’s address and phone number online. If she showed up at the door then maybe a personal plea would bring the information to get him back home to his mother and his daughter. That was her line of thinking, anyhow, as she grabbed a granola bar and an apple for breakfast and tossed her heavy coat, Fenton’s file and her backpack into the truck.

  Two hours later, approaching the outskirts of the sprawling city she fished one-handed into her pack for the address. The street name wasn’t familiar to her, not surprisingly, since she knew so little about the layout of this city. She spotted a McDonald’s ahead at an exit so she whipped off the freeway and headed that direction.

  A strong cup of coffee and a table where she could study the map from her glove compartment, and she eventually figured out where the house was, in the northeast quadrant of town. She jotted a series of notes about which turns to take—this would have been so much easier from home, with the computer—and she was back on the road a few minutes later.

  It felt strange to find herself in a neighborhood of tract homes with squared-off block walls separating them. So different from Taos. But she made the turns and found herself in front of a flat-roofed house stuccoed white with a few bits of bright green wood trim. Freeform brick borders separated the winter-brown lawn from sections of colored rock and some evergreen shrubs. A fairly new blue Pontiac sat on the concrete driveway, taking up both sides of the double garage door in front of it.

  She got out of the truck and followed a precise strip of sidewalk to a flat front porch.

  Lisa Tombo came to the door wearing a turquoise track suit, with a ball cap over her brown hair and earbuds dangling from their cords over her shoulders, like she’d just come in from running. She held the door to a narrow wedge, to keep the heat in and her visitor out.

  Lisa seemed puzzled when Sam said she was trying to locate Tito Fresques, her brown eyebrows drawing together in the middle. After a minute, she invited Sam inside where they settled on a pair of armchairs that looked they were never used.

  “Well, yeah, I worked with him,” Lisa said when Sam mentioned having talked to some people from Bellworth. “We were pretty close, you know. He’d talk about his wife and baby all the time. We ate lunch in the company cafeteria quite a bit. Even though we worked in the same department, he was in the electronics lab most of the day and I had a desk job. Assistant to the department manager. So we met up in the cafeteria and swapped stories for a half hour or so. Sometimes a few of us would go out for a beer on Friday nights after work. But Tito never stayed late. One beer, he’d go.”

  “Some people said there were rumors about an affair.”

  “Yeah, an investigator brought that up right after he left. But me and Tito? Hunh-uh. He was a hundred percent in love with his wife.”

  The way she said it made Sam think that Lisa would have been perfectly willing had Tito made a move.

  “And you haven’t heard from him since? Not even a card or letter?”

  She noticed no signs of deception when Lisa Tombo said no. “He disappeared from my life at the same moment he disappeared from work. And I moved on shortly after that, myself. I’d already gotten a job in Denver and given my notice at Bellworth a couple weeks before Tito left.”

  Sam tried to think what else Beau might have asked, but couldn’t come up with anything other than whether Lisa knew anyone else Tito had been close to, someone he might have confided in.

  “What about Harry Cole or Bill Champion?” Sam asked. “They worked with him.”

  Lisa shrugged. “Different section from mine. I knew the names but wasn’t really close to either of them.”

  Lisa got up to walk Sam to the door. “You know, there was something unusual that last day he was there. I didn’t remember it when that investigator questioned me. That day, I met up with Tito for lunch like usual. Well, he came in all flushed and nervous. I joked around, asked if he’d gotten a jolt from a wire or something. He laughed it off, but now that I think about it, he kept looking around the room. Like maybe somebody was going to come in and chew him out. I just figured he’d broken something in the lab and was hoping not to catch hell for it.”

  Sam opened the door and felt the chilly breeze rush into the house. She pushed it closed again when Lisa spoke.

  “Actually, later that afternoon, somebody did come around looking for Tito.” Her brows did that wrinkly thing again as she worked at remembering. “Dark suit, white shirt, tie. I’m thinking blond hair, maybe? He popped up at my desk and I told him which way to go down the hall to the lab. He had all the right clearances and an ID card on his lanyard, like everyone else who worked there. I guess I never gave it a second thought.”

  “That was on a Friday?”

  “That’s right. I re
member Tito skipped going out for beers that night because he and the family were driving somewhere to go visit his mother or somebody like that.”

  Sam nodded and thanked Lisa Tombo for the information. Back in her truck, she wondered what, exactly, she had learned. Tito was nervous on his last day of work and later some guy in a dark suit had come looking for him. That could be explained in so many ways, including the way Lisa viewed it—Tito had broken something in the lab and someone from management wanted to speak to him about it.

  But then, what had happened over the weekend? Sam couldn’t help but believe Tito’s disappearance was tied to his job at Bellworth. If he’d simply been grabbed off the streets in Taos and robbed, he would have turned up—dead or alive—shortly afterward.

  She opened Fenton’s file and found the notes from her phone calls the previous night. It took a few minutes with the city map but she located streets and jotted directions before pulling away from the curb, mulling over all the information as she left Lisa’s little tract neighborhood.

  Harry Cole’s home was the closer, so she followed Montgomery Boulevard east until she reached his area. Another tract home, another winter-dry yard, this one not as neatly kept as Lisa’s. No answer at the door.

  Sam caught a neighbor openly watching her, eyeing her red pickup truck suspiciously. She crossed the space between the two yards and walked toward the woman who quickly began coiling up a stiff length of green garden hose.

  “They ain’t home,” came the brusque greeting. “Prob’ly down to Isleta.”

  Sam remembered Cole’s comment about liking the casinos and guessed that the Isleta Pueblo had a good one. She thanked the neighbor, deciding against leaving a message. The nosy woman didn’t need to know any of what was going on in Taos. Cole hadn’t been especially helpful on the phone anyway. She drove away, noticing that the neighbor stared at her until she rounded the corner.

  Her only other contact, Bill Champion, met her at the door of his fairly new, upscale home and ushered her into a world of hardwood floors, pale beige furniture, and minimalist décor. Seeing no wifely touches, Sam decided he had hired an expensive decorator.

  “Yeah, I sure do remember your call,” he said, offering her a beer while he muted the volume on the football game on a huge flat-screen TV. “You found out anything about Tito Fresques yet?”

  He ushered her toward a leather couch, while he resumed his spot on a recliner beside an end table full of snack food packages and beer bottles.

  “Not a lot. Glenda Cooper seems to be in the computer business now and Lisa Tombo lived away from Albuquerque long enough that she’s lost touch with everyone.”

  “Yep, yep. Not surprised.” His eyes darted toward the silent TV screen about every fifteen seconds.

  “Lisa did mention someone who was looking for Tito the last day he was at work at Bellworth. She thought he had blond hair, wore a suit and tie.” Even as she said it, Sam realized what pitifully little information that was.

  Champion actually turned his attention toward her, chewing at the inside of his cheek as he thought about it. Slowly, his head began to nod.

  “Could have been Rick Wells. He still comes around once in a great while. Inspector, auditor maybe?” He stopped, as if that explained everything.

  “He still works for Bellworth?”

  “Oh, no. Outside guy. Used to come in a few days at a time, keep everyone jumping, finding reports and all. Well, I guess he did. Wasn’t part of my job description.”

  “But he audited Tito’s work? Or Tito reported to him?” Sam’s experience with auditors was nil, although she’d once had to send copies of her bank statements to someone at the IRS, years ago.

  “No idea. I suppose so. I would see Wells show up, Tito would talk to him awhile. That’s about all I remember.”

  His eyes were back on the game, his face lighting up at whatever was going on there, and Sam knew she wouldn’t be getting much more from Bill Champion. She stood, which distracted him from the TV long enough to listen to her request for Rick Wells’s address, hand her the telephone directory then see her to the door.

  Back at the truck she pulled out her map again and repeated a tedious perusal of the city map. Forty-five minutes later she’d made her way across the river to the suburb of Rio Rancho, missed two crucial turns in the horrendous traffic on Coors Road, and finally pulled onto the street she’d identified as Wells’s. His home was a cookie-cutter bachelor condo, the kind of place a guy buys after a divorce has forced him to split twenty years of accumulation with the ex who’s finally had it with his non-stop—fill in the blank—work hours/womanizing/drinking or general slobbery.

  When Wells came to the door, Sam put her money on womanizing. The guy was good-looking and knew it, probably always on the prowl. He wore his blond hair short and businesslike, and his casual warm-up suit looked as if it had been custom made for him.

  She briefly explained her mission, asking if he remembered Tito Fresques and if he knew anything that might help the authorities to locate the missing man.

  “Absolutely, I remember Tito. He was in electrical engineering at Bellworth, one of the companies I routinely audit. Personable guy, very forthcoming.” His smile brightened in a way that reminded Sam of those infomercial hosts who sell ice cube makers to Eskimos.

  “Were you at Bellworth the last Friday of August, ten years ago? Or maybe the following Monday? Tito disappeared sometime that weekend.”

  “Really? I’m so sorry to hear that. He was a nice guy.”

  She asked a couple more questions and got the same type of answers. Sam watched his face as he talked. He seemed genuine enough but was he actually giving her any information? Maybe that’s how auditors were—trained to get more information than they gave.

  After ten minutes of conversation she began to feel that they were going in circles. She couldn’t think of anything more to ask, and the sun had definitely given up trying to warm the day. She shivered her way back to the truck.

  She made a couple of quick stops; there were always things available in the city that couldn’t be easily obtained in Taos, and after grabbing a quick burger for lunch she was northbound again on I-25.

  The weekend traffic on the interstate roared past her. Sheesh, she thought as a big black Suburban with opaque windows nearly took off her rear fender, am I that much of a country rube? I’m not going that slowly.

  She watched as the vehicle crossed three lanes and disappeared at the next exit. She left the northern boundaries of the city putting the close encounter behind her and beginning to relax.

  With no companions in the truck, she found herself again thinking about Tito, his last day at work, his drive to Taos and his final day with his family. What would possess a man to abandon everything and go underground? When she phrased it that way, she wondered if perhaps the guy had led some kind of secret life. Bellworth got a lot of government contracts. Much of the work in Albuquerque and Los Alamos, particularly, was classified. Maybe he’d seen or heard something on that Friday at work that he wasn’t supposed to know about.

  Chapter 13

  The Rio Grande rushed counter to Sam’s northbound heading as she neared Taos, and the final climb to the high desert revealed the crooked slash of the gorge with the town and mountains sharp in the distance. The magnificent scene soothed the city stress out of her. A person can just never get tired of this, she thought.

  Her speedy trip to Albuquerque had netted information; she just wasn’t sure what to do with it yet. She should check on Marla, find out whether she’d been taken to the hospital. But Sam felt that she should report her findings to Beau first. She pulled out her cell phone and speed dialed his. He sounded a little distracted but told her to stop by his office. Apparently his plans for a day off had changed too.

  With any luck he would either reopen the investigation or press hard with the Albuquerque police to do so. She slowed as the road narrowed into the outpost of Ranchos de Taos, past the old church famously depicted
by Georgia O’Keefe. It soon widened again within the town limits where curbs and sidewalks were a recent addition.

  The sun had dropped low over the western volcanoes, making her crank up the heater setting one more notch. The turnoff to her street beckoned but she ignored it and headed toward Beau’s office. Whether he was interested in opening Tito’s case or not, Sam needed to see him.

  Not many people had business with the sheriff’s office at dusk on a Saturday, it seemed, and she easily found a parking spot. The desk officer greeted her with a smile, glancing at her watch to see if her shift might be nearly over. Apparently not.

  “I think he’s in his office,” she told Sam. “Go on back.” She sighed and went back to some papers.

  Since Beau had taken over the job of sheriff, after the previous man was run out of town in disgrace, he’d inherited an actual office rather than one of the desks in the open-space squad room. She walked up to the open door, prepared to tap, but he wasn’t there. She glanced around and a flash of red caught her attention.

  She felt the breath go out of her. A heart-shaped box of her special chocolates sat on the corner of the desk, open. Felicia Black had been here.

  Sam stared around the squad room and into the empty interrogation room. Called out to him. Beau was nowhere to be seen. The lid on the chocolates was propped partway open. Two pieces were missing. Her heart sank.

  She slowly replaced the lid. He’d eaten some of the candy and she would bet money that Felicia had stood there and watched him do it. Then she’d probably worked her bright smile and flirtatious ways on him. Sam felt her temper rise.

  That tramp! Beau surely told her he was engaged and yet she still came on to him. Sam picked up the chocolates and tucked the box under her arm. Her self confidence began to wane. She walked out, past the front desk, down the sidewalk to her truck, each step an effort. The combination of the special ingredients for the chocolates and her handling of the magical wooden box must have created an extra-strong batch.