Sam stepped over and edged him aside. “You’re getting hungry because I’ll bet you skipped lunch. Let’s warm up the chile from the other night, and you can invite Danny again, if you want to. There’s plenty.” She pulled out the storage container and found a large saucepan.
“So, did you get the impression from Evan that Danny’s no longer a suspect?” she asked.
He shook his head. “The opposite. Lila’s continual harassment—almost stalking—the lies, the fact of her tracking him down multiple times … If anything, they think that gives Danny a stronger motive than anyone else. Not to mention, Lila seemingly knew no one else here in Taos. Danny’s high on their radar, Sam.”
It didn’t look good. Someone had erased Lila’s messages to Danny—except that he or she had missed one, a very critical one. Sam nibbled at her lip, not wanting to think Danny had done that himself, but he was the one with access to the phone. She still wanted to believe her gut on this, but if Danny didn’t kill his girlfriend, who did?
Chapter 19
The next afternoon Kelly stood at her kitchen island, poring over the rune book. She’d handled the wooden box earlier, up in the attic, and was now searching for a cure. Why hadn’t someone, over the years, thought to index this thing? Finding any particular topic was like a computer search without the aid of Google. And this time Eliza was no help. She’d taken a casual look at the book, lifted her tail haughtily, and left the room.
Movement outside the back door caught Kelly’s attention, just before Sam let herself in.
“Hey there, what’s up, Mom?”
Sam hung up her coat and pack.
“Something’s wrong,” Kelly said, setting the book aside.
“Evan and Rico have questioned Danny twice now. They’ve got some pretty incriminating evidence, things Danny never mentioned to me.”
“Mom.” Kelly fixed a stare at her. “A person has a right to some secrets. You didn’t actually think he was pouring out his whole heart to you?”
A sigh. “No, not really. Okay, no, not at all. It’s just that he asked advice on what to do, so I thought he would at least give me the facts.”
“So he lied?”
“More like omitted. Huge, big omissions.”
Again, the fixed stare.
“All right. I get it. I’m dropping it.” Sam noticed the open book on the countertop. “So, whatcha up to?”
Kelly rolled her eyes. “Hoping to find some quickie cure. Scott has this nasty boil on his—” She cleared her throat. “Never mind. Right to have secrets. Anyway, I was just wishing the book had some sort of order—chapters, sections, an index. I’ve been through spells for conjuring up rain, a blessing for bountiful crops, and how to control an unruly child—any of which could come in handy at some point, but they aren’t what I need today.”
“Want me to take a look?”
“Sure. Go for it.”
Sam went to her backpack and pulled out the box she’d begun carrying with her whenever she visited Kelly. She gave it a reassuring pat when it began to warm up, then stuck it back in the bag.
“Okay, let’s see how this goes.” She closed the book, held it between her palms with the spine resting on the counter, then let it fall open to a random page. “Hmm … we might be in the right section. Here’s how to remove carbuncles. I have no idea what those actually are, but it might be close.”
Kelly leaned in to read. “Could be. What’s the cure, and is it anything feasible to make at home? Otherwise, I’ll just try to get him a doctor’s appointment.”
Heavy footsteps pounded through the dining room and the kitchen door swung open. Ana burst in. “Grammy! Eliza told me you were here.”
Sure enough, the cat trotted along behind Ana. Sam turned her attention and swept her granddaughter up in a hug.
Ana’s eyes went to the open book on the table. “Whatcha reading? I finished my whole spelling list today and Daddy has a new book for me to read tonight. I know lots of words now.”
She pointed to the page. “… in … a … bowl.” She looked up at Sam expectantly.
“You can read those words?”
Ana nodded vigorously. Sam and Kelly exchanged a look. Neither of them could read the symbols in the book unless they handled one of the wooden boxes first. And each box worked only for its particular owner—Virtu for Sam, Manichee for Kelly.
“Baby, did you go into my attic room today?” Kelly asked.
Ana shook her head. “Huh-uh. The door is closed.”
“Okay, good. That’s the rule. When the door’s closed no one can go in but Mommy.”
“Right. Got it.”
Sam laughed at the toddler’s grown-up attitude. “Let’s find you a snack since you’ve worked so hard on your lessons.”
She set Ana on her feet and they walked to the fridge where Ana reached for the plastic container of approved snacks. She chose two apple slices.
Scott’s voice came from the other room. “Anastasia Porter … paging Miss Anastasia Porter … we have one more story to read before dinnertime.”
He came into the kitchen and spotted her. “Aha!” he teased. “I thought this might be where you vanished to.”
He greeted Sam with a hug and noticed the book on the table. “Still trying to figure out the code, huh?”
He’d recommended a linguist professor from the university when the book first came into Kelly’s hands, thinking the expert might recognize the language filling the pages. But no luck. The man had told them it appeared to be a coded combination of rune-like symbols, some Cyrillic lettering, and a couple of ancient, obsolete languages. One would need a code key in order to decipher it, he’d said. Kelly and Sam had agreed that it was best not to acknowledge the somewhat supernatural effects they experienced from the wooden boxes.
“I can read it, Daddy,” Ana piped up. “It said to mix some stuff in a bowl.”
“Ah, like a recipe,” he said, his eyebrows arched upward. “Very good. Miss Maddie just might borrow your special skill in our next story.”
Maddie Plimpton was the ten-year-old fictional character in Scott’s bestselling series of children’s mystery novels. After moderate success with a biography of the Victorian house’s previous owner, the writer Eliza Nalespar, Scott had taken inspiration from being a stay-at-home dad to Ana and had come up with the concept for the novels. He jokingly said his degree in history and his tenure as a university professor had been excellent training for the career that brought his real success.
“And speaking of Maddie, I need to knock out another chapter in the new one after dinner tonight,” he told Kelly.
“I get the hint,” Sam said with a laugh. “I’ll leave you all to your evening. I’ve got to get home anyway.”
“Take your time,” he said, picking up Ana. “We’re going to finish a reading lesson and then it’s time for some relaxation with a video game.”
Kelly stuck a folded paper napkin in the book and closed it, marking the page Sam had found. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know you came over wanting to talk about Danny’s situation.”
“It just happened to come up. I came to see all of you and I’ve done that. Unless you want some help with dinner, I’ll get out of the way.” She headed toward the coat hooks near the back door.
“Mom—I really do hope everything turns out okay for Danny. He’s a nice guy and he can’t possibly be guilty of what they’re saying.”
“I think you’re right. I’m just worried that they’ll keep finding these little secrets, and if they do arrest him, they’ll quit looking for anyone else. If we’re going to help him, we have to figure out who is the real killer.”
She gave Kelly a hug and walked out to her car, but the question continued to nag as she drove home. And as she prepared chicken enchiladas for dinner, and as she pretended to be interested in the TV show Beau had chosen. It was shaping up to be another sleepless night.
Chapter 20
The first dream featured an amethyst and opal ring, which Sa
m was struggling to wrestle away from a dark-haired young woman who kept insisting she loved him—although she never named the man—and wouldn’t give up the ring. Sam saw herself on the verge of knocking the girl’s legs out from under her and sitting on her, when she woke up.
Whew—ridiculous!
She rolled to her side, trying to shake the images. After a minute, she got up and went into the bathroom. Splashing cold water on her face, she willed the stupid dream to leave, and once she’d begun to think of something else, she went back to bed.
The second dream took a bizarre twist. Sam was holding the carved box and watching the auras of everyone in a small auditorium where she was sitting in the back row, apparently waiting for some kind of concert to begin. A couple walked in and took seats three rows ahead of her. The young man’s aura was a clear iridescent white while the dark-haired woman exuded vibes of muddy dark red, an evil color. When Sam got up from her seat to warn the man, everyone else in the room exhibited the same dark red auras, ganging up in a way on the one pure person. Sam looked down at her own arm and saw a halo of yellow, turning to orange, and going toward red.
She woke in a sweat, heart pounding and hands trembling.
Enough!
Obviously, staying in bed wasn’t going to help matters. The clock on her phone said it was 3:32 a.m. She slipped her warm robe over her shoulders and carried her Uggs slippers and phone downstairs.
While she heated water for tea, she pondered the meanings of the two dreams. Clearly, it was herself against Lila in both cases. She was trying to save Danny in one case, and to save his grandmother’s heirloom ring in the other. Subconsciously, she still believed in his innocence, even though in reality the sheriff had caught Danny in lies and the evidence was not in his favor.
Could I be so wrong about him?
He might have started out as an innocent, but maybe he snapped. It could happen.
She brewed the tea dark and carried her mug to the living room. Retrieving the carved box from her backpack, she settled into her favorite corner of the sofa. With the box on her lap and the hot tea warming her insides, she closed her eyes and hoped the answers would come to her. Although her mind settled from the jumble of the dreams, after an hour or so of quiet contemplation she couldn’t exactly say she’d discovered any brilliant insights into the situation.
When she couldn’t sit still any longer, she set the box aside and carried her mug toward the kitchen. It was still dark outside, and through the French doors she could see the gleam of moonlight across the pasture. From the darkened house, she watched for a few minutes. A deer picked its way across the stubble field that would soon be planted in alfalfa.
A light moved across the yard, following the pathway toward the barn. Danny was beginning his morning chores early, she realized, and she watched his figure as he entered the paddock. He must have had a sleepless night too, and no wonder. But the aura surrounding him was still clear. Unless she wanted to believe she’d lost her touch with the magic box, Sam had to trust in what she was seeing. Danny was innocent.
And she might be the one person willing to go to bat for him.
He entered the barn and she shook off her reverie. Might as well get to work—that wedding cake wasn’t going to finish itself. She quietly moved upstairs where she showered and dressed in her bakery clothing—black slacks and white shirt, with her baker’s jacket over it.
She left Beau a note to say she hadn’t fed the dogs yet, then donned her heavy outer coat, picked up the box and stuffed it into her pack, and walked out to her car. Traffic was nearly nonexistent this time of morning, and she let herself savor the empty roads and the gray dawn.
Julio was alone at the bakery, and already the smell of cinnamon was heavy in the air. They exchanged a brief greeting and both went about their own work. By seven o’clock, when Jen arrived to open the shop, Sam already had a start on the fondant-coated tiers. She registered the normal sounds of life in the neighborhood—a garbage truck in the alley, two customers chatting with Jen, Riki’s car with its squeaky brakes arriving next door.
Sam finalized a lacy border of piping and realized her shoulders were aching. Setting down her pastry bag, she stretched her arms and decided to take a short break. The scent of coffee from the front room pulled her in that direction.
“Morning, Sam,” Jen said. “I peeked in on you when I got here, but wow, you were totally focused on that cake.”
“Sorry. Yeah, I get that way.”
“It’s coming along beautifully. The customer will love it.”
Sam filled her mug, automatically checking the levels in the carafes and the supplies of sugar and cream. Movement out in the parking lot caught her attention. Evan’s cruiser stopped in front of Puppy Chic again. He stepped out, holding a Styrofoam food container. Ah yes, Riki was addicted to the Taoseño’s breakfast burritos too. Sam watched while he carried it in, and then timed her move out the front door as he emerged from his wife’s business.
“Evan, hey! Got a minute?”
He glanced at his watch. “A minute is about right. Sure, Sam. What’s on your mind?”
As if he didn’t know.
“Just hoping you’ve found some other suspects in the Contreras murder—other than Danny Flores. Evan, I just know he’s innocent.”
“Can you give him an alibi for the night she died?”
“Well, not directly.”
“Okay. Well, all we can do is follow the evidence.”
It was exactly what Beau would have said, and she couldn’t very well argue.
“Sam, we’ve put a technical forensics expert on gathering the evidence from the victim’s phone. I’m afraid it doesn’t look good for your guy.”
“I thought you said …”
“The expert found a whole bunch of texts that had been deleted. Basically everything that transpired between Flores and Contreras for the last couple of months. Yes, initially we found only one message. But people don’t understand—everything that goes out electronically leaves a trail and can be found. Once it’s on the internet or in an email … it’s out there, and it’s fair game.”
“But—”
“Danny Flores had possession of that phone from the last time he admits seeing her, at Java Joe’s, until he turned it over to us. So who do you suppose erased those messages?”
Sam took a different angle. “So, if you’ve read the communications, you must know that Lila was harassing Danny, stalking him, that she’d posted all kinds of trash about him on social media, and she’d followed him here.”
“Yes … we do. We even found the part about how the angels told her she and Danny were meant to be together.” He held up a hand to shush Sam. “Yes, she was nutty, and yes, probably a complete pain. Still, there are legal ways to deal with people like her. Crazy or not, murder is murder.”
Sam realized that everything he’d just said would look like a pretty strong motive for Danny to have gotten rid of his crazy ex.
“I meant what I told Danny yesterday, Sam. He can’t leave town. Don’t you try to warn him or help him escape. We’re getting our evidence lined up. I don’t want you in trouble for obstructing justice.”
Not to mention, Beau wouldn’t like it at all and would make her feel guilty forever if she tried to circumvent the law. She started to make one more plea with Evan to at least consider other suspects, but he’d already opened his car door and was halfway inside. With a friendly wave, he backed out and drove away.
The mug in her hand had gone cold, not to mention her tootsies were frigid. She went back into the bakery, feeling edgy.
Kelly was in the kitchen, chatting with Becky, when Sam walked in.
“When did you get here? How did I miss seeing your car?”
Kelly shrugged largely. “No idea. I pulled up in back of Puppy Chic and thought I’d pop in and say hi to all of you before I start my morning there. Riki’s got a full house today so I offered to do the dog baths.”
She admired the partly f
inished wedding cake. “Mom, what’s going on with Evan? Riki sounded grumpy when she called me this morning, and I got the feeling Evan’s said something about you siding with Danny against him.”
Sam sighed. “I’m not going there. There are no sides—I just made the point with Evan that I hoped he would carefully weigh all the evidence and not jump to the quickest conclusion.” She took Kelly’s hand and gave a squeeze. “I don’t want anything affecting your friendship with Riki. I will not say another word to Evan, or anyone else.”
She made a zipping motion across her closed lips and Kelly laughed.
“Okay. I won’t either.”
Sam gave Kelly two cupcakes and sent her on her way. How she would keep her mouth shut, she had no idea.
Chapter 21
As always, the creative hours passed happily, and Sam was setting the last daffodil on top of the wedding cake when her phone rang down inside her pocket. She wiped her sticky fingers on a damp towel and pulled the phone out to take a look. It was a local number she didn’t recognize, but she took the call anyway.
“Mrs. Sweet?” said a shaky female voice. “This is Pauline Lopez. I’m Faustina’s daughter. My mother asked me to call. She’s so upset.”
Sam could hear Faustina’s voice in the background.
Kelly walked in the back door in time to hear Sam ask what was the matter.
“It’s about Danny. We need some advice. Can you come to our house this afternoon? Do you remember where it is?”
Just a couple of blocks off the plaza. Sam confirmed that they were still in the same house she remembered and said she would be able to get there within the hour.
“What’s that all about?” Kelly asked.
Evan had told Sam to butt out of the Flores business, but surely she could visit an old friend. “Faustina’s really upset. I’m going—”
“I’m finished with dog baths for the day. I’ll come with you.”
Sam had a bad feeling about the call. “Thanks, Kel.”
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