Deadly Sweet Tooth

by Kaye George

  “She’s back at the hotel. She was here for a while, but one of the officers drove her back to the hotel just now.”

  After Tally hung up, her tears came. She and Cole hugged for a few minutes, then Tally asked him if he thought they should call their mom.

  “No,” Cole said. “I think we should go over there.”

  “You’re right.” Tally pulled her jeans on. “She can’t be asleep with this going on. Turn around.” She tugged her nightgown off and slipped into a bra and tee. Cole was dressed by the time she got her shoes on and they headed over to the Sunday House Inn and Suites in his rented car.

  “Mom?” Tally called softly as she tapped on the door. A light shone behind the curtain. All the other rooms were dark and she assumed other people were asleep.

  Nancy Holt answered the door and gathered her two children in her arms, hugging them so tightly they had trouble breathing. Inside the room, Tally and her mom sat on the bed and Cole took the chair.

  “Mom, what happened?” Cole asked.

  Tally had never seen her mother looked this ghastly. Even in the dim light from one table lamp, she looked old, wrinkled, and pale. She sat with her shoulders hunched and her head sagging down, like she didn’t have the strength to hold it up.

  Nancy slowly shook her head. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Mom, can I get you something?” Cole asked. “Something to eat or drink?”

  She sighed, as if this was the hardest decision she’d ever made. Tally could tell her mother was beyond weary.

  “A Coke would be good,” she finally said.

  Nancy downed part of it from the can after Cole came back from the vending machine, then started to tell them what had happened.

  “You need to know this and I need to tell someone. It’s going to be hard, though.” She took a breath. “Okay, I’ll start.

  “I got up to get some more pain pills. I think it was about two or two-thirty, something like that. When I couldn’t locate them, I took your father’s satchel into the bathroom and turned on the light. There was a piece of paper tucked in with everything and I pulled it out.”

  Tally sucked her breath in, knowing what was coming. She glanced at Cole and his eyes were riveted on their mom, waiting for her next words.

  When she didn’t continue, Tally couldn’t contain herself. “What was it, Mom? Tell us what it was.”

  Nancy raised her head and looked from Tally to Cole. “It was awful. I knew whose writing it was.”

  “Whose?” Cole leaned forward.

  “That awful man. Wendell Samson.”

  “Who?” Cole asked.

  “Is he the one Dad showed me a picture of?” Tally asked.

  “Who is he? What picture?” Cole added.

  “To answer that, I have to go back, way back, and tell you some things I had hoped you would never find out.”

  Chapter 12

  Nancy Holt paused before she continued. “Cole, could you get me another soda?”

  Tally knew that talking must have made her thirsty. She had finished the whole can Cole had brought to her.

  “I’ll get it,” Tally said.

  She went outside and drew in a deep breath of the night air, taking a moment to pause on the balcony. A slight breeze stirred the palm tree fronds so that they chattered below her and the clean, strong chlorine smell of the pool wafted up. After a moment, she went to the vending machine and a Coke clanged down the chute. She hoped the people in the nearest room weren’t awakened by the noise.

  At the door, Tally had to hesitate. What was her mother about to tell her? Did she want to hear it?

  After their mom had a sip, Cole spoke. “Mom, who is Wendell Samson?” he asked, his impatience barely contained.

  “He worked for us in the hardware store.”

  “Hardware store?” Cole asked.

  “Yes. This was a long time ago, when your dad and I were first married. I don’t suppose we’ve ever told you about the store, have we? We pooled our resources with the Abrahams and bought a hardware store right after we got married. Fran and Lennie had been married for about a year. Bob and I both had insurance money from the deaths of our grandparents and the Abrahams had just sold their family ranch. The store had been a good business, making money and thriving, but the owner was getting older and didn’t want to run it anymore. He had no children and his wife had passed away.”

  Her parents and the Abrahams in business together? Tally would never have imagined that in a million years. She listened, rapt, to this unknown history.

  “It was going well from the beginning, we thought, though it was a struggle to get it off the ground. The owner before us had neglected the business for a few years. Another two or three years and we would have been making more than sufficient money. Wendell was one of our three employees. He stocked the shelves, unloaded the delivery trucks, and cleaned after hours.

  “Lennie was the first to notice, since he was handling the finances.”

  “Notice what?” Cole was almost thrumming with impatience. Tally wanted her to get to the point, too.

  “Merchandise was disappearing. Someone was stealing from us. Since at least one of the four of us was in the store at all times, we were fairly certain it wasn’t customers. Wendell was the one who was there after hours more than anyone else. We employed two others to help with sales and stocking, a young man and a young woman, whose families we knew. They occasionally worked late, but Wendell did his janitor work after hours every day. Bob spent some of our meager earnings on a security camera and we found out it was Wendell. He was pilfering almost every night.

  “So…” Nancy took a deep breath, then another swig of soda. “We fired him.”

  “But how does murder come into that?” Cole said, leaning closer and closer.

  “Wendell was outraged. He cursed and screamed before he left, then, that night, he set fire to the store.”

  “Oh no!” Tally said. “Did it burn down?”

  “Mostly,” her mother went on. “No one noticed the flames until it was too late to save it. We got there much too late. It was an awful thing to see.” She stared into the past, a haunted look in her eyes. “There were two horrible results. The young man, our employee, had been inside and got trapped by a falling piece of the ceiling and…died.”

  “So Wendell essentially murdered him,” Cole said.

  “Yes. And Wendell was caught on camera setting the fire. The camera was one of the few things not destroyed.”

  “You said there were two horrible results,” Tally said. “What was the other one?”

  “It was the fact that we were grossly underinsured,” her mother said. “We couldn’t afford to insure the place the way we should have. We would have been able to later, but couldn’t right then. We lost everything. Wendell was convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison. Lennie rashly told his wife that we would provide for his family, but we couldn’t. Wendell’s wife had a stroke during the trial and ended up paralyzed on one side. His family was destitute. Lennie also told the family of the man who died that we would all take care of them. Lennie seemed to think we would have enough insurance to cover everything.” Nancy fished a tissue out of her purse on the nightstand and wiped her tears and her nose.

  “You were destitute, too, weren’t you?” Tally asked.

  “Yes, we all were. Lennie was a good carpenter and started working at that, doing odd jobs and building things for people. Bob and I started performing for money in Dallas, Austin, Houston, and other places, wherever we could. Then we had you, then you.” She looked at Tally, then Cole. “Our tours were successful and we did well, eventually. So did Lennie and Fran. They bought the theater, built it up, then sold it.”

  “And now they both work there,” Tally said. “What happened to the rest of the Samson family?”

  “I sometimes feel guil
ty about that, but I guess they got by on welfare. Bob offered to send the widow of the man who died some money to help out, years later, when we had it to spare. Lennie did, too, but she turned all of us down. We never knew if that was from pride, or if she really didn’t need help.”

  “So, the note in Dad’s satchel?” Tally asked, remembering what started all of this.

  Nancy gazed into space, a troubled expression on her face, lost in the awful past. “Wendell tried to blame the fire on Bob at the time. He sent a series of those blackmail attempts before he was arrested. He was trying to extort money from us. Money that we didn’t have, that he thought we had. I have no idea why your father saved that one, carrying it around all these years.

  “Anyway, when I found it a few hours ago, I blew my stack. I’ve been feeling so awful and that just hit me wrong. With this current murder and that awful note…I thought it was a stupid thing to have with him. What if the police searched us? I started screaming at him and he yelled back. We both have voices that carry and someone in another suite must have called the police. They came barreling through the door. We didn’t hear them knocking—we were being so loud. Bob was holding the note. They saw it and jumped to the conclusion that it was about Fran’s murder.”

  “Oh, Mom!” Tally hugged her mother. The loud altercation had brought about the very thing they all feared.

  * * * *

  Yolanda had worked hard all of Thursday morning on a trio of baskets for a fundraising auction at the local TV station. She deserved lunch out, so she flipped her door sign to Closed, delivered the baskets, and drove to an upscale local grill to indulge herself. She called Kevin to see if he could join her, but he was too busy to leave. It was not a bad thing that his business was busy, she thought, and wished hers would be just a little busier. But, for now, she deserved this break.

  She took a seat on the patio and ordered a salad with bacon-wrapped shrimp. It was a favorite of hers on the rare occasions when she dined there.

  The weather was hot. It was August, after all, but she loved the warmth. She munched her salad and sipped a glass of crisp white wine, almost feeling cool.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Yolanda turned to see who was behind her. Shiny Peth. Looking around, she noticed that the patio was full. Shiny probably couldn’t find another place to sit, Yolanda thought. It wasn’t as if they were buddies.

  “Go ahead. I’m almost finished, then y’all can have this spot to yourself.”

  Shiny took the other chair at the round tabletop and a server appeared almost immediately.

  When her own glass of white wine came, she raised it to clink with Yolanda. “To Fran Abraham,” she said.

  “To Fran?” Yolanda was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “May she rest in peace,” she rasped. “Or, maybe I should say, I’m so glad you’re gone, Frannie.”

  Yolanda realized that this wasn’t Shiny’s first drink of the day. “May she rest in peace,” Yolanda added. She hadn’t liked the woman, but couldn’t be glad that she—or anyone else—was dead.

  “It couldn’t have happened to a better person.” Shiny took a sip, then raised her glass high, sloshing wine over the side to drip onto the white tablecloth.

  Yolanda had no reply to that. She started shoveling her salad into her mouth so she could leave as soon as possible. With dismay, she noted that half her salad remained. Maybe if she picked out the bacon-wrapped shrimp and left the rest she could finish sooner.

  “That looks good,” Shiny said, eyeing Yolanda’s salad. “I would never eat shrimp, though. You wanna know why?”

  Yolanda raised her eyebrows instead of answering, not wanting to encourage further drunken ravings. Besides, her mouth was full.

  “Because she liked shrimp. Our precious Frances Abraham, knower of all, boss of the world, thorn in the side of everyone in our theater. That’s who. She liked shrimp.” Shiny leaned over the table, waving her wobbling glass perilously close to Yolanda’s lap. “Aren’t you glad she’s dead? Isn’t everyone?”

  Shiny threw herself back in her seat, spilling the wine onto herself.

  “Shiny, can I order y’all a cup of coffee?” Yolanda asked, not knowing what else to say.

  “I’m celebrating. Can’t you see that? The woman told me not to come back. She threw me out of the community theater. And why? Because I caught her husband’s eye. I’m not the first one to do that. He said I was pretty and I went with it. What’s wrong with that? She didn’t want him. At least not for the things that a husband does.” A sly look came over Shiny’s slack face.

  Yolanda shoved the last shrimp into her mouth and rose. She would pay inside. She had to leave this lunatic.

  “Leaving already? Mind if I finish your salad?”

  “No, go ahead.” It was mostly lettuce. Could that sober a person up? She wondered.

  After she was well away from Shiny Peth, she began to wonder if the woman had murdered Fran. Was a guilty conscience the reason she was so drunk at a few minutes past noon?

  Chapter 13

  When there was a lull in the early afternoon, Lily approached Tally.

  “Can I show you something?” Lily said, her face full of expectation and energy.

  “Sure,” Tally said. If it was something good, she wanted to know about it.

  “In your office?”

  Puzzled, Tally led the way.

  “I need you to log your computer on. To the internet,” Lily said with a smile.

  Tally did so with Lily hovering over her shoulder.

  “Go to oldetymesweets.com, all one word.” Lily almost vibrated with excitement.

  “Okay.” Tally was smiling, too. She couldn’t help it. When she opened the page, she was met with enticing pictures of her shop, the address and phone number displayed, with a map to click on for directions. She read the text: Come in for a sweet surprise. Leave with your taste buds happy. At the bottom, Tally Holt was listed as the owner.

  “This is wonderful, Lily.” Tally jumped up and clasped her. She had done this so quickly. What a treasure Lily was!

  * * * *

  It was midafternoon when Tally looked out the front window to see a couple across the street having difficulty making headway. It looked like the man was supporting a stumbling woman. Tally couldn’t tell if they were both drunk, or if maybe the woman was the only one inebriated and the man was helping her walk. A potential customer who apparently couldn’t read the ingredients printed on the box of Clark Bars waved it in front of her, so she turned her attention to selling her products. Tally patiently read the ingredients, then the woman huffed out of the store because the candy contained sugar. Tally was glad she hadn’t had to read the ingredients of all the packages to her. They all contained sugar. They were candy, after all.

  She had to shake her head that the woman expected vintage candies to be sugar-free.

  For some reason, Allen popped into her head. She hadn’t called him back the night before. She couldn’t have—she’d been dealing with all the trouble going on with her parents. It had been such a long, exhausting day. But he hadn’t called her, either. She checked her phone. No, he hadn’t called. Well, they were both busy. And she was preoccupied.

  The next time she looked out the front window, no more than a minute later, the couple was on her side of the street, walking past the shop. She was surprised to see that the woman was Shiny Peth. She didn’t recognize the man and she barely recognized Shiny, for that matter. Shiny usually had the posture of a model, holding her head high and walking confidently. This Shiny was staggering, her head lolling forward with each awkward, labored step.

  Tally’s cell pinged with a text from Yolanda.

  Did you just see Shiny? She was drunk at noon and it looks like she’s in worse shape now

  Shiny must have passed Yolanda’s place just before she reached Tally’s shop
. She texted back: Who is the guy?

  No idea

  What was going on? How did Yolanda know for sure Shiny was drunk an hour ago? Tally had to talk to Yolanda.

  “Lily, can you take over for a couple of minutes? I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for an answer, Tally zipped out the front door. She stopped and watched the couple stumble and trudge up the street and around the corner. Then she hurried to Yolanda’s place and barged in.

  Bella’s Baskets held a record number of patrons. Tally was glad to see that for Yolanda’s sake, but how could she collect gossip with all those people there? She pulled Yolanda to the back of the one-room shop, leaving Raul to handle the business for a few minutes.

  “What do you mean, Shiny was drunk at noon? Where? How do you know?”

  Yolanda told her about her interrupted lunch and about Shiny sitting with her, complaining about Fran, even celebrating her death.

  “You know, I saw her around the theater soon after Fran died,” Yolanda said. “And the way she acted at the reception, hanging on Lennie all night…I think she’s having an affair with him.”

  “I’m pretty sure she was. That would be a good reason for Fran to ban her from the theater. I couldn’t even blame Fran for that. But what’s with this sudden drinking problem? Have you seen her do this before?”

  “No, never. Do you think she has a guilty conscience?”

  “You mean, because she…killed Fran?”

  They looked at each other in silence. Tally didn’t want Shiny to have killed Fran, but the fact was that someone had. She would rather it were Shiny than her father. “Who was the guy holding her up just now?”

  “I don’t know.” Yolanda frowned. “I think I’ve seen him somewhere, but can’t remember where.”

  Tally walked back to her shop deep in thought, jostling the crowds on the sidewalk, and not paying much attention to what she was doing. Shiny and the guy were nowhere to be seen now. What if Shiny had killed Fran? From what Yolanda said, Shiny despised Fran and had for quite a while. Lily had said that, too. But Fran had been killed from poison in the Whoopie Pies. How could Shiny have done that?