Sweet Holidays: The Third Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  “Kelly? What’s up?” Sam called out.

  Her daughter appeared from the living room, wearing a pair of men’s pajama bottoms and a fuzzy top, along with vivid purple furry socks. Her face was suffused with red and her eyes looked unnaturally bright.

  “Kel?”

  Her fingers twisted at the waist cord on the pajamas and her voice came out high and wavery. “Oh, Mom, I’m so worried. Beau called. They think Iris had a stroke.”

  Chapter 3

  Sheriff Beau Cardwell’s elderly mother was already wheelchair-bound with arthritis and severe osteoporosis. This couldn’t be good. A wave of heat coursed through Sam—a hot flash, or simply the layers of winter clothing? She ripped at the zipper on her coat and slipped it off her shoulders, struggling to find her cell phone somewhere down deep in a pocket. She saw that she’d missed two calls.

  “What else did Beau say?”

  “They took her to the hospital. It must have been right after I left their house,” Kelly fretted. She’d worked for the Cardwells ever since Sam began dating Beau, and they’d both developed strong affection for the older woman.

  “Is she—?”

  “I don’t know. He said the doctors were still in there with Iris when he called. It was maybe an hour ago?”

  Sam was already punching the speed dial number for Beau’s cell. No answer. It went immediately to voice mail. She snapped her phone shut and set it on the counter while she pulled off another layer of too-warm clothing.

  “What happens with a stroke, Mom? Will she come home right away?”

  “I don’t think there’s any way to know yet, hon.” Sam glanced at the clock. It was way past their normal bedtimes, but she knew neither of them would get any sleep at this point. “Want some tea?”

  Kelly nodded blankly.

  “Here, Kel. Untangle your fingers from that pajama cord and sit down.” Sam steered her daughter toward the kitchen table. “I’ll try calling Beau again in a minute.”

  She turned a burner on under the tea kettle and reached for the canister of tea bags on the counter.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to Iris,” Kelly said, sniffling into a tissue that Sam had handed her.

  “I know, hon.”

  “She’s such a sweetie. I mean, she’s kind of like a better grandma.”

  Sam gave her daughter a sideways look.

  “Well, you know what I mean. Since we never spent that much time around Gramma and Grampa . . .”

  Sam patted Kelly’s shoulder before she was interrupted by the whistling kettle on the stove. She knew exactly what Kelly meant. Beau’s mother was one of those spirited old women with a sunny outlook on life and a keen sense of humor. Her own mother tended to be sharp-edged, with a “things are done a certain way” attitude. It was one reason Sam had gotten out of her small Texas hometown the minute she graduated from high school and had never looked back.

  She picked up the two mugs of tea and headed for the kitchen table at the same moment her cell phone began to vibrate on the countertop.

  “Here,” she said, stretching toward Kelly with one of the mugs. “It’s Beau.”

  Grabbing up the phone, she answered with, “Beau, I’m here.”

  “Hey, darlin’. Sorry I missed you earlier. Did Kelly tell you what—”

  “Yes. How is she?”

  “Mama’s hanging in there.”

  That wasn’t exactly a positive report.

  “They have her sedated for the night and I need to go home and see to the dogs. I’m only about a block from your house.”

  “Come on over. Well, if you can spare the time.”

  He clicked off with a promise to stop by, and she heard the engine of his blue Explorer in the driveway less than three minutes later.

  She watched him step out of the SUV and tug the collar of his sheepskin jacket tighter around his neck. Tiny flakes were coming down in fitful little slivers, a fraction of the earlier blizzard. He greeted her at the service porch, with a quick kiss and a frosted arm around her shoulders. His eyes looked tired, his normally ready smile a bit on the wan side.

  “Hi, Kelly,” he said, as he entered the kitchen after stomping his boots.

  Sam held up the second mug of tea to him but he shook his head.

  “I better not stay. Need to get feed out for the horses and dogs and then get back to the hospital.”

  “What are the doctors saying?” Kelly abandoned her own cup and walked toward Beau.

  “Mama could go just about any direction at this point,” he said. “She’s got some loss of motion on her left side, and we haven’t been able to get her to talk yet. But they say that’s not uncommon. Aside from the problems that keep her in the wheelchair, she’s a pretty healthy old bird. Strong heart and lungs . . . we’ll just have to see how much everything else is affected.”

  Kelly’s eyes welled up again.

  “Hey, as Mama would say if she were sitting here, don’t borrow trouble. I was with her when it happened and we got her to the hospital right away. Now we can only wait and see what happens. A lot of stroke victims recover really well.”

  Kelly nodded. Sam watched her expression brighten, but she wasn’t so sure how well a woman in her eighties would rebound. She kept her silence.

  “Well,” said Beau, “I just wanted to stop by.”

  “If there’s anything we can do . . .” Sam knew the words sounded hollow. It was something everyone said, but in reality what could they actually do? “Let us know when she can have visitors.”

  “She’ll be in the hospital several days, minimum, and then a rehab facility.” He didn’t say so but Sam knew from his expression that Iris was nowhere near safe yet.

  He shuffled a little, then gave Kelly a quick hug. Sam walked him to the back door and pulled him into her arms. His kiss was grateful. She watched him drive down the snowy lane.

  “I should have offered to go out there and take care of the animals myself,” Kelly said when Sam walked back inside.

  Sam gave her a look. Kelly, the girl who’d spent the past ten years living in L.A., miles from the nearest horse, the girl who’d never really gone through that horse-loving period that so many pre-teen girls did.

  “And how—?”

  “I’ve watched what Beau does, Mom. I could chop the ice off the water trough and scoop oats for them. He keeps some kind of a big bin of feed out in the barn.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to belittle your efforts. It would be a very nice thing to do. Why don’t you call him back and offer to start tomorrow?”

  Sam half listened to their conversation while she tidied the kitchen and headed toward her room to change into her nightshirt.

  “He says he’s got it covered,” Kelly said, peeking in at Sam’s bedroom door. She gave a small, dejected shrug.

  In her concern for Iris, Sam hadn’t even thought about how the loss of her job would impact Kelly. When her daughter had shown up in September, jobless and homeless, the paycheck for becoming Iris’s caregiver was her lifeline to getting caught up on some bills she’d accumulated. But Sam worried that Beau couldn’t afford to pay his mother’s medical expenses and continue Kelly’s salary, even with his promotion from deputy to sheriff last month.

  All those thoughts continued to ramble through Sam’s head while she brushed her teeth and said goodnight to Kelly. Alone in her room, she wondered how Iris’s condition would impact the budding romance between Beau and herself as well. They’d seen quite a lot of each other in September and early October. Then she opened her pastry shop and Beau’s boss, the former sheriff, had gotten himself entangled in a scandal. Sam knew she had to take more than half the blame for the waning relationship but she really hated to see any distance develop between them.

  Then she felt guilty for even having those thoughts while poor Iris might be lying in the hospital, permanently incapacitated or even dying.

  She crawled into bed and pulled the thick comforter up to her chin, willing back the tears that threa
tened. Exhaustion overtook her the minute she turned out the light and she feel into a solid sleep.

  An icy chill spread through the room, seeping even through the quilts and comforter on Sam’s bed. She rolled over and saw that the red numerals on her clock showed 4:27. As tempting as it felt to try to burrow further in, she knew the alarm would go off in another three minutes. She reached a wary arm out and patted the empty side of the bed where she’d left her fleece robe. How had the room gotten so cold?

  Even her Uggs felt chilly as she slipped her feet into them. Out in the hall, she could hear Kelly milling around. She switched on a lamp and slapped at the top of her clock as the alarm began to sound, fumbled her arms into the sleeves of her robe and headed for the bedroom door.

  “Is the whole house this cold?” Kelly asked as Sam emerged. “My room is freezing.”

  “I better check the heater. Something’s not right.” Sure enough, a hand against the hallway register revealed only cold metal.

  “Try lighting a burner on the stove,” Sam told Kelly. “See if we’ve got gas.”

  A minute later: “It works. I’ll put water on for tea.”

  Sam bundled back into her sweats and work boots and fetched her warm coat from the hook near the back door. They had electricity and gas, so something was wrong with the heater itself. Stepping out into the pre-dawn yard she glanced up to see a clear black sky and a million stars. Drawing a deep breath she could tell that the temperature, as predicted, had dropped. With a flashlight in hand, she made her way to the hatch that led to the crawl space under the house. What a pain. She’d debated for years about having a trapdoor installed inside, but the extra expense never seemed worth it.

  Ten minutes later, she’d relit the blown-out pilot light and waited for the reassuring whoof as the heater kicked on and the blower began to distribute warm air to the ducts. She clumped back inside and found Kelly huddled at the kitchen table. Having decided that tea wasn’t going to charge her batteries this morning, she’d started a pot of coffee and was staring at the carafe wistfully.

  “Give the heater thirty minutes or so and we should be toasty warm again,” Sam said.

  Kelly sent a thankful grin her way.

  Sam rushed through a quick shower, letting the hot water run hard enough to fill the room with steam. A relief from the chill air, but not quite enough to make the tile underfoot bearable. She dressed in her standard black slacks and baker’s jacket and fluffed her short hair for a couple of minutes with the dryer. A swipe of lipstick and she was ready to walk out the door.

  “Becky called while you were in the shower,” Kelly said. “It’s a two-hour delay for school.”

  Sam grumbled a little but that was the agreement with her assistant baker—the young mother of two had to be home when her kids weren’t in school.

  “She said she’d come in around ten.” Still in her robe, with a biscuit and second cup of coffee in front of her, Kelly was making the most of her car-less state. She’d told Sam last night that a friend could take her by the garage to pick it up as soon as Joey Romero called to say that it was ready.

  “No new word about Iris this morning?” Sam asked.

  “It’s only five, Mom. Even Beau probably wouldn’t call this early.”

  Unless it were dire news. Neither of them said it.

  Sam started her pickup truck and let it warm up while she went to the garage for a gallon of the special RV antifreeze she used for indoor plumbing. She would need to get out to that house in Talpa soon since the co-op planned to shut off the power today.

  Her headlights cut a swath of light down her dark, abandoned lane. No one wanted to be out before daylight on a morning like this. Traffic had beaten down most of the snow but there were icy patches, formed by last night’s sleet and wind. Her four-wheel-drive handled it fairly well but she was happy to arrive safely at the bakery ten minutes later.

  Firing up the large commercial bake oven, she started the morning routine that had become second nature . She stirred up batters for her special blueberry and caramel-apple muffins and while they baked she set the mixer to blend the buttery dough for crumb cake. By the time Jennifer arrived to open the front door, Sam had racks of goodies ready to go and the scent of cinnamon and cloves filled the air.

  “Good morning!” Jen greeted. “I can’t believe how I never get tired of walking in here and taking a deep breath.”

  The two women lifted racks of still-warm muffins and headed to the sales room.

  “Who’s that?” Jen asked, nodding toward the front windows.

  Sam glanced up from placing muffins into the display case. Staring into the bakery was a giant of a man wearing a pristine white baker’s jacket and tall paper cap. Bobul had returned.

  Chapter 4

  He pecked at the window with a fingernail when Sam didn’t immediately move to let him in. She sighed and set down her tray. He bustled in the moment she opened the door, the heavy brown coat draped over his arm.

  “Mr. Bobul,” she began, “we didn’t really have—”

  “Is no problem,” he said, glancing around the bakery, taking in the bistro tables and chairs, the window displays with their holiday themed cakes, the vintage wooden cases that would soon be filled with breakfast pastries. “Bobul will find small space to work.”

  He turned to Jen and gave a formal little bow. “Gustav Bobul, master chocolatier, at your service.”

  She glanced at Sam, then back at the large man with the delicate hands.

  He patted the side of a canvas messenger bag with a large strap that crossed his chest. “I bring my tools. Kitchen is—?” He glanced toward the doorway that led to the work area. Without waiting for Sam’s response, he headed that direction.

  “But we really didn’t—” She bustled after him.

  She caught up with him in the kitchen, where he was running his hands over the surface of the stainless steel work table. Before she could utter a word, he’d plopped his floppy bag on the table and pulled out a heavy bag of cocoa beans, some plastic molds and several small packets.

  “Bobul—”

  “Is no problem about the money, Miss Samantha. Remember, I say I will work for no pay.” He turned back to the items on the table before she could respond.

  The timer on her crumb cake went off just then and Sam hurried to the oven to check it. Scones were waiting to go in next and Sam found herself busy for twenty minutes before it finally occurred to her to wonder—how had Bobul known her name?

  But when she turned to ask him, she saw that he was standing over the stove, tending a glass bowl over a pan of hot water from which the most incredible chocolate aroma emanated. Her voice didn’t seem to work. She gave a quick shake of her head and turned back to her own work, trying to remember what she’d been doing three seconds earlier.

  Catching sight of her desk reminded her that she’d never gotten around to placing her supply order the previous evening. She wiped her hands on a damp towel and headed for the computer at her desk.

  “Will require these items.” Bobul stood beside her left shoulder, balancing the bowl of chocolate against his bulky belly with one hand and holding out a slip of paper with the other.

  Sam reached for the list, ready to comment, but a glance told her that they were simple items she would be ordering anyway—sugar, butter, chocolate—although the latter was among the most expensive brands her supplier carried. When she looked up again, the chocolatier was at the work table stirring the contents of his bowl, intent upon the way the molten chocolate drizzled from his wooden spoon. She shrugged and went back to her order, finalizing it with a couple of clicks and printing out the wholesaler’s confirmation page.

  Trays of cookies came out of the oven and the next time Sam glanced toward Bobul, he was working a pool of melted chocolate back and forth with a spatula. As it thickened slightly he sprinkled it with something from one of his mysterious little packets, stirred again, then scooped the chocolate into a pastry bag and began dispensing i
t into the plastic molds. How much stuff had he brought with him anyway?

  “Sam?” Jennifer peered in from the doorway. “We have a customer here for her wedding cake consultation and I’ve got four others waiting at the counter.”

  Sam handed the baked cookies off to Jen. “It’s after ten. Have we heard from Becky?”

  “Uh, yeah. She called awhile ago and said that the school has cancelled for the day. Something about the heat going out.”

  So, somebody light the pilot like I did, Sam thought as the sounds of voices came from the sales room. But there was nothing to be done about it. Busy days just happened, and usually when you were short of help. She supposed she could call Kelly in if necessary. But that would involve driving home to get her. And by the time Kelly’s car was drivable again, the crush at the bakery would surely slow down. She sighed and put a smile on her face before picking up her order book and stepping out front to meet the bride.

  The twenty-something girl sat at one of the bistro tables, looking like a timid rabbit next to an indomitable woman with the iron gray hair and a hard stare. They introduced themselves as Miramar Southwell (“just call me Mira”) and her mother, Sylvia. Sam greeted them as warmly as she could, considering the unfriendly vibes from momzilla.

  “I’ve heard that your cakes are ridiculously expensive,” the older woman began.

  Then shop elsewhere. What she said was, “It all depends on what you order, Mrs. Southwell. As you can see from the selection in the display cases, some of our standard designs are very reasonable.”

  A whimper from the young bride let Sam know that she was certainly hoping for more.

  “Did you bring pictures of what you have in mind?” Sam suggested. At Mira’s blank look, Sam took another tactic. “Well, let’s look through the ideas in our portfolio.” She went to the counter behind the display cases, getting a sympathetic look from Jen as she passed, and retrieved the oversized folder of photos of some of her previous cakes.

  After nearly an hour of hair-pulling agony, the Southwells were in agreement on nothing. Mira held out for spectacular while her mother demanded cheap. Sam wanted to make suggestions but the pair couldn’t even seem to agree on how many guests they needed to feed. And the wedding was less than two weeks away. Twice, Sam left the table hoping to give them some space—or to drop the hint that she had other work to do.