Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  Sam truly looked at the place for the first time. Without Carinda’s room-filling personality the place had the blandness of a two-star motel room. Commercial grade couch and armchair flanked a coffee table and end table of cheap material. The one lamp seemed like something that had come with the furnished apartment rather than an item Carinda would have chosen. A TV stand didn’t even attempt to mimic the other wood laminates. A vanilla-scented candle stood in the center of the coffee table; that, and some DVDs under the new-looking television were the only touches the management probably had not provided. Not a single personal photo, no art or handmade pillows or throws.

  “It really feels temporary, doesn’t it?” she said.

  “Yeah.” He was busy rummaging through the contents of the shelf under the TV. “These movies are rentals. Goes along with your theory that she was only staying for the summer.”

  “Maybe she really only settled into the bedroom. I’ll check.”

  The same generic furniture here—double bed with a plain headboard, one nightstand and a dresser that semi matched each other. The rumpled bedspread showed flashes of the sheets beneath, all of which looked like a bed-in-a-bag set that most likely came from Walmart. A discarded white sweater lay across the end of the bed and a pair of white sandals had been kicked off in the corner by the one window.

  The dresser top contained a clutter of girly-stuff: a puddle of silky lingerie which turned out to be three pairs of bikini panties with lace edging; a drinking glass held a clutch of makeup brushes, two with shades of blusher, two smaller ones with residue of the gold eye shadow Sam recognized as Carinda’s shade. Plastic trays of the same blusher and eye shadow, three tubes of lipstick sprawled among the others. On the floor beside the dresser sat a half-full plastic laundry basket; in it Sam recognized the blouse Carinda had worn during the set-up phase of the festival.

  Beau stood in the doorway.

  “I haven’t looked into the drawers yet,” Sam said, pulling open the top one.

  He told her he would take the bathroom while she worked the dresser.

  Only two drawers held anything at all—more underwear and a few pairs of socks in the first one, three sweater twin-sets and two folded tank tops in the second. The other two held dust balls that easily dated to the previous tenant. Sam moved on to the closet.

  A dozen hangers held pants, blouses and one light jacket. Below them, on the floor, were walking shoes, black flats, and two pairs of heels that happened to go along with the colors of the clothing, which all fit the blue/yellow/orange color palette. Sam remembered that Carinda was wearing a blue dress when she died.

  Also on the closet floor was a large, wheeled suitcase. Giving it a quick estimate, Sam would guess that all the clothing she’d come across so far would easily fit into it.

  “It really looks like Carinda arrived in town with one suitcase of clothing and made a quick trip to Walmart to flesh out the décor of the apartment,” Sam said when Beau emerged from the bathroom.

  “It’s pretty sparse in there, too,” he said, holding up a zippered makeup bag similar to the one Sam used for her own things on short trips. “I’ll ask the manager whether she signed a lease or had this place month-by-month.”

  “I haven’t spotted a letter, an address book, or any type of personal memorabilia.” Sam lifted the white sweater from the bed and started to fold it.

  “Ah-so,” Beau said in a Charlie Chan imitation. “What’s this?”

  In the folds of the bedspread, under the spot where the sweater had been, lay a cell phone.

  “She didn’t have the phone on her when she was found?” Sam asked.

  He shook his head. “And there wasn’t one in her purse. I guess I was so distracted that I failed to think beyond what was there, to consider what wasn’t.”

  “Well, there’s no landline in the apartment, so it makes sense that this is her only one.”

  He was already tapping buttons.

  “Battery’s almost dead. I may have to charge . . .” His voice trailed off. “Hmm. Recent calls. In the two days before she died there are six outgoing and two incoming. Four are local. Ha—one of them is to you.”

  Sam had talked to Carinda so many times during the planning and setup of the festival, she couldn’t honestly remember who had called whom in those last couple of days.

  “Here’s one that I believe is a New York area code . . .” he tapped at the screen.

  “Which fits with her driver’s license. She would have been calling someone back home.”

  He listened intently for a minute then ended the call. “It’s a law firm. Hanover, Somebody and Somebody Else. I didn’t catch all of it. Recorded message states their hours and Saturday evening at . . .” He glanced at his watch. “Nearly eight p.m. Eastern time is outside their work day. I’ll have to call again on Monday.”

  He stared at the little screen. “Dang, battery just died. See if we can locate the charger for this thing, or I’ll have to find a generic one.”

  Sam rummaged in the drawer of the nightstand—also remarkably sparse—and found what he needed.

  “So, what do you suppose her story was?” she asked Beau after they had locked the apartment. “She bragged about who she knew as if she’d been here a long time.”

  He started the cruiser and backed out of the small space where he’d parked. “Wilson—the manager—says she paid a month at a time. When she rented the place she said she was waiting for her household things to arrive and had to have an apartment until she closed on the sale of her new place here.”

  “But we didn’t find anything at all about a real estate purchase.”

  “No, we didn’t. The one suitcase and rental car suggest that she never planned to be here all that long.”

  “It would fit with the remarks she made, about not putting up with all of us. She never really intended to stay.”

  “Odd though. Why join a committee and get so involved? It just doesn’t fit with someone planning to move away quickly.”

  “Or with someone hiding out.” Sam didn’t know why that thought had popped into her head, but now that she’d said it she couldn’t quite let go.

  “What if she was? Hiding out, I mean. Getting away from someone back East. Maybe she was in trouble with the law there. It could explain why she had a lawyer.”

  “A reputable lawyer would recommend that she go back and turn herself in for whatever she was accused of. He would then be able to represent her in court and work to get her out of the jam.”

  “And when was the last time you had a suspect who would have done that? Especially if she was guilty?”

  He tilted his head in acknowledgement. The Taoseño appeared on the right and he pulled into the restaurant’s full parking lot. They stood in the vestibule for a few minutes until their turn came for a table. Sam ordered the chicken enchiladas—since Beau had earlier put that picture into her head—and he went for the burrito special.

  “What other reasons could Carinda have had for joining the festival committee?” Sam mused after she’d taken a sip from her water glass. “Maybe there was someone in town she wanted to keep an eye on . . . one of the committee members or one of the vendors.”

  “Any idea which?”

  “No, not at all. She didn’t seem to form any friendships. If anything, it was the opposite. She managed to either tick them off or hurt their feelings. I chalked it up to her just being one of those people who isn’t very good at social interaction.”

  “Well, Garcia didn’t seem to come up with anyone who both hated Carinda and had the opportunity. Nearly everyone can be accounted for.”

  “Farrel O’Hearn and Danielle Ferguson were both away from the ballroom at the time of the murder.”

  “We called them in this morning,” he said. “Apparently, they had a little row of their own. Questioned separately, they each gave nearly identical accounts, so I tend to believe that they alibi each other.”

  Sam pondered it all. She was missing some vital clu
e, almost certainly. No one really liked Carinda Carter, but she couldn’t think of anyone with enough hatred to stab the woman. As Garcia had said, it took a lot of rage to do that. She finished her meal, then chided herself for not being more mindful of the amounts she was eating.

  Beau pushed his own empty plate aside and reached over to take her hand.

  “I don’t know where you were just now,” he said, “but don’t worry about it. We will figure out what happened.”

  She gave him a thankful smile. It was nice to have someone else do the worrying. He drove back to the Bella Vista and pulled alongside her van in the parking lot.

  “I won’t stay at the bakery late,” she promised. “A couple of hours to bake a torte and a few trays of cookies and brownies should do it. I can go back in the morning to ice them.”

  “If I can help you . . .”

  The offer was generous but Sam knew she could finish more quickly on her own than if she had to stop and give instruction or help him find his way around the kitchen.

  “You’ve had a long day already,” she told him. “By the time you take care of the horses and feed the dogs, I’ll probably be there.”

  She arrived at her shop, giving a quick look up and down the alley, half expecting to see Bobul again. No sign of him, of course. Inside, she switched on lights and turned on the oven, moving as automatically as she had in the early days before hired help, when she had to prepare enough baked goods in the pre-dawn hours to open the shop for the breakfast crowd. The routine was familiar and comforting; she found her mind wandering back over the events at the festival as she took eggs and butter from the fridge and measured flour and baking powder.

  Friday morning, things had been crazy—no doubt about that. Most of the vendors had been busy with final setup, getting their product readied for sale. Since several of them were also committee members—herself and Harvey, especially—most of the organizational work had fallen to Rupert, Kelly and Carinda. Bentley Day had arrived at the hotel but had not yet shown up in the ballroom. Carinda had gone to search for him . . . Bentley’s moves as told to Beau by the celebrity chef and the hotel bartender were somewhat different and Sam’s own memory of the sequence of events was already becoming fuzzy.

  She let the big mixer stir the brownie batter.

  Several people had come looking for Carinda—Sam tried to remember who all they were. There had been a run-in between Farrel O’Hearn and Carinda, but Sam had considered it minor. Farrel’s big competition was Danielle, so that was the battle that had stuck in Sam’s mind. Of course, there was the fact that Farrel and Carinda had been wearing such similar dresses . . . Had she mentioned that to Beau, on the theory that Farrel might have been the real intended victim? She should say something to him when she got home.

  Brownies into the oven, Sam started on the recipe for her Triple Chocolate Kahlua Torte.

  Looking at this case from another angle, who had access to the murder knife? Early Friday morning, it had been with Bentley Day’s props in that box under the judges’ table. Carinda herself had shown it to Sam. And afterward? Carinda might have taken it from the box, thinking she should carry it upstairs to Bentley for when he made his grand entrance. A possibility.

  What about the other vendors? The closest booths to the dais were Harvey’s, Sam’s, Farrel’s and Susan Sanchez, one of the finalists in the contest. Of those, it kept coming back to Farrel as the one with the most grievance against Carinda. It would have been fairly simple for her to watch for a lull around the dais when no one else was present, stroll over there and duck behind the table for a moment. The knife wouldn’t have been exactly inconspicuous, but many of the bakers had knives on the premises for slicing cakes. No one would have necessarily thought twice about someone carrying one around.

  She poured the cake batter into round pans. The timer on the brownies showed only a few more minutes.

  Of course, the fact that anyone could quietly carry a knife around, anywhere near the festival, pretty much opened the list of suspects right back up again. Face it—anyone could have done this.

  Brownies came out of the oven, torte layers went in. They were thin enough to bake quickly, so Sam used the time to wash utensils. In the morning she could whip out a few batches of cookies and make frosting for the brownies and the torte. Being Sunday, she would have the place to herself.

  The chair at her desk looked inviting—just for a few minutes to get off her feet—but exhaustion was setting in and it would be too easy to rest her head on her arms and end up sleeping there half the night. She kept moving.

  At last the timer dinged for the torte layers. Ten more minutes before she could remove them from the pans, so she used that opportunity to organize space in the fridge for storage. When everything was neatly stashed away, she headed home.

  Her eyelids felt heavy during the final few miles and she nearly missed the driveway turn. I have to get some rest. Pulling the van in beside Beau’s personal SUV she got out and saw that the dogs were waiting for her on the porch. Her heart tugged a little—how nice that simple thing was, to be greeted with wags and excitement.

  Nellie, the border collie, rubbed against Sam’s legs when she stopped to give each of them some attention. Beau must have heard her vehicle; he opened the front door.

  She stood up and started toward him, and that’s when she smelled smoke. Faint and distant, but distinctly the smell of burning vegetation. She turned toward Beau.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The fire’s still burning north of here. Wind’s carrying the smoke right toward us.”

  Chapter 16

  The bedcovers felt so good. Sam snuggled in closer to Beau, relishing the afterglow of predawn sex. They’d fallen into bed last night, both too tired for anything but a lazy goodnight. But somewhere around four, he reached for her and the timing was just right. Now, she wanted nothing more than to stay exactly where she was for the next two days.

  That wouldn’t happen, of course. The excitement of the chocolate festival was wearing off but the duty to be there had not yet gone away. One of her recommendations to the Chamber folks—if they planned to do this again—would be to make it a one-day event. Catch everyone at the peak of enthusiasm and end it while they still wanted more. Just her opinion.

  There was also the real possibility there might not be another festival at all. The murder was still making the news and more than once had been linked to the festival because of where it happened and Carinda’s involvement with the committee. She drifted back to sleep almost hoping that the event would vanish for all time.

  She woke to Beau’s nudging.

  “Sam? The alarm didn’t go off. It’s nearly seven,” he whispered against her neck.

  “Seven!” Almost a record sleep-in for her, these past two years. She sat upright, her heart pounding.

  Spitting toothpaste into the sink, she forced herself to calm down. There wasn’t that much yet to do at the bakery. She would be better off to think clearly and get the work done; even with cookies, brownies and a torte to finish she would still make it to the hotel by ten for the opening.

  She walked into the ballroom at 9:57, in time to see Rupert put down the microphone after giving the usual morning pep rally and with enough time that she and Becky easily filled the display with the new items before people had drifted up to their booth. A glance around the room showed that most of the other vendors were present—only a few had completely given up the show, and for the most part the empty spaces had been put to good use with tables and chairs where folks could sit for awhile to enjoy coffee or tea with their dessert.

  Despite the fact that Sam really just wanted this day to be over, she was glad to see that others were still on their toes to make it a quality event for the crowd. She and Becky did a brisk business in scones, muffins and coffeecake for awhile, then Kelly showed up.

  “I never thought I would say this, but the smell of sugary things has no appeal at all for me today,” she said to her mother. “What do you say
to a real breakfast with eggs and bacon and everything? Right here in the restaurant—I’ll buy.”

  Sam looked toward Becky, who said, “I had exactly that at home before I came. It did hit the spot—you guys go. I can handle things here.”

  An assessment of the room showed much thinner crowds than the previous two days. Becky could surely manage.

  “Call me if you’re swamped. I can come right back,” Sam told her assistant.

  A long buffet had been set up in the Bella Vista’s restaurant, Sunday brunch in place of menu service. Sam filled a plate with protein and fruit.

  “I really am reaching my saturation point with sweets and crowds and people in general,” she said quietly to Kelly after they’d found a table beside a divider that partially screened it from the rest of the room. “Between the thousand and one hippies next door, the whole to-do over Carinda, and constantly having to smile while selling cheesecake slices . . . I’m ready for a break.”

  “Take one, Mom. You and Beau should book a trip and get away for awhile.”

  Sam laughed. “Well, a trip isn’t going to happen. He’s tied up with this case—who knows how long that will take—and I know he won’t leave the ranch until the band of flower children go away. He’s nervous as a bird about having that many of them around.”

  “How long will they stay?”

  “Probably another month. Their leader said they have a big thing set up for summer solstice.”

  “No wonder Beau is antsy. At least you get to be done with your big-crowd event by the end of today.”

  Kelly glanced around the room, aware that others from the festival might be nearby. Sam peered over the divider.

  “Speaking of Carinda . . .See that lady with her hair up in a clip?” Kelly asked. “Just leaving, bright turquoise top?”

  Sam nodded, although she only caught a flash of the brilliantly colored shirt as the woman disappeared out the door.