8 Sweet Payback

by Connie Shelton

  “I’m checking with neighbors of Sophie Garcia’s,” he said. “I know her boyfriend has been around recently. I’m wondering if you saw his bike coming or going over the weekend—Easter Sunday morning?”

  She stared skyward for a moment. “I did. That was the day I got called in for an extra shift. They woke me up. I went in around two in the morning. Once we took care of a rollover carload, things weren’t so busy so I was able to get out of there around five. Thought maybe if I rushed home I could get my husband and son up in time to go to the sunrise service in Taos. But they were so sound asleep that I didn’t have the heart to wake them, and to drive back where I’d just come from.” She realized she was rattling on. “Anyway, yeah. The bike was parked in the driveway, in front of Sophie’s car, both when I left and when I came back. The apartment was dark except for the outdoor lighting that’s on all night, all the time. They might have left for awhile, but in the middle of the night? Why would they?”

  Beau could think of one reason but to have shot Jessie Starkey, Lee would have had to leave and tail the hunters out to the woods. And he’d have needed to make record time getting back here before Claudia MacNeill came home. Besides, neither Sophie’s little car nor Lee’s Harley was exactly suited to quiet travel over mountain terrain. It wasn’t proof positive that Lee was innocent, but it went a long way toward backing up the story the ex-con had told him. Beau thanked Claudia for her time and she gratefully headed toward her front door.

  Voices across the street caught Beau’s attention and he saw Nathan Garcia come out of the apartment and mount his bicycle.

  “Stay right here on our block,” Sophie called out to him. She looked up and saw Beau.

  He made eye contact and walked over.

  “Can we talk for a minute?” he asked.

  “I guess.” She backed into the apartment, standing aside so he could enter. “I don’t know what I could tell you that’s any different from yesterday.”

  Beau looked around. “I notice Lee’s bike is gone. Did he leave?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, he didn’t bring much stuff with him. A few clothes that he carried in his saddlebags. He loves that bike.” She moved a stack of folded towels from the armchair and motioned for Beau to sit.

  “He’s had it a long time?”

  “Long time. Even back when we first started dating. He left it with me when they sent him away. Nathan was a baby then and Lee told me if things ever got really hard for us that I could sell the bike. That was my first clue how much he loves Nathan. He wouldn’t give up that bike for anything or anyone else.”

  “Things must have been difficult for you, more than once I would imagine.”

  “Yeah, well. I’ve got my job at the bank. It’s steady even if it doesn’t pay a whole lot. My folks helped me out some too. Mom watched the baby for me until he started school, so that was really good.”

  “And now that Lee’s back?”

  “I don’t know.” She’d perched on the arm of the couch and now she ran her fingers through her hair, scraping it back from her face. “I still have feelings for him. We might be able to make it work. But I told him he can’t put Nathan in danger—no matter what. I don’t want to move away from my family . . . but I don’t know if we could stay here. I just don’t know anything right now.”

  “If it’s any help, I was able to verify Lee’s alibi for Sunday morning.”

  Relief washed over her. She truly hadn’t been sure that he had stayed on that couch all night long, Beau realized.

  “Sophie, I think the way out of this whole mess is if we can go back to the old case, when Angela was killed. If we can find out who really did it, I’d hope that the whole town could get on with life and put this situation behind them.”

  She nodded. “Otherwise, I’m afraid it’s going to be one payback after the other.”

  Smart girl.

  “So,” he said, “what do you remember from back then? Did you know Angela Cayne?”

  “Oh sure, slightly. Everybody knows everybody in this town—I’m sure you’ve heard that before. Angie was a few years younger, you know, so we were never in the same classes. But when I started going out with Lee—we were seniors in high school then—I’d see Angie around. Her folks lived right next door to Lee’s. Cute girl, pretty popular as I remember. I recall her getting into some kind of trouble over a drunk driving incident . . . she was probably about sixteen.”

  “Her grandmother said she was in an accident once and they thought they might lose her.”

  “Oh, gosh, that’s right. That’s what it was. Angie was driving and there was a bad wreck. Her best friend died. I was away when that happened, taking training courses for my job. Lee went to UNM for a year and I think he was gone then too. College didn’t work out for him. He finally went to work for his buddy who owns that bike shop in Taos.”

  “So, moving up to the time when Angela was abducted and killed . . . what do you remember about that?”

  “My world and Angie’s were pretty different. I’d gotten pregnant with Nathan, but Lee and I were having problems. I couldn’t decide if getting married was a good idea or not. I guess my hormones were going all crazy, but I just didn’t want to make that commitment until after I had the baby. Then one thing and another. I went back to work, my mom was keeping Nathan during the day . . . you know, I rarely got over to Lee’s parents’ house in those days so I hardly ever saw Angie. The first I knew about the tragedy was when a customer came in the bank, all scared and shaky and said she’d just heard that Angie Cayne was kidnapped. I mean, no one believed it at first. The gossip went wild—she’d run off with a boyfriend, she’d run off with an older man, she’d run off to get away from her parents—that kind of stuff. No one truly believed that anything bad had happened to her until her body was found a few days later. Then it was shock—total shock.”

  Chapter 8

  Sam hit the accelerator a little too hard as she watched Beau’s cruiser turn around. Being ordered back home didn’t sit well with her, but a niggling feeling told her that it wasn’t Beau she was angry with, it was the situation. And she couldn’t very well be angry at a situation that didn’t realistically involve her. And yet, just a few minutes ago, she had become involved.

  At the bottom of it all was fear. What if the man who’d pulled her out of her truck was the killer? And what if he’d grabbed her with evil intent, and what if Beau hadn’t come along at that moment?

  That’s what spurred her emotions now.

  The road curved and her truck swayed across the yellow line. Get hold of yourself, Sam. She eased off the gas and concentrated on the road, dashed lines on pavement, flowing past, calming her mind.

  At the ranch, Nellie and Ranger sat up on the porch as Sam pulled up the driveway. The minute she got out of the truck, both of them bounded toward her, tails in motion, smiles on their faces.

  “Hey you guys,” she said, bending to give them some attention. “You know how to brighten a mood, don’t you?”

  They circled, slowing her progress to the front door. She let them come inside and she dropped her pack on the couch. Frustration welled up again. No lunch, little progress on the job at the big white house, and now Beau was put out with her for being in Sembramos at all.

  She stood in front of the open refrigerator door, contemplating the contents—didn’t she used to get after Kelly for doing the same thing?

  Make up your mind, Sam, and just get on with the day!

  She picked up a plastic container of leftover potato salad, not exactly the lunch she’d anticipated. Wandering through the house with fork in hand, she polished off the contents as she debated what to do next. Despite the best of intentions, she wasn’t in the mood for spring cleaning. She took the empty Tupperware to the kitchen and put it in the dishwasher, looked around, felt her impatience rise again.

  A slip of paper on the counter caught her attention.

  It was the name Rupert had given her, the reference librarian. Well, doin
g a little research sounded like way more fun than cleaning. She picked up the phone, dialed the number at the Harwood Library and was put in touch with Cora Abernathy.

  “Oh, yes, Rupert Penrick,” the woman with the elderly-sounding voice said. “He comes around now and then. I have to say, he does have some of the strangest requests for information.”

  Sam could see this line of conversation going a thousand directions—interesting ones, yes, but since she already knew the plots of most of Rupert’s books, she figured she better lead Cora toward her own needs.

  “Well, my request might turn out to be an odd one, too,” she said with a chuckle. “I met a woman here in Taos—Bertha Martinez. She died almost two years ago and I understand that she was possibly involved in the occult. People said she was reputed to be a bruja.”

  “Hmm . . . I’ve never heard of her. I suppose I could check the New Mexico history texts, see if her name comes up.”

  “I don’t know that it would,” Sam said. How to approach this without actually telling Cora about the wooden box? “I doubt Bertha was anyone very important, although I could be wrong. What I’m mainly interested in knowing is how I might find other people who knew her. There’s not some kind of local witches club around here or anything, is there?”

  “That would be called a coven. I’m not aware of any. Still, you never know.” Cora sounded slightly distracted. “I’m making some notes. Let me do some checking and I’ll get back to you.”

  The librarian took Sam’s phone number and promised to call back, whether she found out anything or not. At least it was a start, Sam figured, as she hung up.

  The idea of there being a local coven really hadn’t occurred to Sam before now, so on a whim she set her laptop computer on the dining table and decided to give that a try. A search for “witch covens Taos” led to two websites, one of which seemed to be wiccans who seriously studied the practice of modern day witchcraft; the other looked like a bunch of schoolgirls who fancied themselves to be Harry Potter’s girlfriends. Neither seemed a likely match for a woman in her nineties who had probably practiced the oldest of the old New Mexico traditions. To have been a contemporary of Bertha Martinez, Sam guessed she would be talking to someone over seventy.

  She closed her browser, unsure whether she was on the right track at all. A rumor about Bertha being a bruja was a far cry from knowing it for a fact, and an even farther leap to the notion that the wooden box had anything at all to do with such practices. Sam decided to put the whole thing out of her mind unless she heard back from Cora Abernathy and got any truly useful leads. There were more important things requiring her attention—her business, for one.

  Aside from the two weeks she was away on her honeymoon, this was the first time she’d gone a full day without being at the bakery. She dialed Sweet’s Sweets. Jen didn’t answer until the fourth ring and Sam could hear a clamor of voices in the background.

  “Things are busy, I gather?” She could picture the sales room full of people and Jen dashing around to fill orders. It was, after all, mid-afternoon and there was often a rush of coffee-and-dessert folks about now. “Just call me back when it settles a little.”

  “No, Sam, wait!” Her voice went lower. “We have a little situation. Can you talk to Becky a minute?”

  Situation? Uh-oh.

  Becky came on the line, sounding frazzled. “Oh, Sam, I’m afraid I lost an order. There’s a lady here who’s giving Jen what-for out front.”

  “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

  “This woman comes in—this was about fifteen minutes ago. She’s got, like, five or six friends with her. She says she’s here to pick up her divorce-party cake. Jen comes back with a blank look on her face. I don’t remember the order either . . . And now this woman is throwing a fit and all of her friends are making comments like ‘why did you order from this place?’ and stuff like that. I’m afraid they’ll all leave here and tell people that Sweet’s Sweets is a terrible bakery. She keeps saying that the party is tonight and if there’s no cake she’s going to—I don’t know what, but she’s pretty angry.”

  Sam’s mind whirled. She didn’t remember any divorce-party order either, but with the Easter rush and everything else that had happened in the past week, she just couldn’t be sure.

  “Becky, calm down. Has the woman described what she ordered? Can we pull something together quickly?”

  “She says it was like a wedding cake, three tiers. Only the bride and groom aren’t standing together on the top, she’s pushing him off, like he’s falling down the stairs and breaking his neck.”

  This customer sounded like a lovely woman to be married to. The guy was probably thrilled to be taking the stairs out of there.

  “Okay, Becky, walk over to the fridge and tell me what we have on hand.”

  “Two dozen vanilla cupcakes iced in chocolate, a red velvet half-sheet that isn’t decorated yet, four eight-inch layers . . . those aren’t decorated yet either. Oh, and two fruit tarts. All of that was going to be part of our stock for tomorrow.”

  It was an adequate amount for the usual walk-ins who wanted birthday cakes and family desserts. Sam’s mind tried to put it all together into something coherent.

  “Good. Now we’re going to fudge a little with the customer.” An out-and-out lie, really, but you had to do that sometimes to save the day. “Go in there and tell the woman that you hadn’t realized the owner had taken her order home to personally finish it. Tell her to come back at five and it will be ready.”

  Becky let out a whimper.

  “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, pull out all the cake toppers we have and see if anything can be adapted to the bride-and-groom scenario she wants. If not, get out the modeling chocolate and you and Julio do your best to sculpt figurines. I’ll handle the cakes, if you can do the other. And Becky? Don’t panic. We can do this.”

  Sam glanced at the clock as she hung up. Three o’clock already. But at least she finally felt like the afternoon had purpose. She wondered how soon Beau would be home. He’d ordered her to stay at the ranch so there wouldn’t be trouble with the Sembramos crowd, but surely this didn’t count. She picked up her pack and the keys to her bakery van. See? I won’t even be driving the same vehicle—no one will know me. Yeah, how far is that argument going to go?

  She walked through the back door at the bakery to find Becky and Julio bent over the work table shaping bits of colored claylike material.

  “I take it the customer accepted the plan?”

  “Barely. I think she still gave Jen an earful.”

  Sam peered through the curtain, where Jen was furiously polishing away at the bistro tables.

  “You okay?”

  Jen looked up and nodded. “Thank goodness you came up with this idea. The woman actually seemed a little bit pleased that her order was being personally handled by you.”

  “Thanks, Jen. I’m sure you handled it as well as anyone on earth could have.”

  “We never did find an order form for this, and I swear I never saw this person in the shop before.”

  Whether the lady was mistaken about which bakery she’d visited, or whether she was the type who operated by throwing tantrums all around town to get what she wanted, Sam would probably never know. For now, she would have to come up with something to save her reputation from being trashed.

  She’d been forming an idea as she raced out of the house and drove to the shop. Now it was time to implement it.

  “Julio, do we have plenty of white buttercream?” she asked.

  He pointed to a tub that Becky had wisely taken from the fridge. Sam pulled out the sheet cake and the four layers. Smoothing buttercream on the sheet first, she then stacked three of the layers on top of it, butting their edges together into a cloverleaf formation. They all received a buttercream coating, then the final eight-inch layer went on top. Sam filled her biggest piping bag and went to work with flowers and large, full-blown roses. The desig
n began to take shape nicely, and it really did scream ‘wedding.’

  Julio, meanwhile, had created a groom in tuxedo. The little man-figure’s legs were splayed and his arms seemed to be grabbing air. Julio held him beside the cake and, for all the world, he looked as if he’d just been knocked down a flight of steps. Becky’s bride-figure had her hands on the hips of her white gown and a furious expression on her face.

  “I got her hair color and features from the real one,” Becky said with a satisfied little grin.

  Sam set the figurines in place, piped on a couple more little details, and stood back to evaluate. “It seems pretty vindictive to me.”

  “So did this customer. Maybe we should add some blood,” Becky said.

  Julio eyed the cake. “I think the guy’s lucky. The real one, I mean.”

  The bells at the front door tinkled and female voices filled the shop. The clock said five.

  “Shh,” Sam warned. “I’ll take it out there. Either she’ll love it or I’ll be back in a minute with half my ass missing.”

  That drew a chuckle and the others turned to clean up the mess the flurry had created on the worktable.

  The customer seemed in an entirely different frame of mind this time. She greeted Jen as if her parting words had not been rude and threatening, and she gushed over Sam’s cake design to the point that Sam decided the group must have started the party a little early at a bar somewhere. At any rate, the lady paid for the cake and left and Sam’s entire staff had survived. Smiles and relief showed unanimously. Sam was in the middle of handing out congratulations all around when her cell phone rang. Beau.

  Oh boy. Was this going to be their first real clash of wills?

  Chapter 9

  A deep rumble vibrated the apartment’s windows. Beau looked out and saw the familiar Harley roll to a stop. Lee swung his leg over. Sophie’s son, Nathan, sat on his bicycle at the edge of the roadway, watching the man and machine with fascination.