Sweet Masterpiece - The First Sweet’s Sweets Bakery Mystery

by Connie Shelton

One glass of wine, the chill night air, and the long day began to catch up with Sam. When Beau caught her yawning he suggested that they go back inside. She peeked into Iris’s bedroom where Kelly was sitting in a chair beside the bed, looking through a book.

  “We should get going,” Sam said. “Iris, good night. Thanks for having us in your home.”

  While Kelly looked for her purse, Sam walked out to the front porch with Beau. “It’s a beautiful night,” she said, enjoying the warmth of his arm around her shoulders.

  “Weather’s about to change. About to get some frost.” He gave her a light kiss on the top of her head. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  A discreet cough behind them and Kelly walked outside. Sam started the truck and negotiated the turn-around.

  “I really liked Beau and his mother,” Kelly said as they drove out through the gate. “Her stories about him as a little boy are a hoot.”

  “Well, she sure took to you like a ladybug to a daisy.”

  “Mom, where do you come up with those sayings?” She laughed as she said it.

  “Grampa, I suppose. He used to say stuff like that all the time. I guess spending time with Beau and Iris brought back a lot of Texas childhood memories. You remember Grampa’s farm, all those miles of cotton fields? I think of high school football games and fried chicken Sunday dinners . . .. I get around ranchers and it all comes back.”

  “I like him, Mom. I think he’s good for you.”

  “Thanks, Kell.”

  So, what did this mean? Despite all her reservations about involvement, with her daughter’s approval, Sam wondered if she was on the right track this time. She’d not had the best success at choosing men, leaning toward the ones that were good looking but too shallow to be dependable. Recognizing that, somehow, before she let them become permanent. Spending her whole life without a partner as a result.

  Sam fell asleep with that train of thought and ended up having a nightmare about how her life turned out because she’d married Billy Roy Farmer and stayed in Cottonville, Texas. When she woke up to a brilliant blue New Mexico sky, with a frosty chill in the air, she felt a rush of elation. Life usually did turn out the way it was supposed to.

  Yesterday’s summery outfit wasn’t going to cut it, she realized when she looked out to see thick frost on the neighbor’s metal roof. Beau had been right about the change in the weather. She left the light blouse and pants draped over a chair and opted for socks and boots with her heavy jeans and sweatshirt.

  Coffee really hit the spot. Sam stared out toward the driveway for a few minutes, thinking again of her resolve to get Sweet’s Sweets underway. The larger orders were bringing in some good money, but now she was running into the problems of working in a tiny kitchen and making cake deliveries with her pickup truck. The backseat was one of those little half-sized things, difficult to get anything in and out of, and transporting food in the open bed was out of the question. And she couldn’t keep borrowing Zoe’s car, especially if things turned as she hoped and she began making several deliveries a day.

  On the other hand, she needed a beefy vehicle for her landscape work. At the very least, something with a trailer hitch. A mid-sized SUV or van could probably handle both needs.

  Someone once told her that wishing for a thing wouldn’t make it so. And yet she was a firm believer in visualizing the future. The clearer picture she could form, the more likely she was to manifest the reality. It was a technique she used in cake design all the time. Now she figured she better apply it to her business plan. The company vehicle would be a good first step. She sipped her coffee and flipped through the newspaper.

  After an hour she’d come to the conclusion that her truck and all the cash in her checking account would just about make an even trade on the van she needed. She placed a couple of calls on vans that were listed for sale but both were already gone. Undeterred, she kept the image in her head while toasting two slices of bread and topping off her coffee.

  Kelly emerged from her room and Sam noticed that she was shivering in her light cottons from southern California.

  “I don’t think I own anything warm enough for September in Taos,” she said.

  “You’re welcome to look through my closet but I don’t think anything’s going to be a great fit on you.” Kelly was about the size of a pencil.

  She dashed into Sam’s room anyway and came out with a pair of sweats that, while still large on her, were ones Sam had shoved to the end of the closet rail because they hadn’t fit in years. The sweatshirt overpowered Kelly’s slim frame but she seemed glad of the extra space in it.

  “I’ll have to do some shopping,” she said.

  Sam saw her bank balance take a dive.

  “I’ve got some money, Mom. I collected my final paycheck. And there are credit cards.”

  Sam didn’t want to get into the conversation about how she’d gotten into trouble with those cards already. The stare she sent tried to convey get a job first, without damaging their recent rapport

  What she said was, “I’m looking at a vehicle for my business, so I’m not going to have any spare cash to help you out, Kell.”

  “I know, Mom. I don’t expect that.” She poured herself some coffee and joined Sam at the table. “Actually, I think I have a job prospect.”

  She saw the surprise on Sam’s face.

  “I talked a lot with Iris last night, and I even mentioned the idea to Beau.”

  Another surprise.

  “You went in the bathroom right after dinner. That’s when I ran the idea past him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Iris is getting pretty frail. She told me that Beau worries about her, that he runs home a few times during the day to check on her, and it’s causing trouble for him at work. When anyone mentions nursing homes they both get emotional and can’t talk about it.” Kelly sipped at her coffee. “So, I suggested that I might become Iris’s caregiver. Well, she called it a babysitter. It would just be during the day, because he’s there with her at night.”

  “What did he think of the idea? Can he afford to pay someone?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. Yes. I guess he’s been thinking of it for awhile but he wasn’t sure about having a stranger in the house. He even interviewed a couple of women a few weeks ago but Iris didn’t like either of them.”

  A rush of conflicting emotions ran through Sam. Kelly working for the man she was about to be romantically involved with. Would Kelly be dependable? Would they be happy with her work? Would she be happy doing that sort of thing—she’d done nothing but office work for years.

  “Iris loved the idea. She wants Beau to hire me right away. He said he’d think about it, and I said I would need to run it past you.”

  Sam wasn’t sure what to think but covered her utter surprise by carrying her empty plate to the sink and refilling her mug.

  “It’s quite a commitment,” she said. “She’ll need more and more help as she gets older.”

  “I know. I think I can do it. And Beau kept saying we could ‘give it a try.’ He probably doesn’t know how his mother will react to having someone else around all the time either.” She went to the cupboard and found some peanut butter crackers, which she slowly unwrapped. “At least it’s something, some way for me to earn my keep until I find out what life holds next.”

  “As long as you are fair with them, Kell. You can’t take this job and then bail out when some high-salary corporate thing comes through.” Sam held up a hand. “I’m just saying. Be sure you’re ready to live up to the responsibility.”

  Kelly nodded. “Let’s see what they say about it today. They may have changed their minds.”

  A few minutes of silence passed. “Kell? I’m glad you’re thinking creatively about this. And I’m glad that you understand my situation and are willing to pitch in with expenses.”

  Kelly came over and gave her a warm hug. “Remember how it was when I was little? Just you and me. You gave up a lot for me, Mom
. I don’t expect you to keep doing that. I hope things work out for you and Beau.”

  How’d she get to be so wise? A tear threatened Sam’s eye and she blinked it back.

  The phone jangled on the kitchen wall and they both jumped.

  “There’s Beau now,” Kelly said. “So, what do you think?”

  “It’s your choice. I know you’ll make the right decision.” Sam reached for the phone. “And how do you know it’s Beau?”

  Of course it was, and after talking to him for a minute she turned the call over to Kelly. While they discussed details, she busied herself taking inventory of her baking supplies.

  “I can start tomorrow,” Kelly said to Beau. Done deal.

  When she hung up she said, “Now I really better find some new clothing. Looks like I’ll be here for the winter.” She had a huge grin on her face.

  With Wal-Mart, one department store and a variety of expensive, touristy specialty shops in town, Sam gave Kelly the options and suggested she might rather drive to Santa Fe where there was a mall and some outlet stores.

  “I guess I could spend a day in the city,” Kelly said. “What about you? Want to come along? I didn’t even ask what you were doing when I walked in here.”

  Sam told her about the decision to find a new vehicle and, like the younger-thinking person she was, Kelly suggested looking online. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She busied herself at the computer while Kelly dressed for her shopping trip.

  “Don’t spend all your money in one place,” Sam kidded as she headed out the back door.

  “You either!”

  Back at the computer, Sam found a few possible vehicles of interest and sent emails requesting more details. While waiting for responses she figured that she better get her own truck cleaned up and ready to sell. She carried a caddy of cleaning supplies out and worked over the interior, detailing the dashboard with cotton swabs until the thing looked like it had just arrived from the showroom. Moving on to the backseat she came across the bag with the wilted stems that Zoe called deathcamas. She’d completely forgotten to mention it to Beau last night.

  She set the bag in the service porch and finished cleaning the truck, inside and out.

  By eleven she was more than ready for a break. If it were true that the little wooden box gave her some kind of magic energy zap, she was sure wishing she’d called upon it this morning. She put in a call for Beau, needing to tell him about the deadly plant, and then made a sandwich and flopped into a chair at the kitchen table while she waited for him to call back.

  As it turned out, he stopped by instead.

  “Hey, the truck sure looks spiffy,” he said, giving it an admiring look.

  She thanked him again for last night’s steak dinner and then told him about her plan. “As much as I hate to part with it, I need the other vehicle more.”

  She handed him the plastic sack with the plants in it. “You told me that some kind of plant toxin showed up in Pierre Cantone’s autopsy tests. I’m wondering if this might be it.”

  He glanced into the bag.

  “They’re completely crispy now, but when I first found them they seemed the same shade of green as that stuff that I found inside his house. Zoe tells me this stuff is poisonous.”

  He pulled out one of the stems and held it up. “Looks like deathcamas. She’s right. Livestock eats this stuff and it’s a horrible death. Never heard of a person eating it though. Why would they?”

  “It was growing near Cantone’s house. There were smears of something much like this in his kitchen. The man dies. The nephew inherits a fortune in paintings. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  Sam wanted to say ‘aha!’ She’d not liked that nephew much anyway.

  “But—” He held up an index finger. “But, to make any kind of accusation, much less a court case, we have to have some kind of proof.”

  “Lab tests. Can’t they tell if this is the plant toxin that was in Cantone’s body?”

  “We can have it tested and find out. And that’s a good start. But it’s still a far cry from proving that the nephew administered this. Or that he didn’t eat it accidentally.”

  “A poisonous plant like this—accidental?”

  “You’d be surprised how many people experiment with plants in their yards, Sam. Some of them are tasty and harmless, like dandelion greens. They’ll pick a bunch of unknown greens and make up a salad. Never put it together that they got really sick the next day.”

  “But day after day? Zoe said it would take quite a bit to kill a person.”

  “Hey, it kills horses and sheep.”

  Sam still couldn’t see it happening accidentally to a person. “There are other people who had grudges against the man. Have you questioned Mr. Trujillo, the neighbor with the lawsuit against Anderson?”

  “Haven’t had time. Padilla has me on another case that just came up this morning. He’s pushing hard to close the whole Anderson-Cantone file and get on to other things.”

  “But—” She pointed at the bag.

  “I’ll try. The first step would be to tie this to the victim. If I can get Padilla to agree, I’ll have it tested against the toxin the lab found in Cantone. See if that tox level was high enough to be fatal. Don’t count on getting a conclusive answer, though. Things like this really deteriorate with time. But we can see what happens and take it from there.” He gave her a quick kiss. “I gotta get back on the job.”

  She walked him out to the cruiser. “Thanks for what you’re doing for Kelly. The job is a big favor.”

  “Hey, it’s a bigger favor to me. I hope she likes being with Mama. I really was getting to my wits end about a solution to the problem. I’m glad Kelly is willing to do it.”

  She watched him drive away, then rummaged in the garage for a For Sale sign that she’d used years ago. Filled in the phone number and a couple of details about the truck and taped it to the window. She would miss the Silverado’s capacity for stuff that she had to haul away from the properties she tended, but it was time for a change.

  The day had warmed up considerably, as usually happened this time of year, and Sam suddenly realized she was way too hot in her sweats. She showered and looked for something else to put on. The handiest thing was the pair of slacks and blouse she’d worn yesterday. As she pulled the pants on something crinkled in the pocket.

  The envelope she’d taken from Bart Killington’s house.

  Chapter 22