Sam pulled the envelope from her pocket and stared at it. So much had happened in the hours since she’d been there, she’d completely forgotten to mention it to Beau. Of course, telling him about it would open another set of questions about how she’d gotten it. Maybe better to wait.
Beau’s comments about both tying the plant residue to the nephew and verifying it as the cause of Cantone’s death made her realize that simply finding evidence did not prove a crime. She would have to find some kind of proof that the one-page will she’d located was not the real one. Something more than her own simple intuition.
She laid the envelope on her dresser.
Back at her computer, Sam saw that she’d received a reply to one of her emails about a van for sale. It turned out that one was in Albuquerque and while she didn’t relish a five-hour round trip drive to go see it, she didn’t want to rule out anything either. She sent a reply thanking them for the info and saying she’d consider it.
Movement in the front yard caught her eye and she saw a man circling her truck. She stepped outside to talk to him and he readily offered about half of what it was worth. When she showed him the printout she’d gotten online with the values, he went away a little grumpy. Feeling somewhat discouraged she went back inside to find that she’d missed a call from Rupert.
When she called him back he said that he’d heard from Carolyn Hildebrandt, the art rep in Santa Fe, wondering whether Mrs. Knightly was still interested in Cantone’s work. Although the painting they’d looked at was going out to New York today, she could show them some other pieces.
“I’d say, considering what we spotted in Bart Killington’s house,” Sam said. She didn’t tell Rupert about her little breaking and entering caper the other day. You never knew what would end up in one of his books.
“So, would you like to become Mrs. Knightly again and run to Santa Fe for the day?” he asked.
She considered it for about half a second. The drive down to the capital was getting old. Plus, what would they really learn? She already knew that Hildebrandt and Bart were close, and she was pretty certain that Bart’s stash of Cantone paintings were the real thing, art that he’d taken from the artist’s Taos residence. She begged off, using her caretaker job as an excuse.
Rupert grumbled a little and she suspected that he’d secretly wanted to take the day off from his writing. But like most professionals, he was pretty good about disciplining himself to devote a certain number of hours a day to his craft, and like it or not he sometimes needed for his friends to not enable his lazy streak. He said as much before ending the call.
Well, thought Sam, I guess I could say the same for myself. Can’t very well nag Rupert about not working if I don’t do the same. As she placed her gold hoop earrings into the lumpy wooden box she had a thought. If the box seemed to give her an energy boost, why not use that to her advantage?
She picked it up and held it in her arms, close to her body. Again, warmth surged from the wood and the yellowish surface began to radiate golden light. The stones glowed more brightly than she’d ever seen them. She quickly set the box back on her dresser, her heart pumping. The power of the thing unnerved her.
She stared at it for a couple of minutes.
You might be playing with fire, Sam.
Shaking her hands to dispel the tingly feeling in them, she began to back out of the bedroom. Then something green caught her eye.
The envelope containing the purported will.
The entire surface of the envelope was covered in smears of the greenish, powdery substance. The same thing Sam had seen in Cantone’s kitchen, the stuff Rupert swore he couldn’t see.
She picked it up and gingerly opened the flap. Inside, the single sheet of paper also had green marks on it.
Bart Killington was definitely connected to the green dust now.
She dropped the envelope on the dresser and grabbed up the telephone.
“Beau, there’s something weird going on here.”
While he went through a whole bunch of “are you okay?” kind of stuff, she gathered her thoughts. Working at sounding rational, she told him about taking the envelope from Killington’s house and how she’d found powdery green marks on it, just like those at the house that she suspected to be deathcamas.
“It ties the nephew to the poisonous plant—don’t you see?” she insisted.
Beau took a long breath. “It ties a green substance to both the envelope and the kitchen of the house, Sam. First, we’d need a lab analysis to verify that the green is from deathcamas. And, we still don’t know that the uncle didn’t pick those plants himself and carry them into the house. He might have sat at that kitchen table to write out the will.”
Sam bristled. How could she explain the feeling she got when she touched that envelope?
“Sam, it doesn’t prove any kind of foul play by the nephew. Don’t you see that I wouldn’t have anything at all that I could take to a prosecutor? I’m in my office today,” he said. “Bring me the envelope with the will and I’ll see what kind of tests we can run on it. Maybe we can get someone to analyze the signature, if nothing else.”
Fifteen minutes later, she’d hopped in her truck and was on her way downtown to the Sheriff’s Department. All the way there, she debated what to say. In the end she decided the whole truth was the only way.
“Can we talk privately?” she asked as soon as he appeared.
“Sure.” He ushered her out into a small courtyard. They sat on concrete benches in the shade.
She laid out the whole story, starting with the day that Bertha Martinez had given her the wooden box. “The rumors you heard about her being a witch. I’m beginning to think maybe they were true,” she said. “How else can I explain the weird stuff that’s been happening to me ever since I got that box?” He leaned back, letting her finish the story.
She told him that she’d not noticed the green marks in the Cantone house that first day—probably because she’d hardly touched the box—but on other occasions when she’d actually rubbed her hands over the box she’d been almost hyper-aware, seeing the green residue.
“That’s what happened this morning, Beau. The day I found this envelope I hadn’t handled the box. Today, after I touched it, the marks became as clear as anything.”
“And you still see them now?” he asked, holding it up.
“Yes! They’re almost brilliant green.”
To his credit, he didn’t laugh and he didn’t freak out and leave her sitting there. He shook his head slowly and she felt disheartened. He noticed her expression. “Sam, it’s not that I don’t believe you. I know you to be honest and sincere. It’s just that this isn’t something we can use to build a case. The prosecutor would laugh me out of his office, if Sheriff Padilla even let me go that far. And even the worst defense attorney would tear the case to shreds.”
He was right of course. She knew that.
“But you could build a case based on lab proof that the poisonous plant toxin was in the house and on the will. And I’ll bet it’s the same plant toxin the lab showed in Cantone’s body. Please, Beau, please come out there with me. I’ll show you where it is and you gather the evidence.”
She felt his hesitation. “What?”
“I’m supposed to be working on this other case now.” He lowered his voice. “Padilla is already hassling me about this. It’s an election year. He’s a political animal and he knows his chances of being re-elected hinge on people’s perception that crime is under control. If a death can be ruled an accident and quietly filed away, that’s how he wants it. If a case gets sent to the prosecutor, it better be a damn strong one—something that makes Padilla look good.”
“But surely he doesn’t want people getting away with murder! If we could get the evidence . . .”
He gave a thin smile. “It would be a start. But as I’ve told you before, we would have to prove that the nephew administered the poison and we’d have to prove intent to kill his uncle.”
“But at least
it’s something,” she said. “I can’t stand the idea of that poor old man dying such a horrible death and this greedy nephew burying him in a hidden grave and walking away with a fortune.”
“I agree about that,” he said. “The whole thing really stinks.”
He stood up and they walked back to the office. “Okay. An hour, tops. I’ll say it’s my lunch break. Let me get a lab technician to come with us. The other thing we have to do here is make sure that there are more than just the two of us gathering this evidence. You’re already going to have some explaining to do about how you got that envelope from Killington’s house. And if all the evidence comes from my girlfriend, that’s another thing a defense attorney will jump on like a dog on a bone.”
Girlfriend?
He’d picked up the phone and punched a two-digit intercom extension. “Lisa, can you take your lunch break now? I need you to bring your lab kit and come with me. Five minutes, my office.”
While they waited for Lisa, Beau stared at the envelope Sam had handed him.
“You still see green all over this?” he asked.
“You don’t? Nothing at all?”
“It looks like a white envelope and the page inside looked like plain old paper,” he said. “Sam, I’m so sorry I can’t verify it for you.”
She gave a dispirited shrug. What else could she say? She didn’t want this ability to see and feel things that no one else could experience, and she knew they couldn’t be expected to believe her just because she said so. She suddenly realized that her life would never be the same, as long as she possessed that damned wooden box.
Chapter 23
Sweet Masterpiece - The First Sweet’s Sweets Bakery Mystery Page 26