Sweet Masterpiece - The First Sweet’s Sweets Bakery Mystery

by Connie Shelton

Beau left around midnight and Sam snuggled into her covers. Her body felt alive, sparkling with the combination of great sex, the wine they’d shared after the first time, then the second leisurely exploration of each other. She savored the feeling. She had memories of younger times, other lovers, but nothing like this. Beau satisfied more than her physical needs—he gave emotionally, in a way she would treasure. The years of self-enforced celibacy seemed a little silly now.

  At some point she heard Kelly come in but she registered the sound only as a vague fact, an event without the power to intrude into her dreams. She fell into a deep, pleasant sleep.

  The faraway sound of the telephone woke Sam and she rolled over to glance at her clock. It was well after nine. Kelly had probably gotten up and left for work almost two hours ago. Sam pulled on a robe and caught the phone just before the answering machine took over.

  “Hey you.” Beau’s tone indicated that he was alone somewhere. “How are you this morning?”

  “Completely luxuriating in a lazy morning.”

  “Good. You deserve it. That was amazing last night.”

  She agreed. “Are you at work?”

  “Yeah, actually. Couldn’t get out of it. Although I would’ve loved to.” Again, that ache in his voice.

  Sam remembered that she had work she couldn’t avoid either. The book cake for the Chocoholics was baked but not decorated. She would have to get it to the store by this afternoon. And she hadn’t worked on Cantone’s place in several days. With the recent rains and warm weather, she ought to see if the yard needed another mowing. She didn’t tell him about her idea of talking to the neighbors out there.

  “I’m having Bart Killington brought up here for more questioning,” Beau was saying. “He may not be a suspect anymore, but he knows more than he’s telling. Maybe I can find out who the other person was, the one handling the deathcamas.”

  “You don’t have to go to Santa Fe for that?”

  “If necessary, Sheriff Padilla can have the Santa Fe County authorities pick him up and bring him here. I think I’ve finally impressed upon him that we don’t have a simple accidental death here. Getting Bart away from his own territory might help throw a little fear into him. Make him more talkative. Who knows? He may come willingly.” Some papers rustled in the background. “I’ve got about a dozen reports to finish up, but maybe we can get together later in the day, or this evening?”

  Sam agreed and wished him luck, already preoccupied with her own duties for the day. By the time she’d dressed and grabbed a piece of toast for breakfast, she was feeling the pressure to get the cake done. She quickly iced it with milk chocolate buttercream, piped borders around the edges, then wrote the words “It was a dark and stormy night . . .” in dark chocolate script on the right-hand ‘page’ of the book shape. For the left side, roses seemed too traditional so she made mounds of tiny flowers in white chocolate that became clusters of hydrangeas. She added dark chocolate stems and leaves, and strategically sprinkled dragées and edible chocolate glitter to catch the light. That final step made the entire cake practically glow.

  Sam looked at it with satisfaction. She felt almost the same radiance, herself.

  She popped the cake into the fridge to set while she cleaned up the mess in the kitchen. A tuna sandwich and baggie full of potato chips would serve as lunch, sometime between delivering the cake and mowing Cantone’s yard. The room darkened slightly, a cloud passing across the face of the sun, heralding a shift away from their warm Indian Summer days.

  A subtle chill sneaked down her spine when she thought of Cantone. Beau’s words came back. He would be questioning Bart Killington today. Why did that suddenly bother her?

  Sam shook off the feeling and changed to work clothes. As she put her good gold hoop earrings into the wooden box, it sent its familiar warmth into her hands. She hadn’t realized that they were cold as ice.

  She held the box an extra minute, her hands absorbing the heat they needed. When she set it down again she felt her energy return. She paused a moment to let it surge through her, welcoming the power she would put to good use in accomplishing her tasks.

  The white van waited in the driveway beside the Silverado. Soon, she told herself. Soon she would get signs made and Sweet’s Sweets would become a presence as she drove around town. Briefly debating which vehicle to take, she couldn’t resist driving the new one. She set the cake carefully in the back, hitched up the trailer with her lawn equipment and started rolling.

  As always, Ivan Petrenko was effusive in his praise of the new dessert for the Chocoholics.

  “Is reading a gothic mystery this week, for the group,” he said. He showed her the book. “See? ‘Dark and stormy night’ is perfect motif. How do you know?”

  How, indeed? Sam shrugged it off and wished him well.

  By the time she reached Cantone’s property heavy clouds had begun to build over the mountains. She stared upward and gave a nervous chuckle. The changing weather must be the real reason for her ‘dark and stormy’ inspiration.

  Beyond Cantone’s property the house belonging to Leonard Trujillo, the property boundary complainer, looked empty with no vehicles in the driveway. Betty McDonald’s place looked similarly unoccupied. Later, Sam thought, she could catch them and ask questions after she finished her work.

  She lowered the short ramp on the trailer and pulled the mower to the ground as the dark cloud moved closer. Wet grass wouldn’t cut well; she should get it done before trying to question the neighbors anyway. The machine started right up and she made quick work of the areas in front of the house. A patch of the scary deathcamas grew near the steps to the porch and she cut it down without a second thought. Zoe’s description of its effects, the violent convulsing death, haunted her. As the shredded stems flew away from the mower Sam felt an almost physical ache for poor Pierre Cantone.

  Dark gray clouds covered most of the sky now.

  She steered the mower to the backyard, making a perimeter where the lawn’s edge touched the wild grasses and sage beyond. As she passed the dark hole in the earth, where the sheriff’s men had dug up the artist’s body, she again felt that slice of fear up her spine. What had the old man gone through as he ingested the poison, day after day, slowly dying. Did he know he would end up in this corner, covered by the heaps of soil that now lay in dark piles?

  She turned her back, aiming the mower in the opposite direction.

  Calm down, Sam, she told herself. What’s the matter with you?

  A flash of lightning in the distance caught her attention. Great. She pushed the mower a little faster. Doubling back, she concentrated on the work, on making neat rows and refusing to think about Cantone or his death.

  The first drops of rain began to smack the earth. From the depth of the black clouds overhead, Sam knew her work was coming to a halt. She cut the mower’s engine and steered toward the covered carport.

  That’s when she spotted the plume of dust. A dark vehicle roared along the road, kicking up dirt. Someone trying to beat the storm to get home. But as she watched, the shape became a green Jaguar and the car whipped into the driveway right behind her van.

  Chapter 28