Tres Leches Cupcakes

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Bill showed up a moment later and swore again. Pushing his hand through his hair, he ordered everyone out of the van and told them to grab shovels and verify that every as-yet-untouched grave contained Anasazi bones. “If there are more fresh bodies out there, I want the police to deal with them all at once.”

  Sadie waited for someone to object, but no one did, which meant she had to. “This is a crime scene, Mr. Line,” she said as crew members climbed out of the van and grabbed shovels. He turned to look at her and put his hands on his hips. Not a good sign. A few of the crew hung back, but others took off toward the remaining mounds of dirt. Sadie took a breath and pulled together her confidence. “We can’t dig anymore.”

  “Until the cops get here, it’s my dig.”

  Sadie shook her head with more force, losing some of her anxiety in the face of his . . . wrongness. “You can’t do that,” she said. “It’s illegal and it can mess up the pending investigation. We need to leave everything as we found it. We may have already accidentally destroyed evidence. But there won’t be anything accidental about us continuing to dig now that we know.”

  “My dig,” he repeated with clipped words. “And my freaking bonus that just went down the toilet. Salvage archeology is already the redheaded stepchild of any development like this.” He waved his hand at the raw desert surrounding them. “All the construction company sees is that they have to waste time and money on what, to them, is as important as dirt. This”—he pointed at the body Margo had gone back to digging up—“is their worst nightmare because what was already a pain in the neck just got ten times worse.”

  “I hardly think this is all that fond of being a part of it either,” Sadie said, waving at the bodies they had unearthed. “These bodies are not supposed to be here and—”

  Bill turned away and headed for his trailer, dialing another number on his phone.

  Sadie hurried after him. “This is a big mistake, Mr. Line,” she said as she marched in an attempt to keep up with his long strides. “A terrible, horrible mistake.”

  She stopped in her tracks as an awful crunch sounded to her left. She spun around and saw Kyle Langley, whom she’d researched just the night before, pull his shovel out of what was obviously a grave of antiquity, the dirt barely rounded above the flat desert.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Margo yelled, jumping up from where she’d been excavating and storming toward Langley.

  He put the point of the shovel in the dirt again and hurried to step on it before she reached him. The lizard tattoo on his forearm moved with his muscles as he pushed down on the shovel.

  Margo wasn’t fast enough to prevent the secondary crunch.

  “Bill told us to dig,” Langley said.

  Margo grabbed his shovel, pulling it away from him with surprising force. She swung the shovel up and grabbed the other end of the handle, holding it in front of her with both hands like a bow stick. Sadie had trained with bow sticks during her self-defense class, but she’d never mastered the weapon; she’d hurt herself enough times with it that the teacher suggested she concentrate on her hand work.

  When Langley grabbed for the shovel, Margo pushed it toward him, catching him in the chest, and causing him to stumble backwards. “What the—”

  “You’re not digging for rocks!” she yelled, taking a step toward him, which caused him to fall back another few steps. “You just crushed a skull, you idiot.”

  “Bill told us to dig,” Langley said again, but some of his fervor was gone. His eyes darted back and forth as though looking for someone to back him up. Sadie was the only person close enough to do such a thing.

  Margo was still advancing toward Langley, who was looking at her as though she were a crazy woman. Afraid she was going to hurt him, Sadie hurried forward and put a hand on the shovel’s handle. “Margo,” she said in a reassuring tone. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay!” Margo said, rounding on her and causing Sadie to be the one to backpedal. “These are people. They deserve respect!”

  “I know,” Sadie said, putting her palms out in a placating gesture she hoped would calm Margo down. “He’s caught up in the energy, that’s all.” She looked around for Langley, wanting him to confirm her defense, but he had scurried over to join a friend who was digging up another mound. Sadie clenched her teeth as she scanned section three and saw at least a dozen people digging. She hoped Bill got in big trouble for this.

  “It’s not okay,” Margo said again, but with a catch in her throat that drew Sadie’s attention back to her. Tears filled her eyes as she stared down at the sloppy dig marks Langley had left behind. She fell to her knees at the graveside and, with her hands, began pulling at the dirt, gently uncovering a delicate, small human skull, the top crushed.

  The reverence and sorrow of Margo’s movements seemed out of place following her anger with Langley. Sadie knelt down beside her, staring at the eye sockets that had once belonged to someone’s child before looking up at Margo. Silent tears ran down her cheeks as she carefully removed the skull from the ground. There was something more than archeology and respecting this grave behind Margo’s tears.

  “Get me a bag,” Margo said, wiping at her eyes with a dirty hand and leaving tracks across her cheek. She hadn’t put gloves on before extracting the skull. It was against procedure to handle anything without gloves on, but everything happening on the site right now was against procedure.

  Sadie pulled a plastic bag from her pocket and held it out toward Margo.

  “Grid 33,” Margo said, reciting the cataloging information without taking the bag.

  Sadie pulled out her Sharpie and wrote down the grid information, the item description, the date and time, and noted Margo as the digger, then held the bag open so Margo could place the skull inside it. She then reached into her other pocket and handed Margo a pair of vinyl gloves—she always carried extra of everything.

  Margo put the gloves on before carefully picking up every tiny piece of bone broken off by Langley’s shovel and adding it to the bag.

  “I’m not leaving until she’s up,” Margo said quietly, drained, as she went back to digging.

  “Okay,” Sadie whispered back. “I’ll help you.” She looked at the rest of the crew, still digging, and gave up the fight to preserve the crime scene, opting instead to be very clear in her report of what Bill did to create the chaos. That was information the BLM would certainly be interested in.

  Margo continued to cry as she dug out the jaw, and then the clavicle. She moved with incredible efficiency, and Sadie kept up with the labeling and bagging, only stopping once to return to the original grave, now fully uncovered to show the man’s plain blue sweatshirt, to gather Margo’s tools. Then she took a moment to text Pete what had happened.

  When Sadie returned, Margo was brushing away dirt from the exposed pelvis with her gloved fingers—tender and soft as though not wanting to hurt the ancient bones. She was still crying.

  “Margo?” Sadie said, putting the tools down beside her new friend. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, tears dripping off her face and into the dirt. “I just want her out of the ground. I want to make sure no one hurts her again.”

  “Okay,” Sadie said, removing another bag from her pocket and wondering what was behind the emotion. It was more than this body, Sadie felt sure of that, but Margo seemed too fragile to answer any questions right now.

  They continued digging and cataloging for another thirty minutes. Sadie could not have been more relieved when an approaching cloud of dust in the distance announced the police. She finished filling in the information on the bag she had in hand, then stood and hurried it over to Roberto just as the squad car pulled to a stop.

  She pulled out her phone to see if Pete had responded to her text. He had, and she read the words twice.

  Don’t say anything about the undercover work. Stick to your story. I’ve made a call to the BLM contact. I can’t believe this.

  Sadie le
t out a breath and deleted the text in case the police wanted to look at her phone. She slipped the phone back into her pocket. You and me both.

  Chapter 5

  Sadie gave her statement to the police late Thursday afternoon and was then driven back to the carpool location along with the remaining crew. It was a surprisingly quiet drive; no one wanted to be the one to broach the silence and by the time the D&E van pulled into the parking lot, the opportunity was lost.

  The story was on the news that night and there were a few follow-up notes about it over the weekend. On Saturday, the police reported that initial forensics had confirmed both bodies were male, Hispanic, and possibly illegal immigrants. Both had been killed by a gunshot to the head at point-blank range. The men didn’t match any missing persons reports filed in the last six years, and they hadn’t been buried at the same time, however, both murders were estimated to have happened within the last year. Further testing would be needed. In the meantime, the public was asked to inform police if they had any information. By Monday, the story of two bodies dug up from an ancient burial site was old news.

  The lack of new details was frustrating and Sadie reviewed the order of events over and over again. Details began to rise to the surface of her memory—things she wanted to make sense of. Why were the bodies there? Why had Margo been so upset? And then there was Shel. He’d kept digging and discovered the second body even after Bill told him to stop.

  Pete didn’t know anything more about the case than she did, and Agent Shannon, Sadie’s contact from the Bureau of Land Management, had told her via one phone call—the first time Sadie had even heard the woman’s voice—to be patient. Ho boy, being patient was not Sadie’s strong suit. But she didn’t dare go around the BLM to ask for information from the police. She didn’t know how the jurisdictions worked.

  To keep her mind and hands occupied, she’d been baking like a madwoman, freezing most of what she made for a later date, something that was a bit odd to her because she liked the process of cooking her favorite items as much as eating them, so freezing simply denied her the pleasure of creation later on. Still, she needed to stay busy, and baking was her old standby. She should really take up some hobbies other than cooking and investigating murders.

  At least Pete was coming to visit this weekend, after he finished some training he was heading up in Denver. Sadie couldn’t wait to see him. But the weekend felt so far away.

  Sadie wondered if she’d go back to the dig at all—D&E had sent out a form e-mail explaining that they would be in touch when and if the dig reopened. As much as Sadie hated the actual work, she missed having purpose—and a dual purpose at that. The last nine names on her list remained unresearched, waiting, like everyone else, to see what would happen next.

  “Well,” Caro said after Sadie had voiced her concerns about whether or not she’d go back to the dig site, “I told Lois I’d help her with her booth at the Fiesta. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind an extra set of hands if you don’t go back.”

  “That would be fun,” Sadie said, transferring the dulce de leche bars she’d made that morning to a clean plate.

  Lois was Caro’s good friend and the owner of her own cupcake catering business. For the second year in a row, Lois had a booth at the upcoming Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque—an annual hot air balloon festival that Sadie had heard about, but never actually been to. Sadie loved the idea of helping Lois with her cupcakes, but she knew if she never resolved her questions about what had happened at the dig, she would remain frustrated. She wanted more than newspaper articles.

  “I’m going to run some errands,” she said, making sure the plastic wrap was good and tight around the plate. She’d decided to talk to Margo for a variety of reasons, but mostly because Margo was the one person from the dig that Sadie felt connected to. Finding that body together had made them into an unexpected partnership.

  “I’ll come with you,” Caro said as she started gathering up the bills she was sorting.

  Sadie hurried to talk her out of it as gently as she could. “Well, after the library I was going to stop at Margo’s. She’s the woman I worked with at the site that last day. She was really upset about everything. I want to make sure she’s okay.”

  “Oh,” Caro said, reading between the lines. “It would probably be awkward if I came, wouldn’t it?”

  Sadie made a regretful face. “Probably. Sorry.” While waiting to be cleared to leave the site that night, Margo had smoked her way through half a pack of cigarettes while Sadie came up with a hundred things to talk about in hopes of keeping Margo at least a little bit distracted. It hadn’t helped much. Seeing all the graves open had devastated Margo. It was as though the bodies were her own people—despite her Caucasian ancestry—and she took the fact that they weren’t being properly removed as a personal failure. At the same time, once she got over the initial, intense shock, she seemed a bit embarrassed by her reaction. Sadie hoped that her impromptu visit wouldn’t be too unwelcome.

  “That’s okay,” Caro said, trying to be a good sport. She fanned the bills back out on the table. “You know where she lives?”

  “Background check,” Sadie said with a casual shrug. Didn’t everyone do background checks on their acquaintances? Granted, Sadie hadn’t done a full report on Margo yet, but it had taken less than five minutes for her to find the address. Like Kyle Langley, Margo had her own place—she was easy to find. “I won’t be gone very long—maybe an hour. I could stop and pick up the tortillas for the Tostadas Compuestas. You still wanted to make that tonight, right?”

  “That’d be great. I’m almost out of Monterey Jack cheese, too, if you don’t mind.” The chili con carne was already simmering in the slow cooker, filling the house with the most delectable smell.

  Sadie assured her she didn’t mind, but by the time she was on the road, her eagerness to talk to Margo had moved to the top of Sadie’s list of errands. The library and the Mexican market weren’t going anywhere.

  Margo’s duplex was on the other end of town, so it took a good ten minutes before Sadie pulled up in front of the very basic adobe structure. Caro had shown her some traditional adobe in the restricted section of the city where everything had remained authentic, but the majority of the “adobe” was made of a stucco-type material.

  Parked in the driveway on Margo’s side of the duplex was a 1970s model Land Cruiser with faded green paint and some stickers on the back window: “Bark Less Wag More,” which Sadie didn’t understand, and a familiar blue “Coexist” sticker.

  Sadie took a breath, hoping to calm her nerves as she focused on her objectives: first, make sure Margo was all right, and then see if she could answer some of the questions Sadie couldn’t ask anyone else. Just talking to someone else invested in the dig would be a relief.

  Sadie reached the front door and knocked rather than ringing the doorbell. No one came to the door, but Sadie was sure Margo was home since her Land Cruiser was in the driveway. She knocked louder, and this time heard movement from inside. Several seconds later, the doorknob turned and the door began to open. It stuck slightly before being yanked all the way open. Margo looked as though she’d just woken up despite the fact that it was almost noon. Her hair was down, but tangled, and she wore mismatched sweats.

  “Hi, Margo,” Sadie said, giving a little wave with her free hand.

  “Sarah?” Margo said, using Sadie’s undercover name. She lifted a hand to her hair as though she could fix the damage. “What are you doing here?”

  “I just thought I’d stop in and see how you were,” Sadie said, feeling her instincts kick in. “And I brought you some dulce de leche bars,” she said, holding out the plate.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Margo said, looking embarrassed. Sadie knew they were both thinking about Margo’s reaction at the dig site. “I’m all right.” Then she looked at the plate that Sadie had extended toward her. “I sure did like those, though.”

  Sadie smiled even wider. “I was also hoping you might
have some info on the dig. I haven’t heard anything other than what’s been on the news.”

  Margo finally reached for the plate. “Do you want to come in? I mean, it’s a mess, but if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” Sadie lied as Margo pulled the door open all the way and ushered her inside.

  Besides the stale and thick stench of long days of chain smoking, there were piles of clutter everywhere. Clothes, books, magazines. Things weren’t piled in a hoarding kind of way, just in an “I don’t care” attitude that often plagued people who lived alone. Though to a far lesser degree, Sadie herself had fallen victim to that same attitude once her children had moved out. Luckily, she’d nipped that particular bad habit in the bud. Margo’s house was a testament of what a good decision it had been for Sadie to cure herself years ago.

  Margo closed the door, but had to really push to get it to snap back into the frame, making the whole apartment shake slightly. “I left the door open one night and it rained—the water warped the entryway.” She waved toward the parquet flooring near the door, which was warped, dull, and lighter in color than the rest of the floor that was mostly covered with a large area rug in need of vacuuming. “The warped boards catch the door.”

  “Wood floors are tricky,” Sadie said, trying to ignore the puffy pillows of dust and hair accumulated by the baseboards. “Can you sand it down?”

  “Maybe,” Margo said with a shrug. “I haven’t tried. Don’t know how long I’ll be here, and I already broke a window lock so I won’t be getting my deposit back, whether I fix it or not.”

  Margo turned toward the small kitchen with the plate of treats, placing it on top of the dish drain, which was the only space free of dishes, pop cans, and miscellaneous papers. “I guess I fell asleep on the couch,” she said, reaching up to scratch her head. “When I’m not waking up at three a.m. my body tries to make up for all the sleep it’s missed over the years.”