Tres Leches Cupcakes

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Let me see if I can get away,” she said before she’d properly evaluated the question or her answer to it. Was she seriously going up in a balloon with a man she believed was connected both to bodies found in the desert and to Margo’s disappearance?

  “I’ll wait,” Ethan said, his eagerness curious but not necessarily disturbing. He stepped out of line, and Sadie rang up the next person in line before finding Lois at the back of the booth talking to one of the Fiesta officials. She waited for them to finish their conversation, which ended with Lois giving the man a complimentary cupcake. Sadie explained the invitation and asked if she could leave for about forty-five minutes, fully prepared to take “No” as a sign that this was a bad choice.

  Lois smiled instead. “You’re going on a balloon ride with Ethan Standage! How exciting!”

  When she relayed Lois’s blessing to Ethan a minute later, his face lit up with relief and he nodded quickly. “Great, I’ll see you soon, then.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Standage.”

  “Please, call me Ethan.” He put his hand out, and Sadie shook it.

  What questions did he have for her? What questions would she ask him in return? Nerves made her stomach flutter at the possibilities. She’d turned everything over to the police, but sometimes people told her things they would never say to an officer of the law. She had to do this, for Margo’s sake, if nothing else.

  She focused her thoughts and turned to the next set of customers—a young couple debating on whether to share one cupcake or each get one of their own. Sadie was against the sharing of baked goods; it wasn’t good for any relationship, especially a new one. She was about to offer such advice when she caught Caro looking at her, a question on her face.

  “What?” Sadie asked automatically.

  “Ethan Standage is taking you up in his balloon?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Huh.” She turned to her next customer, leaving Sadie no choice but to do the same, though she kept glancing at Caro, wondering what was behind her question. She wanted to think that one of these days, she and Caro would be friends again and that they would overcome this difficulty, but Caro’s mood today didn’t seem to forecast that very well.

  Chapter 26

  Have you heard of the Albuquerque box?” Ethan said half an hour later when he pulled the door of the balloon’s basket closed and nodded to his crew to let go of the ropes holding the balloon on the ground.

  “No,” Sadie said as he reached past her and secured the door. There were benches built into either end of the rectangular basket, which was about eight feet long and five feet wide—bigger than she’d have expected. The burner hovered overhead, and she stared up into the envelope of the balloon, catching her breath at all the space inside the silken panels. She was seriously trusting her life to a wicker basket connected to a glorified parachute? She closed her eyes and prayed until the burner roared, and she opened her eyes to see that they were rising. Just like that.

  Her stomach dropped, and she hung onto one of the leather loops positioned at intervals along the inside of the basket. Ethan pulled the burner cord again, and Sadie looked up to see the fire and heat waves distort her view for a few seconds. She felt the increased speed as the balloon lifted even higher. “What’s the Albuquerque box?” she asked, though her voice squeaked. She cleared her throat and wished she had anticipated this experience better.

  “It’s the name coined for the wind patterns in the Albuquerque valley. Northern winds flow at the lower levels, and southern winds are higher. It allows balloonists to use the wind patterns to take off and land from the same location. It’s why ballooning is so popular here.”

  “I’d heard the valley was ideal for ballooning, but I didn’t know why. That’s very interesting.”

  “It isn’t always available, and it’s most common in the mornings, but today is a perfect box. You’re lucky to have your first balloon ride under such ideal conditions.”

  “Lucky me,” Sadie said, but she was feeling a little green.

  He smiled, then pulled the burner cord again, taking them higher. She could see nothing but sky and a few other scattered balloons. They went higher and higher, but Sadie managed to contain her panic and instead let her eyes focus on the valley with the goal of appreciating the amazing view. It was lovely, but she was still queasy.

  When Ethan let several seconds lapse between pulls of the burner cord, Sadie realized they were level with another balloon several hundred yards to their left, but moving in the same direction—south. She’d left her jacket at the booth and hugged herself for warmth. The temperature had dropped quickly.

  Now that they weren’t going higher, she focused on Ethan and why he’d invited her here. He took a deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out. Sadie often did the same thing when she needed to calm down or to do or say something difficult. She waited him out, and a few seconds later he looked toward her. “Shel told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  Ethan crossed his arms and looked at the bottom of the basket, covered with a piece of plywood. He took another breath and then said quietly, “About the bodies.”

  He’d inadvertently answered her unasked question. “I saw the bodies myself. You told Shel they were there, didn’t you?”

  He blew out a breath and ran his fingers through his long hair while nodding his head.

  “How did you know?” she asked when he didn’t automatically explain himself.

  He sidestepped her question by asking a new one of his own. “Did you tell the police?”

  “I told them everything I knew,” Sadie said. She almost apologized before catching herself. There was something about Ethan that made her feel protective of him, but it bothered her to respond to him that way. “Have they contacted you?”

  “I had a message from a detective this morning saying they needed to talk to me. I’m really freaked out. They think I had something to do with those guys being at the dig site, don’t they?”

  “You tipped off Shel. You knew they were there.”

  “But I didn’t put them there,” Ethan said with a pleading tone.

  “Then how did you know about them?”

  “I didn’t know for sure.”

  “Okay, so you had a strong suspicion, and you were right—there were two bodies buried right where you told Shel they might be. It’s going to be hard to split hairs on that.”

  Ethan looked at her for a few seconds, then busied himself with pulling the burner cord. They lifted again, but this time Sadie’s stomach didn’t roll. After a few seconds, he asked, “Who are you? Why are you even interested in all this?”

  “My friend is missing, and I’m trying to figure out what’s happened to her,” Sadie said. She nearly told him about Margo’s disappearance and her suspicions that it was connected to the ranch, but decided to hold onto that for the time being. Her goal was to determine what Ethan Standage knew, not show her hand. “She asked Shel a bunch of questions Monday night, and she hasn’t been seen since.”

  “This is that Margo lady?”

  “You know her?”

  “No, Shel told me about her when I called him after listening to the message from the detective. I don’t know anything about why your friend is missing, though. I don’t even know who she is.”

  “But you knew the bodies were at the site.”

  “I hoped the bodies weren’t there,” Ethan said with more force than anything else he’d said.

  “But you feared they were. Why?”

  Silence. Was he already regretting saying too much? Yet, they were in a basket hundreds of feet above Albuquerque—surely he wasn’t going to stop now.

  “Look, my friend’s life is on the line here,” Sadie reminded him. “And the two men from the site are already dead. Holding back now isn’t going to do anyone any good. You brought me here for a reason—why?”

  “I just . . . I need someone to believe me. Shel says you’re working with the cops but that you listen.”
>
  Sadie was touched by the compliment, and she hoped she could live up to it. “I’m listening, and I’m willing to advocate for you, but you’re not telling me anything they don’t already know. If I’m going to help you, I need to know what happened.”

  Ethan took a breath and a pained expression crossed his face before he relaxed just a little bit. “About six months ago, I received an anonymous tip, a letter mailed from Albuquerque that said my assistants were buried at a burial site in the desert northwest of Santa Fe.”

  “Your assistants?” Sadie said. What assistants?

  “On my expeditions, I take a single assistant with me to help pack my gear and catalogue information. Teodor had worked with me for years, but he disappeared a few weeks before last year’s fall expedition. I figured he’d gone back to his family in Mexico—I’d recently paid him well for his help. I hired Raphael, the nephew of one of the ranch hands to take his place. He had climbing experience, and he went on the fall and the spring expeditions with me. But then he disappeared a month after our return.”

  “You reported these disappearances, right?” The papers had said the bodies didn’t match any missing person reports.

  “No,” Ethan said. “I hire . . . illegal aliens as my assistants.” A look of justification leaped into his face as he continued. “They are good, hardworking men who have families they want to bring to the States the right way. They need money, and they need a good immigration attorney. I give them both in exchange for their secrecy and loyalty, both of which are essential to my work. Since I began these expeditions, I’ve helped two men bring their families here and begin the citizenship process. I’ve had a few others who ended up going back home once I paid them.

  “When Teodor and Raphael disappeared, I assumed I was just having a string of bad luck with the men I chose. I had no reason to expect foul play, and because they’re illegal, I couldn’t go to the police even if I was worried about the circumstances. When I got the tip that they were . . . buried, I hoped it was some kind of sick joke.”

  “The tip told you they were at a burial site in the northwest desert. You could have looked for them.”

  Ethan looked south, but Sadie suspected he didn’t see the amazing view laid out before them. “I could have,” he said quietly. “But I didn’t want it to be true. I tried to forget all about it.”

  “How did Shel get work on that site?”

  “When I heard about the newly discovered burial site in that area, I asked Shel to transfer to D&E and be my eyes and ears. I couldn’t tell anyone official, you understand, and I couldn’t connect myself to the site, at least not directly.”

  “You got him the job that quickly?”

  “Frank Delam—the D in D&E—is a friend of the family. They’re usually the company used for digs found by Parley Excavation; they’d discovered the site when they were excavating for a road. I called in a favor, and Frank was happy to employ a friend of mine in need of work.”

  “And all that effort was worth getting a phone call as soon as the bodies were discovered instead of when it hit the evening news?”

  “Teodor and Raphael were my friends,” Ethan said, a pleading tone in his voice. The balloon had started to sink again, and he pulled the burner for several seconds so they would rise back into the southern air currents.

  “But you didn’t report them gone. Even if they were here illegally, you didn’t take the tip to the police even though you had reason to think it was true.”

  He looked past her toward the West Mesa. “Yes, I left them there because I hoped they weren’t there at all. Part of me still hopes it isn’t them, but everything in the papers seems to be supporting the fact that it is them. I hired someone to look for them in Mexico about the same time I asked Shel to work with D&E. I was in Mexico City following up on the investigation when Shel called me about the bodies being found. A few days later, I spoke to Raphael’s mother—it was my last hope to prove that the tip really was a sick joke.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the floor of the basket again. “She hasn’t heard from him in six months, since a few days before he went missing. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Teodor’s wife after that. They have three children, and I don’t know what she’s going to do without him. He’s been gone for over a year. I sent her some money through the investigator that I hope will help, but I’m just sick over this. I can’t sleep, I try to make sense of it and I can’t. They were good men—family men with goals and ambition. I don’t understand what happened.” He cleared his throat and turned away, attempting to hide his emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” Sadie said sympathetically. “I can see you truly cared about them and their families.”

  His back was still toward her, but he nodded, took a breath, and then turned around to face her.

  “Why would someone kill your assistants, bury them in an old burial site, and then tell you where they were?” Sadie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ethan said. “The only thing I can come up with is that someone’s trying to frame me.”

  “Why would they tip you off if they were trying to frame you?”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

  Sadie glanced down toward Fiesta Park, just a patch of grass from this far up, and processed through everything she’d learned these last several days. Then she turned back to him. “Were your assistants a threat to someone? Could they have both been involved with something criminal?” She meant criminal other than their status as illegal aliens.

  “They were good men,” Ethan said, running his hand through his hair again. “I don’t understand how any of this happened. And then there’s your friend who’s missing, and Shel said that the guy he was with at the bar that night was dealing in artifacts, and it’s all just such a mess.”

  “Langley?” Sadie said, perking up. “Shel said Langley was dealing in artifacts?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did Shel find that out?”

  “He said he talked to the guy Wednesday night after my exhibit and, even though the guy denied it, you’d told Shel some things that made him think this guy was dirty. That’s also when he told me he was going to Arizona, that things were too much for him here. I couldn’t blame him; I’d leave if I could get out of this that easily. But I don’t see how a guy on the crew being involved with the black market has anything to do with Teodor and Raphael, yet this is going to come back to me. I feel . . . ambushed, and I don’t know why, or what to do.”

  “You need to get an attorney and then tell the police the whole truth,” Sadie said, trying to calm him. He shook his head but she continued. “I know that after keeping your secret this long it feels impossible to just put it all out there, but like you said, this is bigger than just you. Teodor and Raphael deserve justice. It can only be found if you help the police find it.” Margo had said in her message that whatever she wanted to tell Sadie was bigger than she thought—did she mean this? What Sadie wouldn’t give to talk to Margo about what she knew.

  “Right.” He sounded completely miserable and muttered, “How do I tell my parents?”

  “Just tell them,” Sadie said. “Tell everyone the truth. It’s your only protection.”

  Sadie peered over the edge of the basket. They’d caught the northern air currents and were now moving closer to the festival grounds rather than away from it. They’d been gone for more than half an hour, but as they got closer to the landing area, Sadie realized she was running out of time to talk with him. “Ethan,” she said, “after my friend left the bar that night, I think she went to your ranch with Kyle Langley.”

  “That’s impossible. The ranch isn’t open to the public, and I’d never heard of Kyle Langley until Shel mentioned him the other day.”

  “Do you live at the ranch? Were you there that night?”

  “I keep an apartment near the plaza, and I was in Mexico the night Shel called me to tell me he’d been arrested. I didn’t get back until Wednesday morning.”

  �
�Did you ask Benny to bail Shel out?”

  Ethan nodded.

  “I also ran into Benny on Wednesday,” she said, then proceeded to tell him about their encounter. “I won’t deny that he made me very uncomfortable.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Ethan said, but Sadie could see that talking about Benny had raised his defenses. “We’ve had a hard few years at the ranch. We’ve had to cut back on our workers, and with my mother’s health, it’s been a strain on everyone. Benny’s been the glue that holds everything together; I’m sorry he was rude to you.”

  “I didn’t realize the ranch was struggling,” Sadie said. The website hadn’t mentioned that detail, but then again, a website wouldn’t get into those types of things. “Is that why you’re cutting back on your photography and turning your attention to the ranch?”

  “That’s part of it,” Ethan said. “My mother’s in poor health, and my father wants to spend more time with her and, then, all this business with my assistants and feeling like someone is setting me up—it’s all kind of compounding to show me the only path I can really take right now. I need to get the ranch back on track and ease things up for my dad. I should have done it years ago, really. I’d appreciate it if you kept the status of the ranch quiet. We’ve worked hard not to make a big deal about it, and I’ve been able to help support it with some of the profits from my photography, but money isn’t all that’s needed—the ranch needs someone there, all the time, being attentive and aware. I’m only telling you this because I want you to understand where Benny was coming from. The ranch is his life, and like the rest of my family, he’s dependent on its success—he’s like an uncle to me.”

  He leaned over the side of the balloon and did something that made them descend faster than they had before.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” she assured him, sensing the heaviness upon Ethan’s shoulders. “Detective Gonzales is the man heading up this investigation. He’s kind and will be fair with you.”

  Ethan nodded, but as they approached the landing zone at Fiesta Park, his mood became more and more somber, more and more scared.