Tres Leches Cupcakes

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sadie said, throwing up her hands. “Can you set aside your pigheadedness for two seconds and listen to me? I need to pay this man—he saved my life. I need two hundred dollars, and I don’t have time for your hardheaded, boorish ways right now!”

  Rex narrowed his eyes, but turned and headed for his room. Sadie gave a thumbs-up to the man still scowling from the truck. She stayed on the porch, shifting her weight and holding herself back from going for the box. If she didn’t think her driver would charge after her, she’d have chanced it.

  Two minutes later, Rex walked past her without a word. He handed the cash to the man in the truck, then came back to the door while the truck growled and rumbled down the road.

  “Now help me find my wife,” Rex said, leading the way into the house.

  Sadie followed him, hearing Caro’s voice ringing in her head: “You’re not the only one with skills, you know.” Caro had overheard Sadie talking to Ethan Standage, and she’d been outside the trailer when Sadie left the message for Marcus about what she and Ethan had talked about during the balloon ride. What if those things hadn’t been circumstantial? What if they’d played into Caro trying to figure out what it was Sadie wouldn’t tell her? Sadie also thought about Horace saying they’d been called back to the Fiesta. Oh, heavens.

  “When did Caro say she’d decided to stay with me?” Sadie asked as she walked to the phone in the kitchen to call Caro’s cell phone.

  “When she left this afternoon,” Rex told her.

  Caro’s phone rang four times before going to voice mail. Sadie hung up without leaving a message. She rested her hand on the handset. “I’ll call Lois and see if she knows anything. I think she said she’d forwarded the bakery calls to her cell.”

  She thumbed through the phone book while Rex paced back and forth across the kitchen floor.

  The phone rang twice before Lois answered. Sadie immediately apologized for calling so late.

  “It’s fine,” Lois said with a laugh. “Inez and I were just getting a head start on tomorrow. Is everything okay?”

  “Actually, I’m looking for Caro. She isn’t answering her phone, and I wondered if she was with you.” Rex stopped pacing and moved closer to listen in. She pushed the button that transferred the call to speakerphone so he didn’t have to breathe down her neck.

  “Nope, it’s just Inez and me. I haven’t seen Caro since she went after you.”

  “After me? When was that?” Sadie asked.

  Rex turned and headed for the other side of the room where he grabbed his car keys from the rack by the garage door. Without asking, she knew he was getting ready to go to Albuquerque.

  “Um, I don’t know, a little after six, I guess. She said she needed to talk to you. Is everything okay?”

  “I’m not sure,” Sadie said, though she felt sick to her stomach. “Can you please tell me exactly what happened?”

  “A few minutes after you left, she asked if I needed her to stay—she said that she wanted to catch up with you. I’d hoped you two were going to work things out so I said we’d be fine and that I’d see her in the morning. She did catch up to you, right?”

  “No,” Sadie said, closing her eyes. “I didn’t see her after I left the booth. I tried calling her just now, but she didn’t answer her phone.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Lois said after a few moments of silence. “What should I do? How can I help?”

  “I don’t know,” Sadie said. “I need to talk to Rex and make a game plan. I’ll let you know, okay? But until you hear from me, don’t talk to anyone about this, okay? Just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “Just don’t talk to anyone,” Sadie said, turning and scanning the kitchen. Could Caro have left anything behind that would tip Sadie off? “And call her house if you hear from her. . . . Wait, actually call Rex’s phone.” She lifted her eyebrows toward Rex, who moved closer to the phone.

  He gave Lois his number; she read it back and agreed to call.

  Sadie hung up the phone and crossed the kitchen while processing through what had happened after she’d left the booth. Sadie began a search of the kitchen, looking for notes Caro might have made, phone numbers she might have written down somewhere.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking to see if Caro left behind any clues. I think she was investigating all this stuff—all the things I wouldn’t tell her. I need to know what she knew.” If Sadie was right, Caro could be in real danger. But Caro would also have been careful about leaving any notes behind. It was the first rule of investigating—one Sadie had learned the hard way—protect your information. She was sure Caro understood how important that rule was. “I need to call Pete.” Pete would help her line things up, and he’d know what she should do next. Call Marcus? Go back to the Fiesta?

  “We can call him on the way to Albuquerque. We’re going to retrace her steps,” Rex said, turning toward his room. He stopped and asked, “Do we need to take you to the emergency room to get your head checked?”

  Sadie raised her hand to the scabbed-over cut, but shook her head. “There’s no time, but thanks for the offer.” Sadie looked at her dirty hands and clothes. She was a mess, and Rex was in his pajamas. It was a necessary evil that they take a few minutes to prepare themselves. “I should get cleaned up though.”

  He nodded and looked relieved. “We leave in two minutes.”

  “Okay,” Sadie said, turning toward her old apartment.

  “Sadie,” Rex said.

  She stopped and turned to face him. “What?”

  “Is Caro having an affair?”

  “What? No,” Sadie said, shaking her head.

  Rex pulled his eyebrows together, and his eyes went back to the dried blood on the side of Sadie’s head. “Then what’s going on here?”

  Sadie took a breath. “I’ll have to tell you on the way. We need to hurry.”

  Chapter 34

  Sadie tried not to look at herself as she cleaned up a little bit, but the streaks of mud and blood were difficult to clean up without looking at her reflection. Her hair was atrocious; she had to pull out a few weeds before attempting to smooth it. The biggest issue was the cut on her scalp. It was less than an inch long and had already scabbed over, but it had bled pretty badly, and as she cleaned it up, she could already see the bruise forming around it. If it left a scar, she’d need to find a new way to do her hair.

  Her hands were scraped, as were her calf and her knees. Going to bed was what she really needed to do right now, but that was out of the question. She didn’t bother asking to borrow any of Caro’s clothes, though the idea did cross her mind. Rex was wound pretty tightly, and it wasn’t hard to imagine an explosion for any number of reasons.

  She grabbed the green box from the apartment, a notebook from the cupboard beneath the phone, and the retractable razor blade Caro kept in the utility drawer in the kitchen. Even then she beat Rex to the truck. She was waiting next to the passenger door when he finally came into the garage. He hit the button that raised the garage door behind them, and strode purposefully to the driver’s side while shoving his arms into the sleeves of his jacket.

  It wasn’t until she was climbing into the passenger seat that she remembered the earlier fear she’d had that the box wouldn’t be in the apartment at all. The fact that it was still here meant the Cowboy and Horace didn’t know where she’d been staying, or hadn’t arrived yet.

  “What’s the box for?” Rex asked after starting the truck and backing out of the driveway.

  Sadie touched the tape. “It might hold the key to everything.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped, looking at her quickly before pulling into the street. He shifted into drive and took off so fast that Sadie was thrown against the seat. “I want to know what’s going on here.”

  Sadie took a breath and laid it all out. Rex already knew about her BLM involvement, so she told him about Margo’s history and disappearance, the conver
sation with Shel at the gallery Wednesday night, and her own kidnapping from the Fiesta. She explained the connections to the Standage family she suspected tied everything together, and then about her kidnappers’ reference to something Sadie thought Margo had hidden in her room Monday night—the box.

  “What does any of this have to do with Caro?” Rex asked when she finished. Whether he meant to or not, he sounded beyond angry.

  “I’m not sure, but she made a comment about finding out what I was doing. She said she could figure it out if she wanted to.” Sadie stared at the box, and a wave of regret and guilt washed over her. “The men who took me out to the desert were called back to the Fiesta. They’d been bothered by my talking to Ethan, maybe Caro talked to him too. If she’d done some poking around and discovered his tie to things, she might have put herself right in the middle of this, just like me.” She wanted to believe something different had happened, but what other reason could there be?

  “This is exactly why I wanted you to leave!” Rex bellowed, startling Sadie.

  In her current state, responding in kind was not hard to do. She turned toward him and narrowed her eyes, almost glad to have a chance to let out some of her own aggression. “And that is exactly why Caro would have investigated on her own. Because she didn’t know what was going on. Because I didn’t tell her. Because you told me not to. I was just following your orders.”

  “Don’t you dare put this on me!” Rex yelled, gripping the steering wheel so tight she felt sure she’d hear it crack any second. “I was trying to protect her.”

  “Well, it didn’t work, did it?”

  He glared at her and she glared back before they both looked out the windshield again. Sadie tried to keep her own guilt at bay, but she couldn’t do it. They had no idea where Caro was or why. Making Rex feel worse about an already horrible situation was a waste of energy and not entirely fair. Sadie had brought this to their doorstep, and all the justification in the world couldn’t hide that truth. It was also true, however, that if Rex hadn’t forbidden Sadie from talking to Caro in the first place, Caro wouldn’t have been investigating things on her own.

  She was trying to find some way to say she was sorry for her part in things without making it sound as though Rex had won this argument, when Rex picked up his phone and touched a single button—speed dial. The ringing immediately sounded through the speakers of the truck thanks to a hands-free Bluetooth system that routed his calls through the sound system. Sadie had seen him use it over the last several weeks during the few times the three of them had gone somewhere in Rex’s truck together. It rang four times before Caro’s voice invited them to leave a message. Hearing her voice made Sadie sad all over again. Rex didn’t leave a message and pushed a single button to hang up the call before putting the phone back in the middle console of the truck.

  “I’m opening the box,” Sadie said, shifting out of her melancholy and into the present. Regardless of fault, Caro was missing, and this box might hold the reason why. She turned on the interior light, then took the razor from her pocket and used the button to slide the blade out of the plastic holder. A shoe box and packing tape didn’t seem to warrant the interest the Cowboy had in whatever it was Margo was hiding.

  The blade cut through the layer of tape like butter, and she turned the box, severing the tape all the way around. After retracting the razor and putting it back in her pocket, she used both hands to lift the top off the box. Inside was cloth, just plain muslin. She hadn’t thought about fingerprints until right now, and the reminder was just plain annoying—so annoying that she didn’t heed it. There wasn’t time.

  She pulled back the first layer of cloth, and then the next; it was tightly packed, and after pulling back the third fold, she worried that the box was just full of cloth, but then she caught a flash of brown. She pulled back the additional folds, hanging the excess fabric over the edges of the box.

  Inside the box was something that, at first glance, looked like a stick. Using a corner of the cloth, she picked up the item and turned it over to reveal the bowl of what she now realized was a ceremonial pipe. Intricate carvings covered every surface, and strips of rawhide attached skeletal remains of feathers to the end. She laid the pipe back on the cloth, suddenly realizing she’d seen it before—the only other time she’d seen an ancient ceremonial pipe up close. The acceptance of it was breathtaking. Scary.

  “A pipe?” Rex asked regarding it in quick glances while continuing down I-25 toward Albuquerque.

  “Not just any pipe,” Sadie said, flickering her gaze toward him, though he was watching the road. “It’s from one of Ethan Standage’s photographs. In fact, I think it’s on the cover of this year’s anthology.” She wished she’d taken the time to get Caro’s copy of the book.

  “I thought he left the stuff he photographed where he found it.”

  “That’s what he says.” She stared at the pipe lying innocently on the fabric. “At the gallery on Wednesday, Caro said that if Ethan were lying about leaving things be, it would destroy his art.” Sadie remembered her earlier doubts about Ethan and whether he really left the artifacts behind, but then she thought back to the balloon ride conversation she’d had with him that afternoon. He feared someone was setting him up. What if he was being set up for more than murder?

  “What if someone else is trying to destroy his art career for him?” Sadie let the question linger between them for a few seconds. “But who would want to do that? You know the family better than I do.”

  “I have no idea,” Rex said, shaking his head. “He’s pretty much a local hero.”

  “What about the ranch? Is there someone who’s angry with the ranch?”

  “There are always people angry at ranchers,” Rex said. “Environmentalists mostly, but they cut down fences and burn down barns—this doesn’t seem like something they would do. I don’t know the Standages well enough to know if they have anyone else who might be out to get them.”

  “But you do know a little about the Standages. How supportive is Edward Standage of his son’s work?” She envisioned a bowlegged, hardened cowboy who chewed tobacco and shot trespassers on sight. Basically, she pictured the Cowboy who’d abducted her that night. “He wasn’t at the exhibit.”

  Rex shook his head. “Edward worships the ground his son walks on. He and Ethan’s mother, Lacey, are the very picture of doting parents. When Ethan was young, I was sure he’d grow up to be a spoiled, worthless loser because of it, but as far as I know, he’s an upstanding guy, and Edward is as proud as ever.”

  “What about Ethan’s responsibilities to the ranch? I understand his art has taken most of his focus, and Edward has had to divide his time between the ranch and Lacey. Maybe that’s created some discord between them.” She felt like she was grasping at straws. Her knowledge of the Standage family dynamics was so limited that she had little basis for any of her assumptions.

  “Last I heard, he is taking over the ranch,” Rex said, casting a glance toward her. “There was an article in the paper about it a few days ago. I think Ed’s been hoping his son would step up for a few years now. Guess he finally is.”

  Sadie leaned back against the seat and looked at the pipe again. “If we can figure out who wants to ruin Ethan, we’ll be that much closer to solving this.”

  “Those men who took you to the desert seem to want that pipe pretty bad.”

  “Right,” Sadie said with a nod. “And they were connected to Langley, who dealt in artifacts. Maybe he was going to help them sell this. But did they want profit or to destroy Ethan Standage?”

  “Maybe both,” Rex said.

  Sadie nodded.

  They passed a sign that read Albuquerque—21 miles. Fiesta Park was located a few miles outside of Albuquerque, which meant they were about fifteen minutes away from the last place they knew Caro had been.

  Sadie’s thoughts cycled quickly, and then stopped at her next avenue of thought. “Why would Margo have this?” And how would she have gotten it? For
that matter, how would anyone have gotten it? Ethan spent months finding the relics he photographed, and he claimed to keep his locations secret. If he didn’t bring it out of the wilderness himself, how was this pipe here at all?

  But that piece clicked into place almost as soon as she considered the question: the missing assistants. They were the only other people who knew where the artifacts came from. She mentally sorted through all the prints that she could remember from the exhibit Wednesday night. Of all the artifacts featured, only one seemed to be sturdy enough and small enough to be easily smuggled away from wherever Ethan had found it.

  She imagined the pipe wrapped up and hidden within the supplies packed in and out of the wild. Ethan had said his assistants were good men, but they were also in need of money for their families. Maybe they were made an offer they couldn’t refuse. But they were both dead, and Ethan had only hired one assistant at a time. Why kill them both?

  “Ethan’s assistants are the men buried out at the site,” Sadie said out loud in hopes it would help her process her thoughts faster. “They disappeared a few months apart, one right before Ethan’s expedition last fall and one right after the spring one.” She wriggled in her seat and turned toward Rex. “What if the first one—Teodor—was asked to help bring Ethan down and was killed because he refused? Ethan said he hired Raphael quickly, so he wouldn’t have known him as well. If Raphael smuggled this out, and then turned it over to whoever wanted it, the Cowboy and Horace could have killed him to ensure his silence. They obviously have no qualms about getting rid of complications. Except that Horace lied about my falling off a cliff and—”

  Rex smacked the steering wheel. “Will you stop thinking about everyone else and think about Caro for just one full minute!”

  Rage exploded within her, and she responded quickly enough to startle Rex with her knee-jerk reaction. “Will you open your mind to the fact that whatever is going on with Caro has to do with everyone else who is wrapped up in this mess? It’s a puzzle, Rex, and Caro is the most important piece. But the way the other pieces fit together is the surest way for us to know how to proceed from here on out.” Suddenly, Pete’s face flashed into her mind. Pete! If anyone could help her put the pieces together, it would be him. He could help her explain all of this to Marcus too. She’d been un-kidnapped for over an hour and hadn’t yet told the authorities.