“Strange that you would dream about the case, especially the mention of a woman who is worried,” he said. “We had a little quiet spell at the office this evening and I did some more research on Cheryl Tercel’s family in Colorado. Turns out her brother heard from her recently, said she was really worried about her ex finding her. When I told him this was an official investigation, not connected with anyone’s ex-husband, he told me she’s living in Alamosa now.”
“So, are you going to be able to question her about Fenton?”
“Officially, I can’t. Padilla would have a fit. If I ever get a day off, I’d like to. Alamosa’s not that far—it would make an easy half-day trip, up there and back.”
“I could break away tomorrow. If you would want me to go instead.”
“I really need to be there. If she killed Fenton, stashed the coat in her closet, then got to thinking about what she’d done and just bolted . . . well, she might be dangerous.”
Sam hadn’t thought about that, but it made sense. Although why Cheryl Adams didn’t just chuck the trench coat in the nearest dumpster, that didn’t add up. And if Bertha was right about the lady being worried, well, it could go a lot further than that—Adams might be desperate.
“—first thing in the morning?”
“Sorry, my mind went elsewhere for a minute.”
“I don’t have to be at work tomorrow until mid-afternoon. If we got an early start, and assuming that Kelly wouldn’t mind staying over again with Mama . . .”
“Did you say ‘we’ could get an early start?”
“Only if you want to. We’re kind of going rogue on this anyway.”
“I can be ready by five in the morning.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that, as she put away the tea and turned off the kettle. Her one morning to sleep late and she’d just given it away.
Chapter 13
When the alarm went off at four-thirty, Sam felt even more frustrated with herself for giving up her free morning. What was she thinking? She brushed her teeth with the idea that maybe it was just an excuse to spend time with Beau, but by the time she’d started the coffee maker and found a Thermos to take with them, she’d concluded that it was really more about solving the murder because the key piece of evidence had come from one of her break-in houses. If she’d accidentally thrown away some other important evidence, she could never live with that. She needed to learn the truth.
Beau looked a little rough around the edges when he picked her up in his blue Explorer. He was in civilian clothes but she noticed that his badge was pinned to his belt and he carried his service weapon.
“Only if necessary,” he explained. “The badge should work to get us in the door, and I’ll make her think we’ve got a subpoena.”
“Jurisdiction?”
“Yeah, that’s definitely fuzzy. Technically, I should get Alamosa PD to work with us, but that would probably get back to Sheriff Padilla. Plus, it seems like overkill when we just want answers to a few questions. It’s not like we’re planning to arrest the lady.”
Sam poured them each a cup of coffee once he’d reached the open highway, and got out the bag of day-old apple cinnamon scones she’d brought from her shop last night.
“I think if I ever get used to being up at these atrocious hours, I might actually like it,” she said between bites. The inky sky filled with billions of pinpoints had a certain mystical appeal, she had to admit.
The plan, loosely, was to arrive at Cheryl’s house around seven, heading her off before she left for the day. The brother who had spoken with Beau didn’t know if she had a job yet. Her normal pattern was to live off unemployment from the last one until it was about to run out. With job skills limited to waiting tables or being a motel maid, the good news was that somebody, somewhere was always hiring. The bad news, for Cheryl, was finding daycare for an infant and keeping the others in school when she moved around so much.
As Sam got bits and pieces of the woman’s life story, she began to see why attempting to fit into the role of homeowner probably wasn’t something Cheryl Adams was cut out for.
The sun glowed slightly above the hills to the east as they pulled into Alamosa. Beau steered to the side of the road and stopped, pulling out a map.
“It shouldn’t be far,” he said, tracing the lines with his finger to show Sam the road they were looking for. “A trailer park. Those aren’t usually in the choice downtown locations.”
He was sure right about that, Sam thought as they drove down a narrow, rutted dirt lane and came upon a cluster of old-style single mobile homes. Signs warned to watch for “Slow Children Playing” and Beau, accordingly, took it easy. Cheryl Adams’s rented trailer was in the fourth row, third space on the right. Crispy dry weed stalks bordered the skirt of the metal shell and a dented blue Chevy Malibu was parked out front. An amazing number of plastic tricycles were scattered about the small area they used as a yard.
“Looks like she’s already begun collecting stuff again,” Sam commented. “There’s no way she brought all this from the old place in that car.”
Beau rolled his eyes but continued picking his way through the mess, heading toward the front door. Sam followed, noting the sounds of high-pitched kid voices from within. After the third, increasingly hard knock the door opened.
A toddler with wide blue eyes stared out at them.
“Is your mommy here?” Beau asked.
The pajama-clad kid continued to stare.
“Billy, you’re letting the cold air in!” The woman looked just like Sam would have imagined—blond hair up in a hasty ponytail at the top of her head, loose shirt hanging off one shoulder, obvious signs of baby spit on one leg of her less-than-clean jeans. Four little ones didn’t allow a mom much time for personal grooming.
“Cheryl Adams?” Beau asked.
“Yeah . . .” She scooted the kid out of the way and placed herself solidly between the door and the jamb.
Beau opened his jacket to reveal his badge. “I have a few questions about someone you knew in Taos. Would you rather we came inside so we don’t waste your warm air?”
“Here’s fine,” Adams said, her eyes narrowing.
“Okay. We’re looking into the death of a man named Bram Fenton. Some of his personal items were found at your house.”
“Who?” She genuinely looked puzzled.
“Bram Fenton. He was a private investigator.”
“Never heard of him.”
“There were some articles of male clothing at your house, the place you abandoned on the south side of Taos.”
Cheryl’s features twisted into a mask of thought. “Well, my ex left some of his stuff behind. I probably never threw it out.”
Sam nearly burst out laughing. This woman had never thrown anything out.
“Was there a dark green trench coat?” Beau asked.
“Trench coat? Oh, the private eye thing. I get it. Uh, no. No way Doug woulda worn nothing like that. Strictly a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy. Wore a suit for our wedding but that’s the most dressed-up I ever seen him.” She shook a clinging kid off her leg and tightened the closure on the door. “Look, I got kids to get ready for school.”
“We believe the coat belonged to the private investigator. Any idea how it got into your closet?”
“Not really. I mean, I buy a lot at garage sales and stuff, but I never seen a coat like that.” She raised her voice to be heard over the increasing clamor inside the trailer.
Beau handed her his card. “Call me if anything comes to mind. Maybe you’ll remember someone giving you the coat . . . maybe a visitor left it behind . . .”
“Whatever.” She bit onto the card as she used both hands to grab at another kid who tried to make a break for it between her legs. The door closed and the volume of whining voices diminished a little.
“Any bets on whether you’ll hear from her?” Sam commented as they walked toward Beau’s SUV.
“About a million to one against.” He started the engine and back
ed out into the narrow road. “She genuinely seemed clueless. Well, maybe that wasn’t the right word. Clueless about life, maybe. But not connected to our case. I didn’t see any signs of deception when we talked to her.”
“So we still have our central question: How did Fenton’s bloody coat get out to Cheryl’s house?”
“There has to be some tie-in. The medical investigator said his artery was cut by a thin-bladed object, probably a small knife. If we could locate that, we might be able to get some kind of trace evidence that would lead us to the killer.”
“I didn’t come across anything like that when I was cleaning.”
“There were a few dull kitchen knives at Cheryl’s place, but I sprayed them and found no blood traces.”
“Plus, she’d moved away at least a month before Fenton’s death, right?” Sam raised her coffee cup but it was stone cold.
“So if Sheriff Padilla’s theory is correct and it was a gang killing, what are the odds of finding either the knife or the person it belonged to? Wouldn’t it have to be a very distinctive knife to tie it to any certain guy?”
“Pretty much. And what are the odds of us ever finding it? You’ve seen that gorge. Miles and miles of boulders, the river running down the middle, eight hundred feet below. There’s an altercation, bad guy whips out a knife, slices the other guy, realizes how bad it is, throws both the vic and the knife over the edge.”
“After going to the trouble to remove his coat?”
“Doesn’t seem likely, does it?” He turned back onto the highway and headed south toward the New Mexico border. “Maybe Padilla is right—we just don’t have the manpower to follow up on this. It would take a dozen searchers to comb the area under the bridge, and a little knife might never be found. Assuming it was thrown over that bridge. There are a zillion places to get rid of a small weapon like that.”
“But a man was murdered. You can’t simply let it go,” Sam said. “Doesn’t he have relatives, someone who would keep pushing at the Sheriff to get this solved?”
“We didn’t find any next of kin. Sam, I’m not going to give up on this, even though the case is getting colder by the day. I’ll get another warrant for Fenton’s office and home, go through everything more closely if I can get some additional manpower. But I really doubt that’s going to happen until Padilla is feeling securely re-elected.”
Sam fumed over it for the next fifty miles but didn’t come to any better conclusion, herself.
“I’d say it’s safe for you to go back to the Adams place and do the rest of your cleanup, whenever you want,” Beau told her as he dropped her off at her house.
At least it appeared that Cheryl Adams was alive, unharmed, and in the clear, and Sam felt relieved about that. She stood in her driveway as Beau pulled away, debating whether to devote the remaining half-day to the cleanup or to get back to Sweet’s Sweets and see how things were going there. A big head-slap later she was on her way to the bakery. What was she thinking, leaving her brand new business in the hands of two even-newer employees?
Her concern turned out to be for nothing. Jen was wiping tables that had obviously been filled with customers shortly before, and the half-empty cases attested to strong sales all morning. Becky had, per Sam’s instructions, mixed and baked the sheets and layers for the big gala cake. All were cooling on the work table when she walked in. Sam would apply the ‘dirty icing’ and get them into the fridge this afternoon. Tomorrow she would assemble and decorate her masterpiece.
She showed Becky how to make small shrubs and pine trees out of sugar cones, modeling chocolate and royal icing.
“This is fun,” Becky said after a couple of aborted attempts and then discovering the secret of holding the pastry bag at the correct angle.
“You’re showing a natural knack for it. I’ll show you some of the other techniques soon.”
Sam decorated more Halloween cookies and told Jennifer how she wanted them arranged in the front windows—might as well pull in all the holiday business she could get. Her mind raced forward to Thanksgiving and then Christmas, knowing that unique pastries and plenty of variety in her made-from-scratch recipes would be what set her apart from the mundane offerings in the supermarkets. This first holiday season could very well get the business launched for all time.
“Will this be enough shrubs?” Becky asked from her end of the work table.
Sam glanced up to see about two dozen little bushes. “I think so. We’ll probably only use eighteen or twenty of them, but it’s always good to have extras in case of breakage.”
“Got it.” The two women lifted the board with the heavy sheet cake and carefully carried it into the walk-in fridge.
“Thank goodness for this thing,” Sam said as she closed the door. “Would you believe that I used to have to bake all my sheet cakes in quarters and store them in a normal-sized fridge until the day of assembly. Then I’d put the whole thing together and get it delivered as fast as I could.”
“You’re loving the bakery, aren’t you?” Becky commented.
Both phone lines rang at once. “I’ll get one,” shouted Jen. “Can you get two?”
“Yep, loving it,” Sam said.
She picked up the second line and listened as the customer requested a special dessert for a family dinner on Sunday. Sam suggested an apple-pear tart that she’d recently tested at home. Seasonal fruit, easy to bake large enough for any number of people.
She’d no sooner hung up from taking that order than her cell phone buzzed inside her pocket.
“How are you doing with the property I gave you last week?” Delbert Crow asked. “Can we get real estate agents in there soon?”
She hedged and asked for another week. If she could just get her gala party done and those special orders for the election, she could budget an entire day for the Adams house.
Five o’clock. Jen closed out the register, handing Sam the tape showing the total and a bank bag with the cash, before leaving for the day. Becky had already gone, needing to be home for her kids.
Sam moved the few cookies and cupcakes from the window displays to the glass cases, covered the remaining product with clean white towels to keep them fresh, and turned out the lights in the front. In the kitchen she washed a couple of mixing bowls that hadn’t been done earlier.
Outside, it was nearly dark. She called home and found that Kelly was already there.
“If you haven’t started anything yet, I’ll bring dinner home with me,” Sam said.
“Pizza? I’ll call it in.” Kelly was a confirmed pizza-holic so the request came as no surprise. Sam could even guess what would be on it—everything. The large supreme pizza wouldn’t do a lot for her own dieting plans, but then running a bakery wasn’t exactly helping in that department either.
Thinking of food addictions reminded her that the weekly meeting of the book group, Chocoholics Unanimous, was coming up again soon. Last week, she had been so busy with the store opening that she’d only supplied them with some hastily baked cookies. This week she should strive for something more dramatic but at the moment she was fresh out of ideas.
Sam mulled over the idea of getting some help with her caretaking properties as she drove to Kelly’s favorite pizza place, paid for their order and headed home. She’d thought of asking Kelly, but with Beau working so many extra hours these days, her daughter was tied up caring for his mother. Sam couldn’t ask either of them to cut back on Iris’s supervision. She’d already borrowed Darryl’s crew several times, plus paying their rates would quickly eat up any income from the property. Mowing and trimming flowerbeds didn’t quite fall into the same category as the heavy lifting that she physically couldn’t do herself. She’d just have to make time for everything.
Sam found herself almost nodding off at the dinner table. She nibbled her way through one slice of the thick pizza. At least sleeping through meals would help her keep her diet on track, she thought.
“Mom, you’re pooped! You should just go to bed early.�
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“Probably. But there’s so much to do.” She yawned. “At least I better get the menu finalized for the gala. We’re doing a lot of free samples all day.”
She told Kelly about the plan for the cake that replicated the shop. “If Beau can’t get away to bring Iris to the party, will you do it?”
“Absolutely. I’ve been telling her about it and she’s so excited. She wouldn’t stay away on a bet.”
“Good. Now, if I can just find the energy to get to the grocery store tonight for the special ingredients it’ll be that much less I have to do tomorrow.” She reached for a pen and notepad and began writing the list from memory. Cheeses, herbs, wines. Her head nodded but she kept writing. “Okay,” she said finally.
“Mom, I’m not letting you drive anywhere tonight. You’d probably fall asleep, even though it’s only a few blocks to the store.” Kelly held out her hand. “Here. List.” She wiggled her fingers.
Sam reluctantly pushed the page toward her daughter. “Okay. Just choose some decent wines.”
“I can handle it.”
Sam hardly remembered getting ready for bed. She rolled over and yawned the moment the bedroom lamp was out.
Chapter 14
Grocery bags waited on the kitchen table and Sam rummaged through them to be sure Kelly had found everything on her list. She scribbled a quick thank-you note and carried the bags out to the van.
The shop was quiet when she arrived and the clock told her it was still an hour or so before Jen and Becky would arrive. Sam got the first batches of breakfast pastries into the ovens before she took a break and found her coffee mug. The dark brew brought her out of the last of her morning fog. Each day got a little better, but Sam still wasn’t sure how she—the original late sleeper—functioned before sunrise.
She was in the process of organizing ingredients for the savory treats for the party, matching them with the recipes to keep everything straight, when the phone rang.
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