Sweet's Sweets: The Second Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  Sweet’s Sweets

  The Second Samantha Sweet Mystery

  Connie Shelton

  Secret Staircase Books

  © 2010 Connie Shelton. All rights reserved.

  Author’s Note

  Readers who might be familiar with the Taos County Sheriff’s Department will undoubtedly notice that the department described in my series is quite a bit smaller than the actual. For story purposes, I’ve given them fewer deputies and other personnel. I’ve also moved the location of the offices. No need to write and inform me of my ‘mistakes.’ It’s been done on purpose. I hope you’ll simply enjoy the story for what it is, including the ‘magic’ parts!

  Once again I extend my thanks to Susan Slater, for your editorial suggestions and for all the good catches you make in reading my work. And to my readers, my thanks for your loyalty and for recommending my books to others; you make it all worthwhile. You are the best!

  For Dan. It’s amazing how twenty years have just flown by!

  Thanks for being such a wonderful partner.

  Prologue

  The woman tensed. Were those footsteps behind her on the dark street? She couldn’t be sure. She spun to check—saw nothing.

  Catching a whiff of cologne—or was it someone’s garden?—she picked up her pace. Where were the crowds? The people who normally jammed the plaza and surrounding streets on these early-autumn evenings were gone. Was it really that late?

  She must have lingered in her lover’s bed far too many hours. She raised the collar of her light jacket, sniffed it. Did she smell of him? Despite a shower, she feared that she might carry his scent home.

  There was always danger in these matters, the constant fear of being caught, the continual deception, even with her closest friends. The stress of keeping up appearances . . . it was all becoming too much.

  But he loved her—didn’t he? She loved him, she felt certain of that. Nearly certain. And yet she couldn’t break the news to her husband. Wouldn’t rip the bandage off and get it over with cleanly. Couldn’t seem to leave the miserable, sham marriage behind and start a new life. The time wasn’t right, not yet

  A scuff on the sidewalk behind her. She froze. Dared a glance. A shadow moved but she couldn’t be certain—a man, or merely a tree branch? For a moment she nearly let her guard down, almost didn’t care what happened to her.

  But self-preservation prevailed.

  She ran blindly up a side street, then spotted an alleyway just ahead. On a nano-second’s impulse she ducked into it. The stupid high heels were killing her feet; she’d never be able to outrun the stalker. What did she have for a weapon?

  She fumbled her purse open, felt blindly for anything she might use to defend herself.

  The footfalls resumed. Closer.

  She held her breath.

  Someone was there, mere feet from the alley. Her fingers touched her wallet, a lipstick, her car keys. They closed around a small knife she’d forgotten about, a pen knife her husband had left in the car. She’d intended to take it in the house. A four inch blade—silly, really, for self defense—but it might dissuade an attacker.

  The footsteps, again. He seemed to pause and consider the alley. Ahead, as she remembered, the road curved to the north. For all he knew, she might have kept running, beyond his sight. She took his hesitation as uncertainty. She thumbed the blade of the knife open, pressing her back against the block wall.

  What if it turned out to be her husband? Possibly the perfect opportunity to rid herself of him forever, to be with the man she really wanted. The thought flitted through her head in an instant, shocking her. But would she have the nerve?

  A silhouette filled the alley. Oh god, she thought.

  He stepped toward her. She edged away, two steps, bumped into something. He came forward. Instinct kicked in and her right hand slashed toward his face. The knife blade connected—she couldn’t tell where. But at once there was blood. A lot of it.

  The man grabbed at his neck and crumpled to the ground. She leaped past his flailing legs. As he rolled to his back she caught a glimpse of his face. A stranger.

  Chapter 1

  October light filtered through a layer of grime on wide storefront windows, playing up the air of abandonment. Samantha Sweet viewed the challenge ahead of her as she scrawled her signature on the lease. Cleaning up a mess was nothing new to her. She relished the task ahead—refinishing the old wood-framed display cases, throwing out piles of old junk, making those front windows sparkle so that her scrumptious pastries could beckon the world to her door.

  Sweet’s Sweets. Her own bake shop. Her dream.

  She watched as Victor Tafoya, her new landlord, countersigned the papers. The seventy-five year old man reminded her of the Grinch, minus the green. Skinny, wizened, with a shock of sparse white hair which he usually covered with a battered straw hat, no matter the season—Tafoya was known around town for being miserly and grumpy but generally fair. However, Sam would rather deal with him than his son Carlos, who fancied himself something of a monarch here in Taos. Two terms as mayor, now running for governor of New Mexico, Carlos was reputed to share his father’s stingy ways, without the fairness. Sam dreaded the day he would take over the elder Tafoya’s rental properties.

  She sighed and took the signed pages and key Victor Tafoya handed her. The old man grumbled something about how her check better clear the bank or he’d be back, then he walked out without another word.

  Sam let a smile spread over her features as she turned and surveyed her little domain. As long as she paid her rent on time and was able to perform repairs herself, she shouldn’t need to deal with either of the Tafoyas for a long time. She loved her vision for this spot—and the location was perfect.

  “Knocking, knocking . . .”

  Ivan Petrenko, owner of Mysterious Happenings the bookshop next door, peered around the edge of the door. A longtime customer for her pastries, Ivan was an endearing little man whose curious mixture of Russian and French usually kept Sam guessing. Rumor had it that he had defected from Russia to Paris with his wife’s ballet troupe, but there had been no evidence of a wife here in Taos. She must have found Paris more alluring, at whatever point in time Ivan decided to move on to America.

  “We are the neighbors now, eh?” He stepped into the room and surveyed the mess the former tenant had left behind.

  “It’s going to need some cleanup, isn’t it?” Sam said.

  “Oui, but Miss Samantha is how do you say, up to the task?”

  Sam laughed. “Yes, indeed. I am. I hope to have the shop open in a week or so.”

  Another tap at the door interrupted.

  “Samantha . . . it’s official, then?” The newcomer was her other neighbor, Erika Davis-Jones—Riki D-J to everyone—who owned a dog-grooming shop to the south. They’d met through the book group at Mysterious Happenings, and Sam immediately took a liking to the petite British-born young woman who wasn’t a whole lot older than her own daughter.

  Sam held up the pages of the lease. “Yep. Here I am.”

  Riki squealed and danced around. “I’m so happy for you, Sam.”

  Sam showed them around, pointing out the changes she planned to make. Her daughter, Kelly, had designed a logo for the shop in Sam’s favorite shades of purple, and Sam would use those same colors, along with gold trim, in the scheme throughout the store. A wall already divided the space roughly in half, and Sam had a bake oven, walk-in refrigerator, and all the best in equipment on order from a bakery supply house. She’d not revealed
to most people where the money came from for her new venture, but there was sufficient cash to do it right and that’s just what she intended to do.

  At the moment, though, the main requirement would be elbow grease. The previous tenant had not left on good terms with the Tafoyas—being four months behind on rent before they evicted him—so he’d taught them a lesson by leaving masses of cardboard boxes, unsold product, piles of paperwork and old brochures—generally anything he didn’t want to make the effort to move. And of course the Tafoyas didn’t care. The location, one block off the Taos Plaza, was so prime that they knew it would rent, in any condition. Enter Samantha Sweet and her dream of opening her own pastry shop.

  “Is a good place,” Ivan said when they’d completed the quick tour.

  “Hmm, it needs a spot of work,” Riki said.

  Sam laughed out loud. “More than a ‘spot’ I’d say. But it’s doable. I’ll call up my old resources.” A dumpster and perhaps a couple of muscular teenage boys would come in handy.

  “Ah yes, what about that?” Riki asked. “You’ve not quit your other job have you?”

  Sam grimaced. Breaking into houses for a living was not how she wanted to spend the rest of her days, but she was under contract for another two years. It had seemed her only choice when money was so tight last year; she’d really needed the income just to scrape by.

  “No, I’ll have to juggle both for awhile. Right now I’ve just got two properties in my care and they are pretty simple ones. I’ve suggested to my supervisor that he might shift some to other contractors, if there’s someone who can take them. But I don’t know how it’s going to work out. There are only two of us in the county right now.”

  “Well, my shop is only closed on Sundays but if I can lend a hand . . .” The dog groomer patted Sam’s arm. “Better get back to it now.” She practically skipped toward the front door. “Later, Sam!”

  “Ah, I am seeing cars at my place too,” said Ivan, heading that direction. “Pleasing to be your neighbor.”

  Sam chuckled as he left. It was nice to be here among friends. She had a good feeling about the shop.

  “Okay, let’s get busy,” she muttered to herself, walking out to her van parked in the alley behind the row of businesses.

  She shed the jacket that had been necessary early this morning and rummaged among her tools in the back of her van for a box cutter. Flattening and stacking empty boxes, she piled them into the van for a trip to the recycling center. The former tenant’s old brochures and other miscellaneous paper could probably also be recycled. Most of the other stuff would simply have to go into the trash. She was no more than an hour into the job when her phone rang.

  Delbert Crow, her USDA contracting officer. A new job, and of course he wanted this one tended to quickly. Sam took down the address, her mind zipping through the steps in hopes of handling it, along with her own new cleanup project, as efficiently as possible.

  She finished talking with Crow and decided she might as well go out and do the break-in and assess the situation at the new place.

  She pulled out the roll of white butcher paper on which she and Kelly had written in huge letters: COMING SOON—SWEET’S SWEETS—A BAKERY OF MAGICAL DELIGHTS. Carrying it to the front of the shop she carefully unrolled it and taped the banner across the front windows. Not only would it conceal the current grime and her subsequent cleanup-in-progress, she also hoped it would whet the appetites of passersby and give the business a boost when it opened. She walked outside and stood on the sidewalk. It looked good. She smiled.

  Washing her hands in cold water—she must remember to get the gas and electric turned back on today—she rummaged for a paper towel and then made herself a list of cleaning supplies to bring from home. She locked the front door, felt her way through the dim space and went out the back to her van.

  The property her USDA supervisor had added to her workload was located beyond the far south end of town, she discovered as she looked up the address on a road picturesquely named Hickory Lane. She drove through mid-day traffic, past the little community of Ranchos de Taos with its famous historic church, and turned off the highway into an area filled with tiny houses interspersed with single-wide trailers. The lots were small and most had no landscaping to speak of—dirt yards with a few shrubs and a lot of kids’ plastic toys seemed to be the norm. Hickory was the first dirt road after the turnoff.

  She figured out the address by process of elimination. Looking for #23 she spotted a 21 on one side and a 25 on the other. The unmarked one in the middle must be it. She pulled through an opening in the coyote stake fence, onto a dirt track that passed for a driveway. The little house was covered in badly done white stucco, with aluminum frame windows and a cheap hollow-core wooden front door. Surprising that the USDA had guaranteed a loan for the place; not surprising that the owner abandoned it. Sad, really, that even such an unassuming house would be beyond the means of the buyer. Perhaps someone who had lost a job in the recession. Sam had no way of knowing. Her job was simply to get inside, make sure the place was cleared of personal possessions and made ready for sale or auction.

  As was her custom, she first walked the perimeter, looking for broken windows or other damage, assessing what yard work might need to be done, finding the easiest way in. That part of it turned out to be quite simple. When she tried the front doorknob it was unlocked.

  The door swung open about twelve inches before it bumped against something and came to an abrupt stop.

  Sam bit back a few choice words as she shoved against it and inched into the opening. Why hadn’t she worked a little harder to lose some of those extra pounds? She kicked at whatever was blocking the door and pressed harder to squeeze herself through.

  Ohmygod, she thought, staring into the house.

  Stacks of newspapers, magazines and boxes lined a narrow entryway forming a tunnel-like walkway. Sam pulled a small flashlight from the pocket of her jeans and aimed it toward the ceiling. The piles of paper to her left looked really precarious. She edged away. Yikes, if this mess starts to fall, there’s nowhere to go, she thought. Even with the unlocked front door, she began to see why thieves had not messed with this place.

  Turning sideways, she sidestepped farther into the clutter. A break in the tall paper-stacks revealed a living room. A sofa had some crocheted afghans and a couple of small throw pillows on it, looking like someone had just gotten up from a nap. A cheap fake-wood stand, minus the TV, stood in one corner and little nests of afghans were bunched in front of it. In the corners were piles of plastic toys, the kind that seem to grow and multiply in so many American homes. On the south wall, they were literally stacked to the ceiling in plastic crates.

  Paper sacks lined the walls of a dining area—Sam assumed that a table was somewhere under the collection of silk flowers, half-burned candles and cereal boxes. When she shone her light toward the latter, two spiders edged away. She gingerly poked into one of the paper sacks and pulled out three baby t-shirts, size six months. Another sack revealed size twelve months; another size four. Some items were new, in wrappers, while others were splotched with food stains, as if they’d been worn and stashed away dirty. What the heck?

  She dropped the small clothing back into the bags and headed for the kitchen. The stench of old garbage filled the small space. Every counter top was covered in dirty dishes, with a conglomeration of pots and pans in the sink as well. The stove would have to be hauled away. No degreaser in the world would cut through that mess. Dreading it, Sam reached for the refrigerator door. Green fuzz coated several lumpy surfaces, but the odor of rotten meat nearly knocked her over. She slammed the door vowing to bring a respirator mask when she came back.

  Why this week? With so much to do at the shop, why did she have to get this filthy assignment right now? She cursed her luck and debated calling Delbert Crow back and begging him to take her off the job. She sighed. Buck up, Sam. You can do it.

  She’d seen a few things nearly this bad, but that was back
when she had no choice but to take every job that came her way. She headed back toward the living room and blew out a sharp breath to get the kitchen-stink out of her nostrils.

  There must be bedrooms. Could they be any worse? She edged along the magazine-lined hallway and discovered two. A master bedroom held a double bed and crib—both with rumpled bedding and scattered clothing. The smaller bedroom contained bunk beds, plus a single. At least three children had occupied it, with toys for seventeen. What on earth were these people thinking? They could have made their house payments for a hundred years with what they spent on all this . . . this debris. Sam shook her head, wondering at what led someone to live this way.

  She’d often wondered what, aside from being unable to make their payments, would lead someone to abandon their home. Six weeks ago she’d encountered two situations where the homeowners had died. But standing here surrounded by junk, floor to ceiling in places, she could see the appeal of simply walking out with a toothbrush and the clothes on your back. Surely the overwhelming clutter could drive a person insane at some point.

  She stared into the master bedroom closet. Aside from a few coats, slacks and a solitary dark suit, most of the clothing was for a female. Maybe the man of the house went crazy first and simply bolted, leaving his mate to cope with everything. Sam had been in here less than thirty minutes and she already felt the cloak of despair settling upon her.

  Chapter 2

  Before she could let it get to her, Sam pulled her cell phone from her pocket, dialed a number from her address book and ordered a roll-off. As much as she believed in recycling she simply couldn’t spare the time to go through everything in this house and separate it. Delbert Crow had been insistent that she finish the job quickly. She had to wonder if he’d actually seen the place.