Sweet Masterpiece: The First Samantha Sweet Mystery ssm-1

by Connie Shelton

  They were standing in the checkout line at Smith’s when her cell rang. Beau.

  “Would it be convenient for you to stop by my office on Civic Plaza at some point today?” he asked. “I’ve finished with Anderson’s personal papers and thought you might need to include them with the other contents of the home.”

  Normally she didn’t keep papers from the homeowners, but in this case she could offer to hold onto or dispose of them, whatever was required.

  “How about in five minutes? I’m nearly there now.”

  Rupert decided to go inside with her. “If you’re dating this guy, I need to pay more attention.”

  Sam bristled. “It was not a date, big brother.”

  They found parking right next to the building, which was some kind of miracle, and were directed to Beau’s cubicle down a narrow corridor. His desk was fairly neat, considering the amount of paperwork even the most minor case required these days. A number of file folders stood upright between the dividers in an organizer caddy. In the center of the desk one folder lay spread open and he was tamping some pages and stapling the corner of them as they walked up.

  Beau handed her a rubber-banded stack of envelopes that she recognized as the bank statements she’d collected from the house. Their fingers touched briefly as she took them, and she got the feeling that his request for her to get these items was an excuse to see her.

  She glanced toward the open folder on the desk. Clipped to the front was a DMV photo of a gray-haired man.

  “Is that Mr. Anderson?”

  Beau nodded and pulled the picture from the paperclip, handing it to her.

  “Ohmygod—it’s him!” Rupert snatched the photo from Sam. His breath was coming hard.

  “Him?”

  “It’s Cantone! He’s older here, but I’d know that face anywhere.”

  Beau stepped forward. “You’re sure? Absolutely sure?”

  Sam looked at it more closely. The photos of the artist that she’d seen online were mostly taken in the 1960s and ’70s at the height of his career. He’d been dark haired then, with a pencil mustache and smooth face. In the DMV photo he was gray, no facial hair, with severe bags under the eyes. Cruel, what time did to everyone.

  However, the more she looked, the more resemblance she could see. He wore his hair in essentially the same style, combed straight back, longish, touching his collar. Although the official photo was straight-on, whereas the publicity photos were generally posed at a more flattering angle, the bone structure was the same.

  “I’m telling you . . .” Rupert said.

  “Yes, I can see it too,” she told Beau. “Check online. There’s a lot of information about the artist. I think it’s him.”

  She handed the photo back and Beau clipped it to the file.

  “Well, this adds a new wrinkle. Surely there must be someone related . . . I mean, it wouldn’t be right to put him in a pauper’s grave now, would it?”

  Rupert inhaled sharply. “For Cantone? You have to be joking.”

  “Well, we didn’t know—”

  “I will personally pay for a grand funeral for this man before I’ll let you just stick him—” He actually began to tear up.

  Sam laid her hand on his arm. “Rupert, it’s okay. Now that we know who he is . . . It’s going to be okay.”

  Beau spoke up. “Rupert, that’s very kind of you. But now that we know his identity, we have to make an attempt at locating next of kin. Once we know if he has living relatives, decisions can be made.”

  “I’m sure you can be part of the plans, Rupert, once his relatives are found.”

  He visibly relaxed. Rupert loves to plan a party and Sam could already see the cogs turning.

  Beau said, “You know a lot about this man’s life, Rupert. Do you know if he had children?”

  Rupert told Beau the same story Sam had discovered online, that the artist’s wife and children were killed in a train crash years earlier. He’d never remarried and had become quite reclusive. Adopting a fake identity was about as anonymous as a person could get, Sam imagined.

  She spoke up: “I’m wondering about the younger man who was living with him. According to Betty McDonald he showed up in March and was gone—well, both men were gone—in June. I wonder if he was related. Anderson, uh, Cantone, didn’t seem like the type of guy to have a stranger move in with him.”

  “I seem to remember a brother . . . or maybe it was a sister,” Rupert said. “Let me check.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory.

  “Esteban. Hey, Rupert here. What do you know of any family history on Pierre Cantone?” He listened and hmm’d a couple of times. For a couple of minutes he simply waited, as the other man talked. “Okay. Thanks ever so.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal.” Rupert loved to tell a story and he was just warming up.

  Beau picked up on that and pulled a couple of chairs closer to his desk so they could sit down during the telling.

  “Cantone had a sister. Sophie. She was ten years younger. She married an American, an older man—really a romantic whirlwind thing during a trip to New York.” He sighed. “Kind of like the scenario I created in Love’s Glory where—”

  Sam tapped his foot with her toe.

  “—oh, right. Sophie Cantone became Mrs. Robert Killington. He was wealthy, an industrialist or something. They had the most to-die-for apartment in New York, right on Central Park, and a villa in the south of France.”

  She could see Beau’s eyes beginning to glaze over.

  “Children?” she reminded.

  “Ah yes. Esteban wasn’t sure. He thought he remembered there being a son, but if so the child was kept completely out of the limelight. Sophie and Robert traveled the world and attended all the right parties and there were never any children in sight.”

  Beau stood, a clear signal. “That gives us a lot to go on. Thanks, Rupert.”

  Sam nudged Rupert in the shoulder to remind him that they needed to get moving.

  “I’ll do some checking to see if Sophie and Robert Killington are still living. As his sister, she—”

  “Oh, they aren’t,” Rupert interrupted. “Living. That’s what else I meant to say. He died after only about ten years of marriage. He was quite a lot older, remember. She stayed around the art scene, attending many openings as Cantone’s hostess, for a few years more. But then she became ill—the rumor was cancer. She died only five or six years after her husband. It was so tragic. So young.”

  “Then I guess I’ll start with the possibility that the son might still be living. Maybe even in Europe,” Beau said.

  Rupert and Sam left him to the search. His phone was already ringing as they walked down the corridor.

  “Sam, let’s dash back out there. To Cantone’s house? Please?”

  She unlocked the truck. “Oh, Rupert, I’ve got all those cookies to bake . . .” And she wanted his help. She would get that a whole lot easier if she didn’t send him into a pout. “All right, but just a few minutes, okay?”

  He seemed as delighted as a kid going to the carnival. The Anderson/Cantone place was only about fifteen minutes away. Sam was surprised to see that it was just a little past noon, anyway. She’d accomplished a lot already today so it shouldn’t matter that they take a quick side trip.

  Rupert was beaming as she unlocked the door to the simple wood frame house. While he clearly regarded this as a near-shrine, knowing that his beloved artist had lived here, Sam merely saw it as sad, that such a respected man had ended up unable to pay for even this worn-down abode.

  He headed straight for the front bedroom, where they’d found the art supplies and where the mural was painted. Even with it gone and the wall patched, Rupert seemed to sense the essence of the artist at work in the cramped space. Sam, meanwhile, went to the kitchen, updating her sign-in sheet, making sure that she’d left everything in order for the pending sale of the place.

  At once she sensed something different. What was this greenish, powdery
stuff on the wall near the table? And there—more of it near the sink. She’d wiped down the counter and table with disinfectant cleaner. She could see her circular wipe marks in dried swirls of green. No way she left it like this. She checked the back door. Still locked tight.

  “What’s going on?” Rupert asked, peering around the doorjamb.

  “Huh?”

  “You cursed. I heard you say ‘what the f—’ all the way down the hall.”

  “Look at this!” She pointed to the table. “I didn’t leave all that green stuff.”

  “Uh-huh. Sam, there’s no green stuff.”

  “Right there!” She flicked her fingers toward the wall. “And there. Powdery stuff on the wall. Swipe marks on the table.”

  He was staring at her blankly.

  “Stop it! No teasing.” She laughed but it came out sort of shaky. “Rupert, you’re scaring me. You do see this.” She wiped her finger across it and some of the green came off. She held it up to him.

  “Honey, I see a table and a kitchen that looks perfectly clean. You’d never leave a mess behind in one of your places. You clean like the devil when you do these jobs.”

  Sam felt like she’d been whacked. What the hell was going on? She rubbed at her eyes and blinked hard. The green stuff was still there. And her good friend was looking at her like she’d just sprouted horns.

  “I want a third opinion.” She pulled out her phone and dialed Beau. No answer on his cell. Sam stopped herself. How crazy would it sound, trying to explain this to him?

  Rupert was watching her from the doorway.

  “You. Keep out of this,” she grumbled. He flinched and slinked away.

  She stomped across the kitchen and flung the door open. It closed behind her, a lot more firmly than she’d intended. She strode over to the gaping hole in the back corner and stared into the empty grave for a good ten minutes. Maybe she was going crazy. Maybe not. But snapping at her friends wouldn’t solve anything.

  She took a deep breath and headed back to the house.

  Refusing to look closely at the kitchen walls, Sam went back to the bedroom where Rupert was sitting on the bed, looking like a whipped puppy. “Hey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” She sat down beside him.

  “And I shouldn’t have doubted you. That’s not what friends do.” He took her hand.

  “So, we’re good?”

  “We’re good.” He patted her hand and gave it a light squeeze. “Want some help with those cookies?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll just recheck all the locks first.”

  He went out to the truck while Sam made the rounds, ignoring the green powder in several places. She rinsed her fingers at the kitchen sink and the substance came right off. So strange.

  She drove back home, still shaky over the fact that she was seeing things other people couldn’t see, hoping that it wasn’t some alien concoction from the Planet Whatever.

  Chapter 12

  By two o’clock Rupert and Sam were up to their elbows in cookies. He’d completely moved past the earlier little tiff and pitched in with his practiced ease in the kitchen. As Sam mixed each new flavor of dough he operated the press and filled cookie sheets with neat rows of butter cookies, chocolate spritz, butter-mint whirls and more. She shuffled them in and out of the oven and onto cooling racks. As he worked up the final batch she prepared decorator icing and began piping a variety of tiny summer flowers onto the cooled ones. She loved to see how many different styles she could come up with, customizing every order so the customer always received a surprise.

  A tap at the kitchen door caught her attention. Zoe turned the knob and came in.

  “Hey. You guys must be way into your own zone,” she said. “I knocked at the front door twice. Figured you had to be here since your truck is out front.”

  Sam gestured toward the counters and table, which were covered with racks of cookies at various stages of completion.

  “Quick question and I’ll leave you alone,” Zoe said. “Can I borrow your truck tomorrow, for the day? Darryl’s just informed me that he’s working and needs his truck, and I have some furniture to take to the library’s garage sale fundraiser. I told them I’d also help haul away anything that doesn’t sell by five o’clock. They donate it to the homeless shelter.”

  “Ooh. I have to get all these cookies delivered to Santa Fe.”

  She leaned against the counter, wheels turning. “How about we trade vehicles? Can you fit all the cookies into my Subaru wagon?”

  “That’ll work.”

  “Let’s just trade keys now. Sounds like we’ll both be done by early evening and we can switch back then.”

  Sam wiped frosting off her hands, fetched the truck keys from her backpack and got Zoe on her way. The rest of the baking operation went smoothly and she was surprised to see that it was only four o’clock as she started clearing the mixing bowls and putting the utensils to soak in the sink.

  “You, girl, sure know how to roar through an order,” Rupert commented, plopping into one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m beat.”

  She stared around the room. They’d accomplished an amazing amount of baking in a short time, and the results were stacked everywhere. “Thank goodness for triple-decked racks,” she said. “This kitchen is so inadequate.”

  “Hey, you’ll get your shop. My offer still stands.”

  He’d generously proposed to loan Sam the money to properly open Sweet’s Sweets. She had to admit that it was tempting to take him up on it. But she also knew that opening a retail store was a risky thing. There would be a lot of expenses that she couldn’t foresee, and she’d feel better if she could at least foot most of the bill herself, without the worry of repaying a loan. A flash of irritation, again, at her daughter for helping herself to the savings Sam had so carefully accumulated. She suppressed it and turned on a flame under the tea kettle.

  “I think we can spare a few of these little beauties and have ourselves a proper tea,” she told Rupert, handing him a plate.

  He chose an assortment of the cookies and she poured them each a cup of Earl Grey.

  Sam woke up Sunday morning feeling satisfied. After she’d taken Rupert home—he swore that the cookies had given him renewed energy to get back to his writing—she’d pulled out disposable platters and carefully arranged the cookies in two nice displays, topping them with plastic covers. They’d made a couple dozen extras, just in case, and she made up a few sampler baggies. It never hurt to throw in a few gifts along the way.

  After a slow-paced morning at home she loaded up her treasures and headed for Santa Fe. The hour and a half drive went smoothly, the only traffic snags coming as she approached the northern edge of the capital city, where weekends brought crowds out to the flea market. By then she was watching for the turnoff to Casa de Tranquilidad, where she followed a winding gravel road to the hotel resort. The meandering adobe building sat at an overlook, surrounded by pine forest. Really a beautiful spot for conferences or weddings or social events. Sam hoped her effort on the cookies would bring even more business from them.

  She pulled under the portico at the front entrance, unsure which meeting room was her destination. The hotel’s conference coordinator usually suggested she avoid the bustle of the kitchen, as long as the client’s meeting room was available. She made a quick inquiry at the front desk, got her instructions and headed back to the car. The valet parking attendant seemed a bit impatient at the length of time she’d parked and she felt pressure to stack the trays and carry them both at once. About the time she’d nearly dumped one of them a young woman with long auburn hair came walking up. She looked like a hotel guest, carrying a leather duffle, and she noticed Sam’s plight.

  “Could I help you with those?” she asked, dropping her bag near the Subaru.

  Sam gladly handed off one of the trays. “Thanks. It wasn’t smart for me to try handling both of them.”

  She followed Sam inside and they set down their burdens. Back at the car the younger wom
an picked up her duffle, introducing herself as Charlie Parker.

  “Here, Charlie, let me . . .” Sam reached for the samples she’d bagged up. “If you ever need pastries, give me a call.”

  She looked at Sam’s card and thanked her, eyeing the cookies—obviously a girl who liked her sweets, although her slender figure belied that. Sam gave her a smile and then caught the eye of the valet who was clearly sending annoyance vibes her way. She climbed back into the car as Charlie went into the lobby.

  Sam stopped in Espanola for a quick burger and reached the outskirts of Taos as it was getting dark. Her cell phone rang about two seconds after she’d traded Zoe’s Subaru back for her pickup truck, Beau asking if she’d like to meet for dinner. She explained about the burger and he sounded so disappointed that she caved and said she’d love an ice cream.

  They decided that the Sonic Drive-in on the south side of town could satisfy both his need for solid food and her ice cream desires. She headed that way and had just pulled in when she spotted his Explorer behind her. He parked it at the side of the property and Sam pulled in at one of the slots with the old-time speakers for ordering. He climbed into her truck and they stared at the menu and placed their orders.

  “I’m glad you were available on short notice,” he said, sending a genuine smile her way. “This way it’s not officially a date.”

  She sent him a saucy grin and told him about the delivery in Santa Fe. “You caught me just at the right moment. Otherwise, I’d have been snug inside.”

  He gave her a long, intent gaze. “Sam, I . . .”

  Before he could finish the thought, a girl arrived with their tray. In the exchange of wrapped food, drinks, and cash, Beau took charge and Sam simply accepted her hot fudge sundae and watched as he unwrapped his chicken sandwich.

  “Is there anything new on Cantone’s death?”

  “Not yet. Still waiting on some lab results.” He turned sideways in his seat to face her. “But I don’t want to think about work right now.”

  She’d set her empty sundae dish in the cup holder between them and he reached over to run a gentle finger down her forearm. He’d hardly taken two bites of his sandwich.