The best offset color for the pale apricot would be ivory, so she added the color to white buttercream. With fondant covering the middle tier, Sam set about piping swirls to cover the sides of the others. Soon, the top and bottom tiers were completely covered, and the result looked like a million rose petals opening to face the audience. She added a subtle sprinkle of iridescent sugar to catch the light, then piped a few decorative swags on the apricot-colored layer. Off to the fridge so everything could set up nicely, then she would add the sugar paste flowers right before taking the cake out to her bakery van for delivery.
A glance at the clock told her she still had a couple hours before she would need to leave. A day without a crisis felt a little strange, but Sam cautioned herself not to count on anything. In the other room, she heard the front door bells followed a minute later by a shriek. Oh god, what now?
The shriek turned to a giggle as Sam parted the curtain to check it out. Barbara Rivers, a longtime customer, was looking at the rainbow cake Sam had finished for her father. Jen had explained about the hidden cache of candy inside.
“It’s perfect, Sam. He’ll love it!”
Sam gave the customer a warm smile and a hug and watched her carry the cake box to her car. Everything Sam had produced today had turned out beautifully. Why, then, did she have a nagging sense of trouble hovering nearby?
Chapter 12
The man without a past—Beau chided himself for having the thought about Percy Lukinger. Everyone has a past; he just needed to discover this one. He sat at his desk, tapping a pencil against the case folder with the photos and notes.
The squad room was empty except for one deputy—a new transfer from Mora County—who was writing up his morning’s worth of traffic citations. Everyone else had been dispatched—a home robbery, two missing dogs, and a gas station holdup. In broad daylight. In Taos. Things were changing around here, for sure.
Okay, Percy Lukinger. I’m doing my best to find your family. I will do my best to figure out what happened to you.
Beau closed the folder, taking only the license photo with him, and grabbed his hat and coat from the rack beside his office door. He stopped by the desk of their dispatcher-secretary.
“Dixie, did you find contact information for the owner of 54 Montaño Lane?”
“Sure did, Sheriff.” She handed him a pink message slip. “Name, address and phone number.”
He mumbled a thanks and headed for the back door, switching off the squad room coffee maker on his way through. Never understood how the men could sit in there, smelling the thick dark odor of day-old brew, without doing it themselves, but they didn’t. He slid his arms into the sleeves of the department-issue down jacket and planted his felt Stetson on his head.
Slush from two days ago had frozen in heaps around the concrete bumpers the vehicles parked against, but otherwise the employee lot had pretty well melted clear. He started his cruiser and sat there with the sun shining through the window until the heater began to produce warmish air. After coming up empty by checking the voter rolls, DMV, and county property records, visiting Lukinger’s landlord seemed the only way to find out where the man worked or if he had a wife.
This accident case was taking way too much of his time. So far, he had no evidence it was anything more sinister than a guy making the very bad choice to keep driving when he shouldn’t have. Finding a family member to claim the body shouldn’t be this difficult; once he did so, he could close the case and be damn thankful Lukinger hadn’t taken out other innocent drivers in the process.
He dialed the phone number Dixie had given him for Charles Romero, and it was answered on the second ring. Beau introduced himself and said he needed a little information on the tenant on Montaño Lane.
“I’m trying to find a way to contact someone who’s related to him. Did he have a wife or girlfriend living with him?”
“Why you need to know that?”
“Can you just check the application he filled out when he rented? He hasn’t been in town long, so it can’t be filed that deeply away.”
“I, uh, I don’t keep that stuff.”
“Really? So, if he damaged the house or skipped out on the rent, you don’t have any way to find him?”
“Nope.” The line went dead.
Okay, there’s a guy who’s hiding something. Beau backed out of his parking slot and hit his strobes. Don’t mess with me, you little jerk.
Romero’s address was only three blocks from the station. As traffic glided away to the sides of the road, it took Beau under a minute to screech to a halt in front of a tan little adobe box. He was out of the SUV and on the front porch ten seconds later. Pounding on the door, he shouted.
“It was a simple question, Mr. Romero. Would you like to answer it here or down at my office? I can make enough noise your neighbors will start to take an interest.”
The front door opened a couple of inches, revealing a short man with a fair amount of gray in his hair.
“Thank you.” Beau brought his voice to nearly a whisper, forcing Romero to open the door wider to hear him. “Now. May I see the rental application Mr. Percy Lukinger signed when he rented your property on Montaño Lane? Please.”
Romero fidgeted. “Look, Sheriff, I wasn’t lying. I really don’t keep any forms or anything.”
Not good business practice, but not strictly illegal.
“Then maybe you can just tell me how many people live in the house? Does Lukinger have a wife, kids, any family who live there?”
The shorter man shook his head. “He told me he’d be living alone. Look, he don’t cause no trouble. Been there a few months and no complaints.”
“Okay. Well, then I’m sorry to inform you that Mr. Lukinger was killed in a traffic accident a couple days ago. I’m just looking to reach his next of kin. Anything you know would be helpful. He had recently moved to Taos. Did he ever say where he came from?”
Another head shake. “He kept his business to himself. Brought me an envelope the first of each month. Usually it was ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ and not much more.”
Rent paid in cash, almost certainly undeclared income … which explained Romero’s dodging him at first. He could make an issue of it if he had to, but he wasn’t the tax man.
“He never mentioned anyone else—a lady friend, a buddy, what he liked to do on Saturdays or where he was going once he dropped off his rent money?”
“None of that.”
“I’d like a key to the house,” Beau said. “Maybe his possessions will give some clues.”
Romero disappeared for a minute and came back with a bristling key ring. He looked at tiny labels on keys until he came to one with a 54 on it. He ran it around the metal ring until it came off.
“That’s my last copy, so don’t lose it,” he said.
“I’ll have it right back to you when we’re finished.” Beau met his gaze straight-on. “It can become a sticky mess, you know, if you don’t happen to be reporting that cash income on your taxes.”
Romero’s eyes widened slightly. He got the message.
Back in his cruiser, Beau sent a little salute toward Romero’s front window. No doubt the man was watching to see how long he would hang around.
Montaño Lane was only a half-dozen blocks west, so Beau headed there. The small house at number 54 proved to be nearly a carbon copy of the landlord’s own home. He pulled his SUV into the driveway. No one answered his tap at the door, so he used the key.
Curtains were drawn at all the windows, making the interior dim, chilly, and cave-like. He flipped the switch nearest the door; it illuminated an overhead fixture with woefully inadequate light. Probably meant to hold three bulbs and only one remained functional. The layout was basically living-dining L, cubbyhole kitchen, one bathroom, two bedrooms. Furniture consisted of mismatched castoffs. Whether they belonged to the landlord or the tenant, they were dingy brown lumps with the personality of hedgehogs in hibernation. A scarred co
ffee table in front of the brown sofa was littered with a week-old newspaper, a coffee mug with dried sludge at the bottom, a paper napkin with a browned apple core, and a single white sock.
The kitchen sink held a plastic drain rack with some forks and knives in the square compartment meant for flatware. A tall trash bin near the back door was stuffed to overflowing with used paper plates and bags from fast food places. An empty gin bottle topped the precarious mess. The countertop showed no signs of meal preparation, no small appliances other than a tiny one-serving coffee machine of the type you’d find in motel rooms. Fridge had a pizza box with two dried up slices of pepperoni and a bottle of French vanilla coffee creamer. Beau pulled open the few drawers, wondering if one served as the catch-all for mail, but they contained only the most basic of kitchen tools—a single corkscrew.
He moved on to the bedrooms. One had an unmade double bed—mattress and box spring only—and a cheap nightstand. A peek in the closet assured him no one had lived in the room. The other, slightly larger bedroom also had a double bed, the nightstand to match the one from the other room, and a chest of drawers with a mirror above it.
The top drawer contained a half-dozen pairs of men’s white briefs, a mound of dark socks, a leather belt, and box of condoms. The second drawer held a few T-shirts, men’s size medium. A few items of women’s size small clothing had been dumped into the third drawer, and the fourth was empty. Wire hangers in the closet held a navy sport coat, four long-sleeved men’s shirts and two pair of jeans, black dress shoes on the floor, and a suitcase easily large enough to hold every personal item in the place.
There’d been no stashed boxes on either closet shelf—no photo albums or mementos, no Christmas decorations, tickets to events … not a trace of the collection of things most people moved around with them through their lives. Still—what about the present-day stuff? Nothing in the nightstand drawer—no paycheck stubs, no checkbook, no passport, no utility bills. Where did the guy work? How did he pay his rent?
So far, his findings tended to uphold what they’d learned. A man who could pack up at a moment’s notice and a woman who spent very little time here. Toiletries in the bathroom fit the same picture. Rico had speculated maybe Lukinger was a traveling salesman, but there was no evidence of samples or product brochures.
And what about the woman? Casual dates didn’t leave their clothes, toothbrushes, or makeup behind. She had to be someone Percy had cared for. But Beau had found nothing in the whole place to identify her.
All he could figure was that their victim somehow worked within the underground economy, some type of off-the-books job that paid in cash. Could be as simple as washing dishes in a little café somewhere, or as sinister as dealing drugs. Small town or not, that stuff went on everywhere.
He would give one last shot at getting the woman’s name by talking to some of the neighbors. As a last resort, they could go to the media with Percy’s picture and, without saying why, let it be known they were looking for relatives. It wasn’t ideal. No one wanted to learn of the death of a loved one by seeing his photo on the evening news.
Beau switched off the lights he’d used along the way and was ready to close the front door behind him when his phone rang.
“Sheriff Cardwell? This is the Medical Investigator’s office in Albuquerque,” said a woman’s voice.
Beau stepped back into the house and closed the door. “Yes, what’s up?”
“Winston Reed asked me to give you a call. He just wanted to say, once you’ve looked over his reports, feel free to call with any questions.”
“I’m not at my office right now, but thanks—I’ll do that.”
The woman added, “At least you found his next of kin.”
Beau froze. “What?”
“Mr. Lukinger’s wife. She came in early this morning, identified the body, and sent the funeral home folks to get him.”
Chapter 13
A million questions ran through Beau’s mind, but all the woman on the line could tell him was that a lady with long black hair, wearing a black coat, had identified Percy Lukinger as her husband. She left without even collecting her copies of the death certificate, but the OMI had provided the necessary one to the funeral home people who had taken the body away. It was Sanchez Mortuary in Taos, and they had left about an hour ago.
So, maybe it was just that simple, Beau thought as he locked the Lukinger house and got into his cruiser. The wife had somehow heard about the accident, probably without realizing the Sheriff’s department was trying to locate her. How she had known to go to the OMI’s office was still a mystery, but there were dozens of ways an ordinary citizen could find out where the state’s autopsies were performed.
He would read over the reports Winston Reed had emailed, tying up the loose ends in the case, and he could get on to other things. Sam had been working overly hard the past couple weeks, and he remembered Becky was to be back at work tomorrow. Maybe he could get Sam to agree to a few days off and the two of them could go somewhere nice.
Back at his desk, Beau opened his email and discovered Reed’s attached reports. The first thing the toxicologist had noted was the presence of something called benzodiazepine in Lukinger’s system. A lot of the medical-speak was beyond him so he dialed the OMI’s office once again.
“Yeah, Sheriff,” said Reed when he came on the line.
“Hey, Winston. I’m looking at the Lukinger results and I need you to tell me if I’m reading this right. This chemical substance was actually the cause of death?”
“A contributing factor. Basically, benzodiazepines—benzos—are the classification for the brand names Valium, Xanax, or a dozen others. What I noted is, in dosage quantities they’re okay. People take them in pill form for anxiety or insomnia. It slows the breathing and heart rate. Hospitals use it pre-surgery to calm patients who are nervous.
“The bad part comes when combined with alcohol or other drugs—those effects can quickly become intensified. Placed in an alcoholic beverage, it’s what people call the date-rape drug. Extreme lethargy leads to unconsciousness. You sure don’t want to attempt to drive in that condition. Most likely, this victim lost consciousness at the wheel of his car, went off the road and got thrown around inside the vehicle—by the time EMTs got to him he was deceased.”
“So, he drugged himself for anxiety but proceeded to drive.”
“Well, that’s the thing. If you flip to page two you’ll see some additional notes. There were no pills in his stomach, so we began looking for another way the drug got into his system. It took awhile, but we found a small injection site in his back, just beside the right shoulder blade.”
Beau caught himself reaching for the spot on his own back. Right-handed, he could barely touch it with his fingertips.
“I know what you’re doing,” Winston said. “And you’re right. It’s tricky for a person to reach that location on his own body, nearly impossible to hold a syringe at the right angle and inject himself.”
“So someone else injected this drug?”
“And administered it directly into the lung. It was a great enough concentration to have slowed his breathing dramatically within three minutes, halted it completely in about ten.”
“He may have even been dead already when he went off the road,” Beau said.
“Quite possibly.”
“No way he gave it to himself?”
“Not that I can tell. Plus, why would he?” Winston said. “Anyway, we kept tissue and blood samples here at the lab, and I realize I’ll probably be called to testify about this in court. I tried to make my report thorough enough that any expert medical witnesses who need to look it over can tell how and why we drew our conclusions.”
“Was Doctor Plante in agreement about releasing the body?”
“Completely. We documented everything.”
Beau thanked the toxicologist for the information and slowly set the phone back in its cradle. Reed was already a step
ahead of him. He had done his job thoroughly, having realized the simple traffic accident was now a murder.
The word hung in his mind and he felt a moment’s panic. Always one to sweat the details, Beau scrambled to remember whether he’d gathered sufficient evidence and made enough notes about the victim at the scene. He’d been focused on the vehicle’s position, calculating its speed when it left the road, and of course concern for the other drivers who had come so close to being entangled.
If he got over to Sanchez Mortuary quickly enough maybe he could take another look and add last-minute notes. He called to see whether the hearse had arrived back from Albuquerque yet.
“Our driver just returned,” Monica Sanchez told him, “but we don’t have the Lukinger remains. When Victor got to Albuquerque and met with the widow—her name is Ramona Lukinger—she said her husband’s wishes were for cremation. Since we don’t do that here, Victor drove the body over to Sunrise. Once they have the cremains for us, we’ll do a small memorial service, as per Mrs. Lukinger.”
“I haven’t had any luck reaching her. Do you have a phone number for her?”
“Sure, Sheriff.” Monica read off a local number. From the prefix, he thought it was most likely a cell phone.
“Thanks.” Beau fidgeted at the change of plans now that he couldn’t make any more notes about the body. He hung up the phone and paced the width of his office twice before making himself stop and take stock. The OMI’s report was on his computer screen. The folder of photos sat on his desk, along with two bags of personal effects—the clothing removed from Lukinger’s body at the morgue and the small items collected at the accident scene. Somewhere among them must be the right clues.
Sticky Sweet Page 6