He picked up his desk phone again and punched the digits for Ramona Lukinger’s number. One ring. Two rings. It took a moment to realize what he was hearing—Percy’s cell phone in its plastic evidence bag was ringing. When he picked up the bag and looked closely, it was his own number showing on the screen.
Okay … was this a case of a flustered widow in shock, automatically reciting her husband’s number instead of her own? Or was something more devious going on?
Chapter 14
Sam wheeled the nearly finished wedding cake into the fridge. Once the sugar paste flowers were completely set, she would do the final assembly and it would be ready to deliver. She stood beside her desk, flipping through the orders for the rest of the week, prioritizing by due date and difficulty. Becky’s return would be a huge help. It was all doable. Then the phone rang.
“Sam, it’s Benjie.” By his tone of voice, Sam could tell he was near panic.
“What’s up?”
“It’s the furnace. Yesterday we were freezing in here. Now it’s so warm the chocolate in the packing room is starting to melt. The girls can hardly handle it without their fingers getting messy.”
Not a good thing. Sam’s mind raced.
“Okay, have you tried turning down the thermostat? Opening some windows?” Come on, it’s January—there’s got to be an easy way to cool a place.
“Tried the thermostat. The furnace isn’t cutting off. I’ll get to the windows right now.”
Sam promised she would be there in a few minutes and tossed the order forms back into the basket.
“I’m heading for the chocolate factory,” she called out to Jen. “I’ll be back in time to get the wedding cake delivered, but otherwise don’t count on me for the afternoon.”
Julio gave a questioning look.
“If you run out of other things to do, start baking the cakes needed for the first four orders in that stack,” she told him, with a nod of her head toward the basket on the desk.
He nodded and went back to spreading icing on top of a Bakewell tart, the newest in their line of European pastries. The almond crust and raspberry filling had made it a new favorite with the afternoon tea crowd.
Behind the bakery, Sam started her delivery van and let it warm up for a minute while she pulled out her cell phone. Somewhere in the contacts, she had a number for a guy who knew how to work on the boiler and heating system at the chocolate factory. She debated—call him and try to get him out there immediately, or assess the situation herself first? Decided it would be better to have an idea what was going on. After all, it could come down to a momentary panic among the employees over a situation Sam could easily remedy. She pulled out of the alley and took a left, heading north.
The blue-gray Victorian house, with its slate roof and turret at one end, sat stately as ever on the rural lane where she’d found it five months ago. When she’d first gotten the lead on the old place, she had been underwhelmed by the idea of moving a whole segment of her business there. But mild intrigue had grown to interest and had become downright love once she saw how the spacious rooms could be adapted to her needs.
The quality of the structure had come through in solid framing, good woodwork, along with reasonably good heating, plumbing, and electrical systems. Although the interior now held worktables, shipping cartons, shelves of cocoa and flavorings, and the kitchen was more like that of a high-end restaurant than any Victorian could have ever imagined, the exterior still held all the grace and charm that the original owner—an eccentric writer—had ever imagined.
Sam pulled the van up the long drive and came to a stop under the portico by the kitchen door. Windows were raised in the packing and shipping areas, where chocolates from the kitchen were placed in decorative boxes and then packed for shipment to Book It Travel’s operations center.
She always loved to imagine the candy aboard private jets being enjoyed by people with so much money that truffles and bubbly were probably a daily part of their lives. It was no easy challenge to keep her chocolates unique and special enough to please such a clientele.
Sam walked through the short vestibule into the kitchen, immediately peeling off her coat at the balmy indoor temperature.
“I see what you mean about the heat,” she said. “I’ll be in the basement.”
She walked through the packing room, where the open windows kept the temperature bearable, but it was a battle between the radiator pumping more hot water through the system while icy January air came through. The thermostat was turned as low as it would go. Same situation in the back of the house, where a second thermostat near the storage room should have been keeping supplies in the sixty-degree range.
Sam opened the door to the basement and descended to face the boiler, the horror scene from The Shining flashing for one terrible moment through her head. What she faced was nothing like that—big relief. The benign-looking metal box hummed along, quite content to keep running, even though Sam had switched off the thermostats along her way.
Aside from the melted chocolate, the sheer amount of propane being used could soon bankrupt her. She pulled out her phone and tapped the number for the service guy. The last time she’d dealt with him was in the early autumn when she’d had him check the system in preparation for the upcoming winter.
“Sure, Ms. Sweet, I remember the place. Big old mansion out on Tyler Road, right?”
She described the problem.
“Are all the thermostats off now? Nothing at all turned on?”
She’d forgotten about the one upstairs. He stayed on the line while she climbed the two flights to get to the upper hallway. Turning the dial down on this one, she heard the soft hum of the boiler wind down and stop.
“Sounds like either you’ve got two bad thermostats or a couple faulty valves,” he said when she reported what happened. “I’m in the middle of a job right now … let me see what I can do.”
“I’ve got expensive chocolate that’ll turn to syrup if I don’t get this thing fixed.” Not strictly true. They could shut the power completely off and risk things freezing. “I’ll pay overtime, a bonus, whatever it takes.”
At the magic words, he said, “Give me an hour.”
Sam drummed her fingers on the phone’s case after the call ended. An hour wouldn’t mean the end of the world. They could play around with opening and closing windows, turning the upstairs thermostat on and off, any number of ways to make the situation workable for the short term. She hoped and prayed he would have any necessary parts with him; this solution wouldn’t be a good one if they had to wait days for something to be shipped.
She went back to the kitchen and reported. The girls who’d been packing chocolates in the on-again, off-again temperatures weren’t thrilled that there wasn’t an immediate fix, but Benjie showed his compassion as a manager by getting in there with them and setting a quick pace. While the other two chocolatiers continued forming delicate truffles, Sam went into the storeroom and took inventory. Packaging supplies were once again running low, so she placed an order for more, along with shipping boxes and tape.
The boiler guy, Hal, showed up thirty minutes later than he’d estimated. The good news was, after taking a look and commenting over the age of the heating system, he did have valves that would work.
“They’re not the originals for this model. Nothing’s probably original on this old baby,” he joked. “But the beauty of this older equipment is that things were made generic. You could interchange parts and such. Not like the new systems today where the wrong computer chip just won’t do.”
While he took panels off and pulled a hefty looking wrench from his toolbox, Sam sneaked a glance at her watch. Yikes. She’d promised delivery of that wedding cake fifteen minutes from now. She left Hal wrenching away and told him to leave his invoice with Benjie. She would drop a check by his shop tomorrow.
Back at Sweet’s Sweets, Sam washed her hands and started placing the full-blown roses strategica
lly on the cake. Thank goodness she’d made them in advance. This day hadn’t exactly offered a spare moment. Rechecking the address of the wedding venue, she got Julio’s help to set the cake in her van, and off she went.
Her destination was a block off the plaza, only a couple of streets away from her best friend Zoë’s B&B. She hadn’t seen Zoë in more than two weeks, and she realized her chum’s birthday was tomorrow.
Okay, Sam, get your head organized here. Can’t let constant work get in the way of friendships and a semblance of a social life. In the past, she would have planned a nice dinner at home with cake and gifts but looking ahead she knew it wasn’t going to happen this time. A restaurant lunch and a gift would have to suffice. She pulled up to the back entrance of the small inn where the cake was due, tapped at the kitchen door and checked out the banquet room before loading the cake onto a wheeled cart and taking it inside.
Ten minutes later, that obligation out of the way, she sat in the van and phoned Zoë to suggest the lunch.
“Sam, you’re working too hard. Remember, Darryl and I invited you and Beau here for dinner tomorrow night? I mean, lunch out is always nice, but Darryl’s already got a rack of ribs marinating and he even pulled out the grill.”
“Oh, god, Zoë. You’re right—I am working too hard. My brain’s been mush this week. Forgive me.”
“Hon, there’s nothing to forgive. As long as you show up around six, it’ll be great. Although, if you want to bring along a little something from your bakery case, I’m always good with that.”
They both laughed. Sam knew she would put Zoë’s birthday cake at the top of the order stack for the morning, and she would make her friend something perfect. She would just have to think of what that might be. Now, for a gift.
One of Sam’s favorite shops on the plaza carried a variety of jewelry and accessories, so she headed that way. Zoë’s taste went toward beads and natural-fiber items, and Sam was certain she remembered seeing those styles at Clarice’s. A small bell over the front door chimed when she walked in.
Clarice, the owner, was standing behind a display case counting little square jewelry boxes. She greeted Sam with a tight smile. “I swear, I’m going to have to put these inside the case. A couple more have disappeared.”
“And it’s not even tourist season,” Sam said.
“Yeah. Usually it is the tourists who help themselves. I know most of my regulars and they’d be too embarrassed to pilfer something, right under my nose.”
Sam had spied a metal tree-shaped display with beaded necklaces hanging from it, but she glanced down to see what was in the small boxes Clarice was fiddling with. Each one held a delicate gold chain with an emblem of an astrological sign. She’d seen these before—where?
Jen. A picture flashed in front of her. Jen, holding up a necklace identical to these. She’d said Missy Malone gave it to her. And that wasn’t the only time Missy had shown up with little gifts. The day after their first meeting, Missy had given Jen and Sam carved stone trinkets. She glanced around the shop and saw similar ones—it surely must be the work of the same artist.
A thread of distrust wound its way through her.
Chapter 15
Beau had worked late the previous evening and they’d barely exchanged an I’m-so-tired greeting before they headed to bed and fell instantly asleep. Sam had dreams of forgetting Zoë’s birthday and rushing around the bakery near closing time in search of a cake. When she awoke at four-thirty, she took it as a sign she’d better get an early start on the day. She tiptoed around the bedroom, getting ready, going downstairs, where she left Beau a note beside the coffee maker, suggesting it would be nice if they could both break away for lunch together.
She parked in the alley behind her shop and was thumbing through the keys on her ring when Julio came rolling up on his Harley. They’d had the conversation more than once—Sam offering him a ride on winter days when he arrived looking half covered in frost. He always declined, and she’d already learned that he didn’t talk about his home life or personal circumstances. He swung his leg slowly over the seat and tried not to look as if his legs wouldn’t straighten. Sam looked away and busied herself opening the back door and turning on the lights.
Julio greeted her with his customary half smile, then each turned to the earliest-morning chores—he turned on the bake oven, she headed for the front to brew the first pot of coffee. He was measuring flour and butter into the Hobart’s big bowl when she returned.
By the time the door opened again and Becky’s cheerful face appeared, Sam had reviewed the orders in her basket, and was online at their wholesaler’s site to place an order for flavorings and colors that were running a bit low.
“Hey, look at that tan!” Sam commented when Becky slipped off her jacket. “You guys had a great time?”
“Mexico was wonderful. Simple flight, easy to get to the condo we rented, and the kids had a blast.”
“I’d say you spent a little beach time yourself. How did Don like it?”
Becky blushed slightly as she admitted how they sneaked back to the room for a while when their sons got busy building a huge sand castle with some other American kids they’d met.
“Hey, a second honeymoon never hurt anyone.”
“It was nice, but I’m ready to get back to work. I forget how non-stop the kids can be, especially when they’re all wound up with excitement.”
Sam handed her the entire sheaf of order forms.
“This isn’t so bad,” Becky said, studying them. “A lot of these aren’t due until later in the week, right?”
“I won’t work you to death your first day back. You’d probably head for Mexico again and just stay there.”
Becky laughed. “Little chance of that. I’d miss you guys too much.”
“I’ve got a personal order to work on,” Sam told her. “It’s Zoë’s birthday and I’d nearly forgotten about it. Any ideas for a knockout design she’d love?”
Becky pursed her lips. “Well, she loves gardening, and since it’s winter she could be missing her flowers. Some version of our flowerpot design might work.”
Sam nodded slowly, but she remembered making the flowerpot cake for Zoë last year. “It should be a little different … I saw a wedding cake in a design magazine awhile back. Sort of rustic with woodsy flowers and pine tree elements, plus some little woodland creatures. I’ll think about that. Meanwhile, the cake has to be chocolate, Zoë’s very favorite. Julio, do we have a couple of eight-inch layers with the 80% cacao?”
“I baked some of those yesterday,” he said. “In the fridge.”
“She’ll love it,” Becky said as she tied her apron around her waist.
Sam located the magazine with the rustic cake designs and figured out what she would do. The cake would look like a slice of a sawed log. Around the sides, she would create the appearance of bark with decorative chocolate; the top would be iced in light tan, with circles piped to represent the tree rings. Then she could use chocolate to shape a squirrel and a baby rabbit. She set to work on the little critters while Becky started with the most difficult of her orders for the week, a five-tier wedding cake.
Sam found herself in her decorating zone as she added small details—a rustic branch made from edible chocolate and slender pine needles of hardened sugar, which had to be handled very gingerly with tweezers. Wood roses and delicate pastel columbine came together under her skilled hands as she formed the petals and hung each flower upside down to harden before it could be placed on the cake. When her phone rang, it startled her.
“Did a very pretty lady leave me a note with a lunch invitation?” Beau asked.
“Hey, is it already—?” She glanced at the clock above the stove and saw it was after twelve. She’d barely been conscious of the fact that Julio had taken his lunch break already, and Becky was nibbling a sandwich as she piped roses for a birthday cake.
“Can you get away?” he asked. “I’ve got thirty min
utes if I’m lucky, and you’re the one I want to spend it with.”
Well, who could turn down an invitation like that? They agreed to meet at the deli across the street from the sheriff’s department. Beau would walk over and place their orders while Sam washed icing from her hands and got out the door. When she walked into Bert’s Place ten minutes later, a steaming bowl of tortilla soup awaited.
“Glad you put in your note that we were invited out for ribs tonight so I knew to order a light lunch,” he said, after placing a kiss on her cheek.
“This is perfect.” Sam tore a flour tortilla in half and filled him in on her surprise idea for Zoë’s birthday cake. “You seem very distracted, hon. What’s going on?”
“That traffic fatality a few days ago—well, now it’s looking like a murder.”
Her spoon clattered against the side of her bowl. “What?”
“Yeah. I have almost no clues to go on, so all I can think to do is start tracking through the victim’s life and see what comes up.”
“Tell me whatever you can. I’ll be glad to help.”
“Percy Lukinger is his name, he’d been in Taos about four months, no job records or employment information. I’m looking for bank records to see if he got a disability income or retirement of some sort, although he wasn’t really old enough for the typical pension.”
“Maybe he won a lottery or a lawsuit or was extremely lucky at gambling?”
“It’s a good idea to look at all those possibilities. He didn’t live the lifestyle of someone with vast wealth—had a little adobe two-bedroom rental, and drove a ten-year-old Mitsubishi. I haven’t come across anything yet that points to found-money, but you never know.”
“A lot of millionaires live quiet lives under the radar,” she said.
“Sure—people who work hard, save money, invest well. But this guy seems too transient for that. And those quick winners usually take their jackpot and blow it all quickly, living high and flashing it around. Of course, maybe he did that already and we caught up with him at the end of the cash.” He set his spoon down and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Whatever the story, I still have to figure out who killed him.”
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