Sweet Hearts

by Connie Shelton

  Jen walked into the kitchen, the first time all day she’d not dodged being alone with Sam.

  “I know, need to get home to get ready for that exciting date?” Sam teased.

  “Well, it would be nice. The shop has been pretty quiet for the last hour.”

  “So you and Kelly both have someone . . . interesting?”

  “She’ll tell you about it, Sam. I know she will. It’s a guy she met at the nursing home last night.”

  “Oh god, don’t tell me he’s ancient.”

  Jen relaxed and laughed out loud. “He works there as an orderly. About our age, good looking.” She put her hands up. “Okay, that’s all I’m saying. Kel can tell you the rest.”

  “Ah, so there is more.”

  “Sam, don’t make me—”

  Sam aimed the pastry bag toward her, like she planned to get off a good, gooey shot. “I won’t. Thanks for telling me at least that much.” She lowered the bag and turned back toward the cake. “And, yes, go on home. Turn out the front lights and lock the door, okay?”

  Jen stepped over and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. “You’re a great boss, and Kel’s lucky to have you for a mom.”

  Sam watched her saunter back to the sales room with a jaunty little lift in her step. These girls. Pretty cute.

  She finished the wedding cake and managed to slide it from the worktable to a rolling cart and get it to the fridge. The thing weighed over sixty pounds and she really should have insisted that at least one of her workers stay long enough to help with the task, but she managed to move it without a crash.

  Her phone rang as she was closing down the shop, sticking the money and credit card receipts into a bag to take home.

  “Hey darlin’. How’s it going?”

  “Pretty routine around here. How about your day?”

  “Well, that’s what I was calling about. I promised you dinner at home tonight but we’ve gotten a bunch of extra calls. I’ve got all the deputies out on traffic watch. Storm has moved in and the northern part of the county is getting socked. I hope you can get settled in before much longer.”

  She assured him that she would go straight home and stay there.

  “My place or yours?” he asked.

  A rush of lusty thoughts and pictures popped into her head and she almost blurted out that she wanted him—now.

  He was talking on, though, about how it would be a late night and maybe she shouldn’t chance the drive all the way out to his place. He would be busy. She ought to go on to her own house. Disappointment welled up as she said goodbye. What’s with that, she thought as she stuffed the phone into her pocket. They’d never been clingy with each other. Fatigue? Hormones?

  Now she knew something weird was going on.

  Chapter 9

  Outside, clouds still blanketed the town, heavy with the promise of snow, the air chill with undelivered moisture. However, as yet the actual storm had not reached her house.

  The envelope with the private investigator’s notes waited on Sam’s kitchen table, but she gave herself time to take off her sugar-coated bakery clothes, have a quick shower, heat a frozen low-cal dinner and eat it before turning her attention to the stash of information.

  The first two pages were evidently the investigator’s worksheet, the information he’d taken from the family, and a copy of the same police report she’d seen in Beau’s file. She set them aside.

  From that point on, the pages contained dates, times and results of interviews, all in Bram Fenton’s vaguely familiar neat printing. Sam had helped Beau with the investigation of the PI’s death a few months ago. She pushed back the memory of those circumstances and read on.

  Fenton had started with the same set of friends Sam knew about, the list of people Marla said she had spoken with. But the investigator dug a bit further, going to the supermarket employees, a man who regularly sat on the street corner by the store, and Tito’s co-workers at Bellworth. Sam scanned the early pages; none of the market employees remembered seeing Tito that afternoon, and the man who regularly begged spare change from caring souls was one of those who lived in his own minute, foggy world. If you weren’t pausing to drop some cash into the can he held out to you, you were not of interest to him. Fenton reported that he’d gone back a week after first questioning the man, to find that he no longer resided at that intersection.

  She stared for a moment at the dark kitchen window. There would be no point in going back to the market now. Odds were that their employee turnover was tremendous and no one from ten years ago would still be around. Any who remained would almost certainly not remember one particular August afternoon. She laid those pages aside and got up to make herself a cup of cinnamon tea.

  Settling into her favorite corner of the sofa, she set the tea cup on the end table and resumed with Fenton’s reports. With the assumptions taken from the police report—the questions Marla and Tricia didn’t want to ask—the PI had quizzed Tito’s friends specifically about whether he’d had a woman on the side. Sam read the notes carefully, but it seemed that none of his local friends could or would verify that.

  Beside two of the notations, Fenton had penned a small asterisk but there was no footnote corresponding to them. Sam could only guess that it was a bit of private code for himself, maybe to indicate that a particular interviewee had more to say, or perhaps he suspected those witnesses of fudging the truth a little. It might be worth following up.

  The next page indicated that Fenton had traveled to Albuquerque and talked with Tito’s supervisor at Bellworth, along with a few co-workers. It was a huge company, and Sam surmised that the investigator would only have taken the time to talk with those who worked personally alongside the missing man. She wished she had phone numbers for them. A few calls might ascertain whether those folks still worked for the company. She took a sip of her tea and pondered whether it would be worth her time to personally look them up. The idea of taking a day or more out of her crazy schedule to go there made her feel tired.

  Then she thought of Marla and Jolie. The grandmother clearly wasn’t holding up well. Having her son come back to reconnect with his daughter was vitally important to her, and it seemed that Sam’s involvement in the case was the thread she was hanging onto.

  Sam turned back to the pages, hoping for something firm, some clue that could quickly resolve this whole puzzle, but she didn’t spot a thing.

  A noise at the kitchen door caught her attention.

  “Greetings, mama mia,” came Kelly’s voice.

  Sam heard the door close a little too firmly and something thudded to the floor.

  “Kel? You okay?”

  “Oh yeah. Me doing wonderful.”

  Sam stretched to see around the corner into the kitchen. Her daughter was bent forward at the waist, picking up her huge hobo bag from the floor, obviously the cause of the crash. When Kelly raised up she tilted to the left; luckily the wall was right there.

  “Had a few drinks after work?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, Mom, we had the greatest time!” She came into the living room and flopped into an armchair. “Riki and I met up with Ryan and Tanner at this new little bistro. They make the best pasta with melted tomatoes.”

  Too many questions flew into Sam’s head. Ryan? Tanner? Melted tomatoes?

  “Ryan is just . . .” her voice drifted and her gaze floated toward the ceiling.

  Sam noticed that Kelly’s oversized T-top had slid off one shoulder.

  “Ryan is the orderly from—”

  “Yeah.” The word stretched out into a long sigh.

  “And Tanner? Riki’s date?”

  “More than a date,” Kelly said, leaning forward with a confidential air. “Those two are hot together!”

  She’s thirty-four, Sam reminded herself. You can’t preach. She smiled a little wanly.

  “So anyway, we had this fabulous dinner, some wine . . . ended up at Ryan’s for music and more wine . . .” She scratched at her scalp and her brown curls wiggled. “I gu
ess maybe a little too much.” Her vision seemed to focus a little more sharply. “Whatcha got there?”

  Sam held up the pages from Fenton’s report and gave Kelly the quick, uncomplicated version of the story.

  “I was just thinking I might have time to call a couple of these Bellworth people tonight. Fenton didn’t give phone numbers in this report, though, and I hate to go through directory assistance with no more than a name. They make it difficult.”

  “So, look ‘em up online,” Kelly said, rising a little unsteadily. A fuzzy smile crossed her face. “I think I’ll take a shower.”

  Online. Why didn’t Sam ever think of the obvious? She took the notes to her little desk in the corner and found a white pages service where she could browse the names. Within five minutes she had numbers for two of the people from Fenton’s file.

  “I’m following up on an investigation by Mr. Fenton, on behalf of a woman in Taos.” A little devious, but it wasn’t completely a lie. “There’s an urgent family matter here and we really need to locate Tito Fresques as quickly as possible. I understand you worked with him at Bellworth a few years ago?”

  The man at the other end of the line, Harry Cole, came back with about ten seconds of silence before he said, “Yeah?”

  Sam went on to explain that Mr. Fenton talked to him right after Tito disappeared, and that she wondered if he might have thought of anything new about the case since then.

  “Lady, that was ten years ago. I ain’t given Tito another thought. He went off for a weekend and never came back. Didn’t make my job no easier, I’ll tell you. Had to do his work and mine until they got a replacement.”

  “Mr. Cole, do you remember if there was anyone at the company that Tito was especially close to? A buddy he hung around with after work or anything?”

  Again, a long pause. She could almost imagine him rubbing his chin while he pondered the question.

  “Maybe a woman?” Sam asked.

  “I’m tryin to remember. There was some from the department, went out for a beer on Friday nights sometimes. I never went along. Like the casinos better myself. There mighta been a woman or two in that bunch. Lisa Tombo was one, I think.”

  It didn’t exactly sound like the makings of a hot, secret affair. She read off the names of Fenton’s interviewees and Cole thought a couple of them were in the Friday night group. Sam thanked him, realizing she’d gotten about all she could from him.

  The second call was more productive. Bill Champion instantly remembered Tito.

  “Well, heck yeah. Tito and I worked side by side for five years. I just couldn’t believe it when he never showed up for work that Monday morning. I mean, it seemed way out of character, him not quitting or anything, just not showing up. I talked to your investigator guy and he asked a bunch of questions, like did Tito have a girlfriend or something like that. Well, I told him I sure didn’t think so. I mean, you work with a guy for a long time, they’ll usually hint around, maybe ask you to cover for ’em now and then, make up a story. Tito never did anything like that.”

  “Harry Cole said that a woman named Lisa Tombo sometimes went along with the group, out for a beer. Do you know how I might get in touch with her?”

  “Lisa. Yeah . . . she and Tito ate lunch together a lot. Gosh, I haven’t heard from her in quite awhile. I don’t remember. She quit Bellworth and moved out of town, I think, shortly after Tito left. She might have got married. Now, Lisa, she was a looker. If Tito was going to fool around, she might be the one. Hell, I might have been interested there too, but she never gave me those kind of vibes, you know, where a woman kind of lets you know she might want to?”

  “Mr. Champion, can you think of anyone else that Tito might have confided in? Someone he might have told if he were planning to leave?”

  “Gosh, I sure can’t,” he said after a short pause. “But you know, the human resources person back then was a lady named Glenda Cooper. I heard that she left Bellworth to start her own company, some kind of internet thing that she runs from her home. She and Lisa were pretty tight, as I remember. She might be the person who could tell you where Lisa is now.”

  Since he seemed like the kind of guy who loved to share information, Sam asked if he knew how she could reach Glenda Cooper and he very cooperatively looked up her number and she jotted it down. She immediately dialed it as soon as she got Champion off the phone; the chatty guy didn’t quite know when to quit. A busy signal buzzed in her ear. Hmm, who doesn’t have voice mail anymore? The thought crossed her mind that Champion might have dialed Glenda Cooper himself, in order to be the bearer of the news, but a quick dial back to him and his phone rang. She hung up before he could answer. Cooper’s line immediately went to an answering device on the second try but Sam didn’t leave a message. She realized she was tired.

  Sam yawned and gathered Fenton’s notes into a stack. Okay, so she would try Glenda Cooper again in the morning and see if she could track down Lisa Tombo. At least she felt like she was doing something to help Marla.

  She poured the unfinished half cup of tea down the drain, noticing for the first time that a few snowflakes drifted past the window. She switched off the light and stared out into the darkness. A scant half-inch of the white stuff coated the landscape and her vehicles, nothing near the amount of doom-and-gloom called for by the weather forecasters.

  She peeked into Kelly’s room on her way to the bathroom and found her daughter sprawled on top of the covers. You’ll be freezing by morning, she thought as she tugged the spread out from under her snoring body and draped it over the top. Some things never changed. She would always be a mom, she supposed.

  Don’t get hurt with this new romance, little one.

  Chapter 10

  It was mid-morning before Sam remembered to try calling Glenda Cooper again, not exactly optimal timing. She tried to tune out the bakery noises all around her as she sat at her desk, but it was impossible. Finally, taking her cell phone and bundling into her heaviest coat against the blustery air outside, she stepped out to the alley.

  The overnight snowfall had only amounted to an inch or so, but the temperatures had dropped dramatically and she’d opted to drive her pickup truck in case there was more weather and she might need the four wheel drive. She shivered and leaned against the big vehicle, hoping to draw a little warmth from it.

  Glenda answered on the second ring with, “Website Answers. How may I help you?”

  Sam had already decided that an HR person wasn’t likely to fork over information on a former employee, especially if the inquiry sounded official, so she’d cooked up a story about being a friend of a friend, someone Lisa would know. She needed to know how to get in touch with Lisa now, and really hoped Glenda could help her.

  Other phones were ringing in the background and Glenda stopped twice to put people on hold before Sam even got her cover story out.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when she came back on the line the second time. “Now, what was it you needed?”

  “I can see that you’re really busy. Lisa Tombo—I just need to quickly get in touch with her.”

  “Lisa Tombo?” The wheels turned for another couple of seconds. “Oh, Lisa from Bellworth?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Sam said. “I guess the address I have for her is old since my Christmas card came back. Do you happen to have a current address or phone number for her?”

  Another phone rang. “She’s back in Albuquerque but we’ve kind of lost touch,” Glenda said. “Can I put you on hold again?”

  “I’ll just let you go. Thanks so much.” Sam clicked off and jammed the phone and her frozen hand into her pocket.

  She stepped gingerly through the thin layer of snow and up the steps to the bakery’s back door. The heat from the oven felt so good that she stood still for a moment, soaking it up.

  “Sam, Jen was just looking for you,” Becky said. “Something about a birthday cake order.”

  Sam shed her jacket and headed toward the fridge. “I think I know which one
it is. Lemon cake, white fondant, ‘Happy Birthday Betty’. I finished it early this morning because the customer said he would be in around ten.”

  She retrieved the cake, carried it out to the gray-haired man who gave a noncommittal nod and fished a twenty out of his pocket. Women were so much more complimentary, probably because a lot of them had attempted to decorate a cake and knew that it wasn’t just a simple task. She gave the guy a smile and went back to the kitchen.

  It was time to buckle down to the daily production of chocolates. Although she’d re-created the flavor and a little of the pizzazz of Bobul’s chocolate techniques, she was nowhere close to the speed of his production. Even when she’d relied on the wooden box for a boost in energy, she still felt like she was moving in molasses-time compared to the way the chocolatier had turned out hundreds of pieces a day. And now the supply out front was nearly gone.

  She pulled out the new heart-shaped gift boxes and experimented with placement of the variously shaped pieces, fitting a pound of candy into each box. Once she’d come up with a pleasing arrangement, she used one box as an example and told Sandy to fill the others in exactly the same manner.

  While Sam stirred dark chocolate at the stove and added Bobul’s prescribed pinches of this and that, she monitored the progress around her. Becky was stacking and filling layer cakes and quarter-sheets, smoothing buttercream icing on some, merely dirty-icing the ones that would require fondant. Sam considered that it might be a good idea to teach Becky how to roll and apply the sugar-dough coating. It would free up more of her own time.

  But, for now, chocolates were the pressing matter. She watched the candy thermometer for the precise moment to pull the double-boiler off the stovetop.

  “Clear me a spot,” she said to Sandy, preparing to pour and temper the chocolate.

  She’d just finished dipping caramels and fruit crèmes when her phone rang.

  “Hey, darlin’. How’s your day?”

  “A little crazy, but crazy is the new normal, isn’t it?”