8 Sweet Payback (4 page)

Chapter
4

Sam walked to the relief map that
hung in the recess under the stairs. Sembramos was only fifteen miles away,
probably twenty minutes by car, if Beau didn’t turn on his siren. She paced.
Worried. Realized how vital her work at the bakery was, keeping her busy and
sane while he did this kind of thing every day. There was no way she could
simply sit at home and wait for news.

She started to dial her best
friend, Zoë, then remembered that she and Darryl had closed their B&B for a
month and used the spring lull for a much-needed vacation. Rupert, her writer
friend, had a rule about no phone calls before noon—mornings were the magic
hours during which he became Victoria
DeVane
,
bestselling romance author. Secretly, of course. But she had to respect his
creative time, even on holidays.

She called her own phone number,
Kelly’s now. If she was home it probably meant she wasn’t doing anything in
particular. Sam couldn’t honestly remember whether Kelly had mentioned Easter
plans or not. She drummed her fingers on the countertop, realizing there would
be no answer. What was she going to say anyway? I’m bored? I’m worried about
Beau? It didn’t seem fair to dump those things on her daughter. She hung up and
wandered upstairs.

With nothing else to occupy her
mind, she started a load of laundry and gathered cleaning supplies. Dusting
furniture and scrubbing the bathroom would at least accomplish some needed
tasks while she continued to wish she was with Beau. She had planned to take a
few days off for spring cleaning—here was her big chance to get started. But it
didn’t feel like a satisfying way to spend the day.

She had finished the upstairs
bathroom, her gaze lingering on that mysterious wooden box, when her cell phone
rang. She yanked it out of her pocket, thrilled to see that the readout said it
was Beau.

“Hey there, sorry I didn’t touch
base sooner.”

“You don’t owe me a
minute-by-minute account,” she said. “Just glad to know that you’re safe.”

“I’m fine. Not so sure about the
town, though. But I’ll fill you in on that when I get home. It shouldn’t be too
late. They’ve just loaded the body into the medical investigator’s car and
he’ll be taking it to Albuquerque.”

“So it wasn’t clearly an
accident?”

He chuckled. “You’re learning a
lot about this stuff. No, the MI didn’t agree with that story. So, I’ve got a
whole lot more questions to ask.”

Someone started talking to him so
he had to hang up, leaving Sam wondering how ‘whole lot of questions’ and
‘won’t be home late’ went together. She ran the dust cloth over the deep
grooves in her jewelry box, still thinking about her resolve to find out more
answers about it.

She tossed her dust cloth down and
decided it was now late enough in the day to call Rupert. He knew a lot of
people in this town, and maybe she could distract herself from Beau’s case.

“Afternoon tea? What a lovely
idea,” he said when she reached him.

Although tea and pastries weren’t
exactly an unusual thing for a bakery owner, she mainly wanted to spend a
little time with a friend and see what she could learn. Rupert suggested a
quaint place that only women or a gay man would know of, Miss Rose’s Lovely Tea
House. Despite her reservations over whether it would be open on a holiday
afternoon, true to Rupert’s prediction, it was. They walked past shelves
displaying delicate English cups and saucers, tea spoons, tea balls, and
finally a case full of delectable sweets. Sam studied them, as always, thinking
of ideas she could ‘borrow.’ Their hostess arrived and showed them to a table.
She eyed the delicate chair legs a little apprehensively as Rupert cast aside
his flowing purple scarf and lowered his two-hundred-plus pounds onto the seat.

He recommended the Darjeeling so
they ordered a pot of that and an assortment of miniature pastries and
sandwiches. After some minutes of chit-chat, catching up on each others’ lives,
what their mutual friends were up to and pouring the tea, Sam brought up her
true reason for the visit.

“You remember my jewelry box,” she
began, “the funky carved one with the little stones mounted on it?” She went into
a short version of how she had discovered that her uncle in Ireland had one
nearly identical, only a bit larger.

Rupert nodded as she talked,
plucking a
crustless
sandwich triangle from the
serving plate and finishing it off in two bites.

“Well, knowing there was another
such box out there in the world has made me wonder where mine came from. And
you are always doing research for your books . . . so I wondered if you might
have some ideas where I might find out more.”

“Honey, the Internet. It’s where I
look up historical data for my purposes. Have you tried that?”

Sam had to admit that she hadn’t,
but she had a feeling its place in history was only a small part of what made
her box unique. She debated—Rupert had entrusted her with a major secret about
his identity as a writer. Surely she could trust him with some of the unrevealed
aspects of the box and its powers. On the other hand, he might very well turn
around and use the information in a future story. She waited until he’d
finished his third sandwich.

“What I’m looking for is more
about where this one came from before I got it. I told you that an old woman
named Bertha Martinez gave it to me?”

He nodded vaguely.

“Well, according to Beau, people
here in town thought Bertha was a
bruja
.
When I cleaned out her house I found some curious artifacts.”
A dried up old snake and bunches of odd
herbs and candles.
“I wonder if there’s anyone else around who might have
known her.”

“Did you look for her relatives?”

“We checked that when she died. There
were none that she had regular contact with.”

Rupert reached for one of the
small éclairs, his mouth pursed in thought. After he’d chewed on it for a
minute his expression brightened. “There’s a reference librarian at the Harwood
who has helped me out several times. Cora . . . Cora . . . Well, I can’t think
of her last name at the moment. It’s probably in my address book at home. For
Shaman’s
Love
I had to do some rather specialized research on New Mexico
traditions along those lines. This lady knew what books to point me to.”

It didn’t sound exactly like what
Sam needed, but it was worth a try. She thanked him and picked up the last
sandwich. With a bit of free time coming up, this could be the perfect time to
pursue leads on the mysterious box.

She said goodbye in the parking
lot and wished Rupert luck with his book, then started her truck. Her hand was
on the gearshift when her phone rang. She shoved it back in Park and picked up.
Delbert Crow’s name showed on the readout. Darn.

Unfortunately, if she ignored it
he would only call back so she answered.

“Got another job for you,” he
said. No greeting, no niceties, no Happy Easter.

“Hold on a second,” she said. “I’m
in my truck.” She rummaged into her pack for paper and pen. “Okay. Give me the
details.”

Under her contract with the
Department of Agriculture, Sam was obligated to break into houses that had been
abandoned and were in foreclosure. She would clean them up, empty out whatever
possessions the owners had left behind, and maintain the property until it went
up for sale. As her contracting officer gave directions to the house, she heard
children’s voices laughing in the background. Although Delbert hadn’t hesitated
to call her on a holiday, it was a little reassuring that maybe he had
relatives and some kind of a real life. Unfortunately, there went some of the
time she had hoped to use for personal pursuits.

She repeated what Crow told her.
The property was located somewhere in the unincorporated part of the county.
She would have to look at the map.

A loud shriek came over the phone
connection and the single word “Grandpa!” and Delbert Crow told Sam he needed
to go but that she could call his office if she had further questions once she
had checked out the property. In the years she had done this work she’d come across
all types of scenarios—hoarder’s dens, ordinary homes neat as a pin, creepy
artifacts, and even a body buried in the yard at one place. Each new job always
brought a moment of trepidation.

* *
*

“I need you to show me where you
and Jessie were this morning,” Beau said to Joe Starkey. He almost regretted
putting the man in the front seat of his cruiser. The flannel hunting shirt
reeked of several days’ sweat. And now, in close quarters, he would bet that at
least a beer or two had been consumed this morning. He lowered his side window
and put the SUV in gear.

Starkey directed him to a county
road at the north end of Sembramos and he turned east into the foothills. Two
more turns and they were on a two-track dirt lane. About a mile in, Beau could
see where a vehicle had pulled off the crude road and made a hasty turn. The
grasses were shredded and skid marks showed in the dirt. He glanced over at
Joe.

“We parked right there,” the older
man said. “After they shot Jess, I dragged my boy to the truck and took him
back. Hoped the EMTs in town could help him.”

“So you were hunting close to
here?” Beau stopped the cruiser. As they got out he scanned the ground for
signs of any other vehicle but saw none.

Starkey headed into the forest.

“Hold up,” Beau said. “I need to
be watching for footprints.” Not an expert tracker by any means, nevertheless he
could see where two sets of prints led into the wooded area, and scuffs and
drag marks came back out. At least that seemed to fit Starkey’s version of the
events.

He stayed side-by-side with the
other man as they walked toward a small clearing ahead. No other tracks had
shown up yet.

“Here we are,” Joe Starkey said,
pointing to a huge pine tree. “We was leaning up against the back side of it
here.”

Both men circled the tree. There
against the side of the tree sat a shotgun, propped against the trunk. A second
shotgun lay on the ground, apparently where Joe had flung it when he went
looking for his son.

“Dang. Good thing we came back.
I’d forgot all about
leavin
’ these.” Joe bent to pick
up the guns.

“Leave them for a minute,” Beau
said. “We’ll take them with us when we go.”

Joe nodded.

“So you were sitting here at the
base of this ponderosa. Which direction did the shot come from?”

Joe positioned himself with his
back to the tree, closed his eyes for a few seconds and pointed over his right
shoulder. “Somewhere over
thataway
.”

Beau looked over the two shotguns.
Normally with a hunting accident they would both be bagged and taken back for
tests and prints. But since the medical investigator had said Jessie’s fatal
wound came from a rifle there was no point. He picked up each gun, unloaded it,
stuffed the shells in his pockets, and draped the guns—cracked open—over his
arm. It was a bit of a burden but he certainly wasn’t going to leave two
weapons within reach of a man whose story he hadn’t fully verified yet.

He stared off in the direction Joe
Starkey had indicated. The trees were thick here, the ground littered with pine
needles. A shooter had a thousand places to hide and a pretty safe bet that he
could walk around without leaving tracks. Still . . . he had to check it out.

“Stay right here by this tree,” he
told Starkey. “Do not move.”

The older man nodded and sat with
his back to the tree.

Beau circled the tree, found the
place where Jessie’s blood stained the needles, the spot where the evidence
that he’d been dragged out of the woods began. He stared off into the trees,
trying to envision a straight path for a bullet. Walking slowly and turning
frequently, he stayed on line, scanning the ground.

The shooter would have wanted some
kind of cover; the sun hadn’t risen but he could have been spotted in the early
gray light of dawn. So he would have kept to the trees, ducked behind one until
he had a line on Jessie and could step out to get the man in his sights. The
problem was that the shooter couldn’t get too far away. More than fifty yards
or so and there would have been too many obstacles in the way. Beau kept
turning, getting that picture in his head. He scanned the ground, hoping to
find a brass casing. If the killer had gotten careless and left it behind, it
could be the very thing that would convict him.

But—no such luck. He widened his
search area. Joe could have been mistaken about the direction. Shots echo in
the hills, way more than most people would imagine. Still, no brass and not a
single footprint.

He made his way back to the tree
where Joe Starkey sat. The man’s eyes and nose were swollen and red, his face
wet with tears. Beau cleared his throat and Starkey looked up.

“I didn’t find anything,” Beau
said. “I’ll get a team out here. Work a larger search area, more people . . . if
there’s evidence here we’ll find it.”

But down inside he didn’t believe
it. The shooter merely had to be careful to walk on the blanket of pine
needles, and to pick up the one small piece of brass that would implicate him.
As long as he did that he, or she, probably had gotten away with murder.

“Come on, Joe. Let’s get going.”

Joe wiped his shirt sleeve across
his face and sniffed deeply as he stood up. Beau put the shotguns into the back
of his SUV and they rode quietly back to Sembramos. Joe pointed out the turns
to his house, apparently forgetting that Beau had visited there only yesterday.

The plain little blocky house sat
two blocks off the main drag, on a dirt road with no sidewalks. Tan stucco,
flat roof, a yard that might have once had a lawn but was now taken over by the
wild grasses and a generous number of dandelions. The only thing that
differentiated it from most of its neighbors was the shade of red on the
peeling front door and the dozen or so people milling around outside. Some had
angry expressions. Beau pulled to a stop and Joe opened his door.