Bitter Sweet (11 page)

“Did he bring food yesterday?”

“No, I don’t think so. They ate
in the dining room and I seem to remember that they went through the normal
buffet line.”

Sam searched Beau’s face to see
if this meant anything.

“Did anyone else visit Mrs. Gray
yesterday?” he asked.

“I don’t recall any visitors,”
she said, “but I could check the sign-in page. I left for about an hour to run
a few errands.”

“Please.” Beau turned to Sam
while Martha was out of the room. “I’ll fill you in on Marshall Gray later.”

Martha returned in less than a
minute carrying a bound book. “Let’s see . . . it looks like Mr. Gray signed in
at eleven-thirty and signed out at one o’clock.” She ran her finger down the
few remaining lines, then shrugged. “I don’t see anyone else who signed in to
visit her. Of course there are some people who don’t specify—clergy, doctors,
physical therapists and such. They’ll often come to visit more than one patient
at a time. If the purpose of the visit is for medical care, they have to check
out the patient’s chart so they can make their notations, then they return the
charts to the receptionist or one of the nursing staff.”

She picked up Sadie’s chart and
opened it. “But there is no record of that sort of visit for Mrs. Gray yesterday.
It was a pretty quiet and normal day for her.”

Until she didn’t wake up from her
nap, Sam thought.

Running out of questions for
Martha Preston, Beau told her he would be back in touch if he needed further
information. Sam and Beau walked out toward their vehicles. A pleasant breeze
came out of the north, pushing the forest fire smoke away.

“So, what were you going to tell
me in there?” Sam asked the minute they were clear of the building.

“Looks like Marshall Gray loves
to spend money,” he said. “Along with the bank account records, there was a
credit card which was initially taken out in Sadie’s name but later she added a
card for Marshall as well. That card was nearing the max of its twenty-thousand
dollar credit line.”

“Whoa. Could you find out what
was charged on it?”

Beau opened the door of his
cruiser and plucked a sheet of paper from a folder. “Among other things are a
first-class air ticket for nearly ten thousand dollars. I’ve got a deputy
checking to see what the destination is. A men’s clothing store in Albuquerque
shows three separate sales at well over a thousand dollars each. And there are
regular florist charges for hundred-dollar bouquets every week or two.”

“So, the gifts Marshall brought
Sadie were going on her card and probably being paid for with her money.”

“Looks like. Every previous
payment on this card was made from her personal checking account.”

Sam seethed. What a rat!
“Wait—you said an airline ticket. Don’t you see what this means? I heard
announcements and noises over the phone when he called me this morning. He was
probably at an airport and he’s on a plane now, going somewhere.”

Beau’s eyes widened. He grabbed
his phone and speed dialed. “Rico, did you get the result on that airline
ticket charge yet?”

Sam watched as he nodded and um-
hmmd
a couple of times.

“Get on the horn to Dallas
PD—now. Tell them to pull Marshall Gray off that plane when it lands. We want
him held for questioning as a person of interest in the death of his wife and
financial fraud. Report back to me the minute they confirm that they have him.”

“What—”

“You were right. The first class
ticket was to Zurich. Luckily, Albuquerque doesn’t have any direct flights so
his connections are in Dallas, then London. If we’re lucky we can catch him
while he’s still on American soil.”

“Good. You can arrest him for
taking off with Sadie’s money.”

“Well, I’m not so sure about
that. It’s why I said to hold him for questioning. We’ll only have forty-eight
hours.”

“But he’s taken her money! He may
have even killed her!”

“We don’t yet have any proof of
either. I’ll have to get autopsy results. On the money side of it, they were
married. It’s a community property state. She added him as a cardholder and
changed the bank accounts to jointly-held. She may have willingly given him
access to everything she had.”

“Oh, god, Beau. This is awful.”

“Sorry about lunch,
darlin
’ but I think I better get right back to the office
and stay on top of this. I may be on a plane to Dallas to question Marshall
Gray before the day is over.”

“That’s okay. It’s better to
learn the truth and then to get this guy if he’s guilty.” She watched Beau back
his cruiser out and hit the lights and siren. When he got in a hurry, he really
could move.

She picked up a fast-food burger
and took it back to Sweet’s Sweets with her, feeling a tingle of anticipation
along with a sense of being out of the loop. She hoped Beau would keep her up
to date as the afternoon went on, but knew that mainly he just had to do his
job.

Hoping to find answers about
Sadie Gray’s death were one thing, coming back to a bakery backed up with
orders was another and, as Sam discovered when she walked in the door, the more
urgent.

“Two more weddings for this
weekend,” Becky said, pointing toward the new order forms Jen had laid on Sam’s
desk.

Sam stared at the pages, feeling
a little out-of-body as she forced her mind away from Sadie’s death, the empty
house and the whole drama unfolding as Beau and the Dallas police tried to stop
Marshall Gray from leaving the country. No matter what else was going on in the
world, these brides would truly believe that their weddings were the most
important events on earth, and Sam knew that the cakes better be done right.

She spread out the order forms
for the coming week, calculated her supplies of sugar, butter and flour and
called her wholesaler for more. After tallying the number and sizes of layers
to be baked, she made up task lists: what to bake on what day, what colors of
each type of icing to make, and how to fit all the custom orders into the flow of
the normal work day. In twenty minutes she felt that she had a better handle on
it—
if
she could figure out how to invent a forty-eight hour day.

She cranked up the big mixer and
began dumping in eggs, sugar and flour, lining up cake pans and filling the
large bake oven with as many as she could do at a time. Tomorrow’s cakes went
into the fridge, everything for the day after into the freezer. As long as she
could keep track of the constant flow of what-went-where on each day, it would
all come out right.

“And how soon do you plan to get
more help?” Becky asked as Sam emptied four more pans and began to mix another
batch of batter.

She really couldn’t sustain this
pace and wait until autumn for help to arrive. She knew it but wasn’t sure when
she could pause long enough to hire and train someone else.

“An option, if I might offer it,”
Becky said, not looking up from the icing rose she was forming on a flower
nail. “I know a guy that worked at a commercial bakery in Albuquerque. He’s a
buddy of Don’s from high school. Just lost the job in the city and came back
here until he figures out what to do next.”

“Does he want to stay in Taos
permanently?”

“No idea. But he has family here
and it might work in with his plans.” Becky set the current flower on a tray
and started another.

“Give him a call. If he can run
the Hobart and follow a recipe he would be a big help. It would free me up for
decorating. If he would wash pans and do the occasional delivery he would be a
lifesaver.”

Becky laughed. “You’ll have to
negotiate all that with him.” She carried her tray of roses to the fridge and
picked up the phone. With a call to her husband to get his friend’s number,
followed by another, she’d set up an appointment for Julio to be at the bakery
in an hour.

“I hope that was okay,” she said
to Sam. “He seemed eager to come by. Hopefully, you can interview while you
decorate . . . this chocolate ganache is a little beyond my expertise.”

When a noisy motorcycle rumbled
up to the back door and a muscular man with tattoos up the back of his neck and
a cotton ‘do-rag’ around his shaved head stepped into the bakery, Sam almost
negated the whole idea. But he had a pleasant smile and an honest look in his
deep chocolate eyes. He smelled clean and spoke softly. No one said bikers
couldn’t be bakers.

“Sam, this is Julio Ortiz,” Becky
said.

Sam asked a few questions about
his past job—learned that he’d specialized in breads but in the ten years he’d
worked there he’d learned all the cake recipes and had a little experience
handling fondant. But the thing that won her over was when he heard the oven
timer go off and without a second glance, grabbed up the potholders and began
pulling out pans and expertly sliding them into the cooling racks.

“If that’s your next batch of
batter I could go ahead and—”

“Absolutely. It’s chocolate
sponge, and those hexagonal pans are for the order—six-twelve- and
fourteen-inch layers.”

He grabbed an apron from the pegs
on the wall and the pans were in the oven before Sam had time to blink twice.
Julio looked around for something else to do and she hired him on the spot. A
quick rundown of the hours and pay, and she set him to grating carrots for one
of tomorrow’s birthday cakes. She lost track of the time, realizing when she
carried a finished Golden Anniversary cake to the fridge that Julio had
completed all of the next day’s layers, stowed them safely in the cooler and
that Becky had showed him how they normally pre-mixed dry ingredients for the
morning pastries. By five o’clock Sam was actually moving at a normal pace
instead of feeling like she was running everywhere.

“See you in the morning,” Julio
said as he took off his apron. “Sam, I’ve really missed this. I’m glad you
hired me.”

With a
brum-brum
of the Harley, he was gone. Sam remembered to thank Becky for the
recommendation as they turned out the lights. She indulged in a quiet moment
after the girls left, savoring her business and reminding herself that when
times got too crazy there was usually a simple answer. In this case, a tattooed
biker had saved her day.

“Hey, Mom. Haven’t seen a whole
lot of you lately,” Kelly said, peeking through the open back door. “Guess you
and Beau are making up for lost time.”

“I only wish. Between his new
case and sheer craziness here at the shop . . . well, I’m not even getting
regular lunches with him.”

“You got plans for tonight? I was
kind of thinking some chicken to take home and the latest
Desperate
Housewives
?” She was picking tufts of dog hair off her T-shirt, the remains
of her day at Puppy Chic, right next door.

“You know, that sounds perfect.
Can you pick up the chicken? I’ll check in with Beau. We kind of left it where
he might be on a plane to Dallas tonight.”

Of course, that required an
explanation. By the time Kelly had picked up the food and they met up at home
again, Sam had learned from Beau that the Gray apprehension was getting
complex—something about the FBI becoming involved. He would be at the office
late, wished them well with their dinner and TV show, and he would give details
later.

Sam was dozing on the couch in a
Kentucky Fried trance, her favorite show now followed by some reality thing
about a family who ran an alligator trapping business with one disaster after
another. The point, Kelly seemed to be saying, was to keep the gators from
eating any of the children before the episode was over. It came as a relief
when the phone rang and Sam had reason to abandon the program.

“Hey
darlin
’.”

“Beau! Are you still here or did
you head for Dallas?”

“I’m here. The FBI pulled Gray
off his plane and questioned him. He got very jumpy and refused to talk without
a lawyer present. Last I heard they had taken his passport and are holding him
until we get autopsy results on Sadie.”

“You think he killed her?”

“We don’t know for sure. But his
cleaning out the house before she died and then emptying the bank accounts
immediately after . . . well, those don’t seem like the actions of an honest
man.”

“But you said you could only hold
him forty-eight hours. Have you heard anything on the autopsy yet?”

“The medical investigator’s
office is giving it priority and is supposed to get back to me any time now.
And although we can’t hold Gray more than two days, we can prevent him from
leaving the country, at least by airplane. He can always hang around Dallas and
try to get a later flight, if he can clear his name. From what the federal guy
told me, Gray was squawking like a mad rooster. That Zurich ticket was
non-refundable.”

“
Yowch
.”

Sam heard the intercom buzz on
Beau’s desk.

“Hold on a sec,” he said. “Let me
find out who this is.”

He was gone nearly ten minutes
and she was about ready to hang up when he came back on the line.

“O.M.I. in Albuquerque. They’re
sticking with ‘natural causes’ for Sadie Gray’s cause of death. He says there’s
no evidence of violence, no drugs other than a very mild sleeping tablet that
was prescribed by her doctor.”

Sam pondered that for a minute.
“So, does that let Gray off the hook?”

“Pretty much. Like I said, the
financial stuff probably isn’t illegal, as long as Sadie put him on her
accounts voluntarily. I better call back the Dallas folks and discuss all this
with them. Gray’s actions are in bad taste, but without being able to prove
that he had anything to do with his wife’s death I don’t know that we have much
of a case.”

“But this is just
so
wrong, Beau.”

“It is, but you can’t arrest a
guy for being a jerk.”