Bitter Sweet (13 page)

“Do you have any idea where Ted
might have gone?” Sam asked. “Maybe if the sheriff can catch up with him soon
enough, they might get your money back.”

Debbie shrugged and the tears
kept running down her face.

“I didn’t even know he’d gone off to some
other woman. Did he know her very long? No, I can tell you he didn’t. I’ll bet
he swept her up just like he did me.” Her eyes narrowed. “In fact, I bet I can
tell you
exactly
when he went out on the prowl. Right about Easter time.
He laid off the beer for a few weeks, went to some gym and said he was
gonna
lose that big gut of his. I even caught him reciting
movie lines, staring at himself in the mirror and talking like some foreigner.”

Her mouth grew hard. “Easter
weekend he took my cookie jar money and bought the kids the biggest Easter
baskets they had down at the K-Mart. They was so happy that they didn’t even
notice he wasn’t home that next day.
That’s
when he went out to find
himself somebody else. And I’ll bet he took her money too.”

Sam kept silent. She couldn’t
admit to Debbie just how right she was.

“I think the law will catch up
with him,” she said. “We’ll find a way to get your money back.”

Beau knelt beside Debbie’s chair.
“If you can think of anywhere he might be, any of his family, some friend he
could go to who would be willing to hide him for awhile?”

Debbie sighed deeply and stood
up. “There’s some relatives. His mama and daddy won’t have
nothin
’
to do with him. But there’s a cousin or two, they might put up with him for a
little while.”

Beau copied some names and phone
numbers from the address book Debbie pulled from a small drawer in the end
table. With little else to be accomplished here, they walked to the door.

Sam wanted to speak up, to tell
Debbie to divorce the bum and move somewhere that he couldn’t find her, but she
realized how futile that would be. The guy had charming ways, apparently, and
his kids loved him. He would always have a way into this poor woman’s life if
he showed up with gifts for the children.

Beau simply thanked her for the
information and they left.

The electronic
bing-bing
of slot machines rang out incessantly in
the airport lounge. After lunch at a laid-back Old West-themed steakhouse
followed by a tedious crawl in traffic along The Strip —Officer
Ruskovik’s
attempt at showing them the lights and glamour
of Vegas—there had been nothing much else to do but wait for their flight.

“Does that noise never end?” Sam
asked, feeling fractious among the crowds that seemed only
hungover
and broke.

Beau took her hand. “Think of it
this way. The airplane, which you normally refer to as a ‘cattle car’ is going
to seem really pleasant after this.”

She looked into his ocean-blue
eyes and smiled. “You are
so
right about that. But our little town is
going to be even better. I actually can’t wait for the drive—” Her cell phone
vibrated, interrupting the thought.

“Samantha Jane, where are you?”

Her mother had tracked her down.

“At the moment, Las Vegas.
Waiting for our flight back to Albuquerque.”

“Oh my
god
, ya’ll didn’t
elope,
did you?”

Sam felt her eyes cross. “No,
Mother, we did not.”

“Because if you did, you would
disappoint one
heck
of a lot of people. Your
en
tire family is
planning on coming out for your wedding. You know that, don’t you?”

Oh boy, did she know it. Half of
west Texas would come if Nina Rae had her say.

“We
need
to know the date,
Samantha. People have plans to make. You know, all the kids are only out of
school for about eight more weeks. And it’s going to be impossible for your
sister—well, okay, not im
poss
ible exactly, but it’s just so
much
easier for families to travel when the kids are out of school.”

Sam pictured her mother, pacing
the floor as she talked, perfectly manicured hands gesturing to emphasize her
points.

“Mother, Beau and I—”

“Aunt Bessie’s in a dither over
what to wear. Well, you know she always has to be the fanciest—”

Sam held the phone away from her
ear, but the
bing-bing
was every bit as
irritating as her mother’s voice.

“—family reunion?”

Oops, apparently there was a
question attached to that.

“Mother, sorry. It’s so noisy in
here that I can barely hear you and they’ve just called our flight. I’ll have
to call you when we get back to Taos.”

“You said that last week.”

Stop with the guilt, Mother.
It’s not helping your cause.
She forced a smile into her voice. “Gotta
go—love you!”

Sam stood up, switched the
phone’s power off and jammed it into her pocket. She strode three paces away,
spun around and came back—blowing out a sharp breath.

Beau looked up at her with a
faint smile, looking like a guy who planned to keep his trap shut.

“Beau, she’s driving me crazy
about this. Are we ready to set a wedding date?” she asked.

He reached for her hand. “As in,
run off to some little Vegas chapel? Play hooky from work one more day and I’d
do it now.”

She shook her head. “That would
never work. She’s talking more cousins, my sister and her brood, the works on
the Sweet side of the family.”

“I will do whatever you want,
darlin
’. You know that.”

She plopped onto the plastic
chair beside his. “I want—” Her eyes prickled. “I don’t know what I want. I
have a dress I’d like to wear and a cake design I’d love to make. Beyond that,
just having some of our friends around . . .. The whole crowd scene just feels
like too much.”

“But your mother isn’t going to
let it go at that.”

“Or ever speak to me again if I
mess up her plan.”

He squeezed her hand and slipped
his other arm around her shoulders. “We’ll do whatever is necessary. I get to
have you all to myself for the rest of my life. I guess we can compromise with
the crowd for a day.”

She leaned into him, taking
comfort, but not telling him that her mother was working up to a whole week of
festivities. When she got home she really should sit down with the calendar and
Beau and make a plan. Or never hear the end of it from Texas.

“Let’s talk about something
easier. Like catching this con-artist Ted O’Malley.”

“First thing in the morning I’ll
get on the contact list Debbie gave me. If we get lucky maybe O’Malley’s been
in touch with someone from his past. But with all of Lila’s money at his
disposal he could just about do anything.”

“I wish I’d gotten a better sense
of his personality, that time I saw him briefly at their house. He seemed very
social, chatting with people. My guess is that he might very well show up
around his parents or cousins, wanting to show off his new riches. You know,
the kind of guy that would be driving a new sports car and flashing some cash,
just to prove what a success he’s become.”

Someone on a PA really did call
their flight right then and they stood up and edged their way into the muddle
of people standing around.

By ten o’clock as they drove
north of Santa Fe, passing through the small towns of Pojoaque and Espanola,
Beau pointed out the orange glow from the big fires to the west. It was eleven
p.m. when they reached the outskirts of Taos; Sam dozed in the passenger seat,
pretending that the brief nap would count toward the full night’s rest she
would need in order to be functional at the shop in the morning.

Beau pulled into her driveway and
walked her into the house, offering to make her a cup of tea but she was still
close enough to that
dozey
state that she just wanted
to fall into bed.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he
said, “as soon as I get anything useful to the case.”

A big part of her wanted to back
entirely away from the whole mess. She’d found an empty house, she’d visited a
woman in a nursing home. She’d extended condolences to Zoë over the loss of a
friend and gone along to that crazy wake-turned-yard-sale. Otherwise, what
business was this of hers anyway? She had a wedding to plan and a bakery to
run. Beau was the sheriff. This was his job, not hers.

Debbie O’Malley’s tired face
appeared.
Sam, you know you won’t let it go.
Her current mood was
exhaustion talking. She closed the back door behind Beau and went straight to
bed.

By morning she’d recovered a lot
of her perk, especially when she arrived at Sweet’s Sweets to find the kitchen
spotlessly clean and the recipes and baking pans neatly aligned to start the
day’s work. Becky and Jen were good workers but she spotted the professional
hand of Julio in all this.

While she was still sipping at
her first cup of coffee, he arrived and with a quick greeting started right to
his duties. Sam sat at her desk, the calendar in front of her. There wasn’t a
single weekend in June or July that wasn’t crammed with other people’s
weddings. She would be working seven days a week to tend to her customers’
needs and there was no way to wedge her family and a bunch more activities into
the mix. She flipped the page to August, scanned it, looked ahead. Her schedule
looked impossible until at least the middle of September, and that answer was
not going to go over well with Nina Rae.

Sam picked up her cell phone,
turning it over in her hand and calculating the time in Texas. Before she
worked up the courage to dial it, the little instrument sent out a musical
tone. Delbert Crow’s number appeared on the readout.

What now?

“Hello, Delbert,” she said.

“Where were you yesterday? I
tried to reach you half the morning.”

On an airplane
. She’d
never checked the log of missed calls and he must not have left messages. But
she didn’t say it. He wasn’t one for excuses and saying that she’d dashed off
to Vegas wouldn’t work too well when she’d just begged him for fewer jobs
because of her heavy load at the shop.

“Really? What was the problem?”

“The photographer went out to
that place on Tapia Road and couldn’t get inside.”

“Didn’t he have the standard
lockbox code?”

“It didn’t work. Did you reset
it?”

“No. I always use the same one.”
She could see this little blame-game going around and round. “I’ll check it out
when I have a minute.”

“Actually, you need to check it
out now. He’s on the way and will meet you there in ten minutes. He’s got to
upload the pictures this morning for the auction.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Grr
. . .

Becky and Julio were doing fine
in the kitchen and Jen should be along within a few minutes to open up the
front. Sam put a lid on her coffee cup and carried it with her to the van.

A blue car sat in front of the
Gray’s former house and a lanky guy in his twenties stretched himself out of it
when Sam parked in the driveway.

“Sorry about this,” he said. “I
didn’t want to make a fuss, but Mr. Crow insisted on interior pictures as well
as exterior.”

“It’s okay.” She tried not to
grumble. If this thing was going to require a bolt-cutter she would have to go
back home and get her toolbox from the truck. And that would put everyone in
that much finer a mood.

She walked up to the door and
looked at the little numerical wheels on the lockbox mechanism. 2-1-3-7-9. It
was one digit off. She flipped the nine to an eight and the box opened to
reveal the door key.

“I guess Delbert didn’t quite
give you the right numbers,” she said.

“So sorry,” the photographer
said. “I thought I’d tried other combinations. Guess I didn’t try enough of
them. Do you want to hang around to relock it after I’m done? It shouldn’t take
but a few minutes.”

“I’m really swamped at my shop,”
she said. “Just put the key back in and make sure the little door clicks
firmly. Then scramble up the numbers.”

He nodded and stepped past her
into the house.

She’d barely opened the door to
her van when another vehicle pulled up. The white sedan looked like a rental
and her first thought was that some tourist was lost. The car stopped a few
feet beyond the driveway and a man in khaki slacks and a light windbreaker got
out.

“May I help you?” she called out,
thinking he looked vaguely familiar.

“I could ask the same thing. This
is my house,” he said.

She felt a jolt. “Marshall Gray?”
After being released by the Dallas authorities he must have come right back to
Taos. “We spoke on the phone a couple of times. Samantha Sweet. You do know
that the auction date has been set?”

He stared toward the house, not
meeting her eye.

“I am on my way to the funeral
home,” he said, turning away. “There’s something I left behind here, in the
garage. I’ll get it and be out of your way.”

He pushed past Sam and walked
across the driveway to the detached garage. Sam realized that was one part of
the property she’d never checked. She started after him, not at all wanting to
get into a grimy cleanup project today, but a hundred questions filled her
head. Would he pay up, try to save the house from the auction block? Where had
all the furniture gone? And why did he never seem to answer a direct query?

Before she reached the side door
to the garage, Gray came out with a small canvas
toolbag
in his hand. He pulled the door shut, ducked around her with his head lowered
and went straight to the white car, speeding away before she could stop him.
She stared after the car.

She tried to turn the knob on the
garage’s side door but it was locked. Well, if the possessions inside the house
had been his, everything in the garage was too. She looked up to see that the
photographer was closing the front door.