Bitter Sweet (3 page)

The early morning air felt nice
and cool—a benefit of living in a dry climate was that the temps usually
dropped at least twenty degrees overnight. She drove through the quiet streets
and parked in the alley behind Sweet’s Sweets. Thankfully, the kitchen lit up
when Sam flipped the wall switch, and her inspection of the refrigerator and
freezer showed those to be working properly. But they were stuffed nearly to
capacity. It took a few minutes to unload the fans and get them cleaned up
enough to run in a kitchen, but once she had set them in place, drawing cool
air in through the back door, she felt better. At least she was taking action.

The other obvious solution was to
avoid the most fragile creations—mainly chocolate and whipped cream. They’d
stopped producing a lot of the finer chocolates after the holidays. She smiled
at the memory of the quirky chocolatier who’d come to work for her at Christmas
and then had shared elements of his secret techniques with her just in time for
the Valentine rush. Unfamiliar with exactly how to measure the special
seasonings, she’d produced some chocolates with amazingly strong aphrodisiacal
qualities. She blushed at the memory of how well some of them had worked.

By Easter she’d thought better of
using the special powders at all—turning the town’s kids into raving sex
maniacs would not have been good for business. All her cute little bunnies and
chickies
were virginally pure. She shook off those thoughts
and got busy mixing the current day’s batches of breakfast breads and cookie
doughs
.

At six, Becky came in and began
filling the display cases with each new item that came out of the oven, and Sam
decided that like it or not the landlord was getting an early phone call. He
groused about it and never really promised anything, so Sam was astounded when
a panel truck pulled up to the front door right at nine o’clock.

“You think Tafoya took everyone’s
threat seriously last winter?” Jen asked, after showing the repairman how to
access the roof.

Sam shrugged. When he’d
threatened to evict her, the neighboring businesses—a mystery bookstore on one
side, and the dog grooming shop on the other—threatened to leave at the same
time. Maybe there really was safety in numbers.

She relaxed into the routine of
the day, finishing two wedding cakes and reviewing the delivery schedule. Becky
reminded her that there were also two birthday cakes due that day.

“I can handle those, if you
want,” her assistant said.

“Remember, one of them is the
curly ribbon design.” The fondant covered cake with dozens of fondant ribbon
curls could get tricky.

“I’ll give you a shout if I run
into trouble,” Becky assured her.

She pulled out large balls of
fondant that she’d tinted the previous day and began to roll them out. Within
fifteen minutes she’d cut the ribbon shapes of red, purple and yellow and wound
thin strips of the same colors around dowels to form curlicues. Sam relaxed and
turned her attention to her own work.

With four dozen ivory buttercream
roses Becky had made the previous day, Sam finalized the more formal of the two
cakes, a tone-on-tone affair where luster powder made all the difference in
giving the cake depth and glow. Into the fridge it went to set up while she
applied pale pink-tinted fondant to a heart-shaped cake and added bright pink
piped flowers and mossy green leaves. A simple rope border and romantic bisque
bride and groom figures completed the two tiers. Sam rinsed her hands and
peered through the curtain to the sales room.

“Jen, if you’re not busy a
second?”

The shop was empty at the moment
and Jen helped load the two cakes into the van.

“I better get going immediately,”
Sam told her. “When the repairman is done, if you need to sign anything, that’s
fine. Just get the air going as soon as possible. Meanwhile, make sure Becky is
running those fans in the kitchen. If you need one for the sales room, that’s
okay too.”

Jennifer assured her everything
would be fine.

Sam ran the van’s air
conditioning until she thought she would have to put a coat on, checking the
addresses for the two deliveries. As usual, heads turned as she drove down the
street in the vehicle with its vivid design—like a box of pastries on wheels.
The big ivory cake went to a nearby church so she drove there first, finding
the kitchen entrance and calling upon a man in custodial clothing to help her
get it onto a wheeled cart and then onto the decorated table in the reception
hall.

The heart-shaped cake was for an
anniversary party at a private home and it took her a minute to locate the
exact street address on the south end of town. The hostess was delighted with
the finished piece and had Sam carry it to the center of her dining table,
where the pink theme continued throughout the room.

“My sister and her husband are
going to love this,” the woman raved. “They eloped so this is kind of their
first real wedding cake.”

Sam left a couple of her business
cards and turned the van’s air conditioning down to a reasonable level now that
she didn’t have to preserve a fragile cargo. As she maneuvered out of the lane
where she’d made the delivery she realized that she was probably close to the
neighborhood where Sadie Gray now lived. The old man next door, Milton
Fasbinder, had said the nursing home was near the hospital. Maybe she could
find out something about the couple’s situation.

The promised ninety degree day
had indeed materialized, with a cloudless, piercing sky that bounced white-hot
light wherever she looked. A haze hung over the far hills, smoke from a forest
fire a hundred miles south. With no rain in the forecast until next month, the
fire situation was getting scary. It hadn’t been that many years since hundreds
of acres had burned in the mountains right outside town.

The nursing home, Casa Serenita,
sat buttoned up tight with closed blinds and no one outdoors in the fenced
yard. She parked in their nearly empty lot and walked up a sidewalk bordered
with chamisa and purple sage, plants that could survive the high-desert summers
with little water.

Inside the double doors, a small
vestibule faced a reception desk. The tan theme included brown carpeting, cream
upholstered chairs, and vanilla air freshener. A tired silk plant anchored one
corner and one lonely magazine brightened the laminate coffee table. Sam’s gaze
skimmed all this and landed on the desk, manned by a business-suited female
whose name badge identified her as Martha Preston. She sent Sam a quick smile
and confirmed that Sadie Gray was, indeed, a resident. Sam gave a very
condensed version of the reason for her visit.

“Mrs. Gray’s dementia is fairly
pronounced,” Preston said. “She might be able to tell you things that happened
a year ago, but anything within the past few weeks will be completely gone.
She’s been here four months and still has a hard time locating her bedroom.
Physically, she’s not in bad shape for a woman of eighty-seven. If not for the
mental decline, she could quite easily fit into our assisted living program.”

“Would it be all right if I asked
her some questions?”

“You can try.” Martha Preston led
Sam through a paneled door to a communal room furnished with two flowered blue
sofas and a number of high-backed chairs. A television with the volume turned loud
captivated the attention of about a dozen elderly people with the latest gossip
from some talk show. The air was warm, and yet nearly every one of the
residents wore a sweater or light jacket. Preston paused a moment and looked
around.

“I don’t see Sadie. She’s
probably in her room.” She started down a wide hallway. Sam ignored the living
room’s scent of despair and hurried to catch up.

Doors stood open on both sides of
the hall, bedrooms furnished with single hospital style beds. Many had personal
touches like family photos on a dresser, a chair that was obviously an old
favorite, hand crocheted afghans in colors that were popular in previous
decades. Martha stopped before a closed door and tapped twice before opening
it.

“Sadie? You have a visitor.” She
stepped into the room and ushered Sam forward.

The room was furnished more
simply than some of those others—a yellow spread on the bed, a dresser and
nightstand that could have been hotel furniture, generic floral prints on the
walls. Sadie Gray sat at the dresser, writing on a sheet of paper. A small
stack of envelopes stood nearby. Her white hair was neatly styled and she wore
pink knit slacks and a flowered blouse in a similar style to the outfits Sam
had seen in her closet. Her eyes must have once been vivid blue but they seemed
dim now behind the thick lenses of her glasses.

Sadie gave her a puzzled look.
“Carrie? I haven’t seen you in ages, dear.”

Martha Preston murmured to Sam,
“She tends to think everyone is Carrie. Apparently that’s her neighbor’s
daughter whom she used to babysit, maybe fifty years ago.”

“Hi, Mrs. Gray. Sorry, I’m not
Carrie. My name is Samantha Sweet.”

“Oh, silly me. The light is
terrible in these rooms, you know.” She stood up. Although her legs took a
moment to get going, Sadie stood straight at a little over five feet and moved
energetically.

Martha Preston had backed out of
the room and Sadie urged Sam to take the seat at the dresser. She perched
herself on the edge of her bed.

“I was just finishing up my
paperwork for the day. So many people in this office will sit around and watch
TV all day but that’s just not the way I do things. I’ve always taken care of
business first.”

Sam glanced down at the sheet of
paper Sadie had been writing on, lined notebook paper on which she’d listed
neat columns of numbers. The envelopes stacked beside it appeared to be junk
mail.

“What type of business do you do
here?” Sam asked.

“Insurance,” Sadie said proudly.
“It’s what I’ve done my whole career.” She lowered her voice. “Of course, my
previous company was a lot better. I loved working with Joe. My husband. We ran
a tight ship. I don’t care for the work ethic in this place.”

Sam had worked for one of the
local insurance offices for a few years and she tried to recall the agency that
might have been Sadie and Joe’s.

“Everything changed when Joe
died,” Sadie said with a sigh.

The conversation could go off in
a dozen directions but Sam reminded herself she had work to do.

“I’m actually here on a financial
matter,” she said. “There seems to be a problem with the payments on your house
and there’s a danger of foreclosure. I was sent to take care of the property.”

Sadie’s pale brows pulled
together. “Well, that doesn’t sound right. My husband is already taking care of
it. He’s very good about those things. Why would you need to?”

Was she still talking about Joe?

Sam went into the explanation
about the late payments but Sadie’s gaze kept drifting, first to the art prints
on the walls, then to the papers on her ‘desk.’

“Is there a number where I can
contact your husband and ask him about this?” Sam finally asked.

“Everything changed when Joe
died,” Sadie repeated.

Sam tried twice more to get
something concrete but the conversation began to spiral into repetition and
Sadie grew impatient to return to her ‘paperwork.’ Finally, Sam stood up.

“Well, I better let you get your
work done,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do to straighten out this other
thing.”

“Yes, that would be better. I’ll
be home next week and we can work out all the details.” Sadie followed Sam to
the bedroom door and closed it gently behind her.

Home in a week? That didn’t seem
likely. Sam made her way back to the reception desk where she found Martha
Preston talking with a younger woman in colorfully patterned scrubs.

“Did you learn what you needed
to?” Preston asked Sam.

“Not really. She thinks she’ll be
home next week and we can just work out the details then.”

Both women shook their heads. The
young nurse spoke up. “Mrs. Gray is such a sweetheart, but there’s no way she
could manage her own home. Her husband apparently is on the road quite a lot.”

“On business matters, you would
have better luck talking to Mr. Gray,” Martha Preston said.

“You must have contact
information for him. Can you share that?”

Martha flipped open a blue
folder, paged backward through it and ran her finger down some kind of form.

“Sadie always talks about Joe but
her husband’s name is Marshall Gray. He admitted her. She remembers him when he
visits and they seem very loving toward each other.”

“Does Mr. Gray still live at the
house on Tapia Lane?” Sam thought of the conflicting evidence—payments in
arrears and food in the refrigerator.

Martha nodded. “It’s listed as
their residence on the admittance forms.”

Martha gave her a cell phone
number and the name of Marshall Gray’s employer, a trucking company. “He’s
quite a bit younger than his wife—I would guess at least twenty years. It’s not
all that unusual. Some men just need a mommy,” she said with a shrug.

Sam forced a smile. Her own
fiancé was younger, and Beau certainly did not need mothering.

“He seems very devoted to her,
comes by to see her at least once a week,” the other woman said.

She thanked them and left,
intending to call Delbert Crow with the information later in the evening. For
now, she might be able to learn something on her own.

Sam had just pulled into the parking
area at ABZ Trucking when her cell phone rang.

“Hey, babe.” Beau’s voice came
through as if he were a block away instead of in Phoenix. “How’s everything at
home?”

As sheriff of Taos County, most
of Beau’s work kept him within a hundred miles of home and it was rare that he
was gone overnight. This required trip had now kept him away for a week and
both of them were getting antsy about the situation.