Sweet Hearts (7 page)

The trip to Marla’s home seemed
to go more quickly this time, the miles streaming by pleasantly. Sam slowed the
van nearly to a crawl as she passed through Arroyo Seco, watching both sides of
the road for any sign of Gustav Bobul. She couldn’t imagine him living so near
and not coming to her shop, at least to say hello. But then he was a strange
one. Nearly anything was possible.

Only the one sedan sat in Marla’s
driveway today. Sam pulled in behind it and Marla stepped out onto the shady
front porch to greet her.

“Come in, Sam. I’ve made some
coffee.”

Sam handed her the red rose Eben
had given her and gave her new friend a hug, noticing for the first time that
Marla’s shoulders were so thin that she could feel the bones through her
quilted cardigan. Marla led Sam, a little unsteadily, toward the kitchen where
she placed her rose into a bud vase then poured two mugs of coffee from a
carafe. Her hands were a bit shaky, and she covered by pushing the sugar and
creamer containers toward Sam rather than attempting to spoon the contents
herself. Sam pretended to ignore Marla’s increasing weakness, turning to remove
her coat and hanging it over one of the kitchen chairs. She held up the folder.

“Sheriff Cardwell gave me this.
His department ran out of leads a long time ago, but he said it was okay if I
did some asking around.”

“Thank you.” Marla’s voice came
out tight and high. “It means so much to me.”

Sam bit her lip. “I really can’t
promise anything. But I’ll try.”

Marla nodded, blinking her moist
dark eyes twice. “I know.” She sat in one of the chairs at the table, her body
sagging as if she’d used every scrap of energy to answer the door and pour the
coffee.

“May I take a look at the file?”
She reached toward Sam with her thin fingers.

“I guess it would be all right.”
Sam handed over the folder, giving a short verbal recap of what she’d just
read.

“The list of friends,” Marla
said. “We called most of them ourselves. The police wouldn’t even take a report
for more than two days. So Tricia and I started calling everyone we knew,
hoping he had run into a buddy and got sidetracked.” She shook her head. “No
one had seen him.”

Sam sipped from her mug. The
coffee was really good. “Did the Albuquerque police ever investigate?”

Marla shook her head. “Not
really. They said that he’d disappeared in Taos. I think they told Tricia that
she could file a separate report . . . I really don’t remember.”

“I assume she also called friends
there? People he worked with, maybe?”

“Oh, yes. He worked at Bellworth,
you know. Very good company, a very good job.”

Sam recognized the name.
Bellworth was one of those huge corporations that did a lot of government
contract work, often with agencies at Sandia Lab or Los Alamos. As she
understood it, the contracts usually lasted a few years, but then were often
renewed, so employment was steady and pay was good.

“Tito’s training in the Navy was
as an electrician. He was well qualified for the work he did at Bellworth and
had worked his way to one of the higher pay grades.” Pride in her son was very
evident in Marla’s expression. “He and Tricia bought a house in a nice
neighborhood. Jolie was still a baby, but they chose the area because of the
good schools. They were planning to have more children.”

She closed the folder and toyed
with the coffee mug in front of her. “Sam, Tito didn’t run away. That sheriff,
Orlando Padilla, he hinted that Tito had another woman and that he’d run off
with her. But that wasn’t true. He would never do that.”

An excellent character reference,
or a mother’s blind love? Sam didn’t know. She did know, however, that Padilla
had been lax as a lawman, a product more of New Mexico’s infamous nepotism in
government than any outstanding accomplishments on the job.

“When Tricia died and I brought
Jolie here, I sold their house in Albuquerque. Her death . . . losing the house
. . . it would have hurt Tito so bad.” She swallowed hard. “But I didn’t see
any other way. I used the money to hire a private investigator. I couldn’t keep
him very long. There wasn’t much equity in the house, so the money ran out
pretty fast. With a baby to raise, I couldn’t go into debt.”

“What did the investigator say?”

Marla leaned forward and gripped
the edge of the table to stand. “I have his reports. I’ll get them.”

Sam kept her seat at the table,
feeling an ache in her heart for this poor woman.

Five full minutes must have
passed before Marla came back. She had a manila envelope in one hand and a
stack of smaller ones—pink, lavender, yellow—in the other.

“These are the cards my Tito sent
me.” She set them on the table in front of her mug, just out of Sam’s reach.
She extended the large envelope to Sam. “His name was Bram Fenton, the
investigator.”

Sam knew the name. The man had
died this past summer. She took the envelope and bent the metal brads upward.
Inside was a small sheaf of paper, maybe ten pages at most.

“May I take these? I can make
copies and get the originals back to you right away.”

“It’s all right. There’s nothing
I can do with them now. Keep it as long as you need to.”

Marla had taken her seat again
and her left hand rested on the stack of personal envelopes. “These, I will
keep but you may look.”

She picked up the topmost
envelope, raised the flap and pulled out a birthday card. For Mother, pink with
scalloped edges and a small bow formed of ribbon, stuck to a design of pink
roses. The printed greeting inside was a heartfelt message of love, but there
was no signature.

“They are all like this,” Marla
said.

She set the card down and handed
Sam the envelope. It was hand addressed in neat block letters, no return
address. “It’s postmarked from Chicago,” Sam said.

“Yes. They came from many
places.” Marla spread the others like playing cards in a deck. “California, New
York, Washington, St. Louis. Here’s one postmarked Santa Fe. That’s the closest
he ever got to home.” A tear rolled from the corner of her eye.

Sam studied the envelope and card
intently, giving Marla a moment.

Marla raised her head. “I know
they are from Tito,” she insisted.

“I’m sure you are right. Maybe,
with this proof, I can get the sheriff’s department to reopen the case.”

Even as she said it, Sam realized
how unlikely that was. But it might be worth a shot. Anything she could do to
provide this poor, dying woman with a little hope would be welcomed.

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Marla
said, visibly brightening. She flipped through the cards and chose one. “Take
one with you. Show them.”

Sam could tell that Marla was
tiring. She carried their mugs to the sink, switched off the coffee maker and
helped the other woman to the sofa in the living room, where Marla lay back
against the cushions and pulled an afghan over herself.

“I’ll be all right after a nap,”
she insisted when Sam offered to call someone. She closed her eyes.

Sam gathered the file and
envelopes, shrugged back into her jacket and locked the front door behind her.

Back at Sweet’s Sweets the sales
room was full of customers and Becky was inside the walk-in fridge searching
for someone’s order. Sandy hit Sam with about a hundred questions the second
she walked in the door, and there went all hope of leaving early and spending
the afternoon at home going through Tito’s case file.

She helped Becky find the pastry
she was after, a set of miniature tiered brownies decorated like tiny wedding
cakes for a bridal shower, then she realized that the situation with the gift
boxes for chocolates was getting desperate. She sat at her computer and placed
an order, springing for the cost of overnight delivery and kicking herself that
she hadn’t done it sooner.

Once that was done and she set
Sandy to work happily cutting out heart-shaped cookies, Sam went back to the
stove and began work on another batch of chocolate. She remembered Bobul doing
something with luster powder in the molds, making the finished pieces glow with
a special sheen, so she prepped the molds with dustings of red, gold and
silver, then began melting chocolate in the double boiler.

“We can use more of those out
front, the minute you have them done,” Jen said on a quick pass through the
kitchen. “I’m down to no cookies, no brownies, and only two boxes of
chocolates.”

Sam sent a harried nod her way
and continued filling the molds. While those set up, she unmolded some plain
milk-and dark-chocolates she’d started this morning and quickly filled her
last few gift boxes with them. Sticking a smile on her face she headed for the
front, where she could hear a customer chatting with Jen.

“Here you go,” Sam said, stacking
the seven new boxes as Jen finalized the woman’s order and sent her on her way.

“Whew—what an afternoon! I guess
word is out about the chocolates.” Jen wiped her forehead with a tissue and
looked in the mirrored wall behind the counter, straightening the one errant
hair that had come out of her neat chignon. “Oh dear, here’s another,” she
mumbled, with a glance at the door.

Sam had turned to check the
beverage bar—they were running low on their signature blend coffee—and to pluck
a stray sugar packet off one of the bistro tables. The woman who’d opened the
door was a stranger. Tall, super-slim in a tiger-print dress, black coat and
heels, with chin length red hair which had that purposely bedroom-tousled look,
she wasn’t the sort of woman you didn’t notice.

“Oh what a sweet little shop,”
she gushed, laughing at her own play on words. “Perfect name.”

“Hi,” Sam said. “I’m Samantha
Sweet, the owner. It’s your first time here, I guess?”

“In this shop. I actually once
lived here in Taos.
Ages
ago.” She turned toward the display cases.
“What do we have here?” she said, flicking a long, brilliant orange nail across
her lower lip.

Sam caught Jen’s eye and bit back
a grin.

Jen, with previous experience at
dealing with the rich and snobby, put on her best customer-service manners and
began showing the woman some of their more popular treats.

“The amaretto cheesecake is our
own exclusive recipe. And the scones are especially nice with afternoon tea. Of
course all our ingredients are a hundred percent natural and everything is made
from scratch.”

The woman’s glance barely grazed
the selection. “Actually, I was only looking for coffee. Black. To go.”

Jen nodded and Sam lifted a cup
from the stack and proceeded to fill it. She affixed the plastic cap and
carried it to the register where Jen was ringing up the dinky sale.

Tiger lady reached for one of the
sample chocolates from the plate near the register and popped it into her
mouth.

“
Mmm
. . .” Her voice went
into a little lilt at the end. “Those
are
good.” She spotted the boxes
nearby. “Add one of those to my order.”

She paid with a gold card,
gathered the box and cup, then flounced out the door.

“Well, at least she ended up
spending a few bucks,” Jen said as they watched the colorful swirl of orange
and black get into a Lexus at the curb.

“Taos has all kinds,” Sam
muttered, heading back to the kitchen.

The three employees who’d spent
their day near the ovens were looking pretty wilted.

“Once those cookies and brownies
are done, why don’t you all head home?” Sam suggested. “I can finish up.”

Cathy, the older woman who seemed
to have a series of perpetual aches and pains, gave her a grateful look and
headed for the coat rack. Becky’s kids were due home from school any minute and
that was always her cue to exit. Sandy stood at the sink, washing up the last
of the cake pans from the morning’s output, and her efforts put her back on
Sam’s gold-star list for the day.

Sam turned her own attention to
getting a quick smear of frosting on the heart-shaped cookies and sending them
out to the display cases. She set the brownies to cool and unmolded her most
recent set of chocolates. From the sales room came the high voices of school
kids, in for their daily cookie fix, and shoppers who tended toward the coffee,
tea and heavier desserts. Jen’s voice sounded calm and in control, so Sam lost
herself in the zone of decorating two more proposal cakes.

By five-thirty it seemed that all
was clear. With the other employees gone, Sam had used the last hour to clean
up and organize. She took a deep breath and looked around. As much effort as
the shop required, this had been her dream for such a long time. Once in awhile
she needed to simply stare around her and appreciate that.

She appreciated it right up to
the moment when she stepped into a near-invisible dab of butter and her foot went
out from under her.

“What happened?” Jen said,
rushing into the kitchen. “I heard a crash.”

“Cookie sheets. I guess I grabbed
for the table—” Her breath caught as a pain jolted through her hip.

Jen dashed toward her. “Let me
help—”

Sam laughed. “Don’t even try to
pick me up. You’d break your back.” She rolled to her left hip and got her
hands and knees under her. “I’ll be fine.”

Jen backed away, keeping a hand
outstretched, just in case.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she
asked once Sam had pulled herself to her feet.

“Yeah. I think I hurt my pride
more than anything else.” She took a few steps, just to prove it. “See? All
better.” Her right side felt like knives were piercing every joint, but she
wasn’t about to admit it.

Jen eyed her boss’s cautious movements.
“Maybe I better call Beau to give you a ride home.”

“Nonsense. I’ll take something
for it. We were about to close up anyway. Let’s just do it now.”

“If you’re sure . . .”