Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (13 page)

“Thank goodness almost no one here
knows that a woman was stabbed this morning,” she whispered. “This little show
takes on almost obscene proportions in light of that.”

Rupert, for once in his life, seemed
a little at a loss. “It’s the standard introduction he uses at the beginning of
every show. He’ll settle down in a minute.”

“He’d better. Maybe this is a good
time for you to step in and take over as MC?”

He nodded, crossed the corridor
and pushed back into the crowded ballroom. Sam watched as Rupert nearly leapt
up the steps to the dais and picked up the microphone.

“Thank you, Bentley Day! How about
this guy, folks? Is he as crazy as on TV, huh?”

Okay, Rupe, tune all of it down a notch
, Sam thought. She walked to
the other set of doors, the less crowded end near the kitchen, and stepped into
the ballroom. Deputy Garcia stood there, watching the celebrity’s antics with a
grim expression. Uh-oh.

“Looks like there was more than
one knife,” she said when he noticed her.

“That does add another wrinkle to
it.” His eyes were scanning the booths, watching each of the vendors, most of
whom were riveted to the scene at the head of the room.

Rupert had edged his co-star away
from center stage as he proceeded to give the rules for the contest.

“As you know, the Swiss chocolate
maker
Qualitätsschokolade
has offered
cash prizes for the best desserts made with their products, and we have three
esteemed judges here to do the tasting and make the call. All of our contestants
have booths here today, so you can taste the scrumptious entries yourselves. Be
sure to use the form on the back of your ticket to nominate your favorite for
the People’s Choice Award. There is a separate prize for this one, and you will
make someone’s day if his or her name is chosen.

“All contestants will submit a
sample of their best recipe today. The top ten will go into a semi-final round.
Tomorrow, those entries will be narrowed to five, and on Sunday the top three
will be awarded prizes. Third place wins two thousand dollars cash!”

Applause throughout the room.

“Second place will receive three
thousand dollars.”

Another wave of appreciation.

“And the first place entry gets
five thousand dollars—”

This time the cheers caused him to
pause.

“—plus the winning baker will get
an appearance on
Killer Chef!
”

The room rocked with cheers and
shouts. Sam wondered if Rupert had made that up on the spot, hoping to sell the
producers on the idea, or if Bentley Day had made the offer before coming up on
stage. Whatever the situation, she had to admit that stretching out the judging
over several days
and
the award of
the high-profile prize would definitely be good for the charity for which all
this fundraising was happening.

“Contestants ready?” Rupert threw
every bit of his enthusiasm into the call. “Get set . . . Here come the judging
assistants to pick up your entries!”

To keep the judging impartial,
each baker would place three small servings of his or her entry on a plain
white paper plate, along with a number which did not correspond to the booth
from which it came. The plate was covered with a napkin until it reached the
judging table, theoretically preventing anyone in the crowd from knowing and
whispering ideas to the judges. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to
circumvent the system, but at least the efforts attempted to give equal footing
to all.

Sam circled to her booth,
relieving Kelly who was one of the entry-delivery helpers. While the visitors
were enthralled with watching judge reactions to the first few desserts, Sam
found herself watching the vendors. Garcia was quietly making his way around
the room, speaking in low tones and taking names and contact information from
them. At Danielle Ferguson’s booth, he asked her to step outside. Luckily, she
had an assistant to take over sales of her elegant tortes.

Sam wondered what was going on. By
now, surely they had removed Carinda’s body. The hotel would certainly want the
crime scene tape gone as soon as possible; this could not be good for business.
Auguste Handler’s job had just become harder, dealing with the PR nightmare
associated with having a murder on the property.

“You’re distracted, Sam.” Becky
was staring at her. “Go. Do whatever it is you’re wanting to. There’s a lull
right now—I can handle the booth.”

What she really wanted to do was
talk to Beau. After Becky assured her once again that she would be fine alone,
Sam walked out of the ballroom. She stepped out the back door to the garden, didn’t
see him among the men who were still gathering evidence, so she went toward the
lobby.

Through the large windows across
the front of the hotel she saw a different sort of crowd. The medical
investigator’s vehicle disappeared around a bend in the long driveway, and now Beau
had a half-dozen microphones shoved toward him. Looked as if the press invited
to cover the chocolate festival had now latched onto the crime instead.

Chapter
11

Sam’s white baker’s jacket drew
looks from a few of the reporters but they quickly realized she was nobody they
might be interested in.

“Sheriff, is it true that Bentley
Day is your main suspect?”

Beau seemed a little startled.
“Where did you hear that?”

The questioner held up her cell
phone, on which the Twitter logo was easily recognizable. “It’s all over the
place.”

Sam had sidled toward the group;
now she saw messages on several phones.
Bentley Day being quizzed by cops
showed on one.
Is Killer Chef really a killer?
blazed across another, with responding messages coming through fast and
furiously.

Where had this started? Sam felt
her temper rise. Carinda might have been a pain in the ass and Bentley Day
grandstanding and full of himself, but it didn’t necessarily follow that he
killed her. Aside from wishing he could swat her like an annoying mosquito,
what motive would he have?

Beau answered nearly every
question with something along the lines of “It’s too early in the investigation
to make any assumptions” and “We’re in the process of gathering evidence and
asking a lot of questions.”

When the reporters began simply
rephrasing the same tired queries, he politely said that he needed to get back
to work. He turned away while they were still calling his name. Sam edged away
from the cluster of microphones and followed him through the hotel’s tall entry
doors.

Less than halfway across the lobby
she realized some of the reporters were following. She spun around and faced
them.

“The festival, Sweet Somethings,
is an event to raise money for charity. Unless you are here to cover that
angle, you’ll need to leave. Please respect our goal and please let the sheriff
get on with his business.”

It was the wrong thing to say.
Suddenly, all of them wanted to cover the charitable aspects of the event. Sam
could see a two-edged sword here—the additional publicity could very well be a
detriment to Beau’s investigation. On the other hand, publicity for the event
and the charity could probably be a good thing. She promised a news release
later in the day and the chance for their crews to film the prize awards on
Sunday afternoon.

“Sorry, that’s the best I can do,”
she responded when someone asked if Bentley Day would be available for
interviews.

She headed for the ballroom,
entirely sure that the reporters would lurk until, one by one, they could catch
the celebrity chef and wangle interviews on their own. It was too much to hope
that they would respect the department’s methodical investigation rather than
push for a high-profile arrest that would make national news.

She said as much to Beau a few
minutes later when she caught up with him and the two had strolled past the
crime scene tape in the garden, the one quiet spot on the whole property.

“We think Myrna Ulibarri started
the rumor,” he told her.

“The police chief’s sister? She’s
one of our judges!” Sam remembered passing the judging stand earlier, seeing
Myrna typing something on her phone. She felt her teeth grind. “I can’t believe
it! Of anyone in the world, families of law enforcement usually realize the
harm in letting information out too early.”

“I know. I know, darlin’. I’ve
talked to her, just now. She claims she only meant to send the chief a note to
let him know about the murder.”

“Yeah, right. He’s got all kinds
of official ways to learn what he needs to know. She planted that story so her
name could be associated with Bentley Day’s.”

“Most likely. Unfortunately, it’s
a bell we can’t un-ring.”

Oh, man, the harm that could be
caused by these things. Sam stared at the trampled lawn near the rose bushes,
hoping Beau’s men had collected all the useful information they could get.

“Sam, I want you to be my eyes and
ears inside the festival,” Beau said. “If I send uniformed deputies in there,
everyone who knows anything will clam up. Garcia’s doing his best to ask the
right questions of the right people, but they’re only going to tell him so much.”

“And they’ll tell the sheriff’s
wife more?” It didn’t seem likely.

“You are head of the committee and
you know them all pretty well. Just try to sort through the gossip and
speculation, see if you can get any actual facts that we might miss in our own
questioning. That’s all.”

Sam had her doubts. Surely, there
were other things on everyone’s mind.

“Well, I better get going,” Beau
said. “I need to push the forensic lab to get prints from that knife, and then
I better talk with the medical investigator. If the local man can’t positively
state the cause of death, I’ll have to push Albuquerque to rush the autopsy.
They won’t be happy about it, on a weekend, but half our suspects are leaving
town Sunday evening and I can’t let this case get cold that fast.” He headed
for his SUV and Sam went back into the hotel, wishing she could find a moment
of calm before walking into the chaotic ballroom.

Most of the action was still
taking place around the judging stand. With a lull in the delivery of new
entries, Bentley Day had stepped down to floor level and was posing for
pictures with fans. She crossed to the second aisle, heading for her own booth.
Snippets of conversation caught her attention.

“I’m not at all surprised,” the
chocolate chip cookie lady was saying to the one whose wares featured fragile
chocolate shavings on cupcakes topped with mounds of thick frosting. “She came
along yesterday afternoon at five o’clock, telling me that I had to get all my
signs reprinted. I basically told her where she could shove that idea.”

Farther down the line, Nancy Nash
was staring out into space. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she appeared to be
doing her best to avoid crying in public. When Sam looked toward her, she
turned away and got busy arranging a stack of paper napkins.

Sam edged past the end of her own
table, into the work area of her booth. Before she could ask Becky how things
were going, Nancy leaned across the narrow space between them.

“I wish it had been Bentley Day,”
she whispered. “The man is such a jerk, and that woman who was killed—she was
no better.”

Okay, here was a good chance to
get some gossip.

“Why?” Sam asked, mimicking the
confidential whisper. “What did they do?”

Nancy sniffed and blinked hard.
“My entry. My family’s favorite recipe? He . . . he . . . laughed when he
tasted it. He said it was the worst—oh, I can’t even think about it. The man’s
a complete loser.”

Sam felt for the woman. Clearly,
her family either really did love the bottled syrup she used or they’d been too
kind in letting her think they did. She shouldn’t have been in a competition
with serious chefs, true, but it wasn’t a reason to publicly belittle her.

“This morning it was Carinda,
watching me make my chocolate sauce, rolling her eyes and giving me this . . .
this
look
. I could have—
ugh
!” She started to make a strangling
motion but caught herself and let her hands drop to her sides. “Not that I
would actually—”

“I know,” Sam said, still
whispering. “But, you know, maybe someone wasn’t as gentle a person as you are
. . . Did you hear anybody else say anything against her?”

“Yeah, like, everyone. I tell you,
nobody liked the woman. But I can’t really imagine anyone taking it that far.”

Neither could Sam. She would just
have to keep asking questions.

She glanced again at the dais where
Bentley was still wowing the crowd with his jokes. At least the public didn’t
seem to be aware that a death had happened here this morning, that, or they
didn’t care. A quick look at the stock left in her display cases showed that
over half their items had sold—and it was early afternoon of the first day.

“I better call Julio and have him
ramp up the baking at the shop,” she told Becky. “We’ll never make it through
three days with what’s left here.”

She stepped out to the corridor,
looking for a quiet corner of the lobby to make her call. Jen assured her
everything was fine at the shop, a little quiet for a Friday afternoon, but
that was probably because half the town was at the festival. Sam spoke with
Julio next and gave him a list of things to bake.

“I’ll stop by this evening or
first thing in the morning and pick them up. The show opens here at ten again
tomorrow.”

She hung up and suddenly felt a
wave of exhaustion. Two more days of this. Where would she get the energy?
Across the lobby she saw people coming out of the restaurant. Sam realized
she’d completely forgotten to eat any lunch. She called Becky in the booth and
offered to bring her a sandwich or something.