Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (14 page)

“I’m good, Sam. Kelly brought me
something earlier. Take your time, get off your feet for a little while.”

As much as she felt like a slacker
for doing it, the idea held enormous appeal. She went into the restaurant where
a tired-looking middle-aged hostess showed her to a table near a corner that
was semi screened off from others by a divider capped with plants. The perfect
spot to avoid questions, reporters and festival crises. She ordered a salad and
something described as an energy smoothie.

Midway through her lunch she heard
the hostess seat someone else on the other side of the divider. Great. A
near-empty restaurant and the only other customer had to be right next to her.
Probably something to do with the waitress’s stations or the fact that she
didn’t want to walk across the room any more than necessary. Sam crunched a
crouton, trying to drown out the sounds of the female who’d decided to place a
phone call.

“I found her,” said the voice. The
fact that she was murmuring, an obvious attempt to keep the conversation quiet,
caused Sam’s ears to perk up. “But I haven’t gotten the—the other thing. I
can’t believe Julia changed it.”

Sam shifted in her seat. Unable to
see the speaker, she really didn’t want to be seen either. The voice was
slightly familiar and she had the feeling if it was one of the vendors there
would be extra conversation if she recognized Sam.

“Okay,
yeah
,” said the woman. “I
will
.
I’ll call you.” She clicked off the call with a disgusted little
puh
, then called the waitress over and
asked that her order be put in a box to go.

“It’s coming off the grill now.
I’ll tell the cook,” said the waitress with one of those impatient tones that
said she knew her tip would be diminished because of this.

Sam heard motion behind her as the
customer got up and left. She breathed a little easier and finished her salad.

The healthful meal really had
boosted her energy, as well as her mood. By the time she got back to the
ballroom the judges were into a new batch of entries and even the antics of the
onstage celebrity didn’t bother her so much. She strolled past the booths,
gauging moods, making sure the vendors were happy.

Of the ones who’d given a bit of
static the previous day, Danielle Ferguson seemed a lot more subdued today. Sam
caught her sending a nervous glance toward Farrel O’Hearn’s booth. Probably
worried over the outcome of the competition. Danielle had openly stated that
she wanted to win this thing at all cost. Did she mean that literally?

Farrel, on the other hand, seemed
completely wrapped up in her own mini-celebrity status. People crowded around
her booth and Sam caught more than one of them raving about the cuisine at her
Santa Fe restaurant. Gone were the baleful glares from yesterday.

And Farrel wasn’t the only one who
seemed more relaxed with the temperamental Carinda out of the way. All over the
room Sam felt a general air of fun that had been missing earlier. Did it mean
that the murderer believed he or she had gotten away with it? Or was this
simply because the show was underway and sales were good.

Even though Sam had committed to
donate all of her three-day proceeds to their chosen charity, it wasn’t
mandatory and many of the vendors were probably making a good portion of their
monthly income this weekend. She decided to relax and not think about the case
until she’d had a chance to talk with Beau. She really had no evidence to go on
anyway.

She’d circled the room by now and
was about to step back into her own space.

“Sam, would you and your assistant
like an ice cream cone?” Harvey Byron held up an empty cone. “On the house. Any
flavor you want, as long as it’s chocolate.”

He smiled while the two of them
decided. Becky took white chocolate raspberry, and Sam couldn’t resist the
chocolate chip cookie dough since she knew Harvey used an exotic Mexican
vanilla in the recipe.

“Weird about Carinda, wasn’t it?”
he said as he dipped out perfect globes of the creamy white chocolate flavor.

Sam nodded, working for a measure
of respect toward the dead woman.

“It’s too bad that no one really
liked her.” That was undoubtedly true, especially based on Carinda’s actions of
the last few days.

Harvey handed over Becky’s cone
and started dipping Sam’s. Becky shivered and walked into their booth to serve
a customer who had approached. Sam accepted her free cone and joined her. When
Sam set her cone into a paper cup to bag two brownies for their customer,
Becky’s expression was unfathomable. The customer left and Sam’s eyes met
Becky’s.

“It’s nothing,” her assistant
said, giving her cone a lick. “My mother had superstitions about speaking ill
of the dead. But this
is
Carinda
we’re talking about.”

At the dais, Rupert had appeared
and picked up the microphone. Sam hadn’t seen him for hours and he appeared
fresh enough that she suspected he had sneaked home for a nap. He’d certainly
changed clothes and redone his hair. The man managed somehow to never, ever
look as bedraggled as she felt right now. She sneaked a look at the time on her
phone—an hour yet to go before they could shut down.

“Hello again, chocolate lovers!”
Rupert said with a flourish of the purple scarf draped over his shoulder. “Does
chocolate make everybody happy?”

Like filings to a magnet, the
crowd shifted toward the dais, faces upturned to Rupert and the judges.

“I know everyone has been waiting
to find out the names of the contestants whose entries have made it to the top
ten, and to give you that delicious information . . . here is our famous Killer
Chef—Bentley Day!”

Sam really needed to talk to
Rupert about his choice of wording. What if it turned out to be true?

Bentley took the microphone and
gave a little bow to the audience, followed by a wide smile that showed a lot
of perfectly aligned teeth.

“All right, everyone—here are the
finalists!”

He picked up a folded sheet of
paper and began reading.

“Come up here as I call your names.
Farrel O’Hearn of The Southwest Chocolatier! Harvey Byron from Ice Cream
Social!”

It was a short hop for those two,
to stand in front of the podium. Seven others joined in quick succession,
including the brownie lady and the one with those to-die-for cupcakes. Sam
avoided looking directly at Nancy Nash.

“Danielle Ferguson!”

Danielle shot Farrel a triumphant
look as she took a place on the opposite end of the row.

“These contestants, ladies and
gentlemen, will be further narrowed to the final five tomorrow so you want to
be sure and be here for that. Besides, you will have eaten all the goodies you
bought today so you’ll need to come back for more, right!”

A cheer went up.

“Contestants, the pressure is on
you. Bring your best recipes and take off the gloves because the battle is
really on!”

Cameras flashed as the contestants
posed with Bentley. Rupert reminded everyone that the doors would open again at
ten in the morning and reiterated that all ticket proceeds went to charity.

“Bring your friends and make your
gift shopping lists. This is
the
place to be in Taos all weekend!”

Gradually, the gathering at the
dais broke up.

“Let’s organize and cover our
product,” Sam told Becky. “Everything will be fine here overnight, and I’ll
bring more from the shop. Sleep in, since Jen comes tomorrow.”

“I’m used to being on my feet all
day, so no problem there,” Becky said. “Don’s going to bring the kids by on
Sunday, so I’ll take a little break and walk around with them.”

Sam laid a tablecloth over the
open side of their display cases and tucked the zippered bag containing the
money into her backpack, fishing for the keys to her van at the same time. The
large room had cleared remarkably quickly, most of the vendors accustomed to
trade shows where they simply draped something over their displays and beat a
path out at the end of day.

In the adjacent booth, Nancy Nash
was stacking plastic bowls of strawberries and looking somewhat dejected.

“I didn’t sell much,” she
admitted. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

Sam didn’t know what to say. The
family’s kindness toward Nancy’s cooking evidently hadn’t been such a favor
after all. She wished Nancy better luck tomorrow.

One more thing to do, she thought
as she looked for Auguste Handler. He’d promised that the ballroom doors would
be locked overnight and that a security guard would come by several times to be
sure they stayed that way. Most of the vendors were leaving expensive equipment
and a fair amount of inventory in his care. She located him behind the hotel’s
front desk and he assured her he had it covered.

The quickest way to her van was to
take the corridor past the ballroom and go out through the garden. Near the
large glass back doors she spotted the silhouette of Bentley Day. A little girl
of about seven raced ahead of Sam and called out to him.

“Mr. Chef, could I have your
autograph? Please?”

Sam was twenty feet away but she
heard his response.

“Bugger off, kid.”

The little girl came to an abrupt
halt. “What?”

“Get outta here. I’m off work
until tomorrow.” He lit a cigarette and pushed out to the garden.

Sam saw the stricken look on the
kid’s face. “Look, sweetie, I’m sorry about that. If you’re here tomorrow you
come by my booth for a free cupcake, okay?”

The girl nodded and trudged back
toward the lobby.

“What was that?” Sam said,
confronting Bentley where he leaned against an adobe pillar. “Rude to a kid?
How could you think that was necessary?”

He shrugged and blew smoke toward
the rose bushes. “Bloomin’ wears me out sometimes. By the end of the day—”

“Drop the accent. You’re off work
until tomorrow.” She stalked away to her van. What a complete rat!

Chapter
12

A frozen casserole would have to
suffice for dinner. Sam felt no guilt whatsoever as she pulled the packaged
entrée from the freezer, read the directions and stuck the cheap aluminum pan
into the oven. A shower and a glass of wine . . . she might begin to feel
human.

She thought again of Sarah, lying
in the hospital and how the final encounter with Bentley the chef had capped an
already stressful day; she found herself replaying it while the hot water
poured over her head. As she scrubbed shampoo into her scalp she forced her
thoughts away from the obnoxious celebrity. But then her mind began to go back
over the rest of the day’s events—Carinda’s body lying in the garden behind the
hotel, the questions from Beau’s investigator, the petty emotional turmoil
surrounding the competitors at the festival. How could grownups get so worked
up over recipes? And that thought led her back to, how could a grown man treat
a little kid so rudely? She rinsed away the suds, determined to put all that
behind her for the rest of the evening.

By the time she walked downstairs,
wearing comfy capris and a loose top, the smell of chicken and green chile was
beginning to fill the house. Maybe the casserole idea wasn’t such a bad one.

“Hey, darlin’,” Beau said, coming
through the front door just in time to deliver a kiss.

“You look the way I felt thirty
minutes ago,” she teased. “Dinner can be ready anytime, so grab a shower first
if you want.”

He rested his chin on her head and
drew a long breath. “You do smell a lot better than me. I’ll take you up on
that offer.”

By the time he emerged, she’d set
the table and made a salad to go along with the pasta, chicken and chile
combination. He pulled a beer from the fridge. Sam plopped into her chair,
hoping the meal would revive her.

“So . . . long day, huh.” She
watched as he scooped up a huge portion of the casserole.

“Seems that way. The latest was a
report of a grass fire up north. Not that my department has to deal with it,
but we get notified along with every other agency. BLM dispatched some
firefighters. I’m just hoping it doesn’t spread. There’s no forecast of rain in
sight.”

Poor thing—Sam felt for him—too
many things to keep track of.

“But I assume what you really want
to know is whether we’ve figured out who killed Carinda Carter.” He smiled at
her, knowing that she didn’t expect an answer this early on. It never went
quite that easily.

“I can tell you that the knife was
covered in prints. We identified Carinda’s and Bentley Day’s.”

Not surprising.

“But there were a zillion others,
none that we could identify.”

“Anyone involved in setting up the
festival could have had access to it,” she told him. “Plus who knows who might
have touched it before Bentley even brought it to town.”

“You’re right. I’m afraid the
weapon might not reveal much, from that standpoint.”

Sam sipped her wine.

“The autopsy results . . . not all
that helpful either,” Beau said. “The cause of death was definitely the knife
wound. The killer only had to take one stab at it, so to speak. Death was
instantaneous and probably happened only shortly before the body was found. The
whole thing probably transpired in a few seconds and the person just kept on
walking.”

Coolly enough to walk right back
into the ballroom and proceed to sell chocolates all day? Or to host the show
as though nothing at all was wrong? It would take a hard heart and a lot of
acting skill to pull that off.

“Bentley was out of sight when the
murder happened,” Sam said after telling Beau how rude the man had been at the
end of the day. “And he had another knife handy so the show could go on.”

“A fact that no one else probably
knew—in case the killer planned to frame him by using his knife. You did say
that it was in a box in the ballroom where at least fifty people had access to
it.”