Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (5 page)

“So! I’ll go get my husband fed,
and I’ll see you in a day or so, whenever you want to drop off those posters at
my shop.” She beat a path around the side of the building and got her van in
gear as fast as she could.

Beau wasn’t home when she arrived
so she set about her plan for putting him back in a good mood. His favorite
fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans—just the way his mother had always
made for his birthday. Everything was nearly ready when he came in, and she gave
him a glass of his favorite Scotch before putting the food on the table.

“I’m guessing by the look on your
face that you didn’t accomplish much at the courthouse,” she said as she handed
him the potatoes.

“I got a little lecture from the
judge, along the lines of ‘don’t waste the court’s time with questions you
already know the answers to’.”

“But you were just—”

“He was right. No law has actually
been broken yet. I knew that. With that contract the Flower People have the
right to go onto Mulvane’s land. Until they come onto our place they aren’t
trespassing. Until they cause damage, they can’t be cited for that either.”

She reached out and squeezed his
hand.

“If I were being called out to
anyone else’s land this is exactly what I would have told them. I jumped the
gun by going to the judge, so I guess I’m grumpy because he called me on it. He
did drop the hint that it would be perfectly within my jurisdiction to post a
couple of uniformed officers out here, to keep an eye on things and to catch them
in the act if they get out of hand.” He sighed. “Like I have the manpower for
that. I have one more approach to try, but it would have to involve a different
judge.”

Sam nibbled at her chicken.

“And then there goes my whole
weekend,” he said. “I had the days off, and I was planning to help you at the
festival.”

“Really? You would do that?”

“It was a thought.” He smiled, the
one that had originally made her fall in love.

“Well, play it by ear. Maybe the
hippies won’t cause any trouble at all.”

Whether it was the fried chicken
dinner or the kind words, Sam didn’t know. She did know that he was in an
amorous mood later and they made it an early bedtime. When she woke up before
her alarm the next morning, feeling unbelievably refreshed, she decided to get
an early start at the bakery.

Two wedding cakes and eight dozen
molded chocolates later, Sam looked up in surprise when Jen peered through the
curtain from the sales room.

“A lady’s here, asking about
someone on your festival committee . . . I think. I’m not really sure what she
wants.”

Sam didn’t recognize the tall,
blonde woman who stood in the front of the shop, eyeing the display of cakes in
the front window. City dweller, was Sam’s first impression. Designer shoes with
six-inch heels, a deep red dress that fit her slim body perfectly, a haircut
and color job that had to have cost a couple hundred at least. No one in Taos
dressed like that.

“Hi, Ms. Sweet? I’m Kaycee
Archer.” She held out a hand with hundred dollar nails on it. No, definitely
not from around here. “I’m sorry to interrupt your work, but I’m looking for
someone that I believe is here in Taos.”

And I’m the logical person to have this information?

“I was told that she’s involved
with an upcoming festival and that you’re the person heading it up. Her name’s
Carinda Carter.”

“I do know her.”

“Wonderful! I need to contact her
on another matter. I suppose you would have an address or phone number for
her?”

Sam almost pulled out her phone to
recite the number stored there but something held her back. For all she knew,
this city slicker was selling insurance or cosmetics or something like that.

“If you’ll give me your card, I’ll
be sure to pass it along to her when I see her again.”

Kaycee didn’t seem thrilled with
that plan but she pulled a pen from the tiny purse hanging by a thin cord from
her shoulder. She reached for a napkin near the cash register and scribbled a
number on it. “Tell her the call will be financially beneficial to her.”

Hmm. Insurance, it was.

Sam took the napkin and watched
the woman walk out and get into a nondescript sedan parked in front of the
bookshop next door. She started to crumple the napkin but thought better of it.
The decision wasn’t hers to make. Carinda could easily throw the saleslady’s
number away herself.

“Nice shoes,” Jen said.
“Completely impractical. But nice.” She gave that if-only-I-lived-in-a-city
sigh that wasn’t uncommon around here.

Sam sent her a smile. “Since I’m
out of the kitchen already, I think I’ll run out to the Bella Vista Hotel and
go over some things with the manager. Carinda Carter may stop by with a stack
of posters. She’s the skinny one with auburn hair. If so, you can give her
this.” She plunked the napkin down by the register. “The posters can go in
back, beside my desk, please.”

“No problemo,” Jen said with a
smile. “You have fun out there.”

Sam gathered her backpack, her
folder of notes pertaining to the vendors, along with a tape measure and blank
notepad.

The Bella Vista Hotel had once
been a Taos showplace, with a driveway that swept up to a sturdy adobe porte-cochere,
acres of manicured lawns and ancient cottonwood trees that thrived on the
moisture from the Rio Fernando running behind the property. The design was
Southwest-meets-Art-Deco, where a lobby with high ceiling formed the perfect focal
point as one approached. Two-story wings flanked this central feature, rooms
designed so that each small balcony had privacy plus a view of either the
river, the gardens or the woods.

Over the years motel chains had
come to town, eclipsing the classy old grand dame with their closer proximity
to the middle of town, plentifully mundane rooms and cheaper prices. The Bella
Vista had gone through hard times but kept its integrity as a place for the
genteel and the art set. In times past it had claimed such luminaries as
Georgia O’Keefe and D.H. Lawrence as guests. Rupert, as a member of that crowd,
had no doubt called in some kind of favor in order to get the owners to allow the
chocolate festival. Sam couldn’t honestly remember there ever being such a public
event here.

She parked in a lot that was
discreetly screened from view by a row of high arbor vitae, consulted her notes
and went in search of Auguste Handler, the manager. As it turned out, he stood
behind the hotel’s front desk, watching over the shoulder of a young clerk as
the girl typed at a keyboard. Handler could have been anywhere between thirty and
fifty, with perfectly trimmed dark hair, a pudgy face, and impeccably aligned ultra-white
teeth. His dark suit seemed more in line with the attire of a metro male lawyer
than a small town manager in the hospitality field, but apparently the outfit
was in keeping with the image the Bella Vista wanted to portray.

Sam introduced herself and didn’t
merely imagine the critical glance directed toward her white baker’s jacket.

“I’d like to take some
measurements in the ballroom,” she told him, “and maybe you can show me the
outdoor area we’ll be using.”

“I will take you out to the
gardens first,” he said, aiming his polite smile just a tad over her shoulder.
Not exactly a warm and friendly kind of guy; maybe she should have brought
Rupert with her to butter him up.

Handler led the way through a side
door and down a cloistered walkway until they came to a wide, graveled path
that bisected the spacious lawn.

“We must insist that foot traffic
stay to the gravel and the walkways. It’s nearly impossible to keep a lawn
intact in these dry conditions, much less one that has been trampled to
oblivion.” He pointed to one narrow area where his criteria could be met.

Sam took in the layout, the sun
directly overhead, the forbidden grassy spaces. To effectively guarantee that
crowds of people wouldn’t trample the landscaping, they would need to erect
fences or ropes and put up signs. This didn’t look promising.

“May I see the ballroom now?”

She followed him back to the heavy
glass doors through which they’d come, then down a wide corridor. He paused at
a set of carved wood doors that were easily twelve feet tall and pushed inward
on one of them. The deco theme was prevalent here with parquet floors, metal
and glass wall sconces, massive pillars and art-glass chandeliers. She could
practically see dancers in long, flowing skirts whirling to an orchestral
waltz.

Pulling out her tape measure, she
held it up. “Mind if I take some measurements?”

He spread his arms, palms upward,
in a be-my-guest manner. “I will be at the desk, if you have any questions.”

Okay, she thought, stretching the
tape along the north wall, where high windows were draped with gold silk swags.
Making lines and jotting measurements on her notepad, she sketched out the
rectangular room. Booths could easily line most of the four walls, except where
exit doors came in on the south wall and a service door, probably to the
kitchen, was tucked into a corner of the east wall. She could also place a row
of vendors along the center of the room, with breaks for the large pillars.

The committee had planned on
allowing forty vendors, wanting as much variety as possible and giving everyone
who wanted to sell their products the chance to do so. No matter what she did,
no more than twenty-five booths were going to fit into this room. She wandered
back to the garden and stared out over the pathway and lawn. Overhead, the sun
blazed down and Sam could envision chocolate creations running down the fronts
of table skirts and onto the ground—customers buying nothing and unhappy
vendors. A sure way for the festival to get bad reviews in the press and ill
will from the populace. She felt a headache coming on.

Back inside, she contemplated the
ballroom again. A standard booth size was normally ten feet wide, but if she
reworked that a bit and tweaked the placement . . . She called Kelly.

“How many vendors are signed up so
far?”

“Twenty-three, I think.” Pages
rustled in the background. “Yep, that’s it.”

Sam stared at her sketch and made
an executive decision. “Pull the ad calling for more, and tell anyone else who
inquires that we’re full.”

Rather than taking on the agony of
crowd control out there on the lawns, not to mention the grief she would get
from vendors who didn’t like their choice of site—indoors or out—she could
simply limit the number to however many she could crowd into this room. That
would be it. Double-checking her measurements, she paced off the booths and was
even able to allow for a space at the west end of the room where they could
erect a small platform to use for presentation of the prizes. The sponsor,
Qualitätsschokolade
, would be pleased to
have that area for its advertisements.

She reviewed the sketch and felt satisfied.
She would need to sit down with Kelly and go over the specific applications,
decide placement of each booth, but at least this was a great start.

She found Auguste Handler—as
promised—at the front desk.

“I think I have it all worked out
and we’ll only be using the ballroom, not the garden,” she told him. “I will
need access early Thursday morning, so I can mark off the vendor spaces. The
vendors will begin setting up from noon onward that day.”

He nodded, leaving a little expectant
pause in the air.

“Ah, the check. I’ll just—” Sam
rummaged in her bag.

Handler stood there with the
composed patience of his class, while Sam scribbled out the amount Rupert had
told her. As she was ripping the check from her checkbook her phone rang. She
pushed the check across the desk, thanked Mr. Handler and walked toward the
exit as she pulled out her phone, noting that the call was from Sweet’s Sweets.

Becky’s voice was shaking so badly
Sam could barely understand her.

“The pueblos—for the festival—”

“What’s happened, Becky? Calm
down.”

But the explanation was
incoherent.

“Hang on. I can be there in
fifteen minutes,” Sam said. She started her van and tried not to imagine too
large a disaster awaiting her.

Chapter
5

Sam arrived at the bakery to find
Julio working on one of the metal storage racks with a wrench, Becky sitting at
Sam’s desk with a cup of tea and red-rimmed eyes, and Jen picking up decorating
tools and broken ceramic wedding cake toppers. Becky’s eyes welled with tears
when she saw Sam.

“Are you all right?” Sam rushed to
her side and looked her over for injuries.

“I’m okay but I am
so
sorry! I don’t know what happened.”

Sam could pretty well figure it
out. She’d been meaning to empty that rack and repair the shaky leg on it for
some time. Since it meant unloading hundreds of little items and reorganizing
the whole thing, she hadn’t yet found a minute to do it.

Becky set her tea aside and stood
up. “I just reached for the plastic bin with the bottles of edible glitter but
that shelf was a bit over my head. I should have stood on a stool. This is the
worst of it.” She showed Sam the remains of the pueblo chocolates—some intact,
many broken in pieces, lying among a litter of the small cardboard boxes in
which they would have been sold.

A solid rock went to the pit of
Sam’s stomach. All that work. At home she might have claimed the
five-second-rule and picked them up, but there was no way she could sell these
in her business. Her license would be gone in moments even though the bakery
floor was probably cleaner than in most hospitals.

“Let’s see if any of the boxes can
be salvaged,” she said. “Unfortunately, the chocolate has to go.”

A vision of the wooden box flashed
through her head. In times past, faced with insurmountable deadlines, she had
used its energy burst to perform some amazing things. But none of the employees
knew that. She had to go carefully here.