Sweets Forgotten (Samantha Sweet Mysteries Book 10) (12 page)

“Okay, let’s say the thirteenth.
Did you go directly up to his room or meet somewhere else?”

“I met him in the hotel bar. It’s
this cushy place that’s supposed to look like some old English library or
something. I was told to approach him, to dress down, be classy.”

“Who told you?”

“Um …”

“We’ll contact Hilde Maya and ask
her.”

The name of her friend rattled
Krystal a little. “No, don’t do that. She didn’t know about Zack.”

“So, who set you up with him?”

Krystal stalled, glancing around
the room, shifting in her seat. “Okay, the deal was that I could
never
say who hired me.”

“That deal’s off. Don’t you get
it? You’re about this close to being arrested for murder. You got no deal with
anybody now, honey.”

Beau wondered if it was APD
policy to refer to a suspect as ‘honey.’ He suspected not, but sometimes you
broke a few little rules.

She fidgeted a little more.
“Okay, it was the wife.”

“Robinet’s wife? A wife hired you
to take her husband to bed.”

“Yeah.” She looked at him
frankly. “It’s not the weirdest request I ever got. She actually told me to get
him to fall in love with me if I could.”

Kent’s eyes met Beau’s above
Krystal’s head, exchanging a what-the-hell look.

“And you got to the hotel and
thought this would happen in one encounter.”

She shot him a don’t-be-stupid
expression. “Okay, so I didn’t quite tell it all. I’d been seeing Zack for a
few weeks. The plan was coming along and I was about to ask him if he would
leave her and we go off somewhere really cool together. I was thinking the
Virgin Islands or Bermuda or somewhere like that.”

“So you didn’t meet him in the
hotel bar,” Beau said.

“Oh, yeah, the first time I did.
Zack was pretty cool. He’d spend money on me and I really liked the Kingston
Arms. It’s a classy place. He was going to Vegas last weekend and promised to
take me along, but he would get me my own room. I couldn’t let his partner know
I was there. He had some big business show to do but said I could hang around
the pool or go shopping and put whatever I wanted on the room bill. I really,
really thought he was all into me.” Her voice cracked a little at this last
part, as if it was just now hitting her that Zack was truly gone.

“Let’s get back to the night you
were at the Kingston Arms. You and he were in a suite together,” Beau said,
watching her nod along with the statements. “The sex play maybe got a little
rough …”

She tilted her head. “Well,
sometimes he liked me to put my hands on his throat. Oh, god, were there
fingerprints? Is that why I’m here? Cause I swear I never did it very hard. He
didn’t stop breathing—I swear to that!”

Taylor switched topics. “Were
there drugs involved in your little party?”

“No. I don’t do that shit and
Zack said he didn’t either. Well, okay, there were a few times we smoked a
little pot. That’s not really a drug, is it? I mean it’s legal for a doctor to
give it to you, right?”

“All doctors do is give out
drugs,” Taylor pointed out. “It counts. But we’re talking about something else.
Was there heroin in that room?”

“I never saw any.” Her eyes were
wide now, as if the possibility of a drug charge was more dangerous to her than
a murder charge.

Taylor slammed his hands down on
the table. Krystal nearly jumped out of her chair and Beau even flinched.

“Zack Robinet died from a heroin
overdose. You were in the room with him. Did you give it to him or did he shoot
it himself?” The mild-mannered, middle aged cop was gone now, replaced by a man
who looked like he might burst a vessel in his head.

Krystal started to cry. “No, no,
I never saw no drugs in the suite. If Zack did it himself it was while I was
gone.” Her mascara had run nearly to her chin now and her face quickly became a
wet mess.

Beau seized the new lead and made
his voice gentle—playing good cop to Taylor’s bad one. He handed her a box of
tissues. “You left the room and came back? Maybe you better tell us about
that.”

She snuffled into the tissue for
a couple of minutes. Elaborately swabbing her lower eyelids she finally got her
voice under control again.

“We’d spent all day in the
bedroom—you know. And then about five o’clock we were getting hungry. Zack
suggested room service but I was really in the mood for pizza and they didn’t
have it. So I said I would run out and get one. There’s a Dion’s near there and
that’s my favorite. I got dressed and took my car.” She breathed deeply,
calming herself and getting the events in sequence.

“I picked up a large pepperoni
and came up the elevator. When I walked into the room, I told him ‘dinner is
served’ all elegant-like, you know. He—he didn’t answer me. I put the pizza on
the table in the living room area and went into the bedroom—” Her voice broke
again.

“He was in bed, still with no
clothes on, but he looked weird. Not like himself. I said his name again and
his face was just so … blank. I told him to quit kidding around and I shook
him. He was warm but he was dead.” A fresh flood of tears.

Beau wondered if this was the
first time in days she had acknowledged to herself what had happened.

“What did you do then?” he asked
gently.

“I … I got so scared. I thought
he had a heart attack or something and I knew paramedics or somebody would be
coming and I just couldn’t stick around. I mean, if I wasn’t going to get Vegas
or the Virgin Islands or anything at all … Well, I figured let the wife deal
with all of it. She’s the one who got me into this whole thing anyways.”

“Describe your actions,” Taylor
said, his tone far softer than five minutes ago.

“I thought of
CSI
and I got real scared they could
figure out I was there. I ran around the room and picked up the lacy little
teddy I’d worn earlier and grabbed my makeup bag. And then when I went through the
living room I knew my fingerprints would be on the pizza box so I took it with
me. I guess that’s about it. I drove away and threw my room key in the trash.
And the pizza. I couldn’t even think about eating it after that.”

“Did you check all the rooms and
closets in the suite? Could someone else have been there?”

“Oh my god!” Her eyes were huge.
“I never even thought of that. Somebody killed him. And they could have saw
me.”

She began to look a little
frantic.

“You’re safe here. But if you can
think of anyone who had a reason to kill Zack you need to tell us and do it
now. We can’t protect you from the killer if we don’t know who it is.”

She swore there was no one she
could think of and finally they had to let her go. Back in Kent Taylor’s car,
they took her to her own vehicle in the parking lot at The Scoreboard, then
followed her home to be sure she made it safely.

“Well, now it makes sense why
Josephine Robinet decided to disappear,” Taylor said on the way back out to
Beau’s place. “I’d say she’s our number one suspect now. Who else knew exactly
where Zack would be and could stage it to implicate the girl she, herself, had
paid to go there with him?”

Chapter
13

Chandler Lane met Beau and Sam at
the door of the funeral home, apparently taking the role of host. He seemed
haggard compared to their previous meeting at the offices of ChanZack
Innovations the day after Zack’s death. The shock, combined with the rigors of
a three-day trade show without the advantage of the business partner’s help.
His loss would continue to show up in a hundred ways, Beau imagined, as the
days went on.

“So glad you could make it,
Sheriff,” he said. “Are there any developments in your investigation?”

“We’ve got some leads. We’re
working the case systematically,” Beau replied.

He spotted George and Nancy
Robinet near a huge floral arrangement with a guestbook nearby. Solemn music
drifted through the doors leading to a chapel where people were already taking
seats on long pews. Beau steered Sam toward the parents to say hello. They
asked the same question and got the same answer.

“It’s hard to believe Josephine
hasn’t come back to town,” Nancy said.

George grumbled a little, Sam
catching something about ‘her type.’ Last night Beau and Kent had stayed up
fairly late discussing the case and going over details, especially the
bombshell news that Jo Robinet had hired Krystal to seduce and possibly steal
her husband. None of them could quite piece together any logical reason behind
such a plan. Of course, as Kent Taylor pointed out, Krystal’s whole story could
be pure b.s. too. Surely, the elder Robinets knew nothing of this.

The detective had brought his own
car to the funeral, planning to head back to Albuquerque as soon as he’d had
the chance to observe the crowd here. He already had men in Albuquerque talking
to the staff at the Kingston Arms and reviewing security tapes and keycard
usage to see if what the young woman said gelled with the facts. Sam didn’t see
him around; he must have already taken a seat inside the chapel.

A slightly built teenage boy
slouched across the room and came to stand beside the Robinets. They introduced
him as Bentlee, Zack’s son. He had the look of entitlement that was probably de
rigueur at exclusive boarding schools. Expensive suit, rebelliously unkempt
light brown hair to go with the down-your-nose attitude with which he regarded
Sam and Beau. Nancy reached out to take his hand but he sidestepped her before
she actually touched him.

Sam knew Kent Taylor had
questioned the teen back in Albuquerque, the day he’d been sent to inform the
boy of his father’s death. Taylor’s impression was that this kid was no
stranger to drugs—he’d practically bragged that kids in his school could get
anything they wanted whenever they wanted it. But Bentlee had been genuinely
surprised to learn that his father had died from a heroin overdose, Taylor was
sure of that. So much for the possibility father and son had done drugs
together. Provided Krystal’s version of the events of that day was
substantiated by the hotel’s video records, it looked fairly certain Bentlee
wasn’t a suspect.

“Oh, it’s exactly like her to
skip out,” the teen was saying in response to someone else’s question about his
mother. “If it was important to my dad, she hated it. She never supported
anything he did, and it’s no wonder she can’t be bothered to come to his
funeral.”

Sam wanted to wipe the sneer off
his pugnacious little face, just on the principle that kids should be
respectful toward the adults in their lives. She took a breath. Thankfully, he
was not her problem. This could be evidence of one more crack in the Robinet
marriage. It was sad how often bickering parents recruited the kids to take
sides.

People continued to pour into the
lobby and the Robinets became quickly distracted by friends and sympathizers.
Beau moved off, probably to touch base with Kent Taylor, and Sam decided to
sign the guest book.

“Hey, Sam. I didn’t expect to see
you here.” She turned to see Darryl Chartrain, Zoë’s husband.

“Beau. Work.”

He nodded understanding.

“I didn’t know you knew the
Robinet family, either,” she said.

“Me? I did a big remodeling job
at their offices a couple years ago, became a huge fan of the game Zack and
Chandler invented.”

Seriously? Sam always imagined
online gaming as the domain of teenage boys and nerdy young men. Darryl,
gray-haired contractor with a successful business and partner in the B&B
with Zoë, did not at all seem the type. You just never knew.

“Well,” he continued, “that plus
the fact that George and Nancy used to be neighbors before they moved to their
new place. We knew Zack as a teen, before he and Jo married.”

“Is Zoë here?”

“She wanted to come but we had a
houseful of guests last night and she needed to stay home to see them off.
They’re heading toward Pike’s Peak this afternoon.”

Another of Darryl’s neighbors
grabbed his attention and Sam turned to look for Beau. True to form, he was
standing near the entrance to the chapel, smiling and nodding at those he
recognized. Behind his pleasant demeanor she could tell he was processing
information relentlessly, memorizing faces and making mental notes he and Kent
could discuss. It couldn’t be easy to treat every occasion as a grab-bag of
clues to be sorted and used in his job. Sam said hello to a few of her bakery
customers as she edged toward her husband.

“I’ll find seats for us,” she
said under her breath. “Near the back?”

“Thanks.” He shook hands with a
man who approached just then.

Sam spotted Kent Taylor sitting
alone at the end of a pew in the north corner of the big room. Assuming Beau
would want to cover the opposite side the room, she found two spaces along the
south wall and staked out spots there. Already, the chapel was nearly full.
Popular guy, this Zack Robinet. Many familiar faces in the crowd. Sam marveled
at how closely their lives may have touched upon each other and yet even in
this small town the two families had never met.

She settled in for the ritual of
the service, monotonously sad music setting the mood with the kind of tunes
that brought back unhappy memories from other such occasions. She wondered how
funeral directors handled it—avoided becoming depressed around so much grief
and gloom every day of their lives. Maybe the same way Beau did it, approaching
each day as a job to be done.

At some point the doors closed
and he took his seat beside her, reaching for her hand with a little smile,
squeezing it when a burst of sobs erupted from the front section where Nancy
Robinet sat next to her husband. Sam couldn’t imagine what it would be like to
lose her only child, especially the way these people had. If she allowed those
thoughts into her head she would be a puddle of tears in no time. Instead, she
let her mind wander back to the discussion of suspects that had kept Beau and
Kent going last night. That quickly became a tangle of statements by people Sam
didn’t know, and she turned her thoughts to things she could control—the order
of fine chocolates which Jane was, even now, working on at the bakery.

Sam let herself envision the
special ingredient she would add to a batch later, the thing that made her
chocolates irresistible to her customers. A smile formed on her face until she
realized how inappropriate that would seem to anyone who might look her
direction. The final prayer began and she bowed her head, sneaking a peek at
Beau who openly observed people in the crowd. She squeezed his hand once more.

Eventually, talk ended and
movement began as the mourners began making their way to the front to offer
condolences to the family. Sam hung back with Beau. Somehow, Kent Taylor had
gotten past them and now hovered near the doorway at the front of the room
where those in the receiving line had to exit.

“So, is that it for your part?”
she asked Beau.

“I think Kent wants to go along
to the cemetery. Some clue might emerge depending on who shows up there.” He
watched her face. “I get the feeling you’re eager to get back to work?”

“Well, yeah. But I can go along
with you. There’s nothing crucial right now.”

“Do whatever you want. I’m sure
Kent and I can handle the crowd. Afterward, I’ll probably let the department
treat him to lunch before he heads back to Albuquerque and I get on with my
interrogations.”

Movement behind her caught Sam’s
attention, someone else ducking out of the condolence line and heading for the
rear door. The woman disappeared the moment Sam turned her head, the hem of a
long plaid coat the only real look she got. Something seemed very familiar
about the person, but Sam couldn’t think why. Earlier, she had spotted a number
of people she knew but the clothing didn’t match with any of them. She shook
off the feeling. It wasn’t as if it mattered anyway.

She realized Beau was looking at
her, waiting for an answer about lunch, it seemed.

“It’s simpler if I stick with
you,” she said, “since we rode together.”

They met up with Kent Taylor in
the parking lot and decided to take a back way to the cemetery without becoming
caught up in the long and slow funeral procession.

“You never know,” Taylor said.
“Watching people come and go from things like this can be fairly enlightening.”

It took thirty minutes for the
entire crowd to make the ten-minute drive, park and assemble again once Zack’s
coffin had been carried from the hearse and set in place. Sam’s patience was
showing severe strain and she really wished she’d asked Beau to detour by her
shop and drop her off at work. She shifted from one foot to the other as the
non-denominational minister uttered more of the same tired phrases he’d said
back at the chapel. About the time she was thinking of a way to conceal a yawn
she heard a ripple pass along the edge of the crowd.

There, not more than twenty feet
away, was the woman she’d noticed earlier. There could only be one of those
plaid coats anywhere in the state.

“It’s her!” someone nearby said.

“Yes!” The stage-whisper
attracted more attention than if the word had been uttered aloud.

Sam’s attention locked onto the
bulky coat, the gray hair and lopsided felt hat. Someone plucked at the woman’s
sleeve and the coat slipped off her shoulder. The stranger’s expression became
instantly familiar.

“Jane!” The name slipped out
before Sam realized she’d said it. “What are you doing—?”

“It’s Jo!” Others called out the
name. “Jo Robinet!”

She spun, trying to slip out of
the coat and run but her clunky shoes caught on tree roots hidden in the grass
and she stumbled. The cheap gray wig went lopsided on her head as the hat fell
to the ground. Beau was there in an instant, taking her arm and not letting go.

“Josephine Robinet?” he queried.

Sam rushed to his side and stared
the woman in the face. Their Jane Doe could no longer hide her identity.