Sweets Galore: The Sixth Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (15 page)

“I need the order page for that
cake we did last week, the audition piece,” Sam said.

She went to her desk and rummaged
through the folder of finished orders. Valentino’s order was near the top and
she jotted down the phone number he’d given. While she was trying to decide
what approach to take when she talked to him, her phone rang.

“Sam? I’m so sorry to bother you
with this now,” Zoë said. “I just looked at my bookings. I’m full up all week,
starting tonight, people who booked months ago.”

“Explain it to my mother. She’ll
understand.”

“Shall I send them to a hotel?”

Oh boy. After what she’d put them
through already . . . Sam couldn’t add insult to injury. “I’ll have to clear
space in Iris’s old room, but that’s doable. Have them pack up their stuff and
I’ll figure out something by this afternoon.”

When, exactly, that would happen
Sam had no idea. It was already after two and she had the meeting with Mark
Nelson at three. And she needed to squeeze in a quick visit to Vic Valentino if
she could find him. She dialed his number.

“Victor Garcia’s residence,” a
young-sounding female voice said.

“I’m trying to reach Vic
Valentino. Do I have the right number?”

“Oh my god, yes! You must be from
You’re The Star
. He
really
needs this call. He was so upset the other night. He thought
your judge rejected him, but now if you’re calling back . . .”

This was one of those instances
where giving the truthful response wasn’t going to get her what she needed.

“I’d like to meet very quickly,”
she said. “Could I come by the house? I just need directions.”

And just that fast, she had a way
to find Valentino. She pulled up in front of the apartment the girl had
described, a two-story tan stucco building full of sliding doors and narrow
iron-railed balconies painted turquoise. The Del Ray Apartments might have once
been a cheap motel, for all the building’s charm. Unit 1-J was on the ground
floor at the west end. A skinny sidewalk led to a courtyard of sorts, one that
might have once been landscaped but now consisted of gravel and a few spiky
agave plants that could gore you to death if you came home drunk one night. Sam
tapped at the door.

Vic Valentino opened it and his
smile drooped. “You’re the bakery lady. Maria said you were from the show.”

“Well, I didn’t quite say that,”
Sam said. How much should she tell him? “I said I needed to talk to you
about
the show.”

“Oh my god, I’m getting a second
chance!”

Vic backed into the apartment and
Sam followed, closing the door behind her. He paced the floor of the miniscule
living room, taking three lengths of it in under a minute, mumbling something
about what he would wear.

“Will this audition be for a
different judge?” he asked, coming to halt in front of her. “One of those
pretty girls I saw? I think I’d have better luck with female judges. Maybe one
of them would see my performance now.”

He must be talking about Evie and
Kelly, who were both standing on the sidewalk with Jake when Vic received the grand
rejection. Of course, he didn’t know that Sam knew about that.

She shook her head. “Vic, I don’t
really have any inside information about the show itself. I was just wondering
whether you ever got the chance to sing for Mr. Calendar.”

“I tried to.” He told her that
he’d met up with Jake outside the hotel, glossing over the details that Kelly
had told her, not mentioning the cake at all. “He was kind of busy at the
time.”

“Did you make another appointment
to see him again after that?”

“I tried. I hung around the lobby
of the La Fonda the next day. I thought about trying to take him another bakery
present.”

Her interest perked up. “Did you?
Take him something?”

“Nah, I chickened out. He didn’t
exactly appreciate the cake like I thought he would. The guy turned out to be a
total asshole.”

Clearly he didn’t like the way
Jake had treated him—who wouldn’t be resentful of that?— but Sam didn’t detect
the kind of anger that would drive Vic Valentino, or Garcia or whatever his
name really was, to kill. This guy still had grand hopes for getting on the
talent show. She would see if anything turned up on Beau’s background check
before completely writing him off. She talked her way out of Valentino’s needy
clutches and drove away from the Del Ray Apartments, deciding to cut through on
Bent Street to reach Mark Nelson’s law office without having to drive through
Plaza traffic.

Shoppers filled the sidewalks
along the narrow street and Sam slowed, knowing that in tourist mode it wasn’t
uncommon for some little old man to step out into traffic to get a picture of a
crumbling adobe wall. A bright pink sweater caught her attention and she
realized that the young woman filling it was none other than Evie Madsen.

Evie, it seemed, wasn’t wasting a
lot of time grieving for Jake. She was laughing at something a man next to her
must have said. A horn tooted behind Sam’s truck and she picked up her pace a
little. So Evie was still in town.

Sam turned right at the next
intersection, drove a block, and found the law office. Sitting in the parking
lot she quickly dialed Beau’s cell.

“I spotted Evie,” she said,
telling him where the girl had been walking.

“Good. When I called the hotel
they couldn’t tell me if she was still staying there. I’ll cruise around and
see if I can pick her up and have a little chat.”

Sam described Evie and her
clothing, then gave him a heads-up on her parents’ impending stay. “I better
get to that meeting with Nelson now, but I’ll go home after that and make the
room ready for them,” she told him.

From the street the offices of
Nelson and
Gravitz
looked like any of a hundred other
traditional adobe buildings in Taos. Mud brown walls, wood framed windows
painted blue, wrought iron lettering spelling out the name of the firm. Inside,
Sam discovered, the attorneys had given themselves the creature comforts that
come with success. Deep leather sofas and chairs in the waiting room, heavy
Mexican desks, custom crafted end tables, pricey art by Gorman and Peña. It was
a man’s world, one meant to let the client know why he was the loser and his
attorney was the winner in life’s lottery. Through their brilliance, this
successful team would save you from prison and line their own pockets handily.

She hoped her own case would be
resolved for less than the cost of a Gorman painting, realizing with a jolt
that if the prosecutor really pressed it, she might have to sell her house to
save her life.

She managed a wan smile at the
sleek receptionist who greeted her. When the girl left to announce her, Sam
blinked hard and gave herself a little pep talk. Financial ruin wasn’t in her
future. She and Beau would find out the truth.

She hoped.

“Samantha, good to see you again,
under better circumstances this time. Did Chloe offer you some tea?”

“Thank you, no,” Sam said.
No way I’m spending time on chit-chat with
someone who costs nearly ten bucks a minute.

She followed Mark Nelson through a
series of hallways which revealed a number of small offices and a lot more
employees than she would have imagined. By the time they reached his private
office and she’d taken a seat, she’d probably spent fifty dollars.

On the drive over, she’d thought
of telling him exactly what she and Beau planned to do but decided against it.
One, he might try to talk her out of doing anything and, two, she didn’t want
to pay to hear herself talk. She was here to get her hands on whatever
information the Taos Police might have against her.

Nelson hesitated when she asked to
see the file but he finally pulled it out. “If you were ever close to the
victim, Sam, you won’t want to see the photos. Death by poisoning isn’t
pretty.”

“Beau will want copies,” she said.
“I’ll settle for letting him look them over. Mainly, I’d like to know exactly
what the police have that they feel warranted charging me with this crime.”

“It’s largely circumstantial,”
Nelson said as he flipped through some pages. “Cupcake from your shop, your
prints on the bag, poison that you had readily at your disposal, and the big
fight you had with the victim.”

She didn’t spend time refuting or
explaining. That could happen if they ever had to prepare for a trial. Right
now, she and Beau needed leads—any leads.

“The firm has a private
investigator who handles the sort of thing you want to do,” he explained. “He’s
a professional.”

The tone said ‘leave it alone’ but
she wasn’t listening. Beau was better at investigating than ninety percent of
the local PIs, and he had a vested interest in getting this solved quickly.

“Just the copies, please. That’s
all I need for now. We can plan strategy later, once we know everything we’re
dealing with.” She offered up a wide smile with the request.

He stalled with more
friendly-sounding advice, but she held her ground until he called an assistant
in to begin copying the contents of the folder.

Chapter
13

“
Darlin
’
I’m proud of you,” Beau said with a grin when she handed over the attorney’s
folder. “I half expected him to pat you on the head and tell you to get your
beauty sleep and just leave the heavy lifting to him.”

“He did. But I karate-chopped his
hand and then sat on him.”

He laughed out loud; it was the
first time in two days she’d heard that cherished sound. The two of them were
in his mother’s former bedroom, stowing boxes of her things that they hadn’t
sorted since she passed away in January, making closet space, dusting
furniture. Sam had stripped the bed linens and found fresh ones in the closet.
A candle and some flowers, and the room would be as nice for her parents’ visit
as any hotel. She couldn’t match Zoë’s fabulous breakfasts but she had a
sneaking feeling her mother was about to commandeer her kitchen anyway.
Biscuits and gravy for breakfast were her specialty; Sam thought of her
waistline again and vowed to avoid them.

“I think I heard a vehicle,” Beau
said, walking to the bedroom door to peer out the front windows. He looked back
at Sam. “Ready for this?”

She bundled up the old sheets and
dashed to the laundry room beyond the kitchen.

“Woo-
hoo
,
anyone home?” came Nina Rae’s voice.

Sam took a breath, put on a smile
and walked out to greet their first houseguests.

“Now I don’t want
ya’ll
to worry about supper tonight,” Nina Rae said,
holding up a supermarket bag. “We’ve got it all covered. Roasted chicken, sweet
corn, and I bought the ingredients to make my famous coleslaw.”

Sam’s smile went plastic. The
famous coleslaw was something of a family joke, as no one other than her mother
actually liked it. She would have to warn Beau to take a small serving or be
sure one of the dogs was sitting nearby.

Nina Rae bustled into the kitchen
and began taking items from her shopping bag. Sam looked at the clock. Her dad
would be ready for happy hour. Although Sam was itching to get on with the
investigation she put the desire on hold long enough to get through drinks,
dinner and an evening of chit-chat.

Beau’s phone rang twice during the
second of the
Seinfeld
reruns. Nina
Rae cackled at the inside jokes while Howard dozed in one of the recliners.
Beau excused himself each time and took the calls in the kitchen. When the
second one came Sam sneaked in there too.

Beau thanked the caller and turned
to Sam.

“Tustin Deor is in town,
registered at the La Fonda.”

“So, apparently this whole
You’re The Star
thing is for real,” Sam
said. “I halfway believed that Jake was just blowing smoke, trying to get money
from me for who knows what reason.”

“I’ll do some more background on
Deor when I can get to my computer at the office. A basic search online just
lists his publicist’s version of his bio—movie credits and such—which I suspect
may be just a little inflated. Once I have more facts about him, I’ll stop by
and question him a little, find out how things were between him and Jake.”

“Tustin and Evie could leave town
any day, couldn’t they?”

“Apparently there’s a press
conference tomorrow afternoon. I don’t know what he’s announcing but it must be
related to the show.”

So, basically, Sam thought, we
might
have twenty-four hours in which
to gather information about the people Jake was hanging around with, before
they scatter and leave the state.

“Hey, you two,” Nina Rae said. “I
was wondering where
ya’ll
got off to. How about we
get up a little domino game? It’d keep your daddy awake until the ten o’clock
news.”

Sam couldn’t remember the last
time she’d watched the late news. With a schedule that included getting up at
four-thirty, six mornings a week, bedtime in her home came pretty early. She’d
forgotten how her parents’ routine never varied. She stifled a yawn and gamely
agreed to find the dominoes.

She flubbed most of her plays and
fell way behind, but winning meant more to her mother, so Sam let it happen.
Across the table, Beau kept making eye contact and she knew there was something
he wanted to tell her. When the opening strains of the network news theme came
on, they left the elder Sweets to it and said goodnight.

“I wanted to tell you about that
other phone call I got tonight,” Beau said as they were brushing their teeth at
the double sinks in the master bath. “The police have found Jake Calendar’s
brother and he’s coming to town to pick up Jake’s belongings. Tomorrow.”

“Will you get a chance to talk to
him?”

“I hope so. It would be nice to
know what else was going on in Jake’s life. There are millions of people out
there beyond Taos, and I can’t help but think his death might not have anything
to do with this little town at all.”