Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery (16 page)

Outside, she put a rake and some other garden
tools into the back of Zoe’s Subaru and headed toward the Martinez
place.

No yard had ever been raked so vigorously.
She had a lot of energy to work off—thoughts of her conversation
with Rupert last night, the sexual energy surrounding Beau, Kelly’s
continued presence in her house, and the unexplained phenomenon of
the wooden box. She shook off the images and scraped leaves into
several piles. By the time she’d bagged them her shakiness began to
subside. Practicality took over and she realized that she’d not
eaten anything all day. Food would help.

She stacked the leaf bags beside the house,
to be hauled away next time she came by with her truck. A chicken
sandwich on the way home gave her a shot of energy. Back home, she
quickly offloaded the tools and placed a clean sheet over the floor
of the hatchback’s cargo area.

After a quick shower and change of clothes,
she found Kelly, who gave her a hand with the wedding cake. They
lifted off the top tier and made space for everything that went
along with setup at the reception site. Sam draped a filmy sheet of
plastic over the whole thing and was on her way.

There was something about having an
almost-two hour road trip ahead. Her earlier good spirits after the
morning encounter with Beau and the sense of accomplishment at
finishing work at the Martinez house began to deflate as Sam
thought more about what Rupert had told her last night about
Cantone’s estate.

She couldn’t get past the idea that his
nephew showed up so conveniently and that the great artist had died
within such a short time. Now the nephew was living a life of
riches. She just couldn’t think of a way to prove anything against
him. At best he might have simply been a guy who was in the right
place at the right time. At worst, he might be a murderer.

There. She’d said it.

Once the word got into her head it wasn’t
leaving. She chided herself for focusing so exclusively on Bart
Killington, though. According to Betty McDonald there were plenty
of other people who didn’t much like Pierre Cantone. Money and
territory were often at the root of conflicts, and she’d personally
found two instances where Cantone had made someone angry. Leonard
Trujillo, the neighbor who was ready to go to court over a few feet
of land. What if the court had ruled against him and he decided to
take out his anger on Cantone personally? Or the guy in town with
that IOU for four hundred dollars—he too could have decided to take
matters into his own hands. It was just that she couldn’t come up
with a likely way that any of the three men could have given him
the pneumonia that caused his death. And who else might be out
there who had a grievance with the artist?

Sam thought about it until she pulled into
the wide driveway of Casa de Tranquilidad. Opening the hatch on the
car and looking again at the wedding cake reminded her what life
was really about. The cake, frankly, turned out beautifully. She
hoped it would be one of the memorable parts of someone’s wedding
day. Baking and delivering beautiful things for people was the most
positive part of her day, of her work in general. The minute she
could get away from cleaning houses and repairing worn-down
properties, she would do it. She fixed a picture of the storefront
of Sweet’s Sweets in her head and resolved to hold onto it.

She walked into the big resort’s lobby,
headed toward the ballroom, borrowed a wheeled cart from the
kitchen staff and headed back to the car. A bellman helped lift the
heavy lower tiers on their cake board and set it onto the cart. The
smaller two tiers for the top fit nicely in place. She headed down
the hall with it. The ballroom doors were closed again and she was
just debating how to manage the doors and the cart when a voice
piped up behind her.

“Hi again. Can I give you a hand with that?”
It was the woman Sam had met on her last trip here, Charlie Parker.
“Wow, beautiful cake!”

The maitre d’ appeared just then and held the
doors while Sam steered the cart inside.

“Oh,
there
you are,” said a woman in a
blue suit, the wedding planner no doubt.

“Where does this go?”

“Ah, well, the hotel staff haven’t set up the
cake table yet. Let’s just park the cart off to the side and you
can set it up after awhile.”

How long a while, Sam wondered. She stood
around for twenty minutes but no one seemed very organized. So,
what to do? Trust that someone else could set up the cake, secure
the top tiers firmly, and not touch the wrong spot and ruin
something? Grrr.

Finally, she snagged the wedding planner
again but the woman was interrupted three times by phone calls
coming into the little headset thing she wore, like some kind of
rock star diva.

Sam stood around, staring at the pictures on
the walls, for another fifteen minutes. Looking at
impressionist-style art made her think again of Pierre Cantone and
that led her to the fact that several of his paintings were hanging
in his nephew’s house right now. He’d claimed there was a will but
was content to bury his uncle in the backyard and leave him there.
And if that young man had killed his uncle for the valuable art, it
couldn’t be ignored. She felt her fingers start to twitch. What if
she just took a peek?

The blue-lady bustled past her again and Sam
practically stuck her foot out to stop her. “Don’t let anyone touch
that cake,” she said. “I have an errand to do and I’ll be back to
set it up in about a half hour.”

What was she thinking?

Before she could talk too much sense into her
own head, she rushed out to the car and took off. Bart Killington’s
house wasn’t that far away. She remembered the turns they’d made
the other day and followed them. She would simply ask him to show
her his uncle’s will. Or, she might say that she’d been in contact
with the Taos County Sheriff’s office and they had questions about
the will. That sounded better. But what if he called up there to
verify her story? She’d be in big doo-doo with Beau and not just on
a personal basis. There was surely some law against what she was
about to do. Still, she drove on.

Halfway up the hill on Bart’s road she
spotted a car coming toward her. The green Jag. Bart was heading
toward the city. She turned her head slightly and raised a hand to
scratch her nose, obscuring her face from his view. He didn’t even
glance her way. She watched until he’d rounded a curve in the
road.

Sam, it’s now or never.

She accelerated up the hill and debated what
to do next. Actually, she gave herself over to very little debate.
At this point the only thing that would accomplish her goal was
rash action. She pulled up his steep driveway, circled the portico
and faced the car outward. She hadn’t noticed a housekeeper or
anyone else around the place the other day but her mind raced
through a story that she would give if someone answered. She’d play
the part of a secretary from the law firm handling the will and she
needed a copy for their files, because the original had somehow
become misplaced/damaged/shredded. She took a deep breath and
stepped out of the car.

The front door chimes rang through a very
hollow-sounding house. No response.

She placed a hand on the latch and gave it a
try. It didn’t just magically swing open. She eyed the lockset. How
easy
that
would be. But she’d brought no tools, no picks. It
wasn’t going to happen.

Walking around the side of the house, Sam saw
that landscapers had been hard at work, although they must have
left for the day. A huge hole in the ground, criss-crossed with
rebar strips, indicated that a pool was underway. Shovels stuck up
out of dirt piles, boulders lay in haphazard stacks. She scanned
the whole area and didn’t see anyone. But she did see a low window
that didn’t appear securely latched.

With cupped hands she peered into the room
beyond. A study, with a desk covered in papers. Right there. Just
for the taking. Bart was a real fool, she decided. Without a second
thought she raised the window and crawled through. No alarm
sounded. A door opened into a long hall, and she took a quick peek
just to be sure that there wasn’t some maid standing there with a
hefty dustmop in her hands.

Nothing.

A ticking clock echoed from a faraway
room.

Sam gently closed the door to the study. Took
a deep breath. Realized that she didn’t have the luxury of taking
her time. If Bart had not set the alarm he didn’t plan to be gone
long. She rushed to the desk and riffled through the papers. What
lay out in plain sight consisted of construction invoices, notices
from the utility companies, a quote for the new swimming pool. She
yanked open a drawer and found about a dozen hanging file
folders.

Unfortunately none of them were labeled
“Will.”

She flipped through them quickly. A flat tray
contained incoming mail and a few other miscellaneous envelopes. It
all seemed to be the average stuff that everyone gets in the mail.
Drat. She’d gone through the whole stack when she came across a
long, unmarked envelope at the very bottom. The flap had never been
sealed; inside was a single sheet of paper. It was crisp and yet it
looked worn. Odd.

It unfolded and lo-and-behold—the will.

At least it claimed to be a will. The words
were there, just as Bart Killington had said, leaving the entire
estate to him. There was even a shaky signature at the bottom. But
the whole thing was off. No attorney had drafted this thing—they
would fill at least a couple of pages with therefores and whereases
before they got to the meat of any document. And the wear on the
paper was superficial, like a document created recently and then
buffed to look old. The date on the will purported to be
twenty-five years ago, but Sam couldn’t believe this paper was that
old.

She stared across the room, thinking. How
could her theory be proven?

Two paintings leaned against the opposite
wall. More of the Cantone legacy. She stepped over and looked at
the first canvas. Cantone’s style, no doubt about it. She stared at
them and felt renewed awe at the man’s genius with paint.

She glanced back at the will, still gripped
in her left hand. The signature was similar to that on the
paintings, but not exact. Okay, signing a sheet of smooth paper
with a pen was a different thing than signing with paint on canvas.
But still . . .

So, what to do about all this? She should
report the existence of the will to Beau and let him notify the
proper authorities. But once they began asking questions, would
this little sheet still exist?

She was looking around the room for a copier
when she heard the sound.

The distinct sound of a heavy door
closing.

Someone had just come through the front door.
Oh god.

She sneaked a quick peek by opening the study
door a half inch. She couldn’t see anyone but heard a woman call
out Bart’s name. Carolyn Hildebrandt. Sam knew the voice. It
sounded like the she was standing in either the entry hall or the
formal living room. Footsteps crossed the tile floor, becoming
louder.

Without a thought Sam folded the envelope,
stuffed it into her pocket and ran for the open window. She even
remembered to close it behind her. Staying low, she crept along the
back of the house. She’d passed French doors when she came in. This
time she went the opposite direction, skirting the landscape
boulders, aiming for the driveway and praying like crazy that she
wouldn’t be spotted.

She heard the woman open a back door and call
out again, just as she rounded the western side of the house. Not
since she’d run track in high school had Sam moved quite so fast.
She fished Zoe’s car keys from her pocket and jumped into the car,
all in one motion. A silver Town Car was parked directly in front
of one of the garage doors and she zipped around it.

There was no way Carolyn Hildebrandt didn’t
see the Subaru. Sam had parked right in front of the door. The art
rep would have the cops on her
so
fast—Sam’s heart raced at
the thought.

She roared down the hill with little regard
for the curves or oncoming traffic. After a quarter mile or so she
began to realize how foolish that was. Wouldn’t do any good to
escape Hildebrandt only to die in a head-on crash. She slowed to a
safe speed and gripped the wheel. By the time she reached the
highway her fingers ached and her wrists felt like they had steel
rods in them. She pulled to the side and braked.

Three deep breaths and her thinking cleared a
little. Hildebrandt had a key to Bart’s house. The greeting she’d
called out had the tone of a “hi, honey, I’m home,” even though Sam
had not heard the exact words. What was
that
all about?

Sam shook out the tightness in her wrists and
pulled out into traffic. Belatedly, she wondered whether she left
things on the desk the same way she’d found them. How much of a
neatnik was Bart? Would he notice minor changes? There was no point
in stressing over it. She couldn’t go back and fix it. Her mother
always said, “Don’t borrow trouble.” Well, this went a little
beyond that. Sam couldn’t predict the fallout from her rash move,
so no point in worrying over it. However, she’d created her own
mess of trouble and didn’t dare hope this was the last she’d hear
of it.

By the time she’d returned to Casa de
Tranquilidad her hands were steady again. Thank goodness. The
wedding planner was in a snit because now that they had the table
set up and decorated, Sam was expected to be right on the spot to
set the cake in place. She did so, checked the details, and passed
out business cards to a couple of hotel people who might send her
some future business.

Out in the parking lot a small crowd had
gathered around a Jeep and Sam immediately saw a woman down on the
ground. It was Charlie, the one who’d helped with the doors
earlier. She veered over to see what was wrong. Charlie was sitting
up, rubbing at her head and conversing with one of the women who
appeared to be a doctor. She fidgeted, wanting to stand up, so Sam
extended a hand to help her. Immediately, a surge of energy flowed
down Sam’s arm. Charlie felt it—Sam could tell. But she didn’t say
anything.