Sweet Masterpiece - The First Samantha Sweet Mystery (18 page)

“Weather’s about to change. About to get some
frost.” He gave her a light kiss on the top of her head. “I’ll talk
to you tomorrow.”

A discreet cough behind them and Kelly walked
outside. Sam started the truck and negotiated the turn-around.

“I really liked Beau and his mother,” Kelly
said as they drove out through the gate. “Her stories about him as
a little boy are a hoot.”

“Well, she sure took to you like a ladybug to
a daisy.”

“Mom, where do you come up with those
sayings?” She laughed as she said it.

“Grampa, I suppose. He used to say stuff like
that all the time. I guess spending time with Beau and Iris brought
back a lot of Texas childhood memories. You remember Grampa’s farm,
all those miles of cotton fields? I think of high school football
games and fried chicken Sunday dinners . . .. I get around ranchers
and it all comes back.”

“I like him, Mom. I think he’s good for
you.”

“Thanks, Kell.”

So, what did this mean? Despite all her
reservations about involvement, with her daughter’s approval, Sam
wondered if she was on the right track this time. She’d not had the
best success at choosing men, leaning toward the ones that were
good looking but too shallow to be dependable. Recognizing that,
somehow, before she let them become permanent. Spending her whole
life without a partner as a result.

Sam fell asleep with that train of thought
and ended up having a nightmare about how her life turned out
because she’d married Billy Roy Farmer and stayed in Cottonville,
Texas. When she woke up to a brilliant blue New Mexico sky, with a
frosty chill in the air, she felt a rush of elation. Life usually
did turn out the way it was supposed to.

Yesterday’s summery outfit wasn’t going to
cut it, she realized when she looked out to see thick frost on the
neighbor’s metal roof. Beau had been right about the change in the
weather. She left the light blouse and pants draped over a chair
and opted for socks and boots with her heavy jeans and
sweatshirt.

Coffee really hit the spot. Sam stared out
toward the driveway for a few minutes, thinking again of her
resolve to get Sweet’s Sweets underway. The larger orders were
bringing in some good money, but now she was running into the
problems of working in a tiny kitchen and making cake deliveries
with her pickup truck. The backseat was one of those little
half-sized things, difficult to get anything in and out of, and
transporting food in the open bed was out of the question. And she
couldn’t keep borrowing Zoe’s car, especially if things turned as
she hoped and she began making several deliveries a day.

On the other hand, she needed a beefy vehicle
for her landscape work. At the very least, something with a trailer
hitch. A mid-sized SUV or van could probably handle both needs.

Someone once told her that wishing for a
thing wouldn’t make it so. And yet she was a firm believer in
visualizing the future. The clearer picture she could form, the
more likely she was to manifest the reality. It was a technique she
used in cake design all the time. Now she figured she better apply
it to her business plan. The company vehicle would be a good first
step. She sipped her coffee and flipped through the newspaper.

After an hour she’d come to the conclusion
that her truck and all the cash in her checking account would just
about make an even trade on the van she needed. She placed a couple
of calls on vans that were listed for sale but both were already
gone. Undeterred, she kept the image in her head while toasting two
slices of bread and topping off her coffee.

Kelly emerged from her room and Sam noticed
that she was shivering in her light cottons from southern
California.

“I don’t think I own anything warm enough for
September in Taos,” she said.

“You’re welcome to look through my closet but
I don’t think anything’s going to be a great fit on you.” Kelly was
about the size of a pencil.

She dashed into Sam’s room anyway and came
out with a pair of sweats that, while still large on her, were ones
Sam had shoved to the end of the closet rail because they hadn’t
fit in years. The sweatshirt overpowered Kelly’s slim frame but she
seemed glad of the extra space in it.

“I’ll have to do some shopping,” she
said.

Sam saw her bank balance take a dive.

“I’ve got some money, Mom. I collected my
final paycheck. And there are credit cards.”

Sam didn’t want to get into the conversation
about how she’d gotten into trouble with those cards already. The
stare she sent tried to convey
get a job first
, without
damaging their recent rapport

What she said was, “I’m looking at a vehicle
for my business, so I’m not going to have any spare cash to help
you out, Kell.”

“I know, Mom. I don’t expect that.” She
poured herself some coffee and joined Sam at the table. “Actually,
I think I have a job prospect.”

She saw the surprise on Sam’s face.

“I talked a lot with Iris last night, and I
even mentioned the idea to Beau.”

Another surprise.

“You went in the bathroom right after dinner.
That’s when I ran the idea past him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Iris is getting pretty frail. She told me
that Beau worries about her, that he runs home a few times during
the day to check on her, and it’s causing trouble for him at work.
When anyone mentions nursing homes they both get emotional and
can’t talk about it.” Kelly sipped at her coffee. “So, I suggested
that I might become Iris’s caregiver. Well, she called it a
babysitter. It would just be during the day, because he’s there
with her at night.”

“What did he think of the idea? Can he afford
to pay someone?”

“Well, that’s the thing. Yes. I guess he’s
been thinking of it for awhile but he wasn’t sure about having a
stranger in the house. He even interviewed a couple of women a few
weeks ago but Iris didn’t like either of them.”

A rush of conflicting emotions ran through
Sam. Kelly working for the man she was about to be romantically
involved with. Would Kelly be dependable? Would they be happy with
her work? Would she be happy doing that sort of thing—she’d done
nothing but office work for years.

“Iris loved the idea. She wants Beau to hire
me right away. He said he’d think about it, and I said I would need
to run it past you.”

Sam wasn’t sure what to think but covered her
utter surprise by carrying her empty plate to the sink and
refilling her mug.

“It’s quite a commitment,” she said. “She’ll
need more and more help as she gets older.”

“I know. I think I can do it. And Beau kept
saying we could ‘give it a try.’ He probably doesn’t know how his
mother will react to having someone else around all the time
either.” She went to the cupboard and found some peanut butter
crackers, which she slowly unwrapped. “At least it’s something,
some way for me to earn my keep until I find out what life holds
next.”

“As long as you are fair with them, Kell. You
can’t take this job and then bail out when some high-salary
corporate thing comes through.” Sam held up a hand. “I’m just
saying. Be sure you’re ready to live up to the responsibility.”

Kelly nodded. “Let’s see what they say about
it today. They may have changed their minds.”

A few minutes of silence passed. “Kell? I’m
glad you’re thinking creatively about this. And I’m glad that you
understand my situation and are willing to pitch in with
expenses.”

Kelly came over and gave her a warm hug.
“Remember how it was when I was little? Just you and me. You gave
up a lot for me, Mom. I don’t expect you to keep doing that. I hope
things work out for you and Beau.”

How’d she get to be so wise? A tear
threatened Sam’s eye and she blinked it back.

The phone jangled on the kitchen wall and
they both jumped.

“There’s Beau now,” Kelly said. “So, what do
you think?”

“It’s your choice. I know you’ll make the
right decision.” Sam reached for the phone. “And how do you know
it’s Beau?”

Of course it was, and after talking to him
for a minute she turned the call over to Kelly. While they
discussed details, she busied herself taking inventory of her
baking supplies.

“I can start tomorrow,” Kelly said to Beau.
Done deal.

When she hung up she said, “Now I really
better find some new clothing. Looks like I’ll be here for the
winter.” She had a huge grin on her face.

With Wal-Mart, one department store and a
variety of expensive, touristy specialty shops in town, Sam gave
Kelly the options and suggested she might rather drive to Santa Fe
where there was a mall and some outlet stores.

“I guess I could spend a day in the city,”
Kelly said. “What about you? Want to come along? I didn’t even ask
what you were doing when I walked in here.”

Sam told her about the decision to find a new
vehicle and, like the younger-thinking person she was, Kelly
suggested looking online. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She
busied herself at the computer while Kelly dressed for her shopping
trip.

“Don’t spend all your money in one place,”
Sam kidded as she headed out the back door.

“You either!”

Back at the computer, Sam found a few
possible vehicles of interest and sent emails requesting more
details. While waiting for responses she figured that she better
get her own truck cleaned up and ready to sell. She carried a caddy
of cleaning supplies out and worked over the interior, detailing
the dashboard with cotton swabs until the thing looked like it had
just arrived from the showroom. Moving on to the backseat she came
across the bag with the wilted stems that Zoe called deathcamas.
She’d completely forgotten to mention it to Beau last night.

She set the bag in the service porch and
finished cleaning the truck, inside and out.

By eleven she was more than ready for a
break. If it were true that the little wooden box gave her some
kind of magic energy zap, she was sure wishing she’d called upon it
this morning. She put in a call for Beau, needing to tell him about
the deadly plant, and then made a sandwich and flopped into a chair
at the kitchen table while she waited for him to call back.

As it turned out, he stopped by instead.

“Hey, the truck sure looks spiffy,” he said,
giving it an admiring look.

She thanked him again for last night’s steak
dinner and then told him about her plan. “As much as I hate to part
with it, I need the other vehicle more.”

She handed him the plastic sack with the
plants in it. “You told me that some kind of plant toxin showed up
in Pierre Cantone’s autopsy tests. I’m wondering if this might be
it.”

He glanced into the bag.

“They’re completely crispy now, but when I
first found them they seemed the same shade of green as that stuff
that I found inside his house. Zoe tells me this stuff is
poisonous.”

He pulled out one of the stems and held it
up. “Looks like deathcamas. She’s right. Livestock eats this stuff
and it’s a horrible death. Never heard of a person eating it
though. Why would they?”

“It was growing near Cantone’s house. There
were smears of something much like this in his kitchen. The man
dies. The nephew inherits a fortune in paintings. Are you thinking
what I’m thinking?”

“Anything’s possible.”

Sam wanted to say ‘aha!’ She’d not liked that
nephew much anyway.

“But—” He held up an index finger. “But, to
make any kind of accusation, much less a court case, we have to
have some kind of proof.”

“Lab tests. Can’t they tell if this is the
plant toxin that was in Cantone’s body?”

“We can have it tested and find out. And
that’s a good start. But it’s still a far cry from proving that the
nephew administered this. Or that he didn’t eat it
accidentally.”

“A poisonous plant like this—accidental?”

“You’d be surprised how many people
experiment with plants in their yards, Sam. Some of them are tasty
and harmless, like dandelion greens. They’ll pick a bunch of
unknown greens and make up a salad. Never put it together that they
got really sick the next day.”

“But day after day? Zoe said it would take
quite a bit to kill a person.”

“Hey, it kills horses and sheep.”

Sam still couldn’t see it happening
accidentally to a person. “There are other people who had grudges
against the man. Have you questioned Mr. Trujillo, the neighbor
with the lawsuit against Anderson?”

“Haven’t had time. Padilla has me on another
case that just came up this morning. He’s pushing hard to close the
whole Anderson-Cantone file and get on to other things.”

“But—” She pointed at the bag.

“I’ll try. The first step would be to tie
this to the victim. If I can get Padilla to agree, I’ll have it
tested against the toxin the lab found in Cantone. See if that tox
level was high enough to be fatal. Don’t count on getting a
conclusive answer, though. Things like this really deteriorate with
time. But we can see what happens and take it from there.” He gave
her a quick kiss. “I gotta get back on the job.”

She walked him out to the cruiser. “Thanks
for what you’re doing for Kelly. The job is a big favor.”

“Hey, it’s a bigger favor to me. I hope she
likes being with Mama. I really was getting to my wits end about a
solution to the problem. I’m glad Kelly is willing to do it.”

She watched him drive away, then rummaged in
the garage for a For Sale sign that she’d used years ago. Filled in
the phone number and a couple of details about the truck and taped
it to the window. She would miss the Silverado’s capacity for stuff
that she had to haul away from the properties she tended, but it
was time for a change.

The day had warmed up considerably, as
usually happened this time of year, and Sam suddenly realized she
was way too hot in her sweats. She showered and looked for
something else to put on. The handiest thing was the pair of slacks
and blouse she’d worn yesterday. As she pulled the pants on
something crinkled in the pocket.