Sweets Galore: The Sixth Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (13 page)

“Any paper bag from my shop could
have my prints on it. I often unpack shipments of new ones and resupply the
stack under the sales counter. At this point it seems you are jumping way
ahead. You won’t even know for sure how he died until you get the autopsy
results.”

A flash of irritation crossed his
face. The detective clearly didn’t like her questioning his assumptions. He
stood again and left the room.

Another detective came in, a woman
who identified herself as Mira Schwartz. If Ordonez was the good cop, Schwartz
was playing bad cop. She ran through the same set of questions, then threw in a
new accusation.

“If you know nothing about poison
in a cupcake, how is it that you very conveniently have a can of
Ratzout
in your vehicle?” Schwartz’s mouth settled into a
hard, straight line.

“I use it in my business,” Sam
said, realizing two seconds later what a mistake that statement had been.

“Obviously,” said Schwartz with a
grim little smirk. “Poison and baked goods seem to go well together, for your
purposes.”

Schwartz left the interrogation
room and Sam thought about simply getting up to find out if that door was
locked, but she wasn’t sure how far she would get. Plus, they still had her
things.

Time dragged by. Clearly, they
were trying to wear her down by making her wait. She’d tried every calming
technique she could think of to keep herself from screaming.

Eventually, Ordonez came back in
and Sam heard raised voices out in the hallway. She knew one of them.

“Beau! I’m in here!” she shouted,
dashing to the door and pounding on it.

He appeared to brush off whomever
he’d been speaking with as he opened the door.

“Sam, come on. We’re leaving.” He
stared at Ordonez. “You had no right to hold her here all this time. Tell
Sanchez this is not over.”

“He’s got my phone and my passport
and our airline tickets,” she told Beau.

Beau stood straight, regal in his
tuxedo, and stared the shorter man down. Ordonez led the way into the hall and
down to a desk. He picked up a large plastic bag, reached into it and retrieved
Sam’s cell phone.

“The passport and tickets have to
stay with us,” he said. “She’s a suspect and, with these, a flight risk.”

Beau’s jaw muscle twitched but he
didn’t say anything. He took Sam’s elbow and steered her toward the exit where
his Explorer waited in the parking lot. It was dark outside and Sam shivered in
the chilly air. She hugged herself against the cold and felt her eyes well up.

“I’ve missed my wedding,” she said
bleakly. A sob escaped.

“
Darlin
’
it’s okay. We’ll straighten it out.” He opened the passenger door and guided
her into the seat, closed her in securely and got behind the wheel.

“How did you know where—?”

“Kelly got your call about being
delayed and then I thought to check my messages.” He started the engine. “I’m
so sorry that my phone was off when you called. When you said the police were
at the house I started calling around. At first nobody would tell me where you
were, but I finally reached somebody helpful. One of my former deputies who
switched over to the PD. He scouted around and told me you were at the station
being interrogated.”

“I thought they would just ask a
few questions and it would be quick. I kept thinking I could get back to the
wedding. What happened there?”

He gave a rueful glance. “Well,
the minister had to leave. He had another wedding this evening. By
mid-afternoon everyone was getting hungry so Zoë and the caterer put out the
buffet and that kept them happy for awhile. I managed to make them hold off on
the cake. It’s safely locked inside Zoë’s office.”

“Everyone went home?”

“Yeah. The relatives are all
settled back at their hotels. Poor Zoë was getting the third degree from your
mother, but I tried to let them all know that everything would turn out just
fine.”

“I can’t face them right now,” she
said.

“You don’t have to. We’re going
home.” He’d already turned away from the center of town and headed north toward
the ranch.

Sam’s thoughts churned, reviewing
everything that should have happened by this point in the evening. So many
things to reschedule. Among the first on the list would be to contact Clinton
Hardgate and be sure the travel reservations were changed so they weren’t
permanently lost.
Damn the local cops
,
she thought.
You aren’t messing up both
my wedding and my honeymoon
.

She was astonished to see, when
they walked into the house, that it was after nine p.m. She phoned Zoë and
reassured her that she was all right. Zoë offered to pass that along to the
parents so Sam wouldn’t have to get into a long explanation. The next call went
to
Hardgate’s
cell number and she was half surprised
when he actually answered.

“I know it’s late on the coast,”
she said.

He was gracious about it and told
her not to worry about the travel plans. He would place everything on hold and
wait to hear from her again. Although she hadn’t given the reason for the
delay, he wished her luck.

“What would you like? Are you
hungry? Or maybe just some wine or tea?” Beau asked from the kitchen.

“A shower first. Then maybe a cup
of hot chocolate.” Sam couldn’t think of anything at the moment beyond getting
rid of the scummy feeling of the police station.

When she came back downstairs
fifteen minutes later, fluffing her hair to dry it, wearing soft pajamas, Beau
handed her a mug of cocoa and she snuggled into her favorite corner of the
sofa.

“We can set the wedding up for
tomorrow,” he said. “Same time, same station.”

“I can’t do it, Beau. I can’t
stand the idea of starting marriage as a murder suspect.”

He went completely still. “Did
they actually say that? What all did they ask you,
darlin
’?
Go through the whole thing.”

She did, covering every question,
every answer, and everything Ordonez had said to her. As she talked he paced
the room.

“Damn. I wish this were in my
jurisdiction. Even though I couldn’t work the case myself—because of us—I’d
have ways to find out what’s going on behind the scenes, to know what evidence
is coming out.”

“Until they get the autopsy
results, they won’t know for sure that Jake was poisoned or that the poison
came from the cupcake, will they?”

He looked thoughtful. “Well, they
probably have a pretty good idea about the poison. There are signs on a body.
They may even know what type it was. But the medical investigator’s office in
Albuquerque will verify it.”

“They can’t really think that I,
or any of my crew at the shop, really did it though. That would be so stupid.
My business would be ruined if—oh, god, what am I thinking? If word of this
gets out, my business will probably be ruined anyway. People won’t buy pastries
at a bakery if somebody died from our product, will they?” Despair crept in.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,
darlin
’. We can only take things a step at a time. I’ll
call the O.M.I.’s office myself tomorrow and see if I can get answers. If their
findings eliminate you as a suspect, I’ll go down to the PD and demand your
documents back.”

Sam had a horrible feeling it
wouldn’t be quite that simple.

Chapter
11

Another sleepless night. Sam
stared at the ceiling until nearly dawn. She felt Beau’s eyes on her. He moved
in close and held her, but it didn’t help a lot. She’d ruined their wedding plans.

No, she told herself. Jake
Calendar ruined their wedding plans. He’d made someone mad enough to take
revenge. It was just ill-fated timing that it happened in her town and right
after they’d had words. The thought of Pete Sanchez’s bad feelings toward Beau
and the way Ordonez and Schwartz had looked at her as they asked their
questions—the whole thing made her feel sick inside.

At dawn they gave up the pretense
of sleep.

“Come outside with me,” Beau said.
“Let’s breathe some fresh air and get your mind off everything else.”

He got up and started pulling on
his clothes. She followed on semi-automatic, not really because she thought it
would help but because it was a relief to simply follow, not to have to think
or plan.

A light frost lay on the pasture grasses
and the dogs trotted along beside them as she trailed Beau along his well-worn
footpath to the barn. He dipped a bucket into the feed bin and handed it to
her.

“Here, Old Boy likes this oat mix.
Hold it out for him.” He scooped another bucket for the mare, Pretty Girl, and
they walked out to the wire fence where the two horses stood in the chilly air.

As the animals nuzzled into the
buckets Sam focused on the little things—the way the mare’s hair formed a whorl
around the white patch on her forehead, the way steam rose from their nostrils
when they raised their heads and chewed.

“How about a short ride?” Beau
asked.

Without waiting for an answer he
headed into the barn and came back with a saddle and tack. Within minutes he
had Pretty Girl saddled for Sam and a blanket thrown over Old Boy’s back. He
helped Sam with her stirrups, then saddled and mounted the other. They set a
leisurely pace, riding the fence line around the fifteen acres.

Frost crunched under the horses’
hooves. Steam rose from the grass wherever sunlight struck, melting ice
crystals into dew. In the trees two vivid blue jays got into a ragged
conversation, and a raven cawed as it soared overhead. Sam felt her head begin
to clear. It was easy to forget your worries out in the blue-gray dawn air. She
let out a contented sigh. If only life could stay this simple, always.

The phone was ringing when they
walked back into the house. She felt her mood deflate. Beau picked it up.

“Zoë,” he said, handing the
receiver to Sam.

“Hey, girl. You okay?” She didn’t
really wait for an answer. “Just FYI, I wanted to let you know that your mother
and sister have started the day on a mission. They’re determined to see the
wedding go through—today.”

“Oh boy.” Sam could see the female
dynamos of the family orchestrating to fix what they felt were Sam’s failings
in the planning department.

“Do you want to come by and talk
to them about this?”

No. Not at all
. “I guess we better. Can you get them through
breakfast and we’ll come down there in awhile.”

Zoë chuckled. “Breakfast is what
we do here. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure Darryl and I can think of ways to
stall them even longer if you want us to.”

“I have to deal with this sooner
or later,” Sam said. She could hear the resignation in her own voice.

Beau figured out what Zoë had
said.

“Let me call Albuquerque and see
if I can get someone I know on the line at the O.M.I.’s office. Somebody will
be at work there, even on a Sunday.”

Sam put coffee on to brew while he
dialed. In a minute or so he signaled her over and put the phone on speaker.

“. . . chocolate cake, ingested
between three and four p.m. with death occurring within minutes afterward. The
poison was cyanide, commonly found in rat poisons or several other household
products used to kill vermin,” the male voice said.

“Any other trauma to the body?”
Beau asked.

“None. The poison was definitely
the COD.”

“Thanks, Dan. If you would, don’t
mention my call to anyone from the Taos Police Department. We’re working a
different angle of the case.”

“No problem.”

The line went silent.

“This isn’t good,” Sam said. “They
already know that a chocolate cupcake came from my bakery. And they found
Ratzout
in my truck. Every year we get an infestation when
the weather turns cold and I’ve doused my garage and several of my caretaking
properties with the stuff.”

“Half the stores in town sell
Ratzout
and a lot of homes have a supply of it,” Beau said.
“They’ll never prove that you are the only one who could have poisoned Jake.”

“But none of those other homeowners
really had a reason to wish Jake would go away.”

“One thing at a time,” he said.
“Who knows, maybe overnight they’ve found someone else with even a stronger
motive. Let’s just let it play out.”

He poured coffee for each of them
and made cinnamon toast with the last two slices of bread in the house.

“I better go face the music with
my family,” Sam said, brushing toast crumbs from her hands as she finished the
small breakfast. “I can’t leave it to Zoë much longer.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t have to do that.
Besides, you can do more by trying to find answers and get my passport back.”

He kissed her on top of the head
and squeezed her shoulders. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll make some calls and be
sure we can get the latest information. Maybe today they’ll find the real
killer. It’ll be such a relief that you’ll be ready to come walking down that
garden path by this afternoon.”

She wrapped her arms around him
and fervently hoped he was right.

Ten minutes later, she knew he
wasn’t. Blue strobes flashed in her rearview mirror as she approached the
plaza. She pulled onto narrow Bent Street and stopped at the curb.
Really? Right here in the middle of town?

She powered down the window of her
pickup.

“Samantha Sweet? I’m afraid you
need to come with us, ma’am.” It was Pete Sanchez, with an officer that looked
like a rookie. The chief’s face held a hint of humor. The bastard was enjoying
this.

She felt like cursing, crying,
screaming. But she got out of the truck, locked it, and walked with Sanchez to
his cruiser.