Sweets Galore: The Sixth Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (18 page)

On a whim, Sam ran a search on
Evie Madsen. Several celebrity-watch websites appeared and she followed the
link for the first one. Evie at the Oscars on the arm of a young man Sam didn’t
recognize; the caption with the picture associated him with one of the Batman
movies. Then there was Evie at the Sundance Film Festival, Evie at the Grammys
with some rapper, Evie at the Emmys—each time with a young man, each pose with
sparkling eyes and a dazzling smile no doubt practiced in front of a mirror for
maximum effect. Judging by the number of photos, either Evie was a lot more
famous than Sam would have imagined or paparazzi would photograph anyone who
happened to stand on a red carpet. She suspected the latter.

She slugged back the rest of her
tea and turned the computer off, itchy to be moving again.

The street in front of Beau’s
office was clear of media vehicles so she parked down the block and walked
there.

“Hey, I was just about to call
you,” he said, looking up from his keyboard. “Got some financial information on
Tustin Deor.”

She moved around to stand behind
him and look at the screen.

“Credit rating—awful. Kelly’s
credit score is probably higher.”

“Seriously? How can that be?”

“Looks like he had an influx of
money a couple years ago.”

“Which would jibe with what I
found about his career—one production credit for a show that lasted less than a
full season.”

“Well, Tustin lives like that
money came from a never-ending source. He ran through his entire cut from it
within six months. Bought a big house, two cars and high-end furniture, all
with minimums down and payments that stretch on for ages.”

Just as Sam had suspected.

“Looks like he picks up the check
for every party, stays at five-star hotels, the works. Travels all the time to
stay ahead of the repo man and the bank. He’s got fourteen credit cards, all
maxed. Six months ago he began getting new cards to pay off old ones.”

“I thought the banks had really
cracked down on that stuff.”

“Apparently not as much as you
would imagine. He’s got some of the cards in his own name, but a lot of them
are under various business entities. Each time he has a brainstorm for a new
project he forms a new company.”

“My dad would call it robbing
Peter to pay Paul.”

“Exactly. There are also payments
that don’t match up with his known income, which tells me to look for a private
source.”

“So then . . . Would that be why
he turned to Jake to help finance this
You’re
The Star
thing? Jake was every bit as flaky as Deor himself.”

“
We
know that. But maybe Deor didn’t.” His fingers twitched near the
keyboard.

“I saw two men at the press
conference, Beau. Polyester shirts, hard faces—really didn’t look like they were
from around here. Did you see them?”

He shook his head. “Sound like the
kind of men who would be willing to track down somebody who owed them money.”

Loan sharks. Again, she remembered
the man who’d come up to Jake on the street that evening outside the jewelry
shop. He wasn’t one of the men she’d seen at the press conference but something
told her they were connected.

“Can we find out who they are?”

Beau nodded and made a note on a
scrap of paper.

“Even if somebody like that came
to town looking for Jake, it still doesn’t really explain why they would kill
Jake and try to frame me for it.” Sam sat in one of the chairs across the desk
from him. “And I don’t see how Tustin benefits from Jake’s death.”

“Deor couldn’t possibly have hoped
to inherit from Jake, not unless he’d gotten him to write a will to that
effect.”

“Or to go in as a business
partner? One of those deals where upon the death of one partner the other gets
a big insurance policy or something?”

“He could have done that. He certainly
had enough of these little business entities. Maybe he talked Jake into signing
something.” Beau tapped his index finger against the space bar on the keyboard,
caught himself and quit. “Without getting into the corporate records in
California, I don’t know how we could find out. I’ll try that track though—plus
we still have the ex-wives and Jake’s gambling to look into. What are you
planning on next?”

She told him how
Evie’s
involvement kept nagging at her and what she’d found
when she researched the young woman.

“Clearly, she’s got a good agent
or a great dating service—showing up all the time with these various actors. I
have to wonder why she showed up here in Taos with Jake. And now she’s hanging
on Tustin like a silk scarf. I’d like to ask her some questions,” Sam said, “if
I can ever catch her without Tustin attached at the hip.”

“What time do your parents get
back from Santa Fe?”

She glanced at her cell phone
where the readout showed 4:37. “I better check in with Rupert. I asked him to
entertain them as long as he could possibly handle their company.” Her
thank-you pastry for him would have to be something fabulous.

She scrolled through the numbers
and pressed his. Rupert answered on the first ring and the conversation went
quickly. She clicked off and looked at up Beau.

“They’re just leaving Santa Fe. He
said he couldn’t talk them into staying there for dinner. He didn’t sound all
that unhappy to be bringing them back.”

Beau smiled with good grace.

“So, I have maybe an hour,” she
said. “I wish we’d made more headway today. I want to get this solved and clear
my name and get married so Mother and Daddy will go home.”

Beau reached across the desk and
took her hands. “We’re doing what we can. More than Sanchez’s department has
done.”

Sam squeezed his hands, then stood
up. “I think I’ll drop by the La Fonda and see if I can find Evie. Surely
Tustin can’t be in the room
all
the
time.”

At the hotel’s front desk Sam
wasn’t surprised to find that they wouldn’t give out Tustin
Deor’s
room number. They did, however, agree to ring the room and ask if Ms. Madsen
would accept the call. The clerk turned his back as the phone rang multiple
times.

“Sorry, ma’am. No answer.”

Sam debated leaving a message but
didn’t. She thanked the clerk and meandered toward the restaurant. As she
passed the open doorway to the bar a flash of pink caught her eye. The light
over the bar caught rosy liquid in crystal as the bartender set a glass down,
and seated there accepting the drink was Evie. Once in awhile fortune does
shine down, Sam thought. Evie was alone.

Sam edged up beside her and took
the adjoining seat.

“Hi, Evie, how are you?”

Evie looked a little disconcerted
but covered it by taking a long sip from her Cosmopolitan. She fixed her mouth
in a sullen moue and regarded Sam through half-closed lids.

“Tustin’s not with you?”

“He’ll be down in a minute.”

“I was surprised to see the two of
you together. I mean, you seemed pretty infatuated with Jake just a few days
ago.”

“So?”

“I could understand what Jake saw
in you—young and pretty and all. But I never quite got what you saw in him.”

Evie sipped from the drink without
responding.

“Did it bother you that Jake came
to town to see me?”

Evie’s
eyes traveled from Sam’s hair, which hadn’t been combed since this morning,
slowly downward to her
day-glo
green cross-trainers.
A smug grin formed on the young woman’s face.

“No, Sam, it didn’t bother me at
all.”

Unless the girl was a far better
actress than her credentials suggested, there went Sam’s theory that
Evie’s
motive for striking out might have been jealousy.
Still, it didn’t explain why Evie suddenly showed up with a man so much older,
when her normal taste went to the young and hip.

“What was Jake here for, really?”
Sam leaned against the back of her barstool. The long day without answers was
wearing her down.

Evie took another sip of the
Cosmo. “Just what he told you, raising money to finance the show.”

Sam searched her face for signs of
deception but Evie had put on her clueless, Paris Hilton smile as she drained
the rest of the drink. She started to get up but Sam placed a hand on her arm.

“When I didn’t give Jake the
money, was there trouble between him and Tustin? Or between you and Jake?”

Evie gave her a long stare, shook
off the hand and walked out of the bar. Sam watched her head for the stairs.
What was she so hostile about? Clearly, as she’d indicated, there was no reason
to be jealous of Sam.

“Hot and cold, I’ll tell you,”
said a male voice. The bartender. He held up a glass, asking with his eyes whether
she wanted a drink.

She shook her head. “What do you
mean, hot and cold?”

He tilted his head toward the
doorway where Evie had just disappeared. “That one. Hot. You know what I mean .
. . But
co-old
.” He stretched out the
word. “They’ve been here a few days. I’ve seen her pour herself all over a guy,
you know, melting him. Then she’s like she was just now. Won’t give you the
time of day.”

“I suppose she gets a lot of
unwanted attention, with looks like that.”

He tipped his head. Maybe.

“She came in my shop a few days
ago with a different guy, older man. Now she’s with this young producer.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too. The guy
and her, they came in a few times on my shift.”

“Did they have words? Some kind of
argument?”

“The old guy or the young one?”

“Either.”

He wiped at the bar, thinking.
“Not really an argument. But something changed. She was all over the old guy
the first day they checked in. The last time I saw them they were barely
speaking. I guess that was Friday afternoon. She did that cold-shoulder thing
and walked out, just like now.”

“Do you remember anything else
about that day?”

“He had a little bag with him,
purple, paper sack.”

Sam’s breath caught.

“While I was making their drinks
he opened the bag and made some kind of comment to the lady. Right after that
is when Miss Cosmo got all huffy.”

So maybe Evie
had
believed that Sam sent the cupcake as a gift for Jake. If she’d
said that to the police, it could be the real basis for their case against Sam.

“Did you see where he got the bag?
Did someone deliver it?”

The bartender shrugged. “I can’t
say. He had it with him when I first noticed it.”

Jen had already told Sam that Jake
hadn’t bought anything at the bakery that day. She’d sold a dozen or more of
the chocolate cupcakes but not to him.

“You could ask at the front desk,”
the bartender said. “The guy did act like it was something he’d received as a
gift. Maybe somebody left it there for him.”

“So the woman left first. Did you
see where the man went? Did he leave the hotel or did he go up to their room?”

“I didn’t see. Things got busy
about that time and I never really noticed when he left.”

She thanked him and pulled out
some money, which he pushed back across the bar.

“I hope you get this resolved, Ms.
Sweet.”

Had he known who she was all
along? She dug out a business card and asked him to give a call if he thought
of anything else related to Jake Calendar or Evie Madsen.

Sam walked straight to the front
desk, where she had to wait behind two other people who were checking in. When
her turn came the young man in the white shirt and black tie turned a polite
smile her way.

“Checking in?”

“No, actually I had a question
about a gift that might have been delivered here Friday afternoon. A small,
purple paper sack. Were you here at the time?”

He looked at the ceiling,
thinking. “Yeah . . . I remember it. I gave it to the guest, name Challenger or
something like that.”

“Calendar. That’s right. Can you
tell me who delivered the gift in the first place?”

He shook his head slowly. “It was
already here when I came on duty. Sitting back there on that counter. Celina,
who works the desk until three, told me to be sure to stop Mr. Calendar if I
saw him and give him the bag.”

Sam got the coworker’s name but he
wouldn’t give out her number. She thanked him and stepped out to the sidewalk,
dialing Beau’s cell.

“I need to reach a Celina Romero
who works as a desk clerk at the La Fonda.”

He didn’t question, just tapped
into one of his databases. “There are three Celina
Romeros
in the DMV records. One is aged seventy-eight, so that’s probably not the one.”
He gave addresses of the other two. “Do not ever tell anyone how you got that
information unless you want to see me lose my job.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a pretty
good idea which one it is and I just have one or two questions for her.”

When her friend at the hotel desk
talked about his coworker, Sam had the impression she was younger so she headed
for the home of the Celina who was only twenty-five. The flat-roofed house was
in an older neighborhood and when a woman in her fifties answered the door Sam
realized that Celina lived with her parents.

“She went to the market for me,”
the elder Mrs. Romero said. “She should be home soon.”

“If it’s okay, I’ll wait for her.
I can sit out here in my truck.”

“No, no, come on inside. I know
you,” Mrs. Romero said. “You’re the bakery lady. I see your van driving around
town sometimes, and my grandchildren love to come by for cookies after school.”

She ushered Sam into a cube of a
living room, filled with seventies furniture and a little shrine of the Virgin
Mary against one wall. The smell of pinto beans reminded Sam that her parents
would be arriving soon and she had absolutely no idea what she was feeding them
for dinner. Hopefully, Rupert had gotten them a big lunch.