Sweets Galore: The Sixth Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (23 page)

“Ma’am, I already explained that.
The emergency contact number in Mr. Calendar’s wallet listed his brother. It’s
procedure. The items have been claimed and there’s nothing more I do for you.”

Doralee looked ready to burst a
vessel when she spotted Sam. It took about two seconds for her to switch
directions and ask the favor.

“Sam,” she said, “can you do
anything about this?”

“Sorry, no.” Kindnesses at the
police department were hardly coming Sam’s way this week.

Meanwhile the officer had escaped
and Doralee had latched onto Sam.

“There’s just so much official
business to take care of when someone dies. I never realized . . . insurance,
bank accounts, bills and things . . .” She waved a sheaf of papers toward Sam,
as if that might make the bills go away.

“I’m sure it’s tough.”

“It doesn’t help that he’d moved
out. I don’t even have a key to that apartment where he went.”

What part of “I’m divorcing you” didn’t this woman get?

“Doralee, you probably just need
to go home and let this new situation settle in. You’ll get used to it in time
and you’ll build a new life for yourself.”

Doralee gave Sam an impatient
glare—she’d probably gotten the same advice from everyone she knew, including
Jake. She stomped out.

The clerk returned with Sam’s
burglary report and handed it over.

Sam was all the way down the block
when she remembered her phone call the previous evening to find out more about
the altercation Jake had gotten into at Murphy’s Pub. She could have picked up
the report on that incident at the same time.

Her mother interrupted her train
of thought. “Oh, Samantha! There’s a drug store, right there.”

Pointing out that the other store
probably had a better selection would do no good. Sam made a quick right-hand
turn and parked in front of the place her mother had spotted. While Nina Rae
went inside, Sam dialed Beau’s cell.

“I just missed a chance to get the
police report on Jake’s fight with that guy . . . what was his name?”

“Hulk Moscowitz. Don’t worry about
it. I can have it faxed to my office. Maybe we can meet up for lunch later and
compare notes.”

“I’m hoping to take Mother back
out to the house so she can drive Daddy nuts instead of me. I’ll give you a
call.” She looked up to see Nina Rae approaching the truck.

“Well, that little place didn’t
have hardly anything. Out of vitamin C and they didn’t even carry the best
brand of decongestant.”

“We’ll try another place,” Sam
said, her mind on getting the police report to Kelly.

She used Martyrs Lane as a shortcut
to Camino de la
Placita
and headed toward Sweet’s
Sweets. Nina Rae said she would say hello to the girls at the bakery while Sam
walked over to Puppy Chic. Kelly was up to her elbows with a sudsy little brown
dog whose long hair lay in wet ropes down the sides of its face when Sam walked
into the back room. The owner, Erica Davis-Jones, had a cocker spaniel on the
clipping table and the dog was patiently allowing the shaver to take tufts of
hair off its paws. About an acre of clipped blond hair already lay on the floor
around the groomer’s feet.

“How
are
you, Sam?”
Riki
asked, briefly taking
her eyes off the dog.

“I have to say I’d be a lot better
if Saturday had gone as planned, but overall I’m coping.” She held up the
police report. “This is your report, Kelly. I’ll just set the page somewhere
safe.”

She found a spot on a high shelf
well away from the hair and water.

“Did you and Jen sleep okay last
night?” Sam asked Kelly.

“Having her over brought back
memories of a lot of slumber parties. And without Mom at home.”

She wiggled her eyebrows and the
dog in the deep sink tried to make a break for it while her attention was
elsewhere. “
Bidgit
! Stop that!” She got a better grip
on the slippery critter. “But yeah, we slept. Didn’t have the kind of
up-all-night stamina we did when we were twelve.”

Sam smiled at that memory.

“Yoo-hoo! Where
is
everyone?” Nina Rae’s voice carried
with megaphone clarity.

“One moment,”
Riki
called out automatically.

“I better go,” Sam said quickly.
She walked toward the reception area but found her mother already on her way to
the back room.

“Well, I better give my
granddaughter a hug before I go,” she said, pushing past Sam. “Kelly,
hon
, thank you so much for taking us on that beautiful
drive yesterday. Your
Grampa
got a cold, but we had
the best time. Woo—that little guy’s all wet!”

Kelly reached for a towel to get
the spray the dog had shaken across the room. Sam waited while her mother
dabbed droplets from her silk blouse and then ushered her back out to the
truck.

“Let’s get to the pharmacy,” she
suggested, “and then I can drop you back at the house.”

“Beau said something about getting
together for lunch.”

“Oh, did he?” Sam saw their chance
to discuss the case flying out the window, unless she wanted the details to be
headline news at the
Cottonville
Ladies Bridge Club
next week. She put on her smile and drove south on Paseo.

“Now I don’t want to mess up
y’all’s
plans. I know you’re real busy with all that police
stuff. I can go back to the house right after lunch. Your daddy will be needing
me for something by then anyway.”

Sam pulled into the parking lot at
the pharmacy where she’d originally intended to go. “Take your time, Mother. If
you don’t find what you need, the supermarket across the street has a lot of
stuff too.”

She speed-dialed Beau’s number as
Nina Rae walked toward the store.

“Just a heads-up. Mother thinks
she’s invited to lunch, so we’ll have to be careful what we say about the case
in front of her.”

“Gotcha. Well, I’ve hit one
roadblock already this morning. Went back to ask Vic Valentino what he knew
about the cupcake. The guy’s not as clueless as he appears. He found out that
Jake’s dead, that you were arrested for it, and that I’m looking out for you.
He wouldn’t tell me anything except to go talk to his lawyer.”

Rats. The bad news was that they
wouldn’t get any voluntary info out of Vic; the good news was that his being so
defensive definitely kept him on their suspect list. Plus, he knew the bakery
and what they had to offer; it would have been a simple matter for him to get
the cupcake. He seemed the kind of guy who would be more likely to sneak poison
to an enemy than to confront him outright, especially a man of Jake’s size and
build. And the fact remained that he had motive; Jake had publicly humiliated
him in his hometown where Vic’s friends could easily have seen or heard of the
incident.

The thoughts tumbled through Sam’s
brain until she spotted her mother coming toward the truck, a tiny paper sack
in hand.

“Well, wouldn’t you know it. They
had the decongestant but not the cough syrup or the vitamins. I guess we’ll
have to go on to that other place you were talking about.” Nina Rae fastened
her seat belt. “It’s just so frustrating shopping in a strange town. Back home
I’d have called up Jim Ed at the Rexall and he’d have all this stuff gathered
up for me before I got there.”

You could go home any time and get right back into your routine.
Sam bit at her lower lip as she backed out of the parking spot. A glimpse of
Nina Rae clutching the little bag with her thin fingers brought her up short.
Somewhere along the line, her mother had aged and it suddenly hit Sam that all
the attempts to control the outcome of things . . . maybe that was only a
frantic attempt to stop the clock and go back to the days when Mother was truly
in charge of the family. Her push for the wedding might simply be every
mother’s desire to see things work out perfectly for her daughter. Didn’t Sam
want the same for Kelly? Weren’t their wishes very much the same?

She swallowed hard as she pulled
into the supermarket parking lot. They walked inside together and Sam steered
her mother toward the vitamin aisle, picking up a bottle of Vitamin C for their
own use before heading toward the produce section. While she was staring at the
apples her phone rang.

“
Darlin
’
I’m sorry I have to skip lunch with you ladies,” Beau said. “A call came in,
traffic accident north of Questa. I have to head up there.”

“Okay. Call me when you get any
news.” She tried to put some cheer in her voice but inside felt frustration
rise. Could they meet
any more
roadblocks
in getting on with the investigation? Or was Sam, in her push to straighten out
this situation, doing all the very things she didn’t like about her mother?

Put it aside
, she lectured herself.
Enjoy the day rather than chafing at the way things are going.

They finalized their purchases and
Sam chose a nice spot for lunch, a place with tables along the sidewalk. They ordered
and Nina Rae commented on the variety of little galleries and shops in the
area. Sam closed her eyes for a moment, wanting to follow her own advice and
relax, but the fact was that she couldn’t forget that she was still, in the
eyes of the police, a murder suspect. She had to stay diligent.

Their lunches arrived and Nina Rae
exclaimed over them. Sam chewed at the plain salad she’d ordered but her mind
wandered, going over the list of suspects she and Beau were considering. Aside
from the group from California, Vic Valentino was starting to look viable, the
loan shark
had
uttered a threat, and
they still didn’t know how serious the altercation in the pub had gotten. Maybe
Jake left that Hulk guy mad enough to come after him. Doralee might be a
suspect too, except that she’d seemed more intent on keeping Jake married to
her than getting rid of him. If anything, she would have probably wanted to
harm Evie.

Which brought up another
possibility. They could be going about this all wrong if Evie had been the real
intended victim . . .

“. . . did you?” Nina Rae’s
rambling narrative had apparently turned into a question.

“Sorry, Mother, I—”

“I know, honey.” She reached over
to pat Sam’s knee. “You’ve got so much on your mind. Me asking about the
flowers for your wedding was insensitive. I’m sorry.”

Sam blinked away the sense of
unreality. Wedding flowers and murder charges; a white gown and a jail cell; a
string of suspects but no real leads . . . How had her life become so
completely twisted around in only a week’s time?

“Is it anything you want to tell
me about?”

How could she get into the
complexities of the situation without facing a lot of questions about Jake and
the past? She shook her head. “Nothing all that important. Let’s just enjoy our
lunch.”

The clouds seemed to have
thickened, cooling the air. They quickly finished their salads and Nina Rae
pulled cash from her purse.

“My treat,” she said, reminding
Sam of her mother’s generous nature. “I just love the looks of that little shop
across the lane there. Can we take a peek on the way back to the truck?”

“Sure. They’ve got some cute
things; Kelly loves that place,” Sam said as they walked away from the sidewalk
café.

Before they reached the boutique,
which sold purses, scarves and about a million little paper items like
stationery and diaries, Sam’s phone rang.

“Go ahead, Mother. I’ll be right
in.” She noticed on the readout that it was Beau.

“Hey there. I’m at a lull in the
action here, waiting for a tow truck that’s probably at least fifteen minutes away.
I thought I’d tell you that I got the police report on that altercation at
Murphy’s Pub. It came in on the fax as I was walking out awhile ago.”

“What’s it say? Who started it?”

“No one seemed to know. According
to three witnesses, Jake and Hulk Moscowitz had words and the next thing anyone
knew a table was overturned and there was broken glass all over the place. The
bartender called the cops before it could get worse.”

“Well, Jake didn’t have any marks
on him the next day. Maybe he got the better of the Hulk?”

“It’s possible. No one was taken
away for medical care, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t limp out with some minor
injuries—either to his body or his ego.”

“I get the idea with this Hulk guy
that an ego injury would hurt worse.”

He chuckled. “Probably so.”

“But would he wait until the next
day and go to the trouble of poisoning a cupcake, just to get even? He sounds
more like a flash-temper sort of guy.”

“Yeah, I agree. I see him more
likely to wait in a dark alley than to plan something in advance. Doesn’t look
like the police ever called him back in for more questions and no one filed
charges.”

“So we move Hulk whatshisname to
the bottom of our list?”

“Most likely. Are you still with
your mother?”

“I’m at the shopping arcade off
Bent Street. Mother’s in one of the shops.” She moved a little farther from the
door. “I’m just about ready to say screw the white dress and flowers and
ceremony, let’s just get the judge to marry us right away.”

“Really? You know my opinion. I’d
do it right now.”

“Couple problems. I need to be
sure my dad isn’t really getting sick. I suspect it’s like usual—he lays low
for a day or so just to have a little quiet time. But what if? So, once we’re
sure about that, yeah. I’m ready. Well, except for the honeymoon. I can’t leave
until I get my passport back. So, no ‘Ireland, here we come’ just yet.”

“Hang in there. We’ll get this
resolved.”

“Call me again when you get back
into town. Mother should be ready to go back to the house pretty soon.”

A spur of the moment marriage in
the judge’s chambers would work for Sam and Beau, but she knew her mother would
be severely disappointed to see the gown and cake and flowers and dinner go to
waste. This wasn’t over yet.