Sweets Galore: The Sixth Samantha Sweet Mystery (The Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (25 page)

“And Jake died in the late
afternoon.” She ran through scenarios—
Kozark
delivering the cupcake and then leaving town, having one of his goons do it—but
nothing really fit. Neither the style nor the timeframe.

“Anyway, he’s out as a suspect.”

“Which really leaves Doralee as
the most likely.”

“I’m almost looking forward to
meeting with Pete Sanchez. The guy is a pretentious jerk and this time I can
blow about a hundred holes in his case.”

The memory of the two smoky
figures went through Sam’s head again. One had seemed slight, like Doralee. So,
who was the other one? “Something about Doralee bothers me. I just can’t quite
put my finger on it yet.”

“Well, if you don’t mind waiting,
I guess tomorrow’s fine to face down Sanchez. Let me know if it comes to you.
I’ll see you at home soon?”

“Yep, almost on my way.” It would
only take a few minutes to place an order for the supplies that Becky had
neatly written on a list.

Julio nearly had all the baking
pans and utensils washed, she noticed, and Becky set a finished cake into the
fridge and walked over to the desk. Sam showed her the website where she
ordered specialty items—in case someone came in with a desire for an art deco
bridal cake topper or something. Otherwise, she told her assistant, their
supplies of flour, sugar and other staples should tide them over for the coming
weeks.

“Sam?” Jen’s voice came over the
intercom. “There’s somebody on line one that won’t talk to anyone but you. She
sounds really upset.”

Great. Just what she needed at five
minutes to closing, a customer who’d probably forgotten that her kid’s birthday
party started in an hour. She gave a sigh and picked up the phone.

“Samantha Sweet here.”

“Sam? It’s Evie Madsen,” the
tearful voice said. “I need help.”

Chapter
22

And I’m your mother?
Sam almost cut Evie off but something in the
girl’s voice sounded truly desperate.

“What’s happened? Where is
Tustin?”

“He blew a gasket earlier—started
screaming at me. He pulled off the street at this coffee place and left me
there. I didn’t even get my purse.” Her voice rose, thin and reedy.

“Which coffee shop? Maybe you
could ride the town trolley back to your hotel.”

“No! I can’t go back there. He
might be there. I—I don’t know what to do, Sam. Can you come get me?” The girl
choked back a sob.

Sam searched for any other answer,
someone she could send to help Evie out of her situation. Social services, a
battered women’s shelter, the police? Sam didn’t exactly have inroads with any
of them. And she had to admit she was curious why the pair hadn’t left town
already.

“I’ll come over. Which coffee shop
is it?”

“They closed and the manager made
me go. I went next door to a bridal shop and hid in the back room. When the
girl who worked here left, that’s when I decided I could call you.”

Sam knew the place—Beautiful
Bridals, right next to Java Joe’s Joint. “I can be there in about ten minutes
and I’ll come to the back door.”

“Thank you, Sam, I’m so sorry, I—”

“It’s okay. Just sit tight.” She
hung up and debated calling Beau. No point, really. She would drive Evie to the
Greyhound lobby and buy her a ticket for Los Angeles. After that, the girl was
on her own. She pictured the young woman, tall and proud as she stood on all
those various red carpets, now riding the bus to the coast. Would she even go
for such a plan? Well, Sam would deal with that when they met.

Outside, the sky had darkened
ominously and fat raindrops began to smack her windshield as she turned onto
Paseo del Pueblo Sur.

Beautiful Bridals had soft pink
night lights in the front windows where long gowns were displayed on three
impossibly thin, size zero mannequins. Sam held her stomach in and grumbled at
them as she passed the shop and took a driveway that led to the service
entrances of the few businesses in the little strip center.

The metal door she was looking for
was painted pink. She parked the truck under the one-bulb light fixture above
it, picked up her heavy flashlight, and stepped out into the rain. Wind whipped
at her jacket as she rapped at the door.

“Evie? It’s Sam. Open up. I’m
getting soaked out here.”

Locks rattled and the door opened
a smidge.

“Evie, come on. Let’s go.”

No response.

“Evie.” Sam stepped into the
darkness and pushed the heavy door shut with her butt. She went on hyper-alert
and tightened her grip on her flashlight. Ahead of her she saw the outline of a
doorway, similar to that in her own shop, separating the small stockroom from
the larger sales area. She scanned the stockroom with her flashlight. The two
areas were separated by a filmy curtain. The sales room glowed softly with the
pinkish window display lights. “Evie, if you don’t show yourself I’m leaving.
Right this minute.”

A loud sob sounded ahead of her
and
Evie’s
silhouette emerged from the dark. “Sorry,
Sam. I had to be sure you were alone.” She wiped at her nose with one hand.

Sam shone her light toward the
voice. Evie squinted her tear-swollen eyes shut. Trails of mascara stained her
face. A red knot stood out on one cheek.

“He did that?” Sam said, moving
the light out of her eyes. The young woman nodded.

There went the idea of simply
putting her on a bus. No way would Evie want to be seen until she’d had time to
work on the damage.

“Come here, blow your nose.” Sam
handed Evie a tissue and searched the room for a chair or desk but the space
was pretty well filled with large cardboard cartons.

A flimsy metal shelf against one
wall held rhinestone tiaras and some generic white silk bouquets. She peeked
into the other room where a sales desk at least afforded a chair.

“Sit down out there. If we don’t
turn on any lights, no one will notice us. We can talk a minute and make a plan
for you.” She went into the tiny restroom and wet three paper towels with
water, carrying them out to Evie.

“I assumed you two had left town
yesterday, after I refused to give Tustin any money,” she said, cupping
Evie’s
chin and dabbing at the red welt on her cheek.

“He wouldn’t give up on the idea.
Of the money.” Evie blinked a couple of times. “Said we
had
to get it before we left.”

A vision of her slashed mattress
popped into Sam’s head. She remembered Beau’s findings on the producer’s
financial state. It was a wonder the hotel had accepted one of his maxed out
credit cards. No point in asking Evie about it though.

“With everything coming together
for the show, I guess there were even more people wanting payments for things,
huh? The audition venues, the judges, contracts to be satisfied . . .”

Evie snorted. “The show was a
sham. Right from the start, there
was
no show.”

Sam stood up and leaned back
against the desk. “What? But the auditions . . .”

“Never happened.”

“The celebrity judges . . .?”

“
I
was the biggest celebrity who ever spoke to Tustin. I watched him
make call after call. Nobody in Hollywood would talk to him.”

Sam let that information tumble
around in her mind.

“How did Jake Calendar come into
this?”

Evie took the paper towels from
Sam and pulled a small cheval-style mirror across the desk so she could look
into it. In the dim light she began working on the mascara smudges with a
fingertip.

“Jake and Tustin were made for
each other. Two of the biggest bullshit artists on the scene.” She stared up at
Sam. “In Hollywood, that’s saying a lot.”

Sam glanced toward the front
windows where traffic flowed normally out on Paseo. Lights reflected crazily
off the wet pavement. No one had noticed them.

“Jake had convinced Tustin that
his band was on the verge of a huge hit, that they had a major recording
contract and were about to release an album. He said that Tustin could feature
them on
You’re The Star
and see to it
that they made it to the finals to help launch this album into, like, major
sales. Plus, Jake wrote up this contract making himself artistic director of
the show and it said he would get, like, this major percentage of the profits.”

“Why would Tustin go along with
that?”

“
Because
, Jake said he could get all this money.”

“From me.”

“Well,
yeah
.” She finished with her right eye, doubled the paper towel
over and started on the left. “The joke was on both of them.”

The picture became clear. Tustin
would get nonexistent money and Jake would get a nonexistent contract from a
nonexistent television hit show. They say you can’t con a completely honest
person, that there’s always an element of greed in the picture somewhere, the lure
of something for nothing. Tustin and Jake both had that mentality and the two
had conned each other.

Evie stared into the mirror,
rechecking her makeup repair job.

“So things went bad and Tustin
wanted to be rid of Jake?”

Evie’s
gaze went to her lap.

“Evie? What happened to Jake?”

She started to stand up and push
past, but Sam laid a hand on her shoulder. “Sit. Tell me. Now.”

“Jake figured out the show was
bogus when he told Tustin that he couldn’t get you to give him the money. They
had this huge, screaming fight at the hotel the day before the press
conference. Tustin told me he was scared that Jake would tell everything to the
press and blow his whole plan apart. I guess he thought he could still get the
money from somewhere.”

“Wait a minute—you said the fight
was at the hotel? I thought Tustin didn’t arrive in Taos until the day of the
press conference.”

Evie’s
perfect little eyebrows pulled together in the middle. “No . . . he was here
before.”

“How badly did Tustin want Jake
out of the picture? Did he threaten to kill him?”

Evie’s
eyes darted back and forth as she tried to come up with a story.

“Tell me the truth.” Sam put all
the force of motherhood into her voice. “This minute.”

“He only wanted to make Jake sick.
So he couldn’t leave the room and do the press conference. Tustin could tell
the story like he wanted to, without Jake contradicting him. I didn’t mean to
put so much—” Her mouth slammed shut.

“So much what, Evie?” Sam stepped
closer. “Did
you
put the poison in
the cupcake?”

“Just a little, I swear.”

“My god, Evie, it doesn’t take
very much of that stuff. You killed him.”

“I didn’t! Let me tell it all.”
She began to twist the paper towels to shreds. “Tustin came in and asked me how
I planned to make Jake sick. I showed him how I’d made a small hole in the
cupcake and then smoothed the frosting back over to cover it up. He kept
looking at the box of
Ratzout
, there on the desk in
Jake’s room.”

Two smoky grey figures. She saw
them again with clarity. One at a time, both Evie and Tustin had added poison
to the cupcake.

“He didn’t think Jake would get
sick enough, I guess.”
Evie’s
lower lip began to
tremble.

“You need to tell all of this to
the police,” Sam said, covering her anger with as much gentleness as she could
force into her voice. “I’ll take you to the station to talk to them.”

Evie squirmed in her chair,
glancing toward the gowns on display. At that moment a flash of light threw the
room into brilliant clarity. A split second later the storefront windows
exploded.

Chapter
23

Mannequins flew. Racks of white
dresses billowed like sea foam over the hood of the car that sent the place
into pandemonium. One headlight shattered and the other shone awkwardly at the
intersection of wall and ceiling, highlighting a row of plastic heads wearing
veils that had been knocked cockeyed. The engine sputtered and died.

A burst of vile curses, mostly
beginning with F, reverberated through the chaotic room as Tustin Deor emerged
from the car. Apparently, he’d come alone. His hair stuck out at wilder angles
than normal and the black jacket hung off one shoulder. His face was a mask of
fury.

“Evie, you stupid c—”

He hadn’t finished the thought
when he noticed that Sam had her phone in hand.

“Drop it!” he shouted.

She stared at him, trying to think
what to say to calm him down.

“I said drop it!” His lips
straightened into a narrow line of determination and he raised a gun.

She dropped the phone onto a pile
of white satin.

“I drove around Java Joe’s, baby,
looking for you. Saw that red pickup truck out back here.” His attention was on
Evie, the red mark on her cheek making a stark slash of color against the white
of her skin in the glaring light. He aimed the gun at her, holding it sideways
in that ridiculous posture Hollywood had adopted as cool.
Evie’s
face went another shade lighter.

“Tustin, you don’t want to do
this,” Sam said, working the tremble out of her voice.

“Really. Evie, what did you tell
her?” His eyes bored like hot embers. He took a step closer. “Evie.
What
did you tell her?”

Sam stole a sideways glance at
Evie, who looked about ready to keel over.
Think,
Sam. Stay cool.

He took two more steps.

From twenty feet away he might
actually hit one of them, despite his awkward hold on the gun and complete
inability to sight down the barrel. Sam thought to her days as a kid in Texas,
where Uncle Chub had taken her to the shooting range many times, and to the
times in Alaska where everyone carried a sidearm as protection against bears.
Tustin clearly didn’t know what he was doing. But even an idiot could get
lucky, especially at this range. She still didn’t want to miss her own wedding.