“Deputy Cardwell is investigating the death I told you about—the artist who was buried on private land.”
“Uh-huh.” Kelly turned toward the coffee carafe and Sam swore she saw a little smirk on her face. She filled a mug and carried it to her room.
Sam poured a mug for Beau, topped off her own and came up with a smile. “Well. That was a little awkward.”
He leaned against the counter beside the sink, drinking from his mug. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . .”
“Hey, not your fault. I enjoyed it. Kelly’s a big girl. She can’t pass judgment on me.”
“Well, we like to think they can’t. But kids always do.”
“I’ll talk to her later.” She ran a finger along the buttons on his shirt.
“So. I stopped to see if you’re available tonight? I could make dinner for us at my place?”
“Meet-the-mom time?”
“Well, I just met your daughter. Looks like the time is right.” He took another sip. “Hey, let’s make it a family gathering. Bring Kelly and everyone can get to know each other.”
Sam ran through the list of things she had to accomplish today, including the fact that she probably wouldn’t get back from Santa Fe until late afternoon. He didn’t seem to mind, so they said seven o’clock and he gave her directions out to his place.
They sneaked another quick kiss on the porch and she watched him climb into the cruiser. No denying that despite her early resistance she was suddenly lusting after this guy.
She shoved that thought aside as she went back inside and peeked into Kelly’s room.
“Yes, I’m interested in him. Yes, I believe he’s also interested in me. Get used to it. We’re going to his house for dinner tonight, where you and I will meet his mother. Get used to that, too. No attitude, okay?”
“Mom, why on earth would I have ‘attitude.’ He seems very nice.”
Sam’s suspicion meter jumped a few notches. During her growing-up years Kelly had done everything possible to chase off any man who came around. But she’s an adult now, Sam reminded herself as she walked through the house, with relationships of her own and maybe she’s come to realize that mom deserves the same. Even so, she knew she better brief Beau to expect anything.
No time to stress over it now. She tidied her room and looked for her watch in her jewelry box. The lumpy wood glared at her in sour yellow, until she picked up the box and moved it. Immediately, the wood warmed to her touch, the stones began to glow, and a feeling of energy surged through her. She quickly set it down and rubbed her hands together.
Bertha Martinez’s words came back: “You are to possess the secret . . . the box has special powers.”
She reached out and touched it again with the tip of her index finger. This was the third time she’d felt something strange from the box. When she’d first worked at Cantone’s—after handling the box that morning—she’d accomplished three days work in one. The time she’d started to massage Zoe’s tired foot and the astounding reaction to her touch . . . Magic?
She drew back from it. No.
Country girls from Texas did not believe in magical powers. They believed in practical things like baking cakes and raising kids to have responsible jobs. And speaking of responsible jobs, she had leaves to rake and mouse bait to check. She pushed the wooden box to the back of the dresser and grabbed up her backpack and keys.
Outside, she put a rake and some other garden tools into the back of Zoe’s Subaru and headed toward the Martinez place.
No yard had ever been raked so vigorously. She had a lot of energy to work off—thoughts of her conversation with Rupert last night, the sexual energy surrounding Beau, Kelly’s continued presence in her house, and the unexplained phenomenon of the wooden box. She shook off the images and scraped leaves into several piles. By the time she’d bagged them her shakiness began to subside. Practicality took over and she realized that she’d not eaten anything all day. Food would help.
She stacked the leaf bags beside the house, to be hauled away next time she came by with her truck. A chicken sandwich on the way home gave her a shot of energy. Back home, she quickly offloaded the tools and placed a clean sheet over the floor of the hatchback’s cargo area.
After a quick shower and change of clothes, she found Kelly, who gave her a hand with the wedding cake. They lifted off the top tier and made space for everything that went along with setup at the reception site. Sam draped a filmy sheet of plastic over the whole thing and was on her way.
There was something about having an almost-two hour road trip ahead. Her earlier good spirits after the morning encounter with Beau and the sense of accomplishment at finishing work at the Martinez house began to deflate as Sam thought more about what Rupert had told her last night about Cantone’s estate.
She couldn’t get past the idea that his nephew showed up so conveniently and that the great artist had died within such a short time. Now the nephew was living a life of riches. She just couldn’t think of a way to prove anything against him. At best he might have simply been a guy who was in the right place at the right time. At worst, he might be a murderer.
There. She’d said it.
Once the word got into her head it wasn’t leaving. She chided herself for focusing so exclusively on Bart Killington, though. According to Betty McDonald there were plenty of other people who didn’t much like Pierre Cantone. Money and territory were often at the root of conflicts, and she’d personally found two instances where Cantone had made someone angry. Leonard Trujillo, the neighbor who was ready to go to court over a few feet of land. What if the court had ruled against him and he decided to take out his anger on Cantone personally? Or the guy in town with that IOU for four hundred dollars—he too could have decided to take matters into his own hands. It was just that she couldn’t come up with a likely way that any of the three men could have given him the pneumonia that caused his death. And who else might be out there who had a grievance with the artist?
Sam thought about it until she pulled into the wide driveway of Casa de Tranquilidad. Opening the hatch on the car and looking again at the wedding cake reminded her what life was really about. The cake, frankly, turned out beautifully. She hoped it would be one of the memorable parts of someone’s wedding day. Baking and delivering beautiful things for people was the most positive part of her day, of her work in general. The minute she could get away from cleaning houses and repairing worn-down properties, she would do it. She fixed a picture of the storefront of Sweet’s Sweets in her head and resolved to hold onto it.
She walked into the big resort’s lobby, headed toward the ballroom, borrowed a wheeled cart from the kitchen staff and headed back to the car. A bellman helped lift the heavy lower tiers on their cake board and set it onto the cart. The smaller two tiers for the top fit nicely in place. She headed down the hall with it. The ballroom doors were closed again and she was just debating how to manage the doors and the cart when a voice piped up behind her.
“Hi again. Can I give you a hand with that?” It was the woman Sam had met on her last trip here, Charlie Parker. “Wow, beautiful cake!”
The maitre d’ appeared just then and held the doors while Sam steered the cart inside.
“Oh,
“Where does this go?”
“Ah, well, the hotel staff haven’t set up the cake table yet. Let’s just park the cart off to the side and you can set it up after awhile.”
How long a while, Sam wondered. She stood around for twenty minutes but no one seemed very organized. So, what to do? Trust that someone else could set up the cake, secure the top tiers firmly, and not touch the wrong spot and ruin something? Grrr.
Finally, she snagged the wedding planner again but the woman was interrupted three times by phone calls coming into the little headset thing she wore, like some kind of rock star diva.
Sam stood around, staring at the pictures on the walls, for another fifteen minutes. Looking at impressionist- style art made her think again of Pierre Cantone and that led her to the fact that several of his paintings were hanging in his nephew’s house right now. He’d claimed there was a will but was content to bury his uncle in the backyard and leave him there. And if that young man had killed his uncle for the valuable art, it couldn’t be ignored. She felt her fingers start to twitch. What if she just took a peek?
The blue-lady bustled past her again and Sam practically stuck her foot out to stop her. “Don’t let anyone
