lady.”
“Yes, she was,” Sam agreed. “I’d only recently gotten to know her.”
The sheriff approached just then, greeting Beau and Sam in his offhand manner. He turned to his wife and steered her toward the kitchen. “Excuse us a minute,” he said, almost as an afterthought.
Beau raised an eyebrow toward Sam. “See what I mean about his total self-absorption,” he murmured.
Another couple came into the dining room just then; Beau took Sam’s elbow and they turned toward the large living room where most of the crowd were standing around chatting in small groups. She recognized the publisher of the local newspaper and the wife of a town council member as two of the important people in the gathering. She also spotted Martin Delgado and Kevin Calendar from the Tafoya campaign among the guests. For the most part, it wasn’t her usual social set at all.
The recent widower mingled with the guests. With friends he seemed to be genuinely grieving. But Sam noticed that with others he immediately went into a low-key version of campaign mode. She caught herself watching him, remembering things Elena had said—the difficulty of life in the limelight, the stresses her husband’s career placed upon her. The affair. Sam felt her throat tighten. So sad. Maybe the lifestyle, as much as Elena’s guilt over the affair and Fenton’s death, had driven her to desperation.
Orlando and Margaret Padilla stepped into the room just then. Tafoya’s voice trailed off momentarily and he stared toward the sheriff. Sam felt a hum begin in her ears. She pressed her fingertips to her temples. Beau had turned to speak to someone else. She glanced back toward Padilla who was intent on filling a plate. Tafoya’s conversation had resumed and everyone seemed unaware of the strange current that Sam felt.
She shook her head and the hum faded away.
What was that all about?
Her arms were covered in goose bumps. Her scalp itched from them, as if her hair were standing on end. In a split second, the bumps disappeared and her hands felt on fire.
“Beau—” But he didn’t hear her. She gave him a vague wave to indicate that she was going to step outside.
A set of French doors stood open to a patio, letting in the mild autumn afternoon. She edged her way through the crowded room and took a deep breath of chrysanthemum-scented air. A waist-high adobe wall enclosed the free-form flagstone patio, providing a safety barrier from the drop-off behind the house. Sam stood at the wall, soaking up the views of the ravine beyond, placing her hands against the cool mud surface.
“It was a little close in there, wasn’t it?”
Sam’s hand flew to her chest at the sound of the male voice behind her. Orlando Padilla stood less than three feet away, trying to stick a fork into an olive on his plate.
“Sam, isn’t it?” he said. “Beau talks about you a lot.”
She nodded, trying to force her heartbeat back to normal.
“Good man. I’m glad to have him in the department.” Padilla continued speaking around a tortilla chip. “With the election and everything, life has been pretty busy these last few months.”
She mumbled something in acknowledgment but couldn’t concentrate on his words. A dark blue haze began to form around his head, snaking around him until it engulfed his shoulders and sent tendrils toward his feet.
“Are you feeling okay, Ms. Sweet?”
The blue deepened, turned muddy gray, became more solid-looking.
Sam’s mouth opened, then closed again. Padilla’s face was nearly obscured now.
“Sam? Ms. Sweet?”
The colored haze vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Sam blinked hard.
“Hey you,” Beau said, slipping an arm around Sam’s waist. “I thought you’d gone missing.”
She sent a vague smile his direction.
“What’s up?” Beau asked, trying to keep it casual.
“I . . .”
Margaret Padilla called out from the doorway to let her husband know that they would be late if they didn’t get going. She smiled apologetically. “Another day, another speech,” she said.
Orlando Padilla gave Sam a long, hard stare. She squirmed just a little. Then he drew a deep breath and walked toward the house.
“What was that all about?” Beau asked.
“I had . . .” She wanted to tell him about the nearly-painful sound that had pierced her ears earlier and the bizarre colors that had appeared around Padilla, but something held her back. Until she had some clue what all the weird signals were about it was better to keep it to herself. “Nothing really. Maybe it’s a migraine coming on.”
Two women stepped outside, an older lady that Sam thought had been introduced as someone’s aunt and a middle-aged woman in a deep burgundy dress with a delicate lace collar. Beau stood a little straighter and sent a polite nod their direction.
“Do you want to go home?” he asked.
She waved off the suggestion. “I’ll be fine.”
Another group had discovered the patio by now, Carlos Tafoya among them. Someone snagged Beau with a question and Sam let her attention wander. As her gaze drifted toward Tafoya, she felt her breath catch. Obscuring his handsome face and ready political smile was a blue haze.
Oh god, not another one.
She blinked hard and looked away, out to the open land beyond the adobe house. When she looked back at Tafoya the aura was gone.
Chapter 18
“I can’t help it, Beau. I got the weirdest feelings around both Carlos Tafoya and Orlando Padilla. I felt such tension in the room.” It was the only explanation she could offer when he quizzed her about her reaction at the wake. They were in his SUV on their way downtown. Sam had asked Beau to drop her off at her shop so she could see how the girls had done without her there all afternoon.
“Did you get the feeling that Tafoya might have guessed about his wife’s affair?”
“Maybe. But if he did, I don’t think he confronted Elena. She would have told me.”
She rubbed her temples, although she felt no pain. The whole thing was just so confusing.
“Dinner later?” he asked. “I put some stew in the cooker this morning. It’ll be real easy.”
“Would it be okay if I beg off? It was an early morning.”
He looked disappointed. “Tomorrow then? Stew is even better the next night.”
She didn’t have the heart to turn him down for the second invitation.
At Sweet’s Sweets, Jen was in the process of closing out the register and Becky had gone home for the day, leaving a supply of tea cookies and cakes ready for sale the next day. Sam would come in early and get the breakfast pastries done in time for the early coffee crowd and Halloween cookies baked for the trick-or-treat promotion they’d been advertising. Two new custom orders had come in—a wedding cake for the end of the month (at least some customers planned ahead!) and a baby shower cake which reminded Sam that new life always came along to offer comfort over the loss of another.
She made up a quick sketch for a three-dimensional cake, a baby carriage surrounded by large toy blocks, all frosted in pastel buttercream, with a set of life-size yellow booties made of sugar. She could do the basics in the morning and put it all together the next day. She rechecked the window displays and left the night lights on before going out to her van, parked behind the shop.
Kelly’s car sat in the driveway at home when Sam arrived.
“Beau came straight home after the funeral,” Kelly said, “so I started dinner early. Hope that’s okay.”
“I’m not very hungry,” Sam said. She had to admit, though, that when Kelly lifted the lid on a simmering skillet of chicken and mushrooms in some kind of savory sauce she might rethink that. “Okay, maybe just a little.”
Kelly chatted while they ate, but Sam found her mind wandering to Elena, specifically their last conversation. Granted, they’d consumed a fair amount of wine but Sam found herself racking her brain to remember anything at all that might have been her clue as to what Elena would do later that evening.
