something.”
That seemed like the best plan. They ended the call with a few suggestive ideas but Sam knew they both had more on their minds besides getting romantic.
She’d no sooner hung up the phone than there was a tap at her front door. Oven guy. With a quick comment about the encroaching weather, he bustled into the kitchen.
“Got the part for your oven right here,” he said, applying a screwdriver to the control panel. “Should just take a minute.”
It was longer than a minute, but not by much. Three hundred dollars later, he was on his way. Sam made the entry in her checkbook absentmindedly, thoughts still bouncing around in her head, puzzling over what had really happened to Elena Tafoya.
At eight o’clock she peered out the window and noticed that it was, indeed, a white world out there. She went to bed wondering how much snow might possibly accumulate overnight, remembering that she’d not been out to check the Adams property in nearly a week and making a mental note to do that. She had two other properties under her care right now, but she’d thoroughly winterized them when the first of the cold weather came along.
By four a.m. she’d come to the conclusion that sleep was not coming back. A glance out the window showed that about four inches had fallen. The silent sky was black with pinpoint dots of light. In the distance she heard the grind of a snowplow, blocks away, probably clearing the intersections and major roads. If she left soon and took the back streets she could get to the shop before anyone else was out. The fresh snow and her four-wheel-drive pickup truck should make for easy traveling. Once the sun came out everything would clear by noon. She dressed quickly and reached into the wooden box for her watch and earrings.
Sweet’s Sweets looked like something from a Kincaid painting with its softly glowing nightlights, snow sprinkling the awning like powdered sugar. Along the roadway and parking area the trees and shrubs stood as frosty sentinels with white icing mounded upon their branches. She cruised past them, circled the building and cut a path through the alley with the truck’s wide tires.
Inside, she preheated the ovens and adjusted the salesroom’s thermostat so it would feel cozy for the early customers. Becky’s planning paid off—Sam added eggs and milk to the dry ingredients for muffins, divided batches and added spices and fruit, and soon had four dozen little golden pastries ready for the front room. Scones followed. Napoleons, chocolate cream puffs, apple strudel, and fruit tarts. She stayed in her own zone and relished the enjoyment of pure creation.
By the time Jen arrived at six, the place was filled with the scents of sugar, fruits and spices.
“Looks like all I have to do is add the coffee,” she said. “Too bad we don’t have a giant vent fan to send this heavenly smell all over town. We’d have customers lined up out the door.”
As it turned out, they nearly did. It seemed that everyone who worked in the center of town and the plaza area had the same thoughts: warm, comfort food for breakfast on a day like this. The coffee, chai, hot chocolate and cider went out by the gallons. Office staff came in with orders and left with boxes neatly tied in purple ribbon and stuffed with dozens of assorted pastries. Riki walked over from her grooming shop.
“Hi luv, the scent of this place is driving me crazy over there, you know.”
She browsed the cases and chose a blueberry tart and a hearty square of Becky’s Pennsylvania Dutch crumb cake. Sam poured her a large latte and said, “On the house. Just send your customers our way, while they wait for their dogs.”
“I’m already doing that, Sam. In case you hadn’t noticed, you are the favorite spot on the block now.”
Sam gave the slender British transplant a quick hug before she departed. She stayed in the front long enough to rearrange the displays and neaten things up before heading to the kitchen again to see how Becky was doing.
“Got it under control here, I think,” Becky told her. “I’ll have more muffins ready in a jiff.”
“Okay. That’s great. If you can handle things here, I need to get out to one of my properties and check it over.”
As she’d assumed, in the midmorning sunlight the streets had quickly cleared, with brownish runoff in the gutters the only sign of the nighttime winter wonderland. The final spots of white were on the shady sides of buildings and shrubs. Sam climbed into her truck and headed south on Paseo del Pueblo Sur.
When she reached the turnoff to the narrow lane where Cheryl Adams’s house stood, she remembered the downside of life on the edges of town. Hickory Lane showed deep, muddy ruts that threatened to be slick. She shifted the truck into four-wheel mode and steered carefully. At the Adams house a set of tracks veered into the driveway behind the coyote fence. Sam tensed. Someone had already been here.
But there was no vehicle in sight. Maybe they’d just chosen this spot to turn around. Pulled in and backed out again. She aimed her truck at the center of the small parking area and firmly established dominance of the space.
No footprints crossed the snow on this shady side of the house, no sign of disturbance in the frozen crystals that remained on the small porch. Sam crunched across them and unlocked the door.
Inside, the house felt cold, empty, and stale. She walked through to the kitchen at the back, surveying the living and dining rooms, checking the sign-in sheet that she’d left on the kitchen counter. No one else had logged in. Sometimes her contracting officer, Delbert Crow, checked the houses where she’d worked. Occasionally a Realtor showed a place. But no one had been here.
She went to the utility room where she verified that she had drained and turned off the hot water heater. The home’s heating system was electric baseboard heat and each thermostat Sam checked showed that those were turned off. She remembered shutting off the main water valve, and now she poured a little antifreeze into each drain as she walked through, a little extra insurance against the pipes freezing as temperatures began dipping toward zero in December and January.
A peek into each of the bedrooms. Checking latches on windows as she went, she came first to the smaller room, the one which had housed the Adams children. All was neat and clean here. Then she heard a sound.
She froze.
There it was again, the faint scrape of something metallic. She edged toward the master bedroom door, realizing the only weapon at her disposal was the plastic jug of antifreeze that she’d used in the kitchen and bathroom. A gallon jug, roughly half full of liquid—well, it might effectively clobber an intruder in the head. She gripped it tighter and nudged the bedroom door with her left hand.
Mini blinds at the windows cast thin stripes of sunlight across the brown carpet. The squeak sounded again, tiny, as if a wire hanger were slid along a metal rod. Her eyes darted to the closet.
A man stood at the open bi-fold doors, reaching into the closet as if he were hanging up a garment.
“Sir? What are you doing?”
The figure ignored her, just continued his perusal of the closet.
“Sir, you can’t be in here. This house is under the care of the USDA.”
He slowly began to turn. Then he simply vanished.
Chapter 22
Sam’s heart stopped.
“What the hell—” She held up the plastic jug, a last-defense battering ram. But there was simply nothing there.
Her gaze sped around the room. Nothing.
She looked behind her, wondering if he could have possibly gotten past her. But how could that be? She’d never left the doorway.
She set the jug on the floor and edged her way into the bedroom. The closet was completely empty. What had made the metallic sound, what she’d taken to be a hanger on the rail? She rubbed at her eyes with her fists, realizing how cartoonish that move would seem to anyone observing.
Taking several deep breaths, she worked to steady her heart.
She strode to the window and pulled the cord to raise the mini-blinds. Dust motes drifted through the air as
